FirstCircle

More details in TFA. Nice recipe for turning your state into an intellectual+educational backwater.

A new Indiana law allows universities to revoke a professor's tenure if they don't promote so-called "intellectual diversity" in the classroom.

Supporters of the measure say it will make universities more accepting of conservative students and academics. But many professors worry the law could put their careers in jeopardy for what they say, or don't say, in the classroom.

"I'd say it ends tenure in the state of Indiana as we know it," said Ben Robinson, associate professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana University.

Tenure is supposed to mean indefinite employment for professors, where they can only be fired for cause or some extraordinary circumstance. According to Robinson, the status "allows faculty the freedom to pursue their inquiries and their teaching without fear of reprisal."

But some academics in the state are worried that the new law allows university boards of trustees to interfere with tenure, which normally is handled by university departments.

That's not how supporters see it.

Republican state Sen. Spencer Deery, a former chief of staff for the Purdue University president and the bill's sponsor, said the new law would help conservative students feel more comfortable expressing their opinions on campus.

"The American public and Hoosiers as well are losing faith and trust in higher education," Deery said. "One of the strong reasons for that is, frankly, higher education hasn't done a great job of making every viewpoint feel welcome."

The law also creates a system where students and staff can submit complaints that could be considered in tenure reviews.

The Purdue University Senate passed a resolution denouncing the bill.

The law does include some protections for faculty, preventing trustees from disciplining professors for criticizing the university or engaging in public commentary.

Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, said protections don't go far enough.

"This is a big deal. This is a national thing," she said. "I've read the bill, and it's absolutely chilling."

Indiana is the third state, after Florida and Texas, to redefine tenure in recent years. A survey of Florida faculty found that after its law passed, nearly half of professors said they planned to seek employment in another state.

"We are seeing the brain drain that we predicted in Texas and Florida, and I think Indiana will follow suit there," Mulvey said.

The Tennessee Senate has passed a bill targeting "chemtrails."

SB 2691/HB 2063, sponsored by Rep. Monty Fritts, R-Kingston, and Sen. Steve Southerland, R-Morristown, passed in the Senate on Monday. The bill has yet to advance in the House.

The bill claims it is "documented the federal government or other entities acting on the federal government's behalf or at the federal government's request may conduct geoengineering experiments by intentionally dispersing chemicals into the atmosphere, and those activities may occur within the State of Tennessee," according to the bill.

The legislation would ban the practice in Tennessee.

"The intentional injection, release, or dispersion, by any means, of chemicals, chemical compounds, substances, or apparatus within the borders of this state into the atmosphere with the express purpose of affecting temperature, weather, or the intensity of the sunlight is prohibited," the bill reads.

The bill is scheduled to go to the House Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday.

People who were aboard a Boeing 737 Max 9 jet whose door plug was explosively expelled after departing an airport in Portland, Ore., in January are being contacted by the FBI about a criminal investigation.

"I'm contacting you because we have identified you as a possible victim of a crime," the letter from a victim specialist with the FBI's Seattle Division begins.

The message, a copy of which was shared with NPR by Mark Lindquist, an attorney representing passengers, lists an investigative case number and tells the passengers they should contact the FBI through an email address set up specifically for people who were on the flight.

Boeing had been accused of engaging in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the Federal Aviation Administration, as the regulator evaluated its 737 MAX airplane.

"Federal prosecutors say key Boeing employees 'deceived the FAA,' misleading the safety regulators about a new flight control system on the 737 Max called MCAS," as NPR reported in January of 2021.

The deferred prosecution agreement had been set to expire three years after it was filed on Jan. 7, 2021. But the agreement also allows the DOJ's Fraud Section to extend its heightened scrutiny for up to an additional year if Boeing is found to have failed to fulfill its obligations — including the airplane company's promise to strengthen its compliance and reporting programs.

