“This school year, Illinois will become just the fifth state in the nation to prohibit corporal punishment in all schools.
“Legislation that Gov. JB Pritzker signed into law this month bans physical punishment in private schools while reiterating a prohibition on the practice in public schools implemented 30 years ago.
“When the ban takes effect in January, Illinois will join New Jersey, Iowa, Maryland and New York in prohibiting paddling, spanking or hitting in every school.
“State Rep. Margaret Croke, a Chicago Democrat, was inspired to take up the issue after an updated call by the American Association of Pediatrics to end the practice, which it says can increase behavioral or mental health problems and impair cognitive development. The association found that it’s disproportionately administered to Black males and students with disabilities.”
Georgia is actually making it HARDER to vote! They’ve spent taxpayer money to develop a website — not to register to vote or to get an absentee ballot — but to REQUEST THE CANCELLATION OF VOTER REGISTRATION OF OTHER PEOPLE!
The Georgia Secretary of State says it’s intended for people moving out of state or who have a deceased family member. But in the last few years, Georgia has had hundreds of thousands of challenges of voter registrations by right-wing groups that didn’t even know the people involved, and most of those challenges were groundless and eventually denied.
When it launched on Monday, it was “marred by a glitch that allowed people to access a voter’s date of birth, driver’s license number and last four numbers of a Social Security number. That’s the same information needed to verify a person’s identity and allow a registration to be canceled.” Apparently the glitch only lasted an our or so, but it underscores concerns that the site could allow outsiders to unjustifiably cancel voter registrations.
“If someone knows my birthdate, you could get in and pull up my information and change my registration,” state Senate Minority Leader Gloria Butler, a Stone Mountain Democrat, said Tuesday. Democratic staff showed The Associated Press a copy of a document with Butler’s information that they said was produced by the system.
This kind of website isn’t actually needed and is clearly to make it even easier for extremists to challenge the voter registrations of anyone they don’t want on the rolls. The original language on the website attested to that, but was later changed.
Not only is there this context of right-wing challenges of voter registrations of so many legitimate voters, but there have been laws passed in Georgia that make it HARDER to vote. Example: requiring a “wet-ink signature” for people to be able to vote, but setting up this online portal to allow anyone to try to remove voter registrations. Shouldn’t it be the other way around? Shouldn’t someone asking to remove someone have to sign a piece of paper, perhaps under the penalty of perjury? Making it easy to ask for the removal of voter registrations is simple disenfranchisement.
Apparently Donald Trump has called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas that the U.S. is negotiating. CBS reported that he is trying to get any deals to be DELAYED until after the U.S. election, because any deal worked out earlier might benefit Harris.
Just like Trump made the bipartisan border bill FAIL so he could use immigration as an issue in the election, he wants to do everything he can to keep the Israel-Hamas war active so it can be an issue as well.
This article discusses how this might even be a crime.
The Texas Public Schools are proposing requiring the teaching of the Bible as truth, regardless of the religion of the teacher or the students. This is in the public school curriculum proposed for August 2025. Schools will be incentivized with up to $60 per student in additional funding.
In this short video, the Texas Education Commissioner is asked some questions about the curriculum, getting to the heart of the problem.
Example: The 3rd Grade curriculum requires teaching that “Jesus rose from the dead.”
And there is not really any representation of other faith traditions and religions.
This clearly violates the Establishment Clause regarding establishing a religion. So much so, that the bill specifically includes IMMUNITY for teachers for violating the Establishment Clause of the Constitution.
Looks like consumers have more of an impact on the economy than the government does. When everyone keeps paying for things no matter how much the prices go up, that encourages raising prices further.
“Some of America’s largest companies, from Amazon to Disney to Yum Brands, say their customers are increasingly seeking cheaper alternative products and services, searching for bargains or just avoiding items they deem too expensive. Consumers aren’t cutting back enough to cause an economic downturn. Rather, economists say, they appear to be returning to pre-pandemic norms, when most companies felt they couldn’t raise prices very much without losing business.”
“India’s largest budget carrier, IndiGo, is the first airline to trial a feature that lets female passengers book seats next to other women to avoid sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with a man in a move designed to make flying more comfortable for female passengers.”
“The airline’s booking process is fairly standard except for the seat map which highlights seats occupied by women with the color pink. This information is not visible to male passengers, according to the airline.”
“‘We have a significant share of female travelers. And, basically, technology is now enabling some things which were not able in the past … We brought it up as a test for female travelers to check in and see where they can sit next to another female traveler, and actually it has resounded very, very well of course with our customers, but also internationally,’ CEO Pieter Elbers said in an interview with CNBC.”
In 1972, when the GSS first began asking Americans, “What is your religious preference?” 90% identified as Christian and 5% were religiously unaffiliated. In the next two decades, the share of “nones” crept up slowly, reaching 9% in 1993.
“But then disaffiliation started speeding up – in 1996, the share of unaffiliated Americans jumped to 12%, and two years later it was 14%. This growth has continued, and 29% of Americans now tell the GSS they have “no religion.”
“Pew Research Center has been measuring religious identity since 2007 using a slightly different question wording – “What is your present religion, if any?” – as well as a different set of response options. Since 2007, the percentage of adults who say they are atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” in the Center’s surveys has grown from 16% to 29%. During this time, the share of U.S. adults who identify as Christian has fallen from 78% to 63%.
“There are many theories on why disaffiliation sped up so much in the 1990s and how long this trend might continue. For example, some scholars contend that secularization is the result of increasing “existential security” – as societal conditions improve and scientific advances allow people to live longer lives with fewer worries about meeting basic needs, they have less need for religion to cope with insecurity (or so the theory goes).
“Others say that in the U.S., an association of Christianity with conservative politics has driven many liberals away from the faith. Still other theories involve declining trust in religious institutions, clergy scandals, rising rates of religious intermarriage, smaller families, and so on.”
Signs at the Republican National Convention called for “Mass Deportation Now!”, giving a full embrace to Donald Trump’s pledge to expel millions of migrants in the largest deportation program in American history.
“Some Republicans aren’t quite ready for that.”
“Historians go back to at least the 1850s when German and Irish immigrants were targeted as degenerate thieves. An undercurrent of popular belief that immigrants breed crime persisted through the 20th century and into the 21st.
“But no one compares to Trump, who reached the pinnacle of power by making immigration a signature issue and portraying the foreign-born as criminals. Yet the weight of evidence shows no support for claims that immigrants are more responsible for crime than native-born Americans.”
