'Intense backlash' sweeps conservatives off US school boards nationwide

Travis Gettys
November 21, 2025 

ALTERHET


US election day, Diverse people at voting booth at US election station with American flag in background. Diverse people in line to vote at US election day. Vote for American democracy. (Photo credit: Rawpixel.com / Shutterstock)

Democrats invested heavily in sweeping Republican culture warriors off school boards across the country, and their efforts paid off.

Republicans lost school board seats in local races in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas after seizing onto educational culture war issues in the post-COVID era, as Democrats recruited candidates to run professional campaigns infused with money from the national party, reported Politico.

“Folks just want their school boards to be boring again,” said Lesley Guilmart, who was one of three Democrats to take back the majority in the Cypress-Fairbanks school board in the Houston, Texas, area. “They want normalcy. Once the board was taken over by a super partisan extremist majority, folks across the political spectrum were dismayed.”

Conservative groups like Moms for Liberty got candidates elected who opposed school closures and mask mandates during the pandemic and argued that public schools promoted progressive values, and Republicans used the energy around those battles to leverage wins in state and national elections.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis elevated Moms for Liberty and attempted to use his "war on woke" as a springboard for his presidential campaign, and Donald Trump's anti-trans rights attacks on Kamala Harris proved to be one of his most effective ads during his 2024 re-election campaign, but those issues seem to be fading as voters continue worrying about rising costs.

“Covid went away, and the dissatisfaction with school districts abated," said Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. It’s not totally gone, but it lessened. I think we’re more at a fatigue level.”

Democratic-aligned group Pipeline Fund, which is recruiting candidates for school board and state legislative races, are targeting states all over the map, and its founder and executive director, Denise Feriozzi, argued that success in those races will help change negative perceptions about the party.

“When you have a Democratic brand that is suffering, you can show people what it actually looks like to be a Democrat in Mobile, Alabama, and Anchorage, Alaska,” Feriozzi said.

Democrats notched wins in this month's off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia and elsewhere, and some believe voters prefer local politics in school board races than national issues, with GOP candidates in New Jersey's Ocean City Board of Education race losing despite touting endorsements from Moms for Liberty and Turning Point USA.

“For many parents, those endorsements signaled a strong commitment to parental involvement and transparency in public education,” said Robin Shaffer, who was on the losing slate along with two incumbents, said in an email.

Shaffer said he and his fellow Republicans were "proud" of the endorsements but conceded they may have been a drag with some voters.

"For others, those associations carried national-level baggage and triggered intense backlash based on misconceptions about our actual views," he said.

DESANTISLAND

Here's the sinister truth behind Florida's flourishing book bans

ALBERTA IS BRINGING THIS TO CANADA

Diane Roberts,

 Florida Phoenix
August 28, 2025 


School libraries are under assault in Florida. Picture: Shutterstock.com

It’s Banned Books Week in Florida!

OK, the observance is in October, but it’s always Banned Books Week in Florida. Every day seems to bring another hissy fit from a state goon or “concerned” parent hell-bent on returning us to the glory days of censorship.

Hillsborough County School Superintendent Van Ayres has been attacked by parents and shouted at by state government for failing to remove materials chest-thumping Attorney General James Uthmeier claims are “pornographic“ from school libraries.

Ayres already had two books — Call Me By Your Name, a gay romance with some sex scenes, and Jack of Hearts (and Other Parts), which has no sex scenes — taken off the shelves.

That was not enough for Uthmeier and some of the school board’s more hysterical members. So, in an abundance of caution, Ayres had 600 more removed from schools for a “review,” estimated to cost $350,000.


It was not enough: During a June school board meeting, one member called many surviving books “nasty and disgusting,” and another, obviously in need of smelling salts, said, “I, as a 56-year-old woman, mother of five and a physician, can’t look at these pages.”

She wants heads to roll:

“Have you considered firing all your media specialists and starting from scratch with women and men who can read, or have a single shred of decency? These people that you trust to review these materials are abusing the children of your county. They’re child abusers.”

Here are some of those child-abusing materials: The Diary of Anne Frank, What Girls Are Made Of, The Bluest Eye, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Slaughterhouse Five, and The Handmaid’s Tale.


Women and men who can — and do — read will know the authors of those books include a Booker Prize winner, a National Book Award winner, winner of a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and a Nobel Prize laureate.

Obviously, a bunch of perverts and losers.

‘Overbroad and unconstitutional’

The good news is that some at that ambush of a meeting objected to the objections.

One parent said it was not the state’s responsibility to decide what books her kid should have access to, it was hers: “Don’t tell me that it’s inappropriate if I think it’s appropriate for my child to read.”

The chair of the school board also took exception to the abuse heaped on school librarians (annoyingly now called “media specialists”) who are, in fact, experts in “age-appropriate” materials.

The even better news is that a federal judge has struck down the worst parts of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ pet book-banning law as “overbroad and unconstitutional.”

A gaggle of big publishers including Simon and Schuster, Hachette, HarperCollins, Penguin Random House, plus a bunch of well-known authors and hacked-off parents, sued over the state’s vague decree that if a text “describes sexual conduct” it’s “pornographic.”

U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza, probably trying hard not to roll his eyes, pointed out the state can’t seem to define what they mean by “sexual conduct”: Consensual intercourse? A kiss? A rape? A seductive conversation? A hand sliding down (or up) to touch certain body parts which may or may not be named? Joyous marital congress?

The state’s arguments boiled down to:If a parent or random Moms for Liberty busybody think something is obscene and therefore an assault on the Moral Fiber of Our Youth, it is, even if they can’t quite get specific about what that means. They know obscenity when they see it, by golly.
Books in public school libraries should promote “government speech,” i.e., the views espoused by the DeSantis regime.

Views such as, say, gays are not good; trans people are worse; sex outside of marriage is terrible; authority should not be questioned; climate change should not be studied.

Legal fees

According the state, “When the government speaks, it ‘can freely select the views that it wants to express, including choosing not to speak and speaking through the removal of speech that the government disapproves.”

According to DeSantis’ lawyers, school books are “not subject to the First Amendment.”

You thought free speech was protected in the Free State of Florida?

In 2023, PEN America file a lawsuit against the Escambia County School District for removing or restricting access to books some people found objectionable. Escambia keeps losing in court, but that hasn’t stopped them from continuing to spend taxpayer money: at least $440,000. So far. To make an obvious point, think about the field trips and school supplies that cash could have funded.

What’s all this book banning really about, anyway?

Authoritarianism for authoritarianism’s sake? That’s probably part of it. Bullies love to bully.

Does it spring from deeply held religious notions of “purity” which hold that any exposure to what some people see as “immoral” words or images will pollute the minds of innocent children?

Y’all might remember the embarrassing kerfluffle at a Tallahassee charter school over showing students one of the great achievements of Western art.

The teacher leading a unit on the Renaissance had the temerity to display a picture of Michelangelo’s statue of David. Some parents freaked out: You could see David’s junk!

As if half the planet does not sport similar junk.

Consider And Tango Makes Three, the famous true story of two male penguins raising a chick at New York’s Central Park Zoo. That book has been snatched off library shelves all over Florida because, well, maybe because it could encourage tolerance toward flightless birds?

Fear factor

The banners seem to think stories with a gay hero or a trans character will turn kids gay or trans.

These people do not assume stories with gun violence will turn kids into mass shooters. But books telling the truth about Native American genocide and slavery will make kids question the essential virtue of America. Biographies of Malcolm X or Martin Luther King or novels by Ralph Ellison or Alice Walker will make white kids feel guilty.

It’s true the Left has been known to criticize certain books — The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and To Kill a Mockingbird, for racist language, or Lolita for its depiction of pedophilia — but rarely demand they be deep-sixed altogether.

Still, nobody can take away the Right’s title as the undisputed heavyweight champs of the book banning world.

Here’s the real reason for MAGA animosity to books: Fear.

They are scared of an America where white is not the default ethnicity, Christianity is not the dominant religion, heterosexuality is only one kind of “normal,” and history is a complicated tangle of high ideals and low crimes. They cannot bear the thought their children will grow up in the 21st century when all they cherished as solid and eternal can be questioned, even discarded.

So, they fight for control.

Until March of this year, a website called BookLooks, founded by a member of Moms for Liberty, touted a ratings system for books it deemed unsuitable for decent eyeballs.

