Monday, April 14, 2025

When The School Doesn't Discriminate!

A school in the Chicago follows the law. Imagine that!
School district denies girls forced to change in front of trans student
  • Students claims they were forced to change in front of trans student
  • The district denies the accusations
  • The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating
News Nation
By Sean Noone
Apr 11, 2025


A school board meeting in a northern suburb of Chicago drew mixed reactions from parents Thursday as they weighed in on allegations that some middle school students were forced to change clothes in the presence of a transgender student.

Some parents of students at Deerfield Public School District 109 said that young girls were being robbed of their privacy, while others said transgender students deserved to feel safe.

The district, however, disputes the claim and insists the incident under question did not happen.

In March, the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights announced that it was investigating after a mother filed a civil rights complaint after female students at Alan B Shepard Middle School reportedly complained to school administrators about a male who was using their locker room to change for gym class.

[...]

Some who spoke during the meeting voiced support for the transgender student, with one speaker calling the controversy surrounding the allegations a “publicity stunt.”
Now lets hear from the Advocate...
Hundreds attended a Deerfield school board meeting to support a trans student after the Department of Education launched an investigation into her locker room use.
By Ryan Adamczeski
April 11 2025


Hundreds attended a school board meeting in Illinois Thursday evening to voice their support for a transgender student after a parent complained about her using the girl's locker room.

Deerfield parent Nicole Georgas claimed last month that her 13-year-old cisgender daughter was "forced" to use the girl's locker room at the same time as a trans girl, resulting in daughter refusing to change there. With the help of conservative groups the Defense of Freedom Institute for Policy Studies and the Liberty Justice Center, Georgas filed a federal civil rights complaint.

The U.S. Department of Education launched an investigation into Chicago Public Schools and Deerfield Public Schools District 109 in March for supposed Title IX violations. The district has maintained that it is complying with state federal anti-discrimination laws.
But the school systems answered those charges saying,
"We are sensitive to the privacy needs of all our middle school students and ensure that no student is required to change into a gym uniform for physical education class in front of others," Schroeder continued. "When both our middle schools were renovated in 2017, we added five private changing stations within each locker room that are available to all students."
So who do you believe?

Meanwhile...
Deerfield Public Schools District 109 held its first board meeting since becoming subject to the Education Department's investigation Thursday night. The meeting was attended by a local chapter of Moms For Liberty, a designated extremist hate group, which was drowned out by hundreds of community members who showed up to support the young trans girl.
Okay here is my prediction... the U.S. Department of Education will find the school system in violation of Title IX. Totally ignoring Supreme Court cases and the case will once again land on the Supreme Court's bench.
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The Big Ripoff!

The have found a way to get around school integration! And they gave an innocuous, vouchers. Vouchers are bring back the era of Jim Crow...
AP News
By  KIM CHANDLER
April 8, 2025


More than half of families who applied for Alabama’s new school voucher program have children attending a private school or are home schooling, numbers that buoy school choice advocates who say the flood of applications proves the approach is what parents want

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey’s office released application figures Tuesday for the CHOOSE Act, the new program which will help eligible families tap state dollars to help pay for private school or home-schooling costs. Families submitted 22,167 applications for a total of 36,873 students.

Ivey said the robust number of applications are a sign that, “clearly, taxpaying Alabama families want school choice.”
However,
The numbers showed that more than half of the applications come for students who are already attending a private school or being home-schooled. Of those 36,873 students, 10,287 students are from public schools, 15,436 students are from private schools and 9,070 are homeschooled.

[...]

Supporters say the programs let parents choose how best to educate their children. Critics say it drains money from public schools to help families who may have already decided to enroll their children in a private school.

“I’m concerned about the fact that we have about 150 failing schools and those schools need additional revenue,” Sen. Rodger Smitherman, D-Birmingham, said referencing the designation for schools with low test scores.
That is my concern also... the school voucher programs help up and middle income families. For some it is enough to kick them up enough so that they can afford a private school and the voucher funds take away from the public schools.

