A Manhattan private school aiming to use more “inclusive language” is encouraging its students to stop using the terms “mom,” “dad” and “parents” because the words make “assumptions” about kids’ home lives.
The Grace Church School in Noho — which offers academic courses for junior kindergarten through 12th grade — issued a 12-page guide to students and staff explaining the school’s mission of inclusivity.
Thought control? What about free speech? We'll be burning books soon. NYC school encourages kids to stop using words like ‘mom,’ ‘dad’ in ‘inclusive language’ guide https://t.co/dV7HYJXcvd Sent from the New York Post app. For more from the Post, visit https://t.co/cFRVkJ7Wpz.
The detailed guide recommends using the terms “grown-ups,” “folks,” “family” or “guardians” as alternatives to “mom,” “dad” and “parents.” It also suggests using “caregiver” instead of “nanny/babysitter.”
“Families are formed and structured in many ways. At Grace Church School, we use inclusive language that reflects this diversity. It’s important to refrain from making assumptions about who kids live with, who cares for them, whether they sleep in the same place every night, whether they see their parents, etc.,” the guide reads.
The document also states how to use appropriate terms relating to gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity.
Instead of asking a person, “What are you? Where are you from?,” the query should be, “What is your cultural/ethnic background? Where are your ancestors/is your family from?,” according to Grace’s guide.
The school defended the guide, telling City Journal that its goal is to “promote a sense of belonging for all of our students.”
“Grace is an Episcopal school. As part of our Episcopal identity, we recognize the dignity and worth common to humanity,” the Rev. Robert Pennoyer, assistant head of school, said in a statement to the outlet.
An analysis compiled by a conservative watchdog group shows that over 90,000 ballots were mailed to the wrong addresses in Clark County, Nevada, in the 2020 presidential election.
“Clark County 2020 General Election data show that 92,367 mail ballots were returned undeliverable to wrong or outdated addresses,” the Public Interest Legal Foundation wrote in a research brief released Wednesday. “For a sense of scale, Former Vice President Joe Biden carried the whole of Nevada with a final lead of 33,596 votes.”
Clark County, home to most of Las Vegas, automatically sent mail-in ballots to every “active” voter registered on file during the 2020 presidential election due to coronavirus fears at polling places.
“In my years of experience in politics, I have never seen the amount of illegal voting like we have documented in Clark County, Nevada,” Trump surrogate Matt Schlapp said. “It is a level of corruption I didn’t think could happen in a modern, free country.”
The Supreme Court of Nevada upheld a district court’s order dismissing claims of election fraud.
The foundation also warned that pending legislation in Congress, the voting rights bill known as H.R. 1, would make mail-in ballots even more of a concern.
“Mass-mail balloting is a step backward for American elections,” PILF President and General Counsel J. Christian Adams said. “There are millions of voter registration records with unreliable ‘active’ address information that will ultimately send ballots to the wrong place in a mail election. H.R. 1 does more harm than good for the American people and will leave them at a constant disadvantage to correct election system errors which ultimately impact their abilities to vote in a timely manner.”
ALBANY, N.Y. (AP) — A group of 59 Democratic lawmakers demanded New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s resignation Thursday in the wake of an allegation that he groped an aide at the Executive Mansion last year.
The letter released by the group comes as Cuomo’s grip on power in the state appeared increasingly tenuous. The top Democrat in the state Assembly, Speaker Carl Heastie, said he will meet with members in conference today on “potential paths forward” in light of mounting allegations.
In New York, the Assembly is the legislative house that could move to impeach Cuomo, who has faced multiple allegations that he made the workplace an uncomfortable place for young women with sexually suggestive remarks and behavior, including unwanted touching and a kiss.
At least five accusers — Charlotte Bennett, Lindsey Boylan, Ana Liss, Karen Hinton and the latest one — worked for the governor in Albany or during his time in President Bill Clinton’s Cabinet. Another, Anna Ruch, told The New York Times that she met Cuomo at a friend’s wedding.
The Times Union of Albany reported Wednesday that an unidentified aide had claimed Cuomo reached under her shirt and fondled her after summoning her to his official residence.
Nineteen senators and 40 Assembly members said in a letter Thursday that it was time for Cuomo to go.
“In light of the Governor’s admission of inappropriate behavior and the findings of altered data on nursing home COVID-19 deaths he has lost the confidence of the public and the state legislature, rendering him ineffective in this time of most urgent need,” the letter said. “It is time for Governor Cuomo to resign.”
