The medical, economic, social and constitutional effects of COVID-19 do not appear to be going away any time soon. In spite of the everyday wish to get over this uninvited medical disruption, the pieces needed to solve this puzzle are still not quite fitting together.
Every day we hear the message: “When everyone is vaccinated life will go back to normal.” Unfortunately, that idea is proving to be a mix of science fiction and wishful thinking. It is especially wearisome to hear this message in the corporate setting where business and media leaders preach this simplistic approach without any accountability or liability.
From the beginning of this experience with COVID-19, the definitional question (“what is this?”) has been the first gateway to understanding. COVID-19 is a variation of a coronavirus. It is not an alien infection dropped from outer space with powers no one has ever seen before. Understanding what this virus is, where it came from and how it is most likely to proceed are key pieces of this puzzle.
To date there are still essential questions for which no one seems to have certain answers. The origin of this virus is China. The Chinese, however, will not let the world in to conduct a complete and transparent conversation on the essential “ground zero” questions. If the Chinese had COVID-19 in their Wuhan lab then what did they do to it? When did they do it and why? How did the virus escape the lab and what else is left in Wuhan? Conspiracy theories fill in these blanks only because real answers are not available. This is now a question of foreign policy and national defense. The burden of discovery falls to the United States Congress and the President who together can pursue the complete answers wherever the trail may lead.
Every day we the people are being confronted by the “vaccine messengers” who have boiled this crisis down to a syringe-sized solution. “If everyone gets vaccinated, all will be well” is the constant message. Even the President of the United States got caught in a free-wheeling mind share the other day when he essentially said that if we all get the shots then we won’t get sick. Of course, that is not what he meant to say, but he still said it, just like a lot of other people do every day.
What we are hearing from the medical/scientific community is quite different. Evidence is mounting that there are significant and serious side effects that follow this vaccine. This is not a unique discovery as nearly every type of medical vaccine has attending side effects. With the COVID vaccine, side effects are statistically rare, but they are real. We know people who have been impacted by these side effects in multiple ways. The U.S. Government now reports at least 6,000 deaths attributed to reactions to the vaccines. Compared to 600,000 deaths attributed to complications from COVID-19 the ratio clearly commends the value of the vaccine. The math is simple. The real-life consequences of these side effects are not.
Real humans face real decisions every day trying to put together the puzzle pieces of COVID-19. Processing all the information and applying it to even a single life is complicated. No two people have exactly the same medical profile. Some people will take the vaccine and not have another care. Far fewer will take the vaccine but will still die of COVID-19 or vaccine side effects. Some will take the vaccine and have medical problems that will be a burden for life. Some people will take the vaccine and it will not work and they will get sick and recover. Do we not give people the whole story on vaccines because it won’t fit on a t-shirt or a bumper sticker? Or does it just feel better to pretend a vaccine therapy and wearing a mask solves the puzzle?
No drug company claims vaccines are 100% safe and effective. Unfortunately, many in the media and many corporate CEOs seem to have forgotten this fact. Their message on vaccines is singular and without accountability. They are not doctors (nor are we), but they are “on-message” all the time. What if their message is incomplete? What if there are people whose medical issues prevent them from taking the vaccines? What of those millions who have already overcome COVID-19 and now stand in good health with natural immunities at least as powerful as any vaccine can provide? Must they also now be vaccinated for a disease they have already overcome?
These new forms of vaccine treatments are saving lives but they have limitations and consequences. Currently the U.S. government is distributing a series of vaccines built upon the virus as it existed in early 2020. Those vaccines are built upon data that will soon be two-years old. In that time, the virus has already mutated multiple times into a host of new variants. Recently Tennessee reported a total of 1,000 cases where fully vaccinated people got sick with COVID-19 of which 27 people have died.
This is happening across the country for a logical scientific reason. Viruses change and jump the guardrails of vaccines. Therefore, the vaccine technology has to keep constantly changing. We may be facing a reality where people vulnerable to this virus may have to be vaccinated regularly for a long time.
If scientific and medical discoveries of the past hold true, there will come a time when COVID-19 will be something no one needs to talk about anymore, or hardly at all. Eventually nearly everyone will have encountered this virus and overcome it by their natural immune system or with the assistance of a vaccine. When this time called “herd immunity” arrives the virus will diminish because there are so few people left to infect. COVID-19 won’t die, it will fade away. The Spanish Flu virus of 1918 is still with us today but it has lost its power. This is the way viruses function in the real world.
Vaccines are an important and necessary piece of this puzzle. Vaccines are not perfect. They are not safe and effective 100% of the time. There are people with medical conditions that cannot take the current COVID-19 vaccines. The focus on “vaccines-only” in the U.S. has defrauded these equal citizens who are paying for the COVID-19 vaccines with their tax dollars but cannot benefit equally from vaccine therapy. This is why we must develop state and federal policies that will create therapeutic resources for people who cannot take the existing vaccines. It is time for Congress and the State Legislatures to step up and see these citizens who are being left behind.
The singular focus on vaccination empowers people to believe they are doing something noble to defeat the virus and save lives. It is a great campaign for t-shirts and bumper stickers and it has value. However, it does not solve the COVID-19 puzzle and leaves millions of people out in the cold. We need more scientific inquiry. We need a broader debate and bigger set of solutions to ultimately overcome this crisis.
——
This position paper is the composite work of policy analysts from the American Policy Roundtable, a non-profit, non-partisan media, education and research corporation established in 1980. APR has no affiliation to political parties, social media companies, news outlets, pharmaceutical companies or political candidates.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND ADDITIONAL GREAT ARTICLES
The physical and psychological traumas associated with the chemical abortion regimen evince the unique horrors of the procedure—even beyond what we are used to in the abortion context.
Tammi, one victim of the abortion industry’s embrace of this practice, reflected on her chemical abortion as “savage” and “horrific.”
She recalled extreme physical pain and fear throughout the process, ending in the ultimate delivery of her developing child, possessing undeniably human features, into a toilet bowl at her home.
Tammi’s traumatizing experience with chemical abortion could easily be that of many college freshmen, suffering physical and emotional torture in an unsanitary communal dorm bathroom. Abortion advocates nevertheless have begun pushing for access to the dangerous mifepristone and misoprostol cocktail to be available for students in their campus health centers.
To address this issue, yesterday Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, introduced the Protecting Life on College Campus Act of 2021 in coordination with Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., with Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., introducing the Senate version. This bill would block federal funding for colleges and universities that provide the chemical abortion regimen to students or employees.
In a statement about the bill, Roy—who has been a great leader on this issue—said, “A college dorm room is no place to have a do-it-yourself abortion, and the American taxpayer should not be paying for the destruction of innocent human life on our college campuses. But, as we already know, what the abortion industry really cares about are profits—not the welfare of mothers or the integrity of higher learning.”
It is no secret that the abortion industry deliberately targets vulnerable women in order to expand its reach. Its newest project of invading academic institutions, however, reaches the new low of turning “our college dorm rooms … into abortion clinics,” as Daines told Tony Perkins on “Washington Watch.”
As Family Research Council’s Meg Kilgannon shared at the press conference for the bill, “Colleges are places for women to grow intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s not the place to be handed dangerous chemical abortion pills that kill her unborn child and harm her as well.”
Beyond its obvious disregard for the lives of the unborn, the abortion industry makes clear that it also has no concern for the well-being of women by advocating access to chemical abortions on campuses, affirming what Miller stated explained on the show, “the abortion industry is about death and lying.” She explained how young women are “told that this is a safe, easy, painless way to take care of the pregnancy,” only to later suffer painfully from the process.
Communal bathrooms in girls’ dorms are hardly a sanitary or safe location to carry out a “medical procedure” that causes extreme cramping, hemorrhage requiring transfusions, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, and bleeding that may continue for up to 30 days. Daines reflected in his discussion with Perkins that “7% of the women that take those abortion-inducing pills need some kind of surgery.”
The Protecting Life on College Campus Act is a direct response to the California College Student Right to Access Act (SB 24) that will go into effect in 2023, providing students in the state’s public universities with access to the dangerous abortion pills.
In her own interview with Perkins on “Washington Watch,” Miller discussed the evils of providing chemical abortions to college students, saying that providers are “preying on vulnerable women that are afraid … and they live to regret it.”
As Perkins reflected in his interview with Daines, “We’ve seen that fact, that reality, that what starts in California does not stay there.” This principle rings true as a warning to the rest of the nation to take action before more states face the battle of keeping gruesome abortions out of college dorms.