The Republicans are jumping up and down about Social Security fraud but are tight-lipped fraud in their pet project... school vouchers!


The majority of voucher money the state gave homeschool families this school year went toward non-educational expenses, and a bill to change that is getting a dicey reception at the Arkansas Capitol.

State senators were divided this week on Senate Bill 625, a clean-up bill for the 2023 LEARNS Act, which created Arkansas’s school voucher program. SB625 would require homeschool families to put most of their state funding toward academics instead of extracurriculars. The bill failed in a sparsely attended committee meeting Wednesday, but the full Senate pulled the bill out of committee and passed it on Thursday. It next goes to the House side, where it will likely see further debate.

SB625, sponsored by Sen. Breanne Davis (R-Russellville), puts parameters on how the roughly $7,000 in taxpayer dollars each homeschool student in the state can now claim in voucher form can be spent.
Hmm... how about a new swimming pool? My homeschooled children needs to learn water safety!
The new rules are needed, she said, because data from the current school year, the first in which vouchers were available to certain categories of homeschoolers, revealed that most of that money went toward non-academic expenses.

[...]

Those non-educational expenses include extracurriculars and transportation, and the fact that most of the homeschool voucher money went for those costs shouldn’t come as a big surprise. In November, the Arkansas Times reported on the phenomenon of homeschool families putting voucher money toward horseback riding lessons, baseball coaches and other decidedly non-scholastic endeavors.
So my example of vouchers paying for a swimming pool, I can see how some parents my lie and say it is for swimming lessons! Public Funds Public Schools writes,


The fanciest voucher out there these days is the “education savings account” (or “education freedom account” in places like Arkansas or New Hampshire). There’s an almost frantic effort by the voucher lobby to avoid the “V” word, and some of that includes genuine self-delusion that these ESAs/EFAs are actually something other than vouchers with extra allowable expenses beyond private school tuition. But that’s all an ESA is: tuition plus.

Some states like Iowa and Arkansas still have fairly limited packages in that “plus” bucket: mostly add-on costs associated with attending private school itself, such as textbooks, uniforms, school fees and so on, with limited homeschool expenses thrown in as well. In other states like Arizona and Florida, these add-ons are far more permissive, from educational materials on Amazon to Disney World field trip passes.

One side argument that research-aware voucher lobby folks make is that the horrific academic outcomes suffered by lower- and middle-income voucher users will go away because these new laws aren’t creating vouchers, just “ESAs.” But there’s no educational theory of action—and no brand of common sense—that says students will make up academic losses just because their parents can now use vouchers on backyard trampolines and SeaWorld tickets on top of tuition at private schools that don’t deliver academically.

[...]

One problem with this new array of school voucher designs is that some programs do make it even easier for fraud, misuse, or simple errors to occur involving large sums of public dollars. When a state education or revenue agency is administering the voucher system and directly reimbursing private schools or parents for demonstrable tuition expenses, it’s a bit easier to keep track of spending, especially when routine audits accompany that activity. But in the ESA/tax credit voucher versions, new opportunities for waste and even fraud can and do occur.

In Arizona, Attorney General Kris Mayes has filed charges against people who created what Mayes called “ghost children” to claim voucher dollars, while spending on non-permitted items also has been and continues to be a problem there. In Utah, the state’s voucher middle-man vendor spent more than state law allowed on administrative fees and expenses, while the vendor in Idaho and Missouri has struggled to make payments on time. In Florida, investigative reporting has found voucher payments to schools that faked fire safety and facilities inspections, while in North Carolina, watchdog organizations found the state was sending voucher dollars to private schools for more students than were enrolled in those schools—and even to a school that didn’t exist!
When you stop and think for a moment the Republicans have been pushing the "fraud" in Social Security which is about 0.00625% of the annual budget! But not a peep is said about the fraud in voucher programs!
North Carolina offers an especially telling window into what is happening across this once legally segregated region where legislatures are now rapidly expanding and adopting controversial voucher-style programs.
ProPublica
By Jennifer Berry Hawes and Mollie Simon
Nov. 18, 2024,


Private schools across the South that were established for white children during desegregation are now benefiting from tens of millions in taxpayer dollars flowing from rapidly expanding voucher-style programs, a ProPublica analysis found.

