How to talk to your children about sex

 

In her latest book (“Why Fascists fear Teachers”), Randi Weingarten mentions a book that some people have had banned. It is titled “It’s Perfectly Normal”, and it discussed the physical and emotional changes that teens and adolescents go through as they are growing up.

I recently borrowed the book from the library, and found it both educational and entertaining.

 

The book contains numerous drawings of male and female genitalia, and also discusses some controversial topics, such as abortion, birth control, STD, and sexual abuse. In at least one case, it helped prevent further sexual abuse of a girl whose father was sexually abusing her.

Before I go any further, I need to give you a little background:

I grew up during the 1950’s - a time when “Ozzie and Harriet” was on prime-time television, and it remained there from 1952 until 1966, The couple also had a radio program from 1944 until 1954. In all, the television series lasted 14 years, and can still be viewed on YouTube

The 1950’s were a conservative era, and public discussion about sex, if it occurred at all, was pretty rare. Married couples on TV were not seen in bed together, and discussions about sex, even in family units was also sparse.

Starting in 2021, there have been thousands of books banned or challenged in parts of the United States. Most of the targeted books have to do with race, gender, and sexuality. Unlike most book challenges in the past, whereby action began locally with parents or other stakeholders in the community engaging teachers and school administrators in a debate over a title, local parent groups have received support from conservative advocacy organizations working to nationalize the efforts focused on certain subjects. They have also been more likely to involve legal and legislative measures rather than just conversations in local communities. Journalists, academics, librarians, and others commonly link the coordinated, often well-funded book challenges to other efforts to restrict what students should learn about systemic bias and the history of the United States. Hundreds of books have been challenged, including high-profile examples like Maus by Art Spiegelman, New Kid by Jerry Craft, and The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood.

The American Library Association documented 1,269 demands of book censorship in 2022. It was the highest the organization had ever recorded since it began collecting censorship data more than 20 years prior. A 2023 analysis by The Washington Post found that a majority of book challenges in over 100 school districts from the 2021–2022 school year were filed by just 11 people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_banning_in_the_United_States_(2021%E2%80%93present)

One of the books that had been banned is “It’s perfectly Normal”.

 The exact number of times “It's Perfectly Normal”has been banned is not available, but it has been removed from libraries and schools multiple times, making it one of the most frequently challenged books in recent years. It was removed from libraries in Florida's Walton County School District and has been pulled from school shelves at least seven times in one recent school year alone, according to CBS News. 

• It's Perfectly Normal is a children's book about puberty and sex education by Robie Harris.
• The book has been challenged and removed from school libraries and classrooms due to its frank discussions about sexuality.
• It appears on lists of frequently challenged books, such as those compiled by the American Library Association.
• The reasons cited for banning often include its content being considered "unsuited to age group" or due to its religious viewpoint. 

 

Not surprisingly, Florida is the state that has had the most books ban. As of 2022, the state had the most book bans in place, and Texas was in second place, with 625 book bans. Florida’s dubious record is due to the fact that the ultra-conservate group, Moms for Liberty, is based there.

https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/banned-books-by-state

 

Moms for Liberty is an American political organization that advocates against school curricula that mention LGBTQ rights, race and ethnicity, critical race theory, and discrimination. Multiple chapters have also campaigned to ban books that address gender and sexuality from school libraries. Founded in January 2021, the group began by campaigning against COVID-19 responses in schools such as mask and vaccine mandates. Moms for Liberty is influential within the Republican Party.

Moms for Liberty has been variously described as populist, reactionary, extremist, and far-right group. The group has been criticized for harassment, for deepening divisions among parents, for making students' education more difficult, and for having close ties to the Republican Party rather than being a genuine grassroots effort

Moms for Liberty was co-founded in Florida on January 1, 2021, by former school board members Tina Descovich and Tiffany Justice, and by then-current school board member Bridget Ziegler, the wife of Florida Republican Party Chairman Christian Ziegler. In spring 2021, Christian Ziegler was removed from his position in the party because of a sexual assault history. Republican activist and campaign consultant Marie Rogerson is the third-leading member of Moms for Liberty. Descovich receives a stipend as Moms for Liberty's executive director.

Like fascists everywhere, Governor DeSantis does not like an educated public, and his treatment of New College of Florida provides a good summary of his approach.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/11/19/new-college-florida-desantis-makeover-cost/

Nearly three years ago, as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis championed his culture-war policies during the run-up to a bid for the White House, he vowed to overhaul a small, quirky liberal arts college in Sarasota that was part of the state education system.

