February 18, 2025

Permission to republish original opeds and cartoons granted.

Department of Education Enforces Civil Rights Act On All Schools To End DEI. Will Cities And States Comply Or Will It Be 1957 All Over Again?

By Robert Romano

The Department of Education is going to enforce the Civil Rights Act not just one colleges and universities’ admissions decisions, but also very broadly to public and private elementary and high schools across the country, according to a Feb. 14 letter by Craig Trainor, Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education.

The letter enforces President Donald Trump’s Jan. 21 executive order “Ending Illegal Discrimination And Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” ordering all federal departments and agencies including the Department of Education to enforce federal civil rights laws on states including schools and universities under Titles VI and VII of the Civil Rights Act.

The Trump executive order stated in part, “the Attorney General and the Secretary of Education shall jointly issue guidance to all State and local educational agencies that receive Federal funds, as well as all institutions of higher education that receive Federal grants or participate in the Federal student loan assistance program under Title IV of the Higher Education Act, 20 U.S.C. 1070 et seq., regarding the measures and practices required to comply with Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 600 U.S. 181 (2023).”

According to the letter, “The Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard4 (SFFA), which clarified that the use of racial preferences in college admissions is unlawful, sets forth a framework for evaluating the use of race by state actors and entities covered by Title VI… Although SFFA addressed admissions decisions, the Supreme Court’s holding applies more broadly. At its core, the test is simple: If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law.”

To be certain, the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in SFFA stated plainly that race and gender based admissions policies run afoul of not only the Civil Rights Act but the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution: “Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment…”

But the Court was well aware that its own decision in this case might not be followed, and cited past experience of lapses in enforcing the Fourteenth Amendment: “Despite the early recognition of the broad sweep of the Equal Protection Clause, the Court—alongside the country—quickly failed to live up to the Clause’s core commitments. For almost a century after the Civil War, state-mandated segregation was in many parts of the Nation a regrettable norm.”

And even after Brown v. Board of Education (1954) that desegregated school, states did not want to comply, with Arkansas deploying its state guard rather than integrate the schools, and President Dwight Eisenhower federalizing the state guard using the Insurrection Act — the same statute President Abraham Lincoln utilized during the Civil War — to end the crisis.

Undoubtedly, we’re a long way from something like that. First, cities and states will opt to sue to stop execution of the President’s anti-DEI in education order, but given the Supreme Court’s clear ruling in SFFA, that seems like it might ultimately fail, posing little more than a speed bump for Trump’s plan to enforce the Civil Rights Act by conditioning federal funds on compliance.

But it could still be the same problem with Trump’s anti-DEI in education order, with cities and states insisting they are complying with the Civil Rights Act even as they clearly violate Title VI on its face, which explicitly conditions federal funding on non-discriminatory policies: “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.” Title VII similarly prohibits discrimination in hiring, promotion and firing practices: “It shall be an unlawful employment practice for an employer… to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin; or … to limit, segregate, or classify his employees or applicants for employment in any way which would deprive or tend to deprive any individual of employment opportunities or otherwise adversely affect his status as an employee, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

But that’s exactly what DEI racial and gender hiring quotas and other affirmative action policies do. The Department of Education letter cited several examples of policies that would run afoul of the Civil Rights Act: “[A] school may not use students’ personal essays, writing samples, participation in extracurriculars, or other cues as a means of determining or predicting a student’s race and favoring or disfavoring such students… It would… be unlawful for an educational institution to eliminate standardized testing to achieve a desired racial balance or to increase racial diversity… DEI programs, for example, frequently preference certain racial groups and teach students that certain racial groups bear unique moral burdens that others do not. Such programs stigmatize students who belong to particular racial groups based on crude racial stereotypes. Consequently, they deny students the ability to participate fully in the life of a school…”

And the Civil Rights Act’s mandates extend beyond the classroom and into a school’s own hiring, promoting and firing practices as well as prioritizing aid rewards for any reason: “Federal law thus prohibits covered entities from using race in decisions pertaining to admissions, hiring, promotion, compensation, financial aid, scholarships, prizes, administrative support, discipline, housing, graduation ceremonies, and all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life. Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race.”

