A group of Michigan parents is seeking to overturn a long-standing state constitutional amendment outlawing public funding of private and religious schools.

One of the plaintiffs, Jessie Bagos, told The Epoch Times: “To have the federal court declare the so-called Blaine Amendment unconstitutional will open up real school choice for all the people of Michigan.”

Bagos, a mother of twin first-grade boys, said: “This is a step in a much bigger process. Without this step, thousands of parents will have no alternative but the public school. They will have nowhere else to go.”

School choice is very important to Bagos and her husband, Ryan.

“Because,” she said, “our public school district handled the pandemic horribly. Two young boys forced to do kindergarten on a computer! Can you imagine? They cried every morning.

“We believe our children were harmed by that experience. One son developed anxiety. He just kept clinging to me and crying.

“Ryan and I wanted to switch the boys over to St. Mary’s (a nearby religious school). It stayed in-person all year long during the 2020­­–2021 school year. But, we couldn’t afford it.

“I never want to be in that position again. I want choice!” Bagos said.

In August, at the suggestion of a friend, Bagos asked for help from the Mackinac Center, a free-market think tank based in Midland, Michigan.

By mid-September, the Bagoses had joined four other Michigan families and the Parent Advocates for Choice in Education Foundation as plaintiffs in a complaint filed on Sept. 23 in the U.S. District Court, Western District of Michigan, Southern Division.

The plaintiffs are suing Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, a Democrat, and State Treasurer Rachael Eubanks in their official capacities.

The suit asks the court to overturn as unconstitutional Article 8, Section 2, Paragraph 2 of the state constitution, which prohibits public funds from going to private or religious schools, and to rule on the constitutionality of other state statutes and policies.

The complaint alleges that the state constitution violates the free exercise clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on the grounds of religious animus, differential treatment, and “conditioning the availability of benefits on a recipient’s willingness to surrender its religiously impelled status.”

The complaint also alleges that Michigan law violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution by the “creation of political structure that discriminates against religion.”

According to the complaint, discrimination occurs when parents contributing to the Michigan Education Savings Plan are treated differently.

A couple may contribute to a plan up to $10,000 annually, receive a tax deduction for it on their state income tax form, and use the money to pay for school tuition at a public school they like outside of their district of residence. However, under state law, another couple who uses the same money to pay for tuition at a religious or private school will lose the deduction.

“That’s unfair!” said Bagos. “It’s my money. Can’t I spend it where I want to? Why are they telling me what to do with it?”

The complaint also alleges Michigan’s private secular schools can request to be changed into charter schools, which enables them to receive public funding. Private religious schools aren’t afforded that opportunity unless they sacrifice many of their beliefs and values.

Pastor Jared Witkowski, of Community Baptist Church of Kimball, told The Epoch Times that he would be “leery” of accepting public funds to help support the Christian school at his church because of possible “strings attached.”

“I think money should go to the parents and the government should leave its hands out of the church,” he said.

Patrick Wright of the Mackinac Center, one of the lead attorneys on the case, told The Epoch Times that the complaint would be defended by lawyers from the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, a Democrat.

“We are encouraged by the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent interest in religious liberty cases. If successful, this case will bring educational choice to Michigan’s 1.6 million schoolchildren,” said Wright.

Ben DeGrow, director of educational policy at the Mackinac Center, says of the lawsuit: “It is a significant case. Victory would mean the extension of educational and religious freedom. It will help thousands of families find, and help them afford, a better education for their children.

“The health and future of our nation depends on a well-informed citizenry. Not just academically well-prepared, but also in the understanding of the values of our country that can guide them for the rest of their lives.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/parents-allege-hostility-against-religion-in-school-funding-lawsuit_4031412.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

A teacher who quit her job in California and moved to Florida over what she saw as the political indoctrination of students and staff has helped produce a guide to help educators spot critical race theory (CRT) in the classroom.

The Blexit Foundation rolled out the new guide, developed by Kali Fontanilla, to its 35 chapters across the United States on Oct. 4.

“It’s Blexit’s answer to CRT,” the organization’s national director Pierre Wilson told The Epoch Times.

Liberal cities, especially those with large minority populations, are aggressively advocating for CRT, which is based on Marxist themes, to be taught in American classroom, Wilson said.

“This is an attack on all of America,” he said. “They’re pushing it extremely hard right now, so we felt it was something that we had to respond to right way,” by offering an alternative, he said.

A graphic promoting the guide shows the foundation’s co-founder Candace Owens surrounded by a crowd of supporters, carrying the banner “Blexit’s Stand Against CRT.” It states: “As part of our ongoing education initiative, the Blexit Foundation has launched a new tool kit outlining how parents and teachers can identify and fight back against the creeping influence of CRT in America’s classrooms.”

Blexit’s mission is to lead a “black exit” from the decades-long grip of the Democratic Party.

The digital guide will be made available in print this month, Wilson said.

Fontanilla is known for her strong background in teaching, and she has done “a fantastic job” on the guide, he said.

Though others reached out to help write the guide, Blexit ultimately chose Fontanilla “because of our experience with her and the work that she’s done in her community,” Wilson said. “She is a social media influencer now and has made quite a few videos also expressing her passion and belief that CRT is wrong for this country.”

Fontanilla’s guide is designed for teachers across the nation to help students see alternative views to the CRT’s narrow “hyper race-focused lens,” she said. “It’s not just in ethnic studies in California.”

“It’s a guide for parents and teachers on how to spot it, what to do if they’re forced to teach it, what it is because a lot of people don’t know what critical race theory is, and all the key terms that are in it,” she said.

“In the public schools right now, it’s almost a given, especially in California or in any blue state, that your curriculum is going to be left-leaning. That is just the default,” she said.

For example, health classes usually have a pro-abortion message and history classes tend to paint white people in a bad light, she said.

The Blexit guide includes lessons to counter CRT, including Equity vs. Equality and learning about the Quakers and their fight to abolish slavery. It shows teachers how to instruct students in a way that helps them to critically think about CRT “rather than just brainwashing them into going along with these narratives that America is super racist, and every institution is either oppressing them or benefiting their oppressor,” Fontanilla said.

Though the California School Boards Association has claimed the words “critical race theory” appear only once in the curriculum, references to CRT ideology are prevalent throughout the state’s Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum.

“It’s just silly to me that they deny it because it’s just everywhere right now,” Fontanilla said.

“This is why it’s important to be able to spot the concept of CRT being inserted in lessons for our students that may not explicitly be labeled as CRT,” she said.

Terms such as privilege, intersectionality, hegemony, dominant ideologies, and decolonization, even diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as the four Is of oppression (ideological, institutional, interpersonal and internal) are “just CRT rebranded,” she said.

Fontanilla is an advocate for school choice and has encouraged everyone to speak out at school board meetings.

“School board meetings are public forums in which all members of the community should be welcome to comment even if they don’t have a child in the school. Do not be afraid to speak up. We need every voice in this fight,” she writes in the guide.

Fontanilla taught for about 15 years in California and told The Epoch Times in June she decided to leave her teaching position at Rancho San Juan High School in Salinas, California, after being threatened and bullied on social media for opposing CRT components in the ethnic studies program and denouncing the group Black Lives Matter (BLM).

Since then, Salinas Union High School District (SUHSD) has resisted reading aloud a letter she wrote criticizing school board president Phillip Tabera, who attacked opponents of CRT as “anti people of color” on social media following a June 22 board meeting.

Tabera has not responded to multiple inquiries since the incident, and the school board has not heeded the concerns of parents who spoke out against the SUHSD’s ethnic studies curriculum, seen by some as anti-American and anti-Christian.

“I am disgusted and insulted that he would say such derogatory words about those that were brave enough to speak up about this indoctrination happening in the classroom,” Fontanilla wrote. “Some of those that spoke up were people of color, including myself. To be told that we are ‘anti people of color’ because we are against the district forcing all of our students to receive lessons that are racist and divisive is disgraceful.”

‘A Real Blexit Story’

Though California’s political leaders are known for trying “their hardest to be the most progressive state in the country,” Wilson said no matter what their agenda is called, he believes it’s the same old story of victimhood.

“They’re trying to change America’s history. They want the story to be told only from certain points of view, and they want us always thinking about the past. They want minorities, such as myself and others, to feel like victims,” he said.

“I’m actually a real Blexit story. I was a hardcore Democrat for a very long time,” Wilson said.

Like others who joined the organization, he says he got tired of blaming others and decided to exit the party. Wilson now believes in Blexit’s message that change begins on the inside, not looking outside for someone or something to blame.

But CRT teaches the “total opposite,” he said. “It’s pointing your finger at everyone else and it’s being a victim. …Who did you wrong? Who can you blame? That’s not how we operate.”

Those who claim CRT is uplifting and sheds light on the truth are mistaken, Wilson suggested.

“It’s not true. It’s a political stance that’s now being pushed into our schools,” he said. “I’m black, and I don’t feel oppressed. I don’t feel like there is systemic racism in this country. I feel like the day that I decided to change my life, my life changed.”

Though perhaps well-intentioned, constantly telling black teachers they are appreciated, special, or that black educators matter, as Fontanilla was told at her California teaching job, singles them out for how they look rather than their accomplishments, he said.

“We want to be celebrated because we worked hard. We want to be celebrated because we gave our all, not because we received a handout, or we were treated like victims. That’s what Blexit is all about. We’re all about victors not victims,” he said.

“What about the kids who are growing up, who really don’t see race, like black and white girls who are playing together who are having a great time who don’t see anything negative?” he asked. “But now, they’re in school, and now they’re being forced to look at each other a little bit differently, because one side or family has oppressed the other?”

“We’re teaching them anger, hatred, division, and we’re saying we’re doing this in the name of love, but we’re not,” he said. “It’s sickening when you really think about it. They’re saying that they’re doing this out of love, and they’re doing this because they just want everyone to understand history.”

If CRT proponents really wanted everyone to understand history, “they would understand that white people weren’t the only ones who owned slaves, not to mention that it was white people who helped free the slaves,” Wilson said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/teacher-creates-educational-guide-to-counter-crt-in-the-classroom_4034034.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

One parenting leader is speaking out after Attorney General Merrick Garland sent a memorandum from the Department of Justice to the FBI to address supposed “threats of violence” from parents.

Asra Nomani joined Fox News’ “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning wearing a T-shirt with the words, “I’m a mom, not a ‘domestic terrorist.’”

“It’s outrageous what the federal government is doing now,” said Nomani, who is vice president for strategy and investigations for Parents Defining Education.

“We have parents right now waking up from sea to shining sea to bring their children to school, to urge them into the day, and what has happened now is that the federal government and the National School Board Association has declared a war on parents,” she said.

Nomani responded that the only goal of parents is to speak up for their children.

Schumer’s Signature on Secret, Leaked Agreement Shows Dems Even Dishonest with Each Other

“All we have done over the past year is stand up and speak up for children. It’s unconscionable that the Federal Bureau of Investigations should even spend a minute thinking about us,” she said.

“We all reject violence and all we want to do is protect our kids,” Nomani added.

The government needs to stop demonizing us as parents: Parents Defining Education member @AsraNomani rips the DOJ’s ‘overreaching’ probe into potential threat against school boards. pic.twitter.com/XD4NbgzQUF

— Brian Kilmeade (@kilmeade) October 6, 2021

Her efforts on social media also have caught the attention of Kentucky Republican Sen. Rand Paul.

“The punk who assaulted the policeman defending my wife and I in DC went free but the Biden Admin. labels concerned parents as ‘domestic terrorists?’” Paul tweeted alongside a post from Nomani urging parents to contact the National School Board Association in response to its letter.

The punk who assaulted the policeman defending my wife and I in DC went free but the Biden Admin. labels concerned parents as “domestic terrorists?” https://t.co/dSsqm6TNQQ

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 6, 2021

Nomani’s interview followed a memorandum Garland sent to the FBI on Monday concerning “threats” against school personnel.

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“In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence among school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s schools,” the attorney general wrote.

“The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate,” Garland said.

“In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel,” he continued. “Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation’s nearly 14,000 public school districts.”

BREAKING: Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing “threats.”

The letter follows the National School Board Association’s request to classify protests as “domestic terrorism.” pic.twitter.com/NhPU03YOYq

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 4, 2021

In a letter to President Joe Biden dated Sept. 29, the National School Boards Association pleaded with him to treat parents who oppose mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory as domestic terrorists.

The NSBA letter said, “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

The United Nations Human Rights Council on Friday silenced the executive director of a U.N. watchdog after he drew attention to anti-Semitic comments made by teachers for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

The council cut off U.N. Watch director Hillel Neuer as he was testifying about his watchdog’s report on anti-Semitic social media posts from teachers hired by UNRWA, a refugee agency tasked with educating Palestinian children. The report revealed that a teacher in the Gaza Strip had shared a video of Adolf Hitler “to enrich and enlighten your thoughts and minds.” Another teacher had shared anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that blamed the Jewish people for the coronavirus pandemic and claimed they want to control the world and destroy Islam. The president of the Human Rights Council said Neuer was cut off because he made “derogatory, insulting, and inflammatory remarks” that amounted to “personal attacks” and were “not acceptable.”

No joke: The U.N. Human Rights Council just cut me off for testifying about UNRWA teachers who glorify Hitler. Chair says I made “derogatory, insulting & inflammatory remarks”—by quoting their own Facebook posts. “This amounts to personal attacks. This statement is out of order.” pic.twitter.com/qPXohSdOfW

— Hillel Neuer (@HillelNeuer) October 3, 2021

The Biden administration rejoined the Human Rights Council in February after the Trump administration had boycotted the agency since 2018 over its anti-Israel agenda and its inclusion of human rights abusers such as China, Russia, and Cuba. The UNRWA uses curriculum provided by the Palestinian Authority, and undercover videos taken at the agency’s facilities have shown children calling for the destruction of the state of Israel.

Neuer called on Human Rights Council president Nazhat Shameem Khan to apologize to him and rescind her ruling, saying she “read out a prepared statement” against him. He also threatened to press U.N. secretary general António Guterres to proclaim that his remarks were incorrectly characterized and that the body was sending “a dangerous message” by silencing him and denying his right to freedom of speech.

“The highest human rights body of the United Nations has just sent a dangerous message to the world when, without any basis, you summarily and arbitrarily blocked me from presenting a report about systemic anti-Semitism incited daily by the teachers of UNRWA,” Neuer tweeted.

U.N. Watch’s report contains more than 20 examples of UNRWA teachers making anti-Semitic comments on social media.

https://freebeacon.com/national-security/un-silences-watchdog-for-calling-out-anti-semitism-at-relief-agency/

William Bennett, the Reagan administration’s secretary of education, has launched a new online history and literacy program in an effort to combat “anti-American ideology that radically misrepresents” the history of the United States.

The new initiative, dubbed “The Story of America,” is aimed at providing middle and high school students with a curriculum that allows them to explore authentic historical contents while improving critical reading and writing skills. The curriculum consists of a series of interactive stories drawn from Bennett’s 2007 book “America, the Last Best Hope,” as well as materials developed by other education experts.

“For too long, an anti-America ideology that radically misrepresents U.S. history has infiltrated our education system and misled our kids,” Bennett said Monday in a statement announcing the initiative.

Bennett, who headed the U.S. Department of Education from 1985 to 1988, added that the project will shine a light on our current educational crisis and share the history of our country with the next generation in a way that is truthful, engaging, and gives students the full, complex story of America, which is sadly no longer shared in many of our classrooms.”

The online program, which will be fully released in both English and Spanish languages in fall 2022, is developed in coordination with educators, authors, technology experts, and creative artists at the Today Foundation, which previously designed “Texas History Awakens,” an interactive social studies curriculum intended for middle school students in Texas.

“A truthful understanding of our nation’s history, devoid of political activism, is an essential component of that education,” said Richard Collins, the founder of the foundation.

The announcement comes amid pushback at the local and state levels against attempts to recast the American story as one about racism and oppression. Last week, North Carolina’s Johnston County school board adopted a policy that would discipline or dismiss teachers if they teach such narratives.

“Racism causes damage to individuals and the community. When racism is present, it creates a lack of trust and respect,” the document reads. “No student or staff member shall be subjected to the notion that racism is a permanent component of American life.”

When it comes to U.S. history, the policy states that “all people deserve full credit and recognition for their struggles and accomplishments throughout United States history,” and that the nation’s founding documents “shall not be undermined.” It banned any Johnston County Schools employee from “making any attempt to discredit the efforts made by all people using foundational documents for reform.”

“No fictional accounts or narratives shall be used to invalidate actual objective historical events. All people who contributed to American Society will be recognized and presented as reformists, innovators, and heroes to our culture,” it added. “Failure to comply with this policy will result in disciplinary action up to and including dismissal.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/former-education-secretary-launches-us-history-curriculum-to-counter-anti-american-narrative_4032975.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

As President Joe Biden’s attorney general, Merrick Garland keeps proving how right Republicans were to keep him off the Supreme Court.

Since his confirmation in March, Garland has repeatedly shown how willing he is to use the Justice Department for politically driven causes — from his handling of the fallout from the death of George Floyd, to his opposition to voter integrity laws, to his memo Monday to the FBI to crack down on parents protesting the decisions of their local school board.

If knee-jerk partisanship in the hands of a term-limited political appointee is dangerous, imagine the same man in a lifetime job on the nation’s highest court.

Most Americans should remember that Garland was the federal judge chosen in 2016 by then-President Barack Obama to fill the Supreme Court seat left vacant by the untimely death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

That nomination was stonewalled by the Republican Senate under then-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (even McConnell’s most vicious critics on the right have to acknowledge that act of political heroism for the future of the Republic).

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In an interview Tuesday morning on “Fox & Friends,” Colorado Republican Rep. Ken Buck brought up Garland’s past as a federal judge to explain why the order to the FBI on Monday was so troubling.

“Attorney General Garland was a judge, and he should know better than to try to use the FBI for political speech. So many of the courtrooms that we go into, we see this Greek goddess of Themis who had a scale on her left hand and the sword in her right hand, and she’s blindfolded,” Buck said.

“And she’s blindfolded because justice is blind. Justice is impartial — doesn’t care whether you’re white or black, man or woman, tall or short. Justice should not be used to attack a group of people expressing their opinions at school board meetings, whether they’re in favor of critical race theory or whether they’re opposed to critical race theory. Whether they’re in favor of masks or vaccines or opposed.

“That’s political speech that needs to be protected.”

Check it out here. Buck’s comments about Garland come about the 3-minute mark.

That’s all true, of course. The question is whether Garland believes it.

As conservative commentator Dennis Prager pointed out during the fight over Garland’s nomination, mainstream media outlets and liberal commentators went to huge lengths to paint Garland as the “moderate” kind of judge Americans needed on the high court, when the reality was he was a predictable liberal, likely to side predictably with the left on major issues from abortion to immigration to Second Amendment rights.

Even in an era dominated by lies from the administration — “if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor” of Obamacare — and lies promulgated by the mainstream media — the “hands up, don’t shoot” that helped launch Black Lives Matter as a movement — Garland’s alleged “centrism” was a major assault against verifiable truth.Is the Biden Justice Department a threat to American freedom?Yes No
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As if to prove it, the attorney general, the very same man whom luminaries at liberal outlets from coast to coast — like The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times — assured the country would be a “centrist,” has taken militantly leftists positions at every opportunity.

Instead of a moderate, Garland is revealing himself to be an attorney general firmly on the side of the progressive left, using the Justice Department to file a lawsuit against Texas over its pro-life law, for instance, or overseeing the treatment of defendants in cases stemming from the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion. (Even a liberal publication like The Daily Beast acknowledged the government’s bias, albeit from a twisted perspective.)

But with his latest move, Garland is showing himself to be the kind of AG only a progressive protofascist could dream of.

He’s openly ordering the Federal Bureau of Investigation — the FBI, for goodness’ sake — to keep tabs on the efforts of American parents who don’t want their kids subjected to critical race theory brainwashing, or requirements to keep their faces and noses covered throughout the school day on scientifically questionable grounds. (This isn’t just a view from the conservative side. If New York Media’s The Intelligencer doesn’t buy the mask argument, it’s got holes.)

With his memo on Monday, Garland proved he’s all too willing to wield the powers of the federal government to put the efforts of parents worried about their children’s education and future on a par with domestic terrorism.

At the same time, he’s part of the administration of a president whose political party took the side of actual domestic terrorism last year when mobs tore apart American cities and Democrats cheered them on (or bailed them out).

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Of course, a Garland defender could make the argument that Garland the attorney general is a different creature from Garland as Supreme Court justice — that he’s only fulfilling a role and he would have fulfilled duties on the high court differently. But it’s a hollow point.

Garland clearly thinks he has a legal right to take the actions he has, which means that as a Supreme Court justice, he’d likely approve of similar high-handed tactics on the part of the government (certainly as long as it was a Democratic administration implementing them).

Every day since his inauguration in January, Joe Biden has shown he’s not at all the “centrist” that was sold to the American public by a hideously biased mainstream media during the 2020 election.

Every day since he was confirmed, Merrick Garland has shown the same about himself.

Rep. Buck was right. Garland was a judge and should know better than to give the FBI an order like the one he gave on Monday.

He clearly doesn’t, or he doesn’t care.

And he almost had a lifetime seat on the United States Supreme Court.

We’re in the midst of a pandemic — one where our kids, in some states, have to be masked in school at all times. Naturally, this is a necessity, given that they’re dying in droves from a simple virus.

Well, droves might be the wrong word. And it’s worth noting that, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data from the last few years, fewer children and teens died of COVID than of drowning.

And car crashes. And gun violence. And traffic accidents. And poisoning. And suicide. In fact, the number of deaths from COVID, over the period from May 20, 2020, to Sept. 23, 2021, represented a small percentage of annual child deaths in the United States, according to the U.K.’s Daily Mail.

“Most children in the US die as a result of various accidents, including car crashes, drowning, and from being shot, the CDC says,” the Mail’s Andrea Blanco reported.

“A total of 3,343 children 19 and under lost their lives in traffic accidents in 2019, while there is an estimate of almost 4,000 children dying of fatal accidental drownings every year.

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“Poisoning accidents kill 730 children every year in the country.”

These numbers can be seen in the graph below from a World News tweet of the Mail’s article Monday.

Latest US official figures show that 498 children have been killed by COVID since the pandemic began https://t.co/JDCiyqFP1L

— World News (@worldnewstweet_) October 4, 2021

Based on 2019 statistics represented in the chart, 3,960 children died from drowning, 3,434 from car crashes, 3,285 from gun violence, 1,053 from traffic accidents, 730 from poisoning, 534 from suicide and 79 from bike accidents. Only 498 children died from COVID between 2020 and 2021 — this is compared to the 13,075 kids who have died from other unexpected causes.

In other words, your children are almost seven times more likely to die in a car than from COVID-19. They are almost eight times more likely to drown.

Furthermore, most children who contract COVID are asymptomatic or have mild cases.

But don’t worry, they’ll likely get a shot in the arm to ensure that 498 doesn’t creep up.

Last month, BioNTech and Pfizer announced they planned to seek approval for a reduced dose of their COVID vaccine for kids aged 5 to 11 years old.

“Already over the next few weeks, we will file the results of our trial in five to 11 year olds with regulators across the world and will request approval of the vaccine in this age group, also here in Europe,” Chief Medical Officer Oezlem Tuereci said, according to Reuters.

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President Joe Biden’s secretary of education wholeheartedly approved.

“We know that vaccination eligibility for our elementary-aged students would be a game changer,” said Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, according to U.S News.

“Not only would it help us keep our schools open and have less quarantining and closures, but it would also help parents breathe a lot easier and increase confidence in communities that their schools are safe.”

And as for the 12 to 17-year-olds it’s now approved for, authorities are doing almost anything they can to ensure they get it.

In Colorado, for instance, a vaccine lottery in which high school students could win $50,000 in scholarships to get the jab has been set up.

“This scholarship sends a clear message to our state that we need you for our Colorado comeback,” said Dr. Angie Paccione, executive director of the Colorado Department of Higher Education, according to KMGH-TV.

That’s the carrot approach. In California, they’re employing the stick: All students 12 to 17 must get vaccinated once the shot receives full Food and Drug Administration approval for that age range, all thanks to a mandate from Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom.

“CA will require our kids to get the COVID-19 vaccine to come to school. This will go into effect following full FDA approval,” Newsom tweeted on Friday.

“Our schools already require vaccines for measles, mumps and more. Why? Because vaccines work. This is about keeping our kids safe & healthy.”

BREAKING: CA will require our kids to get the COVID-19 vaccine to come to school.

This will go into effect following full FDA approval.

Our schools already require vaccines for measles, mumps and more. Why? Because vaccines work.

This is about keeping our kids safe & healthy.

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) October 1, 2021

They are laser-focused on making sure that another 498 youngsters don’t die in the next 16 months.

Just so we’re clear, that’s a little over 31 minors a month. Meanwhile, “more than 12,000 children die every year due to injuries including drownings, falls, burns, and road traffic injuries. That equates to around 33 children a day,” according to the Mail.

Are we supposed to assume we’re going to take drastic steps to stop those deaths? There’s no vaccine for that, after all.

No, COVID-19 isn’t “just the flu.” For children and teenagers, however, it’s scarcely fatal — and, for those who end up succumbing to it, there’s likely a pre-existing condition at play.

We don’t see these kinds of precautions being taken for any of the other causes that claim the lives of many more children every year. The thing is, however, that the threat of COVID is real and raw right now. It can pump cortisol into the veins of parents and school administrators everywhere — enough of the stress hormone, in fact, that they no longer read statistics before making decisions.

When situations like that arise, however, bad decisions get made by opportunists and power-trippers. It’s time to start looking at the cold, hard statistics and stop fear-mongering.

Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis accused Attorney General Merrick Garland of “weaponizing” the Department of Justice by using the Federal Bureau of Investigation to intimidate and silence parents.

“Attorney General Garland is weaponizing the DOJ by using the FBI to pursue concerned parents and silence them through intimidation,” DeSantis tweeted Tuesday.

“Florida will defend the free speech rights of its citizens and will not allow federal agents to squelch dissent.”

Attorney General Garland is weaponizing the DOJ by using the FBI to pursue concerned parents and silence them through intimidation.

Florida will defend the free speech rights of its citizens and will not allow federal agents to squelch dissent.

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) October 5, 2021

Skin Problems, Neuropathy, Paralysis All Part of Over 500,000 Adverse Events Reported After COVID Vaccine

The remarks followed a memorandum Garland sent to the FBI on Monday concerning threats against school personnel.

BREAKING: Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing “threats.”

The letter follows the National School Board Association’s request to classify protests as “domestic terrorism.” pic.twitter.com/NhPU03YOYq

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 4, 2021

“In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence among school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s schools,” Garland wrote.

“The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate.

“In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel,” he continued. “Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation’s nearly 14,000 public school districts.”

On Wednesday, the National School Boards Association penned a letter to President Joe Biden pleading with him to treat parents who oppose mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory as domestic terrorists.

The NSBA began by asking “for federal law enforcement and other assistance to deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation.”

“Now, we ask that the federal government investigate, intercept, and prevent the current threats and acts of violence against our public school officials through existing statutes, executive authority, interagency and intergovernmental task forces, and other extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of our children and educators, to protect interstate commerce, and to preserve public school infrastructure and campuses.”

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The group said local and state law enforcement agencies were already working with certain public school officials to “prevent further disruptions to educational services and school district operations,” but more assistance was needed because “these threats and acts of violence have become more prevalent.”

The group also requested “the assistance of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to intervene against threatening letters and cyberbullying attacks that have been transmitted to students, school board members, district administrators, and other educators.”

The NSBA’s most concerning section noted, “As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

“NSBA requests that such review examine appropriate enforceable actions against these crimes and acts of violence under the Gun-Free School Zones Act, the PATRIOT Act in regards to domestic terrorism, the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the Violent Interference with Federally Protected Rights statute, the Conspiracy Against Rights statute, an Executive Order to enforce all applicable federal laws for the protection of students and public school district personnel, and any related measure.

“As the threats grow and news of extremist hate organizations showing up at school board meetings is being reported, this is a critical time for a proactive approach to deal with this difficult issue.”

“These threats and acts of violence are affecting our nation’s democracy at the very foundational levels, causing school board members — many who are not paid — to resign immediately and/or discontinue their service after their respective terms,” the association added.

“NSBA is committed to working with you and your Administration as a partner to address this crisis affecting America’s public schools, and greatly appreciates your prompt attention to our requests.”

In Joe Biden’s America, the Department of Justice has decided that dissent is a danger to democracy and parents speaking their minds at local school boards are a threat to America’s core values.

In a memo to the FBI on Monday, Attorney General Merrick Garland wrote that the Justice Department will launch an effort to stop what he called called “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.”

Garland’s memo comes after the National School Boards Association wrote to the White House to complain about activist parents who oppose COVID-19 policies — such as remote education, vaccine mandates and mask mandates — as well as the imposition of critical race theory in public schools.

While defending mandatory mask policies as protecting “the health and safety of students and school employees” and denying critical race theory is being taught in public schools, the association called upon Garland to look at every possible way to prosecute parents standing up for their children, including the use of domestic terrorism laws.

“As these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes,” the letter stated.

Skin Problems, Neuropathy, Paralysis All Part of Over 500,000 Adverse Events Reported After COVID Vaccine

Garland’s memo appeared to equate parents speaking up against White House and teacher union-backed policies with actual threats of violence.

“While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views,” he wrote.

“Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values. Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”

According to a Justice Department news release published Monday, one goal will be training school boards in how to document threats and preserve evidence to properly punish parents speaking their minds.

However, in the memo, Garland also ordered the FBI to join with local law enforcement to discuss “strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff, and will open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”

“Coordination and partnership with local law enforcement is critical to implementing these measures for the benefit of our nation’s nearly 14,000 public school districts. To this end, I am directing the Federal Bureau of Investigation, working with each United States Attorney, to convene meetings with federal, state, local, Tribal, and territorial leaders in each federal judicial district within 30 days of the issuance of this memorandum.”

The department will create a task force  “to determine how federal enforcement tools can be used to prosecute these crimes, and ways to assist state, Tribal, territorial and local law enforcement where threats of violence may not constitute federal crimes,” the release stated.

Many social media users criticized what they described as an attack on parents.

The Biden administration is rapidly repurposing federal law enforcement to target political opposition.

They want to reclassify dissent as “disinformation” and “domestic terrorism,” justifying an unprecedented intervention, both directly and in partnership with tech companies.

— 🔅💖💜💎Angie🌿🍀🌹 (@EnchantedAngie) October 5, 2021

Texas Making Preparations for What Will Likely Be the Largest Migrant Border Surge in US History

Here it is. Just in case DOJ tries to change it.

Disagreeing with incompetent, unprofessional school boards is not Terrorism.#Garland pic.twitter.com/4pn8c6x6PV

— Gentleman of Leisure (@HowDidThisHap11) October 5, 2021

As opposed to actual violence by BLM and Antifa. Billions of dollars in damages. But darn those pesky school boards who want to voice an opinion the Dictator doesn’t like

DOJ launching effort to combat threats of violence against school officialshttps://t.co/vDaXmspUEo

— gamblin rebel (@dunkin1008) October 5, 2021

The DOJ is sending FBI agents to destroy your life if you criticize the Dogma of Weingarten on behalf of your kids, but everything is totally fine and there’s nothing to see here.

— John Cardillo (@johncardillo) October 5, 2021

BREAKING: Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose critical race theory in public schools, citing “threats.”

The letter follows the National School Board Association’s request to classify protests as “domestic terrorism.” pic.twitter.com/NhPU03YOYq

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 4, 2021

NSBA interim Executive Director and CEO Chip Slaven praised Garland’s memo, according to the New York Post.

“Over the last few weeks, school board members and other education leaders have received death threats and have been subjected to threats and harassment, both online and in-person,” Slaven said in a statement, according to the Post.

“The individuals who are intent on causing chaos and disrupting our schools—many of whom are not even connected to local schools—are drowning out the voices of parents who must be heard when it comes to decisions about their children’s education, health, and safety. These acts of intimidation are also affecting educational services and school board governance. Some have even led to school lockdowns,” the statement said.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Monday that the FBI would take the lead on the law enforcement response to what Garland called “a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff.”

“While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views,” Garland wrote in a memo to federal prosecutors as well as FBI Director Christopher Wray. “Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values.

“Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety,” the AG added.

Garland fired off his memo days after the National School Boards Association (NSBA) claimed in a letter to President Biden that “America’s public schools and its education leaders are under an immediate threat,” as parents grow frustrated with mask mandates being imposed on their children and critical race theory being injected into their curricula.

The Sept. 29 letter cited that opposition — naming the imposition of mask mandates in schools as well as “propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula” as the causes of dozens of incidents at school board meetings this year.

“This propaganda continues despite the fact that critical race theory is not taught in public schools and remains a complex law school and graduate school subject well beyond the scope of a K-12 class,” the letter went on, despite incidents across the country where teachers have been exposed to be racializing their curricula.

The NSBA then suggested that “[a]s these acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials have increased, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes” and asked that the administration review the question.

The letter went on to cite more than 20 reported incidents in California, Florida, Georgia, New Jersey, Ohio and other states. In one incident from September, an Illinois man was arrested on charges of aggravated battery and disorderly conduct for allegedly striking a school official at a meeting.

“We are coming after you,” a letter mailed to an Ohio school board member said, according to the group. “You are forcing them to wear mask — for no reason in this world other than control. And for that you will pay dearly.”

In his memo, Garland ordered the FBI and US attorneys to arrange meetings with federal, state, local, tribal and territorial leaders within 30 days to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats” and “open dedicated lines of communication for threat reporting, assessment, and response.”

NSBA interim Executive Director and CEO Chip Slaven said in a statement that Garland’s action sent a “strong message to individuals with violent intent who are focused on causing chaos, disrupting our public schools, and driving wedges between school boards and the parents, students, and communities they serve.”

“Over the last few weeks, school board members and other education leaders have received death threats and have been subjected to threats and harassment, both online and in person,” Slaven said. “The individuals who are intent on causing chaos and disrupting our schools—many of whom are not even connected to local schools—are drowning out the voices of parents who must be heard when it comes to decisions about their children’s education, health, and safety. These acts of intimidation are also affecting educational services and school board governance. Some have even led to school lockdowns.”

“We need to get back to the work of meeting all students’ needs and making sure that each student is prepared for a successful future,” Slaven concluded. “That’s what school board members and parents care about.”

With Post wires

https://nypost.com/2021/10/05/merrick-garland-calls-in-fbi-to-counter-threats-against-school-staffers/

The radical left want’s to label concerned parents as ‘Domestic Terrorists’… January 6 narrative 2.0

President Joe Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland is officially mobilizing the FBI and U.S. attorneys to “investigate and prosecute” protests by parents against things like mask mandates and critical race theory at public school board meetings and schools across the country.

“Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values,” Garland wrote in a memo that he sent to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Justice Department prosecutors on Monday. “Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.

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“The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate,” he added. “In the coming days, the Department will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”

This came after the National School Boards Association sent a letter to Biden claiming that “education leaders are under an immediate threat.” The NSBA went on to ask for federal law enforcement and other assistance in combatting what it claims to be a growing threat of violence in response to mask and vaccine mandates, as well as curriculum teaching critical race theory.

“Coupled with attacks against school board members and educators for approving policies for masks to protect the health and safety of students and school employees, many public school officials are also facing physical threats because of propaganda purporting the false inclusion of critical race theory within classroom instruction and curricula,” the NSBA said.

https://www.redvoicemedia.com/2021/10/biden-regime-mobilizing-fbi-to-identify-and-prosecute-parents-who-are-protecting-their-kids-from-school-boards/

Attorney General Merrick Garland on Oct. 4 announced a concentrated effort to target any threats of violence, intimidation, and harassment by parents toward school personnel.

The announcement comes days after a national association of school boards asked the Biden administration to take “extraordinary measures” to prevent alleged threats against school staff that the association said was coming from parents who oppose mask mandates and the teaching of critical race theory.

Garland directed the FBI and U.S. attorneys in the next 30 days to convene meetings with federal, state, and local leaders within 30 days to “facilitate the discussion of strategies for addressing threats against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff,” according to a letter (pdf) the attorney general sent on Monday to all U.S. attorneys, the FBI director, the director of the Executive Office of U.S. Attorneys, and the assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s criminal division.

According to the DOJ, further efforts will be rolled out in the coming days, including a task force that will determine how to use federal resources to prosecute offending parents as well as how to advise state entities on prosecutions in cases where no federal law is broken. The Justice Department will also provide training to school staff on how to report threats from parents and preserve evidence to aid in investigation and prosecution.

“In recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools,” Garland wrote. “While spirited debate about policy matters is protected under our Constitution, that protection does not extend to threats of violence or efforts to intimidate individuals based on their views.”

School boards across the nation have increasingly become an arena for heated debate over culture, politics, and health. Parents groups have ramped up pressure on boards over the teaching of critical race theory and the imposition of mask mandates. The debate is split sharply along political lines, with Democrats largely in favor of critical race theory and mask mandates, and Republicans opposing both.

Many of the meetings have turned heated. The amount and severity of the threats against officials are not known, but Garland’s letter suggests the phenomenon is widespread.

“Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values,” Garland wrote. “Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety. The Department takes these incidents seriously and is committed to using its authority and resources to discourage these threats, identify them when they occur, and prosecute them when appropriate.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/justice-department-to-roll-out-measures-protecting-school-staff-from-parents-threatening-violence_4032063.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

The Hong Kong of just a decade ago is unrecognizable from the Hong Kong of today. With the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) busy revising university curriculums, collective patriotism has replaced individual freedom; loyalty to Beijing is not just expected, it’s compulsory. Refusal to comply, more often than not, results in punishment.

To date, the CCP’s crackdown in Hong Kong has been as brutal as it has been all-encompassing. In July, five speech therapists were arrested over an alleged “conspiracy to distribute seditious materials.” In reality, the five individuals, all members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists, published a number of children’s picture books. According to the CCP, the therapists were attempting to “stir hatred” among children. “Don’t think that these are simple story books,” Hong Kong Police Senior Superintendent Steve Li told members of the press. “These three books have a lot of seditious materials inside,” he said. They didn’t. The five therapists simply painted an accurate picture of Hong Kong. Authoritarian regimes, as we all know, have little regard for truth.

Hong Kong, a place once celebrated for tolerance and open-mindedness, is fast becoming a place of intolerance and parochial, partisan politics. On Sept. 19, it spiraled further into the undemocratic abyss. In accordance with the CCP’s “patriots only” system, the political elite, little more than “puppet showmen” for those in Beijing, began selecting a new committee that will eventually select Hong Kong’s new, CCP-backed leader.

Once Beijing passed the Hong Kong law, the territory began to morph into a “society approaching the Orwellian descriptions attributed to mainland China, where dissent is promptly extinguished and penalized,” according to Kevin Drew, assistant managing editor at U.S. News. In other words, Hong Kong is no different from anywhere else in mainland China.

Drew spoke with Dennis Kwok, a fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and former lawmaker in Hong Kong. When asked about the territory’s demise, Kwok said, “I think the international community obviously sees Hong Kong as … a warning about international agreements that you signed with China and the implications of that.” He continued: “I’m not sure we should be looking at Hong Kong in isolation. We should look at the whole situation regarding China’s policy domestically, whether in Xinjiang, in Hong Kong, or … its policy to Taiwan and the South China Sea.”

Kwok also discussed the CCP’s antagonism toward Australia, as well as the arbitrary detention of two Canadians, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor (last month, the two men were allowed to return to their homeland). “I think all of those need to be looked at in the full context in order to understand what China is doing,” he added.

Kwok is, of course, correct. What happens in Hong Kong no longer stays in Hong Kong. The CCP’s desire for global dominance is not a figment of our imagination. It’s a reality. With its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”), China has a number of countries eating out of its sizable hand. According to a report issued by the Green BRI Center, over the past 18 months, “accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic,” an increasing number of BRI clients, “have seen their sovereign debt become unsustainable.” Countries like Congo, Djibouti, and Angola are heavily indebted to Beijing. They’re not alone: Pakistan owes $20 billion to Beijing; Kenya owes 7.5 billion; Ethiopia owes $6.5 billion; and Lao PDR, with a GDP of $18 billion, now owes $5 billion.

To paraphrase the French writer François Rabelais, debts and lies are often two sides of the same coin. With its BRI, China has sold a number of countries expensive lies. The victims have no option but to foot the bill. Then again, like Evergrande, they could opt to default on their payments. Let’s hope they do.

Either way, whether or not the aforementioned countries repay their enormous debts, Beijing’s influence is undeniable. In fact, the CCP’s presence can be felt in almost every country around the world. To make matters worse, as the journalist John Xie noted, Beijing now controls “more shipping ports than any other country.” With “100 ports in at least 60 nations,” the CCP is busy seeking out more. The importance of these transportation hubs cannot be emphasized enough. As research shows, ports play an essential role in a country’s economic stability. After all, he who controls the water controls the world.

The CCP’s vice-like grip over society knows no bounds. Not only does it control a number of powerful nations, but the CCP also exerts a nefarious influence over some of the world’s most powerful organizations. As the Observer Research Foundation has shown, the World Health Organization (WHO) and China are intimate partners in crime, with the former helping the latter to cover up the origins of COVID-19.

Last year, China, one of the worst offenders of human rights on the planet, was awarded a seat on the U.N. Human Rights Council. Fiction simply can’t compete with reality. Granting China a place on the council is the equivalent of giving Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, a Nobel Peace Prize. More recently, according to a number of highly credible reports, staff members at the World Bank changed data to improve China’s ranking. We’re told the changes were made at the behest of Jim Yong Kim, then-World Bank President, and Kristalina Georgieva, then-Chief Executive. One assumes that Beijing applied a great degree of pressure on both Kim and Georgieva.

This brings us back to the deteriorating state of affairs in Hong Kong—events there shouldn’t be viewed in isolation. In fact, nothing the CCP does should ever be viewed in isolation. People who doubt the Chinese regime’s growing international clout would do well to remove their heads from the sand.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-the-chinese-regime-plans-to-destroy-our-civil-liberties_4029872.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Homeschooling has become an increasingly popular choice during the COVID-19 pandemic as parents, frustrated by remote learning and strict COVID-19 rules, take matters into their own hands.

U.S. Census Bureau data released earlier this year shows the percentage of households with children being homeschooled doubled to 11.1 percent in fall 2020 from 5.4 percent in spring 2020.

“Homeschooling became a viable alternative for many parents who had considered it in the past or who were curious but never prompted to change,” William Heuer and William Donovan, authors of a new study on the shift, said in a summary of the research.

Parents who took their children out of public or private school in recent months had various motivations.

Some cited concerns about their children contracting COVID-19 and bringing it home, Jacklynn Walters, media director of the Midwest Parent Educators, told The Epoch Times. Others grew worried about what was being taught at their child’s school. There was also anxiety over remote learning and the lack of social contact.

Children nationwide suffered from remote learning, which has long been understood to be inferior to in-person instruction. The decrease in proficiency on English and math tests during the pandemic was as high as 15 percent, according to the Center for Assessment, which works with departments of education across the United States.

“In core subjects like math and reading, there are worrisome signs that in some grades students might be falling even further behind pre-pandemic expectations,” the U.S. Department of Education found (pdf).

Even as millions of students returned to school, many had to abide by harsh rules such as constant masking.

“My daughter, after a while, she wasn’t even getting on the bus anymore, she wasn’t getting up because she was just so traumatized. She didn’t really want to go to school anymore,” Stephanie Saja, a Shelton, Connecticut, resident, told The Epoch Times.

The frustration began building almost immediately when Saja’s daughter started distance learning in March 2020. A mix of remote and in-person learning was implemented briefly in the fall of 2020 but it was distance learning again until January.

After children started full-time in-person instruction then, all of them had to wear masks and had to stay six feet apart. There was little interaction.

Within a month of beginning homeschooling, Saja saw her daughter perk up.

Saja, who works part time, is handling most of the instruction. She’s been emphasizing hands-on instruction with only occasional supplemental videos.