BookLooks has shut down, saying that “after much prayer and reflection it has become apparent that His work for us here is complete and that He has other callings for us.” However, the ratings system is still all over the Web, with “0″ (no sex, no swearing, no nudity, no booze or drugs), to “4″ denoting a text with “depictions of sexual organs in a state of arousal” plus oral sex of every kind.

Level 5, “Aberrant Content,” means stuff so filthy (“sadomasochistic abuse, assault, and ‘beastiality’” (sic) it’d burn the retinas of a saint.
‘Book of Books’

Take a look at the Moms’ Book of Books, a document that is at once alarming, absurd, and not a little prurient.

It quotes carefully curated and utterly out of context scenes of sex and sexual assault from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye or Yaa Gyaasi’s Homegoing. (Newsflash: in a novel about slavery, you’re pretty much going to encounter sexual assault.)

They react with horror at novels about kids coming to terms with being gay, such as The Perks of Being a Wallflower. They declare books dangerous for supposedly promoting “alternative gender ideologies.”

The Book of Books also lavishly shares sex act image after sex act image from graphic novels including The Handmaid’s Tale and Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer. That stuff is, admittedly, pretty raw, even hard to look at. However, you can’t help wondering why they couldn’t have done with just two or three explicit pictures — and whether the compilers were getting a naughty thrill out of the whole thing.

We expect the Moms and their ilk to freak out over sex of any flavor, but even more of their ire has been directed at references to race, which they label “controversial social commentary” or just “hate.” They don’t mean “hate” as in scenes of racist violence or oppression of people of color. They mean people of color daring to expose or criticize or otherwise express strong disapproval of racism.
‘Nasty white folks’

Adding to the many transgressions of The Bluest Eye, they point to this sentence: “Nasty white folks is about the nastiest things they is.”

In Angie Thomas’ The Hate U Give, the Moms clutch their pearls at: “A sixteen-year-old black boy is dead because a white cop killed him. What else could it be?”

Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian raises alarm for this: “Our white dentist believed that Indians only felt half as much pain as white people did, so he only gave us half the Novocain.”

This nonsense would be hilarious if it weren’t driving public education policy in Florida. Those who want to ban or suppress books are closing the barn door after the horse has bolted and is now in the next town, sitting in a bar drinking a Mai Tai. They’re also exposing themselves as the frightened creatures they are.

The bans will continue: Escambia County has removed another 400-plus books from its libraries without reviewing a single one. The lawsuits will continue. And the 21st century will continue, despite the state of Florida trying its best to drag us back to the 19th.

ROFLMAO

MAGA Mainstay Nancy Mace Cancels Speech After Just Eight People Show Up

OTHER GOP REP'S ARE BEING BOOED BY HUNDREDS

Emell Derra Adolphus
Sat 23 August 2025

DAILY BEAST


Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace—who is currently running as a South Carolina gubernatorial candidate—was reportedly forced to cancel a Thursday speech after nearly no one bothered to show up.

Mace was set to address a local chapter of the far-right organization Moms for Liberty, but changed course after only eight people showed up, My Horry News reported. Mace reportedly slunk away backstage to avoid addressing the situation directly, before pivoting to speaking with those in attendance individually—and taking some questions from the media, of course.

Event organizers had reportedly hoped 100 people would show.

Nancy Mace canceled her speech, but spoke to each audience member individually before addressing the media. / Reuters

South Carolinians will head to the polls to vote for their new governor on Nov. 3. Incumbent Gov. Henry McMaster, a Republican, is not running due to term limits.

Mace, who announced her gubernatorial bid earlier this month, is one of five Republicans currently vying for the state’s top job.

In announcing her run on Aug. 4, Mace embraced her firebrand reputation when she declared: “I didn’t come to join the club. They don’t want me, and I don’t want them.”

“I came to hold the line,” Mace continued. “They said stay quiet; I spoke up. They said sit down; I stood up. They said play nice, and I fought back.”

Nancy Mace has described herself as “Trump in heels,” an image that is memorable for all the wrong reasons. / Reuters

Mace has attempted to clamp onto President Donald Trump’s coattails, stoking MAGA mayhem by attacking Democratic-led bills, policies and positions—describing herself as “Trump in heels” as she publicly pleaded for his support in her race for governor, ABC News reported.

Mace told press at her flop event that her campaign is “winning by double digits everywhere, but particularly with folks who support the president.”

But her political ploys have often left her with egg on her face.

A visibly angry Mace lost her cool with a reporter two weeks ago when she was fact-checked during a town hall at Veterans Café and Grill in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. After Mace claimed credit for the state’s infrastructure upgrades tied to the Inflation Reduction Act, the reporter called Mace out for voting against it, leading to fireworks.

“You’re very confused,” Mace said, outraged, before going on the attack. “You’re a raging Democrat… a raging leftist with that kind of questioning. And I would say, as a woman, like, you might wanna think about how you view other women.”

In another painfully awkward public moment, Mace claimed that she likes to unwind by watching ICE deportation raids—a comment that was ripped across X as a crude attempt to position herself as head ICE Barbie over Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

'How irresponsible': Nancy Mace torched for sharing hoax about college shooter

Robert Davis
August 24, 2025 

RAW STORY

U.S. Rep Nancy Mace (R-SC) attends a House of Representatives Oversight Committee hearing on the U.S. Secret Service and the security lapses that allowed an attempted assassination of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., July 22, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/File Photo

A MAGA representative received sharp criticism on Sunday evening after she shared unconfirmed rumors about an active shooter on the University of South Carolina campus.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who is running for South Carolina governor, amplified claims on X that there was an active shooter at the USC library. She also shared a since-deleted photo of the shooter and a few identifying characteristics. The person Mace accused of being the shooter was later discovered to be carrying an umbrella, not a gun, on campus.

"Please be safe and we are praying for safety for our students and the safety of law enforcement as they take swift action to apprehend this individual," Mace wrote from her official X account.

Later in the evening, she posted that the event was "confusing" for all involved. She also posted a thank you note to local law enforcement who responded to the school.

"Real, or a hoax, or a mistake, now would be an appropriate time to talk about hardened security at schools of all grades, colleges and universities," Mace wrote. "This was a terrifying experience for students on campus and their families."

Several people responded to Mace's claims on social media.

"South Carolina police say there is no shooter on the campus of USC," Travis Akers, a retired Navy intelligence officer who lives in South Carolina, wrote on X. "The image shared by @NancyMace was obtained from X, and was of a student carrying an umbrella. The image was not released by law enforcement or an official authority, and could have resulted in him being killed."

"She deleted it but my God how irresponsible can Nancy Mace be?" Tyler Jones, CEO of Charleston Edge Collective, posted on X.

"@NancyMace posted videos of this kid casually walking through campus with his umbrella saying he was a shooter at the University of South Carolina during their active shooter scare earlier that turned out to be a false alarm….kid should sue her a--!" Wu-Tang is for the Children posted on X.

"Now would be an appropriate time to talk about how to appropriately punish you for this false post that could have gotten someone killed," Fred Guttenberg, who's daughter was killed in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, posted on X. "As the father of Jaime, killed in the Parkland shooting, everything about you and your messaging is the problem. Seek help as I firmly believe you are in need."

See the post by clicking here.

Jayapal Slams ICE for Targeting Law-Abiding 'Moms, Dads, Grandparents'—Not Criminals

"ICE isn't going after the 'worst of the worst' like Trump promised," the progressive congresswoman said. "They're disappearing asylum-seekers, families, and relatives of citizens—many with no criminal record."


U.S. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) speaks to protesters near the White House in Washington, D.C. during May 1, 2025 rally against the Trump administration's deportation policies.
(Photo: Oliver Contreras/AFP via Getty Images)

Brett Wilkins
Jun 26, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

Progressive U.S. Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal on Thursday hosted a "shadow hearing" on Immigration and Customs Enforcement's targeting of asylum-seekers, families, relatives of American citizens, and other law-abiding people for deportation—policies and practices that belie President Donald Trump's claim that his administration would focus on removing undocumented criminals.

Jayapal (D-Wash.)—the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Immigration, Integrity, Security, and Enforcement and an immigrant—convened the panel, called Kidnapped and Disappeared: Trump's Weaponization of Immigration Courts. The shadow hearing "examined the disturbing trend of broad efforts to erode access to legal services and due process in immigration proceedings, especially as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been targeting immigrants showing up for legal proceedings—following the requirements set for them by courts."

