Representative Mo Brooks (R-AL) warns so-called Critical Race Theory, which he says already exists in the U.S. military, aims to exacerbate racial division in the country by allowing discrimination against people based solely on the pigmentation of their skin.
During an interview with Mobile, AL radio’s FM Talk 106.5, Brooks, also a candidate for U.S. Senate in Alabama, argued under Critical Race Theory that the belief that someone can make something of themselves based on merit is rejected, and it applies an emphasis on skin color instead.
“Well, unfortunately, if you saw the hearings yesterday, [Critical Race Theory] is in our military,” he said. “And what your listeners need to understand about Critical Race Theory, and I’m going to abbreviate it, summarize it somewhat is this — first, it’s Marxist. Second, it promotes racism. It teaches people to discriminate against each other based on their skin pigmentation. That is wrong. It tries to divide Americans based strictly on skin pigmentation, calling one group the oppressor class, the other group the oppressed class and recommends that the so-called oppressed class, again based strictly on skin pigmentation, not on wealth, not on job status or anything else that might be merit-based — it is strictly race-based and encourages the so-called oppressed race to rise up and do what is necessary to eliminate the oppressing race. And that is racial division of the worst kind.”
“Any time you use a broad brush like this where you condemn one group of people solely based on their skin pigmentation, and you elevate another group of people solely because of their skin pigmentation, that’s wrong because, in America, you’ve got all ethnicities, all skin pigmentations that are in all segments of life, OK? Wealthy, middle-class, poor, president of the United States, United States senators, congressmen, governors — we don’t divide ourselves based on race or ethnicity evidenced by economic activity and how well people are doing regardless of race. But Critical Race Theory punches that right in the nose. It eliminates the idea that you can achieve a lot in America if you just seize the opportunities you have with the God-given talents you’ve been blessed with.”
Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed new legislation on Tuesday that will require public schools to teach students about “the evils of communism.”
“The sad reality is that only two in five Americans can correctly name the three branches of government, and more than a third of Americans cannot name any of the rights guaranteed by the First Amendment,” DeSantis said at a news conference.
“It is abundantly clear that we need to do a much better job of educating our students in civics to prepare them for the rest of their lives,” he added, according to a news release from the Florida Department of Education.
One of the three bills included a requirement to specifically teach about the negatives of communism.
“The bill also expands our previous efforts in civics to add a requirement for the high school government class that students receive instruction on the evils of communism and totalitarian ideologies,” DeSantis said.
“We have a number of people in Florida, particularly southern Florida, who’ve escaped totalitarian regimes, who’ve escaped communist dictatorships to be able to come to America,” DeSantis said.
The governor tweeted on Tuesday a video of Ana Abaunza, “who escaped social regimes” in Nicaragua and Venezuela before coming to the United States, according to the news release.
The specific bill teaching against communism is House Bill 5: Civic Education Curriculum.
It states, in part, “It further expands required instruction in high school to include a comparative discussion of political ideologies that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy essential to the founding principles of the United States, such as communism and totalitarianism,” according to The Daily Wire.
DeSantis has signed several recent bills related to education in Florida. Last week, the governor signed a bill that will require public schools to hold a moment of silence at the beginning of each day.
The bill will give students the opportunity to “reflect and be able to pray as they see fit,” WJXT-TV reported.
Should schools teach about “the evils of communism”?
Yes: 100% (2 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
“The idea that you can just push God out of every institution and be successful, I’m sorry, our Founding Fathers did not believe that,” DeSantis said.
HB 529, which will go into effect on July 1, will put in place one- to two-minute moments of silence in the classrooms of the Sunshine State’s public schools.
“The Legislature finds that in today’s hectic society too few persons are able to experience even a moment of quiet reflection before plunging headlong into the activities of daily life,” the bill reads, according to the Orlando Sentinel.
“Young persons are particularly affected by the absence of an opportunity for a moment of quiet reflection. The Legislature finds that our youth, and society as a whole, would be well served if students in the public schools were afforded a moment of silence at the beginning of each school day.”
First-period teachers will be required to institute the moment of silence in public schools, WJXT reported.
The law states that teachers aren’t allowed to “make suggestions as to the nature of any reflection that a student may engage in during the moment of silence,” WJXT reported, and students “may not interfere with other students’ participation.”
In 2007, Coke Daniels’ “Gangsta Rap: The Glockumentary” was released. I’d not heard of it before today, but it was apparently the filmmaker’s take on the “This Is Spinal Tap” mock-rockumentary, except parodying seminal gangsta rap group N.W.A.
