Florida parents outraged after teacher tells kids that saying Trump lost the election is an example of media bias

 Travis Gettys Via Raw Story

A substitute teacher used news coverage of Donald Trump's election lies as an example of media bias in a Florida classroom, outraging parents.

The teacher assigned a take-home sheet titled “How Does a Historian Work?” to prepare sixth-grade students for a test, including a list of vocabulary words such as primary and secondary sources, and one mother told The Daily Beast she was shocked by the topic cited by the teacher as an example of bias.

"The media is often biased and will add words that persuade you to think one way or another. Read these two statements made by reporters after the 2020 election," the worksheet read. "President Trump made claims that the 2020 election was stolen. President Trump made false claims that the 2020 election was stolen."

"The first sentence is just giving you information," the sheet added, "while the second leads you to believe he is wrong before you have all the facts."

The mother showed the paper to her husband, who shared her concern, and she was among several parents who called R. Dan Nolan Middle School in Bradenton to complain, and the principal promised to look into the matter.

“It’s actually the most biased example of bias I’ve seen,” the mother said. “It seems pretty out of place for a sixth-grade class.”

“We’re laughing," she added, "but it’s not funny."

Another student's father issued a statement expressing his disapproval of the assignment.

“I am very unhappy that the teacher would choose such a controversial example in an assignment supposedly teaching bias in a world history class," the father said. "There are so many other examples that could have been used. And the way this question is phrased would lead a student to believe that the media was incorrect in their assessment that the president’s claims were false.”

“And I would also add it is inappropriate to be using this example at a time when Trump is STILL disputing the results of the 2020 election two years later and demanding a do over!" he added.

The Manatee County School Board issued a statement saying the homework assignment did not meet their standards, but also pledged support for state standards set forth by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has campaigned against left-wing "indoctrination" in schools and has refused to say whether the 2020 election was stolen.

“It’s like, indoctrinating who?” the mother said, adding that she's awaiting the results of Thursday's test. “I’m interested if he had to use his own example of bias, and if they had to use Trump to get extra points.”

Florida House Panel Rejects Stand Your Ground Repeal, Wants To Expand It Instead

BY NICOLE FLATOW/Think Progress

This summer, after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, a group of protesters remained outside Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) office for 31 days, demanding that he call a special session to repeal the Stand Your Ground law. Scott said he wouldn’t call lawmakers back to the capitol, but House Speaker Will Weatherford agreed to hold a hearing on a repeal bill in the fall.

On Thursday, after five hours of emotional testimony, the House’s Criminal Justice Subcommittee wholly rejected the repeal bill by a vote of 11-2, and voted in favor of a bill to expand Stand Your Ground-like immunity to those who fire or brandish a gun.

Among the speakers was Lucia McBath, the mother of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, shot dead in purported self-defense after a disagreement at a Jacksonville gas station. “My grief is unbearable at times,” she told more than 300 attendees. “I’m here as a face of the countless victims of gun violence.”

But as the Orlando Sentinel wrote in August, this outcome was a “foregone conclusion” in the conservative Florida House, particularly after Weatherford selected Rep. Matt Gaetz (R) to preside over the hearing. Gaetz is not just a stark opponent of the bill who has said from the start he would not support changing “one damn comma” of the law. He is also known as a pugnacious, social media-savvy legislator who, the Miami Herald reports, “has sponsored (and passed) some of the most conservative legislation in a conservative-dominated Legislature.”

Last year, Gov. Scott participated in a similar “farce” when he agreed to review the law in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s death. After a six-month review, a task force stacked by Scott with supporters of the bill recommended that the law remain largely the same, without even considering several studies that found these laws are associated with a significant increase in homicides, have a disproportionate impact on African Americans, and do not appear to deter crime at all.