"These actions are a direct attack on the legal immigration system and the people who are trying to follow all the legal steps."

A sampling of the more than 65,000 people arrested by ICE since Trump reentered office in January reveals people including a beloved resident of a staunchly pro-Trump town, a decorated combat veteran, a child with cancer, anti-genocide protesters, and a woman with an American husband and child who's lived in the U.S. for nearly 50 years.

While the Trump administration claims that "3 in 4 arrests were criminal illegal aliens," most people caught up in Trump's mass deportation drive have no criminal records or have only committed minor offenses including traffic violations. According to the libertarian Cato Institute, 65% of people taken by ICE had no criminal conviction whatsoever and 93% had no conviction for violent offenses.

"Republicans like to talk about how they support immigrants who quote 'do things the right way,'" Jayapal said during the hearing. "Now that they control Congress and the White House, they should be putting their money where their mouth is and ensuring that the legal immigration process remains open to those who pursue it—but that's not what's happening."

"They have arrested people at their citizenship interviews, their check-in appointments with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and increasingly, at immigration court," Jayapal continued. "These actions are a direct attack on the legal immigration system and the people who are trying to follow all the legal steps."

"These actions only serve to make the immigration system even more chaotic and unjust than it already is," she added. "Just when you think this administration cannot sink any lower, they get out a shovel and keep digging."

House Democrats Judy Chu (Calif.), Jesús "Chuy" García (Ill.), Sylvia Garcia (Texas), Glenn Ivey (Md.), Henry C. "Hank" Johnson, Jr. (Ga.), Zoe Lofgren (Calif.), Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), Delia Ramirez (Ill.), Mark Takano (Calif.), and Rashida Tlaib (Mich.) took part in Thursday's hearing.

Speakers on Jayapal's panel included retired immigration judge A. Ashley Tabaddor, National Immigrant Justice Center policy director Azadeh Erfani, Acacia Center for Justice chief of staff Bettina Rodriguez Schlegel, andImmigrant ARC interim director of programs Gillian Rowland-Kain.

"Due process in a courtroom means that every part of the system functions fairly and in concert. That requires an independent judge, a level playing field, and a safe, accessible forum for all participants," Tabaddor said. "Yet noncitizens have no right to appointed counsel—even in life-or-death matters."

"Now, the Trump administration claims that immigration judges are effectively at-will employees, directly undermining their independence," she continued. "At the same time, immigration courts are being transformed into enforcement zones, deterring participation and eroding public trust."

"As a former judge, I can tell you: When even one part of the machine breaks—when judges are undermined, when legal support disappears, or fear keeps people from appearing—the entire system collapses," Tabaddor added. "And when that happens, it doesn't just fail immigrants. It fails all of us."

Erfani said: "Nothing is off the table for ICE to meet Trump's arrest quotas and build the largest mass detention system in recorded history. First, they took away all legal services so no one could represent themselves. Next, they raided the courts and took away access to judges. And lately, they have set traps at ICE check-in appointments, where individuals with pending cases trying to comply with their proceedings are shackled and disappeared into remote jails."

"As ICE tramples all semblance of due process and the rule of law, they are terrorizing our communities," she added.

Rodriguez Schlegel noted how "the Trump administration's attacks on due process have upended the lives and futures of our families, neighbors, and friends."

"In addition to the profound impact on our communities, ending legal access programs has further exacerbated the limited capacity of the immigrant legal services field," she said. "Alongside our inspiring network of legal service provider partners, we will continue to fight for these lifesaving programs to be restored so that families, children, and adults aren't forced to navigate our country's increasingly dehumanizing immigration system alone."

"As ICE tramples all semblance of due process and the rule of law, they are terrorizing our communities."

Stressing that "this is more than a policy shift," Rowland-Kain called the Trump administration's actions "a coordinated effort to sideline due process and deport people without giving them the opportunity to present their case."

"What should have been a space for due process is instead a site of fear," she said. "Masked and armed federal agents are arresting and intimidating people who attend court. Volunteers and attorneys are being surveilled. Every day, our members are in those courtrooms—often the only ones there to stand beside immigrants facing an unjust system. We will continue to do our work and to push back."

'No Secret Police Act': Democratic Bill Would Ban Trump's Masked Federal Agents

"If you uphold the peace of a democratic society, you should not be anonymous," said Rep. Adriano Espaillat.


Masked federal agents stand outside a gate of Dodger Stadium on June 19, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.
(Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images)

Julia Conley
Jun 26, 2025
COMMON DREAMS

From the abductions of foreign students Rümeysa Öztürk and Mahmoud Khalil to the violent accosting of New York City Comptroller Brad Lander as he was trying to shield an immigrant from arrest at a courthouse, the images have become familiar to many Americans: masked federal agents descending on communities across the U.S. and arresting citizens and immigrants alike.

Two Democratic lawmakers on Thursday demanded an end to the Trump administration's use of "secret police," introducing legislation that would require all law enforcement officers and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agents—including Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—to clearly display identification and their official badges when detaining or arresting people.


"If you uphold the peace of a democratic society, you should not be anonymous," said U.S. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.). "DHS and ICE agents wearing masks and hiding identification echoes the tactics of secret police authoritarian regimes—and deviates from the practices of local law enforcement, which contributes to confusion in communities."

Espaillat was joined by Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) in introducing the No Secret Police Act, which would also direct Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to conduct research and development to enhance the visibility of official insignia and identification.

"Across the country, plain-clothed federal agents in homemade face coverings are lying in wait outside immigration courts to snatch law-abiding, nonviolent immigrants going through our legal system the right way," said Goldman. "This isn't about protecting law enforcement, it's about terrorizing immigrant communities."

The legislation was introduced a day after U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi claimed during a Senate hearing that she hadn't been aware of federal agents' recent practice under the Trump administration of wearing masks while completing law enforcement work.

Todd Lyons, ICE's acting director, also said recently that the agency's officers "wear masks for personal protection and to prevent doxxing."

But as New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie wrote Wednesday, "ICE has no right to anonymity."

"All people engaged in public service, from the president to an officer of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, are bound by the nature of a public office to act with some fidelity to the public interest," wrote Bouie. "At a minimum, they must be accountable to the people they serve, ready to accept responsibility when they abuse their power or violate the trust of the public."

Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition, said that by granting ICE agents anonymity, the Trump administration has begun "a war on immigrant communities carried out in the shadows... an unconstitutional campaign of terror."

"Armed, unmarked federal agents are stalking immigrants outside courtrooms and targeting people who are following the rules and fighting for their lives. These tactics are ripped straight from an authoritarian playbook," said Awawdeh. "We will not be silenced nor intimidated by these actions. We are on the right side of the law and we will fight tooth and nail to end this assault on our people and our democracy. We call for the swift passage of the No Secret Police Act."

Gestapo: You Guys Look Like Fucking Criminals


ICE thugs raid a popular swap meet in southern California.
Screenshot from KTLA

Abby Zimet
Jun 25, 2025

COMMON DREAMS

New war hysteria looms, yet still armed, masked, unnamed stormtroopers roam the land, keeping us safe from "the worst of the worst illegal alien criminals" by abducting nefarious landscapers, car wash workers, Wal Mart greeters, tamale makers, swap meet fans and distraught mothers of children with cancer. As glorified "state-sanctioned intimidation" turns some terrified Latino neighborhoods into ghost towns, "Day by passing day, we are watching what amounts to a national police riot by ICE."

In our new Police States of America, the chilling images are everywhere: Throngs of burly, ill-trained, rifle-toting bullies cosplaying as soldiers, storming a car wash or Home Depot in their fearless face masks, headphones, neck gaiters, camo helmets, armored vests, mirrored sunglasses, dime-store badges, tight t-shirts and tough-guy walkie-talkies to round up and terrorize whatever brown-skinned innocents they can find into unmarked cars and then, whoosh just like Fast and Furious, into unknown, possibly illegal, probably distant detention camps. Who are these louts? Nobody knows. Operating under an ominous "shroud of opacity" lacking any accountability, they could be any racist losers with a penchant for violence: For an entry-level "frontline" ICE gig, they just need a driver's license and have to be a U.S. citizen, eligible to carry a firearm, younger than 40. They can apply online.