Cuomo has repeatedly said he won’t resign and urged the public to await the outcome of an investigation by state Attorney General Letitia James into his conduct. Cuomo’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
Cuomo has denied inappropriately touching anyone but has said he is sorry if he made anyone uncomfortable and didn’t intend to do so.
The Times Union of Albany reported that the governor had summoned the aide to the Executive Mansion in Albany last year, saying he needed help with his cellphone.
The aide, whom it did not name, was alone with Cuomo when he closed the door, reached under her shirt and fondled her, the newspaper reported. The newspaper’s reporting is based on an unidentified source with direct knowledge of the woman’s accusation.
“I have never done anything like this,” Cuomo said through a spokesperson Wednesday evening.
“The details of this report are gut-wrenching,” Cuomo said, adding that he would not speak to the specifics of this or any other allegation, given an ongoing investigation overseen by the state attorney general.
“When you don’t have the data and you don’t have the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call”
In a rare moment of truth of CNN Wednesday, Anthony Fauci admitted that there is no scientific reason why people who have had the COVID vaccine are still having their freedoms restricted.
CNN host John Berman asked Fauci “What’s the science behind not saying it’s safe for people who have been vaccinated – received two doses, to travel?”
“When you don’t have the data and you don’t have the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call,” Fauci replied, declaring that Americans will just have to trust the CDC:
Fauci, asked “what’s the science” for denying vaccinated Americans a return to travel, can’t explain.
“When you don’t have the data and you don’t have the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call." pic.twitter.com/lftvNzgA6J
As we reported this week, CNN announced that the CDC is graciously allowing vaccinated Americans some ‘limited freedoms’, prompting a huge backlash on social media where people pointed out that the health body doesn’t grant anyone their God given freedoms.
The Infallible Fauci is a fraud and should be ignored at this point. Go live your lives instead of praying at the alter of overpaid government stooges who are drunk on power they never intend to give away. https://t.co/rA9oKOrmEb
I’m gonna make a judgment call for my kids’ spring break next week and fly to South Carolina to see their vaccinated grandparents. There won’t be a mask in sight all week.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has called out President Joe Biden’s lack of attention to the resurgent border crisis, and now is taking the matter into his state’s own hands.
The Texas National Guard will be deploying 500 troops to the southern border with Mexico to stem the illegal activity at the border, Gov. Abbott announced.
“We will work to step up and try to fill the gap that the federal government is leaving open by making sure we deploy every resource, whether it be Department of Public Safety or Texas National Guard, whatever we need to do,” Abbott told reporters at a news conference Tuesday in Mission, Texas.
“Texas is going to fight for the safety and security of our state.”
Also, the DPS is adding about 1,200 state police officers to the region, and the bolstered National Guard forces will arrive by the end of the week, Stars and Stripes reported.
The National Guard has already been training for the deployment, according to Texas Military Department Maj. Gen. Tracy Norris.
“We have been supporting the border for our governor and our federal and state partners for over 15 years,” Norris said, per the report.
Abbott has a $800 million budget for border security in his state, which will fund the extra forces. About 100 of them were used on similar missions last year, and 1,000 used in 2019, per the report.
Thee 500 troops are in addition to the 3,600 U.S. National Guard already deployed to the border under the Trump administration and remain active under President Biden.
“There is a crisis on the Texas border right now with the overwhelming number of people coming across the border,” Abbott told reporters, per the report.” This crisis is a result of President Biden’s open border policies. It invites illegal immigration and is creating a humanitarian crisis in Texas right now that will grow increasingly worse by the day.”
The news comes one week after Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas rejected claims there was an immigration “crisis” at the southern border.
“I think there is a challenge at the border that we are managing, and we have our resources dedicated to managing it,” Mayorkas said. “The men and women of the Department of Homeland Security are working around the clock, seven days a week, to ensure that we do not have a crisis at the border, that we manage the challenge as acute as the challenge is, and they are not doing it alone.”
Joe Biden Just Reached an Embarrassing Milestone in His Presidency.
President Joe Biden has reached his 5oth day in office. While he has certainly made noise with many of his actions, he has yet to hold a formal news conference.
Biden’s early days have been characterized by an unprecedented number of executive orders and the fight to pass his $1.9 trillion stimulus package even as the COVID-19 crisis winds down.
Many Americans have questions about these moves, and yet Biden has not provided much of an opportunity for reporters to ask those questions.
Biden occasionally has answered questions after his White House appearances, but those instances are short and informal. Sometimes, the White House just decides to cut off the feed before he even has the chance to speak with reporters.