In North Carolina alone, we identified 39 of these likely “segregation academies” that are still operating and that have received voucher money. Of these, 20 schools reported student bodies that were at least 85% white in a 2021-22 federal survey of private schools, the most recent data available.

Those 20 academies, all founded in the 1960s and 1970s, brought in more than $20 million from the state in the past three years alone. None reflected the demographics of their communities. Few even came close.

Northeast Academy, a small Christian school in rural Northampton County on the Virginia border, is among them. As of the 2021-22 survey, the school’s enrollment was 99% white in a county that runs about 40% white.
Remember... school voucher programs were designed for one thing! To continue with the segregation in a way that is legally "non-discriminatory" while discriminating and to gut public education so only the white upper class gets a full education. Private school can discriminate against us, blacks, immigrants, religion, in other words anyone not like them.



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Sunday, April 13, 2025

A Christian Nation!

To appease his far right base, Trump & Company is turning us into a Christian Nation! The military is becoming packed with "Christian Nationalist!" Trump's cabinet is loaded with "Christian Nationalist"

Trump has packed his administration with people not loyal to the Constitution but to the Bible and Trump! Lets go back to last year at this time to set the stage...
Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, president of The Center for Renewing America, part of a conservative consortium preparing for Trump’s return to power.
Politico
By Alexander Ward and Heidi Przybyla
February 20, 2024


An influential think tank close to Donald Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas in his administration should the former president return to power, according to documents obtained by POLITICO.

Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his first term and has remained close to him. Vought, who is frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, is president of The Center for Renewing America think tank, a leading group in a conservative consortium preparing for a second Trump term.

Christian nationalists in America believe that the country was founded as a Christian nation and that Christian values should be prioritized throughout government and public life. As the country has become less religious and more diverse, Vought has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.
Now these so called Christians have warped their doctrine to hate people who are non-white, non-Christian, and are LGBTQ+. These are the people who are fortifying Trump hatred of LGBTQ+ people!


It was a history-making event: In a chapel at Fort Liberty, North Carolina, 2nd Lt. Khady Ndiaye stood proudly – wearing a hijab – as she became the first Muslim woman commissioned by the U.S. Army as a chaplain candidate.

Presiding over the ceremony in June was Maj. Gen. Bill Green, the Army’s chief of chaplains. He said the chaplains serve more than 200 faith groups, “while caring for the entire Army family … regardless of their personal beliefs.”

[...]

Hegseth sometimes conveys his conservative Christian outlook in militaristic terms, has justified the medieval Crusades that pitted Christians against Muslims, and evokes the specter of Islamists seeking to impose their faith on non-Muslims. He has denounced the military’s initiatives to foster diversity, equity and inclusion, which include religion among other categories.
That is one of my concerns... that the military will be stuffed with Trump loyalists and Christian nationalists. The merchant marine academy is also under the microscope;



In January 2023, MRFF, acting on a complaint from a group of seventeen alumni, staff, faculty, and midshipmen at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy (USMMA) in Kings Point, New York, sent a demand to the Academy’s superintendent that a gigantic painting of Jesus hovering over a lifeboat be removed from its completely improper and Constitution-violating location in the Academy’s Wiley Hall administrative building, a demand that was successful in getting the painting moved to the Academy’s chapel.

Fast forward to a few weeks ago, when Trump’s new secretary of transportation, former reality TV star Sean Duffy, visited the Academy, which unlike the other service academies, which are under the Department of Defense, is under the Department of Transportation.