The Protecting Life on College Campus Act affirms the dignity of young women by ensuring that they are not coerced into dangerous chemical abortions while experiencing their first taste of independence at college.
As Kilgannon stated, “Stop telling women that to be successful we have to kill our children. Start telling women the ways you’ll adapt a system—that for decades focused only on males—to accommodate the totality of women, including women’s fertility.”
Is The TN Department Of Education Approving CRT Curriculum?
Published July 23, 2021
By Kendra Ohalloran [contributor to the Tennessee Conservative] –
While all eyes are on Williamson County and Wit and Wisdom, critical race theory is infecting one of the most conservative counties in Tennessee, just under another name.
EL Education was developed by Harvard Graduate School of Education in 1995 and then commissioned by New York State in 2012, noting El Education is among “the highest-quality Common Core-aligned curriculum materials currently available.”
In 2019, it was approved by the Tennessee Department of Education, and adopted as an ELA curriculum in Wilson County. Aside from the fact that the state of Tennessee has banned common core publications via House Bill 782/Senate Bill 769 in April of 2021, does this curriculum represent the values of the constituents in Wilson County, or the state of Tennessee?
Logging onto the website in which the curriculum can be electronically downloaded, you can begin with the “About” section. There you will find a listing of 8 bullet points noting what sets this curriculum apart.
The first bullet notes “Equity and Inclusion,” while the second bullet point is “Embedded Social and Emotional Learning” where they note they encourage students and provide opportunities for them to become active citizens working for social justice, environmental stewardship, and healthy, equitable communities.
For those of us who have been following along with the hijacking of our language as a people, equality, and equity or not interchangeable. Equality ensures everyone is provided opportunity to rise and succeed whereas equity denotes that all should arrive at the same outcome regardless of opportunities seized or effort put forward. EL Education even defines what equity means regarding the curriculum noting “recognizes that we are born into unequal and unjust circumstances—and these factors should not predict our ability to fail or succeed.” This theme runs throughout.
Also on the company’s website, they have an entire section noted “Equity and Racism”.
Within this section, they continue noting the education system is broken as it provided promises and many possibilities to the assumed “privileged” while perpetuating deep inequities to others.
Further down, the “Vision” or “Mission Statement” to achieve this educational equity, is through “explicit anti-racist discussions, practice and action.” They note that they subscribe to Ibram X (formerly Roger) Kendi’s definition of anti-racism “One either allows racial inequities to persevere, as a racist, or confronts racial inequities, as an antiracist. There is no in-between safe space of ‘not racist’”.
They also commit to the following as an organization:
Examining how racism lives in each of us as individuals, and in the fabric of our organization and its policies, culture, and traditions
Holding ourselves accountable to equitable and excellent outcomes in the schools and districts with which we work
Holding ourselves accountable by providing consistent, transparent, and candid reviews to our staff, Board, and partners on our DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) strategies and commitments
Educating ourselves and taking action over time to grow as an anti-racist organization
Anti-racism is the main pillar of critical race theory. To fight racism with more racism and view others first by the color of their skin, and secondly by their character. A curriculum obsessed with marginalizing people based on skin color with a constant theme that every institution in the United States is systemically racist and irredeemable, should be eradicated.
EL Education also presents a reopening guide for school districts in the wake of COVID-19 as they implore this is truly the time to transform education and government funded education.
For starters, their reopening guidance is titled “Working Toward More Equitable Schools.” Again, we see the theme of “equity” and the championing of social and emotional learning to ensure more “equitable” outcomes for students. Not to champion high performers and encourage them to continue thriving, but by setting the bar low so that all can achieve the same outcome.
The Reopening plan continues noting leadership should empower all faculty and staff within the school system to “Explicitly call out that conscious and unconscious bias have for too long created barriers for all students” so that these systemic inequities can not continue to flourish.
For a government run, publicly funded education institution to tell children that they are inherently racist and biased from birth, is to teach them to hate. The repetitive nature of teaching emotional perspectives versus fact-based truths, is rooted in the goal of indoctrination of what to think not how to think.
This is a full-scale TAXPAYER funded invasion of our state, and our nation with the goal of creating as many anti-American revolutionaries as possible unbeknownst to the public and parents alike. The curriculum may have another name, but the same tenants of critical race theory and Marxism remain.
As Herbert Marcuse, the founder of Critical Theory of which the racial, gender and other critical theory-based movements have hatched, says “Tolerance is an end in itself.” It is time we stop allowing the Marxist ideologues who weaponizing our tolerance to overthrow our American culture, traditions, and the indoctrination of our children.
This is the curriculum approved the Penny Schwinn and the Department of Education.
Similar curriculum that has been approved by 33 counties in the state of Tennessee, with the goal of creating the new generation of social revolutionaries who are being taught that America is irredeemable, and therefore must be torn down to start anew.
When does the fiduciary duty of our school boards, Superintendents of schools and the Tennessee Department of Education prove squandered? It is no longer acceptable to take the dance of “blissful ignorance” as to what is being pushed in our government funded education systems, and to take a stand against this.
This comes as no surprise as the largest teacher’s union in the county, the National Education Association during their annual convention held over the Fourth of July Weekend (that will tell you what they represent) have approved to support their members in recruiting teachers to hold political demonstrations about structural racism and oppression, oppose capitalism and any opposition to critical race theory.
Kendra Ohalloran, along with her husband and French Bulldog are recent political refugees from the state of Massachusetts seeking refuge in the great state of Tennessee.
Two weeks into our their tenure in the state, Ohalloran was horrified as to what was happening to our state and felt she could no longer could run, but rather had to become active to help preserve the United States she had the luxury of growing up in.
Ohalloran is a member of various conservative groups in Wilson County and in Nashville, and enjoys exploring the state parks in the local area, trying a new restaurant every week and enjoying all this beautiful state has to offer!
FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND MORE GREAT ARTICLES
"You can't control what happens around you, but you can control what happens within you," says pastor and author James E. Ward Jr. "And by nature, that is God's design, is for us to live life from the inside out, not from the outside in."
Last August, as Americans watched the fallout from a police shooting in Kenosha, Wis., pastor James E. Ward Jr. found himself in a position to help. The victim, Jacob Blake, had been shot seven times in the back in an encounter with police.
Violence erupted in Kenosha. Ward, pastor and founder of INSIGHT Church in the north Chicago suburb of Skokie, Ill., turned to prayer.
"I get this phone call on my cellphone from Julia Jackson," Ward tells The Daily Signal. "Julia Jackson is one of our faithful intercessory-prayer team members in our church. Julia happens to be the mother of Jacob Blake Jr. ... And we prayed that Jacob would live and not die. And we're thankful that he's alive today, and he's doing well."
The shooting left Blake paralyzed below the waist. Yet both Jackson, Blake's mother, and Ward, her pastor, decided "to speak a different narrative."
"We weren't calling for a hatred," Ward recalls. "We weren't calling for destruction. We're calling for peace and speaking the love of God over the city. And it really went viral."
Ward rejects "victim mentality" and ideologies such as critical race theory. He purposefully took a different approach from Black Lives Matter and found himself working with President Donald Trump last year. Now, he's preaching this "new attitude" in a book called "Zero Victim."
Ward visited The Daily Signal to discuss "Zero Victim: Overcoming Injustice With a New Attitude" and his experience in Kenosha last year. Listen to the full interview or read a lightly edited transcript are below.
Rob Bluey: We are joined on “The Daily Signal Podcast” today by pastor James Ward Jr. He’s the author of the book “Zero Victim: Overcoming Injustice With a New Attitude.” Pastor, thanks so much for being with us on the show today.
James E. Ward Jr.: Hey, Rob, it’s really an honor, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. So grateful to you and Charles and Kay [James], everybody here at The Daily Signal and The Heritage Foundation. Really an honor to be with you, sir. Thank you so much for having me.
Bluey: Before we get into the book, you have an amazing story growing up in Alabama. And you said those experiences in the time that you were in elementary school really shaped your thinking about a whole host of issues. Can you take us back to then and what it meant to you?
Ward: Sure. So, the way that I got to the book, this title of “Zero Victim,” of what that means, Rob, I grew up in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the tail end of segregation, growing up on the all-black side of town. You literally did not cross the river into the white side of town.
Third grade, they integrate the school system. And so, I remember the day I first took that bus ride to the white side of town. And going through that experience and seeing that, wait a minute, it looks different here. It feels different. The homes are nice. The landscaping is nice. There’s no cars jacked up on cinder blocks and things like that.
