Menomonee Falls School District banned 33 titles. The same day the ACLU made its open records requests, Elkhorn Area School District received a request from a parent challenging 444 books, prompting the temporary removal and review of those titles.
The letter to the school districts accompanying the requests notes that removing books from school libraries threatens the First Amendment rights of students and their families. The Supreme Court held over 40 years ago that “local school boards may not remove books from school library shelves simply because they dislike the ideas contained in those books.”
Parents should be able to have a say in their children’s education (although, they shouldn’t be astroturfed). The thing is, these articles are selective in revealing the money behind some of these groups. I’ve included links to a few, of the financials/partnerships, below the cut. I wasn’t able to find information on a couple of them, though. Another thing, PEN has ties to the CIA and the Congress for Cultural Freedom.
The House on Tuesday passed a resolution that says “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” the chamber’s latest piece of legislation conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
Whereas the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism is widely accepted and serves as a critical tool to help individuals comprehend and identify the various manifestations of antisemitism;
Whereas, since the massacre of innocent Israelis by Hamas, an Iran-backed terrorist organization, on October 7, 2023, antisemitic incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault in the United States have spiked 388 percent over the same period last year, according to reports from the Anti-Defamation League‘s (ADL) Center on Extremism;
Pocan was drawn into the fracas between progressive lawmakers and AIPAC last month after the group falsely accused him and other representatives of “trying to keep Hamas in power.” The attack came after 10 members of Congress—nine Democrats and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)—voted against an October 25 resolution pledging unconditional support for Israel’s war on Gaza.
Massie joined progressive Democrats in pushing back against AIPAC, posting on social media that “this baseless smear is meant to intimidate me into voting to send $14+ billion of your money to a foreign country.”
Pocan—who did not vote against the resolution—wrote: “AIPAC is not good at telling the truth. We don’t support Hamas. We just don’t support killing kids, which it seems you do.”
The House on Wednesday approved a resolution that expressed strong support for Israel, the first bill brought to the floor after Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) was elected as the chamber’s new speaker.
For most of the last one hundred and fifty years, anti-communism has been a defining aspect of American political culture, both domestic and foreign. As historian Nick Fischer has argued, after the Civil War, anti-communism was deployed to suppress an unruly underclass of people, including the working poor, women, and Black Americans, and prevent any real attention on their working and living conditions. This anti-communism was deployed by an “elitist” class who sought to divide working people among themselves, and prescribe acceptable behaviors, including patriarchal heteronormative familial relationships. When those same people made demands for equal treatment, or even just decent treatment, the epithet “communist” or “socialist” has been deployed to delegitimize their claims to rights.
“CODEPINK’s action alert requesting House representatives co-sponsor the amendment to ban the export license for cluster munitions.”
President Biden may have crossed a new red line for the Democratic Party when he announced he would send banned cluster munitions to shore up Ukraine’s slow counter-offensive against Russian troops.
Gaetz said that the NDAA will be voted on this week in the House. “We have an opportunity with bipartisanship to stand against the war-mongering Bidens,” he said.
The United States owes other nations something different, something new. Democracy is in peril at home and abroad partly because of the impunity that keeps Abrams employed. Though his latest role may be somewhat ceremonial, his appointment is out of step with the demands of our time. There should be consequences for someone like Elliott Abrams. At minimum, it ought to be possible to fail out of public service, but for that to happen, we have to change the way we define failure. The massacre in El Mozote was one such failing — not a regrettable historical footnote but a catastrophic atrocity that indicts the administration Abrams served. His reward must be ignominy. The world deserves nothing less.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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