On Wednesday, the Republican Study Committee, of which some three-quarters of House Republicans are members, released its 2025 budget entitled “Fiscal Sanity to Save America.” Tucked away in the 180-page austerity manifesto is a block of text concerned with a crucial priority for the party: ensuring children aren’t being fed at school.

Eight states offer all students, regardless of household income, free school meals — and more states are trending in the direction. But while people across the country move to feed school children, congressional Republicans are looking to stop the cause.

Republicans however view the universal version of the policy as fundamentally wasteful. The “school lunch and breakfast programs are subject to widespread fraud and abuse,” reads the RSC’s proposed yearly budget, quoting a report from the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank. The Cato report blames people who may “improperly” redeem free lunches, even if they are technically above the income cutoff levels. The “fraudulence” the think tank is concerned about is not some shadowy cabals of teachers systematically stealing from the school lunch money pot: It’s students who are being fed, even if their parents technically make too much to benefit from the program. In other words, Republicans’ opposition to the program is based on the assumption that people being “wrongly” fed at school is tantamount to abusive waste.

Not to be confused as completely frugal, the Republicans call to finish construction of border wall projects proposed by former President Donald Trump. And not to be confused as focused, the budget includes the word “woke” 37 times.

LYNCHBURG, TN—Saying the spirit had been blended with construction workers, farmers, and airline pilots in mind, distiller Jack Daniel’s unveiled a new whiskey Thursday designed to be consumed while operating heavy machinery. “Whether it’s a forklift, dump truck, or crane, nothing lightens the load of handling large industrial equipment like Jack Daniel’s Blue-Collar Label Whiskey,” said company spokesperson Luke Montgomery, who added that the white oak barrel-aged whiskey also takes the edge off for workers operating a drilling rig in a coal mine or on an offshore oil platform. “It’s perfect for sipping discreetly from a thermos while barreling down a cornfield in a combine harvester toward screaming farmhands, or down a runway in an Airbus 320 toward screaming baggage handlers. The next time you’re in the business district of a major city swinging around a 12,000-pound wrecking ball, consider the bold, distinct flavor of Jack Daniel’s.” Company officials later clarified that the new Jack Daniel’s was perfect for “plain old drinking and driving” too.

Paramilitary snowflake is nabbed in Vermont.

Daniel Banyai, owner of the controversial former Pawlet gun range and paramilitary training facility known as Slate Ridge, was charged Wednesday with aggravated assault on a protected person and resisting arrest after a traffic stop led to an altercation with a Pawlet constable, according to Vermont State Police.

Banyai is scheduled to be arraigned Thursday afternoon in Rutland Superior criminal court. He was held overnight at Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility for lack of $15,000 bail, according to a state police press release issued Wednesday night.

Banyai, 50, has had an active arrest warrant since last year after an Environmental Court judge found him in contempt of court orders to dismantle unpermitted structures on his Slate Ridge property. He was ordered to turn himself in to the Vermont Department of Corrections.

According to state police, Banyai was a passenger in a vehicle that Second Constable Tom Covino pulled over for speeding around 2:20 p.m. in Pawlet. Police said Banyai “engaged in a physical altercation” with Covino, who then used pepper spray “to gain his compliance” before arresting Banyai.

In December, an environmental court judge reissued a warrant for Banyai’s arrest after finding him in contempt.

“The threat of incarceration is the only remaining tool at the Court’s disposal to encourage compliance,” Judge Thomas Durkin wrote in his ruling, ordering Banyai to turn himself in to the Vermont Department of Corrections by Dec. 22.

In Banyai’s absence, his attorney, Robert Kaplan, argued an appeal before the Vermont Supreme Court against the arrest warrant and more than $100,000 in fines. The state’s highest court rejected that appeal earlier this month.

See full article for more details.

The new law will impose restrictions around what it calls eight "divisive concepts" dealing with race and personal identity. It also requires public colleges to designate bathrooms "for use by individuals based on their biological sex."