“Not only did she tell me more than once she doesn’t ever want to go back to public school again, she doesn’t want to do any computer [work]. She likes to learn just from the books,” Saja said.

Davina Owens, an estate planning attorney in Sharon, Massachusetts, took her 14-year-old and 9-year-old children out of school because of the sudden remote learning. Owens started teaching her sons in the morning and going to work in the afternoon.

“The world was different,” Owens told Heuer and Donovan. “Everything was changed. The only thing that was the same was that I valued education and I love my kids. So with all of that, I said, ‘Why not try something new this year? It can only be a year and it doesn’t matter because no one is getting a great education this year. So if I fail, whatever failing is in homeschooling, they’ll go back next year, pretty much no harm, no foul.’ So I gave myself permission to try.”

Owens wasn’t sure whether she’ll continue homeschooling. And it remains to be seen how many families who utilized homeschooling in the 2020–21 school year will keep doing it, Heuer and Donovan wrote. But most parents involved with the Midwest Parent Educators plan to, Walters said.

“I would say that most of them are actually deciding to stick with it. They really love the opportunity to be with their children and their family more, and so they’re just really enjoying that family time but also being able to be involved in their children’s academics,” she told The Epoch Times.

Homeschooling does take time and money, primarily in terms of needing a parent to be available to teach. Some parents, though, manage it while working. A couple with different work schedules, for instance, can trade off duties. Most schoolwork can be done on weekends. And in some cases, fathers have been taking on the bulk of the teaching, according to Walters.

There are also different approaches to homeschooling. Parents can go it alone, form “learning pods” with other parents, pay for outside tutors, or have children take a few classes at a private school or a “microschool.” Some mix and match the options.

“There are increasingly more resources now and in the future for homeschoolers to make this easier,” Kerry McDonald, a senior education fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education, told Heuer and Donovan. “Certainly, there will be more investments in online learning and education startups that will facilitate the process of parents taking their children out of school.

Heuer and his wife homeschooled their sons from kindergarten to 12th grade. He sits on the board of directors of the Massachusetts Home Learning Association, which advocates for homeschooling.

Donovan is a business journalism teacher and a former writer for the Providence Journal.

They produced the report for the Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, a nonprofit that has a mission of developing and communicating “dynamic ideas that advance prosperity and a vibrant civic life in Massachusetts and beyond.”

Heuer said the disruption to learning that came during the pandemic “made it a good time to make the change” for parents who had been considering a shift to homeschooling.

“It’s unclear how many families view homeschooling as a temporary solution during the pandemic and how many will continue to do it,” Jamie Gass, director of education policy at Pioneer Institute, said. “But after years of steady increases, it is clear that the practice is common enough to be treated as a viable educational choice.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/study-homeschooling-became-viable-for-many-during-covid-19-pandemic_4030484.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has caved to the demands of progressive activists to cancel a guest lecture because of the speaker’s opinions on diversity hiring.

Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist at the University of Chicago (UC), had been invited by MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences to give its prestigious Carlson Lecture on Oct. 21. He was to talk about the climate on exoplanets, or planets that orbit stars other than the sun of our solar system.

On Oct. 2, however, Abbot wrote on Twitter that MIT has cancelled his lecture, a move he described as a “bad decision under pressure.”

Abbot became the target of the progressives last year after he expressed doubts about certain aspects of the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI)” policies at the UC. In August, the UC campus left renewed its effort to “cancel” Abbot, after he co-authored an opinion piece in Newsweek discussing the flaws of race-centric DEI hiring.

“American universities are diverse not because of DEI, but because they have been extremely competitive at attracting talent from all over the world,” he says in the article, noting that German universities never fully recovered from the Nazi years, during which their employment policies focused on race instead of merit. “We should view this as a warning of the consequences of viewing group membership as more important than merit, and correct our course before it is too late.”

In a petition sent to the UC Department of the Geophysical Sciences, activists declared that Abbot’s opinions “threaten the safety and belonging of all underrepresented groups” and were “an aggressive act,” and demanded, among other things, his immediate removal from his teaching position. In response, UC administrators made it clear that they won’t punish a faculty member for simply expressing his views on the university’s policies.

“Faculty are free to agree or disagree with any policy or approach of the University, its departments, schools or divisions without being subject to discipline, reprimand or other form of punishment,” UC President Robert Zimmer said in a letter to campus community.

Several academics have voice their support for Abbot, including Robert George, a Princeton University professor and vocal opponent of cancel culture. In a Twitter thread documenting the incident, George urged academia to condemn the “politicization of science.”

“It’s not just the scientists who need to speak up against this outrage against academic freedom and integrity,” he wrote. “It is all of us in academia–scholars in every field, and scholars from across the ideological spectrum. Please, don’t be silent.”

George was joined by Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School. Filer argued that MIT should reinstate Abbot as the Carlson lecturer and apologize for their treatment of him.

“By capitulating to a mindless Twitter mob as it did in this sad case, MIT has severely diminished its institutional reputation. Reversal of the absurd award cancelation and high level and sincere apologies are required,” he wrote on Twitter.

MIT didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mit-cancels-guest-lecture-by-scientist-who-questioned-diversity-hiring_4030900.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

In Woody Allen’s classic film “Annie Hall,” we encounter the paranoia of the lead character Alvy Singer, who spots anti-Semitism even where there is no anti-Semitism to be found. At one point he tells his friend Rob that an NBC executive kept asking him, “Jew eat?” Of course, the man was asking Alvy, “Did you eat?” But Alvy only heard, “Jew eat?” The anti-Semitism that Alvy could not find in society, he generated in his own mind.

I keep recalling this incident every time I read or hear on TV, which is a lot, how parental resistance to critical race theory (CRT) in schools is a form of “whitelash.” The accusation is launched against parents in more than 200 school districts who are organizing and protesting against racial indoctrination in their children’s schools. Whitelash is one of those neologisms that basically means “backlash,” except since it is evidently coming from whites, it has been renamed whitelash.

Recently, the online magazine Slate alleged that the parents who fight against CRT are mostly bigots and white supremacists who fear “white replacement” in their communities and are motivated by a desire to “protect whiteness.” Pundits on TV routinely attribute the mobilization against CRT to “white resentment,” “white fragility,” and “white rage.”

Attempting to give these charges an empirical foundation, NBC News journalists Tyler Kingkade and Nigel Chiwaya offered a stash of data to prove that parents nationwide are reacting against “rapid demographic change” and “the exposure of white students to students of color.” NBC showed that in 22 of 33 school districts under review, parental activism could be explained by “backlash over equity initiatives” in districts that are “diversifying faster than the national average.”

NBC embedded its data in a larger narrative that seems glibly lifted from the civil rights era of the 1960s, in which all resistance to change is automatically attributed to people who seek to revive Jim Crow, racial segregation, and the night-riding of the Ku Klux Klan. In a familiar but by now tedious mode, NBC invokes the dark days of the past in which some of these very same school districts actively segregated their school districts to exclude blacks.

But when researcher Christopher Rufo—a leading critic of CRT—reviewed the NBC data, he noted that one third of the districts in the study had diversified slower, instead of faster, than the national average. Moreover, NBC itself noted that parental protest against CRT had been counted in more than 220 school districts, implying that NBC cherry-picked its data from 15 percent of the sample size, ignoring a whopping 85 percent of the evidence.

Let’s zoom in to two counties of Virginia, Fairfax County and Loudoun County, where parental opposition to racial indoctrination has been particularly severe. One might expect, taking NBC’s word, that the leadership of the opposition would be some old-school white male, perhaps someone with direct ancestral ties to the Confederacy. In Fairfax, however, Rufo notes, the parental opposition is led by an Indian American woman, Asra Nomani, who reviles CRT for debasing academic standards and for legitimizing systematic discrimination against high-scoring Asian American students.

In Fairfax and Loudoun counties, the parents who are up in arms are not stereotypical rednecks but rather educated, affluent, and racially diverse, Rufo observes. While both counties have rapidly diversified over the past 20 years, Loudoun County has the same proportion of blacks as it did in 2000. The highest rate of population expansion has been among Latinos and Asians, and it turns out that they oppose CRT by the same two to one margin as whites.

As Rufo demonstrates, data consistently show that the more parents learn about CRT, the more likely they are to oppose it. This is why the first move of CRT defenders was to deny that it was even being taught in schools. Pundit Joy Reid and many others insisted CRT was a highly abstruse legal theory that was merely the subject of specialized academic debate in law schools. The message here was clear: No need for parents to worry; this is not something that’s actually going on.

But parents knew this was a lie. One of the silver linings of COVID-19 is that with students at home, and classes being conducted online, parents are in a much better position to see firsthand what their children are being taught. Moreover, why would teachers unions and the U.S. Conference of Mayors endorse CRT in public education if there was no effort under way to teach it?

Once the first line of defense—“we aren’t doing it”—collapsed, advocates of CRT were forced to switch to “here’s why we’re doing it.” And the best they could come up with is the claim that they are merely teaching established historical facts and that critics were motivated by nothing more than bigotry or “whitelash.” The absurdity of this is clear from the simple fact that survey data show that CRT is opposed by huge margins not only by white parents but also by Latino parents, Asian American parents, and yes, black parents.

Rufo points out that opposition to CRT isn’t even partisan. Both Loudoun and Fairfax counties went heavily for Biden in 2020, one by a 25-point margin, the other by a 39-point margin. Even so, parents oppose CRT in those liberal bastions by an eight-point margin, and 59 percent of public school parents express concern that their children are subject to racial indoctrination.

The problem with CRT is that it’s a poisonous brew of half-truths and lies. The bad news is that this indoctrination seems to have infected, if not taken over, American public education. The good news is that more and more parents, Democratic and Republican, white, black, Hispanic, and Asian, are waking up to the lie and they’re exposing it, resisting it, and warning of a very painful political price if this newest form of child abuse continues in the public school classroom.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/the-fallacy-of-whitelash_4029151.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

A successful golf career can actually pay the bills; track and field? [US Patriot]

A Michigan college is having its knuckles rapped by the American Civil Liberties Union because the sport that replaced track in its roster of men’s varsity programs is “among the whitest of sports.”

Central Michigan University eliminated its men’s track program in May 2020, according to Central Michigan Life, the college’s student-run newspaper. Cost issues related to the impact of COVID-19 were cited as a reason to drop the program.

In August, the college announced that its varsity golf program, which had been part of the college from 1936 to 1985, would be revived.  Adding a program was necessary to meet the number of men’s varsity teams required to keep the college’s NCAA Division One status.

But that did not set well with the ACLU, which delivered its demand that the track program be reinstated in a Sept. 16 letter.

“The ACLU of Michigan shares the concerns of the many people who believe the program’s elimination has harmful racial implications, and to ameliorate the harm, the university should restore track and field as an opportunity for all students, and particularly students of color,” the letter began.

One Thousand Roses Delivered to Nancy Pelosi’s Office in Campaign to Move Her Heart on Abortion

The ACLU said it was disappointed that a missive containing “historical and social factors” about having a men’s track program brought not a word of reply from the college and said the decision “speaks volumes” about the college’s attitude on race.

The letter then viewed the school’s actions through the lens of race.

“The decision to eliminate track and field, a sport heavily populated by African American athletes, was itself sufficient to raise concerns and questions about the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusion,” the letter said.

“But then, after eliminating track and field, the university decided to replace it with a golf program, a sport that is among the whitest of sports. How white is it? It is so white that only three percent of NCAA golfers are African American. How white is it? It is so white, that even at historically Black universities, golf programs faced with a paucity of Black golfers must sometimes make specific efforts to place white golfers on their teams,” the letter continued.

The ACLU was roundly mocked on Twitter.

ACLU wants college athletes to run track, not play golf, calling it ‘among the whitest of sports’https://t.co/yzcjGnzunE

— Campus Reform (@campusreform) September 27, 2021

ACLU wants college athletes to run track, not play golf, calling it ‘among the whitest of sports’ I did not know TIGER WOODS was white. DAMN the most popular golfer in history and they feed you this BS. https://t.co/4wTeSa96E0

— Gina🇺🇸♥️ (@Ginawmson) September 26, 2021

Pro-Abortion Advocates Celebrate Obama-Appointed Judge’s Decision to Rule in Favor of Eugenics

Yes, white males are completely handicapped by their whiteness. They can’t do anything except play golf and oppress people of colour.

— Steamhammered (@steamhammered) September 25, 2021

@PatUnleashed @KeithMalinak @ncollinsblaze Golf is the whitest white game? Has the ACLU not seen curling? #PutThatInYourPipe

— Tyler @ RDMP (@TylerProduces) September 27, 2021

When the program was announced, athletic director Amy Folan said it was a way to stay within budgetary realities, according to MLive.

“We have been working diligently toward this goal since I joined CMU 10 months ago. The financial challenges that forced changes in the sports we sponsor remain,” Folan said. “Our top priority is to offer programs that provide an exceptional experience for our student-athletes.”

“I feel strongly we will be able to do this with our men’s golf program based on the financial parameters necessary for a successful program. We are fortunate to have so many fantastic golf courses locally and statewide, which will make this an attractive program for prospective student-athletes,” she said.

However, in attacking what it called “the decision to replace track with a white sport,” the ACLU letter said that the college was dismissing anyone and everyone supporting racial justice.

The decision, so the ACLU wrote, “might be viewed as the university’s way of saying: ‘We hear the  concerns about race, but those who are concerned don’t matter. Not only do we not care about these people, but we want to show them that people of color are not wanted at CMU by making  the problem worse and rubbing their faces in it.’”

The ACLU said the decision could be seen to be discrimination at work.

“Because African American male athletes participate in track more than any of the other minor sports, replacing CMU’s track program with golf, a minor sports program that is demonstrably ‘white’ speaks volumes about the university’s racial insensitivity if not its discriminatory intent,” the letter said.

The ACLU then told the college to do as it was told or “this issue will otherwise continue to haunt the university well into the future, all the while exacerbating racial tension and promoting the idea that CMU is an institution that is at least indifferent (if not hostile) to the concerns and interests of communities of color.”

The battle over President Joe Biden’s sweeping clean energy plan isn’t over, but there already appears to be a winner–natural gas.

The fossil fuel will likely remain a mainstay of America’s electrical grid for some time, according to energy experts and lawmakers. That’s a big disappointment to liberal Democrats and environmentalists. In protests in cities and campuses nationwide, one of them fronted by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, they made natural gas the new climate villain, replacing coal, the dirtier fossil fuel that’s fading in the states.

Climate activists had pinned their hopes on the administration’s proposal to remake the energy industry at breakneck speed. It gives financial incentives to utilities to ramp up the deployment of clean energy sources such as wind and solar and would slow if not stop the expansion of gas-fired power plants.

But Sen. Joe Manchin, who controls climate policy as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said in early September that he would block Biden’s ambitious plan and seek a middle ground. The West Virginian’s insistence that any climate policy must leave plenty of room for natural gas was criticized by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, among other progressives, as a favor to the fossil fuel industry, which has a large footprint in his home state.

As Manchin tells it, hitting the brakes on natural gas is a risk he’s not willing to take. Although such a move would reduce carbon emissions – a goal the senator shares – it makes the nation’s aging and feeble grid more vulnerable to dangerous blackouts as wind and solar energy play a larger role. They don’t supply power when the wind stops blowing and the sun is down. So natural gas plants, which have contributed to the closing of hundreds of coal burners, need to anchor the grid until viable clean substitutes come of age.

“The United States leads the world in emissions reductions and that’s largely because of the increased utilization of natural gas,” says Anne Bradbury, CEO of the gas and oil trade group American Exploration & Production Council. “It seems extremely shortsighted to be demonizing the use of natural gas.”

The prospect that the fossil fuel will have more staying power than opponents had hoped is an early signpost of America’s energy future as Democrats aim to transform it – and much else in society – in its roughly $4 trillion spending snarl. Here are others.

A Setback for Carbon Capture

Environmental groups are getting in the way of the rollout of a technology that could eventually clean up gas plants, according to carbon capture advocates, which emit about half the emissions of coal.

The Carbon Capture Coalition, a group of energy and advocacy groups, has been lobbying for an increase in the federal tax credit for a technology that can remove more than 90 percent of carbon emissions from gas plants. The bigger subsidy is needed to kick-start the commercial rollout of large carbon-capture installations, much like the tax credits that spurred the expansion of wind and solar power.

But groups like Greenpeace and the National Resources Defense Council are campaigning against federal support for the technology, arguing that it would needlessly extend the life of fossil fuels and delay the deployment of renewables. They have the upper hand. The House Ways & Means Committee failed to boost the tax credit as part of the big reconciliation bill it released earlier this month that carries the administration’s climate package.

That may change if the bill reaches the Senate. Manchin is a big supporter of carbon capture.

A Lack of Transparency

Americans have had only a limited view of the consequential battle over Biden’s clean energy plan in Congress–which affects almost everyone who depends on electricity, and their pocketbooks. So far consumers have paid an average of 2.6 percent more for green power.

Democrats are pushing their climate plan through the budget reconciliation process because it requires only 50 votes for passage in a divided Senate and avoids a Republican filibuster. It’s also an expediated process that limits debate on the floor of Congress and public transparency. Without congressional hearings, consumers haven’t had the benefit of testimony from experts who can point out the merits and flaws of Biden’s plan.

That’s a big departure from the sunshine that typically illuminates such big proposals. The last time Congress considered a major climate measure, the Waxman-Markey bill, experts testified in high-profile public hearings in the House that were covered by the national media. The Affordable Care Act featured hundreds of hours of public hearings.

“With something as important as energy policy that could have a big impact on the national economy, it should be fully debatable and fully amendable,” says Bill Hoagland, a former staff director of the Senate Budget Committee who worked on 17 of 21 previous reconciliation laws. “It’s not something that should be done in a partisan manner through reconciliation.”

Hoagland says both parties have “abused” that procedure to create new laws after it was set up in the 1970s to bring fiscal accountability to existing laws. Biden’s climate plan marks the first attempt to transform a major industry through reconciliation. Hoagland, now a senior vice president at the Bipartisan Policy Center, says Senate staffers and advocates called him to get his advice.

“I told them not to use the reconciliation process for energy policy,” he says. “They said, ‘Thank you very much. But this is the only tool we have to allow us to get it through and we are not going to waste any more time.’”

The Truthiness of Computer Models

Computer models–a bête noire of climate skeptics–live on in the debate over the clean energy transformation, providing ammunition for each side.

The dispute boils down to the reliability of the electrical grid. If intermittent wind and solar power quickly dethrone natural gas as the dominant source of energy, as the Biden administration envisions, will the grid become even more prone to blackouts?

No one really knows for sure. Enter computer models.

University of California-Berkeley experts earlier this year asked their model the big question: Will the grid be reliable if 80 percent of its power comes from clean sources such as wind and solar farms and nuclear plants by 2030? The model, which analyzed seven years of weather and energy use data, answered with a resounding yes. In fact, gas use could be cut in half, supplying the remaining 20 percent, without a glitch.

“The expansion of natural gas should come to a halt if the Biden policy is passed,” says Mike O’Boyle, who collaborated on the study as director of electricity policy at Energy Innovation. “I’m sure some utilities will make the case that they need it for reliability. So it will be up to the regulators to hold their feet to the fire and make sure that the gas plant is the most economic option.”

But models by Energy and Environmental Economics, a consulting group, draw the opposite conclusion. A 2020 study, which covered 40 years of weather data, looked at ways to reach net-zero emissions by 2050 in New England. It found that natural gas capacity would need to grow by about one-third from today’s level.

Even a large deployment of wind and solar farms won’t be able to meet peak demand – which is expected to grow in coming decades – when the wind and sun are down, says Arne Olson, a senior partner at the consulting firm and co-author of the study. That means additional gas power needs to be available, particularly in regions where coal plants are closing, until the day arrives that cleaner fuels like hydrogen can carry the load, he says.

With the best computer models providing conflicting answers, Olson says having plenty of natural gas on hand to shore up the grid makes sense: “Once we get closer to the other side of the energy transition, we will learn how the systems are going to perform and we can shut down some gas plants if we don’t need them anymore. But in the meantime, people want to make sure that they have reliable power.”

Tina Smith Takes the Stage

If the administration and Manchin come together on a clean energy plan, Tina Smith will be a big reason why.

Since 2019, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, a self-described pragmatist, has focused on crafting a practical policy that utilities could support. Biden’s team took some ideas from Smith’s playbook but set far more ambitious goals: 80 percent carbon-free electricity by 2030.

Even supporters consider the Biden plan “aspirational.” It’s meant to line up with the greenhouse gas reduction targets of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which recently  concluded that the warming of the planet has already caused “irreversible” effects such as rising sea levels.

Some Republicans and moderate Democrats are backing a much slower transition by 2050 that wouldn’t push gas power aside. The influential utility trade group Edison Electric Institute and labor unions, including the United Mine Workers – a backer of Manchin –  have rallied behind the bipartisan bill.

Smith, who was first elected in 2018, now finds herself at center stage in negotiations with Manchin. They are trying to find a middle ground, which may be somewhere between 2030 and 2050.

There are more knobs to turn in the negotiations. The administration wants to compel utilities to adopt any form of clean power by giving them a federal grant if they hit an annual growth target of about 3 percent to 4 percent. They will also pay penalties for missing it. (The spending and revenue scheme was also devised to try to make the energy plan eligible for the budget reconciliation process.)

But gas power isn’t included in the proposal, putting it at an economic disadvantage compared to renewables. Industry and utility groups object and are lobbying for gas to receive a partial grant since it’s cleaner than coal.

Adding to the uncertainty over a climate policy in Congress, Democratic leaders in the Senate recently put a politically controversial carbon tax back on the table. They see it as a way to reduce emissions and raise revenue to help pay for the social spending package.

“I’m always interested in figuring out how we can make adjustments to solve problems that people see, and frankly, sometimes that makes a bill better,” Smith told RealClearInvestigations. “There are a lot of issues in this. But I think we are going to get there.”

This and all other original articles created by RealClearInvestigations may be republished for free with attribution. (These terms do not apply to outside articles linked on the site.)

We provide our stories for free but they are expensive to produce. Help us continue to publish distinctive journalism by making a contribution today to RealClearInvestigations.

By Vince Bielski

https://www.theepochtimes.com/it-looks-like-americas-energy-future-is-still-going-to-be-a-gas_4025254.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

A North Carolina school board has adopted a policy that would discipline or dismiss teachers if they incorporate critical race theory (CRT) into their teaching of the history of the United States.

The Johnston County school board on Oct. 1 unanimously approved an amended code of ethics policy after the county’s Republican-run board of commissioners said it would withhold $7.9 million in school funding until the policy was passed, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported.

While CRT wasn’t specifically mentioned in the changes, the new policy did target key ideas aligning with the quasi-Marxist ideology, including claims that U.S. laws and institutions are built upon racial oppression, and that racism is so deeply embedded in the nation that racist views are considered normal throughout all aspects of society.

“Racism causes damage to individuals and the community. When racism is present, it creates a lack of trust and respect,” the document reads. “No student or staff member shall be subjected to the notion that racism is a permanent component of American life.”

When it comes to U.S. history, the policy states that “all people deserve full credit and recognition for their struggles and accomplishments throughout United States history,” and that the nation’s founding documents “shall not be undermined.” It banned any Johnston County Schools employee from “making any attempt to discredit the efforts made by all people using foundational documents for reform.”

“No fictional accounts or narratives shall be used to invalidate actual objective historical events. All people who contributed to American Society will be recognized and presented as reformists, innovators, and heroes to our culture,” it added. “Failure to comply with this policy will result in disciplinary action up to and including dismissal.”

The vote was welcomed by Citizen Advocates for Accountable Government, an advocacy group founded by two Johnston residents. They said the policy would “prohibit the implementing of divisive principles of Critical Race Theory in the classroom.”

“The approach used stands as an example of how diverse voices can work together for the betterment of the Students in our Public Schools,” Dale Lands, the group’s founder, said in a statement to The Observer.

The idea that American society is inherently racist has been popularized by proponents of CRT, notably Nikole Hannah-Jones, the leading author of The New York Times’ highly controversial “1619 Project,” an essay collection arguing that the Revolutionary War was fought to preserve slavery; and Ibram X. Kendi, a professor at Boston University who advocates for active discrimination against white people, whom he deems privileged, as a remedy for historical racism.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/north-carolina-county-to-discipline-fire-teachers-who-say-america-and-founders-are-racist_4029554.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announced on Oct. 3 that there’s “no chance” he’ll mandate COVID-19 vaccinations for children attending school.

When asked about whether he would copy a mandate signed by California Gov. Gavin Newsom to mandate vaccines for eligible children to attend class, Justice told CBS News that he won’t do it.

“From the standpoint of mandates, I don’t believe in imposing upon our freedoms, over and over and over. And I’ve said that over, I don’t know how many times I gotta say it,” Justice told the network. “But from the standpoint of our children, I’m going to still encourage in every way, because I truly believe that the more people that we get vaccinated, the less people will die. But at the same time, we still got to stand up for who we are.”

Justice, a Republican, said that such mandates are divisive. “For crying out loud, we’re Americans.”

Several weeks after Newsom, a Democrat, survived a recall attempt, he became the first governor in the nation to announce a statewide vaccine mandate for schoolchildren aged 12 and up.

“The state already requires that students are vaccinated against viruses that cause measles, mumps, and rubella—there’s no reason why we wouldn’t do the same for COVID-19,” Newsom said.

Numerous studies and federal health data show that children are very unlikely to develop serious or long illness, become hospitalized, or die from COVID-19. A study found that in the UK, five times more children committed suicide during pandemic lockdowns than died from the virus.

Last week, Newsom announced “a statewide requirement for in-person instruction for all of our children to add to a well-established list that currently includes 10 vaccinations … the vaccination for COVID-19.”

“Are there exemptions? Yes, well-established exemptions for medical reasons, personal and/or religious beliefs. Those are established in those guidelines as well,” he said.

While some parents in California praised Newsom’s mandate, many criticized it.

Sarah Burwick, a lawyer in Los Angeles and parent of a soon-to-be 5-year-old, said she’s fully vaccinated, but that it isn’t clear at this time whether the risk to her child is greater from getting the shot than from the disease.

“I think any mandate on this vaccine for kids is way too soon,” she said, according to The Associated Press. “We keep hearing the buzzwords ‘safe’ and ‘effective,’ but I think the question for kids should be: Is this necessary?”

Janet Meadows, whose children are in first grade and preschool, said she would consider homeschooling her children before vaccinating them. The 41-year-old from Kern County, California, said she’s worried about the health effects of the not-yet-approved shots for children and a potential exodus of families from public schools.

“I don’t think we know enough about the vaccine to make our children get it,” she said. “There’s just a lot of unknowns. We don’t need to rush into this right now.”

AP contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/west-virginia-governor-no-chance-of-covid-vaccine-mandate-for-students_4029619.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona was reprimanded on Twitter for not following the science when he tried to push the Biden administration’s policy of forcing students to wear masks in school.

Cardona seized upon a study published on the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website as evidence that wearing masks in school reduced transmission of the coronavirus.

“A Wisconsin study found that schools that required masking had a 37% lower incidence of COVID-19 than the surrounding community,” he wrote in a Twitter post last week.

A Wisconsin study found that schools that required masking had a 37% lower incidence of COVID-19 than the surrounding community. https://t.co/hGN5eX3Bau

— Secretary Miguel Cardona (@SecCardona) September 27, 2021

After Deputy Stops to Help Her, 96-Year-Old Woman Demands to Speak with His Supervisor

The 2020 study, which examined 17 Wisconsin schools over three months last fall, found that in those schools in which masking, social distancing and other steps were taken to minimize the spread of the virus, the percentage of positive coronavirus cases was in fact lower than the community at large.

But Tracy Heeg, an author of the study, objected to it being misrepresented for political purposes.

Although the study showed there was apparently high mask-wearing and low incidence of virus transmission, there was nothing to show one caused the other.

Further, Heeg noted, one of the basics of the scientific method was lacking.

Secretary Cardona, I was the senior author of this study. Our study is not able to give any information about the role masks played in the observed low in-school transmission rates. We had no control group so don’t know if the rate would have been different without masks.

— Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD (@TracyBethHoeg) September 28, 2021

“Secretary Cardona, I was the senior author of this study. Our study is not able to give any information about the role masks played in the observed low in-school transmission rates. We had no control group so don’t know if the rate would have been different without masks,” she tweeted.

That led some to note that the administration that promised to follow the science might have wandered afield.

Secretary Cardona, I was the senior author of this study. Our study is not able to give any information about the role masks played in the observed low in-school transmission rates. We had no control group so don’t know if the rate would have been different without masks.

— Tracy Høeg, MD, PhD (@TracyBethHoeg) September 28, 2021

Inflation Hits 30-Year High, And Now Biden’s Economic Adviser Is Dropping More Bad News

It’s almost like, and bear with me here, the administration is not “following the science”. 😬

— Jay Knower (@jcknower) September 28, 2021

In fact, the published study said there were seven limitations on its result, which relied on surveys for its data.

For instance, the study noted that the level at which students actually wore masks might not have been all it was cracked up to be.

“First, mask use was assessed using a survey that was not validated, dependent on voluntary teacher response and subject to recall and social desirability biases,” the study reported.

“The actual mask-wearing rate might have been different because only approximately one half of teachers participated in the study. Teachers with lower masking compliance in their cohort might have been less likely to complete the survey, which limits the reliability of this measure,” the student said.

The study also noted that there was no independent verification of whether teachers and other staff actually wore masks as much as they said they did.

“Third, it was not possible to determine the specific roles that mask-wearing and other disease mitigation strategies played in the low rate of disease spread, and information on school ventilation systems was not obtained,” the study said.

⁦@SecCardona⁩ claims WI study proves masks in schools work. Physician author of study says study proves no such thing.

Education Secretary Touts Mask Study—Gets Rebuked by Senior Author of the Study – Foundation for Economic Education https://t.co/RWBQ1Cn383

— Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) October 3, 2021

The study’s purpose, as explained on the CDC site, was to determine – at a time when many schools were closed – whether schools could reopen without spreading the virus, and not whether masks were essential.

After he allegedly refused to give black students special treatment at the request of a “non-black” student amid protests over the George Floyd death last year, University of California-Los Angeles professor Gordon Klein was essentially shuffled off to the back room by his school.

He was suspended and the university tried to terminate him, the accounting and finance professor said. That didn’t work, but by the time the ordeal was over, he’d lost most of his income, which came from his consultancy. UCLA had all but called him a racist in public statements.

Now, Klein, who started teaching at UCLA in 1981, according to a school biography,  is suing the University of California system.

In a piece written for former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss’ Substack newsletter and published Friday, Klein said he had been singled out because “I refused to discriminate against my students.”

The dust-up began after a June 2, 2020, email from a student who said black students should be graded with more “leniency” due to the trauma caused by the death of Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25. Klein did not identify the race of the student, but described him as “non-black.”

After Deputy Stops to Help Her, 96-Year-Old Woman Demands to Speak with His Supervisor

“The unjust murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, the life-threatening actions of Amy Cooper and the violent conduct of the [University of California Police Department] have led to fear and anxiety which is further compounded by the disproportionate effect of COVID-19 on the Black community,” the student reportedly wrote. “As we approach finals week, we recognize that these conditions place Black students at an unfair academic disadvantage due to traumatic circumstances out of their control.”

The student then suggested that the final be counted as a “no-harm” test for black students, meaning it only counted if it helped their grades.

Klein said the email “struck me as deeply patronizing and offensive to the same black students [the writer] claimed to care so much about.”

“Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black half-Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half?” he wrote back.

“Also, do you have any idea if any students are from Minneapolis? I assume that they are probably especially devastated as well. I am thinking that a white student from there might possibly be even more devastated by this, especially because some might think that they’re racist even if they are not.”

Once this email was publicized, a petition for Klein to be fired garnered almost 20,000 signatures in a period of days. The school suspended him just three days after the email, with the dean of his school saying that it was “deeply disturbing to learn of this email, which we are investigating. We apologize to the students who received it and to all those who have been as upset and offended by it as we are ourselves.”

“This implied I didn’t believe in equality for all — when that was exactly what I believed and continue to believe,” Klein wrote.

The professor also received death threats, he said, such as one he said came June 11, 2020 that read:

“You are a typical bigoted, prejudiced and racist dirty, filthy, crooked, arrogant Jew k**e mother f***er! Too bad Hitler and the Nazis are not around to give you a much needed Zyklon B shower.”

Young Not Stupid: Conservative Students Harassed and Accused of Racism in Viral Video… The School’s Response Is Telling

And yet, Klein wrote that UCLA’s threat manager didn’t reach out to him until 10 days after this incident.

Within three weeks, after an attempt to fire Klein failed, he was reinstated, Klein wrote. However, the money from his consultancy dried up after he was pilloried in public, costing him “the lion’s share of my annual income,” he said. That’s part of the reason why he’s filing suit.

“No employee should ever cower in fear of his employer’s power to silence legitimate points of view, and no society should tolerate government-sponsored autocrats violating constitutional mandates,” he wrote.

“As the Supreme Court ruled in a 1967 case in which a university professor refused to sign an oath stating he was not a communist, professors should never be coerced into an unthinking timidity. ‘Academic freedom,’ Justice William Brennan wrote, ‘is of transcendent value to all of us.’”

In an interview with the Daily Caller, also published Friday, Klein said that at UCLA, “[professors] are becoming more like robots … They avoid anything that may be controversial or colorful or humorous … Anyone who goes anywhere near a controversial topic runs the risk of being cancelled, being fired, being suspended.”

He also said the dean of students for UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, Antonio Bernardo, set the tone for the school with staff emails and public memos on racial issues that name-checked, among others, Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors on the issue of defunding the police and abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“The dean seems to believe he is a racial justice crusader as opposed to someone in charge of giving people an objective and elite education,” he added. “The purpose first and foremost of a dean is to run a fine educational institution and maintain its elite status. In that regard, by any subjective or objective measure, he has horrifically failed.”

As has the University of California system. Klein’s case is emblematic of how far academia has degenerated, where “academic freedom” only means the freedom to repeat certain leftist outlooks.

If you find yourself outside of that, you’ll end up reaping a whirlwind of hate the way Gordon Klein did — and that’s not even taking into account the career consequences. Given the enormity of the failure, one hopes injunctive relief is in the cards.

An 18-year-old woman with 12 years’ experience training in karate was able to fight off a sexual assailant on her Southern California college campus and chase him away last week.

A suspect was later identified on security cameras and surrendered to the college, which notified the police. He’s been arrested on charges relating to the assault.

At 12:40 a.m. on Sep. 24, the victim was sitting at a picnic table outside her dorm on the campus of Chapman University in Orange, California, talking with her boyfriend in Hawaii, according to KTTV-TV in Los Angeles. A man wearing a skeleton mask approached her and hit her.

“He punches me in the face, I hit the trash can behind me,” she told the station.

She said her assailant wore a horrifying mask.

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“At first, it reminded me of ‘The Scream,’ sort of, because the eyes were blacked out,” she said, likely referring to either the Edvard Munch painting or the 1996 horror movie called “Scream” where the mask featured prominently.

“I couldn’t see any eyes. I specifically remember the skeleton part on top and mouth being blacked out as if he was wearing the full thing and had a mask on, too.”

The attacker pinned her down and sexually assaulted her, but the black belt managed to fight back.

“Somehow, he got off me and I chased him up the stairs cursing him out,” the spirited young woman explained.

Meanwhile, two male students in a nearby dorm heard her screams and rushed to her aid — knocking out the screen in the window of their room to get to her faster.

“We heard screaming outside,” Michael Zapesotsky told WTTV. “You knew something was wrong.”

“I push the screen out the window and we both jump out the window and run over towards where the noise is coming from and there’s this girl there and she’s just freaking out,” the other young man, Joe Hoodenpyle, told the station.

Suspect Dalante Jerome Bell, 22, of Anaheim, was brought to Chapman by a family member and subsequently arrested by members of the Orange Police Department and charged with assault with intent to commit rape, WTTV reported. He is being held at the Orange County jail on $100,000 bail, according to jail records.

After a photo of the suspect was released to the public, 22-year-old Dalante Jerome Bell was brought to Chapman University to surrender by a family member and Chapman University notified the Orange Police Department. https://t.co/OhX5Dt5QuQ

— FOX 29 (@FOX29philly) September 29, 2021

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“We will not tolerate this type of heinous criminal activity in Orange. We hope the students and staff of Chapman University and residents of Orange can regain a sense of safety knowing this suspect has been arrested and we are confident he will be held to answer on the charges,” Orange Police Chief Dan Adams said, according to WTTV.

A report on the arrest from KABC in Los Angeles is below:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/_OH9wQCrR_g?feature=oembed

The university intended to increase security following the attack.

This is a great story that shows both the importance of being prepared to defend yourself and refutes the lie of “toxic masculinity.”

While the monster who tried to assault this girl absolutely got what he deserved, it’s sick to think of what he might have gotten away with had she not been a karate black belt who had trained nearly her whole life to protect herself.

Meanwhile, although she did successfully manage to literally chase off her assailant alone, two young men at the college felt so urgently they needed to come to her aid that they actually broke through their window’s screen to run and help her.

This is the difference between one man’s sickness and criminal depravity and another’s positive, virtuous masculinity.

Thank goodness that this young woman had both the defensive skills to protect herself — and two young men nearby willing to run toward danger to help her. That is what good men do.

Whenever COVID-19 infections are on the rise, calls to impose a lockdown begin. Proponents of lockdowns will invariably justify their advocacy by stating that it is what medical experts are calling for. Indeed, physicians, nurses, and virologists will usually support lockdowns as a means of reducing the spread of infections.

Governments often forget to do a cost benefit analysis in their zeal to lock things down and that involves listening to experts outside of the medical field.

Medical specialists are bound to promote whatever actions are possible to protect public health. They don’t think about the costs of lockdowns, only the potential benefits. Although their advice is critical and we should take it seriously, medical experts are only able to present part of the picture.

Economists are experts in their field as well. Many economists have been pointing out the fiscal damages being wrought through nearly two years of rolling pandemic restrictions. They are sounding the alarm as public debt becomes unsustainable and inflation risies. While we don’t want economists offering medical advice, we should be seeking their input when considering lockdowns. Rest assured, if the economy collapses it will cause very direct harm to people.

Logistics specialists are expressing concerns over world supply chain challenges. We are seeing unusual product shortages in everything from automotive computer chips to noodles for Asian restaurants. While the challenges presented by those shortages may seem trivial, they are warnings of a much larger potential problem.

The world population is nearing eight billion people. It is only through a massive, complicated, and sensitive supply-chain system that we are able to stave off mass starvation and economic breakdowns. When countries impose lockdowns, whatever products they supplied to the world are reduced or cut off. That leads to a whiplash effect which can cause all sorts of product shortages that may take months to resolve. Transportation issues have led to a fuel shortage in Great Britain. While that is manageable right now, what will happen in northern countries if fuel delivery fails in January?

We should consult with experts in sociology. What sort of impact are the lockdowns having on society at large? People have been stressed and divided. We certainly saw a lot of that in the recent federal election. How much damage is that causing to the cohesiveness of our society? How long will it take to recover?

Addictions experts have their hands full these days as we have seen a moderate opioid addiction crisis explode into a massive one. From April of 2020 when the pandemic began until March of 2021, nearly 7,000 Canadians died of opioid overdoses. That is an 88 percent increase over the same period a year before. We can’t pretend that lockdowns didn’t contribute to this. Let’s get input from addictions experts when we make decisions.

Some children are entering Grade 2 this year without ever having experienced a full school year in classrooms. What do early childhood experts have to say on how that impacts their development? We can’t turn the clock back on children. They are only that age once.

Post-secondary students are suffering as well. Online courses are a sorry substitute for many fields of learning. Our graduates are not going to be better for lockdowns.

Aside from experts on physiological health, we also have experts on mental health. We should consult them on the psychological impacts of lockdowns.

Medical experts tend follow the philosophy of “if it saves just one life, it’s worth it.” That outlook makes sense from a medical point of view but it’s unreasonable in practice.

How many fatal collisions would be avoided if we reduced all speed limits to 20 km/h?

How many lives would be saved if we had an ambulance on every street corner?

How many heart attacks would be avoided if we had a dietary consultant offering advice in every grocery store?

Why don’t we do those things? Because they would come at too much of a cost.

We have always applied a cost benefit approach with government policy. We seem to have forgotten that approach when it comes to COVID-19 lockdowns, however.

It is not being unreasonable or heartless to ask for other experts to weigh in before considering legislative moves as harsh as public lockdowns. Media and policymakers need to listen to a broad spectrum of specialists before acting. The perspective of an exhausted ICU nurse is important but so is the perspective of an economist.

Policy needs balance, and if we don’t listen to diverse opinions we may find that lockdowns are doing far more harm than good.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/governments-should-look-beyond-medical-experts-for-advice-before-imposing-lockdowns_4028787.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Friday denied an emergency request filed by a group of teachers to block New York City’s school COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Four teachers filed for the injunction on Thursday with Sotomayor, seeking to stop the mandate from going into effect on Friday.

Sotomayor, an Obama nominee who oversees emergency requests from New York, denied the teachers’ petition (pdf) without comment. She also did not refer the case to the full 9-member court for review.

The decision effectively allows the mandate to go forward.

Vinoo Varghese, an attorney for the teachers, said in an email, “We are disappointed, but the fight for our clients’ due process and those similarly situated will go on.”

The city’s vaccine mandate requires public school workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19 by 5 p.m. on Friday. Otherwise, they would be placed on unpaid leave until September 2022 unless they were approved for a religious or medical exemption.

COVID-19 is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus.

The New York teachers had filed a proposed class-action lawsuit in Brooklyn federal court last month, arguing that mandatory vaccinations violate their rights to due process and equal protection under the law, citing the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment.

The teachers argued that the mandate interferes with their freedom to work in their profession and discriminates against them because other municipal workers who don’t work for schools can opt out of the vaccine by undergoing weekly COVID-19 tests.

The teachers appealed to the Supreme Court after the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, based in Manhattan, denied their case on Monday. The panel did not explain their ruling, which reversed a decision by a federal judge last week to block the vaccine mandate.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/supreme-court-justice-denies-appeal-to-block-vaccine-mandate-for-new-york-school-staff_4028266.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Biden administration officials at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) want to renew an Obama era regulation that allowed labor unions to skim an estimated $1 billion from Medicaid payments to home healthcare providers.

The proposal “will place a federal stamp of approval on abusive state and union practices to pressure, mislead, and ultimately lock home-care providers into assigning portions of their Medicaid payments to union special interest groups and associated funds,” the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (NRTWLDF) said in a comment on the plan.

“Such assignments are generally irrevocable for a year or more, resulting in the diversion of Medicaid payments to third parties for political advocacy and other purposes over the express objections of home-care providers,” the NRTWLDF said.

The Biden proposal from HHS’s Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) would rescind a 2018 Trump administration rule that upheld the intent of Congress to deny third-parties, including unions, access to Medicaid payments to providers of home-based health care for disabled persons.

Despite a federal law—Section 1902(a)(32) of the Social Security Act—that specifically prohibited assignment of payments to third-parties, the Obama administration adopted a special exemption in 2014 that permitted them for labor unions. The only exceptions recognized by the law cover court orders for wage garnishments, child support orders, and judgements for debts owed to states.

The U.S. Supreme Court also ruled in 2014 that compulsory union payments violate the First Amendment rights of home healthcare workers who prefer not to support union activities.

Home healthcare providers in more than a dozen non-right to work states faced requirements that a portion of their payments be provided to fund union activities, according to NRTWLDF.

Those states were able to enforce such requirements by automatically deducting such fees from Medicaid payments even though doing so violated federal law regarding Medicaid funds.

The skimming equaled an estimated $200 million annually prior to the Trump rule taking effect, according to the State Policy Network. There are more than 400,000 home healthcare providers in the U.S.

“Prior to the [Trump] rule, union officials had siphoned upwards of $1 billion from Medicaid payments, an effort which had been aided by the Obama Administration’s 2014 creation of a special exemption for union officials from Medicaid regulations,” the NRTWLDF said in a statement announcing the filing of its comments on the HHS proposal earlier this week.