Unlike “This Is Spinal Tap,” it wasn’t exactly timely. N.W.A. had broken up 16 years prior; founding member Eazy-E died in 1995, and the other N.W.A.-ites your father might know, Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, were considered ancient by music industry standards.
It was also, judging by the trailer on IMDb, poisonously unfunny.
A sample of the humor: In one scene, an uptight Caucasian record-industry type is driving a car with what appears to be the titular group and some groupies in the back. “Those girls back there think, just because I’m white, that I can’t get my groove on with some Tupac [Shakur]?” he asks.
“You know, they’re from that whole world, though,” says the man in the passenger’s seat.
“Man, I grew up in Brentwood,” our thoroughly uptight mayonnaise-eating record exec shoots back. “You know how dangerous it is over there? Guys like O.J. Simpson running around?”
The joke wouldn’t have been funny or topical in 1997 — and that’s actually the closest I came to laughing during the 1:55 of 2007’s “Gangsta Rap: The Glockumentary” I previewed.
Anyhow, in the interim, Coke Roberts has started taking on more buzzworthy topics. He’s also started taking himself a bit more seriously; his next movie, “Karen,” is a thoroughly leftist entry in the race-horror niche popularized by “Get Out.” And, it must be noted, the trailer is side-splittingly uproarious. If only it were trying to be.
The film stars Taryn Manning as the eponymous villain, who is indeed a Karen named Karen. The trailer was posted to YouTube on Thursday and had racked up more than 380,000 views as of Wednesday morning, presumably not because people are wowed by its sub-Hallmark Channel production quality.
Will you be watching ‘Karen’?
Yes: 0% (0 Votes)
No: 0% (0 Votes)
The plot, as far as one can discern it: A black couple played by Cory Hardrict and Jasmine Burke move into Manning’s mostly white neighborhood. After a passive-aggressive meet-cringe, they remark on the irony: “Wait a minute — we have a white, entitled neighbor named Karen?” Burke’s character asks.
Oh, but as the ominous piano tinkling over the scene should have warned them, that’s no mere irony. Or if they wanted to know the danger that was in store for them, maybe they should have just scrolled back a few seconds earlier in the trailer, when Karen is asked about her new neighbors.
“They’re black,” Manning responds in a bit of line-reading so obvious it’s usually only espied on “Saturday Night Live” or “Mystery Science Theater 3000.”
First, Karen comes over for dinner and remarks, “There she is, slaving away in the kitchen.” Foreboding! Pretty soon, she’s calling the cops on some minority teens. Someone off-camera tells the couple they’ve “uncovered some disturbing information on her — and her brother.”
Then, cops are at the couple’s door with a search warrant, arresting Hardrict’s character. In the next scene, Burke — with a tidal basin full of tears under her eyes — says, “I want to sell the house.” This is always reasonable advice in any horror film, no matter what the outcome — but like your average Amityville, New York, homeowner faced with paranormal phenomena, the couple decide to stick it out, because otherwise there wouldn’t be a third act to the movie.
What follows is one of those rapid-fire montages of unconnected dramatic moments from the film, except it plays like a parody of one of those.
A few guns are fired. Hardrict holds up a soap dispenser with a Confederate flag on it. Karen faces down a house full of unhappy-looking black individuals, including Hardrict and Burke: “You people are very angry,” she remarks. (See? “You people?” Don’t you get it yet?)
Again, as if this were all a parody of a horror-film trailer, it closes with Karen intoning one of those taglines only Wes Craven could love: “Bad things happen to people who don’t comply.”
At first, I thought maybe I was wrong and Coke Daniels had gotten it absolutely right. Fourteen years after “Gangsta Rap: The Glockumentary,” a movie where the title was infinitely funnier than the trailer, perhaps Daniels had gained enough mastery over satire to understand the potential in a “Get Out” burlesque featuring a Karen as the villain.
I should have known, though — however inspired by B-movie horror schlock “Karen” may be, Daniels approached the project with po-faced seriousness as his contribution to Our Great Racial Reckoning™.
“Last year during the global pandemic and civil unrest, I — like many of us — felt anger, despair and hopelessness,” Daniels said, according to a Friday report from entertainment-industry publication Deadline. “The overwhelming amount of support from people around the globe, who want to see change, has been such an inspiration.”
