Politics
Oklahoma measure seeks to make school district superintendents an elected position
Oklahoma will consider a new measure to make the role of school district superintendent an elected position in response to a spate of controversial situations involving scholastic leaders, Fox News Digital has learned.
There have been allegations and news reports about several issues: the refusal to remove “pornographic books” from school libraries, the dismissal of a teacher for failure to comply with a COVID-19 face mask mandate, and media coverage of “nothing [being] done” in response to reports a school football coach was bragging about sexual conquests with parents.
In 2021, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt called firings of mask-averse teachers “preposterous” and said their talents are needed more than ever.
“This is about a school district not following state law — this isn’t a debate about masks,” he said, after the Oklahoma City district reportedly fired multiple educators, adding the state previously banned such firings.
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In February, Oklahoma State Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters — who is an elected official himself — threatened to lower the accreditation of Edmond, Oklahoma, schools if it didn’t remove the books “The Glass Castle” and “Kite Runner” from its high school libraries.
Walters called the inaction “subversion of accountability,” though Edmond’s superintendent said the state lacked authority to remove the books based on a 1997 district policy.
In another case, in Edmond, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz from neighboring Texas, among others, blasted videos showing a portion of a school fundraiser wherein students were licking each other’s toes.
In a public statement, school officials appeared to celebrate the event:
“This afternoon, Deer Creek High School announced a grand total of $152,830.38 raised for Not Your Average Joe Coffee, an organization created to ‘inspire our community by including students and adults with intellectual, developmental and physical disabilities,” school staff wrote.
“All participants in the assembly were students who signed up for the game(s) they played ahead of time. No Deer Creek faculty or staff participated in any of the games during this Clash of Classes assembly,” a portion of the latter part of the statement read.
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Walters called the fundraiser “filth,” and Cruz said it was “child abuse.”
In another district on the Arkansas line, now-former Muldrow Superintendent Leon Ashlock resigned after driving drunk and crashing a school vehicle on Creek Turnpike. Two 100-proof bottles of cinnamon schnapps were found in its console, according to KOCO.
Walters told Fox News Digital on Wednesday that a case involving a school’s response to an athletic director’s criminal exploits with a student also drew his attention.
“Even in a conservative state like Oklahoma, where voters have overwhelmingly made clear they want the radical progressive policies of the left out of public schools, we continually see superintendents defying their will, ignoring their concerns, and refusing to take action necessary to improve education outcomes while protecting Oklahoma children,” Walters said.
“This has to end.”
“And, the best way to do that is by requiring superintendents to be elected by the voters.”
Walters called the legislation a common-sense solution to efforts to improve education for Sooner State children.
Walters previously made headlines when he led his state in becoming the first to appropriate funding toward supplying a Bible to each school. The official said the move blunts “woke curricula” and provides students a “historical document” that the founders used to form their government.
Politics
Supreme Court sounds ready to OK laws that ban hormone treatments for trans teens
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court’s conservatives said Wednesday they are inclined to uphold state laws in half the nation that prohibit the use of hormone treatments for transgender teens.
Led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., they spoke of an evolving medical debate over the use of puberty blockers and sex hormones for adolescents who suffer from gender dysphoria.
Britain recently joined Sweden and Finland in sharply limiting these treatments for adolescents, they said. Roberts said the justices should be wary deciding disputes among medical experts.
“Doesn’t that make a stronger case of us to leave those determinations to the legislative bodies rather than try to determine them for ourselves?” Roberts asked Solicitor Gen. Elizabeth Prelogar as she opened her argument.
“My understanding is that the Constitution leaves that question to
the people’s representatives rather than to nine people, none of whom is a doctor.”
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh agreed.
“It just seems to me the Constitution doesn’t take sides on how to resolve this,” he said.
“There is obviously an evolving debate” about the risks and benefits of these medical treatments, he said. “England’s pulling back and Sweden’s pulling back. It strikes me as a pretty heavy yellow light, if not red light, for this court to come in, the nine of us, and to constitutionalize the whole area when the rest of the world is … pumping the brakes on this kind of treatment.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Amy Coney Barrett appeared to agree.
Alito chided the Biden administration’s solicitor general for telling the court there was an “overwhelming” medical consensus in favor of prescribing hormones for adolescents with gender dysphoria.
In response, Prelogar said Britain did not adopt a total ban on such treatments, even if they are now quite limited.
Meanwhile, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who wrote the court’s 2020 opinion that extended federal antidiscrimination protection to transgender employees, asked no questions during the three-hour argument.
