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Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress.

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More students were arrested for taking part in Palestinian solidarity and ceasefire encampments. Now more than 2,000 students have been arrested - more than at any time since the anti-Vietnam War demonstration of the 1960s. 

Another new poll finds that about 20% of voters in five key battleground states are less likely to vote for Biden in November because of his handling of the Israeli assault on Gaza. 

Tough loss for the UAW at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama. To put it in the words of one Mercedes-Benz worker: “This is probably the most strategic and organized union busting campaign in decades.”

Biggest study of “greedflation” finds what most of us have suspected: big corporations, especially the big Fossil Fuel corporations, squeezed us for record profits while blaming it on “inflation.” 

Meanwhile, some scientists are looking to fracking wastewater for a source of lithium for electric car batteries. 

PA is the cyber-school capital and our kids are worse off for it. In the period from 2018 to 2022, the cyber-charter industry gained an additional $485.5 million in taxpayer dollars to line the pockets of executives. 

National liberal groups are biting themselves in the butt by fawning over Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick.

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Biden halts some aid to Israel, then clears billions in arms as the Netanyahu government continues assault on Rafa amidst calls by some right-wing Israelis to permanently settle the Gaza Strip.  

Meanwhile, is it time to start to get concerned Trump coming out ahead in some polls? Biden’s people say they’re not worried. (NYT on the polling)

The University of California union representing more than 48,000 academic workers calls for a strike authorization vote over the university’s attacks on Gaza encampments and protests. Could this signal another step toward unchaining American unions from decades of low-bar action? 

Trump encouraging Fossil Fuel companies to dump $1 billion into getting him elected, promising to get rid of all those pesky climate regulations. 

That comes, of course, on the heels of scientists warning that we are on track to blow past 1.5 degrees of warming and toward a “semi-dystopian” future. 

What can we do about all this? Well, for starts why not get your tickets for Beaconfest. On June 1 The Bucks County Beacon is having an evening of awesome music down at Snipes Farm in Morrisville, PA. Emily Drinker headlines an outstanding lineup and Great Barn Brewery will be on hand so serve up the food and drinks. Get all the details at BucksCountyBeacon.com/BeaconFest. 

If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. We’re here for the fight and we need you. Become a patron for the price of a good beer once a month. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress.

If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress.

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What's on your mind?

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After John Fetterman stakes out hawkish support for Israel and distances himself from progressives, his staff is leaving him in droves. 

Former Senator and Vice Presidential candidate, Joe Lieberman died this week. Let that signal the passing of one of the more destructive factions and ideologies in the Democratic Party. 

NBC hires then fires Ronna McDaniel the election-denying, former head of the GOP, 

School absences have exploded and continue in the post-COVID world. 

University of Florida is going after faculty members that they thing “interferred” with the university’s new Hamilton Center for Classical and Civic Education - the newly establish beachhead for so-called “classical education” and the “Western canon” - one of the buzzwords used by Christian nationalist and far-right activists seeking to whitewash American education and bolster a white, Christian, and celebratory narrative. 

Boston University’s administration had some suggestions for faculty members during the current strike by graduate students: Have AI do the work instead.  

A new Indiana law will require professors to promote “Intellectual diversity” - of face disciplinary actions. What does that mean? It means entertaining even fascist ideas as just another set of ideas. Was Hitler wrong? Well, let’s look at argument for and against Nazism, shall we? 

The University of Kentucky’s presidents seeks to disband their Faculty Senate and turn decision-making over to the university’s Board of Trustees. 

Bucks County sues Big Oil for lying about the climate crisis. 

PA’s Primary is right around the corner. We’ll give you the dates and deadlines you need to know.

Imagine that. Another “nail-biting’ vote to prevent a government shutdown before tonight’s midnight deadline. This is the dramatic sit-com version of politics that the Republicans want to keep renewing.

Lots of not so good news on the climate crisis front. 

• Republicans wage war on electric vehicles
• Big Oil and Gas industry lobbyists successfully gutted new building codes that called for making new construction electric ready. Oh, and look, John Fetterman says he might vote with the Republicans. 
• SIxteen States are suing Biden Administration over their move to halt new exports for Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) in order to study the effects on climate, national security, and the economy.
• Record-setting heat hits Rio de Janeiro - a heat index of 143 degrees.
• Scientists can’t account for the continued record-setting ocean temperatures
• And so much more. 

