Teachers’ union talks up infusing social justice into New Jersey schools

The New Jersey union representing over 200,000 state educators is expected to host several talks at a consortium this week, where plans are afoot to discuss how to infuse social justice lesson plans into public schools.

One talk is titled “Drag is not a Crime: The Past, Present and Future of Drag.”

Another talk in the series is “Teaching Palestine, Beyond Awareness: Cultivating Equity Centered Schools through Action.”

The upcoming NJEA Consortium aims to “put diversity and representation at the forefront of curriculum development.”

The consortium, which is supported by a National Education Association grant, is scheduled for Thursday and Friday.

The three-year effort, it says, aims to “infuse historically marginalized identities into K-12 teaching and learning. The initiative goes beyond curriculum.”

NJEA’s 125-member PAC Operating Committee unanimously endorsed Rep. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, for New Jersey governor. The PAC called her “a strong leader who believes in public education and stands with working families.”

Gun-rights group warns Mamdani a ’huckster’

The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms weighed in on socialist Zohran Mamdani’s front-running campaign for New York City mayor after the candidate’s rap video included gun rhymes.

“Here’s a guy who is running to become New York’s next mayor, and who has vowed to launch a national gun ban effort if he is elected,” said Alan Gottlieb, the group’s chairman. “Yet he appeared in this terrible video, which essentially promoted irresponsible, violent use of firearms. He’s not a political leader, he’s a huckster.”

Although Mr. Mamdani has called for a ban on “all guns,” he was singing a different tune nine years ago when he was a rapper with the name Young Cardamom.

At that time, he filmed a music video for his song “Wabula Naawe” and brandished a firearm. The video’s backdrop is the Luwero Triangle in 1981, around the time of the Ugandan Bush War, The Free Beacon reported.

A hail of gunfire can be heard and shows shirtless militants pointing and shooting their guns while piled in the bed of a truck.

He raps, “Let’s get together and settle this thing once and forever.”

“I’ll finish you like food on a plate,” Mr. Mamdani says while waving his gun and wearing military camouflage. “You are about to run like a chicken.”

Six years later, Mr. Mamdani wrote in an X post, “We need to ban all guns.”

Last July, following a fatal multiple shooting in midtown Manhattan, he promised to call for more gun control measures “beyond New York” if he is elected mayor, including “a nationwide ban on assault rifles.”

Mr. Gottlieb said Mr. Mamdani’s response is typical of most “anti-gun” activists.

Law firm knocks Va. school’s actions in trans case

America First Legal, a conservative nonprofit law firm, in partnership with the Founding Freedoms Law Center, has filed an amended complaint in its ongoing lawsuit against Loudoun County Public Schools.

The complaint stems from a case of two teenage boys who were suspended from their Virginia high school in Ashburn after the boys, then sophomores, came under investigation when a female-to-male transgender student entered the locker room in March and secretly recorded them making comments like, “Why is there a girl in the locker room?”

American First Legal has now added new allegations and a new count of conspiracy, filing details alleging inconsistencies in the school’s handling of a Title IX investigation.

The complaint says that school officials shared confidential information with an outside political action committee to retaliate against male students who expressed discomfort over a biological female student entering the boys’ locker room.

The amended complaint alleges that the school district credited the female student with “superior credibility” despite findings that she changed her story multiple times; that a threat assessment of the male students found “no threat” and that LCPS previously concluded similar allegations would not constitute sexual harassment under federal law.

The complaint also says that LCPS misrepresented video evidence and witness statements, while omitting information that contradicted its conclusions.

Among other details, LCPS failed to disclose that one of the videos it cited as evidence shows the female student laughing and saying, “I got it.”

Witnesses also never corroborated claims that the male students used terms alleged by the female, such as “boy-girl,”“girl-boy,” or “it.”

The district appears to have deleted another video recorded by the female, showing another male student leaving the locker room.

The amended complaint also adds a count of conspiracy, alleging that school officials provided confidential information to Loudoun for All, an outside political action committee, for the purpose of retaliating against the male students and their parents for filing their own Title IX complaint and this lawsuit.