“Union officials, especially at the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), have long used deceptive and even unconstitutional tactics to divert taxpayer-funded Medicaid payments into union coffers,” the NRTWLDF said.

A spokesman for the SEIU did not respond to The Epoch Times request for comment. When the Trump administration proposed its rule in 2018, however, the SEIU issued a statement opposing the proposal.

In that statement, SEIU described the proposal as “a transparent attempt to interfere with workers’ freedom to choose to join together in a union and advocate for higher wages, better training, and basic benefits like affordable healthcare and paid sick time that are crucial to ensure quality home care for our parents, grandparents and children.”

The SEIU includes among its membership hospital and nursing home workers, particularly in the state of California.

The NRTWLDF claimed in its comment that “the proposed rule will undermine the purposes of Home and Community Based Service (HCBS) programs and facilitate abuses of home-care providers’ rights. HCBS programs exist to provide services to persons with disabilities so that they can live in their homes and avoid institutionalization.

“The proposed rule will divert Medicaid monies from this noble cause to fund union political advocacy, both by union political action committees and by exclusive union representatives (whose conduct is inherently political).

“It is a gross misuse of federal Medicaid funds, as well as morally appalling, for CMS deliberately to funnel millions in federal funds, meant to pay for care for disabled persons, to political organizations for partisan political purposes.”

Unless Congress acts to prevent it or the issuing department changes course, the proposed HHS rule will become effective by the end of 2021.

Last week a mom read aloud to the Fairfax County School Board excerpts from library books found in an FCPS library.

Shocking sexually explicit material was included in these books. Fortunately, parents are more aware than ever of what students are learning and the resources that are available to them. But this is not a new fight in Virginia. Not by a longshot.

The final debate in Virginia’s gubernatorial campaign gave us a glimpse into the heart of former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, and a brief history lesson about parental rights in Virginia is now in order.

Does McAuliffe really believe it’s his responsibility to “not … let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions”?

Does he really believe what he said at the debate: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach”? We know that he does, because he proved it at least twice in his previous stint as governor.

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In 2016 and 2017, two separate bills (nicknamed the “Beloved” bills after the Toni Morrison novel) that provided notice to parents and students about sexually explicit material in assigned books were introduced in the Virginia General Assembly. Unknown to parents or students, within various assigned books (especially in AP courses) were instances of pedophilia, rape and even bestiality.

Since presumably, the teacher assigning the books would know about their content, simply notifying parents of that content is not much to ask. The education lobby maintained that parents should have to read all the assigned books to find out which ones had explicit sexual content. But if schools are truly partnering with parents, why the secrecy?

Why not disclose to the parents what is going to be read by their children, which the teachers well know is in the material? What about the rape victim in class who will be assigned a book that will depict the heinous crime committed against her? Does she have the right to know?

Both bills passed with bipartisan support as Republicans and Democrats agreed that parents should be informed when their child is assigned books containing graphic sexually explicit content. Remember when Republicans and Democrats could agree on things?

To be clear, both bills continued to give teachers complete autonomy in the book selection process. What both bills simply provided was a notice to both students and parents of potentially graphic sexually explicit content within the assigned material.

Students then had the ability to request an alternative book. Requesting an alternative assignment is not unusual or unprecedented. Some students have religious objections to animal dissection assignments in biology classes, for example. Those students are allowed an alternative assignment. Students who do not attend field trips for whatever reason are given alternate work.

Bowing to pressure from education lobbyists for teachers unions and publishers, in 2016, then-Gov. McAuliffe vetoed the first of the bills. Undeterred, parents continued to press for this modest request — simple notification that their child might be confronted with literature containing salacious descriptions of sexual acts.

Seeking to accommodate (overblown) concerns about “censorship” ginned up by groups like the ACLU and Pen America, the 2017 bill was more specific. While still ensuring teacher control over the book selection process, the bill required notifying parents of books that include acts that actually are considered felony crimes in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Again, the books could still be assigned. The only requirement was parental notification about content considered a sex crime in the state where that material would be read by minors.

Viral Trend Shows the Destruction of Our Education System by Out-of-Control Students

This allowed for the ability to distinguish between books like “Romeo and Juliet” or “To Kill a Mockingbird” and gratuitously explicit or age-inappropriate books containing acts that constitute felony sex crimes in most states.

The second bill narrowed the scope of notifying parents to those acts that actually are considered felony crimes in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This way books like “Romeo and Juliet” would not be flagged, but books containing graphic depictions of rape, incest, pedophilia and bestiality would.

McAuliffe vetoed these bipartisan bills two years in a row.

While there was unity between Democrats and Republicans as to this commonsense measure, McAuliffe decided to veto both bills. With a disdain for parents that was on full display at the final debate of this campaign, then-Gov. McAuliffe did the bidding of education lobbyists rather than honor the role that parents play in our children’s lives.

We don’t have to wonder who he will listen to if he wins again. It won’t be parents.

Parents are outraged after discovering that a man who has been volunteering inside their children’s northern California elementary school for two years is a registered sex offender.

KRCR-TV reported 36-year-old Sean Green had been working at Columbia Elementary School in Redding, California, until just last week. Per the outlet, Green has a rap sheet that should have prevented him from ever even going near children.

According to the California Megan’s Law Website, which lists known sex offenders, Green was convicted of contacting a minor with the intent to commit a specified sex offense, attempting to possess or control obscene material depicting a minor in sexual conduct and indecent exposure.

District Superintendent Clay Ross explained in a message to parents that Green fell through the cracks because the school relied only on using his fingerprints when it conducted a background investigation.

“This is Mr. Ross with an important announcement. It was brought to our attention last week that an individual was on our campus that should never have been allowed,” he said in an email. “We immediately took steps to permanently deny their access and have been in communication with both RPD and the [Shasta County] Sheriff’s Department.”

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“Rumors of this situation have been spreading on social media and by other means. Please know that we took this situation seriously, have addressed it, and have instituted new internal procedures to prevent this scenario in the future,” Ross added. “If you are aware of individuals who should not be allowed on our campus please bring them to our attention so that we can take proper precaution.”

The message did not calm angry parents, who were told Green had been around children at the school for two years.

“I drop my kids off thinking that they’re safe at school, already knowing that I’m already scared that they’re not gonna be on the bus or something is going to happen, and they hear about this and it’s kind of frustrating,” said one mother who did not wish to be named, according to KRCR. “I went to school back when I was a kid. I had Mr. Ross when I was here. But, it’s kind of frustrating and super irritating.”

Another parent was rightly angered.

“I am disgusted with it,” a man named Joshua Heatherly said. “This was a huge mistake on the school’s part and the teacher whose room he was volunteering in.”

“I’ve spoken with other parents whose kids were in the class Green was volunteering in and they feel the same way. He was there for around two years and has been in a relationship with one of the teachers at the school,” the father added.

Heatherly called for action against the teacher who allowed the sex offender to spend time in the classroom around children.

The outlet reported there is speculation Green might have been in a romantic relationship with a teacher whose classroom he volunteered in.

“Who knows how many kids have been exposed to Sean Green at this point,” the man told KCRC. “He’s been helping at the school for a couple of years now. He’s been volunteering in her classroom as well as school functions. I would like the teacher that knew him removed immediately.”

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A man named Leroy Max told KHSL-TV that he has a niece who attends Columbia Elementary School, and he fears what might have happened while Green was around so many young people.

“A little upset and very scared, I guess you can say, just knowing that there is a possibility he could have been alone with my niece, and for the most part there is no way we really know. It’s a scary situation you wouldn’t want any child to be put in,” he said.

According to KRCR, police said they contacted the convicted sex offender and that charges have been filed against him.

Remember that shameful walk down the hallway to the principal’s office? Chances are that the next generation of misbehaving students will not meet the same fate.

A recent TikTok trend has unleashed a wave of school vandalism, with multiple states reporting students stealing their teachers’ belongings, intentionally clogging toilets and spraying red graffiti on mirrors.

The so-called “#deviouslick” challenge has since been banned by the popular social media platform. The trend sheds light on a deeper issue facing schools: the plummeting standards for student behavior and the rise of legislation banning disciplinary actions.

Instead of relying on the media to censor such trends and “parent” children, teachers must be able to set boundaries for students. Recent legislation has made that impossible.

Allowing kids to bend the rules in the classroom without consequences sets a precedent that enables young people to commit more serious offenses, such as those seen on TikTok.

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The destructive behavior exhibited in these Tik Tok videos are only a tiny fragment of a nationwide issue. Bad behavior is on the rise, and teachers no longer have the ability to address it.

According to a study by EAB Global, a school management consulting agency, there has been an alarming increase in behavioral disruptions in early grades over the last three years.

The report found that “The vast majority of educators responding to the survey identified an alarming increase in behavioral disruptions in early grades over the last three years. This perception holds steady across various school and district roles. More than a third of all respondents note that behavioral disruptions have increased ‘significantly’ during this time period.”

When asked how supported teachers felt by their school in managing such behaviors, teachers gave an average rating of 5.5/10.

With a rise in rowdiness, one might assume that teachers have been sending more children to detention, or in some cases suspension. Yet it is just the opposite. Liberal politicians have set rolling back school rules high on their agendas.

Beginning last July, California teachers were banned from suspending elementary and middle school students from school for disrupting classroom activities or defying school authorities.

The law was signed by the infamous Gov. Gavin Newsom. In 2015 in New York City, Mayor Bill de Blasio prohibited immediate suspensions for unlawful possession of marijuana, minor physical ­altercations, profanity and insubordination. Instead, students are now being handed warning cards.

Proponents of these laws argued that students should not miss out on time spent learning for minor rule-breaking and that minority students face a disproportionately higher number of detentions and suspensions.

They’re absolutely right. Under no circumstances should a student be taken out of the classroom for chewing gum — or, of course, for having a different color of skin.

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The problem, however, surpasses liberal identity politics. Teachers must have the ability to remove students who are actively disrupting the learning process and breaking rules. What if a student brings drugs onto school property? Threatens to hurt another student? Are those not grounds enough for detention?

If a teacher constantly has to deal with one misbehaving student, then they are unable to give their full attention to a class of students who are ready to learn.

In terms of education, America should and could be doing better. The nation rests upon the success of our students to lead the way in innovation and generate a strong economy.

Research in the Asia Pacific Business Review shows that countries that implement classroom discipline report higher levels of academic performance and better work ethics among students.

Multiple other studies reveal that the U.S is falling behind East Asian countries in terms of educational outcomes. In 2015, the U.S. ranked 30th in math and 19th in science among the 35 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Those rankings should be a wake-up call.

Students need expectations. They need boundaries. Not just for the safety of the school and the maintenance of a learning-conducive classroom environment for others, but also for their own success.

Instead of punishing students for disruptive and potentially harmful behaviors, schools have turned to punishing students for expressing unsatisfactory political opinions.

Learning institutions were once venerated by all who walked through their doors. They were the place to develop skills and exchange ideas. In many countries, the opportunity to gain an education is seen as the most valuable opportunity a young person can have.

Yet in America, students are losing respect for their schools. In a nationwide survey of 21,678 U.S. high school students, Yale researchers found that nearly 75 percent of the students’ “self-reported feelings related to school” were negative. The nonprofit YouthTruth has reported that only 50 percent of students feel that what they’re learning in school is relevant to the real world.

The recent TikTok trend illustrates the breakdown of the modern American education system. Administrators are bowing down to politicians and teachers are bowing to administrators. If teachers are forced to relax the rules, the epidemic of student disengagement and disruption will only get worse.

It’s time to hold students responsible for their actions and make education matter again.

A former director at Montana State University (MSU) allegedly called a student a “stupid fuck” and several other staffers berated the student for starting an anti-mask campaign on campus, according to emails obtained by the Daily Caller.

MSU student Dylan Dean and Young Americans for Liberty (YAL) created a petition to end the university’s mask mandate on campus, garnering more than 1,100 petition signatures, according to data provided by YAL. The university’s mask mandate orders students, faculty and staff to wear a mask indoors.

The petition alleged the university waited until the last minute to implement the mandate and students did not have the opportunity to “make decisions about their schooling accordingly.”

Face masks [Shutterstock/Beton Studio]Dean allegedly tried to present the petition to MSU President Dr. Waded Cruzado, who allegedly shut him out of the office. Several staffers and even a professor also attacked Dean over the petition, emails show.

Dean had sent an email to several staffers on Sep. 15, noting the petition and asking “if you agree that the mask mandate is unnecessary at this point, please sign the petition.” 

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Rick Winking, who worked at the school’s Alcohol and Drug Assistance Center, sent a brief email to Dean that read “you stupid fuck.”

Winking also told Dean “there was a time when conservatives were respectable and had intellectual arguments that made sense. Now being conservative seems to mean emotionally stunted whiny little victims.”

In a subsequent email, Winking told Dean he retired on Sept. 1  and had plenty of time to “fuck with dumb shit whiners.”

Professor Seth Pincus sent Dean an email calling him “a selfish idiot who cannot even consider the potential suffering [Dean] can cause others.”

“If you behaved as a citizen concerned about others, loved thy neighbor, and believed in the golden rule, we would not need mandates,” the email continued.

YAL criticized the university for allegedly defrauding students by implementing the mask mandate.

“Students at Montana State University are right to be infuriated. Administrators have cheated them with a bait-and-switch, promising a normal school year, then imposing tyrannical mandates once they arrived on campus and their tuition checks had been cashed. President Cruzado thinks she can dodge accountability by locking doors to public buildings and siccing police on student protesters, but this will not end until she reverses these policies,” YAL senior spokesman Eric Brakey said.

https://dailycaller.com/2021/09/30/montana-state-university-yal-mask-mandate/?utm_medium=email&_hsmi=165573774&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-9P_W2BfStXaSiZhrnEWIPfhc2SpFc8Ol65RrMko8wgP3Y4ghSw6whGDlPro1I5CPyskJSjNx_i9xd1u5LkwbztgwTdng&utm_content=165573774&utm_source=hs_email

President Trump cared about the voices of America’s youngest voters, while the Biden administration seeks to suppress the voices of young dissenters through unfair disciplinary procedures and restrictions.

Free Speech on college campuses is more important than ever as university students across the country make the long-awaited return to in-person learning this fall. Along with this exciting transition, however, is the anxiety that many students feel in expressing their personal beliefs.  

Colleges have long been known to promote liberal ideology to students. Conservative student groups such as the College Republicans, Young Americans for Freedom, and conservative women’s groups, are often extracurricular safe-havens for conservative students. These clubs, however, do not mitigate the threat of retribution from peers, professors, and university administration.  

The fear of being “cancelled” has stretched across the country, and is now besetting students on both sides of the aisle. According to Forbes, more than half of college students regularly hold back their political views, for fear of consequences. While many schools proclaim their commitment to intellectual diversity and curiosity, self-censorship and fear prevent the expression of free speech and diverse perspectives. Another report from the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, surveyed 37,000 students from 159 colleges. The report found that three-quarters of students who identify as strong Republicans, regularly censor themselves, while less than half of strong Democratic students do so.  

Recently, colleges have become increasingly combative against speakers who do not promote the university’s liberal ideology. Campus groups spend months coordinating with speakers and receive funding to host top conservative speakers. Many of these events are ultimately canceled by university administration. Ben Shapiro, one of the most popular speakers among young conservatives, has been barred by several colleges including UC Berkley, Gonzaga University, Grand Canyon University, and others due to his “controversial” opinions. The sited “controversial” opinions all boil down to Shapiro’s unapologetic conservatism which violates liberal groupthink on campuses.  

On Sept. 23, Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania cancelled Turning Point USA speaker, Joe Basrawi’s speech on critical race theory due to an alleged “disruption” at the college. College administration met with the Turning Point chapter leader and directed him that the event should be canceled and moved off campus. The school also requested for its name to not be associated with the event. Elizabethtown claimed that Basrawi was not qualified to speak on the topic of critical race theory because he is not a critical race theorist.  

University suppression has led to a renewed commitment to free speech by many campus groups. Counter-protests and national representatives from groups such as YAF and Turning Point USA are more vocal against cancel culture on campuses, but the reality is that the left has become so good at suppressing beliefs, many students have been silenced.  

As the new administration seeks to undermine our most basic freedoms, we are reminded of the work of President Donald Trump, who defended the rights of America’s youngest voters.  

In March 2019, President Trump signed an executive order protecting freedom of speech on college campuses. President Trump signed this executive order with the support of student leaders who faced suppression at their universities. The executive order supported free inquiry and debate and aimed to promote a culture of understanding on campuses. Colleges that benefit from American tax dollars should not actively limit First Amendment rights.  

President Trump cared about the voices of America’s youngest voters, and supported a culture of free inquiry and debate. The Biden administration wants to suppress the voices of young dissenters through unfair disciplinary procedures and restriction. When it comes to free speech, Trump was right, and Biden is wrong. Our President must support and defend the voices of young Americans.  

Virginia’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe argued that parents should not tell schools what to teach, during the final debate before the upcoming Nov. 2 election.

The remark by McAuliffe, who served as governor of Virginia from 2014 to 2018, came after Republican candidate Glenn Youngkins said he believes that parents should be given more say in the decisions of local school districts, including what kind of books their children are exposed to at school.

“What we’ve seen over the course of this last 20 months is our school systems refusing to engage with parents,” Youngkin said. “In fact, in Fairfax County this past week, we watched parents so upset because there was such sexually explicit material in the library they had never seen, it was shocking.”

He then pointed out that McAuliffe in 2016 put down what was known as the “Beloved” bill, a measure that would have made Virginia the first state to require schools to warn parents of sexually explicit content in books, and allow parents to block their children from reading those books.

“You vetoed the bill that would have informed parents that they were there,” Youngkins said to the former governor. “You believe school systems should tell children what to do. I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education.”

In response, McAuliffe said that parents would have had the power to remove books from library shelves if the 2016 bill passed.

“It was not that the parents had the right to veto books … also take them off the shelves,” he said. “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions.”

“I stopped the bill and I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” McAuliffe added.

The candidates’ comments comes amid ongoing controversies around public education in Virginia, including the incorporation of critical race theory (CRT) in schools, and the Commonwealth’s new model policies encouraging school districts to allow transgender students to use restrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.

McAuliffe during the first gubernatorial debate on Sept. 16 said individual school boards should be making their own decisions on whether to implement the model policies. Youngkin on Tuesday agreed with McAuliffe’s response, but added that parents should be included in the conversation, and that schools must consider “concepts of safety, privacy, and respect” when making decisions.

When it comes to CRT, McAuliffe reportedly dismissed the concerns as a “right-wing conspiracy” that was “totally made up by Donald Trump.” By contrast, Youngkin said the CRT is a real issue.

“Virginia schools are in a state of chaos because of the left-liberal, progressive agenda that is being ramrodded across the Commonwealth of Virginia,” Youngkin told The Epoch Times earlier this summer. “We kept our schools closed so unnecessarily, and damaged kids across Virginia. We have infused a political agenda of critical race theory into the curriculum, and we are seeing parents stand up across Virginia, and acutely in Loudon County.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/virginia-gov-candidate-argues-parents-shouldnt-have-a-say-in-what-public-schools-teach_4023014.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Democrats are pushing to pass a multitrillion-dollar spending bill called the Build Back Better Act. It ought to be called the Political Scam Bill.

Buried in the 2,465 pages are numerous billion-dollar grants to unnamed community organizations for vague purposes such as promoting “community engagement” and “creating equitable civic infrastructure.”

Translation: Your taxpayer dollars will fund the payrolls of left-wing advocacy groups between elections. In return, they become the campaign army staffing phone banks, harvesting ballots and escorting people to the polls on Election Day.

The Build Back Better bill is pouring tens of billions of dollars—an unprecedented amount—into community organizations. That’s because the stakes are high. Congressional Democrats have failed to ram through the two voting bills that would change election rules to favor their party: H.R. 1 and H.R. 4. Build Back Better is the party’s best shot at gaining an electoral advantage.

The bill not only bankrolls nonprofit community organizations but also adds to their clout by allowing them to hand out billions of dollars in seed money for local business startups.

In a new twist, the Small Business Administration is distributing huge sums to nonprofits that will serve as “incubators,” disbursing funding to startup businesses in “underserved” areas. Curiously, the SBA has regional offices across the United States to help startups and could distribute the funds itself. But instead, it is empowering nonprofits by making them the middlemen.

Ninety percent of startups fail. There is no riskier place to put taxpayer money. Yet the bill establishes no standards for which businesses get the funding except that they have to be majority-owned by members of “underrepresented communities,” including residents of high poverty areas and the formerly incarcerated. One thing they can’t have is a track record. If they’ve been in business five years, they’re ineligible.

From an economic point of view, it’s taxpayer money down a rathole. Clearly, the goal is political. It’s vote buying.

All in all, nonprofits are eligible for as much as $90 billion to support their own activities or disseminate to pals under this bill. That’s equivalent of the entire 2020 budget of the state of Florida.

Historically, political machines that doled out benefits in exchange for votes were local, as in nineteenth century Boston, New York and Kansas City. “All there is to it,” explained Kansas City political boss James Pendergast, is “doing things for people, then later on they’ll do things for you.”

Barack Obama, the community organizer who became president, was a master at machine politics. The Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) outsourced the important job of health plan enrollment to community organizations, handsomely funding them and entrusting them to register people to vote at the same time. Obamacare turned community organizations into a fifth estate with government funding but without government rules.

Now, Build Back Better is funding an even wider array of organizations. It allocates a whopping $5.7 billion “for community-led projects to stabilize neighborhoods.” Translation: rallies and legal action to stop gentrification and “displacement.”

There’s also $5 billion for climate justice block grants to pay community organizations for, among other things, “facilitating engagement of disadvantaged communities in State and Federal processes.” Translation: organizing protests and demanding seats on zoning boards.

Hundreds of millions of dollars target the higher mortality rates for black women giving birth, but even on such a serious issue, the bill requires community-based organizations get priority over accredited medical centers, teaching hospitals and schools of nursing. Politics first.

For every left-wing community organization, there’s a grant in Build Back Better. The causes range from Growing and Diversifying the Doula Workforce to Anti-Discrimination and Bias Training.

Republicans used to laugh about Obama’s work experience as a community organizer. But if Build Back Better is passed, Democrats will have the last laugh, shoveling big money into leftist community organizations to tilt the scale against a fair two-party system.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/hidden-in-spending-bill-billions-for-community-organizations_4024959.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

The Pennsylvania Senate Education Committee Tuesday approved a plan that provides parental control over masking decisions in school. Senate Bill 846 next goes before the full Senate for consideration.

Republican senators Doug Mastriano and Judy Ward cosponsored the bill which would allow parents or legal guardians to opt their child out of wearing a face mask due to a rule that is imposed by the state secretary of health or the school board.

The bill also provides that a child who has been opted-out of wearing a mask will not be subject to any harassment or discriminatory treatment, for example isolating that child or forcing him to work in the hallway.

This summer, Governor Tom Wolf’s administration told schools to make local decisions about masking. But just as schools were starting this fall, the Department of Health issued an order requiring masking of students and children at schools and daycare centers. Because Pennsylvania is no longer classified as being in a state of emergency, it is unclear if schools must follow the mandate.

“Unfortunately, this legislation is especially necessary following a statewide mandate from the Department of Health,” Mastriano said in a statement. “It is worth noting that over 90 percent of school districts rejected mask mandates in their health and safety plans prior to the issuance of the mandate.”

“Parents of school age children gather information and do their utmost to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of their child,” Mastriano said. “They know the children’s strengths and weaknesses best, and love their kids more than any bureaucrat or elected official does. Oftentimes, parents are the only ones who can notice the day-to-day changes of their child and the effect that all day mask wearing can have on them.”

This bill allows parents to consider the personalized needs of each unique child, he said.

Ward said her office has been overwhelmed with calls and emails from parents upset with masking mandates from the Wolf administration and from their school districts.

“Parents throughout our districts have echoed their concerns about the negative impacts of mask-wearing on their children,” Ward said.” Issues such as difficulty breathing, decreased communication among students, learning impairments, and anxiety are common.”

“Parents know what their children are going through and can decide whether a mask is necessary for their children’s health and success in school,” Ward said. “Passage of this bill will give rights back to the parents and legal guardians to do what they know is best for their children.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pennsylvania-senate-republicans-aim-to-put-masking-decision-in-parental-hands_4023234.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Having a dissenting view within the prevailing orthodoxies of many universities today can lead to “a death by a thousand cuts,” according to a lawyer who specializes in constitutional law.

Samantha Harris, with Allen Harris Law in Connecticut, represents Stephen Porter, a professor at North Carolina State University (NCSU). Porter filed a lawsuit on Sept. 14, alleging that faculty members in his department were discriminating against him, violating both his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by retaliating against his free speech.

“In some ways, it’s nothing new,” Harris told The Epoch Times, “but what I’ve observed in recent years is these institutions have gotten smarter in knowing that they can’t just fire someone.”

Over the last 20 years, Harris said she’s seen multiple strategies on how universities censor unpopular speech of faculty and students.

Death by a Thousand Cuts

Rather than termination or direct punishment, Harris said the latest is the adoption of an incremental strategy, in which the institution subjects the dissenter to investigations, removal from committees, and accusations of professionalism violations.

This subtle death by a thousand cuts can complicate the livelihood for someone who expresses an unpopular belief, Harris said, and blur the line between First Amendment rights and the institution’s overreach.

“It can make it difficult for people to advance their careers, as well as to get justice for what’s happening to them,” Harris said.

Race-Focused Worldviews

On the predominant social justice ideologies being debated—such as what Porter said he was contesting at NCSU—Harris said she avoids using phrases like Critical Race Theory (CRT), the Marxist philosophy that suggests society is a class struggle between oppressors and the oppressed, labeling white people as the oppressors and all other races as the oppressed.

“That’s become shorthand for what I would call this very race-focused view looking at how we should as a country deal with issues of race and identity,” Harris said. “As a result, people who ascribe to what I would call a more traditional civil rights view of treating people equally and viewing each person as an individual has fallen out of favor on many campuses and is often the accused of being racist itself.”

Color blindness, which used to be the standard for not being racist, is now considered in many circles to be racist, she said.

“Critical Race Theory is a school of thought that evolved out of the universities, and that has informed a lot of thinking, but what I really call it is this very race-focused view of the world, the way humans interact with one another, and the way policies should be made,” Harris said.

Opinions Targeted

Most of her clients are people who have landed on the “wrong side” of these views by expressing opinions not in line with “this very race-focused world view.”

“The same goes for gender identity,” Harris said. “Interestingly, I’ve had clients who are feminist who do not ascribe to the current views on gender identity and have found themselves targeted for that.”

Most frequently, Harris said what she’s observed is the suppression of traditional, conservative views at liberal universities.

Before setting up her own firm, Harris worked for 15 years at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit academic and individual rights advocacy center set up to be a resource for students and faculty members who have had their freedom of speech infringed upon.

“FIRE is a faculty rights organization that does some targeted First Amendment litigation at public universities, but they also advocate on behalf of the students and faculty at private universities who are facing censorship,” Harris said.

On her transition from “big-picture advocacy” at FIRE to “getting into the trenches” to represent individual clients at her law firm, Harris said her focus is primarily on freedom of speech and due process, ensuring those who are accused of misconduct can go through an impartial investigation before facing disciplinary action.

Freedom of Conscience

The firm also defends freedom of conscience, or the freedom to hold one’s own thoughts and beliefs free from governmental interference.

“The seminal freedom of conscience case was when a court held that Jehovah’s Witness students could not be forced to salute the flag in class,” Harris said. “That violated their freedom of conscience, the right to be free from compelled speech and compelled beliefs.”

In the 1943 case of West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the board adopted a directive requiring all public-school students to salute the flag and recite the Pledge of Allegiance or be expelled.

A group of Jehovah’s Witness students challenged the directive on the pretense that saluting the flag conflicted with their religious beliefs prohibiting idol worship, therefore violating their freedom of religion and speech, and the Supreme Court concurred.

Similarly, the freedom of conscience comes into play with what Harris said are “intrusive training” methodologies in which world views and theories aren’t shared, but required.

In North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson’s Fairness and Accountability in the Classroom for Teachers and Students task force report, teachers and parents anonymously provided testimony and examples of curriculums of what they were seeing in North Carolina classrooms.

One teacher alleged in the report that white staff members were told that they were unaware of their racism and required to attend “professional development” sessions related to “microaggression” and “equity” as it relates to race and gender.

Porter’s Case

What brought Harris’ client, Stephen Porter, to the attention of his faculty members at NCSU was his blog posts challenging the social justice ideologies of his department.

“Faculty at public universities have the right to speak as private citizens on matters of public concern,” Harris said. “When a faculty member or public employee has a private blog in which they express their opinions about important societal issues, they have the right to free speech to do that.”

Porter told The Epoch Times that for three years his own department has been attempting to isolate and drain him of resources in retaliation for opposing “the broader push for social justice ideologies within our college.”

After writing a blog criticizing the Association for the Study of Higher Education research conference, which he said had become a “woke joke,” the president of the conference, during her keynote speech, had a picture of Porter behind her at the conference, where he said, “she spent 10 minutes castigating me and my blog posts, accusing me of white fragility.”

In addition, Porter said the department had engaged in untested research methodologies to inquire about diversity being taught in the classroom.

“My background is in survey methodology, so, not realizing this would start a furor, I began asking simple questions,” Porter said.

In the lawsuit, Porter alleged that he had been “systematically excluded” from meetings and activities related to higher education programs and the advising of students, which Porter said prevented him from getting new advisees.

As Porter experienced his own “death by a thousand cuts,” he said he slipped into depression, concerned that he was going to lose his job and the means to provide for his family.

After meeting with Harris and filing the lawsuit, he said he’s in “a much better place, particularly since we filed.”

“I feel like I’m fighting back for my rights, and quite honestly, I’m doing this to restore my job to what it was a few years ago,” he said.

Another reason he filed the lawsuit was to give others the courage to take a stand.

“This is happening in universities around the country,” Porter said. “People are afraid to speak up, and I’d like to provide an example that says, ‘It’s possible to stand up for yourself and fight for your rights. It’s OK to be a conservative in academia, although my colleagues would obviously disagree.’”

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for NCSU said the university does not comment on pending litigation.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/ostracizing-university-faculty-with-nonconforming-opinions-has-become-a-common-trend-constitutional-lawyer_4023217.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

LOUDOUN COUNTY, Va.—Hundreds of protesters rallied in Loudoun County to voice their objection over a recently adopted pro-transgender policy. The event occurred outside the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) administration building on Sept. 28, an hour before the school board meeting.

The policy, also known as policy 8040 (pdf), requires LCPS staff to address students with their preferred pronouns and allows transgender students access to bathrooms and locker rooms according to their self-identified gender. It also requires all LCPS staff to “complete training on topics relating to LGBTQ+ students” and schools to create more single-user restrooms within the next five years. It was adopted on Aug. 11, before the start of the current school year.

For the county parents, the pro-transgender policy was just one out of many issues they had with the Loudoun County School Board (LCSB). “Trust,” or instead, the loss of trust, was often mentioned in rally speeches and during public comment at LCSB meetings since June 22, at which two LCPS residents were arrested after the superintendent Scott Ziegler declared the meeting an “unlawful assembly.”

“I’m even thinking about sending my kids to school with a body cam. When they get into the class, start recording. Because we’re not in the classroom,” said an LCPS parent at the rally. Another LCPS parent said during public comment of the LCSB meeting, “The parents of Loudoun trusted that the members of the board would have our children’s best interests in mind when making decisions; that trust is lost.”

Ian Prior, executive director of Fight for Schools, said that the LCSB needed to act like elected officials and “stop acting like a politburo” that wants to take away parents’ responsibility of raising their children. “If you want to take that responsibility from me, you’re going to have to pry it from my cold, dead hands,” warned Prior. On Aug. 25, Fight for Schools filed a petition in the Loudoun County Circuit Court to recall LCSB member Beth Barts. The next court hearing is scheduled for Oct. 5.

On Sept. 23, the LCPS changed the rules of public participation at LCSB meetings, again. It asked registered speakers to show proof of residence in the county, following changes that took away public viewing during public comment in August. Public participation didn’t dwindle as a result. Instead, the number of registered in-person speakers at the Sept. 28 meeting was 82, more than the 70 at the previous session on Sept. 14.

Andrea Weiskopf, an LCPS teacher, was the only in-person speaker supporting the LCSB. “Will you fight so that it will be pretty clear that they will benefit, that all children of Loudoun will feel like they belong? Cui bono [for whom it benefits]?” she asked. She wrote in a tweet about her plan to “incorporate critical race theory into my lessons” during the summer. On Aug. 24, Weiskopf posted another tweet asking for lesson plans “designed to indoctrinate students.” The LCPS has repeatedly said that it doesn’t teach critical race theory.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/parents-protest-school-pro-transgender-policy-in-loudoun-county_4022687.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

The following is an installment in a weekly series of commentary articles by Cameron Arcand, founder of the conservative commentary website Young Not Stupid and a contributor to The Western Journal.

From the moment I arrived at Arizona State University last month, the faculty stressed the importance of diversity and inclusion in the college community.

In fact, ASU’s charter says the school is “measured not by whom we exclude, but rather by whom we include and how they succeed.”

One of the oft-mentioned tenets of this creed is the need to respect others’ political affiliations, and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has given ASU a green light for its First Amendment policies.

But a recent incident shows that although the university promotes ideological diversity on paper, the student body still has work to do when it comes to political tolerance.

A viral video from the “multicultural space” on ASU’s Tempe campus features liberal students arguing with two conservative students.

A woman confronts the conservative men over a laptop sticker that says “Police Lives Matter.”

“What did I do wrong?” the student with the pro-police sticker asks.

“You’re offensive. Police lives matter?” the woman recording the scene says.

WARNING: The following video contains graphic language that some viewers will find offensive.

🚨 This insanity is happening on college campuses pic.twitter.com/BrVxICZYqP

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) September 24, 2021

The argument continues, with the woman saying the men are “making the space uncomfortable.”

“But you’re white!” the woman says. “Do you understand what a multicultural space [is]? It means you’re not being centered.”

“White’s not a culture?” says one of the men, who is wearing a “Did Not Vote For Biden” T-shirt.

“No, it’s not a culture. White is not a culture,” the woman says. “This is the violence that ASU does and this is the type of people that they protect. OK? This white man thinks he can take up our space.”

Student Journalist Told To Resign from Management Position After Jacob Blake Tweet

When one of the students says he’s not racist, the woman responds, “You are racist. Your sticker’s racist.” When he apologizes and says he didn’t mean to offend anyone, another woman says, “But this offends us automatically because these people kill people like me and like us, right? So you’re promoting our murderers.”

In the full video, the two men eventually leave as the situation escalates.

ASU’s dean of students released a statement condemning the altercation.Does the left really value ideological diversity?Yes No
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“The Dean of Students Office is aware of the incident between a handful of students that was captured in a video circulated on social media. The Dean of Students Office will be discussing it with all involved,” the statement said.

“ASU is a community of more than 100,000 people from all 50 states and more than 150 countries. Differences of opinion are part of the university experience. The university expects respectful dialogue between students in all engagements.”

It’s clear that ASU’s administration is trying to attract and appease left-wing students and faculty, and will likely sweep this incident under the rug.

With that being said, it is undeniable that the university has a significant conservative plurality, making it more reflective of the nature of American politics than many schools.

Let’s be honest: ASU is no University of California, Berkeley, when it comes to leftist hostility.

But this video shows that its political climate leaves a lot to be desired. All students must do a better job respecting the ideological diversity the school claims to value.

Calling the proposed Democratic budget package of progressive sugar plums “fiscal insanity,” Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia on Wednesday said he has not budged in his opposition to the mammoth spending bill.

Manchin and Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona have long been holdouts in the Senate and have indicated opposition to a bill that totals $3.5 trillion, a sum Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders has already said is “not enough” for what should be doled out to social programs.

This week, they were courted by President Joe Biden in an effort to get them on board, as CBS News reported. The two votes matter to Democrats because without them – and with continued united Republican opposition – the spending bill cannot pass a Senate that’s divided between the parties 50-50.

That makes Manchin’s announcement a huge roadblock to progressive plans.

Manchin explained his stand in a statement on his website.

“I can’t support $3.5 trillion more in spending when we have already spent $5.4 trillion since last March. At some point, all of us, regardless of party must ask the simple question – how much is enough?” he wrote.

“What I have made clear to the President and Democratic leaders is that spending trillions more on new and expanded government programs, when we can’t even pay for the essential social programs, like Social Security and Medicare, is the definition of fiscal insanity,” he wrote.

Manchin wrote that claims that spending will not fuel increased inflation are pipe dreams.

“Suggesting that spending trillions more will not have an impact on inflation ignores the everyday reality that America’s families continue [to] pay an unavoidable inflation tax,” he wrote.

Manchin also expressed doubts that an unprecedented deluge of taxpayer dollars will create the version of nirvana its supporters claim will take place.

“Proposing a historic expansion of social programs while ignoring the fact we are not in a recession and that millions of jobs remain open will only feed a dysfunction that could weaken our economic recovery,” he wrote.

Manchin noted he supports tax code changes to address fairness concerns, but that there is a limit.

“Overall, the amount we spend now must be balanced with what we need and can afford – not designed to reengineer the social and economic fabric of this nation or vengefully tax for the sake of wishful spending,” he wrote.

Manchin did not rule out further conversations about an appropriate amount of spending, but wrote that “I cannot – and will not — support trillions in spending or an all or nothing approach that ignores the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces.”

Republicans Down Democrats in Congressional Baseball Game as GOP Rep. Launches Historic Home Run

Manchin also hinted that the final solution may not be a one-party bill, as the $3.5 trillion package was designed to be.

“If there is one final lesson that will continue to guide me in this difficult debate ahead it is this: America is a great nation but great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending and bad policies,” he wrote. “Now, more than ever, we must work together to avoid these fatal mistakes so that we may fulfill our greatest responsibility as elected leaders and pass on a better America to the next generation.”

Sinema is doing her negotiating directly with the WH and Schumer. She’s been at the WH for meetings 10 times since the summer. Durbin, No. 2, himself acknowledged being in the dark about her and Manchin’s demands. Sanders: “I don’t want to talk about Sinema and Manchin.” https://t.co/GvnwyQ8oYs

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) September 29, 2021

Progressives in the House of Representatives say they want to move forward regardless of what Manchin does.

“Progressives won’t back down on delivering paid leave, education, health care, child care, and climate action because of an arbitrary deadline,” said Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, according to Fox Business. “We’re sticking to our deal and delivering for the people.”

Radical Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota indicated disgust with Manchin and Sinema.

“It is saddening to see them use Republican talking points. We obviously didn’t envision having Republicans as part of our party,” she said, according to The Hill.

September 29, 2021

Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin should rally Virginia parents over Terry McAuliffe’s statement that teachers’ unions – not parents — have the final say on children’s education. 

I think Terry McAuliffe made a huge error in last night’s debate when he asserted that parents really should have no influence on what is taught to their children. This race can break wide open if Glenn Youngkin can focus, in a disciplined way, on rallying every parent and grandparent in the state who believes that parents should  have a role in their children’s education. Employing this tactic will drive home the point that the teachers’ unions own McAuliffe. For the Democrats, it is about control and power, not freedom and personal choice. 

I will reflect more on this and welcome your thoughts in our Inner Circle town hall event on Thursday, Sept. 30. If you haven’t already joined, please consider a subscription to my Inner Circle members program today. 

-Newt

Prince William County limits public comment amid debate over COVID, woke curricula

Parents are criticizing Virginia’s Prince William County School Board over a rule limiting public comment, a move community members say is an attempt to stifle debate around hot-button issues.

The school board approved changes to its “Citizen Participation” rule during a tumultuous Sept. 15 meeting. The updated rule limits time for public comment to one hour and prohibits attendees from bringing posters or signs into meetings without prior approval from the board.

The rule comes as Prince William County parents and teachers debate COVID-19 policies and “woke” curricula. The changes demonstrate the board’s apathy toward concerned parents and taxpayers, several attendees and concerned community members told the Washington Free Beacon.

“They don’t want to hear from the citizens. They don’t care what we have to say,” Carol Fox, a former Prince William County Public Schools teacher who attended the Sept. 15 meeting, said. “They’re going to run the school how they want to run it, and they don’t care.”

Prince William County is one of several Virginia counties where school board meetings grew contentious throughout the pandemic. Parents in some districts have organized to oust school board members who promote critical race theory or refuse to reopen schools. Fairfax County Public Schools officials cut off one mother from speaking after she began reading graphic material from a novel offered to high school students.

The Prince William County School Board was set to vote on a swath of measures during the Sept. 15 meeting, including changes to guidelines for public comment. While the board was in private session, parents on either side of the critical race theory debate began loudly taunting each other, one attendee told the Free Beacon. Security ended the meeting after local Democratic leader Tonya James began shouting “fuck you” at attendees.

William Deutsch, a former school board member who attended the meeting, said a select few attendees were allowed back into the meeting space for the board to vote on its agenda.

The newly passed rule only allows for one hour of public comment at school board meetings. Half of that time is dedicated to agenda items, leaving only 30 minutes for parents to discuss other issues. During that 30-minute period, only 10 attendees are permitted to speak for three minutes each.

The school board implemented the rule “in order to conduct its business in a timely and orderly fashion,” the final draft of the updated measure states. Those who are not able to speak at meetings due to the time limitation are encouraged to submit their concerns via video message or email.

Deutsch told the Free Beacon he thinks the rule change could give board members the opportunity to tee up a slate of friendly speakers and exclude dissenting voices.

Several attendees at the Sept. 15 meeting said they had gone to debate the district’s coronavirus mitigation strategies and its embrace of critical race theory. Though the school board denies using critical race theory in its curriculum, the district has adopted the Virginia Department of Education’s equity plan. The state’s “Road Map to Equity” cites controversial “antiracist” scholar Ibram X. Kendi and the educational arm of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center.

Prince William County Public Schools’ equity statement commits district employees to “examine and interrupt beliefs, implicit and explicit biases, policies and/or practices that perpetuate systemic racism and discrimination.”

According to Deutsch, now is not the time for the school board to stifle public comment.

“We’re at a time when there is increasing polarization and division within our school system and it’s up to our leaders to lead by example and listen to the public,” Deutsch told the Free Beacon. “Sadly, the school board has made it clear that they are not willing to listen to the public and shut down viewpoints they disagree with.”

https://freebeacon.com/campus/virginia-parents-say-school-board-gag-rule-stifles-criticism/

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) has introduced legislation to allow students to change schools if mask mandates or critical race theory curriculum are implemented.

Bishop introduced the Masks Off Act and the No Corrupt Racist Training (No CRT) Act. The measures would allow parents to demand federal education dollars be redirected to a private school, homeschool, or other education expenses if a school enacts the mask and race theory policies.

“Federal education dollars should follow America’s students, not the system,” Bishop said in a statement. “This should be true in all cases, but especially if a school is forcing masks on children or teaching divisive Critical Race Theory. If such mandates or indoctrinating curricula are in place, then families should be able to do what is best for their own kids and have the freedom to pursue alternative education options.”

The Masks Off Act would allow students in school districts with mask mandates to be eligible for “opportunity grants” to seek other education options. The No CRT Act would provide the grants to students who attend schools promoting critical race theory. The federal government would redirect 10 percent of appropriated funding from Title 1 of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

Bishop’s office said the amount of the grants would be based on annual income.

Critical race theory is centered around the idea that race is a social construct used to oppress people of color. It was developed by legal scholars in the late 1970s and 1980s and concludes racism in America is systemic. The theory gained new notoriety in response to the 1619 Project, a New York Times multimedia piece that connects slavery to capitalism.

Critics say critical race theory employs heavy use of the Marxist “struggle” ideology and tactic that advocates for the destruction of history, traditions, and culture of a society.

The Republican-led North Carolina General Assembly approved a bill Sept. 1 that would have banned some critical race theory concepts from being taught in public schools. It was later vetoed by Gov. Roy Cooper.

North Carolina students and staff are not currently required to wear masks, but it is recommended under the state’s public health guidance. Cooper has allowed local school leaders to dictate protocols in their schools.