The United States falls out of the top 20 happiest countries for the first time since the annual World Happiness Report began in 2012 by the United Nations. Gee. I wonder why. And young people are leading the unhappiness charge. 

Several new strike votes in higher education.

The Washington Post runs the bio of new Palisades School District School Board Member, Linda Wenhold. How does a local school board member get a full profile in the Washington Post? Well, apparently it helps if you take and teach classes with the Christian Nationalist Patriot Academy, advocate for your school district to teach that America’s true history is a Christian nation, and argue that attempts to make schools welcoming and accessible for all kids are secret plots to Marxists and secular leftists to destroy America. 

Bucks County Beacon announces it’s first annual Beacon Fest to support the work of the Beacon and bring trouble-makers of all sorts together! The event will be on June 1 @ Snipes Farm in Morrisville, PA.

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In a huge announcement, Starbucks officially announced that it will no longer work to oppose unionization efforts by its employees. Now that nearly 400 Starbucks stores have voted to unionize, and founder and former CEO, Howard Shultz, is no longer running the company, it seems that Starbucks Workers United will now be heading to contract negotiations in good faith. In a joint statement, Starbucks and Workers United said they will, “begin discussions on a foundational framework designed to achieve … collective bargaining agreements for represented stores and partners” 

Thousands of academic workers are on strike at York University in Toronto. On Thursday, members of other unions across Ontario joined the picket lines in support of their striking brothers and sisters. 

Last week, the Pennridge School District - the first in the nation to hire the Hillsdale-inspired Vermillion Education to rewrite their social studies and English curriculum through a Christian nationalist lens - officially scrapped the Hillsdale proposed curriculum. 

An Illinois court has kicked Trump of this year’s Republican Primary ballot, all but assuring another round of Supreme Court decisions. The order has been put on hold pending appeal. Early voting has already begun in the state. 

Mitch McConnell announced he’s retiring from Senate leadership after this year’s election. Let the all out Senate Republican civil war commence. 

“Uncommitted” is set to win two delegates from Michigan as the protest over Biden’s unwillingness to stop the Israeli government’s genocidal war in Gaza. 

Washington State’s largest labor union - the United Food and Commercial Worker - has endorsed “uncommitted” in this year’s Democratic Primary. 

In one of the most brazen statements of late from Big Oil, Exxon scolded the world in a recent interview in Fortune magazine saying that Exxon and other fossil fuel companies are not to blame for the climate crisis. Who is? Everyone else but them it appears. Exxon CEO Darren Woods told the magazine, “the world waited too long” to develop green technologies and that "people who are generating the emissions need to be aware … and pay the price." Who are those people? You guessed it, you and me. 

Treacherous blizzard is bearing down on the Sierra Nevada mountain range in California. The storm is expected to dump up to 10 feet of snow with winds already peaking at 145 mph. 

The Smokehouse Creek Fire in Texas has now become the second largest wildfire in U.S. history, burning more than a million acres of land just north of Amarillo - an area larger than the entire state of Rhode Island. 

Former professor at Albert Einstein College to cover all future medical school tuition.

Steve Oross is an Associate Professor of psychology at Kutztown University and as listeners of this show will recall, in Fall 2021 Steve Oross was denied ADA accommodations by Kutztown University’s administration. Oross had a heart transplant in February 2021. Following months of physical therapy and treatment, his doctors cleared him to return to work in Fall 2021 provided that he taught his classes online given that COVID was still rampant and would pose a significant risk to his life. Rather than providing Oross with accommodations, the administration said the only way they would allow him to return to work would be if he taught in-person. Rather than risk his life or being forced to go on unpaid leave pr losing his job, Oross decided to fight. Thanks to his determination and the amazing advocacy of his attorney, Lorrie McKinley, Oross won his case. Steve’s experience has led him to wider spheres of advocacy as well.

Steve is a Team Member with the World Health Network focusing on Legal Action for Policy Change. He has also become involved in the Organ Donation Awareness Corporation which is a student-led organ donation advocacy group with chapters in NYC and Nashville, Tennessee, involving other students from around the country. He will be participating in a series of webinars with this group focused on promoting organ donation among young adults.