Manning, who chews scenery so effectively under a drywall-layer of bad white-woman makeup she should get either an Academy Award nomination or a new agent (and probably both), also contributed a blurb as risible as her performance.
“I felt a social responsibility to take on this role,” Manning said. “Even if I had to play the villain to affect change around the globe, then I was more than willing to step into the role. What’s been going on is devastating. It’s time for change, and for me to be a part of the bigger picture meant a lot to me.”
In her defense (maybe not the right word), Manning’s quote may be a bit of career rehabilitation rather than a sincere belief in the transformative power of the role. Her phone has presumably stopped ringing quite often since last summer — when, as The Daily Beast reported, she posted a quickly deleted QAnon-flavored Instagram screed after then-President Donald Trump visited Lafayette Square in the midst of rioting in Washington, D.C.
The unreadable diatribe sounded a lot more like someone experiencing a serious mental health crisis than any kind of political statement or conspiracy theorizing, but do that in any kind of Trump-adjacent manner and it tends to stick with you in Hollywood. New York Magazine, for instance, noted the film starred “a QAnon truther whose name literally rhymes with Karen, so subtlety isn’t the vibe here.”
At least in Manning’s industry, one can understand getting that incident as far down in the Google search results as it gets.
From the looks of things, however, no one else in “Karen” has an excuse for treating this as anything other than “The Room” for the reckoning.
I would hesitate to recommend it once a release is finally sorted out, because eventually that money finds its way back into the pockets of the thoroughly undeserving Coke Daniels.
That said, I’ve seen entire comedies with fewer laughs than the two-minute trailer for “Karen.”
If only it were going for that.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he’s written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Starting on Wednesday, the Biden administration will reportedly permit at least 10,000 asylum seekers whose previously claims were denied or dismissed to register to enter the United States.
Michele Klein Solomon, the International Organization for Migration’s director for North America, Central America and the Caribbean, told the Associated Press that at least 10,000 migrants whose claims of asylum were denied by the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) — commonly known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy — for failing to appear in court will start to register, ABC 11 reported.
“The estimate seems low. There are nearly 7,000 asylum-seekers whose cases were dismissed — the vast majority in San Diego – and more than 32,000 whose cases were denied, mostly in Texas, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse,” ABC 11 noted, adding, “In all, about 70,000 asylum-seekers were returned to Mexico under the policy introduced in San Diego in January 2019 and expanded across the border after then-President Donald Trump threatened Mexico with higher tariffs if it didn’t do more to reverse a major spike in border crossings.”
In May, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) recorded more than 180,000 encounters with migrants on the southern border, which ABC points out is the most recorded since March of the previous year. More than 250,000 new asylum claims were made last year.
In early 2020, Heather Swift, spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, stated, “MPP is one of the most important and effective tools we have implemented to confront the crisis on the border and we will continue to strengthen and expand.”
In March 2020, the Heritage Foundation wrote of the Trump administration’s “Remain in Mexico” policy:
Once word got out about this new policy, the number of illegal crossings plummeted. With the cooperation of the Mexican government, more than 60,000 illegal immigrants were returned to Mexico over a 13-month period. New immigration courts at key crossing points like Laredo, Texas, drastically reduced the time needed to process asylum claims, so that refugees with legitimate asylum claims had their cases heard much faster.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said the MPP “allowed us to take control of the crisis” at the border that was overwhelming the Border Patrol and our immigration capabilities.
The Biden administration put a temporary hold on MPP the day Biden was inaugurated. On June 1, 2021, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced he was ending the policy, writing in a memo:
I have determined that MPP does not adequately or sustainably enhance border management in such a way as to justify the program’s extensive operational burdens and other shortfalls. Over the course of the program, border encounters increased during certain periods and decreased during others.
He added:
Based on Department policy documents, DHS originally intended the program to more quickly adjudicate legitimate asylum claims and clear asylum backlogs. It is certainly true that some removal proceedings conducted pursuant to MPP were completed more expeditiously than is typical for non-detained cases, but this came with certain significant drawbacks that are cause for concern. The focus on speed was not always matched with sufficient efforts to ensure that conditions in Mexico enabled migrants to attend their immigration proceedings.
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.
Historically, restaurants have relied on customer tipping to supplement the wages of its customer-facing service staff. It is part of a traditional restaurant economic model and many states have allowed reduced minimum wages for service staff in the form of a tip credit. Studies have also shown that there is inequity and built-in bias in the way consumers give tips. In general, Black or Brown servers receive less tips than Caucasian servers. There is gender bias as well. In restaurants, immigrants and people of color work mostly in the kitchens and have no access to gratuities to supplement their hourly wage.