However, the court’s three liberals argued strongly that the conservative state laws discriminate against transgender teens and should be struck down.
“Usually parents get to decide” what is the best medical treatment for their child, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said. “But Tennessee has decided to override them.”
Since 2021, Tennessee and 23 other states have adopted laws that forbid prescribing hormones and puberty blockers for those younger than 18 for the purpose of gender transition.
In defense of those laws, Tennessee Atty. Gen. Jonathan Skrmetti argued that the practice of medicine is a matter for the state, and lawmakers there said the hormone treatments are risky and unproven for adolescents.
The Biden administration urged the court to hear the Tennessee case and to rule the law discriminatory and unconstitutional.
Prelogar and ACLU attorney Chase Strangio urged the court to rule that because the laws discriminate based on sex and gender, they are suspect and should be struck down.
At a minimum, they said, the court should send the Tennessee case back to a lower court judge to decide whether the state can justify what Prelogar and Strangio called gender-based discrimination.
Strangio said the Tennessee law “has taken away the only treatment that relieved years of suffering for each of the adolescent plaintiffs.”
A ruling in favor of Tennessee would be a victory for the conservative states, but it would not directly affect California or other Democratic states, which put no similar limits on medical treatments for transgender youths.
However, President-elect Donald Trump campaigned against what he called “left-wing gender insanity.” Upon taking office, he said, he would instruct federal agencies to “cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age.”
It’s also possible that after taking office in January, Trump’s Justice Department appointees could notify the court they would like to drop the government’s appeal in the Tennessee case.
The justices could choose to dismiss the case without ruling, or they could proceed by focusing only on the appeal lodged by the ACLU.
Kavanaugh and Barrett asked about competitive school sports and whether officials may limit participation by transgender girls. But they agreed that question will not be resolved in this case.
Politics
Iowa sues Biden administration to verify status of 2,000 registered voters who may be noncitizens
Iowa is suing the Biden administration over its alleged refusal to provide access to the citizenship status information of more than 2,000 registered voters whose status was questioned ahead of the 2024 election.
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird and Secretary of State Paul Pate filed the lawsuit on Tuesday, which claims U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) “would not hand over” its “list of noncitizens illegally registered to vote in Iowa.”
Federal authorities’ “failure meant that the State had to rely on the best — imperfect — data it had available to ensure that no Iowan’s vote was canceled by an illegal, noncitizen vote,” Pate and Bird said in a joint statement.
Along with USCIS, the lawsuit names the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as defendants.
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Fox News Digital reached out to DHS for comment but did not immediately hear back.
The complaint details how state election officials checked voter rolls against a list of people who identified themselves as noncitizens with the state’s Department of Transportation. The vast majority of the 2,176 names had subsequently registered to vote or voted, meaning that some of those people could have become naturalized citizens in the lapsed time.
Pate told county elections officials during the state’s early voting to challenge the ballots cast by any of the individuals named on the list and have them cast a provisional ballot instead.
Pro-voting groups sued Pate over the move, though days later a judge ruled against them and allowed those named on Pate’s list to cast provisional ballots.
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At least 500 of the identified individuals proved their citizenship status and had their votes counted, the Des Moines Register reported, citing preliminary information collected from 97 of the state’s 99 counties.
Another 74 ballots were rejected, according to the Register, mostly because those people did not return to prove their citizenship status.
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Most of the people on Pate’s list did not vote in the 2024 election, according to the Register’s data from county auditors.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Politics
California raw milk producer says RFK Jr. has encouraged him to apply for FDA position
Mark McAfee, the California raw milk producer who has been at the center of several bird flu-related product recalls, says a transition team for Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has encouraged him to apply for a position at the Food and Drug Administration.
McAfee, CEO of Fresno-based Raw Farm, LLC, told The Times that he has complied with the request and applied for the position of “FDA advisor on raw milk policy and standards development.”
The recent raw milk recalls were the result of positive tests for H5N1 bird flu among McAfee’s cows. His farms have since been quarantined, and the state has suspended all sales of raw milk and cream. Raw Farm has voluntarily issued recalls for all remaining milk and cream products in stores.
McAfee’s farm is also involved in at least 11 lawsuits stemming from a salmonella outbreak that sickened 171 people in California, and which occurred between October of last year and May of this year, according to Bill Marler, a Seattle-area food safety lawyer.
When asked about McAfee potentially being tapped for a federal food advisory role, Marler wrote in an email: “Clown Car.”