I said, you know what? I belong here. There’s something in me that connected. Went to this new school, nice chalkboards, the playground equipment works, all of these kinds of things.
But I went into it with a mindset that this is going to be hostile, because I’m a black kid in a predominantly white school. The interesting thing is that the teacher of my third-grade class, which I didn’t know was a friend of my grandmother’s, a black lady, Mrs. Pitts, she would put students’ names on the board for doing well. If you did well on a spelling test, she’d write your name on the board.
She didn’t write your name up for behavioral issues, but to celebrate you. And Rob, I began to notice week after week, my name was on the board, and it clicked with me that I’m as smart as the white kids. And when I discovered that internally, it disarmed the hostilities of my perception, the perceive hostilities in terms of my animosity toward them when I felt that I was doing well, that I can do well. They weren’t holding me back.
That built something in me that their trajectory for my life, from that point until now, is that I don’t believe in white supremacy because I don’t believe in black inferiority. And so, there’s a narrative that’s going around right now that pits people against each other, that’s based upon victim mentality.
Here’s the basic idea of “zero victim” mentality from a faith perspective. Jesus Christ was the only innocent person that ever lived on the face of the planet. He suffered the greatest injustice that anyone has ever suffered. And while still in the process of being victimized, while the nails are still being driven in his hand, Jesus is already praying, “Father, forgive them, because of their ignorance. They don’t know what they’re doing.” And that is the standard for forgiveness and dealing with injustice.
And so I called the subtitle of the book, “Overcoming Injustice With a New Attitude.”
“Zero victim” mentality is the mind of Christ. And we’ve got to get that out to our nation right now, especially dealing with the contentions that we see, the divisions, the hatred. We’ve got to get the “zero victim” mindset communicated through our society. That is the soil, even from which victim mentality is, is critical race theory. All of these ideologies that are divisive, it grows from the soil of victim mentality. And so we go right to the root of that with this new book.
Bluey: Well, thank you for writing it. Again, it’s called “Zero Victim.” What was the catalyst or the moment that you decided that you needed to write this book and present these ideas to the American public more broadly?
Ward: So, the interesting thing, the title “Zero Victim” is, I was working for a relatively large church at the time before we planted the church that we’re in right now, working for a church. And we brought in a guy to do what’s called an “attitudinal assessment.” One of the categories on the attitudinal assessment is to measure the percentage to which you see yourself as a victim. I did the exam, my score comes back zero.
The guy calls me up. He says, “You know what? I’ve never seen anything like this in the history of facilitating this.” He says, “Everyone has some degree of victim. I’ve never seen anyone score zero. I need to know your story. I need to know what’s behind this.” I went on a consult for his staff and do a number of other things, but that’s where I got the term “zero.”
Now, the interesting thing about zero, if you imagine a number line, the reset place is zero. And I think if we can bring our society back to zero, I’d say it’s the only way to push the reset button on race relations. I could go into Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a “zero victim” thinker.
It doesn’t dismiss problems that need to be eradicated and things that need to be addressed, but what it is, victim mentality, it’s like a set of lenses through which people see. And you literally read victimization into your circumstances, whether that’s in marriage or bankruptcy. It’s being politicized and weaponized in terms of race to destroy a people group.
We’ve got to get this “zero victim” mindset. You can’t control what happens around you, but you can control what happens within you. And by nature, that is God’s design, is for us to live life from the inside out, not from the outside in.
If you live your life from the outside … your life will be a constant yo-yo. You’ll never have a night of peace. You’ll never sleep well.
Those things are something that will absolutely destroy your church. I tell our church, the grand dragon or the grand wizard of the KKK, whoever the guy is, I love him. Not because of him, but because of me. There’s something in me. I am not a victim.
And so again, I don’t see anything such as white supremacy, because I don’t believe in black inferiority. We got to get that mindset back out into our nation right now.
Bluey: We certainly do, and you’re absolutely right. It is everywhere, in the media and social media. We hear it from politicians, so it’s hard, I think, on a day-to-day basis, to escape it.
Ward: Yeah.
Bluey: So, it’s important to have people like you out there talking about alternatives and different ways to think about it.
Ward: Yeah.
Bluey: For our listeners who might be struggling with it themselves, what are some of the first steps that you would recommend they take? I mean, obviously one is reading your diagnosis in the book. But if they’re thinking on a practical level, if they’re a parent themselves, what should they be talking to their kids about?
Ward: Sure. I’ll give you a short expression of “zero victim” mentality and how to apply it practically—is, I simply tell folks to act and not react, simply act and not react before we engage and respond emotionally, when we respond even out of our own pain.
If we just sometimes take a moment to think about what we’re doing and we act intelligently, instead of reacting emotionally, then we have a much better shot of minimizing expressions of victim thinking being operative in our life. We got to get back to know that these are spiritual and moral issues.
Very quickly, I teach that there are three laws that govern every society. No matter where you go, three laws: spiritual law, moral law, and civil law. Civil law is the kind of law that we’re only familiar with. We pretty much dismissed spiritual and moral law.
Here’s the problem with dismissing spiritual and moral law and only dealing with civil law: The weakness of civil law is that you cannot legislate morality. So, here’s the deal, a righteous man with the launch codes to our nuclear arsenal, people will be safe because he’s inherently righteous. But if you give an unrighteous, immoral guy a paperclip or a soup spoon, you got to fear for your life.
The issue is not the weapon. We have many fights and debates about gun control and all of these things. It’s heart control, but we’re not dealing with spiritual and moral law. So, we got to get back to the fundamentals of faith here in the United States of America. And we’re just encouraging and calling on believers to stand up, not be intimidated.
This is the time for us to express the true biblical principles, not social justice. We need biblical justice. And this is the time for us to return to our foundation of God’s word, if we’re ever going to see our way out of darkness.
Bluey: I couldn’t agree with you more on that. And in fact, I do a weekly radio segment with a station called Faith Radio.
Ward: OK.
Bluey: And one of the reasons I’m so passionate about doing that is because I truly believe that religion and faith plays such an important role in restoring some of the cultural challenges that we find ourselves in.
Ward: Absolutely.
Bluey: Talk to us about the message that you have for your church … for the people who are coming there, particularly in a time when, in many cases, all across our country, where we’re recovering from a really tough year of COVID.
Ward: Sure. Yep.
Bluey: Maybe people have lost family members or others who have suffered. They may be looking for jobs. They’re out of work. How can we remain hopeful, and how can faith play a role in that?
Ward: Sure. Yeah. I have an amazing story to share about that. Again, we pastor a church. We’ve been teaching this “zero victim” message in our church. We’ve been praying about this in prayer meetings, and this is public information.
On Aug. 23, 2020 … you remember the George Floyd situation that happened? There was COVID. We’re getting into the contention of the election, and things were just … streets were burning in Portland, Minneapolis, St. Louis. Things were on fire in our nation. And on Aug. 23, I get this phone call on my cellphone from Julia Jackson. Julia Jackson is one of our faithful intercessory-prayer team members in our church.
Julia happens to be the mother of Jacob Blake Jr. Jacob Blake Jr. was a young man that everybody saw in Kenosha was shot seven times in the back by a white police officer. And we prayed that Jacob would live and not die.
And we’re thankful that he’s alive today, and he’s doing well. He’s a tremendous young man that the nation does not know. But as Julia and I began to engage, and we spoke in the press conference, we began to speak a different narrative.
We weren’t calling for a hatred. We weren’t calling for destruction. We’re calling for peace and speaking the love of God over the city. And it really went viral. And the folks start saying, “Wait a minute. These folks are different.” You don’t hear black people speaking that way in the height of Black Lives Matter and all this contention. They’re saying something different.
And I’m so proud of Julia as well. That led to us being involved in the presidential roundtable and really working on some things with President [Donald] Trump and his staff.
But here’s the thing: When you apply that message in terms of Julia being in this crisis, she responded the way that she did because we’ve been teaching and praying into the “zero victim” message for many, many, many years before this crisis happened to her and to her son. Jacob has that same mindset.
And so, it’s something that by returning to the truth of God’s word, I think that pastors in particular have a strong responsibility and obligation to teach believers to have the mind of Christ.
For example, we’ll preach Scriptures and say, “No weapon formed against you will prosper.” And people just shout and clap and say, “Hey, that’s wonderful.” But at the same time, we have to tell them that racism is a weapon. So, if no weapon formed against you prospers, racism is a weapon. And then we teach Scriptures and say, “Hey, I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.” Except get over injustice. “No, I can do all things.” And so, as pastors and faith leaders, Bible teachers, we just got to start bringing people back to the truth and the veracity of God’s word, to apply it to the things that are happening in society, to act and not react.
