Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior…
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More Legal Shenanigans from the Biden Administration’s Department of Education

Among the foremost threats to individual freedom in America is the abusive and oftentimes lawless behavior of federal administrative agencies, whose vast armies of overpaid bureaucrats remain unaccountable for their excesses.

Among the most familiar examples of that bureaucratic abuse is the Department of Education (DOE).  Recall, for instance, the United States Supreme Court’s humiliating rebuke last year of the Biden DOE’s effort to shift hundreds of billions of dollars of student debt from the people who actually owed them onto the backs of American taxpayers.

Even now, despite that rebuke, the Biden DOE launched an alternative scheme last month in an end-around effort to achieve that same result.

Well, the Biden DOE is now attempting to shift tens of millions of dollars of…[more]

March 19, 2024 • 08:35 AM

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1 Our Public Schools Are a National Disaster

Perhaps what's most distressing about the latest collapse in high school test scores is that no one seems to be very distressed.  You've probably heard the news that ACT scores have fallen for the sixth straight year. Our high school kids are less equipped for a job or college than at any time in three decades.  Why isn't anyone in Washington…

2 Climate Brainwashing

Hammering K-12 school children nonstop about the dangers of climate change in every class, even math, art and gym, is child abuse.  Barely one-third of fourth graders can read or do math at grade level, according to the latest national scores, but climate activists are demanding kids hear about global warming in every class. New Jersey mandates…

3 Democrats Are Throwing Kids Off the School Bus

Have you heard the outrageous story of what happened recently in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania's capital? Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-Pa.), elected in 2022, had campaigned on school choice for tens of thousands of children, mostly minorities, who are forced to attend failing public schools in places like Philadelphia. "It's what I believe," Shapiro,…

4 What's the Matter With Texas Republicans When It Comes to School Choice Legislation?

This has been the year for school choice all over the country. At least six additional states joined Arizona and Florida to give parents the funds to send their children to private and charter schools.  Surprisingly, deep-red Texas is not among these states – at least not yet. Currently, there is no school choice in the Lone Star…

5 Teachers Union Thuggery

If thugs were hurting your kid, you'd do almost anything to stop them. The harm inflicted by the teachers unions is legalized thuggery. Here's what you can do.  The tragic consequences of union strong-arming will be on display Wednesday, when a House subcommittee grills American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten on how the unions…

6 Are Universities Doomed?

In a famous exchange in the The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway wrote: "How did you go bankrupt?" Bill asked. "Two ways," Mike said. "Gradually, then suddenly." "Gradually" and "suddenly" applies to higher education's implosion. During the 1990s "culture wars" universities were warned that…

7 The Taxpayer-funded College Scam

For decades, parents have sacrificed and students have gone into debt to fund college degrees that lead nowhere. But the college scam may be up soon – not thanks to any moral awakening on the part of college administrators.  Instead, a tight job market is motivating more employers, including Google, IBM and some state governments…

8 Student Performance Suffers Unprecedented Decline, Confirming Need for School Choice

Are you better off today than you were two years ago?   Paraphrasing Ronald Reagan’s pivotal 1980 debate query, that question looms large with November’s midterm elections already underway.   From inflation to crime to international relations to energy to almost every other realm of our lives, the answer is an unequivocal…

9 The Secret Curriculum

School is starting, but don't count on getting answers about what your child is being taught. School administrators commonly lie or give parents the runaround. That explains the fireworks over Jeremy Boland, a Greenwich, Connecticut, elementary school assistant principal, bragging about how the school pushes kids to think in a "progressive"…

10 Biden's Student Loan 'Forgiveness' Is an Unjust, Cynical Abuse of Power

"No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law." That's what it says right there in the Constitution. And yet, without any legislation, President Joe Biden now promises to "cancel" up to $10,000 in student loans per borrower ($20,000 for Pell Grant borrowers), limited to those with annual…

11 CFIF Flag Day Quiz

Take our 14-Question Quiz to test your knowledge of our National Standard. (Answer key may be found at the bottom)  1. On which one of the following days in 1777 did Congress pass the resolution establishing the American flag? a. June 14 b. July 4 c. September 17 d. December 7 2. When did Congress officially…

12 Biden Says Kids Belong to Their Teachers

Schools are becoming indoctrination factories, trying to turn children against their country and their own parents' values. It's what the teachers unions intend. Amazingly, that's just fine with President Joe Biden, who told a gathering of teachers and union bigwigs on April 27 that the kids are "yours when they're in the classroom." That…

13 Parents Go After Union Stranglehold on School Boards

Parents who never imagined running for office battled to win seats on local school boards last week; they won some, but lost many. Their fiercest opponents were the teachers unions. The media portrayed these school board races as culture wars, but more than anything they were struggles by parents to wrest control of the boards from self-serving unions…

14 Dems' Attack On Smart Kids

Parents whose kids excel in school need to be on guard. Leftist school administrators across the country – not just in New York City – are banning gifted programs in elementary and middle school and Advanced Placement courses in high school.  Typically, without any notice to parents, an eight grader's accelerated…

15 The Leftists Writing Your Child's Social Studies Lessons

It's hard to know what's worse – brainwashing kids or lying about it. Parents worried their kids are being indoctrinated with critical race theory can't get straight answers. Local school boards and principals lie to them, claiming children are merely being taught to be "critical thinkers." On Saturday, the truth came out…