The number of children homeschooled in North Carolina jumped nearly 21 percent during the pandemic, a recent North Carolina Department of Administration report shows.

According to a John Locke Foundation and Civitas poll released from January, a majority of North Carolinians support school choice. The survey results showed 82 percent of 950 bipartisan voters believed parents should have the ability to select the school their child attends. Critics argue private schools promote religious agendas. Others say opportunity scholarships absorb funds that should be used for traditional schools.

“These bills will reallocate a small percentage of federal K-12 dollars to give families in need greater educational freedom and opportunity,” the American Federation for Children said.

According to the most-recent data from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services, 6,132 COVID-19 cases were reported among school-aged children the week of Sept. 12.

The agency’s dashboard shows 21,005—or 6 percent—of the 350,086 North Carolinians who have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine are between 12 years old and 17 years old. The cohort accounts for 8 percent of the state’s total population.

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report

https://www.theepochtimes.com/north-carolina-congressman-proposes-federal-school-choice-grants-in-some-situations_4021848.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

I cannot resist the setup, so…Karma is a b!tch- and so were you (and now you’ve Croaked!)! [US Patriot]

ORLANDO, FLORIDA — A 67-year-old former Notre Dame professor is dead, in what is fast-becoming a pattern of quick deaths after “booster” shots.

Mrs. Karen Croake Heisler received her first dose of Pfizer experimental mRNA on January 13, according to her Twitter account. Her age allowed her to be one of the first to receive the injections in December and January. It’s unclear when she received the second injection. But Mrs. Heisler declared on April 9 that she and her husband suffered only sore arms after their second injections.

Mrs. Heisler was a passionate, hardcore supporter of anything related to masks and COVID-19 mandates. She also displayed consistent animosity towards those who refuse to receive mRNA and viral vector DNA injections. She called non-vaxxed people “selfish” and ordered them to stay home “until you come to your senses.”

Ms. Heisler loved masks so much that she even made her dog wear them.

For reasons unknown, Mrs. Heisler received a third Pfizer mRNA injection on September 7.

Her health apparently deteriorated very quickly thereafter. Mrs. Heisler tweeted from Orlando Regional Medical Center on September 14. She was there to see a cardiologist. Mrs. Heisler tweeted three times that day, with all of them blaming the “unvaccinated” for her deteriorating health. She went out swinging, telling everyone to “get the damn vaccine” and “damn the unvaccinated.”

Mrs. Heisler died from “cancer-related complications” on September 19.

RELATED: Jovita Moore: Atlanta news anchor develops two brain tumors 12 days after second experimental Pfizer mRNA injection, still recovering from surgery (May 31, 2021)

Mrs. Heisler was well-respected by the Notre Dame community. She worked in the university’s Film, Television and Theater (FTT) department from 1993 until she retired in 2018.

Mrs. Heisler authored the book Fighting Irish: Legends, Lists and Lore in 2006. The FTT Television Studies Award is named after Mrs. Heisler and given to one graduating FTT student annually for outstanding academic performance.

Mrs. Heisler is survived by her husband and two sons.

Two dubious lists for Karen Croake Heisler

An advisory panel spoke today at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to debate who should receive third Pfizer mRNA injections and when. They recommended that only senior citizens and “those at high risk from the virus” receive third injections. A Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel rejected the Biden Administration’s wish to inject everyone with third Pfizer shots last week. The bureaucratic tug-of-war will continue for weeks. Meanwhile many vaxxed people are receiving third injections without FDA approval.

We’ve covered three stories thus far about people receiving third Pfizer mRNA injections. Michael Mitchell received a Pfizer injection after already receiving two Sinovac injections. He died six days later. James Cooper Sawyer died eight days after his third Pfizer mRNA injection. Now Mrs. Heisler is dead 12 days after her third Pfizer injection.

These three individuals were ages 65, 77 and 67, respectively. The average time it took for them to die after the third injection was about nine days. Yet the aforementioned CDC panel is recommending third injections for all seniors. Note that mainstream media are also pushing for Johnson & Johnson “booster shots” after the company touted its own studies on its own product. The original product was marketed as “one-and-done.”

Unfortunately Mrs. Heisler was also a hardcore virtue signaler who died after mocking and belittling the non-vaxxed. It’s a disturbing, common trend among vaxx zealots. Ronald Babb, Louie Knuxx, Jason Maurer, Jordan Hayes Dr. Witold Rogiewicz, Dr. Thomas Flanigan – it’d be overkill to keep listing them. It is what it is.

If you love your parents and grandparents, you will not allow them to get viral vector DNA and mRNA injections. You most certainly will not allow them to receive the third, guaranteed-lethal injection. Stay vigilant and protect your friends and loved ones. S/O to commenter “dddd” for the news lead.

Local officials blame school cancellations on enhanced unemployment benefits

A top House Democrat promised his party’s $1.9 trillion stimulus bill would “get kids back in school” just months before a hiring shortage upended two school districts in his community—and local officials say enhanced unemployment benefits are to blame.

At least two school districts within Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney’s (D., N.Y.) 18th Congressional District boundaries have canceled or scaled back in-person classes due to a bus driver shortage, the Times Herald-Record reported in September. The New York School Bus Contractors Association (NYSBCA) attributed the problem in part to President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan,” which Maloney said would “defeat the pandemic” and “get kids back in school.”

“Enhanced federal unemployment benefits and the child tax credit are compounding the problem,” NYSBCA executive director Tammy Mortier told the Times Union in August. “When unemployment runs out in September, we hope to see some of them coming back.” 

Maloney, who chairs the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, has acknowledged that such hiring problems could spell trouble for his party in 2022. During a closed-door lunch in late July, Maloney told fellow House Democrats they were on track to lose the midterms thanks in part to “inflation and the hiring shortage affecting low-wage segments of the economy.”

Neither Maloney nor the DCCC returned requests for comment.

Maloney heaped praise on Biden’s stimulus bill before and after Democrats passed the $1.9 trillion piece of legislation. In February, Maloney said the bill would “honor the lives of every single American who has died from this pandemic.” He later called the legislation “a game changer” and said it Would “crush this virus,” “jump-start our economy,” and get America “back to normal.”

Mortier, however, is far from the only local leader to malign the bill’s expanded unemployment benefits and child tax credit payments. Swing-district House Democrats notably broke from Biden on the legislation after U.S. job openings reached a record high in April. Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.) admitted that the boosted payments were inhibiting business owners from filling vacancies.

“Every single business owner that I know that has reached out to me has talked about this as their number one issue,” Slotkin said in May after a constituent expressed concern over “boosted federal unemployment.” “They want to make money, they want to be open, but they’re having a problem getting people.” Rep. John Garamendi (D., Calif.) echoed her concerns, noting “there’s a lot of discussion among the business community that the unemployment insurance system is keeping people from wanting to go back to work.”

According to the Herald-Record, “many schools” in Maloney’s district are “dealing with bus delays, uncovered routes, a lack of monitors on vehicles for special needs students, [and] adjustments to sports and extra-curricular schedules.” The shortages prompted the Pine Bush Central School District to close for two days. The Newburgh Enlarged City School District, meanwhile, ordered its superintendent to craft a remote-learning option in response to busing issues. Both Pine Bush and Newburgh are located in Maloney’s district.

Neither school district returned requests for comment.

Maloney became DCCC chair in January, pledging to “work every day to … expand our majority.” But his tenure as House Democrats’ campaign chief has been defined by blunders.

In April, Maloney’s staff greenlit $5,000 wire transfers from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) to vulnerable House Democrats, some of whom returned the money over political concerns. Days later, Business Insider reported Maloney failed to disclose more than $11,000 in stock sales from 2020. And in August, Maloney defied State Department guidelines to travel to France, where he partied maskless at a billionaire’s estate. The DCCC paid $813 for an Air France plane ticket just weeks before the trip.

DCCC Chair Said Stimulus Would Fuel School Reopenings. In His District, It Hasn’t. (freebeacon.com)

For a guy with the support of billionaires, millionaires, China, Mainstream Media, and Social Media, his numbers are WAY worse than Trump ever [US Patriot]

President Joe Biden’s approval rating has hit a new record low at just 40 percent, according to a poll released on Monday by Rasmussen Reports.

The poll of likely U.S. voters also revealed 58 percent of likely voters disapprove of the president’s job performance.

Among those, 50 percent selected “Strongly Disapproved.”

In contrast, only 21 percent selected “Strongly Approve.”

The current approval rating places him below former President Donald Trump, who was at 43 percent approval at this point in his presidency, according to Rasmussen.

Biden National Security Advisor May Be Guilty of Perjury Related to Clinton Campaign’s ‘Collusion’ Claims Against Trump: Report

Today’s #bidenapproval numbers are out, continuing down to a new record low:https://t.co/uzsUlTESNa

Sponsored by The ANTIFA by @JackPosobiec pic.twitter.com/Z4rpISTdj7

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) September 27, 2021

The daily poll has followed Biden’s approval rating since his first day in office.

He ranked as high as 55 percent approval on May 26. Since then, his approval has dropped by 15 percent.

According to a Rasmussen Reports Twitter post Monday, the majority of Americans oppose Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending bill, his plan to raise the debt ceiling and his pandemic restrictions.

Coming Up Today:@JoeBiden daily presidential job approval % is – now at a new record low.

– Majority Oppose $3.5 Trillion Spending Bill
– Majority Against Raising Debt Ceiling
– Majority Now Believe Pandemic A Trojan Horse For Permanent Socialism pic.twitter.com/XB2r7zFGQF

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) September 27, 2021

The Democratic spending bill will be a central focus this week as Speaker Nancy Pelosi seeks a House vote on Thursday. The California Democrat has claimed to have the votes to pass the bill, but some House members remain uncertain.

Biden’s recently announced vaccine mandates for federal workers and companies with 100 employees or more has also led to widespread frustration with many Americans. Several states have opposed the measure through letters and across social media.

Taliban Endgame: Former National Security Advisor Warns Extremists Could Secure 150 Nuclear Weapons

Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp and South Dakota Republican Gov. Kristi Noem have both vowed to sue the Biden administration over the issue.

Daily tracking results for the daily poll are collected via telephone surveys of 500 likely voters per night and reported on a three-day rolling average basis, according to Rasmussen Reports.

The margin of sampling error for the full sample of 1,500 Likely Voters is plus or minus 2.5 percentage points with a 95 percent level of confidence.

A poll from Fox News last week showed Biden’s approval rating with independent voters had experienced a strong drop. Since January, his approval rating plummeted 24 points.

WATCH: Joe Biden’s approval rating collapses 24 points among independent voters. pic.twitter.com/a8YxNMmyQJ

— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) September 23, 2021

“Very, very weak numbers,” Fox News host Martha MacCallum said in the report.

Joe Biden’s Approval Rating Sets Another Record, Is Now Lower Than Trump’s (westernjournal.com)

Apparently, federal charges against a lawyer linked to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign for allegedly lying to the FBI have convinced one of the entertainment industry’s most politically active leftists to conclude Trump-Russia collusion narrative was engineered by the Democrats.

In a video posted to YouTube on Thursday, outspoken English comedian Russell Brand said he was “flabbergasted” by a federal grand jury’s indictment of Michael Sussman. The indictment was part of special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the Russia “collusion” inquiry, according to The Hill.

According to the indictment, Sussman met with an FBI official in September 2016 to tip him off about a connection between then-Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Russia’s Alfa Bank. The bureau could never substantiate the connection.

In the indictment, prosecutors say Sussman didn’t disclose that his law firm, the Democrat-linked Perkins Coie, was working for Hillary Clinton’s campaign when he talked with FBI General Counsel James Baker roughly a month and a half before the election.

“Sussman’s false statement misled the FBI General Counsel and other FBI personnel concerning the political nature of his work and deprived the FBI of information that might have permitted it more fully to assess and uncover the origins of the relevant data and technical analysis, including the identities and motivations of Sussman’s clients,” the indictment stated.

In a news release, the special counsel’s office said Sussman’s “false representation led the General Counsel to understand that Sussmann was providing information as a good citizen rather than a paid advocate or political operative. In fact, Sussmann assembled and conveyed the allegations to the FBI on behalf of at least two clients, including a U.S. technology executive and the Clinton Presidential Campaign.”

The news release also stated that Sussman had provided information about the Alfa Bank theory to the media.

This was all enough to alarm Brand. During his Thursday video — titled “So…Trump was RIGHT About Clinton & Russia Collusion!!” — the comedian and actor said he thought the indictment was “serious evidence that it was the Clinton campaign and Hillary Clinton acolytes” behind the narrative.

“It seems like years ago that we were hearing that Trump was colluding with Russia, that he wouldn’t have won the election without Russia, that his whole presidency was kind of a Putin plot,” said Brand, star of “Get Him to the Greek.”

“Well, now there’s serious evidence that it was the Clinton campaign and Hillary Clinton acolytes that were directly involved in the generation of what has proven to be conspiracy — untrue!

“Think about how much media you watched. Me, a person who I think, broadly speaking, is from the left — a liberal, certainly not a Trump-supporting Republican, with respect to those of you who are — I find myself in awe, gobsmacked, flabbergasted and startled by these revelations.”

Brand also noted that “we have to recollect just how prevalent this story was. Every late-night talk-show, all over the news, it was just — you were bombarded with it.”

Brand he wanted to be believe that the Democratic Party is the party of “inclusivity, and diversity and truth and social justice and all great, positive ideas.” But now he’s not so sure.

“What my concern is becoming is that these are totemic issues pushed to the forefront to mask ordinary, regular corruption like the Russiagate thing, the Hunter Biden laptop, all of that stuff.”

Brand admitted he wasn’t paying much attention to the Russia “collusion” narrative as it unfolded in 2016, but noted that it was “seen as a defining issue,” and “still, in 2020, it was something that was being talked about.”

“And it was like, being sort of in a way discussed as if it was just an absolute fact. To discover that this was propaganda, a construct, a confection by the Democratic Party — who, of course, are now in government — is kind of beyond disappointing, because you begin to question and query what other things may not be true,” he said.

“Once you recognize that people create certain truths in order to meet certain ends and aims, the idea that you might be able to trust their integrity obviously dissolves.”

None of what Brand was talking about — or what was disclosed in Sussman’s indictment — was necessarily news for conservatives. It’s long been known the FBI’s investigation of Trump-Russia “collusion” was predicated on a dossier that was nothing more than a piece of opposition research by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The allegation that the Alfa Bank tip was provided to the FBI by someone connected to the Clinton campaign, who supposedly lied to the bureau about his connection to said campaign, might be new — but it’s similarly unsurprising.

The only surprise here is that Russell Brand, vocal liberal though he may be, was willing to acknowledge how rotten this all seems.

That said, we welcome Brand to the reality party, late to it though he may be.

While we don’t expect to welcome many more celebrities here, it’s a sign that that one of the most cherished fictions the left holds about the Trump presidency — that he was little more than the Muscovite Candidate, propped up by Vladimir Putin and his election-meddling — is crumbling for good.

Massive Liberal Celeb Sees the Light: ‘Trump Was Right About Clinton & Russia!’ (westernjournal.com)

Several prominent professors at American colleges have participated in China’s talent acquisition program, according to leaked documents from a Chinese regional authority. The professors worked with the Thousand Talents Program (TTP), a controversial state-backed recruitment plan criticized by U.S. officials for its role in transferring Western research and technology to China.

Two of the professors work at Carnegie Melon University, and another at University of California, Berkeley. All three are experts in biomedical research and development. Their names will not be included in this report.

The leaked documents, obtained from multiple municipal government agencies in Xi’an city of central China’s Shaanxi province, further listed names of other recruited experts from abroad, funding details, and objectives for the local TTP.

Chinese talent programs, including the TTP, have recruited thousands of experts from around the world since 2008, when the program was introduced by Beijing. The plans offer up to hundreds of thousands of dollars in incentives for overseas professionals to research and work in China for a period of time each year. Xi’an’s program specifically targets biomedical engineering experts, while others programs have focused on other technological fields including advanced manufacturing, aerospace engineering, and new materials.

These state-run programs have drawn intensifying scrutiny in recent years amid growing alarm among U.S. officials that the plans could facilitate the flow of American intellectual property and know-how to China. A raft of American and Chinese researchers have also been prosecuted in the United States for allegedly hiding their links to such programs while receiving federal grant money.

Accomplished Professors

One of the three TTP participants is a professor and associate department chair at Berkeley. This professor is the recipient of numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. Since 2007, he has received at least $5.9 million in research funding, according to online records.

According to the leaked document, this professor is also the technical director of a biotech firm in Xi’an and an editor at Molecular Plant, a journal run by Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Chinese Society of Plant Biology.

A Chinese-media report dated Feb. 13, 2015, mentions a research article co-authored by this professor published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States in January 2015. In this journal article, this academic’s affiliation was listed as both Berkeley and Nanjing University in China.

The Chinese also report provides some background information on this professor, in which the keywords related to his connection to the TTP were redacted.

This professor’s bio on Berkeley’s website does not list his affiliations with TTP nor with Nanjing University. The Nanjing University website also does not include records relating to this academic.

The leaked documents classified the other two accomplished CMU professors as “category A” talents, the top-tier of the city’s internal ranking system.

One is a distinguished professor of chemical engineering at CMU, who also holds the top position at a research institution at the university.

The other professor holds a top position in a macromolecular research center, which is funded in part by the NSF. He is one of the most cited chemists in the world.

A Chinese report dated Sept. 7, 2017, by Xi’an News said that the two professors were awarded honorary professors at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi’an, and that they would lead the efforts to establish the Institute of Biomedical Engineering (IBME).

The report also said that according to the “Policies for ‘One Belt One Road’ Talents Development,” a policy developed by Xi’an authorities, biomedical engineering is the second most desired field of development for the region. However, local expertise and R&D capabilities are both lacking. Therefore, overseas top-tier researchers are crucial in transforming Xi’an into a world-class biomedical center in a short time, the report said. The regional government would provide exceptional support for the professors, and provide them with sufficient research funding and facilities.

The same report quoted one of the CMU professors saying that it would take 5 to 10 years for IBME to become the world’s leading institution in chemistry, biology, and material research. Both professors said that they were very impressed with Xi’an municipal government’s recruiting commitments and believed that “it is possible to create a future” in Xi’an.

Carnegie Melon declined to comment. The three professors and UC Berkeley did not respond by press time.

TTP Incentives

Each year, Chinese regime agencies solicit applications domestically and internationally. For overseas talents, they are not required to quit their jobs overseas, but asked to spend some amount of time in China to perform similar types of work, which brings them financial gains and recognition.

One leaked document (Chinese pdf) titled “Xi’an talent recruiting status” said that by 2020, the city of Xi’an alone has attracted 243 national level, 1,325 provincial level, and 961 municipal level TTP talents. In addition, it has recruited 515 top-tier professionals in key technological areas, and converted 303 scientific research projects into industrial products.

In the set of leaked documents, there are several documents about recruiting policy and incentives. One document titled “Policies for ‘One Belt One Road’ Talents Development” (Chinese pdf) said that expertise in high-tech industry, advanced manufacturing, biomedical engineering, aerospace engineering, green energy, and new materials are highly desired.

Another document, excerpt above, described the budgets allocated for the talents who will work in the Gaoxin district in Xi’an city. The budget is for sign-on bonuses, which are given to recruits’ personal bank accounts, and ranges from $155,000 to $700,000, as well as project bonus, which ranges from $466,000 to $776,000.

In addition, top-tier talents enjoy a variety of extra perks, including free housing, priority school admissions for their children, employment assistance for their spouses, exclusive access to healthcare services, and expense-paid annual vacations.

Moreover, local businesses or institutions are rewarded $155,000 for hosting top-tier talent, and $77,600 or $31,000 for lower-tier talent.

One document titled “2017 Incentives for Entrepreneurs and Awards for Research to Industry Conversion” said that if a talent starts up a business in Xi’an, the start-up will receive a one-time bonus from $155,000 to $776,000. If a scientific research project is converted to a profitable business, the bonus ranges from $77,600 to $1.24 million.

US Response

In recent years, the United States has moved to stem the flow of American research and technology to China, and push back against Beijing’s efforts to target academia through recruitment plants.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, in a 2020 speech, described the operation of talent programs, saying “China pays scientists at American universities to secretly bring our knowledge and innovation back to China—including valuable, federally funded research.

“To put it bluntly, this means American taxpayers are effectively footing the bill for China’s own technological development.”

Meanwhile, a growing number of U.S. academics have been prosecuted for allegedly concealing their ties to Chinese institutions and talent plans while receiving federal funding. In a high-profile case, the former chair of Harvard’s chemistry department Charles Lieber was indicted in June 2020 on charges of making false statements relating to funding from China. Prosecutors alleged that Chinese authorities had paid $50,000 per month, in addition to over $150,000 in living expenses, and more than $1.5 million to establish a laboratory in China.

In March 2020, a TTP member and tenured professor at West Virginia University pled guilty to fraud. In May 2020, DOJ announced a former Emory University Professor and TTP participant was convicted and sentenced for filing a false tax return.

In June, the U.S. Senate passed the Endless Frontier Act, which includes a provision barring any U.S. scientist who participates in a Chinese-sponsored talent recruitment program from receiving or making use of federal funding.

In response to these crackdowns in the United States, the Chinese regime has been deleting information related to TTP and names of TTP participants from the internet. But the recruitment continues.

Distinguished US Professors Participated in Controversial Chinese Recruitment Plan: Leaked Documents (theepochtimes.com)

New York City’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate for teachers and other Department of Education staffers is on pause after a federal judge late Friday granted a request to temporarily block it.

Plaintiffs, a group of teachers, asked for a temporary injunction pending review by a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

U.S. Appeals Court Judge Joseph Bianco, a George W. Bush nominee, in a one-page order granted the request.

The panel will now decide whether to impose an injunction pending appeal or allow the mandate to take effect.

Rachel Maniscalco and three other New York City Department of Education workers sued over the mandate, which was supposed to start on Sept. 27.

They said the order, which requires all workers to show proof they’ve received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, is government overreach, violating the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process Clause. That clause states in part that no state can “deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

The right to pursue a profession is a liberty interest and the mandate, which threatens to cost workers who don’t comply with their jobs, interferes with it, the suit said.

U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan, another George W. Bush nominee, earlier this week declined to block the mandate, ruling plaintiffs failed to show they would likely succeed in their suit.

That prompted an appeal and led to Bianco’s ruling.

It’s not clear when the three-judge panel will make their decision.

In a statement to news outlets, the city’s Department of Education (DOE) said it was confident the mandate will ultimately be upheld “once all the facts have been presented, because that is the level of protection our students and staff deserve.”

“Our current vax-or-test mandate remains in effect and we’re seeking speedy resolution by the Circuit Court next week. Over 82 percent of DOE employees have been vaccinated and we continue to urge all employees to get their shot by Sept. 27,” the agency added.

Unions have urged the city to delay or restructure the mandate, asserting it would lead to teacher shortages.

Some schools have dozens of unvaccinated staffers, Mark Cannizzaro, president of the Council of School Supervisors and Administrators, a union representing principals in the city, told reporters earlier Friday.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, has refused.

“We’ve been planning all along. We have a lot of substitutes ready, but I think the big story here is going to be that the vast majority, overwhelming majority of teachers and staff are going to come in vaccinated to serve our kids next week,” he said on a radio show Friday.

Federal Judge Blocks New York City’s School COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (theepochtimes.com).

Former assistant principal sounded alarm over school’s failure to report violent threats

PUNTA GORDA, Fla.—A Florida educator has filed a lawsuit against Lee County schools after being fired last week for sounding the alarm that her school was not reporting violent threats, which is required by state law.

The former assistant principal also contended as part of her lawsuit that she was discriminated against on the basis of her ethnicity and health issues and wants to be compensated with back pay, front pay, insurance costs, benefits, and damages.

Peggy Slichter, who has spent two decades as an educator, said that the school she worked for, Manatee Elementary, failed to report several student-involved “violent and disruptive incidents” that, by Florida statute, are supposed to be reported regularly.

A week ago, Slichter had told local Fort Myers television station WINK News that she had serious concerns about the district’s safety reporting and had been fired for pushing for state guidelines to be followed, the outlet reported. After that interview, Slichter was released from her job as assistant principal at Manatee Elementary School.

She said she has evidence compiled with reports of several violent and disruptive incidents involving students during the 2020-2021 school year. She claims most of the reports “never left the school building,” and she said she knew this because she had “access to the database.”

WINK News reporter Peter Fleischer confirmed to the Epoch Times that he saw Slichter’s binder while he was at her home interviewing her on Wednesday.

“There were a lot of documents in that binder,” he said via telephone on Thursday.

However, Fleischer and FOX-4 News reported that they could not verify the authenticity of the reports because the Lee County School District denied a public records request, saying the “reports are not public information by law.”

Slichter’s attorney, Ben Yormak, confirmed to The Epoch Times that the binder is real and contains numerous incidents that have gone unreported.

The Lee County School District declined to answer questions due to the litigation and an ongoing internal investigation. A response to the case has not yet been filed and a court date has not been assigned. It has until next month to file a response.

The former assistant principal said she is not waiting for Lee County to conclude their in investigation and she has sent a letter to the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) asking for “Whistleblower protection and an investigation into non-reporting of SESIR incidents,” referring to the School Environmental Safety Incident Reporting System.

The Epoch Times reached out to the FDOE to confirm her request, but they did not reply before press time.

SESIR collects data on incidents of crime, violence, and disruptive behaviors, ranging from verbal threats to aggravated assault, that occur 24-hours and 365 days per year. The incidents can occur on school buses, school grounds and any school-sponsored event on or off campus. Per statute, these incidents are reported by each school to its district office. The district then provides this data to the FDOE.

The SESIR system was created in 1995 to help schools track incidents and “analyze patterns of violent, criminal or disruptive activity.” After the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, a public safety commission asked the FDOE to implement stricter reporting standards. The focus of the program is for there to be “complete and objective data from which to design interventions to improve the learning environment.” The data for the 2020-2021 school year have not yet been released.

Florida statutes also provide for consequences for not reporting, or not reporting properly, to the state. The statute charges each school district with making the school superintendent of each district responsible for the incident reporting to ensure a safe school environment. If non-compliance is determined, then the superintendent or employee of the district’s salary will be withheld. In addition, any member of a district school board who is in violation of the provision is subject to suspension and/or removal.

Slichter told Fort Myers FOX News-4 on Wednesday that she has two motives for suing the school board: to get “justice for herself” for wrongful termination by the School District for coming forward with her concerns, and more importantly, she said, to make sure violent threats are properly reported to keep schools safe.

Yormak, who filed the lawsuit, said his client is being penalized for being honest. He has since cut off all media requests for interviews with her.

“Ultimately, harm is being brought to children,” he told The Epoch Times on Thursday. “I know no school wants to be painted as a bad school, but parents and law enforcement need this information so they can do their jobs.”

When asked why the school had not made the reports, Yormak said he thinks they wanted to make it “appear they were more favorable” than they are. “Just like when kids fight, they label it as ‘peer conflict.’”

As for the termination of his client, he said that it was “inappropriate to have an educator fired for seeking compliance with the law. This is somebody who should be getting a pat on the back, if not a promotion.”

Florida Educator Sues School District After Termination for Blowing the Whistle (theepochtimes.com)

Part 3 of the 3-part series ‘China’s Web of Geopolitical and Economic Goals and Objectives’

Since 2013, the Chinese communists under the leadership of Xi Jinping have been diligently pursuing two strategic initiatives focused on building a worldwide colonial empire and restoring China to world leadership: the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) and Made in China 2025.

In the wake of the economic devastation wrought on the world economy by the COVID-19 pandemic, Xi announced on Sept. 21 at the 76th Session of the United Nations General Assembly a third grandiose program—the so-called “Global Development Initiative (GDI)” that is intended to “steer global development toward a new stage of balanced, coordinated and inclusive growth.”

According to China Daily, Xi’s new initiative involves six areas: “prioritizing development, a people-centered approach, benefits for all, innovation-driven development, harmony between man and nature, and a commitment to results-oriented actions.” Apparently, the only standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda phrase missing from Xi’s announcement was the euphemism “toward a shared future,” which underscores all ChiCom “altruism” that has been trumpeted in recent months by the CCP’s media.

If Xi was truly serious about GDI and his vision for the future, he would have reined in the myriad of secondary initiatives and goals that the CCP apparatchiks have been relentlessly pursuing at the world’s expense over the past several years. A number of these were previously summarized in Part 1 and Part 2 of this series.

But maybe Xi merely “forgot” to mention that GDI, BRI, and those secondary initiatives and goals are meant to result in the world bowing to CCP leadership in all spheres of human endeavors because that is the ultimate objective of the sticky Spider Dragon web of ChiCom “benevolence” being offered to the world.

This third part of the series completes the exposure of the CCP’s secondary initiatives and goals and lays bare the ChiComs’ real intentions: to control all aspects of human endeavors. The scope and diabolical synergy across those initiatives is breathtaking.

Conquer Space

The goal is to dominate space in every way, but especially in military and economic domains. The Chinese missions to Mars and the moon are window dressing used to advertise ChiCom scientific prowess and leadership in advanced space technologies, as well as to masquerade the weaponization of space by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as noted here.

Win Without Fighting

The ChiComs seek to achieve all of their objectives, ultimately leading to economic and military global dominance, without the need for kinetic warfare. Rather, they exploit political and psychological warfare to achieve a fait accompli in the minds of their adversaries, mainly the United States and its allies.

Exploit the United Front Work Department to Win Overseas Friends

The United Front Work Department provides cover for intelligence agents (spies) operating under the Ministry of State Security and has tentacles reaching into the Confucius Institutes, Thousand Talents program, Chinese news services, Overseas Chinese Affairs Offices, and the Cyberspace Administration of China aimed at influencing foreign opinion and winning friends for ChiCom policies.

Oust the US From the Middle East

This objective is a “two-fer” for Beijing: destroy U.S. influence in the Middle East and gain access to massive supplies of oil and gas. Energy-poor China is investing billions under their BRI to develop the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor consisting of highways, rail lines, and pipelines from the port of Gwadar on the Indian Ocean to Xinjiang (East Turkestan). This corridor will be the transmission belt to China for Middle East oil, including oil from Iran, with whom the ChiComs have also established a strategic relationship, as noted here.

Exploit Merchant Seamen to Control the World’s Shipping

The goal here is to dramatically expand the number of qualified and experienced merchant seamen and subsidize their employment by other nations’ shipping industries in order to monitor, surveil, and influence shipping operations around the world.

Implement Global Ocean Governance

The CCP objective here is to substitute China’s standards, technology, and protocols for the international conventions such as UNCLOS that presently determine conduct, responsibilities, and maritime law on the seas of the world. The effort also involves developing a network of surveillance satellites capable of monitoring sea-going traffic around the world, as well as convincing other nations to use the Beidou Navigation Satellite System in lieu of other commercial satellite navigation systems.

Collect and Exploit the World’s DNA

U.S. government advisers warned that the Chinese regime has been collecting genetic data in order to dominate global pharmaceuticals, and this effort could “potentially lead to genetically enhanced soldiers, or engineered pathogens to target the U.S. population or food supply,” according to a Reuters report.

Dominate the Indo-Pacific Region

This goal is to expand Chinese military bases throughout the region in order to counteract U.S. geopolitical dominance, as well as to place additional pressures on key U.S. allies in the region, including India, Australia, and Japan (which together with the United States comprise the Quad).

Replace US Brands With Chinese Labels

The ChiComs seek to displace U.S. brand names with Chinese labels. While this might seem to be simply standard competition, the issue is much more complex and important, as popular brands provide cultural and psychological influences that can be exploited because each one is linked with the country of origin.

Become the Dominant Producer of Industrial Goods in the World

Acknowledging the great strides made in recent decades toward this goal, Beijing’s mouthpiece People’s Daily crowed that “China is the world’s largest producer of over 220 types of industrial products.” Production leadership translates to geopolitical influence and leverage—the underlying objective.

Replace Western-Style Democracy With Chinese ‘Whole Democracy’

This is a ChiCom psychological play to leverage the West’s support for democracy, but with “Chinese characteristics” controlled by the CCP. The word “whole” implies that traditional Western democracy is somehow incomplete and deficient, and that the ChiCom version is better.

Control All Data and Information

The objective here is to limit the exchange of data and information among citizens and entities to that which is approved by the state—and only the state! In other words, George Orwell’s “1984” writ large on the rest of the world but with Chinese characteristics.

Convert the South China Sea Into a ‘Chinese Lake’

Beijing’s goal is to seize control of natural resources in the area and to simultaneously intimidate China’s neighbors. Chinese efforts involve sovereignty disputes and the building of artificial islands controlled by the People’s Liberation Army.

Promote ‘Common Prosperity’ Through Total Control of the Private Sector

Common prosperity is another one of those meaningless Marxist euphemisms that sound good as they roll off the tongue but whose meaning is murky and obfuscated. The CCP has been using it to describe their domestic efforts to deliver improved living standards through the “wise leadership” of ChiCom collectivism.

Exploit the Natural Resources in the Deep Seabed

China has a stranglehold on rare earth element (REE) production and seeks to dominate new REE sources, including those in the deep seabed. Control of REE production provides considerable economic and geopolitical leverage with other industrial nations through “supply chain disruption,” particularly the REE-poor European Union nations.

Subvert International Green Advocates While Masking Domestic Economic Expansion

This goal is about reducing U.S. competitiveness while increasing China’s competitive advantage and expanding the world’s dependency on Chinese manufacturing and production—in this case for “green products” such as solar panels, electric vehicles, and batteries. Only the Western greenies believe ChiCom propaganda that China will achieve its publicly stated goal of “net zero emissions” by 2060. The rest of us know that it’s just another feint in the CCP’s scheming to achieve world economic dominance.

Achieve Information Dominance Around the World

China has invested enormous resources to gain total information dominance in the international arena in order to improve decision-making related to the achievement of all of its goals and objectives. Information dominance involves consuming and understanding all relevant data and information in order to support decision-making. This secondary objective is highly synergistic with all of Beijing’s other secondary objectives.

Foment Discord in the US

Fomenting discord and division in the United States—China’s main rival on the world stage—has been an ongoing ChiCom objective for decades, as reported here and here. Pitting Americans against each other, exploiting economic disparities and “unfairness,” and promoting cultural Marxism throughout American society have been continuing prongs in the relentless ChiCom attack on America.

Build the Infrastructure of a ChiCom World Empire Through Property Acquisition Overseas

Beijing has been making strategic investments in overseas property for years for a variety of purposes, including providing security for the BRI investments, constructing bases for China’s military and navy, acquiring natural resources for future exploitation, and intimidating and pressuring other nations to accommodate Chinese interests. All of those acquisitions over time will form the core infrastructure and network for a ChiCom “colonial world empire.”

Implement the Dual Circulation Model

The objective is to make the Chinese economy less dependent on foreign advanced technologies and supply chains. Chinese companies would become independent of “foreign know-how” while creating domestically produced Chinese products that would be in demand around the world.

Monopolize and Control the World’s Energy Supply

The ChiComs understand that controlling the energy supplies of the future provides them with geopolitical leverage to achieve other objectives. That is why they are exploiting their competitive advantages to capture the energy production market around the world. Controlling the world’s energy resources means controlling the economies of the world.

Dominate the Small Nuclear Reactor Marketplace

Despite all the caterwauling about “green energy,” the only real energy production technology capable of achieving the carbon dioxide reductions desired by green energy advocates is nuclear power (refer to heat exchange ratio comparisons among green energy technologies and the laws of thermodynamics, as well as the German experience with wind and solar as described here). China is moving rapidly to corner the market on exportable nuclear energy capabilities that could be feasibly budgeted by many nations.

Control and Manipulate the World’s Strategic Commodities

Beijing has been successfully acquiring control of strategic commodities for years while building up strategic reserves as both an inflation hedge and also as a means of market manipulation to influence targeted countries. A strategic commodity is a raw material or agricultural product that is considered critical to a nation’s economy such that the economy would suffer significantly if that commodity’s trade and supply is interrupted in any way.

Control Foreign Narratives Through the Use of Artificial Intelligence and Fake Social Media

Beijing has been using aggressive information warfare tactics to influence foreign leaders, diplomats, and other key decision-makers in order to achieve CCP strategic goals and objectives. Part of their information warfare campaign involves the exploitation of social media and artificial intelligence technologies to create fake accounts, bots, and social networks aimed at influencing foreign decision-makers.

Conclusion

This series summarized 52 interlocking initiatives and goals being pursued by the CCP around the world. The ever-expanding Spider Dragon’s web aims to ultimately control and direct all human endeavors: economic, geopolitical, financial, legal, medical, security, travel, individual expression, culture, psychological, ideological, and much more. “Chinese benevolence” and “Chinese altruism”—as expressed by Xi Jinping and the CCP cadres—are oxymorons that camouflage their real objectives. Unbeknownst to many people, the world is meant to pay handsomely for that “benevolence” at the expense of personal and economic freedoms.

The Chinese Regime Aims to Influence and Control All Human Endeavors (theepochtimes.com)

The public school system isn’t just failing — it has become near irredeemably corrupt.

This is especially the case at Minnesota’s Richfield Public Schools district, where one program being used by the school district reportedly directs school children to role-play as gay and transgender children. During the curriculum’s role-play, the students are then asked to decide whether or not to have sex with one another.

According to Alpha News, the program is called “3Rs,” which stands for “rights, respect, responsibility,” and was developed by Advocates for Youth, an organization that partners with Planned Parenthood. The program has curricula available for a variety of ages, but this particularly outrageous exercise was intended for 9th-grade students, according to one parent in the school district.

In one of the 3Rs scenarios, a student is asked to role-play as Morgan, a young student who “identifies as queer.” Another student is asked to role-play as Terence, who “isn’t sure whether he’s straight or bisexual.”

The student playing Morgan is told “Terence has dated girls and seems straight, but he also seems attracted to you. Last week, you bumped into him in the laundry room in your building and after a lot of ‘accidental touches’ you ended up kissing.”

The scenario gets even more explicit for the student playing Terence, who is told, “You date girls you like, but haven’t done much sexually with them; you’ve kissed a couple of them, but didn’t find it very exciting. Now you feel very attracted to Morgan.”

“When you kissed him last week, it felt wonderful, but also confusing. You just can’t stop thinking about Morgan and imagining his touch. You think you want to have sex with him, but you don’t want your family or friends to find out, because they would disapprove.”

After receiving these prompts, the students are told by the curriculum to — as their characters — talk to each other “about what’s going on” and then “make a decision about whether to have sex.”

The curriculum choice was heavily criticized by parents of the children who had to review these overtly sexual exercises in the school district’s recent board meeting.

While this all may sound very shocking, those of us well-versed in left-wing indoctrination saw this sort of child-sexualization coming from a mile away.

After all, the foundation for many modern-day sexual dedication courses is gender theory — the academic philosophy responsible for the left’s obsession with transgender issues — which, from its inception, has promoted the sexualization of children.

John Money, the psychologist whose work serves as the bedrock of gender theory, was known to have made two young brothers role-play as a couple as they pretended to perform sex acts on one another.

School Workbook Encourages Writing ‘Sex Scenes’: Mayor Calls for Resignations, Charges

In other words, the left’s sex and gender craze has always been intrinsically tied to the sexual abuse and exploitation of young children. The news coming out of Richfield Public Schools is only the latest in a long line of examples.

Despite this, it wasn’t too long ago when if one was to say that the left’s goal is to sexualize children, that person would be ridiculed.

Well, no one’s laughing anymore.

Today, the left isn’t planning on sexualizing children — they are actively doing so.

Public School Curriculum Asks Kids to Pretend They Are Gay, Role-Play Plan to Have Sex: Graphic Content Warning (westernjournal.com)

For the month of September we have been running an invite-only beta test of Gab Ads with hand-picked advertisers of all shapes and sizes. We tried our best to pick a wide variety of businesses and services that best reflect our community and represent a budding new parallel economy on Gab.

Our advertisers are newly established businesses, small business owners, well established businesses, politicians, a famous rock band, and a Christian crowdfunding site that is an alternative to GoFundMe to name a few.

One of our advertisers is Dissident Soaps, a self-described “based soap merchant” and Christian-run family business. Their premise is simple: we all use soap, we all buy soap, why not buy soap from a family-owned Christian business that shares your values instead of a multi-national corporation who hates you?

It’s a simple and effective strategy, and it works.

They also have an incredible product at a fair price. I use it everyday and have for months, long before they ever became a Gab Advertiser. You can check out their products here. When was the last time you saw a Bible verse on the packaging of the multi-national megacorp soap you buy at Walmart?

The Dissident Soaps Gab account also isn’t afraid to speak freely about political issues and topics that matter to them as an active and engaged member of the Gab community. This takes courage and it should be encouraged. Brands should not be afraid to stand up for values that they believe in. Our Enemies certainly do this and it’s time we started doing it too.

We are calling this Gabvertising.

Yes it’s advertising, but with a powerful purpose. Brands who advertise on Gab recognize Gab’s growing relevance with tens of millions of current and potential customers. They often share the same values as Gab community members. They aren’t afraid to promote those values and embody them.

Gabbers know that by supporting businesses who advertise on Gab they support our mission to defend free speech for all people and to create and shape a parallel economy. That parallel economy is budding right this very second and it’s miraculous to witness.

Our vision for Gabvertising and the parallel economy we are building is to empower families and freedom-loving business owners to free themselves from the slavery of Woke Capital.

The natural evolution of free speech is free markets, and that’s what is forming right now on Gab. An actual free market, not one rigged by a handful globalist big bankers and hedge funds.

Many of our advertisers have doubled or even tripled down on their initial budgets. Others, like Dissident Soaps, are so overwhelmed with orders that they have had to rapidly buy more equipment and scale up their business.

This is what the beginning of a parallel economy looks like.

Gabbers are starting businesses. They are growing businesses. They are engaging in commerce with one another. They are supporting people and brands who share their values. They are using their purchasing power to help each other instead of the multi-national elites who hate them. They are speaking freely.

This is the way forward and we are only just getting started.

Soon the Gab Marketplace and Gab Pay will be rolling out to usher in an explosion of innovation, commerce, and freedom. It’s all part of our plan to build alternative infrastructure for a growing new parallel economy.

Won’t you join us?

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Only Jesus Saves
September 22, 2021 the year of our LORD

The Beginnings of a New Parallel Economy On Gab – Gab News

The United States has been subverted by people who believe in the failed ideologies of communism, socialism, and Marxism. America’s experiment in self-governance—with State power constrained by well-crafted limits of our constitution—is under direct threat from people who want to “deconstruct” our nation and replace it with a collectivist system of governance.

Many of the 1960s-era adherents to collectivist ideas have infiltrated our government, churches, and a multitude of other institutions, meaning these destructive philosophies have penetrated deep within our country and will be difficult to root out. Many of these radicals are also embedded within the education system, indoctrinating American children.

These people are America’s enemies. But, trying to counter subversive efforts without a full understanding of your enemy is a fool’s errand. I recently interviewed The Epoch Times’ Joshua Philipp, award-winning investigative journalist and an expert on communism, socialism, and Marxism, to determine how America might reorient itself toward mounting an effective defense against the proliferation of these destructive ideas.

One of the least effective ways to discuss communism, socialism, and Marxism is arguing against the economic outcomes and human suffering that inevitably follows adoption of these systems.

“Your average socialist doesn’t care that it doesn’t work economically. Your average socialist doesn’t care that it’s going to uproot the family system and destroy family order,” Philipp said. “They believe that their end goals are so righteous, that killing a few people along the way is worth it for the sake of accomplishing what they hope to create.”

Frequently cited in arguments against collectivist systems are the hundreds of millions of people killed by leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Adolph Hitler, Vladimir Lenin, Kim Il Sung, and Mao Zedong. But, “real socialists and communists don’t even bat an eye to it,” Philipp said.

While he believes the numbers of people murdered by communists should be part of this conversation, he also thinks that in order to persuade people against these philosophies, opponents of collectivism must address the roots of these ideas.

Religion and Natural Order

Karl Marx stood in strong opposition to religion. Though he had been a Christian in his youth, the timeless question that turned him away (and that he used to recruit people into a socialist mindset and the communal communist order) was essentially: If God is righteous, and if everything is created by God, then why does evil exist?