New College of Florida was “more into DEI, CRT, the gender ideology,” the Republican governor said, using abbreviations for diversity, equity and inclusion and for critical race theory. He added: “We’re going to be able to offer some reforms.”

DeSantis has largely succeeded in transforming what was one of the most liberal institutions in the state into a school that is now hailed by conservatives across the country. He handpicked a new president and appointed a board of trustees who fired and denied tenure to veteran professors. The school closed its gender studies center. It added sports teams and turned classrooms in a historic campus building into donor-friendly spaces with cigar smoking allowed on the balcony overlooking Sarasota Bay.

 Now the bill for that effort has arrived, and it shows a remarkably high price. According to a report released this month by the Florida Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the cost to produce a degree at New College is $494,715 — the highest among public colleges in Florida and more than three times the $150,729 cost at the state’s flagship school, the University of Florida.

Operating expenses at New College are $83,207 per student, compared with $45,765 at UF. New College also has the largest number of administrators per student, or 33.3 per 100, compared with 26.9 at UF, a school with nearly 62,000 students.

Enrollment has increased since the overhaul, but with 732 current students, New College is still short of the school’s stated goal of 1,200. More than a third of the new students are athletes recruited to fill recently created collegiate sports teams, including baseball, basketball and softball.

One of the new trustees DeSantis appointed was Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who has led campaigns against critical race theory and gender identity in schools and has advised DeSantis on education policy.

 

The DeSantis administration pledged to model New College after Hillsdale College, a private Christian school in Michigan. New College adopted what it calls a “classical” curriculum centered on the Western canon. Freshmen are required to take a class on Homer’s “Odyssey.”

 

(Hillsdale College  is a member of the advisory board of Project 2025, a collection of conservative and right-wing policy proposals from The Heritage Foundation to reshape the United States federal government and consolidate executive power, since Trump won the 2024 presidential election.)

 

Attorney Alan Dershowitz, a staunch supporter of President Donald Trump, spoke at New College’s commencement in May. Corcoran announced in September that the school is commissioning a statue of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk for the campus, to be funded by public donation

 But, let’s get back to the book>

For parents who are not comfortable discussing sex with their children, and for kids who simply do not know what questions to ask, this book can be a valuable resource.

 

 

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I love the poorly educated.

 

 

During the 2016     Presidential campaign, Donald Trump said that “we won with the poorly educated. I love the poorly educated”.

Before you go any further, I should warn you that his story is NOT about Donald Trump.

It is actually a book report.

Randi Weingarten has been the president of the American Federation of Teachers since 2008, and she recently release a book titled” Why Fascists Fear Teachers”. At 177 pages, it is a quick read, and is definitely worth the effort.

First of all, what exactly is a fascist?

Here is one definition:

 Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology characterized by a centralized dictatorship, suppression of opposition, extreme militarism, and the subordination of individual rights to the interests of the nation or race. It is an anti-democratic system that seeks to create a strong, unified nation under a single, all-powerful leader and party, controlling nearly all aspects of public and private life. 

 Historically, Hitler and Mussolini are the best examples of fascists, but Trump fits the definition as well. In March of this year, Bernie Sanders and AOC took their oligarchy tour on the road.

 Trump’s cabinet in his second term is worth $381 billion – higher than the GDP of 172 counties. Elon Musk, the world richest man, spent $270 million to get Trump elected, which includes the $45 million that he spent on mis-leading ads.

 If you are wondering why Trump likes the poorly educated, consider this:

 States that tend to vote for Democrats spent more money on education.

 Here is a breakdown of per public spending by state:

 Arizona is one of the worst states:

 https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/per-pupil-spending-by-state

 I’m a fan of Heather Cox Richardson, and she is mentioned in this book. In “Democracy Awakening: Notes on the state of America”, she mentions that fascist leaders may compete for our votes, but modern democracies fail because of autocratic candidates who work within the system to change it”

 That sure sounds like Project 25, doesn’t it?

 What do fascists do when the afraid that students will learn the truth on their own?

 They ban books, and Moms for Liberty is one of the worst offenders

 According to the ACLU, more than 3000 books were banned in America, and these restrictions also app to college and universities, who face   loss of funding if they even mention DEI.

 Two months after Hitler came into power in 1933, he presided over the first book burnings in Germany, and 20,000 books were destroyed.