While the committee vote halts the Stand Your Ground repeal movement in Florida for now, another bill that garnered overwhelming 12-1 committee support will move forward. The NRA-backed bill expands Stand Your Ground-like immunity to those who brandish or fire guns in self-defense. It has been marketed as a “warning shot bill,” capitalizing on outrage over a 20-year prison term for Marissa Alexander, who is serving a mandatory minimum sentence after firing a warning shot during a dispute with her abusive husband. But while Alexander’s conviction and sentence have been panned across the ideological spectrum as exemplifying overly punitive sentencing, racial disparity, and insensitivity to domestic abuse, the bill passed by the House Committee does much more than exempt Alexander’s conduct from such harsh punishment. In addition to giving judges some more discretion to depart from mandatory minimum sentences in the 10-20-Life law behind Alexander’s sentence, the bill expands immunity for violent conduct in as vague and sweeping a manner as Florida’s existing Stand Your Ground law, and could represent the newest mechanism for encouraging even more vigilantism.

Florida Cops Shoot Unarmed Black Man In His Mother’s Driveway

BY REBECCA LEBER/Think Progress

This weekend, deputies from Escambia County, Florida shot an unarmed man who went to grab cigarettes from the car parked in the driveway of his mother’s home. A neighbor called police at 2 a.m. because he suspected 60-year-old Roy Middleton was stealing the car. Things quickly escalated when two deputies arrived and ordered Middleton to “get your hands where I can see them,” the Pensacola News Journal reports:

[Middleton] said he initially thought it was a neighbor joking with him, but when he turned his head he saw deputies standing halfway down his driveway.

He said he backed out of the vehicle with his hands raised, but when he turned to face the deputies, they immediately opened fire.

“It was like a firing squad,” he said. “Bullets were flying everywhere.”

The deputies reportedly fired about seven shots at the unarmed man; Middleton was shot in the leg, and another five bullet holes hit the car and the side of house.

With the Trayvon Martin case still a fresh memory for another Florida county, the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the State Attorney’s office are now investigating the incident. For now, the involved officers are on paid administrative leave.

UPDATE

Sheriff David Morgan told press Monday afternoon the police officers reported the man “lunged out of a vehicle and spun toward them.” The gun shots shattered bones in Middleton’s left thigh, which “will require the insertion of a metal rod.”

With Voting Rights Act Gutted, Florida Set To Resume Voter Purge

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

Florida’s controversial initiative to screen for suspected non-citizens and purge them from the voter rolls is allowed to officially resume, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

A Hispanic civil rights group and two naturalized citizens sued last year to block the purge, arguing that it needed to be approved by the federal government because five Florida counties were covered under the Voting Rights Act. After the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out a key section of the law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit had little choice but to dismiss the suit. Secretary of State Ken Detzner (R) said he plans to resume the voter purge.

In 2012, the Department of Justice warned that Florida’s voter purge, which targeted roughly 180,000 people, was illegal, and all of the state’s county election supervisors refused to execute the purge. The lists of flagged individuals — many of whom had Latino-sounding names — also turned out to be largely inaccurate. These flagged individuals would receive notifications in the mail notifying them that they had 30 days to contest the purge.

The state had to partially settle with a civil rights group and restore suspected non-citizens to the rolls, but soon tried to re-start the purge just a month before the November presidential election with a drastically pared down list of 198 voters.

After all the legal battles and thousands of wasted taxpayer dollars, the state could not turn upvirtually any non-citizens who were registered to vote.

Florida voters, particularly in minority-heavy urban areas, suffered some of the longest lines and most chaotic elections in the country last year. The mayhem was largely created by Republican lawmakers’ efforts to suppress votes. Besides trying to purge voters, Republicans cut the number of early voting days in half, changed ballot length restrictions so they could add frivolous constitutional amendments to 12-page ballots, and restricted voter registration. These voter suppression efforts discouraged at least 201,000 Floridians from voting, and black and Latino voters waited nearly twice as long as white voters. The backlash was so fierce that even Gov. Rick Scott (R), the primary defender of these voter suppression laws, agreed to sign an election reform law undoing most of the damage.

Prominent Florida Republicans admitted shortly after the election that the motive behind all these election law changes was to make it harder for Democrats to vote.