But does anyone expect cities and states, especially those with Democratic majorities, to comply with this? Sure, some will, but other, and this is where things might get precarious, will just flagrantly continue to violate the law and ultimately willing to hold the students and parents hostage by claiming the lack of federal funds means they have to close the doors rather than comply with the law — and forcing a confrontation in the courts and beyond.

In a similar vein, school districts including my own local district in Manassas, Va. are already issuing letters assuring district residents — especially those with large illegal immigrant populations — that they definitely intend to not follow federal immigration laws or any attempted enforcement by the Trump administration to deny funds to schools on that basis, citing the 1982 Supreme Court narrow 5-4 ruling in Plyler v. Doe that struck down a Texas statute that barred funding for schools that allowed illegal immigrants.

The Manassas letter stated “MCPS will continue adhering to its established division policies and regulations prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, or national origin. These practices align with the 1982 Supreme Court ruling that public schools must provide an education to all students regardless of immigration status.” And, “MCPS remains steadfast in protecting the legal rights of all students and staff in our schools.” In other words, they have no intention of cooperating with federal authorities at all, even if that means the Plyler decision might be ultimately overturned and federal funds could ultimately be denied.

So what might happen? Readers will recall there remains a mechanism from the Covid lockdowns wherein local school districts can simply shut themselves down. And at the extreme end of the spectrum, 1861 and 1957 show some states would rather risk war than to stop racist policies.

President Donald Trump should be prepared for states and cities that depend on federal funding — particularly in cities — that might shut down the schools and blame Trump rather than comply with the Civil Rights Act and immigration laws, even if the Supreme Court rules against them. This might result in federal funds being redirected to private alternatives, for example, that commit to complying with the Civil Rights Act — but ultimately this is a showdown that is clearly on the horizon.

The advantage the cities and states will have is their ability to use the overwhelming number students, parents and teachers who depend on the public school system — more than 80 percent of students, or 50 million, attend public schools — as a shield against any compliance, even if that means jeopardizing children’s academic futures. It might be wise to plan ahead when the showdown comes.   

Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/02/department-of-education-enforces-civil-rights-act-on-all-schools-to-end-dei-will-cities-and-states-comply-or-will-it-be-1957-all-over-again/

 

Trump Awakens America: The Slumbering Superpower

By Rick Manning

The Trump 2 presidency has proven to be much more foreign policy oriented than most Americans expected with America re-emerging as the pre-eminent economic and political force in the world.

In a whirlwind, the president put Colombia’s communist leader in his place. When challenged about accepting deported Colombians who were in the U.S. illegally, Trump levied the threat of massive economic sanctions causing the Colombian government to back down within hours. Troublemaking Venezuela immediately found that they could accept back deported members of the violent gang they sent across our border under Biden’s disastrous open borders policy immediately following this short showdown.

After the threat of tariffs that would cripple the Mexican economy, Mexico City has promised to put 10,000 troops on their northern border and help with a drug cartel crackdown. Similarly, Canada has promised to better monitor their southern border to stem the flow of dangerous illegal invaders and fentanyl into America.

And in the first showdown with China, Panama has promised to end its partnership with the Communist Party of China through their “Belt and Road” initiative, choosing alliance with the United States and at least partially securing the vital Panama Canal passageway between the Gulf of America and the Pacific Ocean.

Even the discussion about Greenland matters in this context as the forgotten North American island is both rich with rare earth minerals, and essential to defending U.S. interests in the Arctic and North Atlantic Ocean. What most do not know is that China has been mining in Greenland and has established a dangerous foothold on this geo-politically important Danish holding.

When you look at foreign policy through an America First lens, you defend the homeland first. Under Biden, most of South and Central America including Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Colombia, and Chile was taken over by government’s antagonistic to the United States, largely with Chinese support. 

This explains why President Trump has dusted off the Monroe Doctrine and begun to aggressively secure alliances that keep enemies off our borders with a mind toward eventually pushing China out of the western Hemisphere.

What many Americans do not realize is that our nation is effectively one big island itself, separated by the Atlantic, Pacific and Arctic Oceans from land invasion. This security along with the banding together of the thirteen colonies into one country, the Louisiana Purchase and the Manifest Destiny policy which envisioned and achieved a coast-to-coast America, protected our nation to grow free from constant land wars that beleaguered Europe throughout history.