Ten days ago, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden had not yet made plans for a news conference, but she signaled it could be coming soon.
“We will definitely have one, we’ll schedule it, and you’ll be the first to know, because you’re pivotal participants in that,” she said.
When she originally made that comment, many wondered whether the White House was shielding him from the public as much as possible.
At this point, that is definitely still a strong possibility. After all, Biden did forget the names of both the Pentagon and his secretary of defense this week.
Whoops: Biden forgets the name of the Pentagon, as well as the name of his secretary of Defense, Lloyd Austin pic.twitter.com/ZtcgHLBIAO
However, with each day that passes without a formal news conference, more serious questions arise. One of the most important questions is how he will be held accountable.
ABC News reported that every president in the last 100 years has faced “extended questions from reporters” earlier than Biden has.
Biden’s failure to hold a formal news conference is “raising questions about accountability with the White House under increasing pressure to explain why,” it said.
Former White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany told Fox News that while Biden’s failure to hold a formal news conference is disappointing, she saw it coming.
“It is extraordinary but predictable,” she said. “I remember I warned reporters, in a joking way, when it was clear Biden was the incoming president, they should get used to the feeling of not seeing a president regularly.”
Joe Concha, a media and politics columnist for The Hill, went even further.
“Everybody else before him, at least in the modern era, got their ducks in a row weeks ago in terms of meeting with the press,” he told Fox News’ John Roberts.
“What that tells me, John, is that this team, as far as those handling the president, have zero confidence that this president can handle questions outside of … handpicked reporters.”
Psaki and the rest of Biden’s administration have argued that he is too busy dealing with the COVID-19 crisis to hold a formal news conference.
“This president came in during a historic crisis,” Psaki said Monday when asked about his lack of news conferences.
“So I think the American people would certainly understand if his focus and his energy and his attention has been on ensuring we secure enough vaccines … and then pushing a rescue plan that will provide direct checks to almost 160 million Americans.”
.@PressSec says that President Biden will hold a full press conference by the end of the month:
In contrast, McEnany argued that this crisis is the exact reason that Biden should be holding news conferences.
“Part of your responsibility during a pandemic is communicating with the American people,” she said. “They want to hear from who they voted for. The press secretary briefings are not enough.”
No matter what the true reasoning is, the fact is that Biden has failed to face a formal period of questioning from reporters as his presidency reaches its 50th day. That is a milestone no president in the last 100 years has reached.
President Biden is directing $2.5 billion in funding to address the nation’s worsening mental illness and addiction crisis, an official from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services tells Axios.
Why it matters: Confronting the mounting mental health and substance abuse crisis will be an imperative for the Biden administration, even as its primary focus is on combating the broader COVID-19 pandemic.
The funding announced today is designed to increase access to services for individual Americans.
The funding surge comes as the president has yet to fill several key permanent positions in agencies that would lead the charge in combating the drug epidemic, including the Food and Drug Administration and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.
His pick to lead HHS, Xavier Becerra, is expected to be confirmed by a close vote.
Between the lines: The funds will be broken down into two components by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
$1.65 billion will go toward the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant, which gives the receiving states and territories money to improve already-existing treatment infrastructure and create or better prevention and treatment programs.
$825 million will be allocated through a Community Mental Health Services Block Grant program, which will be used by the states to deal specifically with mental health treatment services.
By the numbers: A survey conducted last year published in August 2020 by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that 41% of U.S. adults reported struggling with mental health or substance abuse related to the pandemic or its solutions, like social distancing.
Before the pandemic, over 118,000 people died by suicide and overdose in 2019. An HHS official says the administration is expecting that number to increase because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Preliminary data out of the CDC indicates that the number of drug overdoses through July 2020 increased by 24% from the year prior.
Flashback: On the campaign trail, then-candidate Biden often spoke about the need to address the mounting mental health and substance abuse crisis in America, an issue that hits close to home. His son, Hunter, has openly discussed his own struggles with addiction.
The House participated in a tense session featuring debate over gun control measures. The governmental body convened Thursday with its debate over H.R.8, which is a bill that would expand background checks to all gun sales.
Democrats have claimed instituting a longer waiting period and monitoring private sales would prevent gun violence. However, experts like Crime Prevention Research Center President Dr. John Lott have asserted there are several flaws in the Democrats’ logic.
Taxpayers will now foot the bill for gender reassignment surgery for active military personnel and veterans, with some treatments costing upward of $200,000 under an executive order signed by President Biden.