Last month, President-elect Donald Trump announced that he had chosen Kennedy to lead the U.S. Health and Human Services Department, which oversees the FDA, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health and other agencies.
Kennedy has been a vocal advocate for raw milk, and has criticized FDA policy forbidding interstate sales of the product. According to McAfee, Kennedy is also a consumer and customer of Raw Farm milk.
McAfee said he has not officially been selected for the advisory role. Indeed, Kennedy’s own nomination as HHS director still requires confirmation by the U.S. Senate.
The Times has reached out to the Trump transition team and Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again teams for comment, but has not yet received a response.
McAfee is the largest producer of raw milk in the nation and maintains 1,800 dairy cows on two farms — one in Fresno, the other outside Hanford.
His raw milk products include whole milk, cream, kefir and cheese — all of which can be sold in stores in California, but not over state lines..
However, FDA regulations do not apply to his pet food product line, which can be sold outside California — albeit with warning labels noting that the products are not intended for human consumption.
McAfee is also president of the Raw Milk Institute, a raw milk educational and advocacy organization designed to aid dairy farmers interested in adopting standards and methods for raw milk production.
In an interview with The Times two weeks ago, McAfee said that as excited as he is for Kennedy to change the FDA’s policy on raw milk, such a move needs to be carried out with deliberate care.
“I’m dedicated to making sure that whatever happens, it is not chaotic, crazy, or just a free for all, but rather very constructive with farmer training and testing and high standards,” he said. “I’m very interested in committing myself to helping raw milk emerge as a constructive, high standards, healthy, wonderful, germinating, delicious food.”
He noted that in 2021, Montana lawmakers passed a “food freedom” law that legalized the unregulated sale of raw milk and raw milk products. Soon after, people started to get sick.
McAfee said he flew out to meet with raw milk dairy producers and helped them establish standards that incorporated training, testing and quality control.
For instance, he noted one dairy farmer was cleaning his milk buckets with chlorine, which McAfee said does not address fats and biofilms.
“It was filthy,” he said.
Instead, he showed the farmers how to clean their equipment with hot water and soap.
“You have to have standards,” he said.
McAfee’s milk is highly regulated by the state of California, which performs frequent testing for food-illness pests such as campylobacter, cryptosporidium, E. coli, listeria, brucella, and salmonella and other bacterial illnesses in his milk.
He said unlike conventional dairies where the milk is pasteurized after it’s been collected, he is required to test the cows for pathogens, and said he only milks disease-free cows.
He has an on-farm laboratory where he tests for listeria, campylobacter, E. coli 0157H7 and salmonella in his bulk tanks and cows.
He said his cows are meticulously cleaned before they are milked. And the milk is immediately shunted into a rapid chiller that drops the milk’s temperature from 100 degrees Fahrenheit to 35 degrees Fahrenheit in about two minutes, he said.
Then the milk stays at that temperature until delivered to stores.
Even so, experts say bacteria can still contaminate milk — even when procured from a sparkling-clean udder. The FDA, CDC and other health agencies say the public should drink only pasteurized milk.
Since 2006, Raw Farm — formerly known as Organic Pastures Dairy Company — has been involved in 13 recalls, including the three bird flu related ones from last month.
The other recalls were the result of bacterial contamination, including E. coli, listeria, campylobacteria and salmonella. In some cases, people became severely ill with hemolytic uremic syndrome — or kidney failure.
There was also a recent outbreak of salmonella poisoning from Raw Farm raw milk, which involved at least 171 people “the majority of which were children,” noted a report on the outbreak by the state’s Center for Infectious Diseases.
McAfee said if he were selected for an advisory role at the FDA, he’d consider creating a certification program, such as those in place for organic farming that involve farmer education and training, for raw milk production.
He also said he’d look into changing food liability laws, “where you can’t go get a million dollars for somebody that gets diarrhea for a week.”
McAfee said the government should consider raw milk and other whole food insurance programs, like the USDA’s crop insurance program which provides for farmers whose fields and crops have been impacted by drought, flooding or fire — or the more recent milk insurance program which provides money for dairy farmers whose herds have been infected with bird flu.
“I would recommend strongly that all whole foods — including maybe greens, eggs, carrots, by God, poor carrots — have food liability insurance… so people can get that food, because right now, insurance or companies saying, ‘Oh, you’re on the naughty list so no more insurance for you.’” he said. “And so you’re going to have stores with less and less of these whole foods that are critical to actually getting people healthy again.”
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