Rumors abound: They are Proud Boys, Patriot Front, J-6 warriors, former goons of Erik Prince's malignant Blackwater, which would be "quite the callback to Season One of Fascist Celebrity Apprentice." Some are likely former cops gone flabby or fired for excessive force. Many are likely garden-variety white nationalists, friendless basement-dwelling incels weary of playing Call of Duty and eager to up their ugly game by arresting brown people. To a point: Despite being giddily kitted out in over-the-top, Bagdad-ready military gear, they've reportedly been advised to avoid all the seriously gangsterish areas around L.A., which is why we've seen virtually no videos of amateur-hour Nazi thugs confronting gang members who might actually punch or shoot back - just manhandling pregnant moms, elderly farmworkers, dazed young skinny guys wiping down windshields at car washes.

Starting years ago with a heinous orange guy pronouncing all Mexicans rapists and murderers, it keeps getting worse as guard rails drop. His marauding agents of chaos can now go after frightened targets in once-safe spaces: schools, courts, hospitals, places of worship. They often skip warrants, mask up, refuse to identify themselves, grab U.S. citizens or witnesses (legally) recording - reminiscent, many note, of Gestapo on the streets of Poland. They just further limitedoversight by ending lawmakers' unannounced visits to detention facilities and requiring at least 72 hours' notice. And now - thanks Goebbels - the "heat's on to (go) after the devils who are taking away the jobs." No wonder stories of random bigots impersonating ICE - "Don’t be speaking that pig-Latin in my fucking country!" - are soaring. Also, kudos to Gloria Johnson on her "unhealthy toddler impersonating a President."


And so to harrowing videos of working people suddenly assaulted, cuffed and whisked away by mobs of jumpy, bellicose hoodlums in what newly arrested New York Comptroller Brad Lander calls "a proceeding that bears no resemblance to justice." Like the 238 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador, at least 75% have no criminal history; most of the rest have paltry traffic or immigration violations before being "effectively disappeared." They grabbed a young Afghan interpreter for U.S. troops who invaded his country; he was at court, checking in as instructed. They pinned a pregnant U.S. citizen to a truck, detained the baby's father, then let her go to give birth four days later. They cuffed, interrogated and pulled a gun on a U.S. citizen in Chicago who, driving past thugs accosting a woman, "gave a little honk (to) be there for my people"; said thugs claimed he tried to kill them.

ICE rampages are nationwide. Here in Portland ME, an immigration legal advocacy group gets over 60 calls a day from people too scared to go to work, Hispanic kids only go out to play after dark, and abduction stories spread. In Oregon's wine country, thugs nabbed and put in chains Moises Sotelo, popular 2020 winner of the Oregon Wine Board's Vineyard Excellence Award, who's lived and raised a family there for decades. In a statement, ICE got all the facts wrong about Sotelo; when a friend tried to visit him in detention, he'd vanished and an official insisted they didn't have to tell him to where: "I told him I thought that sounded wrong, and he said, ‘Well, that’s the way it is.'" The Guardian managed to find out Sotelo was shipped to Arizona; when they asked for ICE confirmation they're under no obligation to tell family or attorneys where prisoners are, they responded, "That is correct."

Clearly California, and especially majority-Latino L.A., are the hardest hit. One resident tries to describe it: "Imagine vans roll up to your local Hobby Lobby. Heavily armed men pour out, body armor, masked, no I.D. They immediately move to every white person they see. They handcuff them, assuming they're Jan. 6 rioters." In Pico Rivera, they mobbed and took down a scrawny 20-year-old Wal-Mart worker and U.S. citizen when he tried to stop them from grabbing an older worker; the community loudly protested. In Huffington Park, a half-dozen cars filled with armed, masked, cosplay soldiers barged into the home of a pregnant mother of four; they were looking for her husband David; she said her husband's name is Jorge, and he wasn't there. Nazi Barbie stood outside, ready for the cameras; instead, they left empty-handed, after which the kids got to go back into their now-trashed house.

In Santa Fe Springs, a DHS copter circled overhead as about sixty armed, masked, geared-up brownshirts-in-jeans surged across a crowded flea market as vendors and customers fled in terror. After dragging out people from bathrooms and harassing whoever they found for I.D's, they cuffed and hauled off two victims. Another mob of about 20 masked, psyched, uber-armed hooligans went aftera 60-year-old woman selling tamales outside a Lowe's; after she had a panic attack and collapsed, chaos ensued: Sirens, air horns, brave furious swarms of locals, cell cameras held high, yelling, "You guys are fucking terrorists!" and "What the fuck are you doing here?" As one chubby jerk lifted his rifle, they shrieked, "We don't need fucking guns here! Go get some bad guys!" "What a bunch of weak-ass cowards," said one. "If kidnapping the Tamale Lady doesn't wake you up, you're dead inside."

In Santa Ana, in video that's gone viral, hoodlums brutally beat, punched and pepper-sprayed a 48-year-old landscaper and father of three U.S. Marines before dragging him so hard into an unmarked van they dislocated his shoulder; one son said over 24 hours later his father had gotten no treatment, water or food (but thank you for your service). In Pasadena, a power-drunk thug leapt out of his car, drew his gun and (illegally) pointed it at the head of a guy taking a photo of his (illegally) glare-guard-obscured license plate. Comments on a hyper-militarized GI-Joe wannabe with zero accountability: "Needs to deport: illegal, paranoid, jumpy," "Where can I report a masked man pulling a firearm on a civilian while stopped in traffic in the middle of the day?" "In hindsight, maybe empowering thugs to become American Gestapo might not have been so wise," and, "I think we're officially a shithole country now."

In what passes for mercy these days, an El Monte mother of a 21-year-old daughter battling bone cancer - the mom filmed weeping as she was dragged off - was released on bond on "humanitarian" grounds after outraged "Free Yolanda" marches; in an interview, she stoically displayed her ankle monitor. But that was a rare, small victory. Much more common are surreal scenes like the geared-up punk in Santa Ana, part of a raid outside the Little Market, seeing an observer recording from a nearby car and swiftly sticking his rifle in her face. Later, the woman, part of a local, grassroots rapid response team, calmly posted video of the encounter with helpful information: "You are legally allowed to record an ICE raid from a safe distance, for you and them. They are NOT supposed to draw any type of weapon at you for simply recording...With that said, move with caution.",

In his Doomsday Scenario, Garrett Graff argues the regime's anti-immigrant machinery has "switftly transformed itself into the closest thing the US has ever had to a secret police at the heart of our democracy" - an entity more culturally akin to the Klan nightriders of Reconstruction than any legit law enforcement agency, and one that does not believe it will ever be subject to any meaningful legal oversight or restraint by people in power wholly indifferent to public perceptions of their abuses. Given that indifference, the S.S.-like Goebbel push for 2,000 arrests a day, and soaring assaults on California's farm workers, day laborers, street vendors and other "easy targets" in easily accessed outdoor jobs, local lawmakers and rights advocates are doing what they can to tweak the laws, educate and protect the most vulnerable, and stem the authoritarian tide.

In response to all the documented abuses, two Bay Area legislators just introduced a bill to bar all law enforcement from wearing masks; it also requires them to identify themselves with badges and names. Arguing, "These are not lawful arrests," Huntington Park Mayor Arturo Flores has also called on local police to verify identities of gun-in-your-face yahoos carrying out "masked abductions," and to enforce vehicle codes on visible license plates and agency markings. Still, with many rights advocates charging there's often distance between Dems' rhetoric and reality - LAPD is "protecting (ICE), not protecting us" - local organizers have ratcheted up advocacy efforts with groups like CLEAN Carwash Worker Center and Community Self-Defense Coalition, offering residents rights workshops, “Know Your Rights” cards, and “adopt a corner” programs to warn workers of raids. Lone patriots have quietly stepped up.