Lorrie McKinley, is one of the few lawyers in the Philadelphia area with undisputed expertise in both employment law and special education advocacy and litigation. She is a passionate, bold and creative advocate with a long track record of protecting the civil rights of employees and students under the nation’s civil rights law at every level of the state and federal courts.

Lorrie is widely recognized for her contributions in the employment provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act as well as her advocacy on behalf of children with special needs.

Prior to entering private practice in 1997, Lorrie served as Project Head for the Employment Law Project at Community Legal Services, Inc. in Philadelphia. In 1997 she argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in a case involving constitutional due process issues for people receiving medical benefits pursuant to the Pennsylvania Workers’ Compensation Act. Her work in that case is highlighted in an exhibit in the Supreme Court Section of the United States Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

For over a decade, Lorrie has been selected by her peers as one of the “Best Lawyers in America.” Since 2008, she has also been listed as a “Super Lawyer” by Thompsons Reuters based on peer recognition and professional achievement.

LINKS:

• Oross v. Kutztown University | https://casetext.com/case/oross-v-kutztown-univ
• McKinley & Ryan, LLC | https://www.mckinleyryan.com/
• "Kutztown professor with heart transplant should have been able to teach from home, judge says," Susan Snyder, The Phildadelphia Inquirer | https://bit.ly/49PcBNL
• Out d'Coup LIVE | Steve Oross - Kutztown U Demands Faculty Member to Choose Between Life and Livelihood, Sept. 6, 2021 | https://bit.ly/3h9EuqZ
• Disability Rights PA | https://www.disabilityrightspa.org/

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If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

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Kathryn Joyce is an investigative editor at In These Times, a freelance investigative reporter, and the author of two books: The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption and Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.

Kathryn was formerly a reporter with Type Investigations and Salon, a contributing editor at The New Republic, and a contributing writer at Highline. Her work has also appeared in numerous publications including Mother Jones, The Marshall Project, Longreads, The New York Times Magazine, Vox, The American Prospect, The Intercept, The Nation, Cosmopolitan, Adirondack Life, The Atlantic, Ms., The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and many others. 

She is formerly the editor of Political Research Associates’ quarterly magazine The Public Eye, and teaches as an adjunct lecturer in Brooklyn College’s political science department.

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What's on your mind? Would love to know.

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Meyers is running for the 53rd New York State Senate District with the aim of bringing a fresh approach to representing Central New Yorkers in their state government. He is a veteran with a strong background in service and leadership. Meyers grew up in a working-class environment in Upstate New York in a family who dedicated their professional lives to the service of others. After graduating from SUNY Brockport via an ROTC scholarship with a degree in history, he accepted a commission into active service as an intelligence officer in the United States Army. He currently holds the rank of Major in the Army Reserve.

While serving in the U.S. Army Reserve, he earned a master’s degree in strategic intelligence. His military service led to a position with Alion Science and Technology, a government contracting firm in Rome, NY where he was responsible for the management and completion of million-dollar projects. His love for central New York, the influence of his family, his education, military career and civilian experience, James is motivated to serve our community with the same passion and dedication he has and continues to serve our country.

Meyers is running on a platform of transparency, accountability, and putting the needs of his constituents first. He is an advocate for public safety, economic development, and accessible and affordable healthcare.

LINKS:

• James Meyers for State Senate webpage: https://www.james-meyers.com/
• Follow on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MeyersforNY
• Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/meyersforstatesenate
• Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/meyersforsenate

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Today:

• Have we seen the end of Moms for Liberty? Don’t count on it. 
• GOP operative Clarice Shillenger’s hypocrisy heading to trial. Who knows, maybe we’ll find out the Paul Martino will be chipping in on her legal bills too? I mean, he did bankroll her attacks on public schools…but that was before his Philly restaurant went bust…so, who knows. 
• And we’re seeing Souderton School District and the Kutztown Area School District organizing to beat back the kind of right-wing extremism we’ve been dealing with in Pennridge and Central Bucks.
• New coalition, PAWInS, launches to coordinate information and organizing against extremist attacks on public schools in PA. 