Republican Party Paid $3.1 Million To Firm Under Investigation For Voter Registration Fraud

By Aviva Shen/Think Progress

The Republican National Committee is cutting ties to Strategic Allied Consulting, a voter registration firm under investigation for turning in fraudulent voter registration forms in Florida. The RNC hired the firm to do voter registration drives for $3.1 million this year.

The firm’s founder, Nathan Sproul, is a longtime Republican strategist whose reputation was tarred by widespread accusations of voter registration fraud and attempts to suppress Democratic voter turnout. George W. Bush’s campaign reportedly paid Sproul over $8 million for his work in the 2004 election. Sproul, now under new scrutiny, claims he started Strategic Allied Consulting because the RNC wanted to hide his past:

Sproul said he created Strategic Allied Consulting at the RNC’s request because the party wanted to avoid being publicly linked to the past allegations. The firm was set up at a Virginia address, and Sproul does not show up on the corporate paperwork.

“In order to be able to do the job that the state parties were hiring us to do, the [RNC] asked us to do it with a different company’s name, so as to not be a distraction from the false information put out in the Internet,” Sproul said.

The committee is now scrambling to distance itself from Sproul after Florida launched acriminal investigation into the company. Strategic Allied Consulting submitted 106 “questionable” voter registration forms to the Palm Beach County Supervisor of Elections, and several other counties have discovered fraudulent forms as well. The Florida GOP fired the firm on Tuesday night.

Republicans have launched relentless efforts to prevent in-person voter fraud, which isexceptionally rare, yet seem to have ignored the real threat of voter registration fraud by their own consultant. In a twist one Florida Supervisor of Elections called “ironic,” Sproul’s organization was in fact registering dead voters as Republicans, even as Republican lawmakers all over the country justified discriminatory voter purges with the threat of dead votersshowing up to the polls.

Florida a Central battleground in fight for voting rights

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Voter Fraud Extremely Rare In Florida: ‘More Likely To Get Hit By A Bolt Of Lightning’

By Igor Volsky/Think Progress

Florida authorities claim that they’re purging thousands of voters from the rolls in order to protect the integrity and fairness of the democratic system, but according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, voting fraud is not a widespread problem in the state:

According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, 178 cases of alleged voter fraud have been referred to the department since 2000. [...]

Fraud, [Ion Sancho, the 24-year veteran election supervisor in Leon County] said, simply isn’t much of an issue. “You are more likely to walk out of your office and get hit by a bolt of lightning,” he said.

Since a 2004 law removed a signature requirement for absentee ballots, the state has not prosecuted anyone for absentee-ballot fraud. Similarly, reforms adopted in the wake of the state’s 2000 recount “required counties to use optical-scan voting machines, created statewide standards for recounts and provided $2 million for a centralized voter database” — further reducing instances of abuse. There are more than 11 million registered voters in Florida.

The Department of Justice has asked Florida to end its current voter purging operation, but state officials — who are expected to respond on Wednesday to DOJ’s request — are likely to continue removing voters from the rolls. “We’ve been acting responsibly through this process,” an official told the Miami Herald. “And our letter will reiterate that while addressing the concerns raised by DOJ. We have continued our efforts to identify ineligible voters.”

Key development in fight for voting rights in Florida

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Meet Maureen Russo: An Eligible Florida Voter Governor Rick Scott Just Purged From The Voting Rolls

By Judd Legum/Think Progress

Maureen Russo was born in Akron, Ohio. For the last 40 years she’s operated a dog boarding and grooming business — Bobbi’s World Kennels — with her husband in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. Maureen is 60 years old and has been a registered voter in the state for the last four decades. She regularly votes at the church around the corner from her home.

Two weeks ago she received a letter from the State of Florida informing her that that had recieved information that she was not born in this country and, therefore, was ineligible to vote.

She was given an option to request “an administrative hearing to present evidence” disputing the determination of the State of Florida that she was ineligible to vote. Unless Maureen returned a form requesting such a hearing within 30 days, she was told, it would result in “the removal of your name from the voter registration rolls.”

She immediately sent off a registered letter to the State with a copy of her passport. She hasn’t heard anything back.

It’s unclear precisely how Maureen was identified by the state as an ineligible voter.