In L.A., protests continue, tow trucks are reportedly hauling off ICE rigs in solidarity, and cowboys did a unity ride because, "Nobody is going to save us. We have to come out and stand up." Elsewhere, there are No Sleep For Ice protests - drums, cans, trombones - at hotels where they stay. A new “Dictator Approved" sculpture appeared in D.C. featuring a fat, gold, thumbs-up hand crushing the crown of Lady Liberty and mock tributes from despots: "Trump is a very bright and talented man."The Onion did a special issue - sample: "Think Tank Called Himmler Institute Assures Nation This All Legal" - thanking a craven Congress for doing nothing as we "stand in the smoldering ruins of our democratic government...slipping smoothly into the warm bath of authoritarianism...Now more than ever, our nation needs your cowardice." Then they stuck a print copy in every congressperson’s mailbox.Still, the horrors mount, brutality upon brutality. Goons abduct a woman en route to school with her kids, left sobbing; a reporter covering “No Kings” protests; a pregnant woman who suffers a stillbirth when she's denied care in custody; 15 workers on a flood control project in flood-prone New Orleans. They devise Alligator Alcatraz, a migrant concentration camp of tents and misery in Florida's Everglades, where if they escape, a baleful video leers, alligators and pythons await them. And they swarm Bubble Bath Car Wash in Torrance CA, where the owner yells, "Get outta here You guys look like fucking criminals, and you act like criminals." A defiant woman out front joins in, berating them as bounty hunters. "Who are you guys? You need to fucking identify yourselves - this is a kidnap," she shouts. "Fucking racial profiling is against the law, motherfuckers. Get the fuck outta here, assholes." Deflated thugs stand dumbly, then slink away. "Fuck them, assholes," she spits. There are monsters among us. There are also saints.

Update: On Tuesday, MAGA's own Goebbels, reflecting his racist cabal's meltdown that Zohran Mamdani, a brown person (Muslim yet), won the New York City mayoral primary, blamed the catastrophe on "unchecked immigration." He called Mamdani's rise "the clearest warning yet of what happens to a society when it fails to control migration," noting a third of New York City's residents are foreign-born and almost two-thirds of its children live in a foreign-born household. Sounds pretty cool to us.

A People’s History, Retold in Graphics

By Hank Kennedy

March 1, 2025

Source: Against The Current

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz’s an AN Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States was first released in 2015 as part of Beacon Press’s Revisioning History series. Other books in the series include the histories of queer and disabled people.

From the beginning, Dunbar-Ortiz’s book met with broad approval from the political left. Prominent radicals like Bill Ayers and Robin D. G. Kelley praised it.

At Counterpunch the late Louis Proyect stated the title “will be of great value to those first learning about the Indigenous perspective,” and that the publisher should “be commended for initiating the Revisioning Series and especially for publishing this stirring counter-history for a country that Karl Marx must have been envisioning when he wrote that ‘capital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt.’”

Not everyone was so appreciative. An anonymous reviewer for Kirkus took umbrage with Ortiz’s use of “ideological” language. They thought it unfair for her to write that “indigenous peoples were overwhelmed by a ‘colonialist settler-state’ the very language broadly applied to Israelis vis-à-vis the Palestinians today.”

Doubtless any member of Moms for Liberty or any other group looking to whitewash history would have similarly negative reactions. The celluloid Indian-killer John Wayne also could fit in that category considering he said: “I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from the Indians. Our so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival.”

Surprisingly, the reviewer did not also take issue with Dunbar-Ortiz’s description of the policies of Andrew Jackson as auguring a “final solution” for the Indigenous people. Heaven help us if writers are no longer expected to call things what they are! She uses similar language because the situations are similar.

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The Comics Adaptation

Paul Peart-Smith, a comics artist with a background at U.K. comics mainstay 2000 AD, has adapted An Indigenous Peoples History of the United States to comics form, with the help of editor Paul Buhle, himself no stranger to nonfiction comics.

Buhle and Peart-Smith previously collaborated on last year’s comic adaptation of Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois, published by Rutgers University Press. The same craft and attention that went into that volume can be found here.

The book begins in media res at the 1973 Wounded Knee Occupation when the American Indian Movement occupied the site of an 1890 massacre of 120 Lakota by U.S. Cavalry. The Occupation meant to draw attention to the repeated violations of treaties between the U.S. government and Native tribes.

Beginning the story at this point has important symbolic value, as Peart-Smith knows. The 1973 Occupation birthed a new era of indigenous activism and opened a space for historians and scholars to think more critically about the conquest of the Americas.

Dunbar-Ortiz appears throughout as our guide, reminiscent of Howard Zinn’s similar appearances in the 2008 comic A Peoples’ History of the American Empire, illustrated by Mike Konopacki, also edited by Buhle. Other historians appear as talking heads.

The effect is something like an informative documentary, but given the comics form, readers can pore over the images in a way impossible with film.

Returning to the outraged Kirkus reviewer, a commonality that gives the present volume urgency is the similarity between the arguments made in favor of European colonization and those of Zionist ideologues, as in Joan Peters’ notorious academic fraud From Time Immemorial, which posited there was no such thing as a Palestinian people and that Zionists had entered an empty land to “make the desert bloom.”

Peart-Smith makes the connection explicit in a panel about settler colonialism that shows a Palestinian flag on top of an Israeli tank.

Nor were the Americas a “land without a people,” as Ortiz and Peart-Smith aptly demonstrate. “Contrary to the American origin myth,” they write, “European explorers and invaders developed an inhabited land.”

Prior to colonization, Native tribal nations had their own governments, some of which had progressive elements.

In some tribes “certain female lineages controlled the choice of male representatives for their clans in their governing councils.” Nationally, U.S. women wouldn’t get the right to vote until 1920.
Historical Images and Symbolic Monsters

Peart-Smith’s artwork does excellent work at reproducing historical images. At one point, he shows readers the logo of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, depicting a native man with a “harmless, flimsy-looking bow and arrow.” The text says “Come over and help us,” an indication of the so-called civilizing mission that white Europeans thought they were undertaking.

A connection is drawn to the imperial conquests of Cuba and the Philippines centuries later. President McKinley (Trump’s hero) argued that the occupation of the Philippines (Cost: Over 200,000 dead Filipinos) was necessary in order to “uplift and civilize and Christianize them.”

Peart-Smith’s experience with 2000 AD aids him in drawing symbolic monsters that exemplify some of the book’s themes. He draws a Scots-Irish frontiersman as a gigantic grotesque, astride a Native village. Later on, Uncle Sam is shown as a killer cyborg, resisted by Native protestors.

Terror was a valuable weapon in the conquest. Scalping, first employed in the British conquest of Ireland, was a key part of these terror attacks.

Taking scalps was not just a way to terrify one’s opponents, it was also needed to claim the bounties of those killed. No scalp, no bounty. Scalping, then, was not something inherent in so-called “savages,” rather it was something introduced by their oppressors.

Terror tactics also came in the form of mercenaries used when the military wanted plausible deniability. The goals and methods were the same; the difference was the lack of uniforms.

The effect is something similar to that engendered by the death squads in El Salvador, Guatemala, and Colombia. Not coincidentally, those death squads were also used primarily against poor peasants of Native descent.
The Killer Terrorists

The authors write that the “Father of Our Country,” George Washington, “resigned himself to the necessity of using what were essentially vicious killers to terrorize the region, annexing land that could be sold to settlers.” There were some things even the U.S. Army would balk at.

One of those vicious killers was John Sevier. Sevier launched an unprovoked attack on the Chickamauga in western North Carolina. He then used scorched earth tactics and employed starvation as a weapon.

This was no obstacle to Sevier serving as governor of Tennessee. His statue, still on display in the National Statuary Hall Collection in the U.S. capitol, appears in this book. Arms crossed, he looks smug, if it’s possible for a statue to do so.

The statue’s prominence is indicative of the kind of men elevated as heroes worthy of emulation in the United States. Unfortunately it wasn’t removed during the taking down of statues honoring prominent racists.

The comparisons that can be made to modern politics don’t stop there. In 1754 a leader of the Catawba asked authorities in North Carolina to stop selling liquor to the Indigenous people:

“You sell it to our young men many times…I heartily wish you would do something to prevent your people from daring to sell or give them any of that strong drink…”

Of course, the colonists had no intention of doing so. Alcohol sales meant profits, and if it weakened the Native people, so much the better. Peart-Smith draws Catawba King Hagler (1700-1763) as a proud man, even though he had been forced to beg.

The use of alcohol as a weapon against the Native people reminds one of the allegations made by writers Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair, Alfred McCoy and others of CIA complicity in drug trafficking in order to finance covert wars. Addiction to hard drugs, like alcoholism, was an acceptable loss, especially when their victims could be dismissed as members of a despised minority.