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The complaint charges that the Pennridge School District has discriminated against LGBTQ+ students and students of color in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Educational Amendments Act of 1972. We’ll talk about what all that means and the history of ongoing and systemic discrimination in the districts. And, we’ll talk about what the election of a new school board majority may mean for how this complaint addressed. 

Ashli Giles-Perkins joined the Philadelphia office of the Education Law Center in October 2020 as an Independence Foundation Public Interest Law Fellow. Ashli’s work centers on addressing the significant educational injustices for youth involved in the child welfare and juvenile justice systems in the Philadelphia area who enter, reside in, and leave residential facilities. Ashli provides representation of students and families, training for families and communities, and significant outreach to stakeholders to ensure oversight, accountability, and access to quality education for system-involved youth.

Originally from Bridgeport, Connecticut, Ashli graduated with a J.D. from Loyola University Chicago School of Law with a certificate in child & family law, as well as with an M.Ed. in cultural educational policy studies from Loyola Chicago’s School of Education. While at Loyola, Ashli interned with Advocates for Children of New York and the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. 

Adrienne King is a wife, mother of two daughters in the Pennridge School District, and an outspoken leader and advocate in the community. Adrienne founded The PairUP Society , a 501c3 non-profit organization after experiencing difficulties in her children's school district and realizing the difficulties of navigating that system for her and other underrepresented students and their families. The PairUp Society helps build community among underrepresented students and their families and provide them with resources to advocate for their needs while also activating allies to provide support.   

Adrienne holds a BS in Chemistry from the University of Pittsburgh, MS in Quality Assurance and Regulatory Affairs from Temple University and leadership certifications from Duke University and Cornell University. Adrienne and her family currently reside in Perkasie, PA where she is committed to putting roots down in their community and doing the work to create a sense of psychological safety, belonging and inclusion for all community members

LINKS

• Education Law Center | https://www.elc-pa.org/
• The PairUp Society | https://www.thepairupsociety.org/
• Civil Rights Complaint against Pennridge School District | https://bit.ly/3RBZCZB
• WHYY article on the Civil Rights complaint | https://bit.ly/4agzU47
• "Civil RIghts Complaint Filed Against Pennridge School District," Jenny Stephens, Bucks County Beacon | https://bit.ly/3NnFbNH
• "Understanding OCR complaints, like in the Pennridge School District, and their role to ensure equal access to high-quality public education," Jenny Stephens, Bucks County Beacon | https://bit.ly/3GBhHAP

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If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress.

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New Republican Christian nationalist Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson calls the separation between church and state a “misnomer” and a “misunderstanding” of the true intent of the Founders. 

A judge has cleared the way for a slew of lawsuits against Meta and other tech giants to go forward. 42 state attorneys general and multiple school districts are suing the companies as knowingly designing their platforms to be addictive for kids, despite knowing about the harm those platforms induce. 

Pennridge School District faces a new federal Civil Rights complaint over “the district’s ongoing discriminatory policies, practices, and an environment perceived as hostile due to ongoing race- and sex-based harassment.” The outgoing school board majority only poured fuel on the fires of discrimination, enacting overtly discriminatory policies. 

Central Bucks School Board votes to give outgoing superintendent Abram Lucabaugh a $712,000 golden parachute after he abruptly resigned following the results of this month’s elections. Newly elected school board members say, not so fast. 

A federal judge also ordered Lucabaugh not to delete any documents related to a federal lawsuit alleging retaliation against Central Bucks teacher Andre Burgess, who filed a federal discrimination complaint on behalf of a transgender student. 

Doylestown’s own Pink has teamed up with PEN American to give away more than 2,000 banned books during her shows in Florida this week. 

Book recommendations: Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World; Rebecca Campbell, Aboreality; Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Astrotopia: The Dangerous Religion of the Corporate Space Race.

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Jennifer Cohn is an attorney, election integrity advocate, and political essayist. In addition to writing on elections and Christian nationalism for the Bucks County Beacon, her writing has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Who What Why, The Independent, TYT Investigates, The Brad Blog, and Salon. You can follow Jennifer on the platform formally known as Twitter at @jennycohn1 and on Mastodon at jennycohn@toad.social.