Maureen’s story raises serious questions about the integrity of the massive voter purge being conducted under the direction of Gov. Rick Scott. Last year, Scott instructed his former Secretary of State, Kurt Browning, to compile a list of people who were registered in Florida but ineligible to vote. Browning resigned in February after struggling to find reliable data, stating “We were not confident enough about the information for this secretary to hang his hat on it.”

Congressman Ted Deutch (D-FL), who represents Ms. Russo, has called on the Governor Scott to “immediately suspend” the voting purge because of widespread inaccuracies and a lack of transparency.

Unfortunately, Maureen’s situation is not an isolated incident. Earlier this week, ThinkProgress reported Seminole County Supervisor of Elections Mike Ertel, a Republican, posted a picture on Twitter of a voter on the list falsely identified as ineligible, with his passport. Congressman Deutch also told ThinkProgress he’s heard from several other constituents who have been removed from the rolls without justification.

It is unclear what legitimate purpose Gov. Scott has to move forward with the voting purge in the face of multiple documented errors. Florida has no history of mass voter fraud. It does have a history, however, of mass voter disenfranchisement. By one estimate, 7000 Florida voters were wrongfully removed from the voter rolls for the 2000 presidential election — 13 times George W. Bush’s margin of victory in that state after the Supreme Court halted the post-election recount.

Florida law shrinks voting period

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Poll: Tea party poses ‘real danger’ to GOP in Florida

By David Ferguson/Raw Story

Aligning yourself too closely to the tea party could be a great way to lose an election in Florida, apparently. So says a recent poll by Gainesville, Florida based polling firm War Room Logistics. In the poll, registered Florida voters said 2:1 that the tea party did not represent their views. War Room's Alex Patton says this could pose "a real danger to Republican candidates".

Democrats and independents both gave the tea party the thumbs down, with independent voters holding unfavorable views of the nascent far-right movement 3-to-1. Typically Florida elections are decided by independent voters, and the only constituency still in favor of the recent tide of tea party politicians elected in the Fall of 2010 are Republicans, 68 percent of whom view the tea party favorably.

Patton says the risk for the GOP lies in embracing the tea party in order to win the primary election, then being pilloried in the general election by a population who find the tea party's views to be extreme and divisive. Primary elections, however, most often draw a party's most committed members, and in the Republicans' case, these are the voters most likely to support the tea party.

The Florida poll mirrors national Gallup polls that show only 33 percent of Americans holding favorable views of the Tea party. Pollster Dave Beattie says that one reason for the decline in popularity is that, "Republicans are parents, too, and they don't like cuts to the classroom."

Florida governor Rick Scott has earned voters' ire with draconian cuts to education as well as his decisions to turn down federal money for high speed rail and to drug test recipients of federal aid.

In First Month Of Legislative Session, GOP Lawmakers In Five States Seek To Eliminate, Criminalize Abortion

By Tanya Somanader

Last week, House Republicans launched an indefensible effort to redefine rape to exclude certain rape victims from abortion coverage. Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA) then followed up with the Protect Life Act, a bill that would “give doctors the green light to let pregnant women die if they have a life-threatening condition and need an emergency abortion.”

Not to be outpaced by their federal, anti-women counterparts, GOP lawmakers in states across the country are ginning up woefully ignorant abortion measures to mandate their anti-choice views on doctors and women. Whether through forcing a woman to hear heartbeats or see sonograms, making up imaginary data on race and gender, nullifying the Supreme Court, or redefining the state constitution, lawmakers in Ohio, Texas, Arizona, Florida, and Iowa intend to make this year the year they win their war against reproductive rights by any means necessary:

– OHIO: State GOP Rep. Lynn Wachtmann will unveil the so-called “Heartbeat Bill” today, the “first proposal of its kind” that “would prohibit women from ending pregnancies at the first detectable fetal heartbeat,” which can be heard “within 18 to 24 days of conception” and “in almost all cases by six weeks.” As NARAL Ohio pointed out, this bill targets “a point when many women don’t even know they’re pregnant.” Crafted by the right-wing group Faith2Action, the bill is being advertised via “heart-shaped balloons” and “a music video” with “a few fetuses appearing to keep the beat from inside the womb.”

