Gender identity and transgender issues continue to haunt U.S. schools as parents and teachers sue districts

A conservative law firm is highlighting gender ideology in schools around the U.S. by taking action against many districts they claim are overstepping their boundaries with parents.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, held a press call Thursday with clients they represent from around the country who are embroiled in legal action against their local school districts.

They are backing a Colorado couple whose 11-year-old daughter was assigned to room with a boy who identified as a girl on a school trip to Washington, D.C.

They represent Michigan parents who sued their local school district for using male pronouns for their eighth-grader without their knowledge.

And they are representing a Virginia teacher who claims her district instructed her to hide student's gender identity information from their parents, among others.

'The government is taking decision making authority from parents,' Kate Anderson, an attorney on the aforementioned cases warned on the call.

'They're shifting decisions that should be in the hands of parents to themselves, and then they're hiding that information from parents, so they don't know that the school is making decisions behind their back, and that's dangerous.'

'You're hearing from each of these clients that they're experiencing really dangerous policies that are hurting kids in their districts,' she continued.

Serena Wailes, the mother who is suing Colorado's Jefferson County Public Schools for putting a biological male in the same sleeping arrangements as her 11-year-old daughter, stressed how she felt betrayed by her school district.

'We trusted these people,' Serena Wailes told reporters on a call.

'They told us throughout the whole process that boys were going to be on one floor and girls were going to be on another, and at no point during this process did they ever say that that was going to be based on gender identity, and so we trusted that.'

'We trust our school district with our kids, and they have, they have failed us.'

'It was really shocking, because I'm downstairs in the lobby with the other moms, and I get this call from our daughter, who's upstairs and she's hiding in the bathroom.'

'Her voice is quivering, and she doesn't want to hurt the feelings of all the other kids in her room, but she's like, 'Mom, I don't feel good about this.''

'So I had her come down and we went, we talked through it and had the chaperone come over, talk through it, and then found out it was true. And honestly, what I have to say is I feel deceived.'

Then Michigan parents Dan and Jennifer Mead spoke up.

They filed a lawsuit against the Rockford Public School District after discovering the school had been referring to their child using 'he/him' pronouns last year.

Jennifer described how they sought academic help for their daughter through her school counselor, and they began sharing intimate details about he student and her academic and personal life.

'And all this time, they were lying to us, changing records. They were calling her by a male name, a masculine pronoun at school, and then when they would talk to us or send anything home, it was always her, you know, are given her given name.'

'It was shocking because we felt like we were deceived as well,' the mother said.

They claim the school secretly 'socially transitioned' her before the parents caught on.

The parents found out in October 2022 when a school psychologist inadvertently included the child's masculine name in one section of a report that was sent home.

The eight-grader's name had been changed back to the birth name in the rest of the document, according to the lawsuit.

Finally a teacher spoke up to address how she is taking action against Harrisonburg City Public School Board in Virginia for allegedly muzzling her ability to talk to parents about their kids' gender identities.

She resonated with the parents' stories, and said she is victim to similar policies as an educator.

'This policy that I'm working under deceives parents and it hurts kids,' middle school teacher Deb Figliola said. 'It also requires me to lie.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13843137/gender-identity-schools-parents-teachers-sue-districts-adf.html

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It's not just populists STOKING "misinformation" --it's the elite class

There was a truly REMARKABLE revelation in the UK parliament this week and one you probably missed. But before I tell you about it let’s first remember what is happening right now across the West.

A radicalising elite class —an elite class that’s moved sharply to the cultural left over the last fifteen years, partly in response to things like Brexit and Trump— is blaming any outcome it doesn’t like on so-called “misinformation”.

The narrative goes like this. Ordinary people could not REALLY want to vote for political party and politician X. They could not REALLY want to support policy Y. They could not REALLY want to protest about issue Z. They are just “misinformed”.

They read a “misinformed” tweet. They listened to a “misinformed” populist. They watched a “misinformed” video. They rely too much on “misinformed” social media.