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You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/7XzfKUWCmh

If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress.

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Key links: 

• Vote for these Pennridge School Board Candidates: https://www.pennridgecommunityalliance.com/
• Vote for these Central Bucks School Board Candidates: https://www.cbsdneighborsunited.com/
• Vote for these Council Rock School Board Candidates: https://www.togetherforcouncilrock.org/
• Vote for these Bucks County Board of Commissioners & Judicial Candiates: https://bucksdemocrats.org/candidates/

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We'll be talking about her new article in the Bucks County Beacon, “Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick’s Support for New House Speaker Mike Johnson Shows Voters Who He Really Is.” In that piece, Kierstyn writes about how Fitz was selling the new Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, to the so-called “moderate” Problem Solvers Caucus and big donors tied to No Labels. Fitzpatrick went to lengths to help rebrand Johnson as a 'Reagan Republican' and tried to lend some of his "moderate" vibes to Johnson, who we all know is a MAGA extremist

Kierstyn Zolfo is a resident of Bucks County and a volunteer organizer with Indivisible Bucks County. She also serves on the steering committee of Pennsylvania Indivisible as the Legislative Chair, and in that position edits and contributes to the Pennsylvania Member of Congress Tracking report, an effort that keeps an eye on the votes and quotes from the Commonwealth's 20 Members of Congress. Kierstyn is originally from New Jersey but moved to PA when she was an undergrad at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster and has stuck around the area ever since.

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House Republicans finally managed to elect a new speaker of the house. Introducing Mike Johnson, the anti-LGBTQ, election-denying, climate crisis-denying, right-wing Christian nationalist leader of the Republican-led House. 

Amazon announces near-record profits after two straight years of eliminating jobs and tightening worker surveillance. Also in Amazon news, a new report shows that more than 4 in 10 Amazon workers report being injured on the job, and about 80% of workers feel the stare of Big Brother, surveilling them at work. Coincidence? 

Biden’s strong support of the Israeli government - even during its indiscriminate, ongoing bombing of civilian areas in Gaza - is hitting him in the polls. 

The Biden administration approved the bombing of targets in Syria after drone and rocket attacks against American forces stationed in Iraq and Syria. 

And another mass shooting rocks the country, this time in Lewiston, Maine. At least 18 people have been killed and the killer remains on the loose. 

Florida Gov. Ron Desantis’s solution to mass killings is to make guns easier to purchase and institutionalize more people against their will. Freedom rings. 

Pennridge School District passes anti-trans policy in the name of “protecting girls sports,” providing a platform for Republican school board candidates to approve of the culture war before the Nov. 7 election.

Pennridge parent Darren Lausten won his lawsuit against Pennridge School District. The Judge ordered the District to hand over its book-banning records. 

Council Rock School District is the next target of Moms for Liberty - hoping to bring the politics dominating Pennridge and Central Bucks to their district. 

Pennsylvania’s Republican-led Senate passes state-wide book-banning bill. 

And so much more.

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If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Become a patron for the price of a good beer once a month. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress.

 Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/7XzfKUWCmh

If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

This interview was conducted on October 1, 2023 as a featured event during the PA Climate Convergence in Harrsiburg. Joslyn was supposed to interview Alan Gratz, but Alan unfortunately got COVID just a few days before the event. Karen Feridun from the PA Climate Convergence asked if I would be willing to step in and interview Joslyn. I was more than happy to step up.

If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. We’re here for the fight and we need you. Become a patron for the price of a good beer once a month. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress.

• Heather Hulton Vantassel, Exec. Dir. Three Rivers Waterkeeper
• Liz Evans, Third Act Pennsylvania
• Heaven Sunski, Organizing Director, Center for Coalfield Justice
• Kate Proust, TIAA-Divest
• NaTisha Washington, Communications Director, Breath Project
• Julia Nakhleh, Climate Reality Project
• Kevin Long, Pastor of Intertwined
• Frank Fortino, Extinction Rebellion - Philly

If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. We’re here for the fight and we need you. Become a patron for the price of a good beer once a month. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress.

If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Republicans seem hell bent on shutting down the government as a deal to fund the government by the September 30th deadline is nowhere in sight. 