Bluey: Pastor Ward, we thank you for sharing that story about Jacob and Kenosha. The Daily Signal sent a team last year to that city.
Ward: Really?
Bluey: Spoke to a lot of the business owners and others whose lives were uprooted because of some of the destruction that took place there. How is Jacob doing? How is the city recovering? Can you give us an update on how things are there today, almost a year later?
Ward: Sure. Yep. Haven’t been to Kenosha recently, but I can say of Jacob, he’s an incredible young man. He’s a great dad. And one of the passions of my life and my wife is to actually communicate a better narrative to our nation about who people really are, a narrative and empathy and compassion.
There was a moment when I was on the phone with President Trump, and then I’d hang up, and I’d be on the phone with Julia telling me about Jacob. And then I’d be back on the phone with President Trump. People that America says it’s impossible that these people can’t get along. They would never talk. And I really felt the Lord, Rob, speaking to my heart and say, “What are you going to do about it?”
So that launched us really into this space that we’d already been speaking into, that we really want to see reconciliation and renewal happen in America. We want to see folks coming together around the word of God.
I’m in partnership with the Museum of the Bible. We lead prayer meetings at Museum of the Bible, and we’re seeing this groundswell of folks coming together around faith, not some of the cultural, sociopolitical issues, the things that we’re dealing with there, but around our faith. And we’re seeing people come together from all walks of life. And so, we’re really encouraged about that.
I encourage you, folks, just go to my website at jamesewardjr.com. You can pick up the book there and get some YouTube videos and hear some of the messaging that we put out there. We’re seeing some really amazing things happen. And we’re honored to be here, to join forces with you and others to get the narrative out there that’s correct.
Bluey: That’s great. Well, Pastor Ward, thank you so much for joining us on “The Daily Signal Podcast.” We appreciate you bringing your message here to Washington, D.C.
Ward: My pleasure.
Bluey: And for all the work you’re doing back home, it’s so critically important. Again, we’ll leave a link to the book in our show notes. Again, it’s called “Zero Victim: Overcoming Injustice With a New Attitude” by James E. Ward Jr. Thanks so much.
Ward: My pleasure, thank you.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND ADDITIONAL GREAT ARTICLES
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch asked the Supreme Court to overturn the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide, calling the ruling "egregiously wrong."
“Under the Constitution, may a State prohibit elective abortions before viability? Yes. Why? Because nothing in constitutional text, structure, history, or tradition supports a right to abortion," Fitch wrote in a brief filed to the court on Thursday.
The request pertains to Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization involving a 2018 Mississippi law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, with narrow exceptions for medical emergencies. The law was blocked in lower courts before it could take effect, and the Supreme Court announced in May it would take the case to decide “whether all pre-viability prohibitions on elective abortions are unconstitutional."
Court precedent, first established with the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and reaffirmed in the 1992 Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey decision, is that there is a right to legal abortion before the fetus reaches the gestational age at which it's likely to survive outside the womb.
The conservative-majority Supreme Court has the power to throw out that law in its next term.
“There are those who would like to believe that Roe v. Wade settled the issue of abortion once and for all. But all it did was establish a special-rules regime for abortion jurisprudence that has left these cases out of step with ... neutral principles of law applied by the Court,” Fitch said. "Artificial guideposts have stunted important public debate on how we, as a society, care for the dignity of women and their children. It is time for the Court to set this right and return this political debate to the political branches of government.”
Ten Republican-led states — including Mississippi, Arkansas, Louisiana, Idaho, and Kentucky — have "trigger" laws on the books, which would instantly ban abortions if Roe is overturned. The majority-conservative court has electrified anti-abortion advocates who believe they are closer than ever to throwing the law out.
"Attorney General Fitch’s masterful brief makes clear that the Supreme Court’s abortion jurisprudence is hopelessly unworkable, ungrounded in history or facts, and has tied the hands of pro-life Americans and their elected representatives for decades. It is long overdue to let this debate move forward democratically," said Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion advocacy group Susan B. Anthony List.
Still, the mostly conservative court showed last summer it is willing to defer to precedent in similar cases. Justice Stephen Breyer, a Clinton appointee, led the court opinion in last year's June v. Russo case in which the court struck down Louisiana abortion restrictions based on recent precedent.
Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by former President George W. Bush, issued a surprise opinion concurring with the majority.
The United States Department of Education is walking back plans to encourage the use of critical race theory in civics education curricula.
The move comes after several months of conservative-led activism against the left-wing ideology, which alleges that white people and racial minorities in the United States respectively belong to the oppressor and oppressed classes.
The department published a notice Monday in the Federal Register requesting applications for grants that dropped references to published anti-racism works that had been mentioned in proposed rules released in April for the American History and Civics Education grant program, and that had drawn the ire of conservatives.
The proposed rules did not actually suggest the contested material would be required for grantees to use, but Education Secretary Miguel Cardona addressed concerns of critics by making clear in a blog post that curriculum decisions will not be dictated by the federal government.
The April proposal lauded The New York Times’ “landmark” 1619 Project — which emphasizes the role of slavery as a core reality in the founding of the United States — and quoted from How to Be an Antiracist by Ibram X. Kendi. The new notice dropped both references and appeared to avoid any other nods toward critical race theory.
Opponents of critical race theory approved Education Secretary Miguel Cardona’s amendment of the grant proposal.
“Thousands of Americans across the country responded to the federal government’s request for comment on this issue, and sent a clear message that this was not an appropriate use of tax dollars,” said Parents Defending Education President Nicole Neily. “We are gratified that the Biden Administration has responded to this feedback.”
“Today’s decision is a win for the parents and students,” added Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY). “Future generations of Americans deserve to receive a rich, rigorous education in civics and our nation’s history. But this will hardly be the last word in the fight to preserve real history and real civics in the face of the revisionism that is increasingly sought by the far left.”
As parents continue to push back against the spread of Critical Race Theory in schools, the framework remains in the American public consciousness.
Earlier this month, an African-American father named Ian Rice explained to his children’s school board that Critical Race Theory seeks to teach children that “white people are bad.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “That would teach my daughter that her mother is evil.”
“This board and this school district has failed,” Rice told the administrators. “[Critical race theory] was never meant to be brought into grade schools, high schools — at all. It’s actually taught in the collegiate atmosphere, more importantly, the legal portion of the collegiate atmosphere to see different laws through the lens of race, from an ethical standpoint, not for grade schoolers and high schoolers.”
Rice observed that racial tensions and issues are “nowhere near what they used to be decades ago,” though America still has “a long way to go.”
“But I believe the people here don’t look at me as a black man, they look at me as a man standing in front of you addressing the issue we are all very passionate about,” Rice closed to raucous applause from fellow parents.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member.
FOR MORE EXCELLENT INFORMATION AND ADDITIONAL ARTICLES
Arkansas Republicans Help Give Professional Licenses to Illegal Aliens
JOHN BINDER 5 Jul 2021
Arkansas Republicans, including Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R), have helped secure professional licenses for illegal aliens enrolled in former President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program thanks to the passage of new state law.
The law, which took effect July 1, will now allow the state’s nearly 5,000 DACA illegal aliens, along with illegal aliens who hold federal government-issued work permits, to obtain professional licenses to hold jobs in education and healthcare, among other industries.
Hutchinson said “all of Arkansas benefits” when DACA illegal aliens can obtain professional licenses to take jobs in the state. Only State Sen. Trent Garner (R) and State Reps. Joshua Bryant (R), Bruce Cozart (R), and Gayla McKenzie (R) voted against the legislation.
“The passing of this law was a special moment in Arkansas history,” Hutchinson said.
Arkansas Nonprofit News Network reports:
Act 746, formerly HB 1735, will allow the state’s nearly 5,000 DACA recipients and other immigrants with work permits to obtain any professional or occupational license in Arkansas. The federal DACA program, or Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, covers immigrants who were brought to the United States, without authorization, as children. DACA allows these individuals — a group sometimes called “Dreamers” — to stay in the country free from the threat of deportation if they meet certain qualifications. Although DACA recipients are eligible for federal work permits, requirements at the state level have sometimes prevented them from becoming licensed in specific professional fields.