In short, rather than accept that millions of people might not want to live in the kind of society that’s now being imposed on them from above by an out-of-touch, insular, and hyper-liberal if not radically progressive elite class, the members of this ruling class are now smothering themselves in a comfort blanket by portraying voters as irrational, ignorant, “misinformed” lemmings, who are being pushed around by Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin … [insert your preferred villain here].

It’s the populists, in short, who are stoking political chaos and carnage by cultivating and spreading “misinformation” around Western societies. Hence why the elite class is investing so heavily in politically-motivated “fact-checking”, “verifying”, and, as we now see in the UK, a growing clampdown on free speech and free expression. If you can’t change people’s minds, you can at least control the supply of information.

And nowhere is this strategy more visible than on the issue of immigration, where time and time again we are told by politically-motivated journalists, fact-checkers, and the so-called “expert class” that ordinary people expressing concern about this issue simply do not understand the facts and figures. They too are suffering from an outbreak of what we might call “misinformationitis”.

Think mass immigration is worsening the housing crisis? “Misinformed!” Think it’s driving up crime? “Misinformed!” Think it’s weakening the economy? “Misinformed!” Think it’s costing the taxpayer billions in welfare payments? “Misinformed!”

Which brings me back to that REMARKABLE revelation in parliament, which was quietly made by a renegade Conservative Member of Parliament during a committee discussion about immigration, with Nigel Farage and Reform MPs looking on. What was the revelation? Well, brace yourself because there wasn’t one but a series of bombshells, each one more mind-boggling than the last and each one underlining how it’s not populists who are stoking misinformation —it’s the elite class.

The revelations—by the respected and rigorous Neil O’Brien, Conservative MP for Harborough, Oadby, and Wigston—really are devastating.

He pointed to not just a government but an entire political system that is either deliberately concealing masses of information from voters about the impact of immigration, or is doing so through sheer incompetence.

Just look at what he revealed:

The department for Work and Pensions has STOPPED publishing data on welfare claims by nationality, making it impossible for anybody to ascertain the impact of immigration on the welfare system (and the cost)

HMRC have STOPPED publishing information on the tax paid and tax credits received by nationality, again making it impossible to build up an accurate picture of how immigration is impacting on the national economy

the Home Office is now REFUSING to answer detailed questions about the immigration status of people who are imprisoned in UK prisons, making it impossible to gather information on how, if at all, immigration is impacting on crime rates and imprisonment

even worse, the Home Office actually have these data but they are deliberately REFUSING to publish them

the Home Office does NOT collect either nationality or immigration data on those people who are arrested on these islands, again making it impossible for us to know how, if at all, immigration is impacting on crime and social order

the Home Office does NOT reveal, in detail, what it is spending on hotel rooms and accommodation for illegal migrants in the asylum system, once again making it impossible to verify, dispute, or support claims being made

the Home Office says it DOES NOT KNOW how much it is spending on loans to refugees which is, once again, taxpayer money

As I pointed out on Twitter/X, in a tweet which has now been viewed by nearly 400,000 people, this, not populism, is what is breeding distrust among voters.

Either the elite class is completely incompetent, or it is deliberately concealing this information from you, the taxpayer, knowing full well that if this information was collected and released then it would likely confirm people’s suspicions about the damaging effects of illegal and legal immigration on their society –as data in other countries is already doing, including Germany, which I discuss in the piece below.

What we have then is an out-of-touch elite class that is simultaneously accusing voters of suffering “misinformation” while concealing this very information from them! How can ordinary people be misinformed when the state refuses to make critical information like this available to all? What are elites scared of?

If they are so confident in their policy decisions, in their political choices, in their continual assertion that things like immigration are an unalloyed positive for our society then why don’t they just release all the data and let us see it for ourselves?

I think we all know why. Which is why I and others will not stop drawing attention to this glaring hole in the national debate until we get the information, the transparency, and the assessments that the British people, that TAXPAYERS, deserve.