Yesterday the government started notifying federal employees that a shutdown is imminent. We’ll start seeing government layoffs, military personnel will stop receiving paychecks, WIC payments will stop after a few days, many National Parks will shut down, and SNAP benefits will have to dip into emergency funds to keep assistance flowing for a short time. 

No worries when it comes to student loans, however. Student loan payments will resume on Sunday, October 1, as scheduled. 

Gov. Shapiro announced automatic voter registration for the Commonwealth. 

More Pennridge School Board chaos as the Board passes anti-trans policies regarding sports and biological sex. 

The lawsuit against the Pennridge School Board’s shadow book banning practices went to court on Tuesday. The mounting legal fees in the district caused more strife among board members. Jordan Adams gives a new “report” to the board which is mostly him defending himself against mounting criticism…and I assume taxpayers will foot the bill for that too. 

PA Climate Convergence begins this Sunday.

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Republicans ready to shut down the government because…well…just because.

Biden Administration announced the creation of the American Climate Corps.

Pennridge School Board now starts to face lawsuits in response to their unaccountable, extremist, and potentially illegal policies. Darren Lausten’s lawsuit against the school board for its secret book banning heads to court this Tuesday at Bucks County Courthouse in Doylestown. 

APSCUF negotiations continue. As the PASSHE administration continues to do its best to invest in PR while gutting faculty and programs, we’ll take a quick look at some numbers for perspective.

If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. We’re here for the fight and we need you. Become a patron for the price of a good beer once a month. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress.

In addition to his lead role as Editor-in-Chief for the Beacon, Cyril Mychalejko has over two decades of journalistic experience. His work has appeared in The Bucks County Courier Times, The Intelligencer, Upside Down World, Common Dreams, TruthOut, and other publications. 

Emily Smith, the Beacon’s Publisher, is a seasoned design professional with nearly a decade of experience in strategic communications. Emily has spent nearly two decades working with startups and small businesses. Beyond her design chops, Emily is a creative problem solver, and business strategist. She has also owned her own graphic design firm since 2003, working with nearly every imaginable client including small businesses, giant corporations, non-profits, and community organizations.

Support the Beacon during their Fall fund drive: https://buckscountybeacon.com/support-the-beacon/

If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Hurricane Lee rapidly intensifies to a powerful Category 5 storm in the Atlantic. While current models predict the storm will not directly hit major populated areas, the storms rapid intensification is linked to the record warm temperatures of the Atlantic, providing a window into our climate futures. 

Hong Kong was inundated with flash floods as more rain fell on the region since records started being kept in 1884. Over 19 inches of rain fell on Hong Kong in 24 hours, with over six inches falling between 11PM and midnight last night. 

West Virginia University becomes the latest “canary in the coal mine” in higher education. The university has announced deep cuts, which will eliminate 169 faculty members (7% of the faculty) and 32 of the university’s 338 majors. The president of WCU, Gordon Gee, told the New York Times, “We simply have lost the support of the American public,” when explaining the lack of funding for public universities.  

Elon Musk admits that he unilaterally denied the Ukrainian military access to the Starlink satellite internet service to prevent a Ukrainian drone attack against some of the Russian naval fleet near the coast of Crimea. Privatized, billionaire-run government anyone?

Later today and tomorrow, York, PA will play host to a “Big” Christian Nationalist/Dominionist conference featuring a who’s-who of right-wing religious ideologues. PA Representative Wendy Fink, representing PA’s 94th district, has actively promoted the event on social media, telling readers “Come out to the Big Event at Praise Community Church in York on Sept. 8 to hear me speak about how you can build a community action team at your local church.” That’s right before she and her staff provide the religious zealots and “Introduction to Firearms” followed by a cozy Pastor’s breakfast. Will any major media outlets cover the event?

Great new podcast from the Bucks County Beacon! The Civic Circle is a GenZ hosted and focused podcast from the Bucks County Beacon with production assistance from yours truly! Check out Cyril’s interview with the hosts on the latest episode of The Signal and look for the premiere of their first show right around the corner!

