“Critical Race Theory (CRT) is being taught in many public schools. It’s not a myth, and it’s not just a college-level curriculum. It’s an ideology that can wear many different labels.” This quote is right off the Arizona Department of Education website. Superintendent of Public Instruction, Tom Horne, aims to correct the false narrative that denies the teaching of CRT and social and emotional learning (SEL) in Arizona schools. Such teaching can also be hidden behind other titles, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Read Horne’s explainer here.

Horne set up a hotline in an effort to combat the destructive ideological agenda seeping into public schools under various deceptive names. Parents can call the Empower Hotline (602-771-3500) to report “inappropriate lessons that detract from academic standards such as those that focus on race or ethnicity, rather than individuals and merit, promoting gender ideology, social emotional learning, or inappropriate sexual content.”

Horne made his case on national news, citing abysmal reading and writing scores and blaming an agenda-driven curriculum that sacrifices academics for the sake of “woke ideology.”

Local news covered the Empower Hotline as you might expect, as a “restriction” on teachers and describes CRT this way: “Critical race theory is an academic concept examining how race impacts U.S. institutions that some conservatives use to characterize any race-related instruction.” See Horne’s more accurate description here.

Governor Hobbs vetoed a bill passed by the Arizona House and Senate that would have helped to combat such divisive curriculum in public schools. Senator J.D. Mesnard sponsored SB 1305, which would have banned CRT-type curriculum or that which “promotes or advocates for any form of blame or judgment on the basis of race, ethnicity or sex.” Hobbs vetoed the bill, saying it only serves to “divide and antagonize” – which is ironically the effect of CRT.

Long Awaited Day in Court

Our friends at Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) presented their case against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) this week in ADF’s legal challenge of the agency’s approval of the abortion pill. The suit claims the federal agency illegally approved the dangerous pill and never studied its safety before approval. Read ADF’s statement following oral arguments here.

Pro-abortion activists argue the lawsuit could ruin the FDA’s credibility, something the FDA should have considered earlier. If the judge rules in ADF’s favor, the abortion pill could be illegal in all 50 states, though the ruling will likely be appealed, regardless of the outcome.

The FDA’s latest move to ease abortion pill regulations gave retail pharmacies the okay to distribute the pill. Attorneys general from 20 states sent a warning to pharmacies that dispensing the drug would be breaking their states’ laws. Walgreens announced it would not distribute the abortion pill in those states.

Current Arizona law requires a doctor to distribute the abortion pill in person. It also prohibits the abortion pill from being sent through the mail.

Targeting Raunchy Drag Shows

As those determined to sexualize children with raunchy drag shows continue to push the limits and the law, advocates push back. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pulled the liquor license of the Hyatt Regency Miami after learning the hotel hosted a sexually charged drag show with minors in the audience.

Details of the sexually explicit show are not appropriate to describe on these pages, but news reports make the case against the Hyatt and the show that the hotel insisted was for “all ages.”

DeSantis filed the complaint based on Florida law. Arizona lawmakers are working on a few bills that would prohibit sexually explicit drag shows, which often skirt child decency laws in the name of “LGBTQ equality.”

Activists and some politicians downplay the serious sexual content of such shows, trying, instead, to pass them off as “drag queen story hour.” Governor Hobbs tweeted this week that students have a hard time learning because they are hungry, “not because a drag queen is reading to them or there is a book about social justice on the shelf.” Right there she minimized raunchy drag shows and CRT in one tweet.

It is a constant battle for our children, but one well worth fighting.

ICYMI

• Read here how one lawmaker in opposition to protecting girls’ privacy by prohibiting boys from showering with girls suggested schools just put up shower curtains.
• Read here how one medical professor slammed the “anti-science” and “anti-biology” propaganda being taught in medical schools.
• Read here how law schools are squeezing out students and professors who don’t hold to woke ideology.
• Read here an answer to the claim that you cannot legislate morality.

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