16 To Stop Critical Race Theory, Fight to Control School Boards

The battle to win control of school boards from the grip of racial indoctrinators is like Normandy Beach. Everything hangs on the outcome. Lose and a generation is lost. The outcome will determine whether your children learn to see themselves and other people as individuals, instead of merely members of a racial group. Parents of all ethnicities who…

17 American Universities Have Lost Their Prestige

Nothing is stranger than the contemporary American university. Not long ago, Americans used to idolize their universities. Indeed, in science, math, engineering, medicine and business, many of these meritocratic departments and schools remain among the top-ranked in the world. Top-notch higher education explains much of the current scientific, technological…

18 Thoughts on the 1776 Commission and Its Report

The newly formed President's Advisory 1776 Commission just released its report. The group was chaired by Churchill historian and Hillsdale College President Dr. Larry P. Arnn. The vice chair was Dr. Carol M. Swain, a retired professor of political science. (Full disclosure: I was a member of the commission.) The unanimously approved conclusions focused…

19 CFIF Supreme Court Quiz

Take CFIF’s 10-Question Supreme Court Quiz and test your knowledge of our Nation’s Highest Court. (Answer key may be found at the bottom) 1. How many Justices comprise the U.S. Supreme Court? a. Five b. Six c. Nine d. Eleven 2. How many times has Congress changed the number of justices comprising…

20 Trump's Campaign for Fairness in College Admissions

The outcome of November's election will likely determine the role of racial preferences in the college admissions process. Voters have a clear choice. The Trump administration wants an applicant's grades and achievements to matter most. The Obama-Biden administration had urged colleges to tilt the scale in favor of minority applicants. Now Joe Biden…

21 Universities Sowing the Seeds of Their Own Obsolescence

When mobs tore down a statue of Ulysses S. Grant and defaced a monument to African American veterans of the Civil War, many people wondered whether the protesters had ever learned anything in high school or college. Did any of these iconoclasts know the difference between Grant and Robert E. Lee? Could they recognize the name "Gettysburg"…

22 Why Socialism, and Why Now?

"Socialist!" is no longer a McCarthyite slur. Rather, the fresh celebrity "Squad" of newly elected identity-politics congresswomen — Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — often either claim to be socialists or embrace socialist ideas…

23 Ethnic Studies Latest Ploy to Brainwash Kids

President Donald Trump told a rally last week: "We are all Americans. We all share the same home. We all share the same heart." He cautioned that "the radical Democrats are trying to tear this country apart" with their divisive identity politics. Warning to parents: Left-wing activists are using these same divisive tactics to target…

24 Bernie's #CancelStudentDebt Is a Dangerous Scam

This week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez claimed that it was "literally easier" for her to win the congressional election than pay off her student loan debt — which says something unfortunate about both the cost of college and the electorate's choices. Ocasio-Cortez was commenting on Sen. Bernie Sanders' new plan to eliminate $…

25 Give Warren a BS Degree in Vote-Buying

Presidential contender Elizabeth Warren's strategy is to win the Democratic nomination by promising the most free stuff. Monday, she upped the ante. She's offering a whopping $50,000 student loan forgiveness for nearly everyone who borrowed for college or graduate school. That's old-fashioned Tammany Hall-style bribery — handing out dollars…

26 Hypocrisy: Admissions Preference Advocates Suddenly Complain About Admissions Preferences

This week, no story gripped Americans’ collective attention more than "Operation Varsity Blues" revelations that celebrities and wealthy parents lied and bribed their children’s way into elite colleges over the past decade.  According to federal prosecutors, over thirty rich and famous families paid approximately $25 million…

27 Trump Takes on Campus Speech Police

Colleges and universities that limit freedom of speech are about to get clobbered big time. President Donald Trump came out swinging on Saturday against the higher-education establishment for violating our nation's most fundamental value: free expression, guaranteed in the Constitution First Amendment. "I am proud to announce that I will be very…

28 Stop Google's Kiddie Data Predators

No consent. No disclosure. No escape. For legions of unwitting students and teachers across the country, this is the dangerous, de facto data policy Google has imposed over their school districts. An estimated 80 million students and teachers are now signed up for free "G Suite for Education" accounts (formerly known as Google Apps for Education…

29 Judges Toppling Rigged Campus Sex Trials

Students wrongly accused of sexual misconduct by campus disciplinary systems stacked in favor of the accuser are winning vindication in court. Judges are tossing out the life-ruining punishments meted out by these "guilty until proven innocent" campus tribunals.  This month, Judge Amul Thapar of the federal Sixth Circuit appeals court…

30 NYC's War on Academic Excellence

"I also have a dream." This rallying cry, handwritten on a simple white placard held up by an Asian-American mom at a protest this week against liberal New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's plan to radically transform New York City's public schools, says it all. A new civil rights struggle in education has exploded — yet the national…

 
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"Americans do not trust several major U.S. institutions, including the national news media.The recently released Center Square Voters' Voice poll found that 43% of Americans say the media is trustworthy, compared with 54% who said it is not trustworthy.Younger people were more likely to trust the media, with 47% of those ages 18-34 saying they trust it and 46% saying the opposite.The numbers steadily…[more]
 
 
— Casey Harper, The Center Square
 
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