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty, and their oligarch friends buy our schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/. J

• Trump seeks narrow rules on what he can do with evidence his lawyers receive as part of his criminal case of election interference. In other words, he wants to be able to target and intimidate potential witnesses among other things. 
• Biden’s student debt relief plan for students who were victims of fraud by for-profit colleges is blocked by a federal court. 
• The Florida Department of Education has effectively banned an Advanced Placement course in psychology because of the state’s new law prohibiting discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity. 
• Right-wing think tanks and corporate lobbyists have already written their blueprint to undercut action on the climate crisis. It’s called Project 2025.
• Don’t be fooled by claims that a new law will keep kids safe online. KOSA - the Kids Online Safety Act is a bipartisan bill that purports to clamp down on Big Tech and protect kids. However, the bill could do a lot more than that. 
• D&D community up in arms against Hasbro and Wizards of the Coast after finding out the some of the art for a new source book, Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants. 
• There’s so much more - plus, I’d love to hear what’s on your mind! Here we go!

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress/.

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty & Their Oligarch Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

So, today we'll talk the summer that UN Secretary General has termed the beginning of the "era of global boiling." But we'll also focus on upcoming actions this week, later this summer, and in the fall that will demand decisive, immediate climate action. It's time to make plans to be in Harrisburg this October for PA Climate Convergence. The Convergence will bring advocates, activists, and concerned residents to Harrisburg to tell Gov. Shapiro, lawmakers, and regulators that they are having the wrong conversation on climate and need to change their stance. We’ll talk about why lawmakers are keeping PA from being part of the solution to the climate crisis and what all of us can do to change that.

In addition to founding Berks Gas Truth and co-founding the Better Path Coalition, for the past 11 years, Karen Feridun has worked with organizations in PA, NY, NJ, and DE to win the ban on fracking in the Delaware River Basin that was imposed in February. She is currently part of an international coalition working to stop Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports and a national coalition working with members of Congress to reform the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

LINKS:

• Berks Gas Truth: https://gastruth.org/
• PA Climate Convergence: https://www.pennsylvaniaclimateconvergence.org/

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

UPS Teamsters announced a “historic” contract win a week before what could have been one of the largest strikes in American history. The details of the contract will be the proof to that claim. Since the announcement some UPS Teamsters are saying the unions 180,000 part-time workers may not get as good of a deal as suggested. 

In what could prove to be a sign that higher education faculty are willing to step up and fight to a greater degree, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) voted to affiliate with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). The alliance will be the largest union of higher education faculty - about 300,000 strong. 

Following new scientific data from the World Meteorological Organization on this summer’s record heat, UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, proclaimed that the era of global warming has ended and the “era of global boiling has arrived.” 

It’s been so hot in Arizona that the state’s famous Saguaro cacti are literally collapsing. 

Ocean temperatures of over 100 degrees in waters around Florida could be a global record. 

Something else that climate change is giving us to worry about. More Americans are developing a rare meat allergy - Alpha-gal syndrome - which is linked to bites from the lone star tick. New data from the CDC find a steep increase in cases of alpha-gal. Alpha-gale can give you  “stomach cramps, diarrhea, hives, and shortness of breath that could trigger fatal anaphylaxis,” according to the BBC. 

GM and other major automakers announce they will build 30,000 electric vehicle chargers to help build out the electric vehicle charging network. 

While Republican politicians and media personalities make is seem as though all parents are up in arms about their public schools, about 80% of parents responding to a new Gallup poll say they are somewhat or completely satisfied with their child’s school. That confirms what a string of other polls conducted during the pandemic have shown. There’s a gap between the political propaganda and real schools. 

And Mitch McConnell suffers a medical incident in the middle of a press conference. The party line is that “he’s fine” but no information about what actually happened has been released. 

Central Bucks school board votes to give their superintendent, Dr. Abram Lucabauh, an $86,000 raise and a new 5 year contract after he joined with the board's new right-wing board to enact book bans, anti-LGBTQ politics, and more. He will now be one of highest paid public school administrators in PA.

Pennridge School District board members are enraged over “secret” curriculum meetings between Vermillion Education’s Jordan Adams and select members of the board. Christening Batycki, a member of the curriculum committee, found out “by happenstance” that Jordan Blomgren and Megan Banis-Clemens were meeting secretly with Adams to discuss the direction of the curriculum. 

Barbie breaks box office records as the right-wing loses it’s collective mind (again). 