Speaking to a group of Academy midshipmen, Duffy whipped his audience into a frenzy when he asked at the end of his speech,“Can we bring Jesus up from the basement?”
Then we have a misogamy and racism,
Military.com 
By Steve Beynon
April 11, 2025


The Army's premier institution for training its most senior noncommissioned officers has barred its students from writing academic essays on topics such as women, minorities and other issues related to diversity.

The 10-month Sergeants Major Academy at Fort Bliss, Texas, includes multiple major projects in its curriculum, including two essays students were expected to work on for several months. Both projects were scrapped from the course and replaced with a single essay, a service spokesperson confirmed to Military.com.

[...]

The change reflects the expanding Trump administration censorship across the Department of Defense aimed at erasing acknowledgment of those groups. It also follows a series of executive orders issued by President Donald Trump and internal policy shifts championed by Hegseth, who has made the erasure of those groups a core goal of his tenure so far.
Then in the civilian sector the Secretary of State wants to turn employees into "Big Brothers"
“It’s very ‘Handmaid’s Tale’-esque,” one official said.
Politico
By Robbie Gramer and Nahal Toosi
April 11, 2025


The Trump administration has ordered State Department employees to report on any instances of coworkers displaying “anti-Christian bias” as part of its effort to implement a sweeping new executive order on supporting employees of Christian faith working in the federal government.

The department, according to a copy of an internal cable obtained by POLITICO, will work with an administration-wide task force to collect information “involving anti-religious bias during the last presidential administration” and will collect examples of anti-Christian bias through anonymous employee report forms.
So what is "anti-Christian" bias? What about antiemetics bias? What about anit-Muslim bais? Should they also be reported? Or just "anti-Christian" bias?
Some State Department officials reacted to the cable with shock and alarm, saying that even if well-intentioned, it is based on the flawed premise that the department harbors anti-Christian bias to begin with, and warning it could create a culture of fear as the administration pushes employees to report on one another.

“It’s very ‘Handmaid’s Tale'-esque,” said one State Department official, who was granted anonymity because the individual was not allowed to speak openly about internal department affairs.
Big Brother is watching you! It is 1984! No it is the Handmaid’s Tale... strike that it is a "Brave New World"!

Mark my words, the administration's goal is to force women out of combat positions!



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Like A Third World Nation!

Normally you see travel warnings about third world nations! Now we are have warning travel warnings against us!
March 26, 2025


Some European countries, as well as Canada, are warning their citizens who travel to the United States to strictly follow the country's entry rules or risk detention as the Trump administration cracks down on immigration enforcement.

Ireland, The Netherlands, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany, Finland and Canada have updated their travel guidelines after some travelers from these nations encountered detention by immigration officials.
What does this sat about us? That nations around the world are worried about the safety of their citizens here.
The heightened advisories come after citizens from European countries have been detained and deported by immigration officials while traveling to the United States. Some of the warnings also note that the State Department has also suspended its policy allowing transgender, intersex and nonbinary people to update the sex field on their passports — eliminating the X marker as an option.
As we move far right to fascism the world is worried!

And the worry has filtered to our community...
The groups cited the Trump administration’s recent attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion and transgender rights.
The Washington Post
By Joe Heim
April 11, 2025


WorldPride, the LGBTQ+ festival celebrating “diversity, equality and love on a global scale,” is expected to bring 2 to 3 million people to Washington beginning May 17. But a number of international groups, worried about the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, inclusion and equity efforts and its targeting of transgender rights in the United States, say they are planning to stay away.

The executive director of the Capital Pride Alliance, which is hosting the 23-day WorldPride festival, says he doesn’t blame them.