Because Minnesota state law does not allow a tip credit and does not allow restaurants to pool tips, only the direct-facing service employee can decide if there should be sharing of tips among other service workers. Increased menu prices constitute higher tips which, along with increased minimum wages, adds to the disparity between the front customer-facing service staff and back of house kitchen staff.
In the wake of racial injustice protests and the closures due to Covid, now is the time for Broders’ to reimagine its economics and provide fair pay across the company. Minnesota does not allow restaurants to impose an automatic gratuity and pool tips. What we can do is impose a Benefits & Equity Charge on our sales that is not a gratuity. Our Benefits & Equity Charge is applied entirely to employee compensation. This supplement helps us to set a $16 minimum hourly wage for customer facing employees, $18 minimum hourly wage for kitchen employees (more with increased responsibility) above all government standards, to provide benefits of paid time off & health insurance, and to distribute 5% of daily revenue to all employees based on hours worked. Altogether this allows everyone in our company to earn a real living wage.
The 15% Benefits & Equity Charge is not a gratuity. This means any small gratuities left on top are completely discretionary, but if you choose to tip it will be distributed to only the customer-facing service staff.
A law enforcement source within Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) provided Breitbart Texas with information regarding flights from Del Rio, Texas, to the U.S. interior.
The source, speaking on the condition of anonymity, says the flights transport mostly Haitian and Venezuelan migrants from Laughlin Air Force Base to areas around the Seattle and New Orleans ICE Field Offices. The migrants, who are not eligible for removal under the CDC’s Title 42 Emergency COVID-19 authority, are being processed for asylum and will likely be released once credible fear interviews take place.
As you know, the Del Rio Border Patrol Sector is experiencing record levels of migrant apprehensions. Local, state, and federal entities in the region are thus severely limited in their detainment and processing capabilities. As a result, substantial numbers of migrants, pending trial, are being released into communities in my district, overwhelming local resources and creating unsustainable bottlenecks.
To help alleviate the high traffic this region is enduring, I urge you to collaborate with ICE to facilitate flights for migrants out of Laughlin Air Force Base and to their final destinations.
Border Patrol in Del Rio sees large groups of Haitians and Venezuelans illegally enter the city almost daily. The sector currently leads the nation in the apprehension of these cohorts.
The source within ICE says the flights help to relieve local community strains and also take the migrant releases further from the public eye at the border.
ICE utilizes chartered Boeing 737, 767, and 777 equipment to facilitate the movement of migrants within the United States and abroad.
Randy Clark is a 32-year veteran of the United States Border Patrol. Prior to his retirement, he served as the Division Chief for Law Enforcement Operations, directing operations for nine Border Patrol Stations within the Del Rio, Texas, Sector. Follow him on Twitter @RandyClarkBBTX.
Via MSN: The killings rolled over the country like a fast-moving storm. From Savannah to Austin, from Chicago to Cleveland. In six hours one night this month, four mass-shooting attacks. And in their wake, a sober recognition from city leaders that they don’t have many options left for curbing a surge in homicides that is […]
Democratic Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards vetoed legislation Tuesday that would have banned biological males from participating in female sports.
The legislation would have forced athletes at public institutions to play on sports teams based on biological gender rather than gender identity. The legislation passed by a vote of 29-6 in the Senate and 78-19 in the House, enough votes in both chambers to override the governor’s veto should the legislature chose to do so, according to The Advocate.
“As I have said repeatedly when asked about this bill, discrimination is not a Louisiana value, and this bill was a solution in search of a problem that simply does not exist in Louisiana,” Edwards said in a statement. “Even the author of the bill acknowledged throughout the legislative session that there wasn’t a single case where this was an issue.”
“Further, it would make life more difficult for transgender children, who are some of the most vulnerable Louisianans when it comes to issues of mental health. We should be looking for more ways to unite rather than divide our citizens,” he continued. “And while there is no issue to be solved by this bill, it does present real problems in that it makes it more likely that NCAA and professional championships, like the 2022 Final Four, would not happen in our state. For these and for other reasons, I have vetoed the bill.”
Louisiana House Speaker Clay Schexnayder, a Republican, supports taking up the legislation again in a special session of Congress to override the governor’s veto. If a special override session is called, it would be the first in the history of Louisiana’s legislature.