“If God created all things, and evil exists, then he must have created evil. That was the theory,” Philipp said. “And then they believe, well, if he created evil, then he must not be totally good. And therefore, he must not be the true, perfect image.”

For millennia, this has been a part of theological and philosophical debates, with religious scholars arguing that evil is not God’s creation, but the absence of God. Evil exists because man has free will, so people can choose to do good or evil. But, according to Philipp, what communists and utopians have sought to do is essentially try to eliminate evil from the world, as they see it.

Certain questions naturally follow: How do you prevent people from doing bad things? How do you prevent greed? How do you prevent people from doing things you don’t want them to do?

“You have to destroy the natural order. And, so they looked to create systems that could dictate to a very specific degree all elements of free will, that was one side of it,” he said. “That was always the downfall of utopians.”

Communists believe in the destruction of all previous institutions, including religious institutions. They believe in rebelling against God, whom they see as imperfect. Therefore, communism cannot coexist with the church. Communist ideology suggests that in order to perfect society, “you need to remove God from human morality, you need to remove God from human art, you need to remove God from architecture, and from our family structures, and from the way we shape our lives,” Philipp mentioned.

Dialectical Materialism

One of the pre-existing ideas that was brought into Marxism was that of the “negation of the negation,” which basically means that through the destruction of an existing institution, a more highly evolved system will emerge. For example, the chicken is born through the negation of the egg, the plant is born through the negation of the seed, a higher institution can be born through the negation of an existing institution. This would mean that by destroying institutions, a higher state of human evolution can be induced.

So, they must challenge the church, challenge tradition, challenge belief, create antithesis—the opposite of what is. “Marxism did the same thing under what they call ‘dialectical materialism,’” Philipp said, which is where you intentionally create inversion. You identify important cultural systems of that society and create the antithesis of that.

“So, you promote divorce, you promote feminism, you need to find ways to break up the family,” he said. “You need to look at the ways of doing it, and then develop social movements to argue against whatever the existing institution is.”

“If you want to destroy religion, you need to promote atheism,” he said. “Want to destroy the family, you need to promote feminism, promote divorce, promote the taking away of children by the government.”

The Way Forward

We don’t need to look too closely to see the ways in which communists, socialists, and Marxists have infiltrated the United States and other countries. Communists infiltrated American churches in the early 20th century. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has penetrated American schools. They have seized influence in U.S. companies and within our government.

Notably, their presence is visible in the authoritarian policies born from the pandemic response: the capricious, autocratic mandates; the brutal repression of people marching in the streets demanding the government’s boot off of their necks and a return to normalcy; actions by members of groups such as the United Nations and World Economic Forum who decry a return to normalcy, while pushing a global centralization of power.

For freedom-loving individuals, once you understand the goals of communists, socialists, and Marxists, you cannot cede any ground to them. There’s absolutely no capitulating, no negotiating, no meeting halfway.

“Every time they make a moral argument, and you say, ‘Okay, I want to be reasonable here, I’ll concede half the ground to you,’ society loses half its morals, society loses half its beliefs,” Philipp said. “Every time they do this, and they continue doing it, they force people to acknowledge it. And every time they do this, every time people give ground, they give up half their values.”

All supporters of individual liberty, freedom, and human rights must unite to confront the destructive forces attempting to take over. Americans must use all non-violent means available to deliver an immense repudiation of authoritarian systems of governance.

The battle isn’t unwinnable. There are only a few thousand politicians, bureaucrats, and corporate executives. There are more than 333 million American citizens. Who really holds the power in this country?

If government schools enforce Draconian mandates or teach lessons that indoctrinate your kids with communism, socialism, or Marxism, send your kids to private school or homeschool. If businesses enforce unconstitutional mandates, you stop spending your money there—put them out of business. If airlines enforce authoritarian policies or mandates, then stop flying with them. If your place of employment is caving to authoritarianism, you team up with like-minded employees and say no.

“You do not give an inch, you don’t sacrifice even a single morsel of your system of values, you don’t give in even a drop, you don’t play their games, you don’t talk within the boundaries of their arguments,” Philipp said. “You don’t even engage with them, in terms of giving any ground on anything. If they want to call you names for it, so be it. If they want to attack you, so be it. You do not sacrifice an inch.”

Uprooting Communism, Socialism, and Marxism in America (theepochtimes.com)

In groups large and small, with thoughts said aloud and others held close in silence, America’s students began Wednesday in prayer at the annual “See You at the Pole” event.

As noted by CBN News, this was the 21st year of the student-led event, which takes place around the world at school flagpoles in the morning before classes begin.

This year’s theme came from the New Testament:

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will exalt you. – James 4:10

At Croatan High School in North Carolina, about 25 students gathered to pray, according to the Carteret County News-Times.

“There is just so much going on in our country and in our leaders. It’s so important that we pray for our country,” freshman Faith Eilertson said. “The leaders need wisdom because they are facing so many situations.”

One student noted the importance of prayer at this time.

“We need to gather around and pray because this country has done so much for us. I’m praying for the students and the country. I’m praying for our military because of Afghanistan,” freshman Brody Weihrauch said.

In Pikeville, Kentucky, students at Shelby Valley High School gathered together to pray.

“It makes me feel like I have a connection to everybody in this room, or everybody in the circle while I’m praying,” Collier Fuller, a sophomore, said, according to WYMT-TV.

At Tyler Legacy High school in Tyler, Texas, about 200 students gathered, according to KLTV-TV.

“I think it really does help our school system and it just helps us as believers just to really put God into our hearts and into our school system,” a freshman named Lillian said.

“I would like to say that this very much impacts the school. I want people to understand that we care about each other. We actually are praying for you,” said Jaren, a senior.

Christians from around the country shared images from their schools.

This morning, we gathered together across the country to stand in prayer and glorify God! Thousands of students stepped out and shared their faith in their schools. #SYATP 🙌👏🙏✨🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/A0HYbR8gJN

— LifeMission Church (@lifemissionKS) September 22, 2021

Some of our JBMS students chose to participate in nationally recognized See You At the Pole. #BeBOLD #syatp pic.twitter.com/LcLhCRP4LB

— Jim Barnes Middle School (@JimBarnesMS) September 22, 2021

Beautiful sunrise for FCA’s “See You At the Pole” this morning. ❤️🦅🏀 pic.twitter.com/ZpJDtmuGqS

— Ursula Hill (@CoachUrsulaHill) September 22, 2021

What an AWESOME morning for Byrnes FCA and See you at the Pole!!! Thank You Coach Henderson for the great words!!! pic.twitter.com/auGOqMDf1T

— Billy Anderson Jr (@BandersonBilly) September 23, 2021

At Copperas Cove High School in Copperas Cove, Texas, student-athletes were given a break from football practice and went to pray in their uniforms with about 100 other students, according to the Killeen Daily Herald.

“It makes me feel a lot closer to them, to be honest,” football player Aleczander Patterson said of having his teammates attend the event. “I know a lot of them probably have struggles in their life that probably they need to ask God for … it just means a lot to see them open up like that and show who they are.”

Senior football player Caleb Newberry, who led the event with Patterson, said it was an opportunity to spread God’s word and connect with others in prayer.

“It meant a lot, just so I could be able to serve God and spread the message of Christ and just be able to build connections with other people,” he said.

Wednesday marked See You at the Pole, a student-initiated, student-organized and student-led movement of prayer that happens annually on the fourth Wednesday of September. https://t.co/XvmtnzRn6p

— Killeen Daily Herald (@kdhnews) September 22, 2021

Newberry said his Christian upbringing “keeps me in the Word, just to be able to read and to learn, to pray and ask for understanding.”

Thousands of High School Students Across the Country Just Bowed Their Heads to Pray in Unison (westernjournal.com)

Florida’s new Surgeon General, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, issued a new measure allowing parents to decide whether their children who have been exposed to COVID-19 should quarantine rather than giving schools the authority to do so.

Guidelines signed on Wednesday by Ladapo remove prior statewide rules requiring students to quarantine for at least four days off-campus if they were potentially exposed to COVID-19, the illness caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Students who have been exposed, under the new rules, can continue to attend class in person without restrictions or separate treatment if they are asymptomatic.

“Quarantining healthy students is incredibly damaging for their educational advancement,” Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Wednesday at a news conference in Oscelola County. “It’s also disruptive for families. We are going to be following a symptoms-based approach.”

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that students should quarantine for 14 days if they are not vaccinated against COVID-19. If they test negative, the CDC recommends that students quarantine for seven days.

Florida rules saying that COVID-19 infected students quarantine for 10 days, get a negative test, or offer a doctor’s note granting permission to return to school remain intact.

On Wednesday, Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran said that the new rules would put an end to “chronic absenteeism” and described the mandate as “common sense.”

But some local school district officials and teachers unions disagreed with the DeSantis administration’s quarantine rule.

“The spread of the virus among children has gone up by triple digits, yet our governor and his newly appointed surgeon general continue to bury their heads in the sand,” Anna Fusco, president of the Broward Teachers Union, said in a statement. “This is clearly politically, not public health, motivated. Contact tracing and quarantining are working to minimize the virus’s spread. Why are we fixing what’s not broken?”

DeSantis named Ladapo as Surgeon General on Tuesday. Ladapo, who previously was a UCLA doctor and health policy researcher, shares the governor’s approach to managing the COVID-19 pandemic. Like DeSantis, Ladapo has said he doesn’t believe in school closures, lockdowns, or vaccine mandates.

Ladapo said during the news conference on Wednesday that he is “very happy to be working with someone like the governor, who has a similar vision about how to think about weighing costs and benefits with managing this pandemic.”

“We respect that some parents may be less comfortable sending their kid back to school after being exposed,” he said. “And so the new rule allows for those parents to keep their children home for a period of time. And the new rule also allows for parents who are more comfortable letting their healthy child return to school.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/florida-makes-quarantine-optional-for-covid-19-exposed-students_4011572.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Students, parents, and community members across the United States on Wednesday resume the “See You At The Pole” tradition, uniting in prayer around the flag poles at their schools.

The event, according to the See You at the Pole (SYATP) organization, is held on the fourth Wednesday of September each year. This year marks the 21st annual event, which falls on Sept. 22.

People from all over the world took part in See You at the Pole today. THANK YOU to all of those who participated. We pray that God performs miracles through your obedience. #syatp pic.twitter.com/3sk94iBvLp

— See You At The Pole (@SeeYouAtThePole) September 22, 2021

The prayer rally is meant to “lift up their friends, families, teachers, school, and nation to God,” SYATP said. It is usually held before school and at the school’s flag pole, with students in elementary school through college all around the globe. Adults often pray in support of the students on campus by gathering nearby, at their places of work or worship, or at city halls.

There is no sponsor for the student-organized and student-led event, according to SYATP, although a diverse group of about 100 church denominations, ministries, and organizations are listed as “supporting ministries” who promote, endorse, or otherwise support the movement.

Students at Oak Mountain Middle School are gathering for See You at the Pole today. It’s an annual event where students come together to pray for their community, country, and world. pic.twitter.com/7VyeE5ZL8I

— Jonathan Skinner (@jskinnertv) September 22, 2021

FCA students from Winfield High and Hurricane Middle participated in the student-led “See You at The Pole” event this morning at their schools. #PutnamProud pic.twitter.com/KnupbZUrMb

— Putnam County Schools (@PutnamWVSchools) September 22, 2021

With schools switching to virtual instruction and varying public health restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many SYATP organizers last year moved the event online on Sept. 23, 2020, to pray for their communities. This year, however, many participants chose to meet in person.

Forest High School FCA on Instagram: “God. Is. Good! Thank you to everyone who showed up to See You at the Pole this morning. It was so great seeing youth leaders, pastors…”

“We prayed over our school, our community, our state, and our country,” the Fellowship of Christian Athletes group at Forest High School in Ocala, Florida, wrote on Instagram along with images of their prayer event. “We prayed over students who are going through things we will never understand. We prayed over an amazing student going through surgery this morning. We prayed over being a light through the hallways of this campus.”

According to the latest guidance by the U.S. Department of Education, it is a student’s constitutional right to engage in voluntary prayer that doesn’t disrupt the school’s educational programs or activities. Students also have the right to organize prayer groups, religious clubs, and SYATP rallies, to the same extent that they are permitted to organize non-curricular activities groups.

“Nothing in the Constitution prohibits any public school student from voluntarily praying at any time before, during, or after the schoolday,” read the federal guidance, which was updated last year under former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos. “Students may pray with fellow students during the school day on the same terms and conditions that they may engage in other conversation or speech. Students may also speak to, and attempt to persuade, their peers about religious topics just as they do with regard to political topics.”

In American higher education today, the equivalent of the holy trinity consists of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The impact of this pseudo-religion is difficult to overstate. For example, new faculty are often required to sign a loyalty oath pledging their fealty to “diversity,” while administrative positions with “equity” and “diversity” in their titles proliferate. In practice, this results in an unnatural obsession with race and gender, which affects admissions decisions and, to some measure, every degree program. As with any religion, indoctrination is a crucial part of the process. So-called general education requirements are one vehicle for such indoctrination. This issue of indoctrination is particularly perverse, as indoctrination is, in some sense, the polar opposite of education.

Can anything be done to rectify the situation? Being a natural-born optimist, I believe there are a couple of relatively simple, common-sense changes that would have a profoundly positive impact on American higher education. Quoting Hoyt Axton, “If I were the king of the world, tell you what I’d do.”

First, I would require that universities be held financially responsible when their former students default on education-related debt. I believe that such a requirement would, overnight, transform higher education in multiple positive ways. For example, grievance-studies majors would likely vanish from the curriculum, and easy majors in the soft and pseudo sciences would be disfavored. The humanities would not disappear, but they would serve even more of a supporting role than at present. Universities would have a vested interest in promoting fields that are in demand, which include most of the STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) subjects. Of course, a student could still major in any subject, but if their preferred major is unlikely to provide a positive return on investment, loans would be hard to come by, and as a result, the student would have to foot a significantly higher percentage of the cost.

I believe that this change would benefit students who today are too often lured into easy, worthless majors. And, does anyone doubt that society as a whole would benefit from a renewed and sustained emphasis on STEM subjects?

As a second step towards saving academia from itself, I would require that universities set clear, objective, education-based admission requirements. For example, a highly selective university might empirically determine that an applicant who is in, say, the top five percent of his or her graduating class, or has a composite SAT at the 95th percentile (or higher) almost certainly has the necessary academic foundation to succeed. On the other hand, a less selective university might have analogous, but lower, thresholds. Regardless of how such objective criteria are set, there are sure to be far more applicants who meet any rational baseline requirements than spaces available. I would allow universities to admit any students under full scholarships based on any criteria. But for everyone else, a lottery system would be used to randomly select students from the pool of well-qualified applicants. This would ensure that all applicants who meet a well-defined academic standard for success would have an equal chance of admission. Issues such as the choice of major could be determined after admission.

Such an approach to admissions would ensure true equity among qualified applicants. It would also serve to provide equal opportunity to the children of the taxpayers who fund higher education, instead of artificially favoring one group over another, as is the case today. And, by putting the focus squarely on academic preparedness, the message to high school students would be unambiguous—if you want to succeed academically, prepare yourself academically. Furthermore, it would be well-nigh impossible for universities to game the system, as they would surely be wont to do.

Under such an admissions scheme, to make changes to the racial or gender makeup of the university, the diversicrats would be forced to focus on the lower rungs of the educational ladder, which is precisely where such efforts properly belong. In the process of doing so, it would be difficult, if not impossible, to ignore the gross failings of the U.S. public education system, especially as it pertains to disadvantaged students. Perhaps we would then see diversity advocates begin to advocate for proven reforms, such as charter schools (I warned you, I’m an optimist). Most important of all, this admissions scheme would get universities out of the corrosive business of racial and gender gerrymandering that corrupt the admissions process today.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/how-to-save-american-higher-education-from-itself_4012261.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Despite the passage of laws in some states banning Critical Race Theory (CRT) from being taught in schools, some educators are teaching other educators how to “back-door it” into the classrooms.

A teacher in Iowa posted a video teaching other educators how to circumvent the ban on teaching Critical Race Theory in her state.

In Florida, a Duval County teacher was removed from her position because she refused to remove a banner in support of Black Lives Matter from outside the door to her classroom.

The Zinn Education Project has collected the names of nearly 7,500 educators who vow to keep pushing CRT into classrooms despite the passage of laws banning CRT in a growing number of states.

While the head of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), Randi Weingarten, denied that critical race theory was even taught in elementary schools or high schools, she vowed to fight back against “culture warriors” who are “bullying teachers.”

Not only did the National Education Association adopt a resolution to prioritize their effort to implement CRT in “K-12 and higher education,” it vowed to use all resources at their disposal—including friendly media—to go after those who are “attacking educators doing anti-racist work.”

In June 2020, the Florida Board of Education unanimously passed a rule banning CRT from being taught in the schools.

But on Sept. 20, Florida Atlantic University sponsored a webinar where Dr. Gholnecsar (Gholdy) Muhammad—an associate professor of language and literacy at Georgia State University—taught educators in Miami Dade, Broward, Martin, and Palm Beach County how to creatively slip the divisive subject matter through the back door of any classroom, regardless of subject matter.

This was not the first time Muhammad made a conscious effort to promote CRT in the classroom. During a 2020 interview, Muhammad discussed her plans for revising the entire education system in five steps.

First, Muhammad believes educators “need to get a team together to write new learning standards that are embedded in identity, skill development, intellectualism, joy, and criticality.”

Second, Muhammad said they need “new standards for folks who are writing curriculum,” suggesting  they “will no longer write a curriculum that’s absent of identity and cultural-responsiveness.”

Third, “we need to change the way we think about standardized testing,” she added. “Skills-only does not measure success for a child’s life.”

Fourth, Muhammad wants schools to “stop hiring folks who don’t have a justice-centered mindset.”

“If they don’t have this justice-centered mindset, stop hiring them as Secretary of Education, stop hiring them as school board members, as superintendents, as principals, as teachers, as staff. Period,” Muhammad said.

“The fifth part of the plan is teacher education,” Muhammad concluded, suggesting “diversity” cannot be “learned in one class” but rather it needs to be “threaded throughout the entire program.”

“This calls for hiring conscious professors who know how to research and teach within the realms of critical race theory and other theories like it,” she said.

The Epoch Times reached out to Muhammad for comment.

Difficulties in Defining CRT

“This is very similar to what has happened here in Loudoun,” Patti Hidalgo Menders—president of Loudoun County Republican Women’s Club in Virginia—told The Epoch Times. “They’re implementing CRT under the guise of equity and diversity.”

Menders explained how the new principal at Parkview High School—Dr. Jason Jefferson—immediately removed the heads of all departments and “fired the bookkeeper because she wouldn’t take the equity training.”

“Then he gave a speech about how he wanted to ‘dismantle and disrupt the American public education system,’” Menders said. “So they’re making it very clear what their progressive ideas are.”

“Dr. Jefferson asked Park View’s department chairs to re-apply for their positions,” Wayde B. Byard, public information officer for Loudoun County Public Schools told The Epoch Times. “This is a common practice used when administrations change so that the principal can interview the department chairs and get to know them. At Park View, all the department chairs reapplied and all were reappointed.”

Byard also said “there was no bookkeeper at Park View when Dr. Jefferson assumed his position on May 25. Thus, he fired no one.”

“Dr. Jefferson related to me that he did not make the following statement: ‘dismantle and disrupt the American public education system,’” Byard stated further. “I would hope that anyone who would make such an accusation would be willing to stand behind it. Attributing such a quote anonymously would be cowardly.”

Menders also shared how the Loudoun County school board “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars hiring equity consultants.”

“One group is called The Equity Collaborative,” Menders explained, “and while the superintendent of Loudoun Public Schools claims they are not teaching CRT in schools, it talks about CRT training right on their website.”

“The LCPS Ad Hoc Committee on Equity created an Equity Resolution that was adopted by the Loudoun County School Board on September 24, 2019,” the website explains.

“As a part of the on-going equity work in the school division, on June 8, 2021, the newly appointed superintendent, Dr. Scott Ziegler, recommended that the Equity Resolution be reaffirmed by the current School Board. By consensus, the board recommended that this resolution [pdf] should be publicly available.

“In recent days, media reports and social media posts have sought to distort the equity work by Loudoun County Public Schools,” LCPS Superintendent Dr. Scott Ziegler states on the LCPS website. “Misconceptions and misinformation persist. I want to take a moment to clarify LCPS’ efforts to ensure every student, employee and member of the community is treated in an equitable, respectful manner.”

“In explaining LCPS’ equity priorities, it might be helpful to state what they are not,” Ziegler explains. “They are not an effort to indoctrinate students and staff into a particular philosophy or theory. What they are is an effort to provide a welcoming, inclusive, affirming environment for all students.”

However, the Equity Collaborative website clearly states that their “goal is to help organizations develop their own capacity to create educational equity and social justice by addressing bias and oppression.”

“That means creating an environment that is capable of holding staff members in a place where they are uncomfortable enough to change, but not so uncomfortable as to disengage or revolt,” the Equity Collaborative explains.

The Epoch Times reached out to LCPS for clarification regarding what some, like Menders, see as a contradiction in claims.

“Loudoun County Public Schools has said—repeatedly—and I will repeat now,” Byard told The Epoch Times regarding this separate matter. “Critical Race Theory is not part of our curriculum.”

“They’re very good wordsmiths,” Menders said. “They’re re-branding CRT and calling it ‘equity, diversity, and inclusion.’”

Autry Pruitt, CEO of New Journey PAC, agrees.

CRT By Any Other Name

“All they do is take the various aspects of CRT propaganda and change the language, change the name,” Pruitt told The Epoch Times, explaining how textbooks used to mention “Critical Race Theory, or Race Theory” by name.

“Now when you open those same textbooks, you’ll read things such as ‘diversity and inclusion or equity theory,’ which is the same baseline as CRT,” he explained. “That’s one way they back-door it.”

Asked how people can oppose “critical race theory and other theories like it” being taught in schools, Pruitt said parents can provide the first line of defense themselves.

School Boards

“The best avenue is to take over the school boards to monitor and fire teachers who are determined to push CRT,” he said bluntly. “They also have to be represented in the education department at the state level. It’s not enough to take over the school board and have a blue governor. Even if you have a red governor, like in Florida. You’ll still get resistance in the education department.”

“What needs to happen is almost like the spoil system,” Pruitt went further, “where parents take over school boards and conservative governors are elected, and then the governor basically wipes out the entire state-level education bureaucracy and puts in new people. That’s the only real way to solve it.”

Publishers

While Pruitt anticipates the pushback from parents at school board meetings will continue to increase, as will the number of parents who send their kids to different schools or resort to a home school program, pro-CRT publishers are going to keep “pushing the agenda they want” through the textbooks they provide to their supporters throughout the school system.

“Under a different name with new adjectives and nouns, CRT is concealed, shrouded, veiled, or disguised in the Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) ELA curriculum,” Pruitt noted. “With the use of subliminal messages, teachers are guided to teach Social Emotional Learning (SEL), equity, diversity, inclusion, etc. Feelings are more important than facts.”

As The Epoch Times reported on June 8, HMH declared on its own website a “commitment” to Black Lives Matter (BLM) and “social justice.”

“We believe the education system needs to change,” the website states, “and we will continue to use our platform to make that change.”

Members of the Collier County School Board (CCSB) were made aware of this during a June 7 meeting by CCSB Vice-Chair Jen Mitchell, who said she learned of the “commitment” through an email she received from a concerned citizen. Mitchell further revealed that one of BLM’s greatest advocates in the education field—Dr. Tyrone Howard—had been given a platform to promote the principles of CRT and BLM through the HMH blog site.

“It will be a wait-out, like everything else with the left,” Pruitt explained. “In other words, they don’t have to win. The left has a hold of the publishing world, and they are teaching it in higher education. So it doesn’t matter what the textbooks say in K-12.”

Textbooks

Pruitt strongly suggests parents “actually open and read the textbooks and highlight passages and send it out to people to show other parents what their children are being taught.” According to Pruitt, “most parents don’t understand the language of diversity and inclusion.” He posited that, when people were first waking up to CRT, it was because it was easy to find if one only bothered to look. They used words like “white people” and “oppression,” which most people found to be “troublesome and problematic.”

“But when you use language like diversity and inclusion,” Pruitt suggested, “it doesn’t come off as rough.”

“The people haven’t changed. The committees haven’t changed. The publishers haven’t changed,” Pruitt said. “It’s the language they’re changing.”

“By the time these children graduate, they will not be able to read but they will be great activists who hate their families, God, and America,” Pruitt predicted. “What a horrible thing to do to a child.”

Pruitt said “we all breathed a sigh of relief” when the Florida Board of Education banned the teaching of CRT in Florida, “embracing a traditional American education.”

“Wonderful we thought, Florida students will be getting a great education. The entire nation said we must use Florida as an example,” he recalled. “How wrong we were. We must remember that Communists NEVER stop.”

It is the opinion of Pruitt that the curriculum department of the Florida Department of Education is either “incompetent and never reviewed the texts and curricula that they approved” or they’re “undermining Governor DeSantis and Commissioner Corcoran.”

“In either case,” he admonished. “they should be fired.”

Despite Bans on CRT, Educators Are Teaching Other Educators How to ‘Back-Door It’ Into the Classroom (theepochtimes.com)

Hypocrisy! The radicals in Congress, from Maxine Waters to the Squad, are calling to ‘Defund the Police,’ but they spend large sums of campaign cash on private security and Capitol Hill police protection wherever they go in America.

They rely on all of this security while pushing legislation in Congress that would take cops off the streets in our communities, and they still want to increase their own Capitol Hill police force with YOUR taxpayer dollars.

You may recognize them as “the Squad,” but Law Enforcement Loyalty PAC sees them for what they truly are: two-faced charlatans who publicly attack law enforcement and beg private firms to keep them safe. Many employees at private security firms are former and retired law enforcement and military, so the irony is not lost on us…

Law Enforcement Loyalty PAC is fighting back against the Squad’s hypocrisy and history of hatred for police by supporting principled candidates who will Back the Blue in Congress and oppose drastic measures to strip law enforcement of critical resources.

Roll up your sleeves with us as we prepare to make critical endorsements ahead of the 2022 Midterm Elections. Chip in $25, $50, $100, or more toward our effort to send our team to Congress to combat the Squad.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Cori Bush have spent more than $100,000 on private security this year alone. They believe they should have police protection while you and your neighbors fend for yourselves.

That’s why they’re ramping up their attacks on law enforcement officers:
Ocasio-Cortez backed a rowdy anti-police protest in New York City, where activists shouted “punch a cop!” as they held signs reading “hit ‘em!” and “don’t let these pigs touch us!”
AOC even endorsed the most radical ‘Defund’ candidate for NYC Mayor.
Ilhan Omar took “Defund the Police” to the extreme, backing a ballot initiative to abolish the Minneapolis Police Department in its entirety and replace it with social workers with clipboards. She called Minneapolis police “incompetent” and “brutal” after months of rioting and protests.
Cori Bush is a professional BLM activist who told America to “suck it up” when she was first criticized over her private security expenses, and
Ayanna Pressley is using a D.C.-based political action committee to endorse anti-police candidates all the way down the ballot in states across the country…

They won’t stop until they’ve unleashed their activist mob on your community and left you defenseless and at their mercy. Defunding the police is only the beginning.

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Americans overwhelmingly oppose the Squad’s radical agenda, and we’re stepping up to support principled candidates before the ‘Defund’ Democrats get their wish!

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Chairman of the Advisory Board
Law Enforcement Loyalty PAC

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How to protect yourself and your kids from the harmful effects of technology

Every generation worries about the upcoming youth, but does the age of smartphones and digital addiction pose a more serious threat than ever before? In an episode of NTD’s “The Nation Speaks,” host Cindy Drukier interviews teacher and author Jeremy Adams, as well as psychologist Hilarie Cash, to answer this question.

It has only been 14 years since we’ve had computers in our pockets that are available every moment of our lives. In his book “Hallowed Out: A Warning about America’s Next Generation,” Jeremy Adams, a civics teacher of 24 years, brings awareness to what he is seeing in the classroom and how he believes the younger generation is negatively affected by technology.

Adams says when you work in the classroom, you get to know kids and you notice if there are troubling trends. He believes the most disturbing thing about kids today is the value system they are embracing. The way they look at their country, the way they spend their time, and the values they hold are not helping them live purposeful and meaningful lives. In fact, they are hindering them.

Being a civics teacher, Adams says he worries about the American experiment.

“America is not like other countries. We can’t have a single lost generation that doesn’t understand what it means to be an American and what those values are and how you perpetuate the American experiment,” he says.

He is worried about the values that have emerged in young people over the past 10 years. These include the extent to which young Americans live their lives completely untethered to adult values, influences, or role models.

Adams says that although it doesn’t matter to him whether the youth are religious or not, he is bothered that young people don’t seem to know anything about religion.

Other troubling trends are that the younger generation is extremely unpatriotic, they don’t have the desire for relationships, marriage, or family, and they are radically individualistic.

He says that when you think about the things that make life enchanting and grand, you think of friendships, love, learning, and going out and seeing and doing things. Yet today’s youth are lonely and isolated.

Adams stresses how unhappy this generation is, citing rising suicide rates.

“It is shocking,” he says.

He was worried about these things prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, but now these problems have been amplified and accelerated.

Kids today don’t go out and socialize, they don’t have meals with their parents, and they often spend 9 to 10 hours a day on their phone.

Adams says kids post-COVID-19 are zombies in the classroom and don’t know how to engage in academic and social environments.

Adams believes the reason for much of this falls on the adult generation. He says that we have given young people freedom but haven’t stepped forward and given them the values, knowledge, or insight needed to use that freedom well. If adults give youth the freedom to do whatever they want, we have to also teach them that freedom allows them to commit to what is important and meaningful. When we fail to do that, we are left with a generation that sees freedom as tantamount to indulgence or licentiousness, and doesn’t connect it to important things.

Being a parent, spouse, teacher, or person of faith, is hard. It may be the hardest thing a person does, but it will also likely be the most meaningful. Youth today often aren’t able to make the connection between struggle and purpose.

Acknowledging that high expectations usually come from adults, Adams points out that the parent generation, in our zeal to be compassionate and empathetic, have actually let our youth down. Being kind is a good thing, but it should help students feel secure so they can achieve good things.

Now in schools, teachers are also friends, counselors, and often act as parents to their students.

Teachers today need to understand that compassion and empathy should serve youth in a way that prepares them to show up, study, work hard, and have success. Adams says many teachers think they’re being compassionate by giving students a diploma without making them learn anything.

Any form of success requires diligence, knowledge, and skill. Robbing young people of what they need to stand tall in the world and achieve what they want in their lives is not kind.

Thankfully, Adams does believe there is still time to turn the situation around. He says we all want to do better. Young people know they are addicted to their phones and need to live life more. The adults know better and know they need to do things like insist on family time, church, and community. He says parents and teachers need to start “adulting” again, which means putting ourselves in the physical, intellectual, and moral spaces of young people. Awareness is the key to breaking the phone addiction, because once we are aware, we can intervene.

Teacher Warns of Troubled Next Generation; Tackling Digital Addiction | The Nation Speaks [Full Episode]Play Video

Watch the full episode here.

To learn more about how bad the digital addiction in our youth is and what can be done about it, Drukier interviews psychologist Hilarie Cash, co-founder of reSTART: Internet Addiction Recovery Program.

Cash, who has been seeing addicted patients for over 25 years, says the addiction problem has been growing steadily as technology has entered everyone’s lives. The software is designed to be addictive, and kids are now exposed to technology from early ages, which affects their development.

Cash says there are tell-tale signs if there is an addiction problem. One of the disorders is called “Gaming Disorder,” which often happens to people who become addicted to video games. It can be recognized when gaming begins to take over a person’s life: they no longer have control over how much they use it, they lose interest in other things, and they continue with their behavior despite negative consequences.

Cash says that grades going down, not getting enough sleep or exercise, not having many friends or offline activities, or fighting with family about technology-use rules, are all indicators that there is a problem.

Cash says technology affects brain development in young children. Today, many parents are handing devices to their babies, which has never been the case in past generations. This impacts social development substantially, because a person doesn’t develop good social skills unless they are actually interacting socially with other people.

Cash also explains the attachment issues that result from being exposed to too much technology. A child needs to be attached to their caregivers, but if the caregivers are on their devices too much, or putting the kids on devices to keep them distracted, this affects the attachment a child develops with their caregiver, which in turn affects mental health later on down the road.

She says that from ages 13 to 20, many have intimacy disorders, not having the skills and confidence to initiate, develop, and maintain emotionally intimate relationships.

Sexuality is also impacted because there is a blending of activities online, with many users looking at pornography, gambling, gaming, and social media all at the same time.

On top of this, there are physical problems, such as sleep deprivation, inadequate exercise, and poor diet.

In regards to social development, there is a lack of skill in communication, as well as attention problems.

Technology gives us immediate gratification, which negatively affects academic work by not having the ability to stay focused, persevere to get projects done, and look forward to getting a good grade.

So what can we do? Cash says there are apps that help at least monitor phone use, and these can be helpful if a person is actually motivated to make changes.

She recommends that parents don’t give smartphones to their children before high school. The software parents can put on phones to monitor kids is easy for smart kids to get around. She says to make sure kids don’t have smartphones until they have developed a well-rounded life and can sustain that once they get a smartphone.

Cash also says it is wise to have boundaries around phone and screen time, such as checking your phone at certain times and otherwise leaving it off, and making sure times at home are intentional and not surrounded by screen time and devices. Make sure kids are getting time outdoors, exercising, doing their chores, having down time, and in-person social time.

Cash says the key is to focus on giving your kids the proper rules and guidance so they can live a well-rounded life.

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“Our tolerance for people who do not get vaccinated has run out,” Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett stated Sunday, exasperated that his vaccination strategy—arguably the most aggressive in the world—has failed to curb the Delta variant coursing through the country [Sound Familiar? US Patriot].

Instead of defeating the virus, as he had been promising for weeks in pushing a third COVID shot on Israelis, the number of Israelis at peril climbed steadily: 246 on Sunday were deemed critically ill, 178 of them on ventilators; a week earlier the numbers were 206 and 157, and two weeks earlier 203 and 153. About 400 Israelis died in the last two weeks, up from about 300 in the previous two weeks.

The happy talk from some Israeli medical experts earlier this month, when they expressed optimism the worst was over, is gone, replaced by dire reports of hospitals being swamped, staff in a state of post-trauma panic, and patients needing care instead hurriedly sent home—a situation deemed “catastrophic” in early September by Dr. Amir Neuberger, the director of the Rambam Health Care Campus’s coronavirus ward.

The head of Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer’s Infectious Disease Unit, professor Galia Rahav, last week echoed that view, saying “the morbidity from coronavirus here is insufferable. … Patients who weren’t given a chance to live die because there aren’t enough beds and ICU staff. I see this at a lot of hospitals. It’s heartbreaking.”

The government’s response to the failure of its policies, in this, its fourth wave, is to blame the relatively few who remain unvaccinated and to double down on more vaccinations. Three shots are becoming mandatory to qualify for vaccine passports, and a fourth is on its way, in anticipation of future waves.

There’s a logic to accelerating the rate of vaccinations, just as there was a logic to Israel’s strict lockdowns and other measures to stop the spread of the virus—vaccines do seem to have a short-term benefit in reducing serious hospitalizations and deaths. A study (pdf) that Israel trumpeted last month shows that, after at least 12 days, those who received the third dose had 10 times the protection of those who only had two shots.

But the ongoing benefit is less clear since the vaccines wane, rendering them ineffective after five to six months, as seen in Delta’s success at felling Israelis. There’s also fear that the vaccine may prove all-but worthless against new virus mutations—the Israeli Defence Forces’ Military Intelligence Directorate warned as early as January that mass vaccinations during a pandemic could lead to such a mutation entering Israel, and many fear that the South African C.1.2 variant will prove it right. The government’s response is to the improve detection of viruses at Israel’s Ben Gurion International airport, in the faint hope that future viruses won’t be able to penetrate Israel’s porous borders, and attack defenseless residents.

Israel does have a COVID success story, which ironically occurred where its government most failed to implement its policies. Unlike most of the Israeli population, its ultra-Orthodox largely shunned lockdowns and vaccination early on, leading to a high rate of natural infection, followed by natural immunity and long-lived protection (pdf). The ultra-Orthodox represented 4 percent of Delta cases, according to Israeli Health Ministry data in August. Overall, Israelis with natural immunity represent 1 percent or less of Delta cases.

The same phenomenon of acquiring natural immunity appears to also apply to Sweden, which adopted policies diametrically opposed to those of Israel—no lockdowns to speak of, no shut down of the economy, few restrictions of any kind. As a result, Sweden’s population is believed to have acquired an early herd immunity, before the vaccinations became widely available, leading to only a modest hit to its economy, manageable loads at its hospitals—Sweden’s hospital system never exceeded its capacity—and, since June, an average of less than one COVID death per day.

Sweden is now removing its few remaining restrictions and its naturally immune population may be well positioned to weather future coronaviruses, in the same way it weathered Delta. Israel, in contrast, is besieged, unsure of when its fourth wave will subside or how well it will weather the waves to come. Not long ago, after Israel vaccinated a large proportion of its population and before the vaccines had the opportunity to wane, Israel was everyone’s model of how to tackle COVID. As the world learns more of Israel’s vulnerability, it may provide a cautionary tale of allowing short-sighted expediency to trump far-sighted policies.

News Analysis

Should children be required to wear masks at school? A review of the costs and benefits, including some of the latest science, does not add much to the case for mandating school masks.

First, some basics.

The risk of death from COVID-19 among schoolchildren is very, very low.

How Low?

A Nature study estimating the COVID-19 infection fatality rate (IFR), or proportion of those infected who die, found IFRs of just 0.001 percent in children aged 5–9, and IFRs well below 0.01 percent in all those aged 19 and under.

That’s less than one in 10,000 among teenagers and less than one in 100,000 in 5- to 9-year-old children.

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which has advocated masking children aged 2 and up, found that only 460 children had died of COVID-19 between late May 2020 and Sept. 9, 2021 across 45 states, New York City, Guam, and Puerto Rico—0.08 percent of the total number of deaths they counted.

Looking again across multiple states, the AAP found that COVID-19 cases among children have surged in recent weeks, growing by 10 percent from 4,797,683 to 5,292,837 between Aug. 26 and Sept. 9—a trend that could be related to the start of in-person schooling.

Yet the AAP’s own data shows children are just 0.9 percent of COVID-19 hospitalizations, a rate on par with previous weeks, and down from reported hospitalization rates of 3.8 percent in mid-2020.

With all that in mind, what are the benefits of masking children?

According to the AAP, those benefits include the “protection of unvaccinated students from COVID-19,” as well as “reduc[ed] transmission.”

Yet as described above, COVID-19’s risks for schoolchildren have been, and remain, extremely low.

What’s more, vaccines have been made widely available or are even mandated among teachers, who belong to age groups more vulnerable to COVID-19 than children—and despite efforts to restrict access to ivermectin, individuals may still be able to obtain the drug, identified as an “essential medicine” by the World Health Organization, as well as other potential therapeutics.

Like the AAP, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now recommends universal masking in schools, a change from its previous stance that vaccinated students and teachers do not have to wear masks. (Neither the AAP nor the CDC mention natural immunity in their school masking guidance).

They, too, point to transmission as a justification for universal indoor masking, citing the highly transmissible Delta variant.

Concerns about transmission come down to two questions: First, how much is widespread COVID-19 transmission driven by children in school, and second, how well do masks and mask mandates limit transmission?

While some scientists have provided evidence that children might play a significant role in community spread, researchers generally agree that children, and especially young children, are not the primary drivers of it.

An observational study in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggested that children up to the age of 9 attending school were not major contributors to COVID-19 spread, though the study’s findings on teenagers were more equivocal.

A 2020 meta-analysis, or analysis of multiple studies, on COVID-19 susceptibility among young children and adolescents concluded susceptibility was lower in those groups than in adults and offered “weak evidence” that they play a lesser role in population-level transmission.

More recently, a 2021 meta-analysis on COVID-19 transmission clusters concluded that children infected in school “are unlikely to spread SARS-CoV-2 to their cohabiting family members.”

While the Delta variant appears to be more contagious, driving a rise in CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus-related cases and deaths, many have argued that it is less deadly than the original Alpha strain.

This would be in line with the hypothesized trade-off between transmission and virulence, which suggests that pathogens evolve in the direction of spreading farther while also becoming less damaging to their hosts.

The effectiveness of masks, and mask mandates, in schools is also a matter of dispute, with mask mandates for students apparently lacking clear support.

In his July 30 executive order against mask mandates in Florida schools, Gov. Ron DeSantis argued that “forcing students to wear masks lacks a well-grounded scientific justification,” citing a 2021 preprint that found no correlation between mask mandates and COVID-19 case rates among students and faculty across schools in Florida, New York, and Massachusetts.

Yet the authors of that study stressed that their research was limited to just three states, meaning their conclusions may not apply elsewhere. They also emphasized that the masking variation they identified in Florida schools could make their findings “even less generalizable to all U.S. students.”

A 2020 report by the CDC itself on elementary schools in Georgia noted that “COVID-19 incidence was 37% lower in schools that required teachers and staff members to use masks.”

Crucially, however, the CDC found that mask mandates for students did not have a statistically significant impact on COVID-19 incidence.

Here too, the study’s authors noted some limitations to their work; notably, their findings were based on self-reporting, and investigators did not directly examine whether people were using masks.

What About Masks More Generally?

An early randomized controlled trial of 4,862 adult participants from Denmark did not find that surgical masks reduced COVID-19 infection, although the authors noted that some results were “inconclusive.”

On Sept. 1, however, researchers released a working paper detailing a cluster-randomized trial of mask promotion across communities in rural Bangladesh, which involved 600 villages and more than 300,000 individuals, that appeared to support masking.

After surveying “all reachable participants” and testing blood from symptomatic individuals, the researchers linked mask promotion to a slight reduction in symptomatic COVID-19 infections.

Yet similar to the Danish study, the Bangladesh study was explicitly intended to examine mask-wearing among those “who appear to be 18 years or older”—not the young children or adolescents to whom school mask mandates apply.

What, then, are the potential costs of requiring children to be masked at school?

An obvious one is cleanliness.

“We were almost all taught as children that disposable tissues are good because handkerchiefs are unhygienic and disgusting,” wrote Michael Brendan Dougherty in an article for National Review Online. “But for young children, toddlers in particular, the cotton-jersey masks that they most often wear in schools are just that, a handkerchief pulled over their mouth and nose constantly. They often are disgusting at the end of a day of use.”

Unsurprisingly, children’s masks may be a breeding ground for bacteria and other microorganisms, some of them potentially dangerous.

One recent analysis from the University of Florida revealed that most masks worn by children in 90-degree-Fahrenheit heat were contaminated with parasites, fungi, and bacteria, including a virus known to cause a fatal systemic disease in deer and cattle.

Masks, particularly disposable masks, are also harmful to the environment. With billions of single-use masks being thrown out every day, researchers believe that discarded masks and respirators are adding to plastic pollution—a problem to which school mask mandates can only contribute.

Masking and other interventions may also have knock-on effects related to the frequency of other respiratory diseases.

The recent, out-of-season spike in pediatric hospitalizations for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) has been tied to the COVID-19 response, with infants and young children who would have otherwise been exposed to RSV at an earlier age now falling ill from it.

Masking may also have significant psychological and developmental effects on children.

A 2004 article on masking in a pediatric hospital, authored long before the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the scientific debate on masking, expanded on some of the psychological hazards for children.

“Imagine the impact of a hospital filled with “faceless” people on a young child. Who is smiling? Who is frowning? How do I recognize my doctor? How does my nurse recognize me? Why is everyone so scared of me and my germs?…”

“When wearing masks, goggles and/or face shields, non-verbal communication is impaired. Subtle facial cues are absent or can be misread and lip-reading is impossible.”

More recently, in a roundtable with Governor DeSantis and other scientists, Stanford professor Dr. Jay Battacharya argued that masking children is both medically unnecessary and “developmentally inappropriate.”