So, what can you do? Well, you could write to your local Member of Parliament and ask them why the above information is not being made public. And you could also explore submitting Freedom of Information requests. Because the status-quo, with the elite class portraying much of the rest of the country as misinformed thickoes while keeping this data and information hidden from them is, clearly, unsustainable.

But this is also bigger than one issue. As I argue in my forthcoming short film, it’s high time that the people who run our country start treating the people who live in our country and are forced to pay the costs of the elite’s disastrous decisions with the respect and decency they deserve. Too many ordinary people are being asked (no, forced) to pay the costs of radical political experiments they neither voted for nor support. The very least the elite class could do is make this information available so we can assess the impact of the decisions that are being forced on the rest of us.

Because, look, if leaders across the West do not want to continue fanning the flames of populism, polarisation, and protest then they urgently need to start treating voters with the respect they deserve —and they could start by making this information available so that we can all have an “informed” debate about what is really happening to our country. Because until they do one point will remain inescapable. It’s not just populists who are stoking “misinformation” —it’s the elite class.

https://www.mattgoodwin.org/p/its-not-just-populists-stoking-misinformation?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=3vtk7t&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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Melania Trump blasts FBI’s Mar-a-Lago raid, says it serves as ‘warning to all Americans’

Melania Trump shared a video on her X account Saturday morning blasting the FBI for the raid on her Mar-a-Lago home in 2022, and said it should be a “warning to all Americans”.

“I never imagined my privacy would be invaded by the government here in America,” the former First Lady recalled in the video.

“The FBI raided my home in Florida and searched through my personal belongings. This is not just my story, it serves as a warning to all Americans, a reminder that our freedom and rights must be respected.”

Her husband, former President Donald Trump, is set to sue the Justice Department for $US100 million ($149 million) in damages over the government’s unprecedented 2022 raid on his Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach, Florida, with lawyers arguing it was done with “clear intent to engage in political persecution”.

Mr Trump and his legal team intend to sue the Justice Department for its conduct during the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago on August 8, 2022, amid the federal investigation into his alleged improper retention of classified records.

“What President Trump is doing here is not just standing up for himself — he is standing up for all Americans who believe in the rule of law and believe that you should hold the government accountable when it wrongs you,” Trump attorney Daniel Epstein told Fox Business’ Lydia Hu.

Mr Epstein added that the decisions made by the DOJ and FBI regarding that raid were “inconsistent with protocols requiring the consent of an investigative target, disclosure to that individual’s attorneys, and the use of the local US Attorney’s Office”.

Mr Trump’s attorney also argues the decisions made by Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray were not grounded in “social, economic, and political policy” but instead, in “clear dereliction of constitutional principles, inconsistent standards as applied to” Mr Trump and a “clear intent to engage in political persecution — not to advance good law enforcement practices”.

“The FBI’s demonstrated activity was inconsistent with protocols used in routine searches of an investigative target’s premises,” Mr Epstein wrote, adding that Mr Trump “had a clear expectation of privacy at Mar-a-Lago”.

“Worse, the FBI’s conduct in the raid — where established protocol was violated — constitutes a severe and unacceptable intrusion that is highly offensive to a reasonable person,” he added.

Mr Epstein is also planning to sue for punitive damages.

“For these harms to President Trump, the respondents must pay punitive damages of $US100 million,” Mr Epstein wrote.

This is the second recently released video the former First Lady has posted as she is promoting her memoir, Melania.

Her book will detail “the powerful and inspiring story of a woman who has defined personal excellence, overcome adversity, and carved her own path”, according to the description. It is currently available for pre-order ahead of its October 1 release date.

“The former First Lady invites readers into her world, offering an intimate portrait of a woman who has lived an extraordinary life,” the description reads. “Melania includes stories and images never before shared with the public.”

She posted her first video on Tuesday, raising questions about the July 13 assassination attempt on the former President.