Tucked inside Biden’s Jan. 25 transgender order, “Enabling All Qualified Americans to Serve Their Country in Uniform,” is a clause that repeals an Obama-era policy that prohibited federally funded reassignment surgery. This was followed up by memos from both Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough specifically stating that surgery is now an added benefit.
“This revised policy will also ensure all medically-necessary transition related care authorized by law is available to all Service members,” Austin wrote.
In a VA email to employees, McDonough echoed: “Perform an assessment of the necessary steps to eliminate the exclusion of ‘gender alteration’ (gender affirmation surgery) in the medical benefits package.”
Neither official stated how much the added benefit would cost but rather pledged to undertake an analysis.
Online charts by the Philadelphia Center for Transgender Surgery show a plethora of elective surgeries for both men and women that add up to $100,000-$200,000. Although Biden stated in his order that the cost of treating transgender troops would have minimal impact on healthcare costs, that is not borne out by a 2019 USA Todayinvestigation. The news analysis revealed that the Pentagon spent $8 million to treat just 1,500 transgender military officials, which included hormone treatments and some surgeries. It was not clear why the surgeries were allowed at that time.
Rep. Jim Banks, an Indiana Republican, is an Afghanistan veteran and sits on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs. He supports transgender individuals serving in the military and said he served with people with diverse backgrounds. But he disputes that the public should pay for surgical intervention.
“This is radical and new territory for a presidential administration to force taxpayers to fund sexual reassignment surgeries for those in the military,” he told the Washington Examiner. “I’m compassionate toward those individuals who want to undergo an elective surgery of this nature, but taxpayers shouldn’t be on the hook to pay for it. It’s constitutionally dubious that Congress hasn’t passed these measures, but the administration, in a radical way, is pushing through this agenda. I sit on the committee that should debate these issues.”
The order also violates the religious liberties of Catholics and Christians who oppose such a procedure, Banks said.
Lt. Gen. Thomas Spoehr, who commanded U.S. Army forces in Iraq and now directs the Heritage Center for National Defense, says Biden’s order currently reads like anyone in a war zone can suddenly take leave to undergo reassignment surgery.
“I would like to think the Pentagon would come up with a procedure … It’s completely irrational to change your gender right in front of a conflict,” he said. “A lot of people [in the military] are outraged by this idea that you can just come in and get this [surgery] and be gone from your unit. Someone has to pick up the slack while you are gone.”
Biden has made transgender people a protected class because other recruits are not accepted if they have an existing medical condition that would require ongoing treatment, he said. Spoehr also predicted that many would join the military to receive free surgery.
Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, blasted Biden’s “social experimentation” as a follow-up to former President Barack Obama’s 2016 inclusiveness mandate that he said created chaos with sensitivity trainings and bathroom retrofits.
“By 2019, the Defense Department announced that it had redirected funds from salaries, equipment, and trainings for 22,992 psychotherapy visits, 9,321 hormone prescriptions, and a whopping 161 surgeries (ranging from hysterectomies and breast augmentation to ‘male reproductive’ construction),” Perkins said in a press release. “While America faces rising threats from around the world, it’s obvious that Joe Biden is only interested in using our military to fight one war: the culture’s.”
Arkansas joined a number of states across the country, which seek to protect female athletes to ensure they have the ability to compete on a level playing field.
SB354, otherwise known as the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, advanced out of the state’s Senate Education Committee on Monday in a five-to-three vote. The bill aims to prohibit state government entities, licensing organizations and athletic associations from taking “adverse actions” against schools that maintain separate sports based on gender.
It would apply to public schools, private schools that play public schools and intramural and club sports. The bill’s sponsor, GOP State Senator Missy Irvin, recently brushed off claims that the measure is “anti-transgender,” describing it instead as “pro-women.”
Irvin said the bill simply makes sure that women have the ability to compete on a level playing field. Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge said the legislation creates a protected space for girl’s and women’s sports.
“This legislation will create a space for women’s sports and will provide opportunities for women to demonstrate their skills, strength and athletic abilities against other females of the same biological stature,” Rutledge said.
Meanwhile, several female athletes have argued biological males hold innate physical advantages in sports, including Idaho State student-athlete Madison Kenyon.
“I competed against biological males five times throughout cross country and indoor track,” Kenyon said. “And it’s just very discouraging and frustrating because when you’re at the collegiate level you’re training as hard as you can, putting everything out there, skipping other opportunities to run and train. And you know that the biological male is doing the same thing, but due to the biological differences between the male body and the female body, they triumph over us in athletics.”
Arkansas is just one of a number of states that have considered legislation to ban transgender athletes from women’s sports.