[Emphasis added]
The legislation, sponsored by state Rep. Clint Penzo (R-Springdale) and state Sen. Bart Hester (R-Cave Springs), received overwhelming bipartisan support. It passed the House of Representatives 88-3 and the Senate 34-1; both chambers are controlled by large Republican supermajorities. It takes effect July 1. [Emphasis added]
Gov. Asa Hutchinson said the passage of the law across party lines “was a big victory for the young people who are talented and ready to build their future in our great state. [Emphasis added]
Arkansas Republicans’ passage of professional licenses for DACA illegal aliens comes after the sanctuary state of Colorado passed similar legislation this year with lobbying from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s FWD.us group.
Likewise, New Jersey passed similar legislation last year, and illegal aliens in the state are now applying for and receiving professional licenses.
Today, there are anywhere from 11 million to 22 million illegal aliens living in the U.S., costing Americans about $134 billion annually, with about eight million holding American jobs. Roughly 55,000 illegal aliens live in the state of Arkansas.
The Biden administration is using the U.S. military to secretly transport scores of illegal aliens across the nation and scatter them in various cities and towns — maybe in your neighborhood. And you’re paying for it, whether you like it or not.
The alarming findings were revealed by a Pentagon whistleblower who sent Fox News host Tucker Carlson damning internal emails written by Lt. Col. Matthew Burrows of Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas.
In the bombshell emails, Burrows informed his subordinates that they will transport illegal aliens around the country and that they are banned from taking photos or revealing that this is happening.
“This show has confirmed that the Biden administration has enlisted the U.S. military to move illegal immigrants secretly around our country,” Carlson said on Wednesday.
“That is happening at Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas. We know this is happening there because a man called Lt. Col. Matthew Burrows sent his subordinates an email spelling it out very clearly.”
The note read: “Over the next few days, weeks or months you may see passenger aircraft on our ramp transporting undocumented non-citizens. Please review the attached public affairs guidance on the issue.”
Carlson underscored that Burrows’ email had “instructed uniformed military personnel to hide what was happening on the base from the country they’re sworn to serve. ‘Do not take photographs and refrain from posting anything on social media.'”
He pointed out that “Lt. Col. Burrows offered no national security justification for keeping any of this secret because there is no national security justification for keeping it from the rest of us. He just told the people who work for him not to talk.”
The Biden administration’s top-secret mission of flying illegal aliens from border states to the interior of the United States — using taxpayer-funded resources — is a stark contrast to the Pentagon’s position during the previous administration.
When former President Donald Trump was in office, the Pentagon sternly refused to protect the southern border, claiming that doing so would politicize the military.
“And yet, according to this document, here was the very same U.S. military leadership at the Pentagon helping the Biden administration — with maximum, enforced stealth, with secrecy — to subvert this country’s core immigration laws,” Carlson said.
He said the Department of Defense had confirmed this astonishing abuse of taxpayer-funded military resources.
“The Pentagon has confirmed it to us,” Carlson said. “Spokesman Chris Mitchell described the flights from Laughlin as a ‘noncitizen movement,’ part of what he called ‘the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s mission.’
“He told us then to direct any further questions to ICE. So we did. We called ICE, multiple times. ICE did not deny they were using Laughlin Air Force Base to relocate large numbers of foreign nationals into the interior of our country and do it secretly. The question is: Where are these people going?”
It is tyrannical government abuse to move armies of unvetted illegal aliens into neighborhoods across the country without informing the public of this large-scale resettlement program.
“Apparently, Americans do not have a right to know where foreign nationals are being resettled in their own country,” Carlson said.
“We do know, thanks to the Center for Immigration Studies, that the administration, the Biden administration, has been sending illegal migrants all over the country for some time now.”
Resettling caravans of unvetted illegal aliens across the U.S. is not only a national security threat but also a danger to public safety amid the pandemic that the left constantly fearmongers over.
Why are President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party — which weaponized the pandemic to impose draconian restrictions on the public — not concerned that unvaccinated illegal migrants could spread the coronavirus to American citizens?
Since Biden was installed as president in January, scores of commercial and charter buses have been transporting tens of thousands of illegal aliens in the dead of night from Texas, Arizona and California and dumping them off in Florida, New Jersey, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky and large cities in Texas such as Dallas and Houston, Carlson noted.
“Changing the electoral map, are we?” he said. “Serving the businesses that paid for you to get elected, are we? Yes, we are.
“Now those were buses that you saw. Now, the administration is using aircraft and Air Force bases. And that ought to give you some sense of the scale involved here.
“What you’re watching is demographic transformation in our country without our consent and in violation of our laws. That is happening.”
Carlson said it’s not an exaggeration to say “Biden has opened this country’s borders to the world. Since Biden’s inauguration in January, the Border Patrol has apprehended close to a million foreign nationals coming into this country over land through Mexico.”
And that’s just in the past six months. The Biden administration has now imported enough people to demographically change the country forever.
“The current mass movement of foreign nationals into the United States was never approved by Congress,” Carlson noted. “No one passed a law asking for it. The Biden administration just did it, unilaterally, without asking Americans what they thought of it.”
What Biden is doing violates longstanding immigration laws that he helped pass during his 50-year political career.
And it violates the foundation of our democracy, which is that citizens control who runs the government.
“We, as citizens, have an absolute right to know what they are doing,” Carlson said.
Tennessee Department of Health Reportedly Fired Chief Vaccination Official for Months of Inappropriate Behavior – Not for Sharing Mature Minor Doctrine
Contrary to current claims, the Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) reportedly fired its previous Vaccine-Preventable and Infectious Diseases State Medical Director Dr. Michelle Fiscus due to months of unprofessional behavior and poor job performance. TDH Chief Medical Officer Tim Jones detailed issues with Fiscus at length in a recommendation for termination email to TDH Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey.
Although Fiscus claims that she was fired for informing the public about the mature minor doctrine, TDH offered a laundry list of the issues Fiscus has reportedly caused. According to their records, Fiscus consistently engaged in inappropriate behaviors such as mistreating her colleagues and ignoring superiors. Her behavior reportedly caused two senior leaders to resign. She’d also been pushing TDH over the last three months to award funds to her nonprofit organization – though it had no staff or other major funds.
Jones’ full memo to Piercey is reproduced below:
Based on the program management deficiencies and failure to follow appropriate processes and procedures, please accept this recommendation to expire the executive service of Dr. Michelle Fiscus, Director, Vaccine Preventable Diseases and Immunization Program (VPDIP), Tennessee Department of Health.
This recommendation is based on Dr. Fiscus’s failure to maintain good working relationships with members of her team, her lack of effective leadership, her lack of appropriate management, and unwillingness to consult with superiors and other internal stakeholders on VPDIP projects.
On multiple occasions during the 2020-2021 COVID response, Dr. Fiscus has failed to maintain satisfactory and harmonious relationships among her team. In February 2021, CEDEP leadership and TDH Human Resources received multiple complaints from program staff regarding her management style, treatment of employees, and poor program morale. Dr. Dunn met with five senior team members who expressed consistent complaints related to management of the program by Dr. Fiscus during the COVID response. He had several coaching sessions with Dr. Fiscus, with minimal improvement in the situation noted. Two of her most senior leaders have subsequently resigned.
On March 7, 2021, Dr. Dunn and I met with Dr. Fiscus and another departmental physician to mediate complaints against Dr. Fiscus of disrespectful treatment and inefficient management. The meeting terminated with a refusal of both parties to communicate constructively, and with a refusal by the other physician to work further on the VPDIP team. Dr. Fiscus was coached on professionalism and teamwork.
Dating back to December 2020, the vaccine planning team required intervention by CEDEP leadership to address inefficient use of team resources, including poor inter-program communication regarding vaccine distribution. Repeated failures by Dr. Fiscus to appropriately delegate to others resulted in repetitive, long, and inefficient meetings. These meetings took already busy colleagues away from other tasks.
Over the past three months Dr. Fiscus requested to give a new non-profit organization TDH funding to support VPDIP activities. This organization was founded and led by Dr. Fiscus, had no Executive Director or other employees, and had no substantive source of funding. Providing funds to such an entity would be poor judgment and a substantial conflict of interest.
In June 2021, Dr. Fiscus communicated directly with a state university regarding the department producing COVID-vaccine reports for the institution. She did not notify or consult with supervisors, and the situation only became evident when departmental legal counsel received formal documents directly from the university memorializing the arrangement. The requested reports were not produced by the department.
