‘Psychologically Abusive’: Some Back-to-School Programs Dividing Students by ‘Gender, Culture, and Identity’

A back-to-school curriculum focused on social-emotional learning (SEL) lays the foundation for Critical Race Theory (CRT) by dividing children through the creation of identity charts, “getting to know you” questionnaires and classroom contracts, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

A curriculum created by Facing History and Ourselves, a group that partners with more than 100,000 teachers to provide education resources to combat “racism, antisemitism and prejudice at pivotal moments in history,” has a five day back-to-school lesson plan that teaches kids about gender, culture and identity. The curriculum is based in SEL, which focuses on teaching students social skills for their emotional well-being but has been criticized for laying the groundwork for CRT in the classroom, as similar lesson plans based in SEL are growing in popularity across the country, experts told the DCNF.

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‘Unprecedented’: Judge Ruling Moves Trump Raid Affidavit One Step Closer to Release

Judge Bruce Reinhart on Monday released an order rejecting the Department of Justice’s argument that the affidavit used to justify a raid of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence should remain entirely sealed, moving the document one step closer to potentially being released.

The federal government now has until Thursday to propose redactions and make any other arguments as to why the document should not be made public.

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FBI Raid of Mar-a-Lago Was ‘Improper’: Dershowitz

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said that the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate was incorrectly conducted.

Earlier in August, FBI agents with the Washington Field Office raided the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home seeking classified documents he may have removed from the White House. Reports subsequently emerged that Trump had already been served with a subpoena seeking classified records related to the investigation and had cooperated extensively with federal authorities.

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30 Months into the COVID-19 Pandemic, at Least a Dozen States Are Under ‘Emergency’ Orders

In October 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court stripped Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of the unilateral powers she was using when she declared a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whitmer had been using a 1945 law – which was prompted by a three-day race riot in Detroit three years earlier – that had no sunset provision in it and didn’t require approval by the state legislature.

In May 2021, Whitmer told a news agency that if she still had that 1945 state-of-emergency law, she would use those powers, but not for anything related to a pandemic.

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Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: American Academy of Pediatrics Continues Defense of Youth Transgender Treatments While Other Nations Reject Them

Pediatrician Dr. Julia Mason and Manhattan Institute fellow Leor Sapir warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the leftwing media has championed a “deeply flawed” study published in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) flagship journal, one that argues the surge in young people claiming to identify as transgender is not due to “social contagion,” a concept, therefore, that should not be cited by state legislatures to regulate puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries for youth.

The study, published in Pediatrics, was penned by child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Jack Turban, a controversial clinician-activist, who completed a fellowship at Stanford Medical Center and went on to specialize in helping gender dysphoric youth obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries.

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VA-07, VA-10 Candidates Discuss Policy Problems Faced by People with Disabilities, All Support Increasing SSI Asset Limit

The congressional candidates for Virginia’s seventh and tenth districts met in a virtual forum on Monday evening where they discussed policy problems faced by people with disabilities. At the beginning, moderator Connor Cummings said that the event was a sensory-friendly forum, not a debate, and instructed candidates to speak about themselves, not their opponents. As a result, the forum’s tone was professional and policy-focused, lacking the fireworks of traditional forums and debates driven by attacks and personality.

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Commentary: Yes, It’s Harder to Win the Senate – But That’s Always True

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate.”

That was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Aug. 18 at the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, handicapping the Nov. 2022 Congressional midterms, giving Republicans greater odds to win back the House than the Senate.

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Commentary: With a Lack of Empathy, Disregard for Social Norms and Rules, and Aggressive Tendencies, Is the Democratic Party Sociopathic?

Parties from principle, especially abstract speculative principle, are known only to modern times . . . what madness, what fury can beget such unhappy and such fatal divisions? . . . This principle, however frivolous it may appear, seems to have been the origin of all religious wars and divisions. As no party, in the present age, can well support itself without a philosophical or speculative system of principles annexed to its political or practical one, we accordingly find, that each of the factions into which this nation is divided has reared up a fabric of the former kind, in order to protect and cover that scheme of actions which it pursues.

That profound sentiment comes right from the lips of the father of the Scottish Enlightenment himself, David Hume, circa 1742. It is chock full of insight for our own times. And the practical reason of that era formed the background context for the American founding, much as Scotland itself was the origin of the modern era by inventing, law, economics, science, technology, medicine and unleashing the power of the market.  

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Commentary: Enormous Amounts of Money Flow into the Bottomless Education Pit

Spurred by COVID panic, schools have been the recipient of ungodly sums of money. And it’s not as if the beast was starving before. To put things into perspective, the United States spends about $800 billion on national defense, more than China, Russia, India, the UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Japan combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. America now spends even more on K-12 education, with an outlay of about $900 billion dollars a year, which includes an additional $122 billion from the COVID-related American Rescue Plan. 

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Democrat U.S. Senate Candidate John Fetterman Calls for ‘Prosecuting’ Oil, Grocery CEOs

Democratic Pennsylvania senatorial candidate and lieutenant governor John Fetterman called for prosecuting executives of oil and food companies in a Sunday guest column for local media outlet Times Leader.

Fetterman blamed executives of large oil and food companies for the high prices that Americans are experiencing at gas stations and grocery stores across the country, stating that he would “crack down” on CEOs to bring down costs, according to the opinion column. The senatorial candidate juxtaposed the record profits of companies like Chevron, Exxon and Tyson, a large food company, with the high prices of gas and basic necessities.

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Biden White House Facilitated DOJ’s Criminal Probe against Trump, Scuttled Privilege Claims: Memos

Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-o-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

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Dem-Appointed Judge Opens the Door to More Men Being Housed in Women’s Prisons

A Democrat-appointed federal judge opened the door to allowing more males to be housed in women’s prisons Tuesday by ruling that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) covers people with gender dysphoria.

Kesha Williams, a biologically male former inmate who identifies as a transgender woman, sued several people associated with the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center in Virginia for allegedly violating the ADA in their decision to house Williams with men, according to court documents. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, a Clinton appointee, sided with Williams and rejected a lower court’s dismissal of the initial lawsuit.

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Citing Technical Errors, Virginia Department of Education Delays Review of History Standards

The Youngkin administration asked the Virginia Board of Education to delay reviewing new history and social science standards, a necessary first step that includes public hearings. On Wednesday, in the first meeting with a majority of Youngkin-appointed members, the board agreed to delay accepting the standards for first review until September, although board President Daniel Gecker expressed concern about falling behind on a timeline to approve the standards.

Superintendent of Public Instruction Jillian Balow asked for the delay, saying that would allow the five new Youngkin-appointed members more time to get up to speed and to address technical errors like the accidental omission of language that referred to George Washington as the “Father of Our Country.”

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