“They’re very justified in regards to their concerns and their questions around how safe it is for them to travel here, especially folks who identify as trans,” Ryan Bos said in an interview Wednesday. “So it’s our responsibility to ensure folks that do travel here, especially folks who identify as trans … have the information and resources so that they can make the best decision for themselves.”
I have to wonder what Trump & Company will be doing about local Prides?
The State Department and U.S. Customs and Border Protection say there are no restrictions against international visitors to the United States based on gender identity or sexuality. But a number of European countries, including Denmark, Germany, Finland and Ireland, have issued travel advisories in recent weeks alerting citizens that if their travel documents have their gender marked as “X” rather than male or female, they could face difficulties when trying to enter the United States. Some have warned about entry to the United States being denied even for holders of a valid visa.
People who might have traveled from other countries might now have second thoughts about getting wrapped up in Trump's pogrom. His wrath has scared off sponsors for Pride events!
March 23, 2025


San Francisco Pride Director Suzanne Ford feels both saddened and determined about this year's plans for the city's iconic Pride parade.

The longtime LGBTQ organization is dealing with the potential loss of $300,000 in corporate sponsorship for its hugely popular annual parade, funding needed ahead of June's Pride Month. Multiyear sponsors including Comcast, Anheuser-Busch and Diageo have all backed away from participating.

"We're very disappointed. We're hurt. It's not just a number or transaction," Ford told USA TODAY shortly after announcing the sponsors' exit. "We know everybody is facing difficult decisions to make right now. But we're not going anywhere."
Fear! That what Trump has created... government by intimidation!
San Francisco isn't alone. Kendra Walker, a former president of Pride Houston, said a similar sponsorship trend is occurring for Pride parades and festivals nationwide. The organization currently has a $100,000 deficit for its 47th Annual Houston Pride Festival and Parade, also scheduled for June.

"It's happening everywhere," Walker said. "Most of us have some of the same sponsors, and once you started seeing cuts in San Francisco, San Diego and here, it's like a double-whammy. The reasons become both economic – and political."
You don't want to be on Trump's Shit List.

Some sponsors have expressed political concerns, pointing to the White House's antagonistic stance on diversity, equity, and inclusion and the current climate more broadly. Others are gesturing at tariffs or general economic instability as the cause for their hesitation in committing big money, which organizers have to take at face value, even if it's hard to imagine the politics aren't part of the calculation. Case in point: Kilbride said that a "pretty significant" corporate sponsor has asked to be a silent partner of this year's New York Pride, though it hasn't scaled back its funding.
I don't like Trump using the Department of Justice as his own personal revenge machine. He has weaponized the courts against his enemies and extort them against us. Company are afraid of angering Trump so they are stopping supporting anything LGBTQ+ including Pride events.

In the past I have criticized Pride event about having corporate sponsors. But there is a big difference from the Pride organizers to decide not to have corporate sponsors and the government bullying the sponsors.
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Mini-Post: One Person At A Time

[Editorial]

That is all we have to do... one person at a time!

One person at a time can move mountains!

One time when I was dog sitting my brother's and sister-in-laws dog up in Kennebunk Maine, I went to a local seafood restaurant in Cape Porpoise on the waterside overlooking the harbor. The restaurant we filling up fast, I watched a car with Carolina plates pull up and a family of five got out. Now the restaurant has picnic tables for seats and I was the only only on sitting there so they asked if they could join me there.

I was just finishing the clam chowder and getting ready to attack the lobster they brought out when they arrived. When there lobsters arrived I could see confusing on their faces... "Now what?" So I spoke up... "Usually I start with the legs,,," Half way through my lecture I saw that they realizes that I'm trans but they were more interested in how to eat the giant bug on their plates. One more ally.

Now I am at the Cape, there is a lot more sharing of picnic tables.

A little old lady in the grocery store couldn't reach the top shelf and I asked could I help? One more ally.

In my younger days, a teenager threw some trash on the sideway and I picked it up.

My blog has made a lot converts... especially the Saturday 9.

And just recently I got an email asking for help from a judge I'm on a committee with and he asked for help to give a talk before other judges.