“I mean, how do you teach a child to read with a face mask on Zoom? I think children develop by watching other people,” Battacharya said.

The controversy over the developmental impact of masking children has even impacted the AAP.

In August, Internet users unearthed an AAP webpage emphasizing the developmental importance of face time between parents and babies that had apparently been removed from the organization’s website, along with other AAP webpages describing how babies and young children learn through looking at faces.

The AAP responded by explaining that the web pages disappeared as a result of website migration, telling Just the News that “some content areas, including Early Brain and Child Development, are still being organized before they go live on the new platform.”

Finally, the practice of mandating masks could be argued to compromise individual and parental autonomy.

Advocacy groups such as Utah Parents United have spoken out against school mask mandates, saying that they undermine parental rights and are unnecessary for such a low-risk group, particularly given the availability of vaccines to adult teachers and staff.

With all that we know so far, how can we answer these parents?

If the benefits of mask mandates do not outweigh the costs, it’s hard to find fault with opposition, or at least skepticism—especially for young schoolchildren, who are at the lowest risk of serious illness and death, and who may be most vulnerable to the uncertain and understudied costs of universal masking and other stringent measures.

Science Shaky on School Mask Mandates While Harms Ignored (theepochtimes.com)

President Joe Biden is on vacation again this weekend as the crises his administration has created consume a troubled country which he apparently needs a few days to forget about while at the beach.

NBC News chief White House correspondent Kelly O’Donnell shared images on Twitter Friday of Biden landing in Delaware to bask in the sun before the lunch plates had even been washed on the east coast.

President Biden has taken Marine One to a landing zone at Rehoboth Beach where he will spend the weekend at his Delaware beach house. pic.twitter.com/sfwrbVk0rj

— Kelly O’Donnell (@KellyO) September 17, 2021

Peculiarly, there were no stories headlining Biden’s getaway on the Associated Press home page. That’s odd, because on Dec. 25 last year, the AP printed this: “President Donald Trump spent his Christmas golfing in Florida as a government shutdown looms and COVID relief hangs in the balance.”

Of course, Trump was a Republican president, and few people in the decrepit establishment media view Christmas as anything special. That being noted, it was major news when Trump went home for Christmas.

The AP added in its holiday hit piece, “Trump tweeted that he planned to make ‘a short speech to service members from all over the world’ by video conference Friday to celebrate the holiday…”

Remember what it was like before Big Tech goons colluded with leftists Democrats to censor sitting presidents and other people en masse? Remember when we had a president who was capable of addressing people?

Trump was more present while golfing than Biden is while addressing the country — which is rarely.

Biden was gone from the White House earlier this year when border communities across the southeast were first inundated with COVID-positive illegal immigrants.

The president was also missing in action at Camp David last month as his administration’s decisions in Afghanistan resulted in a humanitarian crisis.

Thirteen U.S. service members were soon after killed by a suicide bomber as Biden’s military leadership surrendered to the Taliban, put troops in a defensive position and gave away weapons and equipment to terrorists as he assumedly still wanted to disarm the American people.

This weekend, as the country is again consumed by a crisis, Biden will be on the beach in Delaware at his Rehoboth Beach resort. The country has entered a full-blown moral crisis and we have no one to lead us through it.

We already don’t know for sure who is really running the White House when Biden is there. We know he definitely won’t be calling the shots until Monday.

Perhaps Gen. Mark Milley, an accused traitor who during the final months and days of Trump’s presidency allegedly betrayed the country’s civilian leader and phoned China, will have his feet up on the Resolute desk all weekend reading Marx as Biden wanders around a beach while avoiding questions about the seven innocent children military leaders like Milley killed last month in Kabul by a drone strike.

Milley inexplicably is still employed, even after he botched Afghanistan, reportedly betrayed his commander-in-chief and called killing foreign kids “righteous.”

A report last week from The New York Times which claimed that a U.S. military drone killed an innocent Afghan aide worker and his family was confirmed by the Pentagon. That confirmation came on Friday. Isn’t that convenient?

Nobody will be around to answer for that all weekend, or for the fact that France, our oldest ally, is walking away from us.

Biden will also have his toes in the sand as an estimated 10,000 reportedly mostly Haitian migrants sleep under a bridge in south Texas. Do you think that campout will be labeled a COVID super spreader? Don’t count on it. The Haitians didn’t vote for Trump.

Biden isn’t concerned, about any of this. He won’t have to answer for the Taliban’s butchers decapitating children as they seek to cleanse Afghanistan of all former American support. He can also avoid any talk of still-rising inflation and totally avoid the fact the country is hopelessly divided along ideological lines and missing its identity.

Remember when he promised to unite us all and then told private companies that they have to tell their employees what they must put into their bodies? He probably doesn’t, either.

The country right now seems like one giant powder keg. The only question for the White House seems to be, who’s tapping the keg in Rehoboth Beach?

My career has taken me around the world, including the combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to support our troops. These travels have helped me appreciate how fortunate I am to have been born in America—home of the free because of the brave.

On the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, people across our nation gathered in remembrance of the lives lost and the heroes who selflessly gave their lives to save others. On Sept. 11, 2001, I was in Washington, D.C., and saw the hole in the Pentagon. Later, I traveled to New York City and saw the massive hole where the Twin Towers once stood. Those are images I will never forget.

In 2002, I was recruited into government service to lead necessary change and transformation in the intelligence community (IC), including better integrating our imagery and signals intelligence enterprises—America’s eyes and ears. I was sworn in as a senior executive in defense intelligence and was a civilian peer to general and flag officers. After the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) was established, I was sworn in as the first IC deputy chief information officer at ODNI. In that role, I worked across the 17 agencies that comprise the U.S. IC and regularly met with the leadership of both the IC and the Department of Defense.

Through my 25 years of service in the national security community and study of history, I have become aware of the techniques, tactics, and procedures that our enemies use. Though the Cold War ended 30 years ago, our nation is still in a war that has been brewing for decades—a war for America’s soul.

Nikita Khrushchev, who ran the Soviet Union from 1958 to 1964, openly predicted the destruction of the United States and said that it would happen in the way that every society eventually collapses. He said, “We will take America without firing a shot. We do not have to invade the U.S. We will destroy you from within.” Khrushchev was talking about an entire system of Marxist indoctrination and takeover that they had refined and executed in country after country during the 20th century.

Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, a former KGB operative, and high-level Russian propagandist, escaped to the West in 1970. He warned America about the KGB tactics used to subvert a nation that he witnessed firsthand in the Soviet Union. This is a planned process of altering the way people think for a particular purpose, which is to affect a regime change. It’s effectively the brainwashing of society—a slow, methodical transformation. Those who conduct this ideological subversion are very patient to employ the tactics over decades.

Ideological subversion has four stages and follows the Hegelian dialectic, a tactic long exploited by Marxists and Fascists to control people.

• Stage 1: Demoralization. This is the destruction of faith in the government and society. Believing that society is broken, systems are failing, and patriotism is evil are three key beliefs that are promoted to create guilt. This leads to the acceptance of radical new ideas because the current structure is believed to be harmful. Traditional Judeo-Christian morality, classical education, and American patriotism are discarded.
• Stage 2: Destabilization. With the decision-making ability of Americans negatively affected through demoralization, the next step takes a foothold—destabilization of the nation’s foundations. Destabilization causes citizens to believe the worst of what they hear about their nation and form of government. Supporters of traditional values and foundational structures in the nation are ostracized and even demonized.
• Stage 3: Crisis. The altered values of Americans cut to the root of the current systems. Upheaval presents opportunities for change. Once a society is destabilized, it begins to collapse into chaos. At this point, citizens want the government to provide stability. We saw this recently as a demoralized and destabilized society responded with fear and panic when a “pandemic” faced our nation. Americans are willingly trading civil rights and freedoms for authoritarianism and overreach that they believe will keep them safe. Messaging in all of this is key. The mainstream media and their tell-a-vision programming play a key role in framing the prescribed narrative as truth.
• Stage 4: Normalization. The “new normal” is a term we have heard constantly lately, and it’s an accurate description of what the normalization stage is all about. When the government and societal structures have changed to restrict liberty, citizens are told the radical transformation is “the way it has to be.” Ironically, it’s described as normal when it’s not normal at all. Normalization creates a new baseline for what a nation will accept, value, and promote. The cycle is complete.

These steps are repeated over and over, bringing a greater result with each cycle until there’s a controlled collapse. America could be on the verge of collapse right now unless we collectively wake up to reality and take a stand to stop tyranny.

The Hegelian dialectic is the framework for guiding people’s thoughts and actions into conflicts that lead them to a predetermined solution. The enemies of America are using this tactic to create fear, turn citizen against citizen, and divide our nation. A house divided cannot stand. If people do not understand how the Hegelian dialectic shapes their perceptions of the world, then they do not know how they are helping to implement the agenda, which ultimately is to advance humanity into a dictatorship—whether by the fascists, the communists, or the globalists and their New World Order. We must step outside the dialectic so that we can be released from the limitations of controlled and guided thought.

The most important thing about America is liberty. America is what has stood between power-hungry people and their goals of world domination. The true enemies of America are trying to convince us that we are each other’s enemies and that big government and control of the lives of the many by a few is the solution to cure what ails us. We must all recognize that they are weaponizing the crisis and this narrative is a lie. Government bureaucrats are now labeling anyone who thinks they have overstepped their constitutional bounds as enemies of the state—“patriot terrorists.” What liberty-loving people are now combating is pure evil.

All it takes for evil to prosper is for good people to do nothing. As we reflect back on Sept. 11, 2001, one thing that stands out about that time following the terrorist attacks is that we forgot the things that divide us. We united as Americans. There’s no better example than what we saw in New York City. We were united together in support of one another fighting a common enemy.

So many have sacrificed so much to secure our liberty and preserve it for future generations. Many of us have lost a loved one on a foreign battlefield or from a service-connected illness after they returned, or in the line of duty here at home. How do we honor their sacrifice and that of so many others in our nation’s 245-year history? We stand and fight to uphold liberty and our unalienable rights enshrined in America’s founding documents. If liberty is to be lost, it won’t be on our watch.

We Are in a War for America’s Soul (theepochtimes.com)

Bullying has been a problem for years, with parents resorting to a variety of methods to help their kids either stop being bullied or become better people and stop bullying others.

But without involved parents or amenable children, the issue can spiral out of control — which appeared to be the case in one recent altercation in Alabama on Tuesday morning.

The incident took place in Jefferson County at around 7:18 a.m., when mom Nannatt Waldrop, 37, boarded a school bus and confronted an 11-year-old student she believed to be bullying her child, according to WMTV-TV.

The mom and student got into a fight, and as a result Waldrop was arrested and held on a $10,500 bail, which was posted within several hours. A video was recorded and shared on social media.

Waldrop has been charged with trespassing on a school bus, disorderly conduct and third-degree assault, according to a news release from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office.

Superintendent of Jefferson County Schools, Dr. Walter Gonsoulin, released a statement following the incident.

“We are aware of the video circulating on social media of a fight that occurred on one of our school buses Tuesday morning,” Gonsoulin said, according to a Facebook post by Fred Davenport of WVTM 13 News.

“I want to be very clear: This type of behavior is unacceptable and it will not be tolerated.

“We reported the adult individual who boarded the bus to authorities, and she has since been arrested and is facing criminal charges. While this is now a law enforcement matter, let me just say what I saw on that video deeply disturbs me.

“At no point is any type of violence acceptable, especially violence against students. We have been and will continue to cooperate fully with law enforcement.”

He also stated that “adults who are not school employees” are prohibited from being on the bus.

Instead of excoriating the mother, many parents have commented on the news shares of the story to voice their support of Waldrop. Some said they’d never get into a physical altercation with a minor, but that they understood the frustration and commiserated with her.

“Good for you Mama, sounds like she got on that bus to whoop tail!” Amanda Gray wrote on a post by Jonathan Hardison WBRC. “If the schools would do more to protect our kids from bullies we wouldn’t have to feel the need to handle it ourselves. We all know they don’t do jack!”

“If the school won’t protect your kids, then parents have to take matters into their own hands,” Kenneth Freeland added. “Good for her.”

“What’s her CashApp???” MB Sides wrote. “She needs bail money!”

What would you have done?

Deeply Disturbing: Mom Jailed After Fighting Her Child’s 11-Year-Old Bully (westernjournal.com)

To be a true market economy, Beijing must ends its “Made in China 2025” program and its predatory goal of trade and global dominance.

In the spring of 2000, the United States normalized trade relations with China. In December 2001, China ascended to the World Trade Organization (WTO). President Bill Clinton expressed his hope that the United States and China would work together in trade. The generally held belief at the time was that inclusion in international organizations would accelerate China’s transition toward democracy and free market capitalism. President George W. Bush had famously said that no nation had figured out how to import goods from the rest of the world, while keeping out new ideas.

The WTO was relatively new and China was the largest trading nation that was not a member. Consequently, adding China legitimized the WTO. Global consumers benefitted from China’s ascension because they could now obtain cheap Chinese products. Corporations also welcomed China’s ascension because they hoped to obtain greater access to the country’s huge markets. And China was happy because their exports increased sharply. By 2009, China had displaced Germany as the world’s largest exporter.

Not everyone was pleased about China being included in the club of trading nations. U.S. labor unions were very concerned about the number of manufacturing jobs that would be lost as factories relocated to China. Between 1999 and 2011, nearly 6 million U.S. manufacturing jobs, as well as 2.4 million jobs in other sectors, were lost to China.

China’s ascension came with a promise that Beijing would make numerous changes to its trading practices to fall in line with international norms and standards such as the following: reduce tariffs; guarantee intellectual property rights; allow market forces to determine the value of its currency; end state subsidies for favored firms and industries; refrain from dumping; end forced technology transfer; and grant reciprocal market access to foreign companies. Now, more than 20 years later, the world is still waiting for China to make these changes and abide by international rules.

One of the reasons why China gets away with seemingly unfair trade practices is because the enforcement mechanisms of the WTO are quite weak. The WTO evolved out of a post-World War Two culture of like-minded countries, largely bound by a gentlemen’s agreement to treat each other fairly. Of course, trade disputes can and do flare up, but the rules of the WTO were established under the assumption that most countries were not actively looking to circumvent them.

The WTO’s enforcement mechanism works well with capitalist and democratic countries, where companies are driven by profit and are largely free of government controls. They were not designed for the People’s Republic of China, which is a hybrid of socialism, communism, and state-capitalism. State-run media China Daily reported that 70 percent of China’s 2 million private companies contained an internal Communist Party cell, underscoring the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) direct control of the private sector.

China is using the WTO to its advantage. Rather than adhering to the rules, Beijing is picking and choosing those rules that work best for China’s interests and then exploiting them. Over the past 20 years, the United States has lodged 23 complaints against China. The most common complaint was that China enjoys free access to foreign and U.S. markets, while continuing to restrict foreign access to Chinese markets.

Forced technology transfer is another of the major points of contention between the United States and China. China requires foreign companies, in certain sectors, to have a local joint venture partner in order to gain access to Chinese markets. They then require that the foreign entity transfer its technology to the JV partner. As so many Chinese companies are either owned by the CCP, or have the CCP as a majority stakeholder, or have a CCP cell and CCP board members, this is effectively like forcing foreign companies to share their technology with Beijing in exchange for market access. While U.S. companies complain about this, it is very difficult to prove that there is an actual infringement of WTO rules. Therefore, the WTO generally does not rule in favor of U.S. companies lodging complaints regarding forced technology transfer.

Currency manipulation is another violation that China has gotten away with in the past. For many years, China undervalued its currency by 30 percent, making its exports cheaper. The WTO, however, has no actual provisions in place to guard against currency manipulation.

One of the agreements China made when entering the WTO was to become a market economy (ME) by 2015, and to then no longer warrant special treatment as a new, non-market economy (NME). China interpreted this agreement to mean that China’s NME status would automatically end in 2015. The world interpreted it as meaning that the removal of the NME status would be dependent on some type of evaluation, and that China was given 15 years to complete its market reforms.

During the intervening two decades, the Chinese regime has failed to reform its economy and trading practices, continuing with prohibited subsidies. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Commerce rightly alleges that Beijing still exercises control, directly and indirectly, over the economy and key economic actors, including the allocation of resources.

Despite China’s promises to reform, it remains one of the most protectionist nations on Earth. It continues to dump steel, which drives legitimate companies out of business. The regime funnels billions of dollars’ worth of soft loans and subsidies through chains of shadowy government-owned or government-controlled entities. And the regime engages in state-level hacking, to steal data from U.S. and other foreign companies.

In order to truly qualify as a market economy and to be a global citizen trading fairly according to WTO and Western norms, China would need to fundamentally alter its approach on trade and on the economy in general. It would need to fulfill its WTO commitments on currency manipulation, dumping and subsidies, stop state-level hacking and forced technology transfer, protect intellectual property rights, and grant reciprocal market access to the United States and other countries. As the CCP has failed to reform over the past 20 years, it seems unlikely it will change in the next two decades.

After 20 Years, China Still Skirting WTO Regulations (theepochtimes.com)

President Joseph Biden spoke with Chinese leader Xi Jinping on the phone last week. Biden’s stated objective: To establish “guardrails” for the U.S.-China relationship in order to ensure the competition between the two nations doesn’t veer into outright conflict or a shooting war.

Sounds good. But it assumes Beijing sees itself as simply being in “competition” with Washington—rather than already prosecuting a multi-front, multi-discipline war against the United States. In fact, Biden’s claim that the United States is just competing with China is a de facto win for Xi on one of the battlefields—psychological warfare.

Go down the list of other battlefields and it sure looks like war. All that’s missing is the shooting.

The Deadly Political Warfare Battlefield

Beijing has a longstanding global political warfare campaign that subverts governments and elites worldwide. This pays off in nations that are politically aligned with Beijing against the United States—or at least staying neutral—and acts to isolate and punish countries inclined to resist China. Outcomes include political and economic subservience and eventual Chinese military access.

China is prosecuting this war on all geographical fronts. It is active in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, and even has its sights on the Arctic—declaring itself a “Near Arctic Nation” even though the concept doesn’t exist in international law. Antarctica, and its strategic positioning and resources, is similarly in the crosshairs.

The idea is to put the Americans (and its dwindling number of allies) in a position where they cannot move—or at least not at an acceptable cost. If so, the game is over before the Americans figure out the competition is in fact a war. In other words, “winning without fighting.”

There is a range of battlefields in the larger political warfare assault. These include the following:

Bio-war: We’re two years into it. At a minimum, Beijing opportunistically seeded the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic while pleading innocence and blocking investigations that could have saved lives and competing economies. Next time it will have worked out the kinks.

Civil war: Beijing stokes internal conflict inside the United States in part via mass customized manipulation through social media. Not that it has to try very hard. What’s better than an enemy that is fighting with itself?

Drug war: Most fentanyl originates in China—and over 60,000 Americans died last year from fentanyl overdose. That’s more than the number of American soldiers killed in the entire Vietnam War.

Economic war: China bought up key American companies by the hundreds over the last few decades and obtained critical U.S. technologies by hook and by crook. It also got U.S. businesses (egged on by Wall Street) to move enough manufacturing to China over the last 30 years, leaving large swaths of the United States gutted and the inhabitants stunned, despairing and too often drug addicted—on China-sourced fentanyl.

And in a gradual, preemptive act of surrender, U.S. companies set up supply chains for key materials and products—such as pharmaceuticals—in China.

Beijing is also buttressing its economic defenses—which is standard operating procedures for a country at war—in part by making itself “sanctions proof” (the modern economic equivalent of siege-proof).

Trade war: We’re two decades into this front of the economic war. Washington gave China the go-ahead to attack in 2001 when it let the People’s Republic of China (PRC) into the World Trade Organization (WTO)—despite not meeting qualifications. It didn’t take a strategic genius to know what would happen. Even before that, Beijing was aggressively violating GATT regulations as a matter of national policy.

Financial war: The PRC is trying to displace the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The dollar is America’s last solid means of applying pressure against Beijing. Yet the Biden administration and previous administrations have done their best to debase the currency. If the Chinese regime makes enough progress on this front, the United States will not even be able to fund its own defense.

Kinetic War

While forging ahead with weakening the defenses of its opponents through political warfare, Beijing is also preparing and positioning for “traditional” kinetic—or shooting—war.

To the Chinese regime, political warfare and kinetic warfare are part of the same continuum, and it will transition from one to the other as needed to achieve its goals. Just ask Tibet, Vietnam, India, or others it has attacked over the years.

The U.S. military’s top dogs are once again dying to engage with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), even as Chinese officers are dying to engage with the Americans—though in a different way. Some examples include the following:

Military size, capability and reach: The Chinese regime has undertaken the biggest, fastest defense build up since World War Two and probably in history. It is dramatically expanding its size, capabilities, and reach. Already the PLA is a match for U.S. forces in certain circumstances.

The Chinese Navy’s fleet is bigger than the U.S. Navy, and China is producing hypersonic and aircraft carrier killer missiles. It’s rapidly improving undersea warfare capabilities as well.

In terms of power projection, the regime is seizing maritime territory, including building artificial islands in the South China Sea and turning them into military bases to dominate the zone and expand the PLA’s operational reach.

Beijing is also setting up port and airfield access worldwide. It started with with commercial inroads but aims for an eventual military presence. Djibouti was just the beginning. The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) is essentially the largest potentially dual use infrastructure endeavor the world has ever seen.

Outer space warfare: China is gearing up to be a “galactic hegemon”—to include strategic lunar positioning and anti-satellite weapons to destroy U.S. satellites and blind U.S. forces.

Cyber warfare: The PRC has already gone to work, looting U.S. government and private industry networks of strategic data (including biometrics) and sector-dominating trade secrets. Yet it has escaped almost entirely unscathed, even though the Americans know who did it.

Nuclear war: The PLA is building a nuclear weapons arsenal that will surpass America’s by 2025—and Russia’s too.

Is This Normal?

This is all breathtaking in its scope and one must admire the Chinese regime’s consistent clarity on its objective.

But isn’t China just doing what all “great powers” do?

Only if the “great power” is rapacious and looking to dominate and control its neighborhood and the rest of the globe. And how a government treats its own citizens—repressively in China’s case—gives one a pretty good idea how it will treat everyone else.

And keep in mind that Beijing has done all this—positioning itself to win a shooting war, or a war without shooting—despite facing no enemies. Nobody and no nation anywhere has ever called for attacking China.

Indeed, the United States and the free world bent over backwards to welcome China into civilized society. WTO is a case in point, along with the U.S. military’s decades of eagerness to “engage” with the PLA. Even President Ronald Reagan provided advanced military technologies to the PRC.

Successive presidents—until Donald Trump—all placated Beijing, while overlooking Chinese aggressiveness and misbehavior, and ignoring human rights abuses and the total absence of “rights” of any sort, including the rule of law, in China.

All this was done with the idea that China would liberalize and become a so-called responsible stakeholder.

But while the Americans offered the open hand (and wallet) of friendship, Beijing quietly—but openly—went to war.

Some Americans did notice what China was up to but they were ignored, ridiculed, fired, or ostracized.

Others tried to raise the alarm as well—proximity to China helps one see things better.

Some Indians have been warning the Americans for years—pointing out that India has been at war with China since 1962.

The Japanese military has also tried to warn U.S. counterparts, though they were usually politely ignored or even rudely dismissed in some cases.

But ultimately it was because America’s ruling elite class was too arrogant to see what was going on and even now can’t quite believe it—or simply wants Chinese cash.

To believe that everything the Chinese Communist Party has done is just coincidence, and not malevolent, requires a belief that the Chinese can’t think coherently or plan for the future. Rather, that they just act on impulse and have zero short-term memory.

In spite of all the battlefields described above, some still say that with just a little more talking or engagement, China will come around. One can’t blame the Chinese for playing to American gullibility and corruptibility. It’s political warfare 101.

The Trump administration understood that the “war” was underway and tried to change course. They didn’t have long enough.

One hopes Team Biden figures out that China is at war with the United States—not merely “competing”—and that whatever “guardrails” China agrees to are more likely ones that Beijing thinks will constrain Washington while it forges ahead unimpeded.

Competing is what rival rental car and soft drink companies do. It can even be what democracies do.

But the regime running China is nether a democracy nor a rental car company.

It is out for blood.

China Went to War a Long Time Ago, but the US Didn’t (Want to) Notice (theepochtimes.com)

The Heritage Foundation on Thursday alleged that it has been temporarily blocked from advertising and promoting on Amazon a new book about the Marxist ideological root of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) organization.

In a news release, the Washington, D.C.-based think tank said it was informed by Amazon that its advertisement for the book “BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution” failed to comply with the online retailer’s policy because it contained “content that is not allowed.”

“Content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted,” said Amazon in a message to Heritage. “Please remove this content from your ad.”

Heritage said in an update that it has won the appeal of the decision, and was notified that it was the result of “human error.”

“Whether this was the result of an algorithm or human action, the outcome is censorship,” Heritage concluded.

The book, which tops Amazon’s “Black & African American History” category at the time of this article’s publication, is written by Mike Gonzalez, a veteran journalist and senior fellow at Heritage. Gonzalez condemned Amazon for allegedly trying to limit the reach of the book, but also noted that this very attempt reveals how important his work is.

“I wrote this book because most of the press refused to cover the important questions about the people and organizations behind Black Lives Matter,” Gonzalez said. “The American people deserve answers to those questions, especially after the 630 or more riots that left our cities burning, businesses destroyed and billions in damage, and Americans dead.”

Gonzalez also questioned whether Amazon would treat books written by Nikole Hannah-Jones or Ibram X. Kendi the same way under the same standard about controversial content. Hannah-Jones is the leading author of The New York Times’ highly controversial “1619 Project,” an essay collection that portrays the United States as an inherently racist nation founded to protect slavery. Kendi, a professor at Boston University, advocates for active discrimination against racial groups that are deemed “privileged” as a remedy for historical racism.

“I have to wonder if Nikole Hannah-Jones’s and Ibram X. Kendi’s books face similar constraints,” he said.

BLM’s official website originally described its founder Alicia Garza as a “trained Marxist” and said the organization did advocate for the dissolution of the traditional family structure, as did Karl Marx, notoriously, in the Communist Manifesto. Those messages, however, have since been removed from the site.

“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each other as extended families and ‘villages’ that collectively care for one another, especially our children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable,” it stated.

Amazon did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Amazon Temporarily Blocked Advertisement for Book That Links BLM to Marxism (theepochtimes.com)

Students get paid to go to class under Democratic reconciliation bill

The Democratic plan for free community college also throws in up to nearly $7,000 in cash for students who qualify for a Pell grant.

A portion of Biden’s $3.5 trillion spending plan would create a federal program that eliminates the cost of tuition at public community colleges in participating states. The federal government would pay for 100 percent of the program in the first year, although its contribution would drop 5 percent each year going forward. The elimination of tuition, however, does not disqualify students from cashing in on tuition assistance benefits. Education economist Preston Cooper said the proposed structure of the program essentially works as a cash giveaway that privileges community college students over those who decide to pursue different careers or opportunities after high school.

“I’m worried about perverse incentives of these two policies together: free community college and Pell expansion,” Cooper told the Washington Free Beacon. “Right now, this is less of a problem because most of your Pell money will go to tuition, so the rebate students get is smaller. But if community college becomes free, that changes.”

The budget reconciliation bill also increases by $500 the maximum Pell grant award, which is $6,495 for students planning on attending a college for a full year. The Democratic bill would not preclude students from collecting Pell grants, which were designed to provide funding for students “who display exceptional financial need,” meaning they would be essentially paid to go to school. Roughly one-third of all college students—6.8 million of 19.7 million—pay for their education at least in part by using taxpayer-funded Pell grants. The average award in 2020 was $3,900 and is based on a formula from the Department of Education that considers family income and the number of dependents an individual or family claims. About 69 percent of all high school graduates attend college in the fall after they graduate, although a smaller percentage end up graduating.

Congressional Democrats are proposing to spend $33 billion on Pell grants next year, a 10 percent increase from 2020. The average cost for a year of community college during the 2018-2019 school year was $3,660, significantly less than the average cost for both public and private four-year universities and colleges. Defenders of Pell grants for community college students argue that money not used for tuition can help cover expenses such as gas, child care, or room and board.

Carlo Salerno, an education economist who works for a financial aid software company, questioned that rationale. The federal government already has a number of other welfare programs to address poverty. Moreover, the reconciliation bill includes a number of new spending initiatives on things such as universal pre-school and expanding the child tax credit.

“The big issue is that Pell was designed to pay for education, not living expenses,” Salerno told the Free Beacon. “Why are we turning an education grant into a living grant? Why are community college students specially chosen for increased aid?”

Congressional Republicans, who are unified in their opposition to the budget reconciliation bill, attacked the provision as another example of reckless Democratic spending.

“Democrats won’t admit that community college is already free for those who need it. The maximum Pell Grant already exceeds average tuition and fees for public, two-year institutions,” said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.), ranking member on the House Education and Labor Committee. “Pelosi wants to slap a clearance sign on college degrees and then design federal program after federal program to keep those students entangled in a web of government subsidies. … This is nothing more than a federal takeover of our postsecondary degree system in order to give a handout to millionaires and illegal immigrants at the expense of hardworking taxpayers.”

Research regarding the impact of Pell grants on the rising cost of tuition remains inconclusive, although experts such as Cooper worry that community colleges will be incentivized to raise prices once the cost burden of tuition shifts to states and taxpayers. The reconciliation bill, as it stands, also mandates that states not impose eligibility requirements—such as full-time status, or GPA requirements—on students enrolled at community college.

That provision marks a departure from previous Democratic proposals, including from President Barack Obama’s 2016 budget request to Congress. Under Obama’s plan, free community college would only be available “for responsible students” who meet basic academic and attendance requirements.

Dem Budget Would Hand Out Cash to Students at Tuition-Free Colleges (freebeacon.com)

Over 383 million Chinese have quit the Chinese Communist Party

Three Chinese who are living in the United States quit the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its affiliated organizations, joining over 383 million Chinese who have registered a public statement of withdrawal from the CCP.

From cradle to the grave, Chinese citizens are indoctrinated to be loyal to the CCP. They are also forced or asked to join CCP-affiliated organizations. As young children, they are enrolled in the Young Pioneers. In middle school, they can join the Communist Youth League. As an adult, they may choose to join the CCP.

When joining these organizations, members are required to raise their fists and swear an oath to the CCP that they will fight their whole life for the communist party, give their blood for the communist party, and never betray the communist party.

Gebi Dong, a U.S.-based economist, and an independent columnist said of the CCP, “Its evil is all-encompassing, all its manifestations are demonic, and the extent of its evil can be said to be ‘unprecedented, unparalleled in the world.’”

“The CCP’s persecution of the Falun Gong practice group is the greatest humanitarian disaster in the world: live harvesting of human organs is an unprecedented evil in human history. Only the CCP can commit this terrible crime that has never happened before in human history, and 1.4 billion people are controlled by the CCP, which is also unprecedented in the history of mankind,” he said. Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice that teaches people to follow the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, and it has been persecuted by the CCP since 1999.

Since 2004, when The Epoch Times published the editorial series “Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party,” hundreds of millions of Chinese people have quit the CCP by making a public declaration that the oaths they gave to the CCP are null and void. Quitting the CCP is called “Tuidang” in Chinese.

As of Sept. 13, the number of Chinese people who have quit the CCP has reached 383,504,922.

The Global Service Center for Quitting the CCP (Tuidang Center), writes on its website, each person who publishes a statement to quit the CCP at the Tuidang Center will receive a certificate as a testimony.

Chinese Economist: Quitting the CCP Is a Way to Save Your Life

Dong recalled that when first visited Los Angeles in 2011, he heard about the Tuidang movement from a volunteer at the Tuidang Center near the East West Bank.

After settling in the United States, he gained a deeper understanding of “quitting the CCP.” Later he not only made his declaration to quit the CCP, but he also began to persuade other Chinese people to cut their ties with the CCP.

“It is a worldwide consensus that the CCP is the most evil regime of mankind,” he said. “Quitting the CCP is actually a way to save your life. If you hesitate and wait and see because of your personal interests, once the CCP dies, it would be a big regret to accompany the regime that is bound to die, falling into the grave with the mark of the CCP.”

In ancient China, society had a deeply spiritual foundation that contained moral values from Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Chinese people believed that a person should not make bad vows at will, because it would bring disaster to oneself, Dong said. Today, if a person has dedicated his life to communism, then the mark of communism—the scythe and the ax—will remain on that person as a sign of communist membership.

“Therefore, no matter how good your reasons are and how much fear you have in your heart, I suggest that you must cut ties with CCP!” he said.

“Chinese have an old saying ‘Heaven’s way is hard to violate,’ once you ‘lose your conscience’ or ‘violate heaven’s principle,’ you will be punished by heaven. So it’s absolutely right that ‘Heaven will eliminate the CCP.’”

Chinese Student: Don’t Be Fooled by the CCP

Zhang Yuchang, a Chinese citizen, was astonished to learn of the crimes committed by the CCP while he studied abroad as an international student.

After returning to China, one day in May 2020, Zhang went to the CCP’s branch office in his local community, demanding to withdraw from the CCP organization.

He wrote a formal statement of withdrawal and signed it with his fingerprints.

The staff at the party branch were surprised and even a bit incredulous as if this had never happened before. They at first excused him, saying that the leader was not in and asked him to come back later to make an inquiry, and then said that a meeting was needed to decide how to proceed.

The staff recognized Zhang’s withdrawal from the party after his third visit but did not issue any receipt or proof to Zhang.

Now back in the United States, Zhang told The Epoch Times, “If you don’t want to be a foolish person that is fooled by the CCP,  but you want to have the right to be a real human being and live in a better environment—I urge people to quit the CCP as soon as possible.”

Chinese Christian: The CCP Regime Won’t Stand Long

On July 11, a group of Chinese people living in New York held an event in front of the New York Public Library denouncing the crimes of the CCP on the occasion of its centennial.

At the event, Yang Shisong, a Christian, told The Epoch Times, “I want everyone who knows me and doesn’t know me to be able to testify to me, and I solemnly declare that I am free from the ideology of the CCP and that I will always stay at the opposite stance to the CCP, that [the CCP] will always be my enemy.”

While in China, Yang said he discovered through his own observations and reflections that all the suffering, injustice, and inequality in modern Chinese society came from the CCP.

Yang was able to obtain the firewall-breaking software Freedom Gate, a software that allows people inside China to access websites that are blocked by China’s internet blockade.

He soon sent an email to quit the Communist Youth League, to which he had automatically been enrolled in school when he reached an age set by the CCP.

After arriving in the United States, Yang publicly posted the certificate of withdrawal issued by The Global Service Center for Quitting the CCP.

Yang said he tries to tell his friends and family, and everyone, everywhere he goes, about the CCP’s deception of the Chinese people.

“The CCP persecutes Buddhism, Christianity, and Catholicism to almost extinction, and the evilness has never stopped since the CCP established its regime. The persecution of Falun Gong has been particularly cruel,” Yang added.

Yang said he believes: “The CCP will not stand long. If you look over history, no regime that persecuted religion has lasted long.

“It is inevitable that the CCP will destroy themselves because they are against the will of heaven, just a matter of time. This is the way of heaven.”

Yang said that Chinese people should state their position clearly and quickly, and keep a distance from the CCP: “Quitting the CCP is a shortcut to avoid being dragged down with the CCP. Separate yourself from all crimes of the CCP, or else your fate will surely be tied to it.”

As a Christian, Yang believes that those who have already quit the CCP differ from those who are still with the CCP in spirit: “[Quitting the CCP] is a group of people with a spirit of fraternity and equality, and we can live in peace and love with people of all nationalities and ethnicities,” he said.

Chinese Living in the US Call on Chinese People to Quit the CCP (theepochtimes.com)

President Joe Biden earlier this month quietly fired two presidential appointees from the waning days of the Trump administration who sued the Department of Education for refusing to deliver their signed presidential commissions.

The two men, economics professor Steve Hanke and law professor John Yoo, were appointed by then-President Donald Trump to the National Board for Education Sciences (NBES) when he signed their respective commissions in December 2020. Hanke is at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, and Yoo is at the University of California, Berkeley.

The appointees stayed in touch with the department about the paperwork when the Trump administration was in power and after the Biden administration took office, but when they began to press for their commissions to be delivered, the Biden-controlled agency stopped communicating with them, according to their lawyers at Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), a Sacramento, California-based national public interest law firm.

The appointees argued that the department failed to acknowledge the validity of the appointments and made it impossible for them to fulfill their responsibilities as members of NBES, an independent board that advises officials within the Education Department on research and funding priorities. The board also performs an oversight function, advising the director of the Institute for Education Sciences. The institute is an independent, nonpartisan arm of the department that evaluates and provides funding for education research.

The Education Sciences Reform Act requires that the board meet at least three times a year and produce an oversight report to both Congress and the secretary of education. The report is due annually on July 1—yet the department had refused to call a meeting.

The Biden administration’s failure to call a meeting, as well as its continuing refusal to deliver the commissions, prompted Hanke and Yoo to sue Education Secretary Miguel Cardona on July 15 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, as The Epoch Times reported at the time. The lawsuit is ongoing. Cardona is required to file a response with the court by Sept. 24.

The appointees argue that even though the commissions were not delivered to them they still possess what lawyers call a vested legal right to the delivery of their commissions even after the election of a new president. This principle was included in the Supreme Court’s ruling in Marbury v. Madison (1803), which established the principle of judicial review, which is the power of federal courts to declare legislative and executive acts unconstitutional.

PLF attorney Jessica Thompson told The Epoch Times that even though no president had ever before fired NBES members appointed by a previous administration, the Biden White House delivered an ultimatum in the form of letters to both men on Sept. 2.

The letters, from Catherine M. Russell, the director of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, asked the men to quit NBES voluntarily by close of business that day.

“Should we not receive your resignation, your position with the Board will be terminated effective 6:00 pm tonight,” Russell wrote.

The ultimatum letters constitute a legal admission that Hanke and Yoo were appointed by President Trump, Thompson said.

The fact that the Trump appointees were fired on Sept. 2 “means that they were legally appointed and that they should have been able to serve in those positions for the past nine months.”

“If they weren’t legally appointed there would be no need to ask them to resign or to fire them,” the attorney told The Epoch Times. “He could just go ahead and appoint the new people that he would like to serve on the board.”

Biden could also have sent out a letter saying his administration refused to recognize the appointments by Trump, but he did not do that, she said.

“It’s a bit petty that the Department of Education has continued to refuse to send over the commissions,” Thompson said.

“I believe that we’ve already established and proved the key point that we were trying to advance through this lawsuit, which is that appointment by the president, even if it’s from the prior administration, is valid once the president signs that commission.”

She said she accepts that Biden enjoys the legal prerogative to remove her clients from the NBES but those clients still want to take physical possession of the paper commissions signed by Trump.

“It’s an honor to be appointed by the president and to receive such a commission and our clients and other members [of the board] were excited to serve the country in this way. And so these commissions mean something to them, and they’re hopeful that they can still obtain them.”

The Epoch Times reached out to the Department of Education for comments but had not received a reply as of press time.

Biden Admin Quietly Fires Trump Education Appointees Who Filed Lawsuit (theepochtimes.com)

Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) is hoping to dismantle the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) influence on American academic institutions through Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes.

The congressman earlier this week submitted an amendment (pdf) to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a massive defense bill that authorizes spending levels for defense, seeking to bar the use of funds from the legislation to provide grants to “any academic institution that receives funding from the Chinese Communist Party, the Chinese Government or its affiliates, or hosts a Confucius Institute.”

In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Buck described Confucius Institutes as “an avenue for the Chinese government to spread propaganda on U.S. campuses.”

“The propaganda is misleading and untruthful,” he added. “We as a government should not be funding institutions of higher education that are using and allowing Chinese propaganda to be spread.”

Billed as Chinese language and culture programs, Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes have drawn heightened criticism in the United States over their role in promoting CCP propaganda and stifling academic freedoms on American college campuses. The State Department during the Trump administration designated the Confucius Institute U.S. Center as a foreign mission in recognition of its role as a propaganda agent of the Chinese regime.

Trump administration officials and lawmakers have also piled pressure on universities to disassociate from the institutes, resulting in dozens of closures across the country. There are currently 36 Confucius Institutes in the United States, down from more than 100 in 2017, according to the National Association of Scholars.

“My hope is that the universities will shut down the propaganda machines of one of our adversaries,” Buck said.

The measure was one of four NDAA amendments submitted by Buck to the House Rules Committee due for consideration on Sept. 20, before the bill moves to the House floor.

The congressman, in another proposed amendment, is pushing for a ban on Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok from being downloaded onto U.S. government devices.

“The threat is that the Chinese Communist Party … can use TikTok to gather sensitive information about Americans,” Buck said.

The Trump administration had attempted to ban TikTok last August, saying that the app could be used by the CCP to spy on Americans, but the order was never enforced due to several court orders. President Joe Biden revoked the ban in June, instead directing the Commerce Department to a review of apps with ties to the Chinese regime for national security risks. TikTok, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, has denied allegations that the app poses an espionage risk.

Buck also wants Congress to take a stronger stance against the CCP’s sweeping human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region, where more than a million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities are detained in a network of internment camps.

The current version of the House’s NDAA condemns the CCP’s actions in Xinjiang, but does not label it a genocide. Buck is hoping to change this.

“The term genocide is used in a particular way in international law and is condemned in a particular way in international law,” he said.

“It’s important that the United Nations and our allies of the world understand that the United States Congress believes that the Chinese government is committing genocide.”

The U.S. government and several other Western legislatures have recognized the CCP’s campaign in Xinjiang as genocide.

The congressman called on the House to adopt these amendments, saying that Congress should send a “very strong message to China.”

“We will not tolerate their military activities around the world. We are aware of their activities, we’re concerned about those activities, and we are not going to turn a blind eye,” he added.

“It’s very important in this NDAA that we send a message that Congress is absolutely resolute in recognizing the threat from China,” he said.

Rep. Buck Calls on US Universities to Shut Down CCP ‘Propaganda Machines’ (theepochtimes.com)

Pennsylvania’s Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee voted along party lines on Sept. 15, following a heated debate, to issue subpoenas to Acting Secretary of State Veronica Degraffenreid, requiring her office to provide extensive information about the 2020 general and 2021 primary elections.

Democrats hope to block the subpoenas in court.

“It has been made plain that the Department of State and acting Secretary of State Degraffenreid are not willing to participate in this investigation into the 2020 general election and the 2021 primary election, and how the election code is working after the sweeping changes of act 77 of 2020,” Committee majority Chair Cris Dush, a Republican, said in the opening comments of the meeting.

Act 77, signed by Gov. Tom Wolf in 2019, created a new option to vote by mail without providing a reason, which had previously been required for voters using absentee ballots. It also allowed for a 50-day mail-in voting period, the longest vote-by-mail period in the country; extended the deadline to register to vote to 30 days from 15 days before an election; and extended mail-in and absentee submission deadlines from the Friday before an election, to 8 p.m. on Election Day.

The Sept. 15 subpoenas call for the Department of State to provide the following information to the Senate Republican Caucus by Oct. 1:

All communications between the Department of State and any county election director and other election officials; a copy of every version of directives, guidance, policies, and procedures in effect during specified dates, relating to elections, election systems, mail-in ballot applications, ballots, polling places, or poll watchers; and all training material used to train election workers.

The subpoenas also seek a list of all changes made to voter records; a copy of the certified results for every race or ballot question for both elections; a copy of all audits or reviews of the voting system; and a copy of annual reports submitted to the Department of State in 2021.

Also requested by subpoena are detailed voter lists, including name, date of birth, driver’s license number, last four digits of Social Security number, address, and, in some cases, date of last voting activity. This information was requested for lists of all registered voters, those who voted in the 2020 general election or the May 2021 primary, in-person, by mail-in, absentee, or provisional ballot.

Democratic Opposition

Democratic committee members took issue with the request for driver’s licenses and partial Social Security numbers.

“You’re asking for a lot of information … for nearly 7 million people,” Democratic state Sen. Steven Santarsiero said. “What do you hope to do with that information?”