– TEXAS: This week, the Texas Senate will consider state Sen. Dan Patrick’s (R) anti-abortion measure mandating that “pregnant women be shown an ultrasound of the fetus at least two hours before an abortion.” Physicians would be required to show the fetus’ dimensions, presence of limbs or internal organs if applicable, and –if audible – the fetal heartbeat. Similar provisions failed in 2007 and 2009 but two weeks ago, Gov. Rick Perry (R-OH) “fast-tracked the sonogram bill by declaring it an emergency item” to allow early consideration. The bill’s author, state Sen. Dan Patrick (R) says the emergency designation is legitimate because “we have 80,000 abortions in Texas every year” and the emotional pain caused by this bill will inevitably compel “one out of five women” to bring the baby to term.

– ARIZONA: State GOP Rep. Steve Montenegro introduced two bills tocriminalize abortions if they’re sought because of race or sex. The bill would slam doctors who “knowingly perform abortions for these reasons” with Class 3 felony charges. While neither Montenegro norindependent searches of state records provide support for his claims, Montenegro insists “that there are targeted communities that the abortion industry targets.” He even believes that “an abortion based on race would include situations where the parents are the same race as the fetus.” Arizona Department of Health Services does not collect information on fetus gender and only recently began asking about racial statistics. As of last week, Montenegro has yet to provide the “promised” statistics to support of his bills.

– FLORIDA: Ordained minister State Rep. Charles Van Zant (R-FL) recently introduced the Florida for Life Act, a bill that mimics Florida’s recent “fetal personhood” amendment which defines all human beings as persons “regardless of age, race, health function, condition of physical and/or mental dependency and/or disability.” The Florida for Life Act is “more overtly religious,” stating that “all life comes from the Creator and begins at conception.” The bill also states that the Supreme Court is unqualified to “determine, establish, or define the moral values” of Floridians and that the Constitution expresses no qualifications for states to “protect life in a manner consistent with the moral consensus of the people, and reflecting the peoples’ belief in a Creator.” The bill would not only prohibit induced abortions but would “punish abortion doctors as felons, should they violate the measures” of the bill.

– IOWA: Two Iowa Republican representatives are opposing a bill seeking to prohibit abortions after 20 weeks because “it doesn’t go far enough.” Because she feels the bill “would codify deaths of babies from zero to 19 weeks,” State Rep. Kim Pearson is “not willing” to support this legislation and will instead introduce her own bill “that would define life as beginning at conception” and effectively “end all abortions in Iowa.” GOP state Sen. Randy Feenstra is trying to push the marker with a bill to restrict abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy. If all else fails, a resolution to amend the Iowa Constitution to “define a person as starting from a single-cell human embryo” is now pending in the Iowa House.

These measures are certainly not the first efforts by pro-life lawmakers to change state law. Last year, a Kansas GOP lawmaker proposed levying a sales tax on abortions. Perhaps inspiring Texas, Oklahoma overrode a veto last year to enforce an ultrasound mandate with “no exceptions for rape or incest.” And a fetal personhood amendment like the one in Florida appeared on the Colorado ballot in 2008 and 2010 but was “decisively defeated.”

But the state-level efforts right out of the gate in 2011 implies a renewed motivation to blindly pre-determine what is already a difficult and deeply personal choice. A recent NARAL report counts a total of 15 states with anti-choice governments. Arizona has already introduced a “heartbeat” bill similar to Ohio and Texas, Georgia, and Oklahoma are watching its progress “closely.” With concerted attack on reproductive health coming both from the federal and state level, the GOP may just walk women’s rights all the way back before the Supreme Court protected them in 1973.

M.C.L Comment: The funny thing about the pro-life movement yeah they want these women to have these babies yet they want to gut programs that were intended to help them raise their children. Again folks if you have a pro-life friend or relative ask them how they feel about welfare and be prepare to hear the most vile things. They might as well say we want to protect more cops by taking away their bullet proof vest.