Obviously, the Civil War was an unavoidable land war to settle the power struggle between the states revolving around slavery expanding the “all men are created equal” DNA of America to include all races.

President Abraham Lincoln did not just unify the nation through war but also envisioned the uniting of America from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the building of the transcontinental railroad. Completed in 1869, four years after his assassination, the linking of east and west connected far off California and Nevada with the rest of the country economically and set the stage for the establishment of states west of the Mississippi River.

The freedom from war and relative stability that followed fostered the development of an industrial, mineral and energy base making America the beacon of freedom and opportunity to the world.

This North America and Caribbean basin First foreign policy that President Trump has embarked upon looks at the whole world through this historic lens, prioritizing the world closest to our shores.

It is a form of international community policing where you focus upon your own and adjacent neighborhoods first before seeking to clean up areas that affect you less.

Now this isn’t dismissing the problems with China, Ukraine/Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere, it is merely recognizing that tending to America’s neighborhood with the impacts of dramatic drops in illegal immigration and a diminution of threats that can strike the homeland rapidly due to the proximity of their origin.

President Trump has demonstrated that he is also able to walk and chew gum at the same time when it comes to other world-wide hotspots he inherited. Trump played a major role in getting Hamas-held American and Israeli hostages released, reclassified the Houthi’s in Yemen as a terrorist organization and hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his first foreign leader to visit, have meetings and dine at the White House in his second term.

Netanyahu’s first in the world visit is an obvious break from the prior administration’s virtual shunning of Israel’s leader, and it makes sense.

Two of Trump I’s achievements were moving the U.S. embassy to Israel to Jerusalem and along with Netanyahu laying the groundwork for an alliance of Muslim states with Israel around joint economic and national security interests, breaking the stranglehold the created Palestinian issue had on regional peace.

Through establishing the Abraham Accords alliances, the President and Prime Minister created a new pathway to peace in the Middle East based upon mutual regional and economic interests, and rekindling that momentum is clearly very high on the Trump II agenda.

And by the time this gets printed, undoubtedly other actions will jump into the forefront, because in Trump II things move at the speed of Silicon Valley rather than the slow meanderings of the past. 

Beyond the speed though is the Trump II North America First foreign policy demonstrates that rather than being buffeted around by world events, there is perhaps for the first time since Ronald Reagan, a gameplan where America leads and sets the agenda accomplishing our interests, and in doing so furthering the interests of the free world.

Fifteen days in, the world has shifted, America is back, confident and a little bit pissed off. The sleeping superpower has awakened from its four-year slumber. 

Rick Manning is the President of Americans for Limited Government.

To view online: https://townhall.com/columnists/rickmanning/2025/02/05/trump-awakens-america-the-slumbering-superpower-n2651656

 

Vice President J.D. Vance's Remarks At Munich Security Conference

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you, and thanks to all the -- the gathered delegates and luminaries and media professionals.

And thank- -- thanks especially to the hosts of the Munich Security Conference for being able to -- to put on such an incredible event. We're, of course, thrilled to be here. We're happy to be here.

And, you know, one of the things that I wanted to -- to talk about today is, of course, our shared values.

And, you know, it's -- it’s great to be back in Germany. As -- as you heard earlier, I was here last year as a United States senator. I saw Foreign Minister -- excuse me, Foreign Secretary David Lammy and joked that both of us last year had different jobs than we have now.

But now it's time for all of our countries, for all of us who have been fortunate enough to be given political power by our respective peoples, to use it wisely to improve their lives.

And I want to say that, you know, I -- I was fortunate in my time here to spend some time outside the walls of this conference over the last 24 hours, and I've been so impressed by the hospitality of the people, even, of course, as they're reeling from yesterday's horrendous attack.

And the first time I was ever in Munich was with -- was with my wife, actually, who's here with me today, on a personal trip. And I've always loved the city of Munich, and I've always loved its people.

And I just want to say that we're very moved, and our thoughts and prayers are with Munich and everybody affected by the evil in- -- inflicted on this beautiful community. We're thinking about you, we're praying for you, and we will certainly be rooting for you in the days and weeks to come.

Now -- (applause) -- thank you. I hope that's not the last bit of applause that I get, but -- (laughter).

We -- we gather at -- at this conference, of course, to discuss security. And normally, we mean threats to our external security. I see mili- -- many great military leaders gathered here today.