As another Indigenous Peoples’ Day passes by, it’s important that radicals remember that we live in a “state based on the ideology of white supremacy, the widespread practice of African slavery, and a policy of genocide and land theft.”

Not only is it important for us to remember; this is a history that must be taught, especially at a time when the Ron DeSantises of the world are trying to teach children such travesties as a beneficial side of the African slave trade.

Despite what countless films, novels, textbooks and even comics would tell you, the “winning of the west” was no heroic affair. Peart-Smith has done a great job of adapting Dunbar-Ortiz’s peoples history in an accessible way. It’s educational and disturbing, but never boring.

The comic ends with words from Acoma poet Simon Ortiz: “Eyes will become kind and deep, and the bones of the nation will mend after the revolution.” I hope he is right.



Hank Kennedy
Hank Kennedy is a Detroit area educator and writer. My work has appeared in the Comics Journal, New Politics, and Logos: A Journal of Politics and Culture. I also wrote pieces the Progressive and Detroit's LGBTQ newspaper Between the Lines. I link a few samples of my writing below.

Anita Bryant, a popular singer who became known for opposition to gay rights,  and ERA dead at age 84

NEW YORK (AP)

 — Bryant died Dec. 16 at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, according to a statement posted by her family.

Anita Bryant is seen at a press conference in Miami Beach, Fla., on June 8, 1977. (AP Photo/Bill Hudson, File)
Associated Press
January 10, 2025


NEW YORK (AP) — Anita Bryant, a former Miss Oklahoma, Grammy-nominated singer and prominent booster of orange juice and other products who became known over the second half of her life for her outspoken opposition to gay rights, has died. She was 84.

Bryant died Dec. 16 at her home in Edmond, Oklahoma, according to a statement posted by her family to news site The Oklahoman on Thursday. The family did not list a cause of death.

Bryant was a Barnsdall native who began singing at an early age, and was just 12 when she hosted her own local television show. She was named Miss Oklahoma in 1958 and soon began a successful recording career. Her hit singles included “Till There Was You,” “Paper Roses” and “My Little Corner of the World.” A lifelong Christian, she received two Grammy nominations for best sacred performance and one for best spiritual performance, for the album “Anita Bryant … Naturally.

By the late 1960s, she was among the entertainers joining Bob Hope on his USO tours for troops overseas, had sung at the White House and performed at the national conventions for both the Democrats and Republicans in 1968. She also became a highly visible commercial spokesperson, her ads for Florida orange juice featuring the tag line, “A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine.”

But in the late 1970s, her life and career began a dramatically new path. Unhappy with the cultural changes of the time, Bryant led a successful campaign to repeal an ordinance in Florida’s Miami-Dade County that would have prohibited discrimination based on sexual orientation. Supported by the Rev. Jerry Falwell among others, Bryant and her “Save Our Children” coalition continued to oppose gay rights around the country, denouncing the “deviant lifestyle” of the gay community and calling gays “human garbage.”

Bryant became the object of much criticism in return. Activists organized boycotts against products she endorsed, designed T-shirts mocking her and named a drink for her — a variation of the screwdriver that replaced orange juice with apple juice. During an appearance in Iowa, an activist jammed a pie in her face. Her career in entertainment declined, her marriage to her first husband, Bob Green, broke up, and she later filed for bankruptcy.

In Florida, her legacy was challenged and perpetuated. The ban against sexual discrimination was restored in 1998. Tom Lander, an LGBTQ+ activist and board member of the advocacy group Safe Schools South Florida, told The Associated Press on Friday, “She won the campaign, but she lost the battle in time.” But Lander also acknowledged the “parental rights” movement, which has spurred a recent wave book bannings and anti-LGBTQ+ laws in Florida led by such conservative organizations as Moms Against Liberty.

“It’s so connected to what’s happening today,” Lander said.

Bryant spent the latter part of her life in Oklahoma, where she led Anita Bryant Ministries International. Her second husband, NASA test astronaut Charles Hobson Dry, died last year. According to her family’s statement, she is survived by four children, two stepdaughters and seven grandchildren.

____

Associated Press writer Kate Payne in Tallahassee, Florida contributed to this report.

WAR ON PUBLIC EDUCATION U$A

Failing AZ charter school reopens as a private religious school — funded by taxpayers

Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

Eli Hagerand
Pro Publica

January 05, 2025


Reporting Highlights
An Opaque System: Arizona imposes no transparency or accountability requirements on private schools that receive taxpayer dollars through the state’s voucher program.
Buyer Beware: Voucher parents shopping for a school say it’s hard to obtain independently verified information on the quality of instruction or financial stability of private schools.
Opposed to Reform: As other states replicate Arizona’s program, voucher advocates oppose requiring publicly funded private schools to meet the same educational standards as public schools.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

One afternoon in September, parents started arriving for pickup at Title of Liberty Academy, a private Mormon K-8 school in Mesa, Arizona, on the eastern outskirts of Phoenix.

Individually, the moms and dads were called in to speak to the principal. That’s when they were told that the school, still just a few months old, was closing due to financial problems.

There would be no more school at Title of Liberty.

Over the course of that week, more parents were given the news, as well as their options for the remainder of the school year: They could transfer their children to another private or charter school, or they could put them in a microschool that the principal said she’d soon be setting up in her living room. Or there was always homeschooling. Or even public school.

These families had, until this moment, embodied Arizona’s “school choice” ideal. Many of them had been disappointed by their local public schools, which some felt were indoctrinating kids in subjects like race and sex and, of course, were lacking in religious instruction. So they’d shopped for other educational options on the free market, eventually leading them to Title of Liberty.

One mom had even discovered the school by window shopping: It was in the same strip mall as her orthodontist’s office, next to a China Palace, and she’d noticed the flags outside with Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints imagery. (The school was not formally affiliated with the church.)

An LDS member herself, she was soon ready to start paying tuition to the school from her son’s Empowerment Scholarship Account — a type of school voucher pioneered in Arizona and now spreading in various forms to more than a dozen other states. ESAs give parents an average of over $7,000 a year in taxpayer funds, per child, to spend on any private school, tutoring service or other educational expense of their choice.

Yet Arizona’s ESA program provides zero transparency as to private schools’ financial sustainability or academic performance to help parents make informed school choices.

For instance, the state never informed parents who were new to Title of Liberty and were planning to spend their voucher money there that it had previously been a charter school called ARCHES Academy — which had had its charter revoked last school year due to severe financial issues. Nor that, as a charter, it had a record of dismal academic performance, with just 13% of its students proficient in English and 0% in math in 2023.

When it was a charter (which is a type of public school), these things could be known. There was some oversight. The Arizona State Board for Charter Schools had monitored the school’s finances and academics, unanimously coming to the conclusion that it should be shut down.

Yet just a month after the board’s decision, ARCHES was re-creating itself as a renamed, newly religious private school, simply by pivoting to accept voucher dollars.

In other words, it was closed down by a public governing body but found a way to keep existing and being funded by the public anyway, just without the standards and accountability that would normally come with taxpayer money.

Arizona does no vetting of new voucher schools. Not even if the school or the online school “provider” has already failed, or was founded yesterday, or is operating out of a strip mall or a living room or a garage, or offers just a half hour of instruction per morning. (If you’re an individual tutor in Arizona, all you need in order to register to start accepting voucher cash is a high school diploma.)

There is “nothing” required, said Michelle Edwards, the founder and principal of ARCHES and then of Title of Liberty, in an interview with ProPublica. It was “shocking how little oversight” the state was going to provide of her ESA-funded private school, Edwards said.

According to charter board members as well as parents and family members of her former students, Edwards is a well-intentioned career educator who cares deeply about children. But she has repeatedly struggled to effectively or sustainably run a school.

She said that when she first transformed her charter school into a private school, she and her team called up “every agency under the sun” asking what standards the new school would have to meet, including in order to accept voucher funds. For example, what about special education students and other vulnerable children — would there be any oversight of how her school taught those kids? Or instructional time — any required number of minutes to spend on reading, writing, math, science?

State agencies, she said, each responded with versions of a question: “Why are you asking us? We don’t do that for private schools.”

“If you’re gonna call yourself a school,” Edwards told ProPublica, “there should be at least some reporting that has to be done about your numbers, about how you’re achieving. … You love the freedom of it, but it was scary.”

