Nicole Carr and Lucas Waldron, Reporter | Graphics Editor - ProPublica
Stephan:
American education is in crisis because not only is it being attacked by politicians, it is also being attacked by ordinary MAGAt citizens who are trying to take over school boards and impose their version of the culture war. This is all part of The Great Schism Trend. and it will have a generation long effect, with the Republican controlled Red states having a less educated population than the Blue states. This will have all kinds of implications for decades to come in Red states. There will be less technological innovation in Red states. Less educated people tend to vote Republican so this distortion of education, will perpetuate that bias which, of course, is the goal. It will strongly effect the wellbeing of states that do this in a negative way.
Time and again over the last two years, parents and protesters have derailed school board meetings across the country. Once considered tame, even boring, the meetings have become polarized battlegrounds over COVID-19 safety measures, LGBTQ+ student rights, “obscene” library books and attempts to teach children about systemic racism in America.
On dozens of occasions, the tensions at the meetings have escalated into not just shouting matches and threats but also arrests and criminal charges.
ProPublica identified nearly 90 incidents in 30 states going back to the spring of 2021. (That’s when the majority of boards resumed gathering in-person after predominantly holding meetings virtually.) Our examination — the first wide-ranging analysis of school board unrest — found that at least 59 people were arrested or charged over an 18-month period, from May 2021 to November 2022. Prosecutors dismissed the vast majority of the cases, most of them involving charges of trespassing, resisting an officer or disrupting a public meeting. Almost all of the incidents were in suburban districts, and nearly every participant was white.
If you are a fertile female child or woman in a Red state this is your new reality. You are not a co-equal citizen with men in your state, and you do not have control over your own body. Frankly, I would not live in a Red state. Note also that this article is in a British publication that is read throughout the world. This is what America now looks like to the rest of the world.
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks to reporters in May.Kacen Bayless/The Kansas City Star/Tribune News Service/Getty
A US teenager was sentenced to 90 days in prison after taking abortion pills to end her pregnancy and disposing of the foetus with her mother’s help.
Celeste Burgess, now 19, pleaded guilty to illegally concealing human remains after she had an abortion when around 28 weeks pregnant, beyond the 20-week limit then set by Nebraska law.
Her mother, Jessica Burgess, 42, faces up to five years in prison for helping her.
Nebraska now bans abortion at 12 weeks.
Police opened the investigation into the mother and daughter in June 2022, before the Supreme Court overturned the nationwide right to abortion and left it to states to determine whether or how to allow the procedure.
At the time, both mother and daughter, then 17, resided in Nebraska, where abortions had been banned at 20 weeks from conception. Earlier this year, Nebraska lawmakers passed an abortion ban at 12 weeks after conception.
According to court documents, Celeste Burgess was in her third trimester of pregnancy when she consumed […]
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey speaks to reporters in May. Credit: Kacen Bayless / The Kansas City Star / Tribune News Service/Getty
Update, July 21: On Thursday, in a unanimous decision, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled that state Attorney General Andrew Bailey overstepped his authority when he refused to approve the fiscal note for the abortion-rights ballot initiatives proposed by retired pediatrician Anna Fitz-James. Bailey’s stonewalling “cannot be justified,” Judge Paul Wilson wrote, affirming a lower court order directing Bailey to approve the fiscal note within 24 hours. “Fitz-James’s constitutional right of initiative petition is being obstructed, and the deadline for submitting signed petitions draws nearer every day.”
In May 2019, when Missouri banned abortions at or after eight weeks of pregnancy, abortion-rights advocates decided to put the issue to voters. Under their state constitution, they could hold a referendum on the new law, if they could gather enough signatures by a late-summer deadline. Missourians—not their representatives in the legislature—would be able to decide whether to keep the 8-week ban or overturn it.
We are literally poisoning ourselves with toxins, micro-plastics, and pollutants. We know it, as this article lays out. And yet we don’t make it a high enough priority to do what is necessary and so we are left with this.
The researchers checked milk samples from 50 mothers across the US. Credit: Katie Collins / PA
New peer-reviewed research has identified 25 kinds of toxic flame retardant in human breast milk in the US, and all samples contained at least some level of the dangerous chemicals.
The compounds are part of the brominated flame retardant class, which are commonly used in plastic, televisions, appliances and electronics. The research also marks the first time a largely unregulated subclass of the flame retardants, called bromophenols, have been found in breast milk.
The chemicals are thought to be potent neurotoxins, especially for developing children, and the findings are “disturbing”, said Erika Schreder, a toxicologist with Toxic Free Future and a study co-author.
“The production and use of these compounds continues, and they are likely to impact children’s health until governments require companies to end their use and switch to safer solutions,” the study’s authors wrote.
The researchers, also from Emory University, the University of Washington, and Seattle Children’s Research Institute, checked milk samples from 50 mothers across the US.
I do not know D. Earl Stephens but I strongly agree with his essay. What is happening in Michigan is a bright light in American politics.
Pictured above from left to right: Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and Attorney General Dana Nessel. Credit: Graphic by https://www.bridgemi.com
When budding radical, rightwing conservative pundit, and full-time lowlife, Donald Trump, broke the news Tuesday morning that he had been served a target letter from the Department of Justice signaling criminal charges for his attack on America, my reaction surprised me.
I felt nothing but burning anger.
My ire was targeted at this orange, blubbering, lying racist of course, but also at Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice for taking so damn long to launch such a short trip to this painfully obvious destination.
We spent four, awful years watching as Trump assaulted all that is good in this country, culminating with his bloody attempted coup on January 6, 2021. Millions of us sat glued to our TVs that day as the siege at the Capitol went on for hours, and Trump did nothing but presumably root for its success.
America’s peaceful transfer of power — her showcase for Democracy — had turned into a […]