In May 2021, Dr. Fiscus broadly shared a letter regarding her own interpretation of state and federal law with external partners with respect to vaccinations and other medical treatment of minors. The letter should have been reviewed by both leadership and departmental legal counsel. However, Dr. Fiscus did not share the letter nor otherwise include any of these parties in the drafting process prior to sending it out. This action resulted in confusion of both law and policy for private providers, parents, and legislators.
These examples clearly demonstrate that Dr. Fiscus’s performance in this role has led to strained relationships with internal and external stakeholders at multiple levels, and to an ineffective and non-cohesive workplace. Her leadership and management of her team does not foster the culture or environment expected at the Tennessee Department of Health.
Fiscus denies that these assessments of her job performance are true, citing last year’s end-of-year job performance review. She also claimed that the TDH Office of General Counsel approved her controversial May letter expositing the mature minor doctrine, which states that minors aged 14 or older may be vaccinated without parental consent.
The change in TDH’s attitude toward Fiscus’s job performance may have occurred after their 2020 job performance review. Chronologically, the first incident that Jones cited occurred in December.
How A 10-Year-Old Girl’s Mom Saved Her From Going Transgender
With permission, I share a mother’s terrifying experience. Her story illustrates how quickly and easily a ten-year-old girl can be groomed into a cross-sex identity.
When I appeared on a Heritage Foundation panel discussion in 2019, I said people are manufacturing trans gender kids. They are hurting the most vulnerable members of our society by encouraging children and adolescents to live as the opposite sex, inject hormone blockers and cross-gender hormones, and undergo surgeries that irrevocably alter healthy body parts.
These protocols are dangerous and unstudied, and shouldn’t be pushed on children. Yet this madness rages on like an unchecked forest fire.
I was a transgender child who “transitioned” to female as an adult. I lived as female for eight years, until I woke up and admitted it wasn’t working. Counseling led to emotional healing and my feelings of gender dysphoria dissipated. Hormones and surgery were unnecessary and physically harmed me. Now I use my experience to mentor others who want to reclaim their biological reality.
So, when a mother who watched the panel discussion wrote me, saying, “The video gave me the courage and helped me to take control of my 10-year-old daughter’s wellbeing,” I knew I needed to speak out again to expose the manipulation that causes vulnerable children to think they have a transgender identity.
With this mother’s permission, I share her terrifying experience of almost losing her young daughter in a few short months. I’ve shortened her emails for space and clarity. Her story illustrates how easily a ten-year-old girl can be groomed into a cross-sex identity, but for the intervention of her mindful parents.
Ten-year-old Mindy (a pseudonym) changed schools and left behind her friends just before the school lockdowns, then attended school virtually for the rest of fourth grade and all of fifth grade. When she exhibited overwhelming stress, her concerned parents took her to a counselor at the pediatrician’s office. That started their nightmare.
Their story followed a common five-step process I have seen numerous times.
Step 1. Exclude the Parents
Separating parents from their child is an excellent strategy to manufacture trans kids. Away from the parents’ watchful eyes and protection, advocates are free to indoctrinate the child into transgenderism.
Mindy was isolated for six days in the hospital from her parents, who were refused updates. Reflecting on this time, the mother says, “She was hospitalized in February for out of the blue with anxiety and depression…I’m still amazed this happened in the first place and my husband and I weren’t given any choice. They told us she was suicidal and she needed to be taken to be evaluated in house [hospitalized].”
“Three days turned into 6 and they were trying to keep her longer…refusing us updates or anything, so we told them we were coming to get her with or without their blessing… I was so overwhelmed leaving my daughter there in the first place…not allowed to see her any and only talking to her for about 3 minutes a day. This is a 10-year-old that had only spent the night 3 times in her whole life away from home. This stay was the direct result of a therapist talking to her without our presence.”
After Mindy’s time in the hospital, counselor appointments continued, but again without the parents.
“My daughter was talked to separately and myself and her father weren’t allowed [to] participate or [get] any information about the appointments,” the mother told me. “Where are the parents’ rights in this? She is 10 years old.”
She’s right: parental rights are eroding under the pretense of transgender rights. But these parents fought back.
Step 2. Leap to a Diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria
For Mindy, what started as “out of the blue” anxiety and depression quickly escalated to a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the next crucial step in the manufacturing of trans kids.
“She began counseling at the pediatrics office and [they] quickly diagnosed her with gender dysphoria (without telling us) and possible Asperger’s in addition to the previous GAD [Generalized Anxiety Disorder]. I felt like they did not listen to me…I told the pediatrics office and counselor that this started when my daughter changed school… leaving her friends and the only school she had ever been to. [Then] school became virtual [and] nothing was normal.”
Notice how the counselor didn’t listen to the parents and their knowledge of their child. Obvious triggers—changing schools, leaving friends behind, lockdowns, and the resulting anxiety and depression—were ignored. To me, this is reckless medical malpractice and it happens far too frequently.
Notice, too, how the counselor leapt over Mindy’s co-existing issues in a rush to affirm her in a transgender identity. Depression, anxiety, Asperger’s, and GAD all have root causes and corresponding treatments that have nothing to do with gender identity.
I routinely hear from people who regret identifying as the opposite sex who say the counselor ignored all co-existing conditions. This also happened to me. In doing this, the therapists ruin the lives they claim to improve.
Step 3. Affirm the Cross-Sex Identity
Studies show that affirming a child in a cross-sex identity alters the child’s psyche and puts a child on the path to living as transgender. Without being pushed into transgenderism, most gender-confused children will re-identify with their natural sex during puberty. In other words, their feelings change, and they grow out of it.
Sometimes the parents affirm the child’s dysphoria and cross-dress him or her. More often, schools, counselors, and teachers affirm and encourage children in a cross-sex identity (new name, new pronouns, new wardrobe), and even keep it a secret from the parents.
For ten-year-old Mindy, her therapist was forthright enough, thankfully, to inform Mindy’s parents that she intended, without their permission or input, to start calling Mindy by a male name. But Mindy’s mama bear mother didn’t roll over. She took appropriate action.
“Well needless to say I began researching this day and night. This is when I found your video. I quickly requested her medical records…of course the info was blacked out but the gender dysphoria was on there.”
“We informed the same therapist that she would not be coming back. We would resume care elsewhere.”
Step 4. Glorify Trans Identities
Manufacturing trans kids wouldn’t be nearly so successful were it not for entertainment glorifying trans identities, through YouTube videos, children’s shows, video games, and education. Children are attracted (and groomed) through the influence of their peers, social media, and teachers.
It’s easy to see why a child who hits a rough period emotionally, or feels socially awkward or isolated, would be drawn to identifying as transgender as a means to acceptance and attention.
Across the nation, public schools include LGBT books and activities in the curriculum, as early as kindergarten, that romanticize those who identify as transgender. (Parents, see this article for concrete advice on fighting this in public schools.) Online, communities and popular apps are incubators, chock-full of transgender-pushing accounts ready to indoctrinate a vulnerable child. “Social contagion” is now a major factor in teens flocking to trans identities.
Mindy’s mom discovered the negative influence of those communities when Mindy made friends with two older kids online: “[Mindy] began to have anxiety more frequently after talking to them / panic attacks while online with these kids,” the mother wrote. “My gut knew this played a part.”
Mindy’s observant mother rightly sensed that Mindy’s online activity contributed to her anxiety and confusion. Most of the parents who contact me report their child has spent too much time online in chat rooms or video games. Many times, we discover the child was not gender dysphoric at all.
Step 5. Vilify and Ban All Differing Ideas
Anyone who has questions the transgender narrative faces the charge of “trans-phobic” and is ostracized. I’ve been called trans-phobic because I tell my story of transition and detransition. A distinguished child psychologist and department chair was effectively fired because he expressed the scientific fact that drugs that block puberty or cross-sex hormones can endanger a child’s long-term psychological health.
Major medical associations have changed position statements to advocate for political ideology over sound medical practice. In 20 states, counselors can lose their licenses if they question a client’s transgender identification instead of reinforcing it.
At the national level, activists disguise the true intentions of innocuous-sounding bills like the proposed Equality Act and the Fairness for All Act. Both bills ban therapy and punish all who question transitioning for children.
Loss of freedom is the result. Individual health professionals must comply or lose their livelihood. Concerned parents can’t find a counselor who will challenge the diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Parents face being labeled “trans-phobic” and more severe legal repercussions, such as a visit from child protective services and possible seizure of their children. The child suffers the consequences for a lifetime.