Dush said the documents are part of any audit that the auditor general would conduct, or anybody who is looking to verify the identity of individuals, their place of residence, and their eligibility to vote.

“There have been questions regarding the validity of people who voted—whether or not they exist. We’re not responding to proven allegations,” Dush said. “We’re investigating the allegations to determine whether or not they are factual.”

If there are problems, Dush said, the legislature has a responsibility to create legislation that will prevent problems in future elections.

Santarsiero grilled Dush on the cost and the name of the vendor that would handle the investigation.

“We are still looking at vendors who will handle the information,” Dush said. “I’m not going to be hiring political activists to do the investigation.”

Democrats protested the subpoenas so vigorously that three times, Dush stopped the meeting as it was broadcast across Pennsylvania.

“This meeting is at ease! Cut the feed,” Dush said, when Democratic state Sen. Vincent Hughes complained about members of the Senate who were “involved in the insurrection” having access to investigation information.

He was referring to Republican state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who has said he attended the Jan. 6 rally and march for President Donald Trump in Washington, and that he followed the law while there.

“We have a public that is concerned about how the last election was conducted,” Republican state Sen. Jake Corman said. “Credibility is important to all of us. When we look at the results of this investigation, one of two things will happen. Either it will give us action items to better our laws, or it will dispel the concerns that people have.”

Ultimately, the committee voted 7–4 to issue the subpoenas.

“I thought it was totally inappropriate,” Minority Chair Anthony Williams, a Democrat, told The Epoch Times. “I felt frustrated by the manner in which this was done and the substance. We don’t know the cost, we don’t know who the vendors will be, we don’t know what they will do with the information.”

The Senate’s Democratic Caucus was expected to file papers in the Commonwealth Court, seeking an injunction to stop the subpoenas, Williams said.

Pennsylvania Senate Committee Spars Over Advancing Election Investigation (theepochtimes.com)

Elizabeth Prelogar may have to recuse herself from landmark affirmative action case

President Joe Biden’s pick to represent his administration before the Supreme Court was given a pass during her Tuesday confirmation hearing on a $10,000 payment that may require her to recuse herself from a landmark challenge to Harvard’s affirmative action program.

The Washington Free Beacon reported in August that Harvard Law School paid solicitor general nominee Elizabeth Prelogar over $10,000 between 2019 and 2020 for teaching and unspecified consulting services, a transaction that seemingly necessitates her recusal from a landmark challenge to the university’s affirmative action program now pending before the High Court. Prelogar has yet to address the apparent conflict in public, but lawmakers didn’t press her about it Tuesday.

The High Court in June asked the Biden administration to weigh in on whether it should hear an appeal from Asian students who allege Harvard’s race-conscious admissions practices are biased against them. The solicitor general’s office will prepare that legal brief and is certain to participate in the case if the justices decide to hear it.

Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office that requires executive branch personnel to step back from matters involving former employers and clients for two years, effective the day of their appointment. According to a financial disclosure obtained by the Free Beacon, Prelogar taught and consulted at Harvard in 2019 and 2020, which means she is subject to the order’s requirements. White House officials can waive the cooling-off period if they determine the public interest requires it.

Apart from the Harvard case, Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) pressed Prelogar about her decision to flip positions in the criminal sentencing case, Terry v. United States. The question in that case was whether the First Step Act made low-level crack cocaine offenders eligible for reduced sentences.

The Trump Justice Department argued that it did not. Prelogar switched sides at the last minute and backed the offenders. In an opinion for eight justices, Justice Clarence Thomas said the offenders weren’t eligible for changed sentences, and he called the result a “straightforward” one. Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote separately to say that the law required the outcome, though she urged Congress to amend the statute.

Prelogar told Cotton she was not ordered to flip positions, but she declined to say whether she consulted with top Justice Department officials about the case. Some speculated that the reversal was the result of political pressure from the White House.

“I was the acting solicitor general at that time and I was responsible for all of our litigation positions,” Prelogar said.

Cotton was one of just two Republicans who questioned Prelogar. Only a couple of senators stuck around for Prelogar’s appearance, which immediately followed a confirmation hearing for two circuit court nominees, Beth Robinson and Jennifer Sung. Most senators left the chamber after the Robinson-Sung hearing, which was significantly more contentious.

The Biden administration is off to an uneven start in the Supreme Court. At Prelogar’s direction, the Justice Department flipped its litigating position and blundered into a 9-0 defeat in a criminal sentencing case in June. And the Court in August rebuffed the department’s attempts to maintain a moratorium on evictions and repeal the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy for asylum seekers, though Prelogar had left the office by that time because of her nomination. She served as the acting solicitor general from January until early August, when she was officially nominated for the post. She’s now on leave from the Justice Department pending confirmation.

If confirmed, Prelogar will set the administration’s legal strategy for the coming Supreme Court term, which includes major cases on abortion, gun rights, and public funding for religious schools.

Lawmakers Silent on Biden Solicitor General Nom’s Financial Conflict (freebeacon.com)

There are many ways in which to divide humanity—the decent and the indecent, the happy and the unhappy, the cowardly and the courageous, those who lead and those who follow, etc.

Two major divisions that are less often noted but highly consequential are between those who want to control others and those who have little interest in controlling others, and between the related categories of those who are comfortable with being controlled by others and those who detest being controlled by others.

Those who seek to control others and those who seek to be controlled by others would seem to be on opposite ends of the political spectrum. But they are not. Both groups are overwhelmingly populated by individuals on the Left.

They currently dominate four of the five English-speaking countries (the United Kingdom may be the one exception). The ease with which Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders have accepted the loss of liberty in their respective countries has been the saddest and most frightening development since the rise of totalitarianism in the early 20th century.

Even sadder and more frightening has been the acceptance of authoritarianism by half of the American people. America has been the beacon of liberty in the world. America was the country to which France gave the Statue of Liberty. America has been, as President Abraham Lincoln characterized it, “the last best hope of Earth.” America’s self-image has been that of a “sweet land of liberty” and of “the land of the free and home of the brave.”

Then came a new virus (one with a survival rate in the 99 percent range for nearly all age groups except older adults who are also very sick), and suddenly, in the name of “public health,” no amount of suppression of liberty, no matter how irrational, has been resisted by the majority of Americans or almost any citizens of the other English-speaking countries.

The citizens of Australia’s biggest states are not allowed to leave their homes for more than a few hours a day, not allowed to congregate with other citizens even outdoors, not allowed even to speak with one another outdoors. For more than a year and a half, Australians have not been allowed to leave their country without the express permission of their government, which will decide whether they have a good enough reason. And, of course, church services are forbidden. Australians, Canadians, and New Zealanders, most of whom are thoroughly secular, have only contempt for their compatriots who wish to attend religious services.

In many arenas of life, most Australians have fewer rights than most Soviet citizens did. Like Australians, Soviet citizens could not leave their country without permission, but they were allowed to leave their homes, to speak with people in the street, and to visit dying relatives in hospitals.

Meanwhile, a large percentage of Americans support a president of the United States who offers government and an enormous number of private-entity workers a choice between getting vaccinated—no matter how young they are, and whether they already had COVID-19—or losing their job. In other words, many Americans support firing any unvaccinated fellow citizens who work for the government, the medical professions, or privately owned companies with 100 or more employees.

Half of America supports a president who portrays the other half of America as an enemy, their fellow Americans as people for whom they should have hatred. No American president has ever given as divisive a speech as the one in which President Joe Biden announced his vaccine mandates (something he denied wanting to impose only nine months ago, in December of 2020). Lincoln, despite the Civil War, a war in which more Americans were killed than in all other American wars combined, called on Americans to have “malice toward none.” Biden, as mean-spirited a president as this country has ever had, has called for malice toward 100 million Americans, declaring, “our patience is wearing thin.”

There is a three-pronged left-wing assault on liberty: in the name of public health (COVID-19); in the name of “anti-racism”; and in the name of saving the planet (climate change). By ratcheting up fear and hysteria, the Left is using each to end individual liberty, including freedom of speech, for the first time in American history.

Will the Left succeed?

Unless Americans fight the Left as hard as the Union fought the slave states, the answer is yes.

Why Freedom Is in Serious Jeopardy (theepochtimes.com)

A professor at Pennsylvania State University is facing multiple misdemeanor charges after he allegedly attacked a student who protested against the advocacy of COVID-19 vaccination mandates.

The incident occurred on Aug. 27, when faculty, students, and community members rallied at the center of Penn State campus and called on the university administrators to immediately issue a vaccine mandate. Student newspaper Daily Collegian reported that the event attracted counterprotesters who held up signs toward the back of the rally attendees.

A video posted to Twitter by Centre County Report appears to show a male, later identified as 36-year-old Walter Oliver Baker, trying to take a sign by force from one of the counterprotesters before eventually pulling him to the ground.

The counterprotester was later identified as Avi Rachlin, the leader of Penn State Resistance, a student group focusing on opposing mask and vaccine mandates on campus. Rachlin was seen escorted away by campus police with blood on his face, likely as the result of the incident.

The campus police record suggests that Baker was charged with simple assault, a second-degree misdemeanor; disorderly conduct, a third-degree misdemeanor; and harassment, a summary offense under Pennsylvania law. The most serious of those charges is the second-degree misdemeanor, with penalties of up to two years in prison and a $5,000 fine upon conviction.

Penn State lists Baker as an assistant professor of English and African American Studies who “specializes in Critical Race Theory.” According to his faculty biography, Baker’s areas of research include “critical ethnic studies, nineteenth-century American literature and culture, critiques of racial capitalism and settler colonialism, and histories of African, Native, Chicanx, and working-class liberation movements.”

A Penn State official confirmed to Daily Collegian that Baker was placed on administrative leave as the investigation proceeds.

Meanwhile, in a previous interview with Daily Collegian, Rachlin said he is not against vaccines as a whole, but rather skeptical about the COVID-19 vaccines, given that they lack long-term data on their safety and efficacy.

“When we take this more locally, the majority of people on this campus are vaccinated,” the junior student told Daily Collegian. “It is a small percentage, but there are thousands of others including myself who have opted not to [get vaccinated] as well.”

Penn State is one of the few remaining Big Ten Conference schools that have yet to put in place any form of COVID-19 vaccine requirement. In an open letter to the campus community, Penn State President Eric Barron made it clear that the public university is not going to jeopardize its funding to issue a vaccine mandate.

“Regulations across the country clearly reflect state-level political realities,” Barron wrote in the Aug. 12 letter. “State funding of our University requires a two-thirds vote of the Pennsylvania legislature, meaning that our funding relies on strong bipartisan support.”

Penn State didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Penn State Assistant Professor Charged With Assaulting Anti-Vaccine Mandate Student (theepochtimes.com)

The online learning environment hastily imposed on students during the ongoing pandemic has accelerated the growth of cancel culture at U.S. universities, according to a new report by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA).

Relying on empirical data taken from student surveys along with insights from faculty and higher education leaders across the nation, the Sept. 8 report “Building a Culture of Free Expression in the Online Classroom” asserts that the sudden, widespread adoption of virtual education in this country worsened the free-speech crisis on college campuses, further limited diversity of viewpoints, and encouraged more self-censorship among students.

“The lifeblood of the liberal arts is debate, dialectic, inquiry, and challenge,” ACTA President Michael Poliakoff said in a statement. ACTA describes itself as “an independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting academic excellence, academic freedom, and accountability at America’s colleges and universities.”

“In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic that has threatened the strength and even the survival of so many institutions, online education moved to the fore. We have seen that it can bless us with access to a vibrant exchange of ideas, but it also has the potential to eliminate the opportunity for growth of character and intellect,” Poliakoff said.

The report comes after an ACTA/College Pulse national survey of more than 2,100 college students in 2019 found that 61 percent stop themselves from expressing opinions “on sensitive political topics in class because of concerns [a] professor might disagree with them” at least “occasionally.”

The fact that it’s so easy to record remote classroom activities makes sharing materials easy, including on social media, and gives students a resource for study, the report states.

This can help students and others, but at the same time creates problems, such as providing “an opportunity for partisans across the political spectrum to exploit the digital records in order to further an agenda that has nothing to do with learning.”

“Audio and video recordings speak directly to our passions and, consequently, can be more effective at rousing anger; and it is easier to misspeak or convey the wrong impression in conversation than by written communication for the simple reason that it happens so much faster,” according to the report.

Higher education hasn’t adapted well to the era of social media, “in which activists can unleash a torrent of negative attention on a university, faculty member, or student within minutes,” and schools are “increasingly forced to engage with vocal activists,” the report states.

Activists willing to tarnish a university’s reputation have an automatic advantage because academics and the schools they work in “are so sensitive to prestige and reputation.”

“Today, universities live in mortal fear of a negative Tweet gone viral. Presidents, deans, and provosts have, to this point, learned a dangerous lesson: that the easiest way to quiet the mob is to give into what it wants—usually by firing someone and denouncing his or her viewpoint—even if that means betraying core academic values,” the report states.

Faculty members can make the environment better by refraining from offering personal, partisan opinions, which often have the effect of making students feel less secure about sharing differing viewpoints, and by avoiding “discussing social and political issues in courses that are not directly related to current events,” the report states.

Remote Learning Advances Cancel Culture, Report Says (theepochtimes.com)

The future darkens as differences between the West and China’s techno-dictatorship rapidly vanish

In 1992, historian Francis Fukuyama wrote that the fall of the Soviet Union signaled “the end of history.”

Capitalism Won Over Marxism

There were nuances to Fukuyama’s theory, but essentially it held that in the battle between Marxism and Capitalism, Marxism had lost. Communist countries from Cuba to China and everywhere in between were all abject economic failures, murderous regimes and horrendous polluters that were absolute hellholes. The top-down, anti-God, oppressive communist system had failed to deliver on its promises in every way.

Conversely, free capitalist nations of every stripe performed relatively well in virtually every way that mattered—in living standards, in freedom for people in all its forms, in technological innovation, artistic and political expression, human rights and even in lowering pollution. All that remained, according to Fukuyama, was the technical management of absorbing the failed Marxist nations into the capitalist global economy.

Making China in Our Image–or Vice Versa?

But a not-so-funny thing happened on the way to the “end of history.” A decade before the fall of Soviet communism, the West—led by America—decided that engaging the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) would not only be a counterweight to the USSR, but would also result in China becoming more like the free, capitalist West.

The thinking was that by giving money, factories, technology and markets to the communist Chinese, we could remake the world’s most populous nation into a society that resembled our own. We thought we were succeeding, but the 1989 slaughter of 10,000 young students in Tiananmen Square ended that delusion.

After that cruel display by the CCP, the United States doubled down on China. First, the United States responded with weak sanctions and then in 2000, invited the CCP into the World Trade Organization. From 1980 to 2020, China went from a backward agrarian nation unable to feed itself, to rivaling the United States in technology, economic power and global influence. Over those years, what China didn’t get legally in terms of intellectual property and technology, it stole from the West, one way or another. That practice continues today.

Social Credit System Emerges

Not too ago, the CCP gained the technological capabilities—from facial recognition, to cameras, recording devices, GPS locators and other items—to create a digital surveillance system to monitor, track, identify, arrest, detain, and dispose of those individuals who may or could possibly pose a threat to the State. China’s social credit system was born.

Then, the CCP bundled their surveillance technology, marketed it as “smart city” technology, and sold it to other authoritarian regimes around the world. The CCP certainly didn’t invent smart tech surveillance, the UK has been among the most surveilled societies on Earth for decades. But China has perfected it.

CCP Virus Brings Totalitarianism

As for censorship and propaganda, the U.S. media and academia fought the Trump administration and its supporters to a degree we hadn’t seen before. Negative events were magnified and even invented out of whole cloth, while any positive ones were simply underreported, distorted, or not reported at all.

But all of these developments were only the precursor to what was to come with the debut of the CCP virus (commonly known as the novel coronavirus) in 2019.

As it turns out, we in America have our own homegrown strain of totalitarians who have been ready to be triggered into action. It has become evident that for America’s Big Tech moguls, great wealth isn’t enough.

They want great power, and indeed, they have it.

Medical Authoritarianism

Sadly, the tech moguls’ coordination with the federal government to censor any ideas that contradict the official narrative regarding the CCP virus in America resembles the relationship between the CCP and the state media in China. Social media companies, along with the federal government are using the CCP virus to justify infringing on our Constitutional rights under the guise of “safety.”

It’s as if the Bill of Rights—which not only guarantees our civil rights and freedoms as individuals, but also restricts the authority of the federal government—has itself succumbed to the virus and has been replaced by medically-induced authoritarianism.

That’s because it has.

The Power of Fear

Sadly, this bothers far too few people in America. Of course, who can argue that relinquishing our rights in the name of medical safety isn’t wise or legal? Very few, because if you do, you’ll be censored. Publicly excoriated. Unemployed. Cancelled.

The reality is that we’ve been spoon-fed fear day in and day out for 18 months now, we all need to accept that we’re too vulnerable, too weak, too afraid to face the world, to face a disease with a 99 percent survival rate, without living under the protection of the State.

And where is China in all of this?

Everywhere.

China Gaining Control Over America

In fact, over the past several years, China has been buying up much of American industry—from agricultural farmland and our largest meat processing plants to AMC movie theaters and major media outlets. The consequences of this are chilling: The CCP is gaining great influence on what we put into our bodies and in our minds. That’s just the kind of power the CCP likes to have.

What’s more, all of these tech giants have made billions of dollars in China and remain deeply connected to the communist regime. Another coincidence. But can anyone really hold that against them? After all, the same could be said of the Biden family.

But where does that leave the American people?

A Return to Empires of Old?

For decades, the oppression of the Chinese people by the CCP was regarded the world over as a dismal historical aberration—a dreary dystopian stepchild of the old Soviet dictatorship. The assumption that it would evolve into a more Western-style country has been proven foolhardy. Rather, current trends show that China is a growing empire with global capabilities and ambitions, disdaining the very Western nations that enabled its rise.

From today’s perspective, perhaps it is the America that is disappearing before our eyes that is the historical aberration. Is history, marked mostly by the brute force and tyranny that defined empire after empire, now returning to form?

CCP Virus Remaking the World in China’s Image (theepochtimes.com)

A Missouri college is denouncing the removal of flags commemorating victims of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks, but it’s not clear if the student identified as removing the flags will be disciplined.

The Young America’s Foundation placed nearly 3,000 flags in the ground at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri to commemorate the victims of the terror attacks. But video footage from Sept. 11 showed a man carrying trash bags filled with the flags, after removing them from where they’d been placed.

Fadel Alkilani was later identified as the man. He’s the student union vice president of finance, the school’s paper reported.

Alkilani admitted to removing the flags in social media posts he later deleted. In one, he wrote that he intended to “protest against American imperialism and the 900,000 lives lost as a result of post 9/11 war.”

Alkilani later took to Instagram to pen a lengthy statement, writing that he “had no intention of removing the flags from the Mudd Field area, and my full protest did not have the chance to be actualized.”

“My planned protest was to place the bags of flags on Mudd field, along with various statistics explaining the human cost of 9/11 in the past 20 years,” he added.

Alkilani indicated that he is under investigation for possibly violating the university’s code of conduct, though he maintains he did not.

The university in an initial statement on Sept. 11 said it was “disappointed to learn about the disruption to the 9/11 display on Mudd Field,” adding, “we condemn the interference.”

“I want to make it very clear that, as an institution, we find the actions of this student to be reprehensible,” Chancellor Andrew Martin wrote on Sunday to students and teachers.

“The removal of the flags impeded the ability of individuals to commemorate the lives lost on 9/11 and to process the trauma of that day. This act was seen as a personal affront by many, at WashU and beyond, and as an affront to the ideals of our institution,” he said.

Martin confirmed that what happened is being investigated.

The school did not respond to an early morning request for comment.

College Republicans President Nick Rodriguez told the student paper that Alkilani’s actions “made a mockery of one of the most somber days in American history” and called for his removal from the student union.

“What does it say to be a top American institution, and have yourself represented by a student leader who has no respect for property, campus traditions, or the remembrance of thousands of lost lives?” he said.

Reagan Steirn, another student, described herself as “livid” about Alkilani removing the flags.

“With a leadership role, someone doing those actions and showing his disrespect will just allow other students on campus to do the same thing, when in this situation it’s just not OK to do that,” she said.

Missouri University Condemns Removal of 9/11 Commemoration Flags by Student (theepochtimes.com)

Art denouncing Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey as the leader of the “TaliBAN” appeared across San Francisco on the eve of September 11th, depicting Dorsey as a bearded mullah.

The art appeared in various locations around the city, including outside city hall, at bus stations, and outside Twitter’s headquarters on Market St. The art references Republican political candidate Laura Loomer and cartoonist and Islam critic Bosch Fawstin, both of whom are banned from the platform.

‘TaliBAN:’ Street Art Denouncing Twitter Censorship Covers San Francisco (breitbart.com)

A visit to Western universities today will lead to one finding a high degree of groupthink in a number of faculties, with barely a conservative thinker insight.

One can only conclude that for years universities have limited their hiring to three types of candidates: left-leaning liberals, socialists, and radical greens.

An outcome of such skewed appointment practices is that faculties are now characterised by closed-shop, progressive-leaning consensus.

Unsurprisingly, courses that are taught and research that is published, is reflective of this consensus. Consequently, universities are not places where students can go to seek diversity of opinion, debate, or education that prepares them for the real world—where opposing ideas clash regularly.

So how did our universities become, as one professor recently described, “social justice factories.”

A book by American philosopher Thomas Kuhn offers us some insight.

Kuhn’s, Structure of Scientific Revolutions explores the notion of “paradigm shifts,” which explores how paradigms—the basic concepts and frames of reference underlying a discipline—can change and be replaced by another.

Importantly, paradigms guide the questions academics are allowed to ask. And in turn, the questions asked will generate a particular type of answer.

Effectively, once a new “understanding of the world” (or paradigm) has gained ascendency within an academic community, “previous understandings” are pushed out, sometimes organically.

Those outside universities can see a shift has taken place and wonder how the progressive paradigm gained ascendance. Those inside universities, meanwhile, witnessed the paradigm shift step by step.

A slow Fabian-style build-up occurred in university committees over the years. However, the process of removing alternative paradigms became easy after progressives became the majority on committees, including the peer-review system, academic journals, and publishers.

Most of those who ended up pushing alternative ideas out of their faculties did not consciously see themselves doing so. Instead, a bubble of progressive groupthink simply emerged because it seemed “natural” to appoint like-minded colleagues.

After all, since it was “comfortable” inhabiting a bubble where everybody’s worldview was broadly the same, why not recruit those who thought like you?

Nevertheless, there was no need to purge conservatives anyway because their subsequent “intellectual isolation” (no like-minded folks to talk to) meant most removed themselves over time, while those who did stay were simply marginalised.

Selection committees could be stacked to the point that non-progressives would be denied real decision-making roles (by colleagues who saw them as “unsound”). Conservatives could be starved of resources (by peer-review processes dominated by progressives).

Finally, committees numerically dominated by progressives meant conservatives had no chance of impacting on policy.

But a big shift occurred when Donald Trump became the U.S. president.

The mood on campuses was transformed into one that was far more aggressive.

On a campus in far-away Australia, I watched the mood change from disbelief, shock, fear, and finally anger.

A few days after the initial shock, what emerged was war-talk. Trump’s election galvanised university progressives.

They saw Trump as an existential threat because academics intuitively realised they were part of the “swamp.”

They knew they contributed to training those in the “swamp,” that they relied upon government funding for their jobs, and that their career paths often involved moving back and forth between the university sector and government jobs.

Even in far-off Australia, Trump seriously threatened their world because any POTUS sets the tone for policy across the Western world.

So progressive academics naturally became opposed to Trump. They closed ranks and saw their universities as bastions to be protected.

But defensiveness soon evolved into a vision of universities as sites from which war against Trump (and other right-wingers) could be mobilised.

This attitude was strengthened by a wave of American academics moving to Australia who deemed themselves “refugees from Trump.”

From then on, the process of making sure faculties were “progressive” became more conscious.

Academics became less tolerant of other ideas and more “missionary” in their approach. A push for more diversity emerged … which effectively leaned towards the hiring of more progressives.

One campaign saw academics mobilise against the creation of the Ramsey Centre for Western Civilisation.

But curiously, despite the opposition to “right-wing” or conservative viewpoints, when one speaks with a progressive and listens to them, it becomes clear that their point-of-view is effectively a construct of myths about what the “right-wingers” supposedly stands for.

And because of the decades-long paradigm shift, we now have a whole generation of academics who have effectively never heard an academic argument in favour of conservatives, right-wingers, traditionalists, or nationalists.

Hence, they do not know what these positions stand for. Unsurprisingly, the vacuum created by this ignorance has instead been filled with negative myths of racism, authoritarianism, fascism, white supremacism, traditionalism, colonialism, and so on.

These mythologies about conservatives are enough to terrify anyone.

So unsurprisingly, progressive academics have positioned themselves into a “just,” wider struggle—along with progressive politicians, journalists, and activists—to push back and defeat the opposing view. The real diversity of opinion, meanwhile, withered in the face of such odds.

The Gradual Takeover of Universities by ‘Woke’ Consensus (theepochtimes.com)

Planning, according to the American author Alan Lakein, involves “bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.” If you want to buy a new house in five years, it helps to start saving today. To have a thriving economy going forward, it helps to have well-trained, highly-skilled graduates. That’s good news for China.

Last month, the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET), a think tank based in Washington, published a rather telling report. When it comes to the production of STEM PhD graduates, as the authors note, China is fast outpacing the United States. For the uninitiated, STEM refers to the “integrated teaching and learning” of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. In other words, it involves a deep understanding of the very subjects that make our lives possible, and the very subjects that are vital for the progression of humanity. Since the “mid-2000s,” as the report notes, “China has consistently graduated more STEM PhDs than the United States, a key indicator of a country’s future competitiveness in STEM fields.”

The gap between China and the United States, we’re told, “will likely grow wider in the next five years.” Chinese universities, once known for rampant plagiarism and questionable teaching practices, are most definitely improving. The authors findings “suggest the quality of doctoral education in China has risen in recent years, and that much of China’s current PhD growth comes from high-quality universities.” If current enrollment patterns continue on this current trajectory, the authors project that “by 2025 Chinese universities will produce more than 77,000 STEM PhD graduates per year compared to approximately 40,000 in the United States.” With more than “three-quarters of Chinese doctoral graduates” specializing in STEM fields, China’s “robust” education system threatens to undermine the “long-term economic and national security” of the United States.

Why is this report important, and why is it a must read for the Biden administration?

From cancer detecting software to virus protection software, drone strikes to drone deliveries, space travel to air travel, modern society is inextricably linked with STEM subjects. This is not good news for the United States, where a precipitous drop in educational standards can be seen in elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and elite universities. A number of American educators consider math to be inherently racist. Some people argue that math needs to confront its “white, patriarchal past.” What does this even mean? Empiricism has become the bête noire of many a leftist. Science is not racist. Although science can be carried out by racists, it’s important to make the distinction. A car can be driven by a xenophobe, but we don’t call the car xenophobic. To continue this brief exercise in stating the obvious, math is not racist. Without math, nothing is possible. More importantly, no one gets paid. Regardless of a person’s skin color, we all benefit from math. In a recent piece for Quillette, the authors—three mathematicians “who came to the United States as young immigrants”—describe the ways in which “the nationwide effort to reduce racial disparities, however well-intentioned” only serve to weaken “the connection between merit and scholastic admission.” When everything, including math and science, is viewed through the prism of race, the country suffers.

The trio lament “the deplorable state” of the K-12 “math education system.” A pitiful number of American public-school children, they argue, are prepared for careers in STEM. Not surprisingly, this leaves the United States all too “dependent on a constant inflow of foreign talent, especially from mainland China, Taiwan, South Korea, and India.” As “curricula increasingly shift from actual mathematics knowledge to courses about social justice and identity politics,” expect this trend to continue.

The United States is home to a number of outstanding universities. However, it’s little use having such extraordinary establishments if they’re not being used to breed extraordinary minds. If the United States is to have any chance of competing with China, serious changes are needed, and they’re needed fast.

Sadly, the only changes we’re seeing are harmful ones. If in doubt, let me point you to Oregon. Governor Kate Brown recently signed Senate Bill 744 into law. For the next five years, all Oregonian high school students who wish to graduate will be exempt from having to demonstrate proficiency in the areas of reading, writing, and mathematics to graduate. The bill, according to reports, was introduced in order to help “Oregon’s Black, Latino, Latina, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Pacific Islander, Tribal, and students of color.” One wonders how dumbing down graduation requirements helps anyone.

Many progressive-minded educators are determined to “reimagine” the way subjects like math and science are taught in schools. But they don’t need to be “reimagined.” They need to be left alone and they need to be taught properly. The United States is currently ranked 31st in math literacy out of 79 countries. China, meanwhile, ranks 1st in mathematical proficiency. Now, with the average IQ of American children continuing to fall, and the dumbing down of education in full swing, expect the proficiency gap to widen. Without enough STEM graduates, how is the United States expected to compete with China? This is an important question that requires immediate answers.

Who Benefits From the Dumbing Down of American Education? China (theepochtimes.com)

Gov. Ron DeSantis lashed out at Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate as well as his overall handling of COVID-19 while accusing the president of avoiding “responsibility for anything.”

Speaking to reporters last week after Biden imposed vaccine mandates on businesses with more than 100 employees as well as most federal employees and contractors, he said that the president was “obviously referring to” the Florida Republican as well as other red-state governors in remarks criticizing them for blocking other pandemic-related requirements in schools and businesses.

“Well I would just say generally when you’re taking action that’s unconstitutional, that threatens the jobs of the people in my state, many, many thousands of jobs, I’m standing for them,” DeSantis said in response to a question about the issue from a reporter.

“We’re going to protect their jobs against federal overreach. This is a guy who criticizes the state of Florida for protecting parents’ rights,” DeSantis continued.

NEW – Florida Gov. DeSantis says Biden’s vaccine mandates are “not based on science” and “will ultimately lose in court”.pic.twitter.com/qmFzMiehSa

— Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) September 10, 2021

“He says school boards should be able to eliminate parents’ rights and force five-year-old kids to wear masks all day. That’s what he thinks is appropriate government,” he added.

“Yet, here he comes from Washington, D.C. instituting an unprecedented mandate, which even his own people have acknowledged in the past is not constitutional. That’s not leadership.”

The Florida governor also criticized Biden’s overall pandemic policies.

“And I think the problem I have with Joe Biden, more than anything, this guy doesn’t take responsibility for anything,” DeSantis said.

“He’s always trying to blame other people, blame other states. This is a guy that promised when he ran for president, that he would shut down the virus,” he noted.

“If you look now there’s 300% more cases in this country today than a year ago when we had no vaccines at all. So his policies are not working.”

“He’s doubling down on things that are going to be very destructive for the livelihoods of many, many Americans, and obviously going to be destructive to our constitutional system and the rule of law,” DeSantis went on.

“And so these are times when you believe in that constitution, you got to stand up. And obviously the substantive issues’ important because there are places that are going to toss aside people who’ve worked, they’ve worked this whole time throughout COVID, now all of a sudden they should be tossed aside? They were working when nobody had vaccine, you don’t know their history, you don’t know why they’re making decisions that they’re making,” the governor added.

“Many of these people have already recovered and they have immunity. The idea that somehow you have somebody that gets a Johnson and Johnson, they can work, but someone that’s got natural immunity somehow can’t?” he said.

“You know, at the end of the day, we don’t live with a one-person rule in this country. We live in a constitutional system, which people’s rights are respected, but particularly in this juncture, their livelihoods and their jobs have to be protected,” added the governor.

DeSantis Blasts Biden’s Failures: ‘This Guy Doesn’t Take Responsibility For Anything’ (trendingpolitics.com)

Almost 2,000 bikers have rallied to honor a Humphreys County toddler who lost his life in the Tennessee floods. The 2-year-old who adored motorbikes had a procession, where members gathered to escort the little boy’s hearse to the funeral home, making the sendoff an absolutely emotional one.

Bikers congregated in downtown Dickson, while another group met in Clarksville with their Yamahas and Harley-Davidsons humming in anticipation. Many had never met the boy, Kellen Burrow Vaughn; but they simply wanted to pay their respects.

“They only asked for bikers to come and ride behind the hearse, but they got so much more,” attendee Donna Steel Magnolia Douglas-Williams wrote on Facebook, sharing photos of the humongous turnout.

Kellen’s grandfather Allen Burrow described his “always happy” grandson to the Tennessean as being much like himself. “Just every time you hear a bike, you look around, see who it is, see if you know him,” he explained. “He just loved seeing bikes.”

Burrow—a member of Tennessee’s Forbidden Shields motorcycle group alongside his wife, Mandy—took to Facebook to ask fellow bikers to escort Kellen to his final resting place. His close friend Mark Rose was heartbroken to learn of Kellen’s passing, and took it upon himself to spread the word.

Rose went live on Facebook on Aug. 29. By the next morning, his post had amassed over 1,000 views, traveling fast via the hashtag #RideForKellen, a tag dreamed up by social media campaign contributor Alicia Schnepf and her 14-year-old daughter.

“At this point, I knew it was going to be huge,” Rose told The Epoch Times. With Burrow’s and Kellen’s mom’s permission, he started making calls, and support gathered quickly.

Kellen was ripped from his mother’s arms by floodwater currents on Aug. 21 outside the family’s Waverly apartment. His mom, Brittney EleBri McCord, and his stepfather, Kalaub, fought hard and saved their other four children, WKRN reported.

Tragically, Kellen’s body was retrieved days later, making him one of the flood victims who lost their lives.

Dickson’s Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and the ladies auxiliary were the first people Rose contacted to ask for support at Kellen’s memorial, followed by the city police, the sheriff’s office, Taylor Funeral Home—where Kellen’s service was held—and several local businesses.

“This message shows me there’s still so much good in the world,” said Schnepf. “We literally shut down Dickson for this child, which is absolutely amazing.”

The VFW ladies’ auxiliary arranged food, Rose told The Epoch Times, while he set up sound, lighting, and video, assigning street corners to volunteer guides to direct and count attending bikers. He credited the “collective effort” for the day’s success.

Initially counting 770 bikers, Rose estimated that the eventual turnout was closer to 2,000. “It was incredible! The biker community showed up and showed out,” he said.

Douglas-Williams—who had lost an infant herself and went on to foster 43 children, adopting 2—pledged, “Anything for a child. It’s so hard to face … Love heals some of the wounds, but you never forget.”

Among those blown away by Kellen’s memorial was Deputy Mike Webb, a 40-year law enforcement veteran of Humphreys County.

“It was a national news story that this little boy likes bikes,” said Webb. “His family wanted a turnout. Well, he got a turnout.”

Watch the video:

Play Video

(Courtesy of Donna Steel Magnolia Douglas-Williams)

Almost 2,000 Bikers ‘Show Up and Show Out’ to Escort Hearse of 2-Year-Old Flood Victim (theepochtimes.com)

During the 2020-2021 school year, most students attended their schooling from home on their computers. This allowed parents, who were forced to work at home due to the Covid-19 pandemic, to get an inside look at what is being taught in our classrooms.

Mrs. Gonzalez is one such parent. She noticed her child was being taught the Islamic faith against her wishes. When she emailed the teacher about this and requested her child be exempt from this specific course due to her religious values, she was denied. Undeterred, Mrs. Gonzalez took this up to the school principal, Suzzete Ruiz. Gonzalez recounted a fascinating conversation.

Recently, concerns over “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) being taught in schools across America have been publicly spoken about; However, there has been little attention given to another controversial topic that is being forced onto students in America: Islam.

Here’s what Mrs. Gonzalez told the school on 10/19/20:

“So, to hear Islamic teaching is being taught and it is part of the Miami Dade schoolboard curriculum, I find, is not aligned with ethical and moral values that we have here in the United States of America. Islamic teachings and religion target the Jewish and Christian community and anybody that does not follow their faith and is not a Muslim. They behead there, they target homosexuality, there’s about 52 terrorist organizations from Islam. ‘Iran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism,’ said Secretary Pompeo. Just this weekend a Paris teacher was beheaded for teaching. So, I whole-heartedly understand that yes, this is given to you and you’re supposed to teach it, but everybody has moral values and to teach something that is so extreme… and they have no tolerance for anything else, I find troubling. Just because somebody says ‘Hey, go walk over there’ you’re going to walk over there? No. I have a very difficult time with this being taught to my son. That’s why I had asked Mrs. Fernadez [her son’s teacher] if my son can be exempt from these teachings because of my culture, my religion, and my moral and ethical beliefs which do not align with Islam. “

Mrs. Gonzalez, a Jewish mother of a child who attends a charter school at Somerset Silver Palms in Miami Dade, Florida, was faced with the tough choice of having her kid fail a class or learn about Islam, a religion and political ideology that is against her beliefs and Jewish values. Previously, her child was in public school; however, due to the curriculum, she chose to send him to a charter school where he can learn reading, writing, mathematics, history, etc., and not about Islam or Critical Race Theory. She was extremely surprised when her child came home with “Islam” on the course syllabus.

Here is one of the packets on Islam that was given to her child.

Mrs. Gonzalez immediately addressed this with her child’s teacher, Ms. Medley, who informed her that her child could choose not to log in for this part of the course, but he would subsequently fail the class. This led Gonzalez to urge a further discussion with the school principal and her son’s teacher.

During this discussion, some shocking statements were made by the school principal. According to Mrs. Gonzalez, Principal Ruiz told her:

“We as administrators, we follow a curriculum that is FUNDED by the State and Federal government as a charter school. And we are following a curriculum that is given to us through the public school system.”

The school principal, Suzette Ruiz, admits that Florida’s education system is funded by the State and is forcing kids to learn about Islam, whether they like it or not. These are state-sponsored religion classes promoting religious beliefs, which is specifically against the law.

According to the ADL:

“While it is constitutionally permissible for public schools to teach about religion, it is unconstitutional for public schools and their employees to observe religious holidays, promote religious belief, or practice religion. School officials and parents must be extremely careful not to cross the line between “the laudable educational goal of promoting a student’s knowledge of and appreciation for this nation’s cultural and religious diversity, and the impermissible endorsement of religion forbidden by the Establishment Clause.”

It is legal to teach about religion, but, with the packets provided below, it’s clear that these Florida educators are teaching the religion of Islam, not about it. It is done in a sneaky way to deceive the eyes of those who do not know much about Islam. (I will provide examples of this later.)

As mentioned by the student’s parent, Principal Ruiz clearly stated that her opinions on the matter make no difference. They are told to teach about Islam in the classroom, and they will abide by the rules set by the state of Florida.

Mrs. Gonzalez had many valid points while disagreeing with the school principal on the fairness of the situation. One should not be forced to learn what goes against their ideology, morals, ethics, or beliefs. The school isn’t religious in nature. An alternative lesson is an appropriate course of action in this case; however, the school didn’t seem to understand that. In fact, the school principal doesn’t seem to fully grasp what she is forcing her staff to teach. Principal Ruiz went on to talk about why it doesn’t matter what she thinks or knows, telling Mrs. Gonzalez,

I understand that, but I don’t make the rules in the state of Florida. And the state of Florida, Mrs. Gonzales, they require us to pass the benchmarks for these in order to take this course. My suggestion to you would be when the Islam pieces are taught, not to log in but he is going to fail those assignments.

Mrs. Gonzalez provided me with the pacing guides and assignments that were given to her child:

The-Rise-of-Islam

Muslim-Culture

Further statements were made by Principal Ruiz, who, according to Mrs. Gonzalez, made it overly clear that her “hands were tied behind her back,” the course must be taught, if Mrs. Gonzalez pulls her child out of the course, he will fail, and that they were only there to teach the facts.

We will have to agree to disagree. You have a right to keep him out of class on the days that that topic is being addressed, it’s fair if that’s how you feel. The truth of the matter is my hands are tied. I am an educator providing facts.

Ultimately, Mrs. Gonzalez chose to have her son exempt from the class with a failing grade. She felt that she went to every avenue she could to correct this situation; no one listened. She then told me her story after the school year, and I am happy to tell it for her.

While taking a closer look at this controversial lesson plan, here are a few excerpts from the packets Mrs. Gonzalez’s child received and some of the “facts” being taught to our youth.

To the unknowing eye, this seems like it is just a simple fact about those who practice Islam. It is not.

The reality is, the Qur’an teaches Muslims to give kaffirs (non-believers) three options: convert, die, or if you are a Christian or Jew, you can pay jizya (a tax.) If you choose the third option, you are “protected” and become a dhimmi (a second-class citizen). None of this has to do with sharing the same beliefs. If the Muslims conquer your land in war, they then enslave those they conquer. This can be seen even today in places like Nigeria where non-Muslims are being hunted down and slaughtered by the government backed Islamists.

Read the Qur’an passages here:

“Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day, nor hold that forbidden which hath been forbidden by Allah and His Messenger, nor acknowledge the religion of Truth, (even if they are) of the People of the Book, until they pay the Jizya with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued” (Qur’an 9:29).

Another excerpt in the curriculum blatantly lies about what Islam does to those who choose to leave Islam. It also lies about the meaning of jihad, warfare against non-Muslims.

Those who leave the Islamic faith are considered apostles, and the Qur’an mandates that practicing Muslims punish those who commit apostasy by killing them.

Say, “The truth is from your Lord”: Let him who will believe, and let him who will, reject (it): for the wrong-doers We have prepared a Fire whose (smoke and flames), like the walls and roof of a tent, will hem them in: if they implore relief they will be granted water like melted brass, that will scald their faces, how dreadful the drink! How uncomfortable a couch to recline on! (Qur’an 18:29).

Muslims who believed in the faith and then reject it will be subject to an enclosed fire. If they cry for relief, they will melt brass and pour it on their face.

This is just another deliberate misinterpretation of the Qur’an that is being taught to children in Florida

The packet deceptively says Jihad means “struggle against evil.” Here is what the Qur’an says:

“When the sacred months have passed, slay the idolaters wherever you find them, and take them, and confine them, and lie in wait for them at every place of ambush.” Qur’an 5

“O Prophet! Strive hard against the unbelievers and the hypocrites, and be firm against them. Their abode is Hell, an evil refuge indeed” (Qur’an 9:73). 

“When you meet the unbelievers in the battlefield, strike off their heads and, when you have laid them low, bind your captives firmly”(Qur’an 47:4).

“Prophet, make war on the unbelievers and the hypocrites and deal rigorously with them. Hell shall be their home: an evil fate” (Qur’an 9:73).

“Those who believe fight in the cause of Allah and those who reject the faith fight in the cause of evil: so fight ye against the friends of Satan” (Qur’an 4:76).

In his book “The Politically Incorrect Book of Islam,” Robert Spencer explains what Islam’s Prophet Muhammad, the most perfect Muslim, had to say about Jihad.

“… there is no mistaking the centrality of violent jihad in Islam. In fact, the Prophet of Islam repeatedly emphasized that there was nothing better his followers could do than engage in jihad warfare. When a Muslim asked him to name the “best deed” one could do, besides the act of becoming a Muslim, the Prophet responded, ‘To participate in Jihad (holy fighting) in Allah’s  Cause.’ He explained that “to guard Muslims from infidels in Allah’s Cause for one day is better than the world and whatever is on its surface.” For ‘a journey is undertaken for jihad in the evening or morning merits a reward better than the world and all that is in it.’”

In the same book, Robert Spencer quotes a few hadiths, a collection of traditional sayings by the Prophet Muhammad, explaining the act of jihad further.

In another hadith repeated several times in the collection of traditions that Muslims consider most reliable, Muhammad says that he has been “commanded to fight against people” until they become Muslim and that those who resist risk forfeiting their lives and property: “The Prophet spoke clearly about his own responsibility to wage war for the religion he had founded: ‘I have been ordered (by Allah) to fight against the people until they testify that none has the right to be worshipped but Allah and that Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah, and perform As-Salat (prayers) and give Zakat, so if they perform all that, then they save their lives and properties from me except for Islamic laws, and their reckoning (accounts) will be with (done by) Allah.’”

Imagine Mrs. Gonzales’ shock to see these religious teachings, picked out of the Quran, on the syllabus and taught to her child during Jewish holidays.