“The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” Mrs Trump said in a video statement on X.

“Now, the silence around it feels heavy. I can’t help but wonder, why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech? There is definitely more to the story and we need to uncover the truth.”

Following the assassination attempt in July, Mrs Trump called for the country to “reunite”, calling for courage and common sense to “bring us back together as one”.

She said the gunman was “a monster who recognised my husband as an inhuman political machine” who attempted to “ring out Donald’s passion — his laughter, ingenuity, love of music, and inspiration”.

“When I watched that violent bullet strike my husband, Donald, I realised my life, and Barron’s life, were on the brink of devastating change,” she wrote, adding that her husband is a generous and caring man.

“Writing my memoir has been an amazing journey filled with emotional highs and lows,” the former First Lady previously told Fox News Digital. “Each story shaped me into who I am today.”

https://www.news.com.au/world/north-america/us-politics/melania-trump-blasts-fbis-maralago-raid-says-it-serves-as-warning-to-all-americans/news-story/ce3b8ec64328e9ad05f087cf90feae8c

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US media needs to step outside big-city bubble

The records of the Trump and Biden presidencies are better than Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were prepared to concede during last week’s debate about each other’s time in office.

Yet it remains accurate, if cliched, to say it is astounding that the richest, most powerful nation on the planet could not produce two better candidates.

Trump, as his debate performance showed, is a deeply self-centred person with an unfocused, undisciplined mind. He could not prosecute a simple case against Harris.

She, on the other hand, has changed her most fundamental political positions on important issues facing the US since she was a candidate for the presidency in 2020. And she has failed the main task President Joe Biden gave her as Vice-President almost four years ago: the role of border tsar.

Trump’s lack of preparation showed. Harris spent a lot of time prepping and that showed too – especially in the way she was able to bait her opponent about the size of the crowds at his rallies or suggestions the former president was an object of ridicule among military leaders and foreign heads of government.

But will it matter on the first Tuesday in November?

This column twice wrote that Trump could win in 2016 in the weeks leading up to that election. It pointed to concerns in Middle America about unchecked illegal immigration. Such concerns are even more evident in the US today.

This column also referred to the likelihood at the time that published polling was underestimating the Trump vote because of the so-called “shy conservative’’ factor.

Polling before the 2016 election underestimated Trump’s vote by 2.2 per cent, and in 2020 by 3.3 per cent.

Remember, too, Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate in 2016. She foolishly berated some of her own blue-collar voters as the usual “basket of deplorables”.

If the press underestimated Trump in 2016, it took him much more seriously during his presidency and at the 2020 election.

Republican presidential nominee, former US president Donald Trump, gestures at a press conference at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles on September 13. Picture: Getty Images
Republican presidential nominee, former US president Donald Trump, gestures at a press conference at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles on September 13. Picture: Getty Images
The establishment liberal media poured millions of words into the false Russiagate conspiracy story, trying to destroy Trump. It happened again in the weeks before the 2020 election as Obama-era intelligence experts claimed the Hunter Biden laptop story published by the New York Post, since found to be true, was just more Russian disinformation.

Mainstream media business models, left and right, benefited from the flow of consumers to sources of Trump information they agreed with. The New York Times used Russiagate to build its subscriber base to all-time highs, while conservative sources such as Fox News benefited from being seen to be more open to Trump.

Yet, much journalistic wisdom about Trump is wrong.

His use of race politics against Harris and Barack Obama may have been crude, but economic history shows Trump was good for the prosperity of African-Americans. Before the pandemic hit, unemployment in black America was at its lowest point since World War II.

Trump’s claims on Wednesday about his economic success as president are also partly true – at least before the pandemic. His January 1, 2018, tax cuts did supercharge growth and employment.

But Trump’s claims the US economy is now in the worst shape in history are silly. US inflation on Thursday last week fell to 2.5 per cent; the Conference Board on August 19 said its leading indicators do not suggest recession is coming; the sharemarket is near its all-time record; and unemployment sits at 4.2 per cent, compared with a long-term average of 5.7 per cent.