"The purpose of this bill is to prevent compelled speech and indoctrination," Republican Sen. Will Barfoot said when he introduced the legislation, according to WBHM.

Since 2023, 80 anti-DEI bills have been introduced in 28 states and Congress, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. Measures have been signed into law in eight states.

Critics of such bills say they're motivated more by politics than by educational aspirations; they also say efforts to ban DEI are more likely to undermine, rather than protect, free speech protections.

The legislation does not specifically mention the troubling record of Alabama and the U.S. on race, such as the dehumanizing enslavement of Black people and longstanding attempts to disenfranchise Black voters. The way schools teach students about those topics has been a political lightning rod in recent years, as opponents took aim at critical race theory.

The new Alabama legislation lists eight "divisive concepts" that range from the idea that "any race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior" to the notion that "any individual should accept, acknowledge, affirm, or assent to a sense of guilt, complicity, or a need to apologize on the basis of his or her race, color, religion, sex, ethnicity, or national origin."

The bill also rejects the idea that any "individual is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or subconsciously" — a position that runs counter to what social scientists have concluded in recent decades.

Other divisive concepts, the legislation states, include the idea that people in one demographic group "are inherently responsible for actions committed in the past by other members" of that group.

During a debate Monday on Legislature Bill 441, a bill aimed at keeping obscene material out of K-12 schools, Republican state Sen. Steve Halloran read a passage from Alice Sebold's memoir, "Lucky," that depicts a rape scene. For some reason, he also decided to drop his colleague's name into his reading of the excerpt. "I want a blow job, Sen. Cavanaugh," Halloran says at one point.

Sens. Machaela Cavanaugh and John Cavanaugh, who are siblings, both serve in the Nebraska Legislature. It was unclear who Halloran was referring to in his reading; earlier in his remarks, he had invoked both their names.

Monday’s session ended early, shortly after Halloran’s remarks.

Later, Halloran said in an email that the passage was a "‘how to rape’ lesson given to young people" and that his only regret is that “liberals” aren't upset that Sebold's book is in school libraries, according to the Nebraska Examiner.

Replying to a Nebraska resident who said Halloran told her via email that he had been addressing Sen. John Cavanaugh, Machaela Cavanaugh suggested it didn't make a difference. "Whichever one of us this assault was meant for does make it less horrific — though I believe it was directed at me," she wrote on X. "Men can also be victims of assault and his response is dismissive of that fact."

Sen. John Cavanaugh said Halloran's argument "missed the point." “There are graphic scenes in books and graphic things that happen to people in life,” he said. “Stories have context, and they give meaning to the people who read them and feel alone.”

Halloran's behavior has prompted calls for his resignation. Sen. Megan Hunt, an independent, said the incident was "beyond the pale" and that Halloran should resign. Republican Sen. Julie Slama also called for his resignation.

According to NBC News, Halloran (somewhat) apologized for his remarks on Tuesday morning, saying his apology was only for inserting his colleague's name in his remarks but not for reading the excerpt.

"I have an apology to make, and I’m not going to make an apology to take the load off my shoulders," he said, adding that he called out Cavanaugh to get their attention.

The California Labor Commissioner’s Office ordered Rafael Rivas’ RDV Construction Inc. and RVR General Construction Inc. to pay $16.2 million for defrauding more than 1,100 workers in Southern California. But the agency, which issued the citations for back wages and penalties in 2018 and 2019, had recovered just 2% as of last month, according to a department spokesman.

KQED reviewed hundreds of pages of state documents and court records, knocked on doors of properties linked to Rivas and interviewed workers the construction contractor cheated to piece together an accounting of the stunning labor violations — and how an understaffed agency was unsuccessful in collecting most of what Rivas and his companies owe.

California has some of the nation’s strongest employee protections on the books, including against wage theft. Yet, Rivas’ case signals that the state is not prioritizing restitution for workers when their earnings are withheld, according to workers’ rights advocates and employment attorneys.

