We Need a Reckoning on the 1619 Project.

The New York Times launched its torpedo at American history on August 18, 2019. I speak, of course, of “The 1619 Project,” which first emerged as a special edition of the newspaper’s Sunday magazine. In the ensuing five years and five months, the 1619 Project outgrew its original 100 pages of newsprint. It became a somber 50 second television commercial on February 9, 2020, that aired during the Academy Awards and featured the singer, songwriter, and actress Janelle Monáe. In 2021, it ballooned into a 590-page hardback book, supertitled “A New Origin Story.” In 2023, Hulu turned it into a six-part “docuseries” with Oprah Winfrey as executive producer.

During those five-plus years, the New York Times ran thousands of print advertisements for the “project.” It substantively revised the magazine text without any public acknowledgment, which means unless you saved the original copy, you can’t know exactly what it said.

Like all revolutionary movements, the destructive Left cannot achieve its goals without convincing enough people that the old order is so evil it can only be destroyed. This is the purpose served by Critical Race Theory and, more specifically, by the New York Times’ 1619 Project, which cast slavery as the foundational principle of the United States. The project’s educational component has been hugely influential but, as Peter Wood points out, the actual numbers on its reach are unclear and even conflicting. Wood argues that a clear accounting of the propaganda’s reach in American schools will be a necessary, if difficult, step in any course correction.

Moar: https://tomklingenstein.com/we-need-a-reckoning-on-the-1619-project/

THIS IS HOW WALZ GOVERNS: Former Minneapolis Mayor Frey aide pleads guilty in Feeding Our Future scheme.

Abdi Nur Salah, 37, of St. Paul, who formerly served as an aide to the mayor and who also donated money to Frey’s election campaign, pleaded guilty to wire fraud.

According to court documents, the co-defendants knowingly participated in a scheme to defraud a federal child nutrition program designed to provide free meals to children in need from approximately April 2020 through January 2022. The co-conspirators obtained, misappropriated, and laundered millions of dollars in program funds that were intended as reimbursements for the cost of serving meals to children.

The defendants exploited changes in the program intended to ensure underserved children received adequate nutrition during the Covid-19 pandemic. Rather than feed children, the defendants took advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic—and the resulting program changes—to enrich themselves by fraudulently misappropriating millions of dollars in federal child nutrition program funds.

Moar: https://alphanews.org/former-mayor-frey-aide-and-brother-plead-guilty-in-feeding-our-future-scheme-ahead-of-trial/

Minnesota is f**ked!

Doron Clark wins special election in Minneapolis giving DFL a majority in state Senate. With the victory in the special election, Democrats will now have a 34-33 majority in the Minnesota Senate.

https://alphanews.org/doron-clark-wins-special-election-in-minneapolis-giving-dfl-a-majority-in-state-senate/

Minnesota doubling down on churning out anti-American extremists and activists.

On Oct. 21, 2024, pro-Palestinian student protestors took over Morrill Hall, the University of Minnesota’s administration building. The students covered security cameras with spray paint, smashed windows, and secured doors with bicycle locks, trapping staff members inside. U of M president Rebecca Cunningham described the ordeal as a “terrifying experience” for staff.

Coercive student activism of this kind is nothing new at the U of M. For years, it has been cheered and held up for emulation by the university’s Center for Race, Indigeneity, Disability, Gender & Sexuality Studies (RIDGS) — an amalgam of “oppression studies” departments whose core, the Department of African American and African Studies, grew out of a student seizure of Morrill Hall in 1969.

RIDGS’s self-declared mission is not academic but political — indeed, revolutionary: to “challenge systems of power and inequality” and “imagine social transformation.” Now the ideological zealots who run RIDGS are coming to Minnesota’s K-12 classrooms under the aegis of the Walz administration’s new Social Studies and Ethnic Studies academic standards. They have launched a comprehensive K-12 Ethnic Studies initiative that aims to spread their extremist ideology to our youngest students.

The Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) formally adopted Walz’s Social Studies standards in January 2024, adding “liberated” Ethnic Studies. These new standards teach that the American project is irredeemably racist and in need of radical reform and calls on students to “organize” for “resistance” to our nation’s fundamental institutions.

Moar: https://alphanews.org/katherine-kersten-liberating-students-from-education/

Gabbard Stands Her Ground on Edward Snowden, Criticizes Surveillance Abuse in Clashes with Senators in Heated DNI Confirmation Hearing.

Her stance on Snowden, a former National Security Agency (NSA) contractor who leaked classified information, has raised concerns among lawmakers and may complicate her confirmation as President Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence. Gabbard has previously defended Snowden and introduced legislation in his favor, positions that have made her a target of scrutiny.

Edward Snowden’s leaks in 2013 exposed a vast, unconstitutional surveillance apparatus run by the US government. The classified documents he revealed showed that the NSA was illegally spying on American citizens, collecting their phone records, emails, and internet activity without warrants or probable cause.

One of the most alarming programs Snowden uncovered was PRISM, which allowed the NSA to directly access data from major tech companies like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft, harvesting private communications, including messages, emails, and video calls. Another program, Upstream, intercepted internet traffic in bulk as it flowed through fiber-optic cables. These programs operated in direct violation of the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches and seizures.

https://reclaimthenet.org/tulsi-gabbard-snowden-surveillance-abuse-dni-hearing

Meta Reaches $25M Settlement with Trump Over Social Media Ban.

The $25 million deal signals a strategic shift for Meta as it navigates its relationship with Trump and his political influence.

Moar: https://reclaimthenet.org/meta-trump-lawsuit-settlement-25-million-free-speech