Yesterday I had my taxes done, the woman who did them before retired so now I have someone new... He called the other day... Can I speak to Diana, sir? Speaking. ....You're Diana? Yes... 

By just being ourselves and helping others we change people's minds, they see us as a person not as some unknown quantity. We put a face on an unknown. But it is a two edge sword... if we do bad that says on their minds. We are ambassadors to the trans community whether we like it or not.

Just go out and be yourself and lets set a goal of converting one person at a time.

[/Editorial]  
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Friday, April 11, 2025

Poof! All Gone.

Trump is trying to make us go away! Removing our history, removing our healthcare, removing our books, and removing our research!
At least 24 termination letters have been sent out, according to one official.
ABC News
By Mary Kekatos
March 7, 2025


Several active research grants related to studies involving LGBTQ+ issues, gender identity and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) are being canceled at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) because they allegedly do not meet the "priorities" of the current administration.

Starting last week, at least 24 termination letters were sent to researchers at various universities and dozens more have likely occurred, an NIH official with knowledge of the matter, who requested anonymity, confirmed to ABC News.

According to copies of some of the termination letters, viewed by ABC News, canceled grants involved research around "transgender issues" and "gender identity," including studying stress in older LGBTQ+ adults and the epidemiology of Alzheimer's disease and other dementia in LGBTQ+ older adults.

[...]

Category two involves projects "partially" supporting DEI activities. The award can only be granted if the "non-compliant" activities are negotiated out of the project.
"Non-compliant" activities means us we are not in compliance with Trump's bigoty!
"This award no longer effectuates agency priorities," all of the letters read. "Research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment, and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans. Many such studies ignore, rather than seriously examine, biological realities. It is the policy of NIH not to prioritize these research programs."
They make these broad sweeping allegations that have no bases in truth!

"Defend women from gender ideology extremism" trans people and women are not mutually exclusive we have coexisted since the beginning of time. What has changed is that the bigots are in charge of the hen house.
AP News
By  CARLA K. JOHNSON
March 24, 2025


A surge of grant cancellations hit researchers focused on the health of gay, lesbian and transgender people last week, as the Trump administration continues to target what it describes as ideologically driven science.

Last week the U.S. government terminated at least 68 grants to 46 institutions totaling nearly $40 million when awarded, according to a government website. Some of the grant money has already been spent, but at least $1.36 million in future support was yanked as a result of the cuts, a significant undercount because estimates were available for less than a third of grants.

Most were in some way related to sexual minorities, including research focused on HIV prevention. Other canceled studies centered on cancer, youth suicide and bone health.

[...]

“We now no longer have anywhere studying LGBT cancer in the United States,” said Rosser, who saw his grants canceled on Friday.

“When you decide to cancel all the grants on sexual minorities, you really slow down scientific discovery, for everyone,” Rosser said. Young researchers will lose their jobs, and the field as a whole will suffer, he added.

“It’s a loss of a whole generation of science,” Rosser said.

Termination letters seen by The Associated Press gave as reasons that the research was “unscientific” or did “nothing to enhance the health of many Americans.”
Just like Hitler and the Nazis tried to eradicate us, Trump and his minions seek a pogrom against anything LGBTQ+.

Here is my prediction for the month of June... Trump & Company will cut funding to cities with Pride events!
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Mini-Post: Have We Reached That Point Yet?

You can read the handwriting on the wall, Trump is ready to give the Supreme Court a gesture that isn't fitting of someone in that office.
The justices ordered the government to seek the return of a man whom it had wrongfully deported.
The Atlantic
By Adam Serwer
April 10, 2025


America has reached a very dangerous moment, as the Supreme Court’s indulgence of President Donald Trump’s belief in his own untrammeled authority collides with the justices’ expectation that he will abide by their decisions.