But while the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine, and we also believe that it's important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense, the threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it's not China, it's not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values -- values shared with the United States of America.

Now, I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don't go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany too.

Now, these cavalier statements are shocking to American ears. For years, we've been told that everything we fund and support is in the name of our shared democratic values.

Everything from our Ukraine policy to digital censorship is billed as a defense of democracy, but when we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening to cancel others, we ought to ask whether we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I say “ourselves” because I fundamentally believe that we are on the same team. We must do more than talk about democratic values. We must live them.

Now, within living memory of many of you in this room, the Cold War positioned defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on this continent. And consider the side in that fight that censored dissidents, that closed churches, that canceled elections. Were they the good guys? Certainly not, and thank God they lost the Cold War.

They lost because they neither valued nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty, the freedom to surprise, to make mistakes, to invent, to build.

As it turns out, you can't mandate innovation or creativity, just as you can't force people what to think, what to feel, or what to believe. And we believe those things are certainly connected.

And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today, it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of the Cold War's winners.

I look to Brussels, where EU commiss- -- commissars warn citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest the moment they spot what they've judged to be, quote, “hateful content.”

Or to this very country, where police have carried out raids against citizens suspected of posting anti-feminist comments online as part of, quote, “combating misogyny on the Internet, a day of action.”

I look to Sweden, where, two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for participating in Quran burnings that resulted in his friend's murder. And as the judge in his case chillingly noted, Sweden's laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant -- and I'm quoting -- “a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.”

And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our very dear friends, the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons, in particular, in the crosshairs.

A little over two years ago, the British government charged Adam Smith-Connor, a 51-year-old physiotherapist and an army veteran, with the heinous crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes -- not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.

And after British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know what he was praying for, Adam replied, simply, it was on behalf of the unborn son he and his former girlfriend had aborted years before.

Now, the officers were not moved. Adam was found guilty of breaking the government’s new “buffer zones” law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that could “influence” a person’s decision within 200 meters of an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of pounds in legal costs to the prosecution.

Now, I wish I could say that this was a fluke -- a one-off, crazy example of a badly written law being enacted against a single person. But, no, this last October, just a few months ago, the Scottish government began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so-called “safe access zones,” warning them that even private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking the law.

Naturally, the government urged readers to report any fellow citizens suspected guilty of thoughtcrime.

In Britain, and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.

And in the interest of comity, my friends, but also in the interest of truth, I will admit that sometimes the loudest voices for censorship have come not from within Europe but from within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and bullied social media companies to censor so-called misinformation -- misinformation like, for example, the idea that coronavirus had likely leaped fr- -- leaked from a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies to silence people who dared to utter what turned out to be an obvious truth.

So, I come here today not just with an observation but with an offer. And just as the Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that.

In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town. And under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square, agree or disagree. (Applause.)

Now we're at the point, of course, that the situation has gotten so bad that, this December, Roma- -- Romania straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.

Now, as I understand it, the argument was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections, but I’d ask my European friends to have some perspective. You can believe it’s wrong for Russia to buy social media advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can condemn it on the world stage even. But if your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with. (Applause.)

Now, the good news is that I happen to think your democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear, and I really do believe that allowing our citizens to speak their mind will make them stronger still.

Which, of course, brings us back to Munich, where the organizers of this very conference have banned lawmakers representing populist parties on both the left and the right from participating in these conversations.

Now, again, we don't have to agree with everything or anything that people say, but when people represent -- when political leaders represent an important constituency, it is incumbent upon us to at least participate in dialog with them.

Now, to many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old, entrenched interests hiding behind ugly, Soviet-era words like “misinformation” and “disinformation,” who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion, or, God forbid, vote a different way, or, even worse, win an election.

Now, this is a security conference, and I’m sure you all came here prepared to talk about how exactly how you intend to increase defense spending over the next few years in line with some new target And that’s great, because as President Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European friends must play a bigger role in the future of this continent. We don't think -- you hear this term, “burden sharing,” but we think it's an important part of being in a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while America focuses on areas of the world that are in great danger.

But let me also ask you, how will you even begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if we don’t know what it is that we’re defending in the first place?

