Free Republic

Smearing parents fed up with their kids’ schools as “domestic terrorists” seems to be a wild, incendiary charge with little basis in reality. Yet it’s the basis on which the U.S. attorney general has convened an FBI task force to surveil and intimidate parents who object to what their children are being taught, and how they are being treated, with public tax dollars. The organization that colluded with the Justice Department to create the pretext for chilling voters’ speech has backed down, but the FBI threat remains. School lockdowns have clarified and accelerated the deep, irreconcilable differences among American parents...

Andrew Yang announced on Monday that he changed his voter registration from "Democrat" to "Independent," calling the move a "strangely emotional experience." What he's saying: While Yang said he has identified as a Democrat for years and has "dozens of friends and confidantes who are entrenched in the Democratic Party," he is "confident that no longer being a Democrat is the right thing." "My goal is to do as much as I can to advance our society. There are phenomenal public servants doing great work every day — but our system is stuck. It is stuck in part because polarization...

The campaign to recall California Governor Gavin Newsom has collected 1,950,000 signatures, Katy Grimes of the California Globe reports, far more than the 1.4 million signatures needed to qualify the recall for the ballot. A full 1.6 million signatures were collected entirely by volunteers, and according to organizer Orrin Heatlie, 31.5 percent of the signers were “other than Republicans.” As the recall effort surges, Democrats turn up the volume against it. “Right-wing Republicans in CA are trying to recall Gavin Newsom for the crime of telling people to wear masks and for listening to scientists during COVID,” tweeted Sen....

The words of diversity ring hollow, as hard-working Asians from every socio-economic background, with stable family structure and strong disciplined work ethic, face dAsian Americans are beginning to realize that their values are no longer aligned with the shifting Democratic Party.A recent spike in Asian hate crimes has led to leftist and corporate media that deliberately refuse to talk about the perpetrators and their motives. They insinuate the hate crimes are due to either structural imbalances in society or a direct result of white supremacy rhetoric. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez bizarrely blamed the rise in attacks on Asians on former President...

Californians were right to decline to give affirmative action a second life. People are much better off without it. Saying 2020 is full of surprises is a gross understatement. One of the good surprises — in contrast to, say, the coronavirus reaction — in this election cycle is that voters in California, the bluest of the blue states, rejected Proposition 16, a measure that sought to restore affirmative action in the state, meaning “universities and government offices could factor in someone’s race, gender or ethnicity in making hiring, spending and admissions decisions.” Prop 16 was the left’s latest attempt to...

Angela Li and Vivrd Prasanna have achieved the pinnacle of a public university education — she a senior at UCLA, he a freshman at UC Berkeley. Both are children of immigrants, with Li’s parents from China and Prasanna’s from India. *** But when it comes to Proposition 16, the Tuesday ballot measure that would once again allow affirmative action in public education, contracting and hiring, the two UC students and their families sharply diverge. *** Their diverse views reflect the complexity of the affirmative action issue among Asian Americans, who represent more than 50 ethnic subgroups with varying politics, histories...

TheHill.com Judge says University of California school system must stop using SAT, ACT scores in admissions BY JUSTIN WISE - 09/01/20 09:57 PM EDT Judge says University of California school system must stop using SAT, ACT scores in admissions The University of California school system must stop using SAT or ACT scores while making admissions and scholarships decisions, a judge ruled Tuesday. The decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed earlier this year alleging the admittance of such scores during the coronavirus pandemic harmed disabled students who lacked the same test-taking opportunities as non-disabled individuals. Alameda Superior Court Judge...

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 209 by an impressive 56-to-44 percent majority. Prop 209 amended the state’s constitution to prohibit the granting of preferences based on race or gender. It inaugurated a series of campaigns, led by businessman and University of California Regent Ward Connerly, that by 2006 had established similar prohibitions in 10 states. A few weeks ago, in a move perfectly in sync with the racial politics of 2020, the California legislature put a referendum on the November ballot that invites voters to repeal Prop 209. The new Proposition 16 would allow the state government, and state...

The DOJ accused Yale University on Thursday of discriminating against Asian and White applicants in its admissions process. In 2019, Harvard University went to trial over allegations that it had discriminated against Asian applicants in its admissions process, ultimately prevailing against charges of discrimination. According to a report by the New York Times, Yale is currently facing an investigation by the Justice Department over practices that the government alleges are discriminatory against Asian-Americans and White Americans. In a letter sent to Yale, assistant attorney general Eric S. Dreiband claimed that Yale data suggests that Asian and White applicants have a...