This school year, ProPublica has been examining Arizona’s first-of-its-kind “universal” education savings account program. We are doing so both because other states have been modeling their own new ESA initiatives after this one, and also because President-elect Donald Trump has prioritized the issue, most recently by nominating for secretary of education someone whose top priority appears to be expanding school choice efforts nationwide. (And Betsy DeVos, his first education secretary, was and remains a leading school voucher proponent.)

These programs are where the U.S. education system is headed.

In our stories, we’ve reported that Arizona making vouchers available even to the wealthiest parents — many of whom were already paying tuition for their kids to go to private school and didn’t need the government assistance — helped contribute to a state budget meltdown. We’ve also reported that low-income families in the Phoenix area, by contrast, are largely not being helped by vouchers, in part because high-quality private schools don’t exist in their neighborhoods.

But the lack of any transparency or accountability measures in Arizona’s ESA model is perhaps the most important issue for other states to consider as they follow this one’s path, even some school choice supporters say.

“If you’re a private school that gets most of its money now from the public, which has happened in Arizona, at that point there should be accountability for you as there is for public schools,” said Michael J. Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a center-right and pro-voucher education reform think tank. “If the public is paying your bills, I don’t see what the argument is for there not to be.”

To illustrate this double standard: Private school parents can speak at public school board meetings, and they vote in school board elections. But public school parents can’t freely attend, let alone request the minutes of, a private school governing body’s meetings, even if that school is now being funded with taxpayer dollars.

Defenders of universal voucher programs counter that the goal of American education should be a free market of educational options for families to choose from, unburdened by excessive state regulations and paperwork. The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank associated with Trump, has maintained that in such a system, schools would have “a strong incentive to meet the needs of their students since unsatisfied parents can take their children and education dollars elsewhere,” which the group says would create “direct accountability to parents.”

Yet in a truly free market, opponents say, consumers would have information, including about vendors’ past performance, to make purchasing decisions in their own best interests.

And if the product fails and has had a history of similar problems — as Title of Liberty did — there would be recourse, as with “lemon laws” that protect consumers who’ve unknowingly bought a defective car.

Several ESA parents across the Phoenix area said in interviews that they absolutely want educational choice and flexibility, but that they also want the sort of quality assurance that only government can provide. Most said that the Arizona Department of Education should provide at least some information as to the background and credentials of private schools and other educational providers that accept voucher money, and also that the department should do something to protect families from badly unqualified providers.

Rebekah Cross, a mother of five in the northwest Phoenix suburb of Peoria, said that the ESA program, overall, has been “life-changing” for her family; she is also an administrator of multiple Facebook groups of ESA parents. Still, she said, it’s “on you” to check the credentials and the criminal history of every private school founder and provider to whom you’re considering paying your ESA dollars, because in Arizona, “anybody can start a private school, you have no idea.” There are mostly “just rumors to rely on,” she said.

Cross pointed out that many local private schools and other educational vendors have started advertising on Facebook and elsewhere that they are “ESA certified,” even though there’s no state “certification” beyond simply signing up to receive the voucher payments. “There’s no criteria; that’s not a thing,” she said.

“You’re putting your kid in [a school], hoping it’s going to work,” Cross said. “If it closes midyear, you’re kind of screwed.”

Doug Nick, spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Education, responded that state law “makes it clear that we have no authority to oversee private schools,” even ones receiving public dollars.

Regarding publicly funded private schools closing midyear, he said that parents “have the wherewithal” to find another schooling option “regardless of the time of year,” and that the law “does not contemplate the department making recommendations to parents” at all.

Asked if the department knew how much public money had gone to Title of Liberty, Nick responded, “We don’t track that information since there’s no business reason to do so.”

Edwards, the Title of Liberty founder, first had the idea for her own school more than a decade ago. She’d long been an educator; she even ran a tutoring business in high school, she told me. At the beginning of her career, she taught Head Start and kindergarten in public and charter schools.

Through that experience and also seeing her own six kids not always having their individual needs met in Arizona’s K-12 system, she came to the conclusion that “to try to teach every child the same is ridiculous.”

Edwards began pitching the state charter board on a concept for a school that would meld principles of hands-on learning, borrowed from the Boy Scouts of America, with a proposal that students be grouped by learning level — “novice,” “apprentice” and so on — rather than into standard grade levels.

The board ultimately allowed her to open this school, ARCHES, in 2018. But it kept a close eye on her finances, in no small part to try to prevent a damaging outcome for students like a midyear closure. While giving her room to innovate, which is a chief goal of charter schools, the board monitored her enrollment numbers and staffing.

As it turned out, Edwards had persistent problems not just with low state test scores but also with unsustainably low enrollment, which would later plague Title of Liberty.

In our interview, she attributed those issues to the transience of many students during the pandemic and post-pandemic period as well as her business managers not being as experienced “as they probably should have been.”

This March, the charter board issued a notice of its intent to revoke ARCHES’ charter contract — a rare, serious move, according to ProPublica’s interviews with board members. (Edwards later reached an agreement with the board to surrender the charter.)

At that hearing, one of the board members commented to Edwards that “I love the fact that you have, you know, ideas and plans and things. … [But] I’m concerned about the kids. I’m concerned about the staff. I’m concerned about the families.”

Another added: “Don’t let that take away personally, on your end, the value of your intent.”

She didn’t. Edwards wanted to keep helping kids, she told me, including several ARCHES students whose families decided to stick with her.

She had the private school idea almost immediately. A post appeared on ARCHES’ Facebook page: “Hey parents! Interested in joining us next year at Title of Liberty Academy?” This was accompanied by an invitation to an “ESA workshop” to help them fill out voucher applications.

Meanwhile, Jason Mow, an ARCHES board member who was helping with its transition to Title of Liberty, tried to recruit new students: “Get your kids out of the government run schools,” he posted, adding, somewhat paradoxically: “The state ESA program will pay for tuition!!!!”

At one point, a parent asked him whether — if state money was going to be funding the school — it would be required to take part in state testing.

“As a private school using ESA, we have a great deal of latitude and not mandated to,” Mow answered.

He also said, “This is how we save the Republic.”

This last comment was part of a larger move that Edwards’ school was making: not just from charter to private and from some public accountability to none, but also from secular to religious with a right-wing bent, which was fully allowed even though it would be bankrolled by taxpayers. So, where ARCHES had touted an “American Revolutionary Classical Holistic Educational System,” Title of Liberty would simply be a “private faith-based school focused on the values of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Meanwhile, Edwards had already been planning to move the school into a new space: a series of storefronts in a strip mall that another charter school had previously occupied.

Over the summer, largely through sheer force of personality, she enrolled about two dozen students.

But Title of Liberty was ultimately even more disorganized than ARCHES had been. For one, Edwards told me, “We didn’t yet have [enough] students enrolled to be able to afford teachers. … But we had to have teachers in order to be able to get students.” She ended up hiring mostly her own family members, both for teaching positions and to do much of the school’s financial paperwork.

She also blamed difficulties with the ESA process, like some parents being told that they hadn’t submitted their email addresses or signatures in the right format. She made clear that none of this involved the state actually scrutinizing her school; still, she wasn’t able to obtain ESA funding as quickly as she had expected to.

The landlord, waiting on unpaid rent, finally asked Edwards to pack up the school and leave. According to one of the property managers, “She just left the space for us to deal with this shit,” which he said amounted to six large dumpsters’ worth.

Edwards responded that she couldn’t afford moving vehicles or storage space for all of those desks, bookshelves, books and files. She said that she’d provided the landlord with information about another school that could have moved in and used the furniture and supplies. (A representative of the owner of the building said that they were done with questionably funded schools by that point, and that they gave Edwards time to clear out.)

“It all depends on how you define success,” Edwards told me. “I feel like the time that our kids had with us was valuable and they learned a lot and took a lot with them from that.”

“We did try to hold to a super high standard,” she added, noting that there’s no one at the state level checking on all the other private schools out there that might not care to meet that standard.

Calls for school transparency and accountability used to be a feature of the center-right education reform movement. No Child Left Behind, one of President George W. Bush’s signature legislative achievements, mandated that public school students in certain grades undergo standardized testing in core subjects, on the grounds that schools should have to prove that they’re educating kids up to state standards and, if they’re not, to improve or else risk losing funding.