 A Democratic society needs PUBLIC schools, in addition to private and religious schools, yet many states, including Arizona, use vouchers to divert public money for private schools. Although the original intent of vouchers was good, the program has grown to the point that they will cause nearly $1 billion in the state’s budget

 As a result, every public school in Arizona will receive $300,000 less in state funding. 3 out of 4 students who benefit from vouchers were already attending private schools, so the vouchers effectively result in a tax break for wealthy parents.  

 https://edtrust.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Lessons-From-Arizona-1-Pager-FINAL.pdf

 

I’ve been a teacher, either full time or part time for more than 20 years, so can assure you that teaching is NOT an easy job- and Ranid Weingarten has been a teacher longer than that, which is why her book is worth reading.

 Another book worth reading is “Reign of Error”, written by Diane Ravitch,

 Diane Silvers Ravitch (born July 1, 1938) is a historian of education, an educational policy analyst, and a research professor at New York University's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development. Previously, she was a U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education. In 2010, she became "an activist on behalf of public schools."^[ Her blog at DianeRavitch.net has received more than 36 million page views since she began blogging in 2012. Ravitch writes for the New York Review of Books.

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Ravitch

 Randi Weingarten has written an excellent book about education. Although the book itself is only 177 pages, the supporting notes add up to another 59 pages, and it is worth reading.

 

 

 

 

 

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There's something rotten in Denmark

 

As I mentioned in my past of September 14, the Supreme Court has made a number of questionable rulings recently, including the fact that a fair number of decisions were made using the “shadow docket”

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2025/09/here-comes-judge.html

The most recent questionable ruling was when the court decided it was OK for ICE to arrest people “if they looked suspicious”

 https://www.npr.org/2025/09/13/nx-s1-5507125/the-supreme-court-clears-the-way-for-ice-agents-to-treat-race-as-grounds-for-immigration-stops

This ruling is contrary what a federal district court ruled in 2013

https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/joes-law-gets-boot-lawyer-plaintiffs

Plaintiffs have established that the MCSO had sufficient intent to discriminate against Latino occupants of motor vehicles. Further, the Court concludes that the MCSO had and continues to have a facially discriminatory policy of considering Hispanic appearance probative of whether a person is legally present in the country in violation of the Equal Protection Clause. The MCSO is thus permanently enjoined from using race, or allowing its deputies and other agents to use race as a criteria in making law enforcement decisions with respect to Latino occupants of vehicles in Maricopa County.

 Federal immigration raids are getting more and more common across the country. On Monday, the Supreme Court cleared the way for federal immigration enforcement agents in Los Angeles to use race and other profiling factors in deciding who to stop and potentially detain. At the same time, ICE has expanded operations in Massachusetts and Illinois, and it remains active in Washington, D.C.

With the backing of the federal government and the courts, ICE is moving quickly to carry out the White House's deportation agenda. 

ICE recently raided a Hyundai plant in Alabama.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hyundai-georigia-ice-raid-450-detained-electric-vehicles-batteries/

In a large-scale immigration enforcement raid at a huge Hyundai facility in Georgia on Thursday, 475 immigrants suspected of living and working in the U.S. illegally were detained, federal authorities announced. 

Steven Schrank, the special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations in Georgia and Alabama, told reporters Friday that the majority of those detained were Korean nationals, but he didn't know exactly how many. They worked for a variety of different companies at the site, including subcontractors, he said.

South Korea's Foreign Minister Cho Hyun said Saturday that more than 300 South Koreans were among the 475 people detained.

 No criminal charges were announced during Friday's news conference. The sweep was conducted as part of a month-long investigation into allegations of unlawful employment practices and other federal crimes, Schrank said. He described Thursday's raid as the largest enforcement operation at a single site in the history of Homeland Security Investigations, which is a unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

"This operation underscores our commitment to protecting jobs for Georgians and Americans, ensuring a level playing field for businesses that comply with the law, safeguarding the integrity of our economy and protecting workers from exploitation," Schrank said.

The sweep targeted one of Georgia's largest and most high-profile manufacturing sites, touted by Gov. Brian Kemp and other officials as the biggest economic development project in the state's history. Hyundai Motor Group, South Korea's biggest automaker, began manufacturing electric vehicles a year ago at the $7.6 billion plant, which employs about 1,200 people, and has partnered with LG Energy Solution to build an adjacent battery plant, slated to open next year.

The search shut down construction on the battery plant.

 As the article below points out, the raid will cripple further Korean investments in America.

https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2025/09/south-korea-visas-immigration-us-investment-hyundai-lg?lang=en

The timing compounds Korean frustration. Lee’s August White House visit just a week prior was widely seen in Seoul and Washington as an important step in alliance management—though light on policy substance, it was heavy on rapport-building, with Trump explicitly praising Korean investment commitments. For Korean officials and industrial leaders who had spent years repositioning away from China and toward deeper U.S. economic integration, enforcement actions targeting their flagship investment projects created strategic whiplash.

