Williamson County parent and advocate Revida Rahman has linked arms with a national campaign organizing parents against what they call "extremists trying to control what our families and kids believe, read and learn." The campaign, dubbed "Freedom to Parent 21st...
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The Book-Bans Debate Has Finally Reached a Turning Point
Across multiple fronts, Democrats and their allies are stiffening their resistance to a surge of Republican-led book bans. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the past month have conspicuously escalated their denunciations of the book bans...
Granddaughter of longtime U.S. senator hopes to reverse legacy of anti-abortion policies
Ellen Gaddy, the granddaughter of former U.S. Senator Jesse Helms, was raised in a conservative family, in the shadow of a man who championed an agenda that included fierce opposition to Roe v. Wade and any effort to compromise on the issue of abortion. For Gaddy,...
Op-Ed: How in good conscience can Rep. Tricia Cotham deny NC residents the abortion access she had?
Republicans in North Carolina have passed a sweeping abortion bill that further restricts access to abortion care — a bill filled with medical misinformation, misdirection and false narratives about abortion. In practice, it will ban medication abortion after 10...
Op-Ed: Lessons for Becoming a Public Scholar
Academics at many colleges and universities today face an uncertain future. Rising tuition and falling enrollments, the lack of tenure-track positions, the dwindling student interest in the humanities in favor of business and STEM degrees, and growing questions about...
What are local schools doing for student safety?
The list is long, as are our memories, of youths who have been victims of school shootings. And as the public cries for a solution become deafening, it is left to school districts and law enforcement to fortify schools with what amounts to bandaids as prevention as...
Abortion policies could make the Republican Party’s ‘suburban women problem’ worse
The 'suburban women problem' Polling shows a majority of Americans disagree with policies that outlaw the procedure, which has become a political liability for Republicans. And the biggest fallout could be with women, like Tiffany Sheffield, who live in the suburbs....
Students, authors fight censorship in PA schools
About four hours before the Central Bucks School District passed a new library policy in July, local high school junior Lily Freeman warned a crowd of about 100 what would follow. The policy, passed by a 6-3 vote, targeted books with explicit or implied depictions of...
The day the book banners lost in Pennsylvania’s culture wars
If you ban it, they will come. For the better part of an hour Saturday, dozens of teenagers and their parents snaked around the towering stacks of tomes inside Kutztown’s Firefly Books and sometimes spilled onto the sidewalks of this quaint Berks County college town —...
Abortion Pill Battle Threatens to Further Box In GOP
“It’s up to politicians to put it front and center in terms of the stakes of the campaign,” said Katie Paris, founder of Red Wine and Blue, a group that seeks to turn out the vote among suburban women. “I think any candidate who chooses to do that in 2024 is going to...
Recent Posts
Okay, But Why is Gay Marriage at Risk?
The U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in 2015, but recent events have people wondering, is gay marriage at risk? The laws of the United States are supposed to protect and lift up all of us. For hundreds of thousands of gay couples across America, the right to get married isn’t abstract – it affects their daily lives, their finances, their health, and their family. Why would we turn back the clock on the social progress we’ve made? And why is banning gay marriage a priority for some people when there are so many real issues affecting Americans?
Okay, But Why is AI a concern?
Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is everywhere these days. Some people think it’s the solution to all of humanity’s problems. Others think it’s going to bring about the end of life as we know it. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between. But with so many different opinions and so many ways that AI can be used, it’s hard to know exactly what to believe. So let’s look at the facts and figure out, why is AI a concern?
Okay, But Why Are Romance Novels Political?
When people think of romance novels, the first thing that comes to mind is shirtless men with windswept hair on the covers of mass-market paperbacks, or maybe the “damsel in distress” main character who is waiting for a love interest to come and save her from the clutches of evil. They’re often not thought of as ‘real’ reading, because they are stories typically written by women, for women, and starring women. But what if the truth is that even the most “raunchy” novels of the genre are deeply political?
Okay, But Why Is Autism in the Headlines?
Millions of Americans are pushing back against claims made by the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and President Donald Trump about finding the cause of autism and their promises to find treatments for the disorder. Trump has called the rise in diagnoses of autism “a tremendous horror show.” Many autism advocates – and people with autism themselves – say Kennedy’s and Trump’s statements are misinformed and even dangerous. So what’s the truth? Are autism rates rising? Do we know why? Is it even something that needs to be “cured”?
Do This: Unite Against Soft Censorship
The only way to end censorship, whether it’s the quiet removal of books from library collections or in-your-face book bans, is to fight it head on. We saw a huge example of this – and a big win for free speech – this week when ABC and Disney returned Jimmy Kimmel and...