Trump is on firmer ground discussing the failures of Biden and Harris in foreign policy. This column accepts Trump’s claim that both Russia and Iran have been emboldened by the weakness of the Biden presidency.

While legitimate doubts exist about whether Trump would support Ukraine, as Australia does, there is plenty of reason to believe Trump is correct to suggest that Putin would not have invaded in 2022 had Trump been president. Chinese President Xi Jinping would not have acquiesced when told by Putin of his plan at the February 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics had Biden not been president.

Similarly, Trump’s tough stands on sanctions against Iran and support for Israel probably would have prevented an attack like Hamas’s in Israel on October 7.

Polling by The New York Times at the start of last week had Trump ahead of Harris by a point. This suggests that despite the Democrats’ focus on Trump’s various prosecutions and the January 6, 2020, Capitol riots, many voters accept his claim that he has been the victim of “weaponised lawfare” from state and local Democrat administrations.

It’s an issue Harris, as a former professional prosecutor, used deftly in the debate to establish herself as a strong leader able to take on Trump face-to-face.

Harris is on much more dangerous ground on border control and her covering up, with Democrat-aligned media, of Biden’s mental decline, which became impossible to hide during the debate between Biden and Trump eight weeks ago.

While Trump returned to the border issue several times during the Harris debate, he let the Vice-President off the hook for hiding Biden’s mental state.

This column on July 7 quoted Pulitzer Prize-winner Glenn Greenwald on the number of people who had belled the cat about Biden’s mental decline in the 18 months before the 2020 election. Covid allowed Biden to escape scrutiny then, and the press, Harris and Biden’s Cabinet shielded him right up until June 28 when the Trump-Biden debate exposed the President’s decline.

Yet Trump’s decision to accept that debate was probably his biggest mistake, as election statistician Nate Silver pointed out on X shortly after the Harris debate. It was Biden’s failure then that gave the Democrats time to move Harris into the presidential nomination.

Silver rated Trump’s other big mistakes as the appointment of JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick; his meandering speech at the Republican Convention on July 19 after the assassination attempt; his failure to anticipate Harris would receive the Democrat nomination; and his failure to prepare for the Harris debate.

Perhaps the harshest assessment of Trump’s performance last week came from former Republican strategist Karl Rove in The Wall Street Journal.

Rove wrote: “There’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Mr Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as ‘dumb as a rock’. Which raises the question: what does that make him?”

Democrats commentators argue that the public’s disillusionment with the political process took Trump to the presidency in 2016, but has dissipated today. That is wishful thinking. Americans this year have seen a political and media conspiracy to hide the mental state of their president.

David Brooks in The New York Times last week reported Gallup polling showing Americans remain disenchanted with politics: only 25 per cent are satisfied with the way the country is going. Ipsos polling shows 60 per cent of Americans believe the country is in decline – Trump’s core message.

Harris, mocked by conservative media for her giggling and “word salads”, has shown she will be no pushover. Her messages of hope for the voters sound better than Trump’s focus on himself.

Harris has been treated like a rock star by much of the media since she received the nomination. That intensified in major-city media after the debate.

Yet presidential elections are not won inside the largely Democrat bubbles of big-city America.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/media/neither-donald-trump-nor-kamala-harris-are-strong-candidates-but-media-must-be-careful-not-to-repeat-mistakes-of-2016-and-2020/news-story/1d5ad212c9d21b1126c79aee3f59c2f8

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My main blogs below:

http://jonjayray.com/covidwatch.html (COVID WATCH)

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

https://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com (TONGUE-TIED)

https://immigwatch.blogspot.com (IMMIGRATION WATCH)

https://john-ray.blogspot.com/ (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC -- revived)

http://jonjayray.com/select.html (SELECT POSTS)

http://jonjayray.com/short/short.html (Subject index to my blog posts)

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