I've heard a lot already in my conversations -- and I've had many, many great conversations with many people gathered here in this room -- I've heard a lot about what you need to defend yourselves from, and, of course, that's important. But what has seemed a little bit less clear to me and certainly, I think, to many of the citizens of Europe, is what exactly it is that you're defending yourselves for. What is the positive vision that animates this shared security compact that we all believe is so important?

And I believe deeply that there is no security if you are afraid of the voices, the opinions, and the conscience that guide your very own people.

Europe faces many challenges, but the crisis this continent faces right now, the crisis I believe we all face together, is one of our own making.

If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you. Nor, for that matter, is there anything that you can do for the American people who elected me and elected President Trump.

You need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the coming years. Have we learned nothing, that thin mandates produce unstable results? But there is so much of value that can be accomplished with the kind of democratic mandate that I think will come from being more responsive to the voices of your citizens.

If you’re going to enjoy competitive economies, if you’re going to enjoy affordable energy and secure supply chains, then you need mandates to govern, because you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of these things. And, of course, we know that very well in America.

You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail -- whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news. Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society.

And of all the pressings -- challenges that the nations represented here face, I believe there is nothing more urgent than mass migration.

Today, almost one in five people living in this country moved here from abroad. That is, of course, an all-time high. It's a similar number, by the way, in the United States -- also an all-time high.

The number of immigrants who entered the EU from non-EU countries doubled between 2021 and 2022 alone. And, of course, it's gotten much higher since.

And we know the situation, it didn’t materialize in a vacuum. It’s the result of a series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the continent, and others across the world, over the span of a decade.

We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions yesterday in this very city. And, of course, I can’t bring it up again without thinking about the terrible victims who had a -- a beautiful winter day in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and will remain with them. But why did this happen in the first place?

It’s a terrible story, but it’s one we’ve heard way too many times in Europe and, unfortunately, too many times in the United States as well: an asylum seeker, often a young man in his mid-20s, already known to police, rams a car into a crowd and shatters a community.

How many times must we suffer these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our shared civilization in a new direction?

No voter on this continent went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did vote for? In England, they voted for Brexit. And agree or disagree, they voted for it. And more and more, all over Europe, they’re voting for political leaders who promise to put an end to out-of-control migration.

Now, I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns, but you don't have to agree with me. I just think that people care about their homes. They care about their dreams. They care about their safety and their capacity to provide for themselves and their children.

And they're smart. I think this is one of the most important things I've learned in my brief time in politics. Contrary to what you might hear a couple mountains over in Davos, the citizens of all of our nations don't generally think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs of a global economy, and it's hardly surprising that they don't want to be shuffled about or relentlessly ignored by their leaders.

And it is the business of democracy to adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box.

I believe that dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, or, worse yet, shutting down media, shutting down elections, or shutting pe- -- people out of the political process protects nothing. In fact, it is the most surefire way to destroy democracy.

And speaking up and expressing opinions isn’t election interference, even when people express views outside your own country, and even when those people are very influential.

And trust me, I say this with all humor, if American democracy can survive 10 years of Greta Thun- -- Thunberg’s scolding, you guys can survive a few months of Elon Musk.

But what German democracy -- what no democracy -- American, German, or European -- will survive is telling millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, their aspirations, their pleas for relief are invalid or unworthy of even being considered.

Democracy rests on the sacred principle that the voice of the people matters. There is no room for firewalls. You either uphold the principle or you don’t.

Europeans, the people have a voice. European leaders have a choice. And my strong belief is that we do not need to be afraid of the future.

You can embrace what your people tell you, even when it’s surprising, even when you don’t agree. And if you do so, you can face the future with certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind each of you.

And that, to me, is the great magic of democracy. It’s not in these stone buildings or beautiful hotels. It’s not even in the great institutions that we have built together as a shared society.

To believe in democracy is to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and has a voice. And if we refuse to listen to that voice, even our most successful fights will secure very little.

As Pope John Paul II -- in my view, one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other -- once said, “Do not be afraid.”

We shouldn't be afraid of our people, even when they express views that disagree with their leadership.

Thank you all. Good luck to all of you.

God bless you. (Applause.)

Feb. 14, 2025
Vice President J.D. Vance

To view online: https://dailytorch.com/2025/02/vice-president-j-d-vances-remarks-at-munich-security-conference/