 Korean companies are now reconsidering these projects. LG Energy Solution paused construction work at the battery plant, while at least twenty-two other Korean factory sites across automotive, shipbuilding, steel, and electrical equipment sectors have been halted, as major conglomerates grapple with precautions about U.S. travel and urgently verify visa statuses.

 The shipbuilding initiative that Trump and Lee celebrated also faces potential stalling, with Seoul warning that ongoing funding negotiations could derail Korea’s commitments without resolution of the worker visa issues. Industry insiders worry about delays to ongoing projects requiring hundreds of Korean technical personnel, from shipbuilding to steel mill construction.

 This hesitation reflects broader Korean concerns about mixed signals from Washington. Their shock and opprobrium, particularly on the ICE images, centered on dignified treatment rather than legal exemptions, suggesting their strategic contributions might not ensure the respectful partnership they had anticipated.

ICE is also doing damage in other areas:

According to the New York Daily News, ICE has confirmed that it will patrol Bad Bunny’s show at the 2026 Superbowl, looking for “suspicious people” The main performer (Bad Bunny) is from Puerto, so he will probably look suspicious to ICE

Earlier this summer, the San Diego Padres told ICE that they could not come in.

Host city San Francisco (which has a large migrant population) should do exactly the same thing.

The Senate has passed a bill making Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) the United States' largest interior law enforcement agency, with funding for Donald Trump's immigration enforcement agenda higher than most of the world's militaries, including Israel's.

Pending its passage in the House of Representatives, Trump's bill could mean a massive increase in ICE funding as part of an immigration enforcement agenda worth $150 billion over four years.

A revised version of Trump's bill was narrowly voted through the Senate on Tuesday. The estimated price tag of the legislation is around $150 billion between now and 2029—an annual average of $37.5 billion, which is higher than the military expenditure of all but 15 countries.

Here is where it gets interesting:

Stephen Miller (the Nazi in the White House) is the driving force behind Trump’s immigration policy. He was the man behind the separation of families during Trump’s first term.

Miller owns stock in Palintar, which provides personal information to ICE so that they can more easily identify vulnerable people.

Miller owns anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000 in Palantir stock, according to newly released financial disclosure forms posted online and first reported by the Project on Government Oversight. Federal financial disclosure forms only require ranges to be given rather than exact holdings.

Palantir won a $30 million contract in April to deliver something called the Immigration Lifecycle Operating System (ImmigrationOS) by September, which is supposed to give the U.S. government “near real-time visibility” on immigrants to manage deportations, according to Wired. Palantir also has lucrative contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, with the firm chalking up more than $1 billion in new federal contracts since Trump took power again in January, according to the New York Times. And it’s those contracts that will raise plenty of eyebrows among people who still care when government employees potentially benefit financially from their positions.

https://gizmodo.com/stephen-miller-owns-stock-in-notorious-ice-collaborator-palantir-2000619547

 “Border czar” Tom Homan was recently caught on tape accepting a $50,000 bribe from companies vying for government contracts.

One of the top architects of Donald Trump’s immigration agenda previously received thousands of dollars from a company raking in millions from deportations.

But the White House says that there's nothing wrong with this situation.

What's more, border czar Tom Homan is just the most recent official in his administration who we have learned was paid by the private prison company Geo Group in the past. According to federal disclosure forms, Attorney General Pam Bondi previously earned money as a lobbyist for the company in Trump's first term.

The Washington Post was the first to publish disclosure forms filed last week showing Homan earned at least $5,000 as a consultant for Geo Group over the two years before he joined Trump’s second administration.

Geo Group also gave $1 million dollars to the Make America Great Again PAC which backed Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. Last year, after Trump was elected, the company’s CEO, Brian Evans, estimated that Geo Group could make an additional $400 million annually as a result of Trump’s planned deportations. And indeed, the company is one of multiple private prison companies making a profit from locking up immigrants for the administration. So much so, that on a conference call earlier this year, the company’s executive chairman said “we’ve never seen anything like this before” while referencing the speed with which the Trump administration has sought to procure contracts with Geo Group.

So the order of events is as follows: Tom Homan and Pam Bondi consult and lobby for Geo Group, Geo Group helps elect Trump in 2024, Homan and Bondi join Trump's administration in 2025, and then Trump’s administration helps Geo Group make profits. At a minimum, that raises questions about a conflict of interest.

But the White House says there’s nothing to see here.

 

 

https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-border-tom-homan-private-prison-immigrants-rcna209544