Parents Can Derail This Runaway Train
Mindy’s mother demonstrated how parents can release a child from the grip of a “gender dysphoria” diagnosis. She didn’t follow blindly the opinions that ran contrary to her observations and common sense. Instead, she researched and found resources to educate herself, starting with the Heritage Foundation panel discussion.
She withdrew her daughter from the harmful influence of trans-affirming health professionals, then sat quietly with her daughter and listened with love. It worked. She writes,
She finally opened up stating the very same things I said all along… the school change began her anxiety…different school, no friends, feeling different, starting to develop (didn’t like that) and she had been bothered on the bus by an older kid but most of all the she had been encouraged and exposed to the Transgender World by the same 2 kids and researched it on the internet…needless to say [she received] bad info…she was just on overload with everything. She says [she’s] not a transgender and was doing it because the 2 were her friends encouraged her…she felt like they would not be her friends if she didn’t play along. You saved my daughter’s future and my family.
By Mindy’s own admission, she’s not trans. Her former therapist was attempting to manufacture a transgender child out of an overwhelmed ten-year-old who needed friends after changing schools. Happily, the parents put a stop to that madness.
Unfortunately, for thousands more, their stories don’t end so well.
Walt Heyer is an accomplished author and public speaker with a passion for mentoring individuals whose lives have been torn apart by unnecessary gender-change surgery.
FOR MORE INFORMATION AND ADDITIONAL EXCELLENT ARTICLES
Governors from 15 states are sounding the alarm over an executive order issued by President Joe Biden tasking his administration to “conserve” 30 percent of all land and water in the U.S. by 2030.
Known as the “30 x 30 plan,” the directive is part of a United Nations Agenda 2030 land and sustainable development goal, which directs nations to conserve land and water to combat climate change.
Biden refers to the policy as part of the United State’s acceptance of rejoining the Paris Agreement, a deal former President Donald Trump pulled out of.
The United Nations goal is to globally “get to a 2° C stabilization pathway and deliver climate-change resilient landscapes” by conserving land and water usage. The United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification argues that by conserving land and water, the remaining emissions gap could be closed by up to 25 percent and reduce the risks posed by climate change. The best way to do this, according to the plan, is for governments to control land, not private landowners.
Biden’s executive order, “Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad,” involves a multi-federal agency approach.
Currently, the Biden administration considers roughly 12 percent of land and water in the U.S. to be “in conservation.” It includes wilderness lands, national parks, national wildlife refuges, state parks, national monuments, and private lands with permanent conservation easements. More than doubling this acreage to 30 percent is equivalent to conserving the geographical size of Nebraska every year for nine years, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts, a Republican, argues.
Ricketts leads a group of Republican governors from the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, Mississippi, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Utah in opposition to the plan.
“We are deeply concerned about any effort to enlarge the federal estate or further restrict the use of public lands in our states,” they wrote.
Biden’s plan would not only infringe on the private property rights of their residents but also significantly harm their economies, they argue.
It’s the states’ duty and prerogative “to manage their own lands and waters for the well-being of their citizens – free from federal interference,” they wrote. “It is precisely because we depend on our lands to be available for future generations to enjoy and use [that], without greater input into this initiative, we must resist implementation of the 30 x 30 program.”
They argue no constitutional or statutory authority of the president or federal agencies exists to set aside and permanently conserve 30 percent of all land and water in the United States.
“Nowhere in the laws of our nation is the authority delegated by Congress to the President or executive agencies to unilaterally change the policies governing land use in America,” they write.
The governors asked Biden to answer 12 specific questions, to which they have not received a reply.
Ricketts signed his own executive order banning Nebraska from supporting federal conservation programs without the governor’s express authorization.
While the Biden administration has not released more details about the plan, the U.S. Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, Commerce and Council on Environmental Quality published a preliminary report outlining a way to implement it.
“I don’t believe that the federal government is going to try to come out and just take land, through eminent domain, for example,” Ricketts said. “I believe the way they’re going to try and cover these goals is by creating more ways that they can regulate you and take your private property rights away.”
However, he also said, “Either they’re going to fail to get to 30 percent, or they’re not telling us something else about how they’re going to get to 30 percent.”
U.S. Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) argues Biden’s “land grab” won’t stop with 30 percent of land and water in nine years because a proposal submitted by the Center for American Progress in 2019 called for “conserving” 50 percent of all U.S. land and water by 2050.
“The federal government already has 111 million acres locked up in wilderness status and owns more than 640 million acres, so where will it get the 681 million additional acres proponents say are necessary to lock up 30% of the country’s land and waters in the next nine years?” she asks. “The Biden administration has explicitly stated that private property is not exempt from the 30 x 30 initiative.”
Boebert added that the federal government would take private property using eminent domain as it already has in her district. More than 55 percent of her congressional district is federal land, and that keeps expanding, she argues. In response to Biden’s plan, Boebert introduced the “30 x 30 Termination Act” in Congress to prevent private land from being seized by the federal government.
“America was founded on private property rights, but the 30 x 30 program relies on the false assumption that private property owners don’t know how to manage their land responsibly,” Boebert said. “Instead, it proposes that we be beholden to the administrative state to govern the land that’s America’s lifeblood.”
Conservatives Call For Penny Schwinn’s Removal As Commissioner Of Education
Published July 7, 2021
The Tennessee Conservative [By Jason Vaughn]
Education Commissioner Penny Schwinn’s performance has many Tennesseans, from average citizens to school superintendents to legislators, calling for change. This call for a change at the top of Tennessee’s public education system is a long time in the making and continues today as we learned by surveying our readers.
When asked if they felt Commissioner Schwinn should resign, Tennessee Conservative readers overwhelmingly agreed – almost to a person – that Schwinn is not the right person for the job.
Citizen Larry Linton says, “She is bringing California values and curriculum to our state. As well, she is allowing Dr. Lisa Piercey to market the EUA vaccine to minors. Both of them need to go.”
Chattanooga resident James Emery says, “She does NOT represent the conservatives in Tennessee!”
“Without a doubt,” states citizen Margaret Twin. “We need someone who doesn’t believe in Critical Race Theory or anything else it might be called.”
Tullahoma resident Robert Chase Matheson wants to see changes that will keep public education from lurching from one extreme to another during future emergencies. “She should resign immediately,” Matheson stated. “And Tennessee needs more transparency between parents and the Department of Education to prevent this in the future.”
Why are so many Tennesseans calling for Penny Schwinn’s removal now? Understanding the full picture requires a review of recent events.
In September of 2020, Maury County Mayor Andy Ogles called for the removal of Tennessee’s commissioner of education.
“Simply stated, she does not represent our values and has no business educating our children,” Ogles said. “I formally call on Governor Bill Lee to remove Commissioner Penny Schwinn.”
*** Click Here to Support Conservative Journalism in Tennessee. We can’t cover Tennessee education-related topics without your support!***
Ogles’ request came just after Schwinn announced that the Department of Education was implementing a $1 million plan to conduct child well checks on all Tennessee children from birth to age 18 – even those not enrolled in public schools. This plan would include a phone call, email, or home visit from a program liaison. Critics of the plan called it a “government overreach”, with the checks including a review of each child’s vaccination records and documentation of any refusal from parents to participate in the “optional” program.
At the time, Schwinn claimed there was a miscommunication of the intention of the program.
“Although well intentioned, we have missed the mark on communication and providing clarity around our role in supporting at-risk students,” Schwinn stated.
Clarity again proved to be an issue for Schwinn later that month as she announced an expected drop of at least 50% in proficiency rates for Tennessee students because of COVID-19 disruptions in schooling. Questioning from school superintendents and lawmakers revealed that the data used to formulate that projection was from state data from 2014-2019, prior to the pandemic. Many school districts across the state had not yet received results from diagnostic tests administered at the start of the school year.
Superintendent of Henry County Schools Leah Watkins was among those who felt the Commissioner was misleading the public about the state of Tennessee schools. “Before the state releases numbers to millions of Tennesseans, let’s make sure it’s accurate and shared with the appropriate context,” Watkins stated.
Legislators were also blindsided by the announcement and Schwinn’s lack of communication, even though they had met with her the day before.
“We know there’s a loss of learning. But before making blanket statements, the state needs to ask superintendents for their data and then look at it closely,” said Representative Mark White of Memphis.
The rhetoric has continually been an issue for Schwinn, who seems quick to fall back on the excuse of miscommunication or misinterpretation when she comes under fire.