This evening, the Supreme Court upheld part of a lower-court decision ordering the Trump administration to seek to retrieve Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom—as The Atlantic first reported—the administration has acknowledged it mistakenly dispatched to El Salvador’s notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT. Abrego Garcia, who came to the United States illegally but was allowed to stay after a judge ruled that he was likely to be persecuted by gangs in his native El Salvador, would be the first person publicly known to be released from CECOT.

“The order properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador,” the justices wrote in an unsigned order.

[...]

The consequences of this evening’s ruling are difficult to predict. The Trump administration could choose to comply with the court order and secure Abrego Garcia’s return. It could also choose the path of open defiance. But it might instead make a token effort to retrieve Abrego Garcia and then shrug, telling the Court that it tried its best but was unsuccessful. The Salvadoran government has declared that anyone who is imprisoned at CECOT will never leave—if Abrego Garcia returns, he could speak out about the conditions he experienced at the facility, which could have political consequences both for the Salvadoran leadership and for the Trump administration.
Lady's and gentlemen! Place your bets! Will Trump lead us into a constitutional crisis? Is Trump leading us down the road to fascism? 
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There Is No Recourse

Do you know what departments Trump & Company have closed?

Well one of them that he gutted was the Office of Civil Rights in the Department of Education... So if you have a civil rights complaint there is nowhere to go to seek help.
‘They Don’t Care About Civil Rights’
Trump’s Shuttering of DHS Oversight Arm Freezes 600 Cases, Imperils Human Rights
CT News Junkie
By J. David McSwane and Hannah Allam, ProPublica 
April 9, 2025


On Feb. 10, more than a dozen Department of Homeland Security officials joined a video conference to discuss an obscure, sparsely funded program overseen by its Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. The office, charged with investigating when the national security agency is accused of violating the rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, had found itself in the crosshairs of Elon Musk’s secretive Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE. 

It began as a typical briefing, with Homeland Security officials explaining to DOGE a program many describe as a win-win. It had provided some $20 million in recent years to local organizations that provide case workers to keep people in immigration proceedings showing up to court, staff explained, without expensive detentions and ankle monitors.
 
[...]
 
None of it worked. On March 21, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem shut down the office and fired most of the 150-person staff. As a result, about 600 civil rights abuse investigations were frozen.
The Republican believe that they are exempt from laws and can do what they want! In a ProPublica article they write;
With a mass email sharing what it called “difficult news,” the U.S. Department of Education has eroded one of its own key duties, abolishing more than half of the offices that investigate civil rights complaints from students and their families.

Civil rights complaints in schools and colleges largely have been investigated through a dozen regional outposts across the country. Now there will be five.

The Office for Civil Rights’ locations in Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Dallas, New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco are being shuttered, ProPublica has learned. Offices will remain in Atlanta, Denver, Kansas City, Seattle and Washington, D.C.
Hmm... did you notice that all the offices shut are from Democratic states?
 
All that lead up to this...
 
Students, additional parents join lawsuit challenging Department of Education's abandoning of civil rights investigations
April 10, 2025
 
 
Multiple parents and students, including two in middle school, from various states across the country have joined a federal lawsuit that seeks to restore the functions of the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and reverse recent actions that effectively eliminate OCR’s ability to process and investigate civil rights complaints, according to an amended complaint filed today.

Each of the additional plaintiffs in the suit, filed by the National Center for Youth Law (NCYL) and Council of Parent Attorneys and Advocates, Inc. (COPAA), have pending claims with OCR alleging discrimination on the basis of race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and/or disability. The initial lawsuit was filed March 14.

"At a time when hostility toward the transgender community is at an all-time high, it is immoral and irresponsible for the agency charged with safeguarding students from discrimination to turn their back on these kids," said Melissa Combs, a parent plaintiff who was forced to move her child to a different school after her child was harassed due to their gender identity. "No student should have to experience what mine did, and no parent should have to take the extraordinary steps I’ve had to take to ensure my child’s equal access to an education."
It is a sad that that the government has to be sued to do their job of enforcing the law!
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