A member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has written to Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan (R), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, warning that Joe Biden’s sweeping executive order embedding radical woke equity ideology in all agencies of the executive branch is a “Trojan Horse” that represents “a major step toward socialism.”
Read MoreTag: Civil Rights
Victor Davis Hanson Commentary: Identity Politics Absurdities and the Ridiculousness of Reparations
The last time racial reparations made the major news was on the eve of September 11, 2001 attacks. The loss of 3,000 Americans, which for a time fueled a new national unity, quickly dispelled the absurdities of the reparation movement, and turned our attention toward more existential issues. Now the idea is back in vogue again. Here are 10 reasons why the nation’s—and especially California’s—discussions of reparatory payouts are dangerous in a multiracial state, and why reparations are not viable either in an insolvent state or a bankrupt nation at large.
Read MoreCivil Rights Complaint Filed Against Minnesota School District over Grant Excluding White Students
Faribault’s public school district is facing a federal civil rights complaint over a drug abuse prevention grant that appears to exclude white students.
Alpha News has learned that a Title VI complaint was filed against Faribault Public Schools less than 48 hours after the school board approved a $1.1 million grant to fund anti-drug abuse programs specifically aimed at “Black, Indigenous, and People of Color” (BIPOC).
Read MoreCalls Grow Among Prominent Figures to Create a New ‘Church Committee’ to Probe FBI Abuses
A half century ago, Americans held grave concerns that J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI and other U.S. intelligence agencies had abused civil rights, improperly targeted enemies and illegally gathered evidence, so Congress set out on a great cleansing mission. It formed a special committee chaired by Idaho Sen. Frank Church that laid bare the wrongdoing, overhauled the bureau and created new guardrails to protect civil liberties.
Read MoreCivil Rights Experts Challenge Google Fellowship’s Race-Based Requirements
A fellowship hosted by Big Tech giant Google is facing heavy legal criticism due to its use of racial quotas, which critics say are unconstitutional.
Newsbusters reports that the prestigious fellowship, which offers $100,000 to students pursuing their doctorate in computer studies, requires that a certain number of students nominated for the fellowship by their university must be non-White.
Read MoreBiden Plan to Restore Obamacare’s Protection of Transgender Rights in Federal Healthcare Programs Poised to Stoke Religious Freedom Lawsuits
The Biden administration will once again sow its seeds of division by proposing a rule to “protect” those claiming “gender identity” discrimination in federal healthcare programs, a move that is expected to generate religious freedom disputes.
The Biden Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced Monday its proposed rule will implement Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) to affirm that “protections against discrimination on the basis of sex, including sexual orientation and gender identity” are “consistent with the U.S. Supreme Court’s holding in Bostock v. Clayton County,” and to reiterate “protections from discrimination for seeking reproductive health care services.”
Read MoreMinnesota College Cancels Appreciation Lunch for Non-White Staff Following Civil Rights Complaint
A small liberal arts college in St. Peter, Minnesota, has canceled a de facto non-whites-only appreciation lunch following a federal civil rights complaint and a report by Alpha News.
Gustavus Adolphus College intended to hold its “People of Color & International Faculty and Staff Appreciation Lunch” on Friday, Feb. 25, but Mark Perry, a man who has filed civil rights complaints against more than 400 colleges and universities since 2018, caught wind of the event and took swift action against it.
Read MoreMinnesota College Ends Segregated ‘Anti-Racism’ Training Program After Civil Rights Complaint
A liberal arts college in southeastern Minnesota ended its “anti-racism” training program following a civil rights complaint.
Carleton College, located in Northfield, held racially segregated “mandatory monthly affinity groups” as part of its “anti-racism training series” for employees and staff throughout the spring 2021 semester (January through May 2021).
Read MoreMinnesota College Planning Appreciation Lunch for Non-White Staff Only
Alpha News has learned that a private liberal arts college in southern Minnesota is planning an appreciation lunch for just non-white staff and faculty later this month, which potentially violates federal civil rights law.
The equity and inclusion office at Gustavus Adolphus College, located in the town of St. Peter and affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, recently announced the “People of Color & International Faculty and Staff Appreciation Lunch” that will take place on Friday, Feb. 25.
An email sent out to faculty and staff from the college’s office of marketing and communication mentioned that “Faculty and Staff who are People of Color and/or international … are invited to an appreciation lunch on Friday, February 25 from 11:30 a.m. – 1 p.m. in the Three Crowns Room.”
Read MoreParents Defending Education Files Civil Rights Complaint over Middle School’s Plans for Racially Segregated ‘Affinity Groups’
Parents Defending Education (PDE) filed a civil rights complaint Thursday with the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) against New York City Public Schools for its plans to hold racially segregated “affinity groups,” according to the complaint.