That testing was often rote, providing incomplete information as to the varied lives of students and pressuring many teachers to “teach to the test,” critics alleged. But it did offer a window into school performance — which, in turn, gave the voucher movement ammunition to criticize failing public schools.

Still, early voucher efforts too included basic transparency and accountability measures. When vouchers were first proposed in Arizona, for instance, a state task force said that “private schools must also participate in the same accountability process as public schools in order to qualify for state funding.” Louisiana’s voucher program, similarly, required participating private schools to administer state student achievement tests just like public schools did.

But voucher advocates changed course between 2017 and 2020. By that time, several academic studies had found that larger voucher programs had produced severe declines in student performance, especially in math.

Asked about a set of particularly negative findings out of Louisiana, DeVos, Trump’s secretary of education, blamed the state’s voucher program for being “not very well conceived.” Part of the problem was that it was overregulated, she and other advocates said.

In the years since, fully unregulated universal ESA programs have become the favored program design of many school choice supporters.

The result is a situation in which, on the one hand, the Arizona Department of Education annually publishes detailed report cards on all public schools in the state, including charter schools. You can look up any Arizona public school’s overall letter grade (ARCHES had a D when it was still a charter school); the academic performance and progress of that school’s students, including by demographic categories; the experience levels of its teachers, and so on.

On the other hand, Arizona private schools receiving public funding have to do no public reporting at all. If they want, they can self-report their enrollment and performance numbers to be published on websites like Niche.com, but they are free to exaggerate.

In other words, it’s not that this newer ESA model has been a clear academic success or failure. It’s just that the public, and more specifically parents, can’t know.

Not all states keep information as hidden as Arizona. At least five, for example, require schools that accept voucher money to be accredited or to provide evidence that they don’t have financial troubles.

Yet even these minimal efforts at transparency and accountability have been opposed by big-money voucher supporters.

Walmart heir Jim Walton, for instance, gave $500,000 this year to defeat a proposed Arkansas state constitutional amendment that would have required private schools receiving state funds to meet the same educational standards that public schools do. At the Ohio Legislature, provisions of a proposed bill that would’ve made voucher schools submit an annual report showing how they’re using state funding were recently removed under pressure from voucher advocates.

And in Arizona, Republicans in the Legislature have opposed every effort by Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs to increase oversight of private schools that receive ESA money — except for one reform: They decided that such schools must fingerprint their teachers.

But the new law doesn’t require the ESA schools to run those fingerprints through any database or to use them in any way.

About a month ago, I asked parents if they could still pay Title of Liberty from their taxpayer-funded voucher accounts. I was curious not because I thought Edwards was collecting voucher money for a closed school but because it remained listed in ClassWallet, the Arizona Department of Education’s privately owned payment interface for ESA schools and vendors.

One mom sent me screenshots showing that she could indeed still pay the shuttered school from her ESA account, though she would need to produce an invoice.

What’s more, when she’d clicked on it in ClassWallet, “ARCHES Academy” was what had popped up — the name of the failed charter school that was repurposed into Title of Liberty.

The school, whatever it was called, was still open, as far as the state of Arizona was concerned. (It was only disabled in ClassWallet after recent inquiries from ProPublica.)

Wanting to make triple-sure that I wasn’t missing something, I drove over to the strip mall a few weeks ago to see if anything was still going on there.

What I found inside was a scene of school choice in its endstage. A sort of zombie voucher school, with dozens or possibly hundreds of books and papers scattered across the floor. Student records, containing confidential information, had been left out. There was food in the cafeteria area, molding.

Under quotes from the Book of Mormon painted on the walls and a banner proclaiming that Title of Liberty would strive to be a “celestial stronghold of learing [sic],” a document was sitting on a table. It offered guidance for parents on how to select the right school for their little ones, including this line: “You might be surprised how many schools are just flying by the seat of their pants.”

And on top of a file cabinet next to that was a stack of postcard-sized flyers that had been printed off at Walmart, reading, “Sign up your student for ESA.”


Mollie Simon contributed research.

Religious schools claim Maine’s anti-discrimination law creates ‘chilling effect’

Photo by 戸山 神奈 on Unsplash

Eesha Pendharkar,

 Maine Morning Star

January 08, 2025

Two religious schools from Maine argued in federal court on Tuesday against the state’s anti-discrimination law, which they say infringes on their constitutional right to free exercise of religion.

To what extent Maine can allow religious schools to follow their practices — many of which uphold traditional Christian values and can be inherently exclusionary to LGBTQ+ students or students practicing other religions — while protecting the rights of all students will be determined by federal judges in the coming months.



“Can a state that has an anti-discrimination law make that apply to everyone, or are religious organizations going to get an exemption from that?” asked Christopher Taub, Maine’s deputy attorney general who is representing the state in the trial.

“Most people, most taxpayers, would not want their funds to be used for purposes of discrimination. And so the question is, can states stop that from happening or not? And I think the decisions that we get in these cases might help answer that.”
Appellants say Supreme Court precedent protects against exclusion

Crosspoint Church, which runs Bangor Christian Schools, and St. Dominic Academy in Auburn appealed in separate cases heard back-to-back in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston.

Citing several Supreme Court decisions, including one in 2022 that allowed religious schools to be eligible for public funds, they said the state’s educational nondiscrimination provisions create what they described as a “chilling effect,” that in effect exclude religious schools from a state program that allows private schools to receive public education funding in cases where mostly rural students without a local public school can opt in to another school or district.

“The First Amendment actually does protect religious organizations from the very activity that the state of Maine is trying to impose upon them,” said Jeremy Dys, attorney for Crosspoint Church from the First Liberty Institute, a national religious freedom organization. “What we want is not to be penalized for the exercise of religious beliefs.”

Both appellants asked for a reversal of a 2024 U.S. District Court decision to allow Maine to apply its Human Rights Act — which prohibits discrimination on the basis of protected classes, including race, color, sex, sexual orientation (which includes gender identity and expression), among other categories — to all K-12 private schools accepting public funds.

Neither school has applied for the program because they said doing so would allow the state to scrutinize their religious practices.

For example, under the Maine Human Rights Act, Bangor Christian Schools’ practice of not admitting gay or trans students, or expelling students for premarital sex, would violate the law. For St. Dominic’s, it would mean if a student who refuses to pray three times a day or attend mass is denied admission, that student could seek protection by filing a complaint with the Maine Human Rights Commission. Also, teachers wouldn’t be able to say that their faith does not allow them to use students’ preferred pronouns, or they risk being investigated under the Maine Human Rights Act, according to Adele Keim from Becket, the law firm representing St. Dominic’s that fights religious liberty cases.


“Non-discrimination law is important for everybody,” she said. “But as important as it is, it can’t be used to deprive religious believers of their rights.”

If the appeals court does not rule in favor of the religious schools, Dys said the case may have to return to the U.S. Supreme Court, which currently has a conservative majority, “if that’s what it takes to make sure that these religious organizations are treated fairly and equitably.”

State argues cases are premature

The state of Maine argued Tuesday that the cases are premature, since neither religious school that appealed has yet applied for funding and so does not know exactly how Maine’s anti-discrimination law would impact their practices.

It is also possible to comply with state law as a religious school, Taub said, as evidenced by Cheverus High School in Portland, which has been approved to accept public funds for students for years, and has not had to face any complaints or investigations.

One of the arguments appellants focused on was the general applicability of the law, which came under question since Maine also allows rural students to choose out-of-state private schools, which Keim pointed out don’t have to adhere to Maine’s Human Rights Act.

However, out of the 4,500 students statewide that use the tuition reimbursement program, only two go to out-of-state schools, Taub said. Since Maine does not have jurisdiction over other states, it can’t apply its nondiscrimination law to those institutions that receive tuition from Maine municipalities, regardless of whether those schools are religious.

Finally, it is possible to strike down part of the Maine Human Rights Act that could be seen as stifling religious freedom without allowing religious schools to be completely exempt from following the law, Taub said. That would mean religious schools can reject students based on whether or not they align with the school’s beliefs, but they would not be able to reject a student on the basis of sexual orientation or gender, for example.

“This particular provision that talks about allowing religious expression, if the court thinks that’s problematic, instead of breaking down everything, it could just strike down that one provision,” Taub said.

Maine Morning Star is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maine Morning Star maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lauren McCauley for questions: info@mainemorningstar.com.