You might be asking yourself, how is this happening in Florida?

Upon further investigation, the state of Florida gets its lesson plans from a company called C-Palms, whose founder, Rabieh Razzouk, attended Lebanese American Univerity from 1995 to 1998. Razzouk has programs in Lebanon as well. The coincidence isn’t surprising. Lebanon is known to push Islamic jihad on its students and lies about Islam given that the country is under the control of Hezbollah Islamic terrorists.

Florida is sponsoring religious teachings in our children’s schools. Teachers refuse to question the curriculum and have a profound lack of knowledge and understanding of what they teach. No child should be forced to learn religion in school, especially one that does not align with our American values. Florida and the teachers within the state have some explaining to do for their negligence and indoctrination of children into the violent political ideology of Islam.

EXCLUSIVE: Florida Funding Islamic Religious Teachings As Schools Fail Students Who Object – Loomered

A new online education platform, American Scholars, launches on Sept. 10, promising courses on history, economics, law, and other subjects, aimed at helping parents and students to inoculate themselves against the woke ideology currently spreading through schools.

In addition to courses, the platform offers a discussion forum that will aid parents and students to discuss educational issues as well as organize their activities.

The platform marks itself as “pro-American,” rejecting the woke political zeitgeist moving through academia that is based on quasi-Marxist ideas such as Critical Race Theory (CRT). The virtual courses are led by established lecturers from American universities and cover areas salient to the current cultural climate.

The project was started by Matthew Pohl, a former admissions officer at the University of Pennsylvania. He saw traditional colleges as needlessly expensive as well as intellectually skewed by woke ideology. He founded American Scholars as an antidote to both, he previously told The Epoch Times.

For chief academic officer, Pohl picked Michael Rectenwald, a retired liberal studies professor at New York University. Rectenwald was de facto pushed out of his teaching job after he started criticizing the woke. He’s since become an authority on corporate socialism, a convergence of government and business interest in establishing a kind of totalitarian, socialist rule.

So far, he’s picked four lecturers to create courses for American Scholars. He’s also personally working on one that will cover CRT.

The subscription will start at $9 a month with the first several courses scheduled for release on September 10. The offerings should grow over time as the platform gains traction, Rectenwald told The Epoch Times via email.

He stressed the discussion forum is “an important piece” of the project, describing it as “a kind of non-leftist Reddit, if you will, where parents and other concerned citizens can discuss the challenges they face with K–12 and higher education, and where they can organize to fight back against Critical Race Theory, socialist indoctrination, and other pernicious ideologies.”

Morality Key to a Free Market

The first course on the platform is in economics and delves into the difference between free market and command economies. It was produced by Robin McCutcheon, associate professor of economics at Marshall University in West Virginia.

“The goal of my economics sessions is for students to self-reflect on what they see around them (in the world today) and decide for themselves how they would like to direct their own life,” she told The Epoch Times via email.

McCutcheon joined American Scholars because she saw it offering academic freedom which she couldn’t find at mainstream universities, she said.

She found universities “replete with people who have been trained and believe in socialist, progressive, leftist … all the words necessary to define an ideology of totalitarian, top-down power and control, where the elite hold absolute power/control and the rest-of-us are considered plebs/serfs.”

A society based on individual liberties and free commerce is superior to a socialist one, the professor said, but she felt the academic world has been hostile to dissenting ideas.

“Most of the elitist intelligentsia do not even know they are on the side of tyranny; they do not see it either in themselves or any colleague who espouses the same kind of philosophy,” she said.

“But when someone comes around that does not espouse their philosophy, not only do they recognize an enemy, they set out to destroy them.”

Through her course, she’d like to engage students in “a multi-step process of self-reflection combined with recognition of their own actions in the market.”

In contrast to a top-down system, McCutcheon sees the free-market economy as the expression of the morality of all its participants.

“If you have a moral code (or code of ethics) that prescribes honesty in dealing with people, then your outcomes and consequences are more probable to be good ones. If you have a moral code (or code of ethics) that prescribes lying and cheating when dealing with people, your outcomes and consequences are more probable to be less than desirable. The outcomes in any market reflect the moral code of its participants,” she said.

“Therefore, the type of market wherein participants hold a very high standard of moral code and ethics, will be the one with the best outcomes where the maximum amount of freedom is to be available for each participant. We call that kind of market the free-market. Honesty, kindness, hard work, quality of product or service, are some of the characteristics of people one sees in a free-market economy. A higher standard of living is possible for all who work to achieve it.”

A person subscribing to “lying and cheating” will have a hard time participating in voluntary exchange, in her view.

“It won’t take very long for your customers to realize what kind of person you are, and they will avoid doing business with you,” she said about people who lie and cheat.

She sees America slipping deeper and deeper into a command economy and considers morality as a key to moving back to a free-market one.

“When students can recognize that a free-market is the polar opposite to a controlled market, and that the underlying character of the people involved in each is the mechanism that defines the market, most people will need to look within themselves to see what kind of moral code they hold dear,” she said.

As her next step, she said she’d like to produce a course on personal finance.

American History

American Scholars will offer a course on American history produced by Aharon Zorea, associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin Colleges.

He sees the subject as “most often abused (or corrupted) by the influence of more political agendas,” he told The Epoch Times via email.

“We often hear about horror stories of students being told that our country is racist, sexist, and built on capitalist oppression—but we do not often have the counter arguments to explain why those stories are wrong, and why they misrepresent (and abuse) American history,” he said.

Zorea’s course aims to provide just such arguments.

“Everyone will benefit from a systematic discussion of American history from its founding to the present day,” the history professor said. “We not only provide the broader context to explain some of the more notorious ‘myths’ about American history that are being in schools today, but we also provide the tools and methods to train our students to pursue their own research to combat these corrupted narratives head-on.”

He already has about 200 video segments planned with more on the drawing board.

“I start off with some basic historical themes, and provide some examples of how these themes are misinterpreted by current history curriculum. Then, as I lay that foundation, I will slowly fill in the gaps,” Zorea said.

In the future, he’d like to add courses on the History of Western Civilization, World History, Ancient Civilization, and “other special topics,” he said.

Internet and Freedom

Another course on the Internet and the First Amendment is being produced by Lisa Nelson, associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh.

The course focuses on “the regulatory framework of the internet that has ironically given rise to censorship when we had originally hoped that it would produce an open and free internet,” she told The Epoch Times via email.

She’s been doing research on the topic of social media and censorship but felt frustrated about the difficulty to discuss it openly in academia.

“In a university setting it is becoming increasingly hard to talk about a variety of subjects because of the political divide that exists,” Nelson said.

Journey of Media

Michael Nevradakis had been until recently a media and communications instructor at the American College of Greece. He’s producing a course on media history, “tracing the development of communication technologies through the ages and up to the present time, along with the controversies, fears, and hopes that accompanied the introduction of each of these technologies into society,” he told The Epoch Times via email.

“We live in a world that is not only increasingly media saturated, but also a world where more and more of our daily lives, activities, and the information and knowledge that we receive and are exposed to, are mediated through new technological platforms,” he said.

“These platforms, in turn, have amassed what some would say is an extreme amount of power, control, and influence over our public discourse. … In such a world, attaining a strong degree of media literacy is vital, as is gaining an understanding of how the media landscape operates and how we got to where we are today.”

Nevradakis, too, has a negative experience with the current climate at universities.

“I’ve personally dealt with a ridiculous set of obstacles at one of the academic institutions I’ve worked for previously; obstacles which seemed to have nothing to do with my academic or scholarly work or my professionalism,” he said, without going into further detail.

Target for Attack

All the academics acknowledged that joining the project can make them targets of attacks.

“Honestly, this part of participating in American Scholars frightens me, but it also makes it important to do,” Nelson said.

“I lived for a time in the USSR and I saw how individuals were forced to quiet their criticism and conform to political pressures to keep their family and livelihoods safe. I never thought I would see the day when America is reaching this point and I believe we have to start challenging the constraints that are being put on us to conform and to be quiet.”

McCutcheon acknowledged facing disagreement as “a given.”

“Frankly, I don’t want all people to agree with what I say—I’d rather they use their logical thinking skills a little more to reason through ideas, rather than tear them apart because they don’t like them,” she said. “I would like more talk and less griping.”

She said she expects the backlash to backfire.

“I’m confident in my personal and professional foundations that anyone trying to attack me will find themselves exposed and vulnerable to criticism directed back at them,” she said.

Nevradakis expressed a similar sentiment, expecting personal attacks on himself to misfire.

“You can either prove that you are, in fact, as tolerant and open as you probably claim yourself to be, or you can prove your ‘opponents’ correct by engaging in a campaign of ostracization against someone who you apparently consider to be, for whatever reason, a threat,” he said. “The choice is yours, but on my end, I am used to such battles—and I am used to winning them.”

Zorea said he’s so far “still encouraged to develop personal research projects” at his university, but acknowledged pressure may mount if American Scholars receives substantial attention and he thus won’t be able to fly “under the radar” anymore.

“You can never predict the extent to which the dominant culture of radicalized activists might go to silence the viewpoints that they disagree with. Yet, we have to speak and teach as we are called to do,” he said.

“We will just have to see what comes of it. I am hoping that our parallel institutions will be able to sustain themselves without the dependency of the dominant social and cultural gatekeepers. That should help a great deal. If we receive support from our viewers, then we really cannot be ‘canceled.’”

Pro-America Group Launches Non-Woke Learning Platform, Forum (theepochtimes.com)

California once was run by conservatives and mostly centrist Democrats.

True paleo-liberal governors like Pat Brown greatly expanded the welfare state. But they also believed in pushing integration and building freeways, dams, aqueducts, and power plants, while preventing forest fires, directing the mentally ill into state hospitals, and ensuring that the state enhanced the housing, timber, oil and gas, nuclear and agricultural industries.

So, why would anyone deliberately destroy that heritage?

Why allow California to have the highest aggregate basket of income, sales, property, and capital gains taxes in the nation, the highest gas and power prices in the continental United States, and nearly the worst schools and infrastructure? California also has the country’s largest populations of homeless, welfare recipients, and undocumented immigrants.

Remember that the left wing of the Democratic Party became hyper-wealthy through globalization and the tech revolution. Coastal universities such as Caltech, Stanford, UC Berkeley, USC, and UCLA became global nexuses of millions who flocked to California to learn business, engineering, science, math, and the professions.

University endowments were no longer measured in the hundreds of millions of dollars but in the billions.

Hollywood and professional sports now had a lucrative worldwide audience of billions.

The market capitalization of Silicon Valley was to be measured in the trillions of dollars, as the world bought iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks to do Google searches, tweet, and use Facebook. The result was the greatest concentration of wealth in such a small space in the history of civilization.

Within 40 years, California had created a new plutocracy of Eloi, whose wealth exempted them from all worries about the mundane problems of the distant and despised Morlock others.

The wealthier the long thin line from San Diego to Berkeley grew, the more the overseers felt they were nearing Utopia, at least in their own lives.

The new Democratic Party liked to redistribute money for the poor and so obeyed the orders from the rich. But they ignored old-fashioned infrastructure that once had allowed the middle class to drive quickly and safely, ensured them water during droughts, curbed their forest fires, and allowed their children to leave school competitively educated.

Reaction, not prevention, was the new mantra. Govs. Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom failed to thin out forests, build water storage, and allow affordable housing.

When those problems exploded, they reacted by citing climate change or some other bogeyman as the culprit rather than government dereliction. They preferred utopian high-speed rail solutions to pragmatic problem solving. And they ensured that none of their crackpot ideas ever affected themselves.

Why worry about affordable housing and electricity for the masses when all the right people had the means to live in the right ZIP codes without much worry about turning on the air conditioning or heat, since there were rarely any scorching days or frigid nights in coastal paradise?

Why worry about immigration when labor became even cheaper?

Why worry that California public schools had sunk near the bottom of state ranks, when there were more prestigious prep schools than ever on the coast?

And why worry about producing lumber for houses, irrigated crops for food, or oil for gasoline, when the right Californians would always have the money to import their hardwood floors, arugula, and fuel from grubby others far away who would make or grow what was needed?

Yet ideas eventually have consequences. Soon, even the left-wing paradise on the coast would be infected by the anarchy the rich had created for less important people elsewhere.

The homeless did not just camp on the streets of Fresno, but in Venice Beach and on Market Street in San Francisco.

Fires began to smoke out not just the brush of the inland foothills, but near-saintly Lake Tahoe, home to the right skiers and the chosen shore owners.

Thieves even smashed the windows of Bay Area BMWs and Volvos.

The current California recall election is a choice between Gavin Newsom, who embodies the woke, old-boy privilege of the Bay Area, and an alternative direction. Newsom is the epitome of the virtue-signaling elite who patronize the poor and drive out the despised middle class.

Gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder did not give us the current California. Indeed, he spent most of his life warning us where Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, and the rarified society of the coastal corridor was taking the state.

A careening California is heading for a colossal train wreck. Voters will have to pick between the incompetent engineer snoring at the wheel or the private passenger who rushes into cab to get the engine back on track.

Recall Election Could Reverse the California Ideology (theepochtimes.com)

Critical race theory (CRT) aims to indoctrinate students and turn them into “Red Guards,” akin to those during the Cultural Revolution in China, warned Xi Van Fleet, a Chinese-American living in northern Virginia’s Loudoun County, at a “Rally to Save Our Schools” event on Sept. 8.

She called CRT “communist race tactics” with the goal of “indoctrinating our kids, dividing Americans, and controlling Americans.”

She added that she would talk to Chinese-language media to tell Chinese-Americans not to stay silent.

“If you still want to enjoy the prosperity and the freedom of this country, now it’s your turn—join the fight,” she said.

She said that upon taking over China in 1949, the first thing the CCP did was to indoctrinate teachers with Marxist ideology so they could teach it to students. Red Guards were the “full display” of what indoctrinated children could do, she said.

The Red Guards were communist youth led by then-CCP leader Mao Zedong to persecute those identified as the CCP’s “class enemies” during the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. They beat up their teachers in public and tore down temples and statues.

“They became Mao’s bulldogs,” said Van Fleet, adding that she saw a similar phenomenon in America during the “so-called summer of unrest,” referring to the riots during Black Lives Matter protests.

CRT adherents believe America is systemically racist, that racial oppression exists in every institution, and that an individual is either an oppressor or oppressed based on the color of their skin.

Monica Gill, a Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) teacher who teaches Advanced Placement government, said that the LCPS was indoctrinating teachers with CRT tenets to trickle down the effect onto students. Though LCPS is not explicitly telling teachers to teach CRT to students, it is “imposing this very distorted lens of race on kids,” Gill said.

“Our kids are in this cultural battle with us … And we have been asleep at the wheel, just thinking that everything in public schools is okay with the majority of teachers—they are teaching our kids the right things—and that’s not the case,” Gill added.

LCPS Public Information Officer Wayde Byard stated in an email to The Epoch Times, “As LCPS has stated, repeatedly, Critical Race Theory is not part of its student curriculum.” He didn’t comment on Gill’s assertion of the LCPS indoctrinating teachers and students.

Political Action

Virginia Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin also attended the event. He accused his opponent, former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, of introducing CRT in Virginia’s schools during his administration in 2015 and that McAuliffe called concerns of CRT a “right-wing conspiracy.” The Epoch Times contacted McAuliffe’s campaign for comments and didn’t receive them by press time.

On June 30, in front of the LCPS school administration building in Ashburn, Virginia, Youngkin promised to ban CRT if elected on day one of his administration. “He will end the use of divisive critical race theory in professional development and as an approach to education,” a Youngkin campaign spokesperson wrote in an email to The Epoch Times on Sept. 9.

“I will preside over the largest education budget in the history of Virginia … to reestablish expectations of excellence in the school systems across Virginia that used to be known nationally for the best place to send your kids,” said Youngkin.

McAuliffe’s campaign announced that Youngkin’s tax cut plan would result in Virginia’s schools losing funds, based on a new study by Virginia Excels, an education advocacy organization.

“Between the available surplus, remaining one-time federal funds, and expected future revenue growth, Glenn’s plan can provide significant tax relief to address the cost of living while making a significant investment in education,” a Youngkin campaign spokesperson told The Epoch Times.

Polls have shown a close race for the next Virginia governor. A new one by WPA Intelligence conducted for the Youngkin campaign shows him leading McAuliffe for the first time at 48 percent versus 46 percent. The poll, released on Sept. 8, surveyed 734 likely Virginia voters between Aug. 30 and Sept. 2. Its margin of error is 3.6 percent.

Early voting in Virginia starts next week.

Critical Race Theory Aims to Turn Students Into ‘Red Guards,’ Chinese American Warns (theepochtimes.com)

Interview with the Antichrist is a must-see film, especially for Christians. In the movie, the Antichrist interviewee made a warning that soon he would take all lukewarm Christians to Hell, instead of being saved by God. Who is this guy? And who are the lukewarm? Could this happen in the real world, and how to prevent it? You will get an answer to these questions after watching this feature.

Director Timothy A. Chey shared he was an atheist until in his 30s. Since then, he has become very spiritual and committed to making faith-based films. Chey does not think the movies he made are merely fictional or for entertainment. “My one and only goal is to bring people true salvation in Christ in these very last days,” Chey said, “the Lord is coming sooner than we think.” And what he is most interested to illustrate is the battle of Armageddon described in the book of Revelations—the destruction of humanity by the Antichrist before God returns and how mankind would go through this great tribulation.

“I believe the Antichrist is alive right now,” Chey stated, “so it intrigued me to show a live broadcast with the Antichrist to ask him every question under the sun.” That is why, in the film, the Antichrist is peppered with stark questions including media domination, the battle between pastor John MacArthur and the California governor, the ACLU, Netflix and couch potatoes, the 9/11 terrorist attack, mass shootings, radical left movements, communist China, the evils of political correctness, pandemic lockdowns, and other mandates.

In the movie, the Antichrist mocks Pope Francis’ Interfaith Unity movement and lukewarm Christians spending more hours watching food channels than reading the Bible. Is even the Pope lukewarm? Some churchgoers may be shocked.

Lukewarm is neither hot nor cold. Lukewarm Christians are people who claim they have faith in Lord, but in the real world, are on and off. Are you lukewarm? Maybe you’re thinking, “No, I’m a devout believer of God.” That is remarkable. But wait for a minute. Is this your resolution or actual daily practice?

When the apostles worried about their clothes and bread, and when frightened by the storm, they were called “ones of little faith.” Peter denied his identity three times, even though he was the first disciple to acknowledge the Messiah.

Like water being cooked, every molecule of water in the pot is lukewarm until it boils. So lukewarm might not be name-calling, but a description of certain status or phase in the spiritual journey. And a person’s spiritual level is not static throughout one’s life; shifts in both directions are possible.

Viewer Joan Enderman agrees this movie is a wake-up call because she has found herself “slipping,” “being a Christian and sealed by the Holy Spirit does not give us immunity from sin and slipping backward.” Another viewer Christine Kenyon notes, “it now becomes harder and more of a spiritual battle because our eyes and hearts have been opened.” The movie talked about people being deceived or attached to worldly desires. For example, the lure of pornography is everywhere, from movies to TV shows, from advertisements on the street to the internet.

The Antichrist in the film is an anthropomorphized character. Through the dialogue between host Alex Carter and the Antichrist, the film conveys that the Antichrist is alive and is everywhere, as many politicians and influential figures believe more in the power of man than in God. This is exactly the spirit of the Antichrist.

Undoubtedly, communism or Marxism has been a collective representation of the Antichrist for the last hundred years. Opposing capitalism and preaching common prosperity through violence are just the political slogans of communists. But anti-God and anti-humanity are their hidden intentions.

The communist regimes have killed hundreds of millions of innocent people simply because of their spiritual beliefs. Affirmed by the China Tribunal, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime has committed forced organ harvesting for years on a significant scale, “an unprecedented evil on this planet.” The reason the communists denigrate and eliminate all traditional beliefs and values is that they want humans to worship them as god or savior.

If you were thinking the Antichrist would only appear in the Western world, that might be a mistake. Revelation 14:9 reads that the worshippers of the beast will receive “the mark on his forehead or on his hand.” Think about the communist posture of raising their hands to take the oath, and then you may understand the verses better.

Likewise, Revelation 17:1-2 says, “The great whore… With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication, and the inhabitants of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication.” Who better to be called the great whore than the CCP that has lured the leaders on earth with money and coaxed the inhabitants of the earth with poor quality and low-priced goods?

Stressed in the movie, the Antichrist and his secular agents are most adept at creating and exploiting various forms of crisis to panic people into ceding their rights to the government and totalitarians. Hence, many people fear that America might become like a communist country.

If you are someone who wants to take your faith seriously, or is concerned about the future of America, or cares about the health and well-being of yourself and your family, I suggest you watch this film. It is available on EpochTV, a streaming platform for exclusive programming that includes investigative news analysis, in-depth interviews, and award-winning documentaries and films.

Lukewarm Christians, Watch This Before It’s Too Late (theepochtimes.com)

A couple of weeks before the completion of the catastrophe of the American presence in Afghanistan—or, if you believe President Joe Biden, the “extraordinary success” of the American evacuation—a Russo-British comedian named Konstantin Kisin published a brilliantly funny thread on Twitter headed: “You’re struggling to understand why some people are vaccine hesitant. Let me help you.”

The “let me help you” megathread, as he called it, consisted of example after example of so-called “expert” opinions that have turned out to be completely wrong—beginning with the British vote for Brexit and the American vote for President Donald Trump in 2016, both of which elections the top experts at the time confidently assured us would go the other way.

Actually, Kisin’s spiel could be considered as a belated gloss on one of the most famous quotations to come out of the Brexit referendum, that of the Brexiteer and veteran government minister Michael Gove who said: “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts.”

I think that Trump was striking the same responsive chord with Americans when he disparaged what he called “political correctness”—still ravaging the county after four years of his administration—which was also the product of that breed of experts who call themselves “intellectuals.”

If people were fed up with experts in 2016, think how much more reason they have to be so five years later! Kisin does, and he goes ruthlessly through the whole catalog of errors from Russian collusion to “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” to “toxic masculinity” and the abolition of sex in favor of the nebulous idea of “gender.”

And of course we mustn’t leave out the conflicting and often mendacious pronunciamentos of “the Science” on the coronavirus, which have culminated in the distrust, not so much of the vaccines themselves, but of “the experts’” attempts to demonize those who remain skeptical about them.

And all this was before the collapse of the Afghan government and army under the onslaught of the Taliban gave us what may be the best reason ever for thinking that we, too, have had enough of experts in this country.

“Afghanistan: the graveyard of experts,” wrote Tim Black at Spiked Online.

“US ‘experts’ who created Afghanistan mess should be fired for malpractice,” wrote Rebekah Koffler for The New York Post—though of course they won’t be. They never are. They’re the experts.

A writer on Substack named Richard Hanania compared the galaxy of American Ph.D.’s (including the now-deposed president of Afghanistan himself, Ashraf Ghani, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia) who got us into Afghanistan with the madrassa-educated Taliban and wrote that, “It’s as if Wernher von Braun had been given all the resources in the world to run a space program and had been beaten to the moon by an African witch doctor.”

Unsurprisingly, there were a great many negative comments appended to Kisin’s bonfire of the experts, most of them to the effect that, just because some people have been wrong about some things it doesn’t mean that other people are going to be wrong about other things—especially when those things include vaccines which, as there are sound scientific reasons for believing, can be life-saving.

Nor should we neglect to consider that the lives saved are not only of those who receive the vaccines but also those of the immunosuppressed and other vulnerable people who come in contact with them.

They have a point. But so has Kisin. The latter is certainly right in thinking that the experts, particularly those who write for the partisan media, have taken too little care of their own credibility in the past, instead expecting to be trusted and believed as right, just because of who they are. When they then turn out to be wrong, they have no one but themselves to blame if people don’t believe them the next time.

Some people are always going to be wrong about almost everything, but the case is altered when the people who are wrong have set themselves up in the profession of being right. These are the people we call “experts” solely because they have the recognized credentials of experts—advanced degrees from top universities or awards for their expertise from other experts—whether or not they have any real-world experience or expertise.

Their authority is what the anthropologists call “positional”—like that of the parent who answers a child’s question of why? by replying: “Because I said so!” or “Because I’m your mother.”

The experts treat us all like those children—and then they wonder why they are resented and distrusted.

They are the people who identify themselves with their beliefs to the extent that they can never admit it—and so never learn from their mistakes—when those beliefs turn out to be wrong.

That’s how you get to Biden’s calling an obvious disaster of the first water an “extraordinary success”—with no more than an occasional raised eyebrow from the compliant media.

Much publicity in the last week or so was given to a Reuters report of a conversation between Biden and Ghani in the dying days of the latter’s government, as the Taliban were closing in. What he had to worry about, said the American president to the Afghan one, was the “perception” that he was losing the war, not the fact that he actually was losing it.

All he had to do to get American help, said Biden, was change this perception, “whether it is true or not.”

I think a lot of the criticism of this extraordinary conversation was misdirected. The problem wasn’t that Biden told Ghani to lie. Lying to the enemy has a long and honorable tradition in the history of warfare.

No, the problem was that he was foolish enough to think he could lie in that situation: that he (or Ghani) could get away with spinning the enemy as he himself was used to spinning the American media—as, of course, he would go on to do again with the claim of an “extraordinary success.”

A man whose self-assurance and self-absorption is such that he believes reality can make no claim against him that he can’t pay off with the experts’ counterfeit currency of interpretive ingenuity and rhetorical sleight-of-hand is a man who can only lead his country and himself into more disasters.

Bonfire of the Experts (theepochtimes.com)

The son of leftist billionaire George Soros tweeted an image of himself and his father meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday, saying, “In Pelosi we trust!”

“In Pelosi we trust! Was good seeing [Pelosi] this weekend,” Alexander Soros tweeted on Thursday.

In Pelosi we trust! Was good seeing @SpeakerPelosi this weekend. pic.twitter.com/dguGCxDm37

— Alexander Soros, PhD (@AlexanderSoros) September 9, 2021

According to his Twitter profile, Alexander Soros serves as deputy chair of the Open Society.

According to its website, the organization is “the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights.”

George Soros is the founder and chair of Open Society Foundations. The elder Soros also leads a variety of other business and non-profit endeavors.

In July, Federal Election Commission records revealed that Soros is a major financial backer of the “defund the police” movement, pouring $1 million into an organization associated with the cause.

Campaign finance data publicly available on the FEC’s website shows that Soros contributed to the Color of Change Political Action Committee on May 14.

Color of Change describes itself as “the nation’s largest online racial justice organization” on its website.

“We help people respond effectively to injustice in the world around us. As a national online force driven by 7 million members, we move decision-makers in corporations and government to create a more human and less hostile world for Black people in America.”

Color of Change has an online petition bearing the title: “TAKE ACTION: Defund the police, and invest in communities now!”

The “defund the police” campaign calls for lawmakers to slash the budgets of traditional police departments and instead invest in social programs and alternative means of law enforcement.

Though the movement enjoyed some success in the months after George Floyd’s death, people gradually began to become disillusioned with it as crime rates rose across the country.

Soros is also known for financially backing Democratic candidates. He reportedly donated $1 million to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s recall campaign.

According to records from the California Secretary of State’s office, the left-wing financier’s first donation was on June 22, with $250,000 given to a committee called “Stop the Republican Recall.”

Then, on Aug. 3, he dropped another $250,000.

Finally, on Aug. 30, Soros doubled down, putting in a $500,000 donation.

Photo Emerges of Nancy Pelosi Meeting with George Soros and His Son (westernjournal.com)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder on Wednesday vowed to “save California” shortly after he was forced to prematurely end a walk-through of his planned campaign stop at Venice Beach, when over 10 hecklers harassed him, throwing projectiles.

Elder, who is vying to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom if he is recalled this month, was touring Venice Beach’s homeless encampments with campaign team members when he was harassed.

Footage of the incident uploaded to social media shows two hecklers repeatedly shouting racial slurs at Elder. A lady in a pink gorilla mask, riding a bike, appeared on video throwing an egg that appeared to narrowly miss Elder’s head.

One of Elder’s security staff attempted to separate the woman from the crowd, to keep her from continuing to throw projectiles.

In videos surfacing on Twitter, the woman slapped the security staff in the face. Another protester hit the same security staff member seconds later.

A white SUV drove up to the crowd, which was walking down Hampton Drive towards Sunset Avenue.

Elder’s team escorted him to his vehicle and drove away.

“Today I kicked off the Recall Express bus tour. Before we even left Los Angeles, my security detail was physically assaulted, shot with a pellet gun, and hit with projectiles. The intolerant left will not stop us. We will recall Gavin Newsom. We will save California,” Elder said in a statement on Twitter late Wednesday, responding to the attacks.

Elder, 69, is an Epoch Times contributor and host of “Larry Elder with Epoch Times” on EpochTV.

The conservative talk radio host first announced in July that he will run in California’s recall election of Democratic Gov. Newsom, which has been set for Sept. 14.

He said in a statement on his campaign website that he’s running for governor “because the decline of California isn’t the fault of its people,” adding: “Our government is what’s ruining the Golden State.”

On his website, Elder calls for “returning to the bedrock Constitutional principles of limited government and maximum personal responsibility.”

Other top Republican candidates include businessman John Cox, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, and state Rep. Kevin Kiley. Nine Democrats are running, including financial analyst Kevin Paffrath and actor Patrick Kilpatrick.

The recall election of Newsom, a first-term Democrat, follows mounting criticism from within his party and across the aisle over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues.

He faced intense backlash after he was seen dining at the French Laundry restaurant with lobbyists after telling Californians to stay home. Newsom apologized for his actions.

The last time a governor was recalled in the state was Gray Davis in 2003. Residents voted “Yes” on recalling Davis by 55.4 percent and selected one of 135 candidates on the ballot to replace him.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, California is one of 19 states where recalls are permitted.

Last month, President Joe Biden publicly backed Newsom, saying in a statement that he the Democratic governor “is leading California through unprecedented crises—he’s a key partner in fighting the pandemic and helping build our economy back better.”

“To keep him on the job, registered voters should vote no on the recall election by 9/14 and keep California moving forward,” Biden added.

The California Republican Party has declined to endorse a candidate, however, several recent polls show that Elder is in the lead.

Jack Bradley contributed to this report.

Larry Elder Responds to Venice Beach Walk-Through Assault, Vows to ‘Save California’ (theepochtimes.com)

The LAUSD Board of Education voted 7–0 on Sept. 9 to require students over the age of 12 to receive a COVID-19 vaccination in order to attend in-person classes in the LA Unified School District (LAUSD).

Students with “qualified and approved exemptions under LAUSD’s existing immunization policies” are exempt from the vaccine requirement, according to the district.

“Today’s decision furthers our longstanding commitment to ensure the safety of our students, families, and staff,” Board President Kelly Gonez said in a statement.

“The vaccine is the single best way to protect students and schools from COVID-19. Los Angeles Unified is committed to meeting our families where they are and providing them with reliable medical information about this safe, effective vaccine.”

First, students who participate in extracurricular activities will be required to get at least one dose of the vaccine by Oct. 3 and are expected to be fully vaccinated by the end of the month. Then, all students over the age of 12 must receive the first dose by Nov. 21 and be fully vaccinated by Dec. 19.

Other students must get their first vaccine dose no later than 30 days after their 12th birthday, and their second dose no later than 8 weeks after their 12th birthday.

Currently, the two-dose Pfizer vaccine is the only vaccine to have received emergency approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for 12- to 15-year-olds; it is fully approved for those over 16.

According to the statement, the LAUSD will require proof of vaccination to be uploaded to the LAUSD’s Daily Pass system by Jan. 10. So far, the Daily Pass system has been used to track COVID-19 tests after the LAUSD mandated weekly tests for students and employees regardless of vaccination status in July.

“Eligible students who do not have proof of vaccination against COVID-19 will not be permitted on school campuses and referred to the District’s independent study program at City of Angels,” according to the district’s FAQ page.

The mandate would affect approximately 225,000 middle school and high school students, 80,000 of whom are not yet vaccinated, according to district officials.

LAUSD staff are required to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 15.

A report highlighting Chinese government-backed influence campaigns on social media platforms found that the effort sought to mobilize protests against “racial injustice,” CNN has finally admitted.

The network’s summary of the recently released Mandiant Threat Intelligence and Google report notes how bot accounts linked to a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) disinformation network attempted to incite Asian Americans to protest against racism and those claiming COVID-19 originated in China.

“US officials believe the operation is linked to the Chinese government,” the article adds.

As the CNN article admits:

In April for example, experts saw thousands of fake accounts calling on Asian Americans to protest racial injustice in the US and “disinformation about the virus’ origins.” While experts found no evidence these posts were successful in mobilizing protesters, the report says “it does provide early warning that the actors behind the activity may be starting to explore, in however limited a fashion, more direct means of influencing the domestic affairs of the US.”

The report identifies how the bot network attempted to catalyze a protest on April 24th in New York City:

In April 2021, thousands of posts in languages including English, Japanese, and Korean, images, and videos were posted across multiple platforms by accounts we assess to be part of this broader activity set that called on Asian Americans to protest racial injustices in the U.S. The accounts specifically called on Asian Americans to protest on April 24 in New York City and “fight back” against the purported “rumors” caused by Dr. Li-Meng Yan, Guo Wengui, and Steve Bannon, and in some instances provided an address that they claimed Guo lived at.

Posts shared by the fake accounts included messages such as “the racism is the virus.”

MUST READ:

High School Teacher With Antifa Flag in Classroom Praises Chinese Communist Party.

“This direct call for physical mobilization is a significant development compared to prior activity, potentially indicative of an emerging intent to motivate real-world activity outside of China’s territories,” the report says.’

“While experts at Mandiant and Google say they have not seen these specific pro-Chinese accounts wade into election specific content to date, they did warn that the actors responsible could be gearing up for a more expansive disinformation push,” CNN adds. Platforms such as TikTok, however, have been used to sabotage Trump rallies during the 2020 election cycle.

The National Pulse first reported on the existence of a Beijing-backed, online bot army in early 2020, which, at the time, was used to criticize former President Donald Trump and his COVID-19 response.

More recently, over 20 advocacy groups comprising the “Stop AAPI Hate” coalition sent a letter demanding the Biden White House terminate the Department of Justice’s Trump-era “China Initiative” – which identifies and prosecutes Chinese Communist Party espionage operations – and publicly discredit the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory.

No evidence of a quid pro quo over the CCP’s attempts to bolster these campaigns digitally and the campaigns’ attempts to shift U.S. government policy on China has yet emerged.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued tighter mask guidance after a prominent teachers union pressured the agency to include more rigorous mask recommendations in school buildings, according to newly-obtained emails by watchdog group Americans for Public Trust.

The emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the watchdog and published by Fox News, show a string of communications between the National Education Association (NEA) and White House staffers.

The NEA is the largest teachers union in the United States and advocates for education professionals including public school teachers, support personnel, and faculty members at colleges and universities.

Email correspondence includes a draft statement from the NEA to the White House in which the teachers union criticizes the CDC over its masking guidance after it announced on May 13 that vaccinated people could stop wearing masks indoors and outside.

“We appreciate the developing nature of the science and its implications for guidance, but releasing the guidance without accompanying school-related updates creates confusion and fuels the internal politicization of this basic health and safety issue,” the draft statement reads.

“CDC has consistently said, and studies support, that mitigation measures, including to protect the most vulnerable, remain necessary in schools and institutions of higher education—particularly because no elementary or middle school students, and few high school students, have been vaccinated.”

“This will also make it hard for school boards and leaders of institutions of higher education to do the right thing by maintaining mitigation measures,” it continues. “We need CDC clarification right away.”

The union said it was prepared to issue the critical statement and called for the CDC to issue new guidance providing greater clarity over masks in schools and release more rigorous mask recommendations.

One day after the CDC’s guidance went live, Erika Dinkel-Smith, the White House director of labor engagement, said she stopped the NEA from releasing its critical statement.

Following discussion and coordination with the White House, the NEA eventually released a much more relaxed statement, which reads, “CDC’s current recommendation that schools continue to implement existing school-related guidance, including the mandatory and correct use of wearing masks and continuing of social distancing, is an important and welcome clarification about the protections that need to be in place in our schools.”

On May 15, the CDC also released updated masking guidelines noting that schools should maintain both masking and physical distancing, as well as other mitigation measures, through the end of this school year, regardless of vaccination status.

The latest string of emails comes just months after the New York Post alleged that the CDC altered its guidance on when and how schools should reopen after being influenced by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second largest teachers union and one of the top donors to the Democratic Party.

AFT President Randi Weingarten later said the CDC had asked her organization to recommend “language” to be used in school opening guidelines.

“The CDC in February and March basically asked all sorts of different organizations to sit down with them and give them comments about what they thought was important,” Weingarten said in an interview with C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. “They talked to parent organizations, they talked to the two [teachers] unions.

“This is normal rule-making,” Weingarten added. “Frankly, this is the way every administration used to do, the problem with the last administration is that they didn’t do it.”

The Epoch Times has contacted The White House and the National Education Association for comment.

CDC Tightened School Mask Guidance After Pressure From Teachers Union, Newly-Obtained Emails Show (theepochtimes.com)

This amazing sand sculpture of the 575-year-old King’s College Chapel is the result of 48 hours of painstaking work.

Talented sculptors used more than a metric ton (1000 kg) of building sand to craft the scale model, which is 7 feet long and 3 feet tall.

The artists went into immaculate detail to recreate the iconic Cambridge University building, which is home to the world-famous King’s College Choir.

Artists Jamie Wardley and Mark Lewis, from sand sculpting company Sand in Your Eye, worked through the night to create the model in Cambridge’s main shopping center.

Liz Warrington, a creative at the firm, said: “We had to go down to very fine detail with King’s. Because the architecture is so intricate, it took two full days of working through the night and day.

“We got all the sand into the shopping center and compacted it down.

“Using sculpting and carving tools, the sculptors started very roughly and got more detailed using finer and finer tools.

“Carving took place during the day so that shoppers could watch what was going on.”

King’s College Chapel itself was built in phases from 1446 to 1515 and was finally completed with stained glass windows under King Henry VIII’s rule in 1531.

Jamie and Mark also recreated Cambridge’s Bridge of Sighs, a near-300-year-old crossing point over the River Cam, the main river that flows through Cambridge.

Liz said that sculptors prefer to use building sand rather than beach sand for their models as it’s more durable.

“Beach sand is the worst sand to make sculptures with because it’s been washing in and out and it’s so smooth. It won’t last longer than a day,” she said.

“Building sand has lots of clay and jagged edges so it’s much stronger. The models could stay there indefinitely.”

The two sculptures, commissioned by the Grand Arcade shopping center in Cambridge, will remain in place until the end of the summer.

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.

Photos: Intricate Sand Model of the 575-Year-Old King’s College Chapel in Cambridge (theepochtimes.com)

Democrats in the House Education and Labor Committee revealed how their committee would use the $761 billion from the $3.5 trillion budget resolution package, saying that among other things, the money will be used to lower the cost of childcare and provide free preschool and community college.

“The Education and Labor Committee’s portion of the Build Back Better Act makes historic investments that will lower costs for nearly every family, create good-paying jobs for American workers, and provide our nation’s children the strong foundation they deserve,” said Chairman Robert C. Scott (D-Va.) in a press statement Wednesday.

The committee will begin marking up the legislation on Thursday with members offering amendments in an attempt to change how the $761 billion is spent.

The legislation would subsidize childcare programs, making it so most families would not have to pay more than 7 percent of their income for each child’s daycare. The funding would also subsidize a pay increase for childcare workers, so facilities could hire more workers.

The funding would also subsidize universal pre-K, so all 3- and 4-year-olds could go to school.

The funding allots $111 billion to provide two years of free community colleges, invest in the Pell Grant program, and fund educational institutions that cater to blacks, Hispanics, and minorities to make quality degrees more affordable for those groups.

The committee’s bill provides $82 billion to public schools for repairs and upgrades. It will invest close to $80 billion in workforce development programs including training people for climate change energy-related jobs.

The funding will also include about $35 billion for school food programs during the school year and the summer months, as well as provide money to upgrade school kitchens.

Ranking Member of the committee Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-S.C.) slammed the committee’s bill, calling it a part of Biden’s “reckless,” “partisan” spending.

“Congressional Democrats could empower individuals and entrepreneurs to make the financial, professional, educational, and parental decisions that work best for them. Instead, Democrats are pushing an irresponsible spending scheme that will double down on the inflation crisis and allow the federal government to infringe on Americans’ liberties,” Foxx said in a press statement Wednesday.

Democrats are pressing forward with their $3.5 trillion budget resolution even though there is opposition within their own party, with some moderates saying this level of spending will increase inflation and saddle future generations with federal debt.

Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has repeatedly said he does not think that this level of spending is wise and his party should put a pause on the legislation until after the pandemic and after assessing the recent inflation.

Republicans have all said they will oppose the budget resolution, but Democrats do not need the GOP to vote in favor of the bill if they get all 50 Democrat senators to vote in favor of the package.

Top Democrat leaders have shared confidence that their party will rally together to pass the massive funding bill.

Schumer was asked by a local ABC news reporter on Sunday if he can convince all members of his party, particularly Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who has also said she will not support the resolution, to vote in favor of the massive spending bill.

“I’m going to do my best and you know so far, after some discussion, and some compromise they have gone along with previous bills. Let’s hope it happens again,” said Schumer. “I have a caucus that runs from Bernie Sanders on the left to Joe Manchin, on the right. How do I bring them all together when you only have 50 votes and every one of them counts?”

Meanwhile, Sanders said he speaks directly to caucus members, in an effort to further negotiations on the budget bill.

“After a lot of negotiations and pain—and I’m going to be on the phone all week—what we are going to do is pass the most comprehensive bill for working families that this country has seen,” Sanders told The New York Time

House Education and Labor Committee Reveals How They Would Spend Their Portion of the $3.5 Trillion (theepochtimes.com)

Two GOP representatives are calling on Congress to pass legislation that would require schools that receive federal funding to make the curriculum they use to teach students available to parents and the public.

Education and Labor Committee Ranking Member Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.) introduced the Curriculum Review of Teachings Transparency Act (pdf). The bill stipulates that federal funding can be denied if K-12 schools do not comply with the rule.

Making the K-12 curriculum openly available to parents is an effort by Foxx and Fitzgerald to counter what they call controversial and factually inaccurate ideas being taught in schools under the name of critical race theory (CRT).

“Decisions about what to teach students in school are being made by bureaucrats and teachers unions, often without the input from parents. As a result, parents across the country are flocking to their local school board to demand transparency and to oppose dangerous ideologies, like critical race theory,” said Fitzgerald said in a press statement.

CRT is rooted in the Marxist theory of class struggle, but with a particular focus on race. Proponents of CRT see racism in every aspect of the American public and private life and seek to dismantle American institutions—such as the Constitution and legal system—which they claim to be inherently and irredeemably racist.

While schools have for years been quietly infusing CRT into their curriculums, it wasn’t until last year, during lockdowns enacted in response to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, that parents were able to see what their children were being taught. Since then, parents have been increasingly stepping forward to oppose CRT due to its racially divisive and anti-American concepts.

There has been fierce debate over whether CRT or similar initiatives—including The New York Times’ “1619 Project” or diversity, equity, and inclusion training—should be taught to schoolchildren. Parents across the United States have held protests against school boards that have increasingly started to promote CRT or CRT-aligned viewpoints in class.

Meanwhile, some media outlets have claimed that CRT is only taught in higher education settings, such as in colleges and universities, and isn’t being widely adopted by teachers. However, critics of CRT have said there are plenty of examples of young children in school being taught to believe that white people are inherently racist—a key CRT tenet—and that “systemic racism” permeates every U.S. institution.

Foxx wrote in a recent op-ed that education’s goal was originally to produce virtuous citizens who would make the country stronger, adding, “The future of our country depends upon a high-quality education system dedicated to equipping the next generation with the knowledge needed for an active civic life. Critical race theory is incompatible with this mission.”

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

US Reps. Introduce Bill to Mandate Public Access to Schools’ Curriculum (theepochtimes.com)