PDE filed the complaint with the Office for Civil Rights “for discrimination on the basis of race, color or national origin in programs or activities that receive Federal financial assistance,” claiming the district violated both Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
Lower Manhattan Community School, which is the reason for the complaint, planned to divide students into affinity groups at school on Nov. 23 and 24, based on skin color to “undo the legacy of racism and oppression in this country that impacts our school community,” according to an email sent to parents, the Daily Caller News Foundation previously reported.
Read MoreCommentary: No Reason for White Guilt
Recently, Ibram X. Kendi was chosen as a recipient for the 2021 MacArthur Genius Fellowship. This event has been met with resounding applause on the Left as it is presumed to be both a well-justified instance of reparative justice and a logical continuation of the 1960s Civil Rights movement. In truth, this event constitutes neither of these things.
In recent years, we have seen increasing instances of anti-white rhetoric within America, exemplified in the rise of critical race theory, Black Lives Matter, and the writings of folks like Kendi.
Read MoreBiden’s Education Department Won’t Enforce a Key Due Process Protection for Students Accused of Sexual Assault
The Department of Education announced it would stop enforcing a Trump administration rule designed to protect those accused of sexual assault on college campuses.
A district court in Massachusetts upheld most of the Title IX 2020 amendments in a July ruling, maintaining new regulations related to public institutions managing allegations of harassment, assault, violence, and more. Although, the court struck down one procedural regulation related to what evidence a “Decision-Maker,” or the employee who is designated to adjudicate the case, may consider in making rulings.
Read MoreBiden’s Education Department Won’t Enforce a Key Due Process Protection for Students Accused of Sexual Assault
The Department of Education announced it would stop enforcing a Trump administration rule designed to protect those accused of sexual assault on college campuses.
A district court in Massachusetts upheld most of the Title IX 2020 amendments in a July ruling, maintaining new regulations related to public institutions managing allegations of harassment, assault, violence, and more. Although, the court struck down one procedural regulation related to what evidence a “Decision-Maker,” or the employee who is designated to adjudicate the case, may consider in making rulings.
Following the court ruling and a letter from the Department of Education on Tuesday, the chosen adjudicator can now consider emails and texts between the parties and witnesses, police reports and medical reports, regardless of cross-examination status at the live hearing.
Read MoreBiden’s Office for Civil Rights Pick Questioned on Her Position on Campus Due Process
Catherine Lhamon’s (right) work in President Barack Obama’s administration on Title IX issues may have won her praise from liberal groups and organizations representing alleged and confirmed victims of sexual assault, but it drew criticism from the ranking member of the Senate’s education committee.
President Joe Biden has nominated Lhamon to lead the federal Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, the same position she held under Obama. But Senate Republicans and due-process advocates have questioned her position on the rights of accused students.
Republican Senator Richard Burr said he is concerned that Lhamon “will charge ahead unraveling significant pieces of the previous administration’s Title IX rules.” He made the comments during a July 13 Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee meeting.
Read MoreEducation Department Civil Rights Nominee Rejects Presumption of Innocence for Accused Students
The Biden administration’s nominee to lead the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights told a Senate committee Tuesday that a year-old Title IX regulation does not require the presumption of innocence for students accused of sexual misconduct.
The claim drew bafflement from critics of Catherine Lhamon, who held the same job in the Obama administration’s second term.
In response to threats from Lhamon to pull their federal funding, colleges lowered evidentiary standards and enacted policies that treat accusers more favorably than accused students. Courts have been steadily reining in those practices, sometimes citing the pressure from Lhamon’s office as evidence of bias.
Read MoreCommentary: Biden’s Domestic Terrorism Strategy Has Roots in Clinton Years
The “National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism,” released last month by the National Security Council, claims to take a “narrowly tailored” approach. Something along those lines is indeed evident throughout the document.
In 2016, readers learn, “an anti–authority violent extremist ambushed, shot, and killed five police officers in Dallas.” The national strategy document does not identify the killer, Micah Johnson, an African American veteran who hated cops. Johnson actually shot a dozen officers but managed to kill only five, and he had bomb-making materials in his home. This killer only opposes “authority” and his murder victims remain unidentified in the NSC document.
In 2017, according to the National Strategy “a lone gunman wounded four people at a congressional baseball practice.” Readers are not told this was James Hodgkinson, a Bernie Sanders supporter who hated Republicans and targeted them for assassination. That should easily qualify as domestic terrorism but here Hodgkinson is only a “gunman.” The National Strategy does not reveal that the “wounded” included Representative Steve Scalise (R-La.), who barely escaped with his life. The NSC document fails to mention that Hodkinson also shot Capitol Police special agent Crystal Griner, an African American.
Read MoreBiden Civil Rights Nominee Pressed Colleges to Adopt Policies Often Struck Down in Court
The Biden administration reached back into Team Obama to fill an Education Department slot that oversees civil rights, including Title IX enforcement.
Catherine Lhamon’s nomination last month drew immediate concern from advocates of due process and fair procedures in college Title IX investigations because so many court decisions — 200 by one count — have since challenged the approach she and others in the Obama administration took in investigating campus sexual assaults.