ACT, college sports, discrimination, A proposal recently released by The National Association of Basketball Coaches requests the NCAA remove an eligibility requirement to submit SAT or ACT scores. In the proposal, put forth by the Committee on Racial Reconciliation, the NABC decries the two tests as wicked forces of institutional racism that should be “jettisoned for that reason alone.” The committee was formed last month, and the proposal shows it.Their argument runs like this: the SAT was created in 1926 by the eugenicist Carl Brigham. Brigham intended the test to demonstrate the racial superiority of white blood. His project, of...

Labor discrimination has been an ongoing issue in recent decades in our country. And now, get ready Well, get ready to add another discrimination category, one not currently recognized by U.S. labor law - the Hindu caste system. It's so foreign to our system that there's not even a law against it! Not yet, anyway.

The California legislature voted last week to strike anti-discrimination language from the State Constitution. In a 30-10 vote, the legislature passed the Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 5 (ACA 5), which removes the words “The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin,” from California’s constitution, which were put in place in 1996 with Proposition 209.

"His many personal and professional flaws, including his bankruptcies, sexual scandals, crude and cruel language, repelled me. I saw him as a populist, even a demagogue, who had not prepared for the heavy responsibilities of the presidency," he said in a new book, which was profiled by Paul Bedard in his Washington Secrets column. Yoo worried, at the time, that Trump would "test, evade, or even violate the Constitution." Bedard explains, "Over the course of 300 pages comparing Trump moves to the wishes of the Founding Fathers, Yoo discovered that despite constant criticism that Trump was destroying the Constitution, he...

Utilizing the new Presidential proclamations INA 212(f) and 215, prevents entry into the U.S. of certain non-immigrants. We think that the ban will be announced and come into force around June 15th, 2020.

Riding the momentum of the George Floyd riots, California's legislators have moved to ask the voters to repeal Proposition 209, the voter-passed measure to end affirmative action. According to the Sacramento Bee: More than two decades after California voters banned consideration of race in university admissions, public employment and contracting with Proposition 209, the state Assembly on Wednesday approved a measure that would ask voters to repeal the law. In a 58-9 initial vote, Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, secured the necessary two-thirds majority approval needed to send Assembly Constitutional Amendment 5 out of her house and to the state Senate. Only...

"With the powers vested in me by the liberal media, I am pleased this morning to declare Tou Thao a white man." Joe Scarborough might as well have said that on today's Morning Joe. Expressing his outrage that the police officers who, in addition to Derek Chauvin, were on the scene when George Floyd died, have not been arrested, Scarborough said: "Three white men have not been charged for standing there and watching as life drained from a man in a slow-motion murder." Get the rest of the story and view the video here.

On March 9, 2020, the Idaho Senate State Affairs Committee approved House Bill H440, a measure outlawing race-based affirmative action in state agencies, state contracting, and public education. The bill is currently on Idaho’s full senate floor for amendments. Once amended and signed by Governor Brad Little into law, H440 will make the Gem State the ninth to adopt a statewide ban on affirmative action. The other eight states are: California, Washington, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, New Hampshire, and Oklahoma. In most cases, measures to ban racial discrimination and preferential treatment were passed by popular votes on the ballot. At...

... [A] task force of the faculty senate at the University of California, of all places, is resisting the movement to ban test scores in admissions. The 227-page report, completed in late January, recommends that the UC system keep standardized tests like the ACT and SAT as admissions requirements, and it demolishes the logic of the politically motivated anti-testing movement. The report dispatches the myth that standardized math and reading tests are useless for predicting college performance. Based on data from tens of thousands of students in the UC system, the report concludes that “test scores are currently better predictors...

Social-justice organizations last week threatened the University of California with a lawsuit unless it halts the use of standardized testing in admissions, claiming the tests discriminate against minorities. Who knows what success they may have before a sympathetic judge. But the issue may be settled sooner as the political mood in the UC moves against testing. This shift could have baleful nationwide consequences. Standardized tests have been a target of the left for decades, but in 2018 something changed. Dozens of colleges, most significantly the University of Chicago, have been dropping their standardized-test requirements. The number of students who take...

Seattle Schools Propose To Teach That Math Education Is Racist—Will California Be Far Behind? by Lee Ohanian Tuesday, October 29, 2019 California’s latest K–12 test scores were released earlier this month. Despite spending 26 percent more per pupil after inflation since 2011, test scores remain low, and improvement is proceeding at a glacial pace. Just 40 percent of California schoolchildren are proficient at math. What should be done? Seattle’s idea is to teach their students that US math education is racist, is used to oppress people of color and the disadvantaged, and has been used to exploit natural resources. According...