“It’s outrageous. It’s infuriating,” said Benjamin Wood, a former organizer with the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center who has helped dozens of workers file wage complaints with regulators, including against RDV. “The state has so much power to enforce laws. But when it comes to massive wage theft, it seems like they’re powerless.”

Javier Gonzalez and Saul Pedroza installed steel rods and wooden frames for RDV Construction in 2016 at an apartment complex in Glendale, north of Los Angeles. The crewmates, both Mexican immigrants, said the company never paid them for about a month of full-time work.

Supervisors “started telling us that the paychecks were coming next week, and then next week,” Pedroza, 51, said in Spanish. “That’s how they strung us along.”

The carpenters were given paychecks that bounced due to insufficient funds. After they quit, Pedroza and Gonzalez said they went to the worksite and RDV’s offices to demand their earnings, and they both filed wage claims with the Labor Commissioner’s Office.

The agency determined RDV owes $11,000 to Gonzalez and $12,500 to Pedroza.

“I see it as a mockery of all the people they defrauded and of the government,” Gonzalez, 61, said. “It was a robbery in broad daylight what they did to us.”

Pedroza said the theft of his salary meant he couldn’t buy enough food for his four children or pay rent for the family’s mobile home in Anaheim. He said he borrowed money from friends and desperately scrambled for other jobs to avoid eviction.

“It was a long time that we were doing badly, without any money,” Pedroza told KQED. “It was wrong.”

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"There were all of these questions around their support for Donald Trump," McCammon says. "How would they deal with the cognitive dissonance, the apparent conflict between everything Trump seemed to stand for and what the movement said it stood for?"

Those questions came to a head for McCammon on Jan. 6, 2021, when she saw people with crosses and "Jesus saves" signs participating in the insurrection on the Capitol. "That was the moment that I really wanted and needed to say something," she says.

On Kellyanne Conway saying the Trump team had "alternative facts" about the 2017 inauguration crowd: What it reminded me of was sort of the refusal to absorb or incorporate information that contradicted the narrative that we believed in that contradicted our ideology. I thought about the approach to science that I saw growing up and the refusal to accept the overwhelming consensus around the history of the world and the age of the Earth. And there is really interesting research around this, that evangelicals report fewer factually correct answers about, for example, the history of religion in the U.S. and, there's other polling that indicates a greater openness to conspiracy theory thinking. And I think some of it may be rooted in simply an approach to knowledge and an approach to secular knowledge in particular.

Trump used the stage to deliver a profanity-filled version of his usual rally speech that again painted an apocalyptic picture of the country if Biden wins a second term.

"If I don't get elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole — that's going to be the least of it. It's going to be a bloodbath for the country..

Biden campaign spokesperson James Singer accused Trump of doubling "down on his threats of political violence."

"He wants another January 6, but the American people are going to give him another electoral defeat this November because they continue to reject his extremism, his affection for violence, and his thirst for revenge," Singer charged in a statement.

A one-time Trump critic, Moreno, a wealthy Cleveland businessman, supported Marco Rubio for president in the 2016 Republican primary, and once tweeted that listening to Trump was "like watching a car accident that makes you sick, but you can stop looking." In 2021, NBC News reported on an email exchange around the time of Trump's first presidential run in which Moreno referred to Trump as a "lunatic" and a "maniac."

On Saturday, however, Moreno praised Trump as a "great American" and railed against those in his party who have been critical of the former president, who this week became his party's presumptive nominee for a third straight election.

"I am so sick and tired of Republicans that say, 'I support President Trump's policies but I don't like the man,'" he said as he joined Trump on stage.

Trump also continued to criticize Biden over his handling of the border as he cast migrants as less than human. "In some cases, they're not people, in my opinion," he said. ... He also criticized the Dolan family, which owns Cleveland's baseball team, for changing its name from the Cleveland Indians to the Cleveland Guardians.