Two more rulings arrived this week, from the 8th U.S. Circuit of Appeals and an Iowa district court under its jurisdiction.
Read MoreCarol Swain Commentary: Critical Race Theory Is a Cancer on Our Educational System
Critical race theory is the civil rights issue of our time. It eats away at our public, private, and Christian academies with its cancerous messages about white privilege, minority disadvantage, and perennial racism. Hardly a day goes by that I do not hear from parents and teachers about yet another school system where the cancerous roots of critical race theory have taken hold or begun to appear under the guise of “culturally competent teaching and learning” or “educational equity.” No matter what they call it, they cannot hide its poisonous effects.
Read MoreEducation Group Files Federal Civil Rights Complaint Against School District That Admitted to ‘Systemic Racism’
A national advocacy organization has filed a federal civil rights complaint against the Columbus City Schools after its board said there is “systemic racism” within the system.
Parents’ Defending Education’s complaint to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights came after The College Fix asked it about the statement from the school system.
The Fix asked the legal nonprofit if it planned to file a complaint, similar to the one the group filed against Webster Groves schools in Missouri.
Read MoreMinnesota Cities’ Police Settlements Ranged from $50,000 to $24.3 Million from 2018-20
Freedom of Information Act research conducted by The Center Square reveals Minnesota cities relied on taxpayers to foot police-settlement payouts ranging from $50,000 to more than $24 million between 2018 and 2020.
Police settlements compensate the public for violated rights and also avoid clogging the court system.
Still, over the past few decades, taxpayers are being left with more significant bills.
Read MoreCommentary: Conservatives Need to Stand Up for Their Own Civil Rights
For those making their arguments about whether Section 230 should be repealed or reformed to protect conservatives on social media, it’s time to declare that this ship sailed long ago. Most of the world has now come to accept that these monolithic platforms can remove people or their content at will. The banning of President Trump and a host of other conservatives from all major platforms has proven this point beyond dispute.
Read MoreCommentary: Can We Recover American Nobility, Piety, and Humanity?
There was a time when a kind of nobility still existed among our leaders. In Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, delivered March 4, 1865, while the nation was still riven by a bloody Civil War, he envisioned a future of national healing. In words now carved in the marble of the Lincoln Memorial, he pledged, “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right,” to go on “to bind up the nation’s wounds,” and to “do all which may achieve and cherish a just, and a lasting peace, among ourselves . . .”
Read MoreUniversity of Minnesota Students File Civil Rights Complaint Against School Alleging Misuse of Student Fees
Two students filed a civil rights complaint against the University of Minnesota for misuse of student fees and “worship[ing] the great god of political correctness.” Along with a student group called Viewpoint Neutrality Now!, students Evan Smith and Isaac Smith claim student fees being used to fund nine cultural centers in Coffman Union with subsidized space is unconstitutional, reported the Minnesota Daily.
Viewpoint Neutrality Now! is not officially recognized as a campus organization at UMN, but it is an association of students who pay student fees and “support and advocate for viewpoint neutrality and other reforms.” The students say that the current system has offered “preferential treatment” to nine cultural groups receiving student fees in that they are offered free lounge space in the student union.
Read MoreObama Judge Rules Border Officials Need Reasonable Suspicion Before Searching Electronic Devices
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Border Patrol agents need “reasonable suspicion” before they can search international travelers’ electronic devices at airports or other U.S. ports of entry, delivering a big win to civil rights activists.
Read MoreBiden Says Race ‘Shouldn’t Be About the Past,’ Defends His Civil Rights Record
by Shelby Talcott Former Vice President Joe Biden said the 2020 presidential race “shouldn’t be about the past” Friday before defending his civil rights record. “I want to be absolutely clear about my … position on racial justice, including busing. I never, never, never ever opposed voluntary busing,” Biden…
Read MoreCommentary: Ralph Abernathy and His Stand to Put Americans First – in 1969
by John M. Howting The summer of 2019 marks the 50th anniversary of man walking on the moon. Before Neil Armstrong took “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind,” however, another significant event occurred: Rev. Ralph Abernathy’s protest outside of the Saturn V rocket at Cape Canaveral, Florida.…
Read MoreCommentary: Learning About America’s Forgotten Civil Rights History
by Marc DeJager Early in the morning last Saturday, a group of 12 Heritage Foundation interns (including myself) boarded a bus bound for Holly Knoll, the manor house of Robert Russa Moton. Most of us had never heard of Moton before. This is unsurprising, as he was “the forgotten…
Read MoreThe Double Standard of Justice in the U.S. Is Risking the Collapse of the Entire System
by Printus LeBlanc The political world is waiting with bated breath for the outcome of Paul Manafort’s trial. The former one-time Trump campaign chairman is being prosecuted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller for various tax and bank fraud crimes, most of which occurred over a decade ago. Manafort is also…
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