In August of 2020, the Department of Education issued guidance stating that they were “encouraging” that all middle and high school students and all staff members wear masks to return to school, but acknowledged that they were allowing school districts to decide on mask mandates themselves.
A statement from Schwinn’s office attempted to clarify the “intent” of the recommendation.
“The intent here is expectation and encouragement means the same thing, which is different from mandate and requirement. We know there are some schools who are requiring masks, but from the state’s prerogative it is not a requirement and it was not at any time a change in direction.”
More recently on Jul 1st, 2021, Schwinn has come under fire for a state-approved curriculum accused of promoting critical race theory even though a new Tennessee law limits what teachers can discuss regarding racism.
During a stop in Sumner County as a part of her summer bus tour, Schwinn was greeted by a group of protestors who argued that some components of the curriculum, Wit and Wisdom, were not appropriate for younger students.
Schwinn’s response was simply to say that the curriculum was chosen by the local officials and that parents just need to pay attention to what their children come home with. “As a parent, I read every book that is coming in front of my kids,” she said.
Citizen Sharee Andrade believes it is time for Schwinn to stop pushing her agenda on Tennessee children. “She is pushing failed curriculum in TN schools. She is also heavily promoting curriculum that isn’t age appropriate, stuffing in gender identity and Critical Race Theory,” stated Andrade.
A group of Georgetown University students said they were “embarrassed” to be American in shocking campus interviews ahead of the July 4 holiday weekend — but none of them could name a better country to live in.
Ophelie Jacobson, a reporter for Campus Reform, surveyed students from the private college in DC Friday about whether they were “proud” of the stars and stripes.
But instead of getting patriotic responses in the lead-up to America’s birthday, the reporter found that the majority of them struggled to say they were proud of being American — with several even admitting they were “embarrassed.”
One student told Jacobson, whose conservative news site is a higher-education watchdog, said: “I think a lot of things about this country are really embarrassing: racist history, colonization, even currently, just what’s going on with politics and the cops.”
Another student said: “I think that’s a complicated question for me. I think most of the time, no … at least over the past four years — it’s been tricky to love to be an American.”
Jacobson also asked students if they think the US is the greatest country in this world.
“To be a white person, it’s pretty good to live here. But overall, I don’t think it’s the greatest country in the world,” a student told her.
“America is not really known for being the most hospitable place,” another one said.
Another woman concurred, saying that “a lot of times, it’s just embarrassing” to be American because the US claims “to support everyone, but we continue to support Israel, which [is] dislocating quite a few Palestinian people.”
Students also admitted they would be willing to move out of the country — or even go so far as renouncing their citizenship because of how they felt about the nation.
However, when asked if they could name a better country, nobody could come up with an answer.
One interviewee said a “tiny European country that’s thriving” might be better than the US while another just said, “Europe.”
Lily Tang Williams, a US citizen who immigrated from China, told “Fox & Friends” on Saturday that she felt “sorry for those young students.”
“They remind me of my past, living in communist China for 23 years, and I was indoctrinated to believe everything the government told me and that Chairman Mao [Zedong] told me,” she said, according to Fox News.
She added that “there are millions of people who would like to switch places with them.”
The University of Memphis (UofM) Benjamin L. Hooks Institute recently hosted a lecture on the importance of critical race theory. The speakers maintained that critical race theory was a vital, necessary part of all levels of education because it offers the true history and understanding of this country.
The virtual discussion streamed June 22 with panelists Dr. Kami Anderson, a communications professor; Dr. Wallis Baxter III, a pastor and professor of African American literature at Gettysburg College; Dr. Le’Trice Donaldson, University of Wisconsin-Stout assistant history professor in applied social sciences; and Daniel Kiel, a constitutional, education, and civil rights and property law professor at Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law.
The first speaker, Anderson, discussed a branch of critical race theory: critical language and race theory, or “LangCrit” for short. She asserted that “racial linguistics” offers an authentic representation of race and culture for black students. According to Anderson, this is according to the principles of something called “language activism,” which examines structures of power and privilege exacerbated through “language supremacy” by attaching language to contestations of power and critiquing standard forms of language as calls to power.
Accordingly, education that pushes a proper form of language that conflicts with the linguistics of a non-native speaker constitutes “supremacist elitism.” Anderson emphasized that Black children need Afro-centric activism, which centers Black students on “Africanisms” and “Africanness” in language.
“Using a common proverb as an analogy: critical race theory is giving the lion an opportunity to share its side of the story. And we’ve now chosen to write the narrative back in favor of the hunter because we’re too uncomfortable to evaluate our role in a lion’s pain,” said Anderson.
The second speaker, Baxter, shared that he teaches critical race theory in church. He referenced one class in particular, “Stop the Madness: Race, Religion, and Politics,” in which he teaches specific critical race theory concepts like ordinariness, interest conversions, differentializations, voice of color thesis, and double consciousness.
“[C]ritical race theory is not so much about trying to point out who a racist is [….] Critical race theory is a theoretical frame of reference for us to dig into the reality of race in America,” said Baxter. “It’s just something that is real – it’s in the fabric, woven into the fabric of who America is, what America’s about, and there’s no way to escape that.”
Baxter asserted that critical race theory should and must be taught. He said that it’s important because people have to understand how they’re being viewed and perceived truly by the people who are looking at them. Baxter added that Black people who don’t engage in critical race theory don’t really understand who they are.
“It helps us understand what it means to ‘be’ in this nation. It is kind of a theoretical approach that helps us define and redefine some things about racism,” explained Baxter. “It’s a dangerous thing when you try to strip a mechanism, a vehicle that helps people come to a place of self-actualization. If you strip it then we’re no longer able, in theory, to attain that level of self-actualization, know who we really are. So we go through life not fully understanding who we are and understanding how we are placed, right, in the world historically.”
The third speaker, Donaldson, claimed that K-12 schools aren’t teaching critical race theory. She criticized legislation banning critical race theory for only allowing a “white-washed” history.
“The fact is that no one who’s teaching between the grades of K through 12 is actually teaching critical race theory,” asserted Donaldson. “However, the language that is being used within the legislation is directed toward presenting this very Anglicized, white-washed version of American history in that race is not a factor in the founding of this country.”
Donaldson said that critical race theory teaches that race is a social construct created to oppress people of color in the United States. She cited the 1776 Commission: a group called together by previous President Donald Trump to create education on the history and principles of America, immediately dismissed by President Joe Biden – though they continue to meet to finish their work.
According to Donaldson, the 1776 Commission is wrong in its assessment that critical race theory teaches for individuals to be ashamed of American history. She says that it merely teaches the truth.
“The fact is that American history is founded on the oppression of indigenous people, the oppression of poor people coming from Europe and whatnot in regard to indigent servitude, and the oppression of enslaved Africans when they arrived in this country on slave ships,” said Donaldson. “The fact is that the United States is literally built on these pillars of oppression. That’s the truth.”
Donaldson clarified further that critical race theory is a lens for viewing current situations through their racial history and impact, using the fact that the country’s largest prison exists on the same land where a plantation once stood.
“That is what critical race theory is teaching and attempting to dismantle: the fact that, why would you build a penitentiary on the same soil of a plantation?” asked Donaldson. “And you systemically oppress and arrest and put people of African descent in that penitentiary and what that means psychologically to a population in the United States.”
The final speaker, Kiel, added that critical race theory is much more complex than how the media and legislators portray it. He offered a history of the theory, starting with its 1970s origins in critical legal studies.
“[It stems from critical theory] as a critique of law and as law not being this neutral, impartial tool where those ‘universal values’ are applied dispassionately and lead to justice. [I]ts aim was to demystify that idealized version of law,” said Kiel. “And suggest, if it’s not that [idealized version] it might have – and in many cases has – of law being simply the codification, the sort of bringing to statute, of existing power structures. These existing power structures that are now supported by law can maintain power structures.”
One of the existing power structures in law was slavery, Kiel said. That recognition was where critical race theory emerged.
“The idea was that we should have this critique of law, not as the sort of impartial system of justice but as at least arguably representing this codification of power structures,” explained Kiel.
To remedy the codification of power structures, Kiel suggested reparations and changes to policy that cause systemic disadvantages in groups. He disagreed with the notion that removing outright discriminatory laws and measures was enough.
“We can’t absolve society of responsibility yet. Why? Because it isn’t neutral, impartial applications of universal measures of merit that is leading to the disparities of today,” asserted Kiel. “[R]ather, it’s the effects of torn-down structures and the perpetuation of existing structures that are continuing to lead to disadvantage of members of marginalized groups.”