“Article III Section 18 of the Louisiana Constitution is clear on the process to hold a veto session. It requires the majority of members of the House and Senate to be in agreement. While I do not have the authority to call one, I do support a veto session and I am in favor of overriding the governor’s veto of the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act (SB156) by Senator Mizell,” Schexnayder said in a statement.
Senate President Page Cortez, also a Republican, has not yet said whether he supports a special session to override the governor’s veto or not.
The issue of trans athletes in sports, specifically biological males participating in female sports, has gained traction recently as numerous states have passed laws forbidding athletes from playing sports based on how they identify. The issue has impacted athletes from high school up to the Olympics.
Earlier this week, male-to-female transgender weightlifter Laurel Hubbard was picked to represent New Zealand at the Olympics to be held this summer in Tokyo. Hubbard, 43, is the oldest weightlifter expected to be competing in the games.
Hubbard’s inclusion in the upcoming games has sparked criticism from at least one other Olympian. Weightlifter Anna Vanbellinghen called Hubbard’s participation “a bad joke.”
“I am aware that defining a legal frame for transgender participation in sports is very difficult since there is an infinite variety of situations, and that reaching an entirely satisfactory solution, from either side of the debate, is probably impossible,” Vanbellinghen said. “However, anyone that has trained weightlifting at a high level knows this to be true in their bones: this particular situation is unfair to the sport and to the athletes.”
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.
A BBC investigation into unaccompanied minor detention centers in Texas revealed alarming conditions under the Biden Administration. The BBC reports migrant children are exposed to disease, dangerous food, and sexual abuse while in confinement.
As the flood of unaccompanied migrant children mounted through the spring, the Biden Administration quickly put up detention centers in multiple locations. The BBC reports the migrant children, mostly from Central America, face “heartbreaking” living conditions.
Findings by the BBC from interviews with staff and migrant children revealed allegations of sexual abuse, COVID-19 and lice outbreaks, long waits for medical attention, a lack of clean clothes, and children served under-cooked meats. Staff members provided the BBC with leaked photos and video from inside detention centers.
This investigation centered on a tented facility erected at Fort Bliss near El Paso, Texas. The facility is the temporary home for more than 2,000 unaccompanied minors who illegally crossed the border from Mexico into Texas.
Staff and children told the BBC the facilities served under-cooked meat to hungry children — some of whom became ill after eating.
“Sometimes the chicken had blood, the meat very red,” a 15-year-old boy said. “We couldn’t stand our hunger and we ate it, but we got sick from it.”
One employee told the reporters, “Hundreds of children have tested positive for COVID.” They also reported outbreaks of the flu, strep throat, and lice.
Employees also told the BBC about children in need of urgent medical attention being neglected, the report continues. A staff meeting recording provided by one employee described an incident where a child was coughing up blood and urgently needed medical attention.
“They said ‘we are going to send him to lunch’,” the employee heard from another staff member. “It was a three and a half hour wait to see anybody.”
The facility reportedly lacked sufficient lice kits, allowing the parasites to spread rampantly in the overcrowded facilities.
The investigation also revealed a shortage of underwear, shoes, and other clothing items, the BBC reported.
“It is heartbreaking to hear their stories and to see them very plainly suffering and to hear the same kinds of complaints over and over again about things that could be corrected so easily,” a staff member told the BBC.
Biden Administration officials assigned to the Department of Health and Human Services pledged transparency in the detention center process but denied the BBC access to the facility. Officials said they are “providing required standards of care for children such as clean and comfortable sleeping quarters, meals, toiletries, laundry, educational and recreational activities, and access to medical services.”
The BBC also found reports of staff members sexually abusing children. In a secret recording, one staff member said, “We have already caught staff with minors inappropriately.”
An official with the Department of Homeland Security also reportedly spoke to staff members about a rape incident.
“DHS mentioned there was a rape – they are giving the girls pregnancy tests,” the staff member told the BBC. “And I heard the other night that another contractor was caught in a boys’ tent, you know, doing things with him.”
The article states children being held in the facility are experiencing severe depression and includes reports of children self-harming.
“Sometimes, and at night, we would cry,” the 15-year-old boy mentioned above told the BBC. “During the worst time, I was nearly at the point of committing suicide.”
Reports from U.S. Customs and Border Protection show that more than 78,000 unaccompanied alien children were apprehended by Border Patrol agents in Fiscal Year 21 through the end of May. This is up nearly 300 percent from the prior year. The children mostly came to the U.S. from Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico.