Sinéad O’Connor dies at age 56. Morrissey writes a passionate tribute to her and condemns the music industry for their treatment of her.

Al Bradbury joined the staff of Labor Notes in 2012, after working with hospital workers as a researcher and organizer for Service Employees Local 49 in Oregon. Al edits Labor Notes and covers postal workers and Teamsters. She's also an occasional singer-songwriter. She is based in Seattle. 

LINKS: 

• Alexandra Bradbury and Luis Feliz Leon, "UPS Teamsters 'Just Practicing," Labor Notes, 7/19/23 | https://labornotes.org/2023/07/ups-teamsters-just-practicing
• Follow Al on Twitter@al_bradbury | https://twitter.com/al_bradbury 
• Labor Notes | https://www.labornotes.org/
• Upcoming Labor Notes events: https://labornotes.org/events

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Rep. Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin just introduced new legislation to attack the National Education Association’s charter in order to gut teacher union power. 

Chad Connelly, a Christian nationalist operative and former “faith outreach director” for the Republican National Committee, runs a voter mobilization organization called Faith Wins. Connelly has organized dozens of secret meetings between top Republican presidential candidates and right-wing pastors, giving pastors the opportunity to grill the candidates on political issues and pray over them.

A train derailed in Whitemarsh Township in Montgomery County on Monday. We all got lucky. Turns out most of the cars were carrying Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG) and toxic chemicals. A bomb train that luckily did not go off.  

And are you ready for the launch of a nationwide effort to destroy teachers’ unions? Let me introduce you to the first-annual “Teacher Freedom Summit.”  It’s what all the right-wing education privateers and religious zealots have been drooling over.

Tonight we'll be talking about her recent article in TruthOut, "A Jan. 6 “Moms” Group Funded by Big Lie Donors Is Stoking Voter Suppression." And, we'll give you the spoiler right up front: It's NOT Moms for Liberty we'll be talking about. The right-wing extremist group “Moms for America” has been flying under the radar as it works to undermine our rights. 

Alyssa received her PhD in History from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2021 with an interest in fascism and antifascism, solidarity and social movements, immigration/exile and transnational history. She has bylines in the Nation and in Truthout, where she is a regular contributor. More of her public writing can be found on True North Research’s website and Substack. 

LINKS: 

• Alyssa Bowen: "A Jan. 6 “Moms” Group Funded by Big Lie Donors Is Stoking Voter Suppression," TruthOut | https://bit.ly/3rqMn3v
• Follow Alyssa on Twitter @AlyssaAnnBowen | https://twitter.com/AlyssaAnnBowen
• True North Research: https://truenorthresearch.org/

RESOURCES: 

• Documented: https://documented.net/
• Center for Media and Democracy: https://www.prwatch.org/ 
• Racial Justice Training Series with H.E.A.L. Together: https://bit.ly/3f3vBRG 
• All H.E.A.L. Together trainings: https://www.raceforward.org/trainings 

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty, and their oligarch friends buy our schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. 

You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty, & their oligarch friends buy our schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/. 

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty, and their oligarch friends buy our schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Chris Ullery has been a reporter with the Bucks County Courier Times since 2015, covering municipal government, infrastructure and the Central Bucks School District. His mostly self-taught skills in the Python computer programming language have helped him flesh out and analyze years of voter registration data, track COVID-19 cases at the start of the pandemic in 2020, and build a 10-year database of 911 call logs in Bucks County. In addition to using his programming experience to track extremist movements, he will work with local newsrooms in the USA Today Network to help tell stories by the numbers. Chris Graduated Frostburg State University in 2014 with a B.S. in English (major in Literature, minor in Journalism) near his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland. 

LINKS: 

• "Emails show how religious liberties law firm has influenced Bucks and York schools," Chris Ullery & Bethany Rodgers, Bucks County Courier Times | https://bit.ly/442QWiH 
• "Libraries to locker rooms: How a religious law firm is changing PA school policies," Chris Ullery & Bethany Rodgers, Bucks County Courier Times | https://bit.ly/3ojlrki 
• Follow Chris on Twitter | https://twitter.com/ulleryatintell You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

And while the national media was urgently reporting on the fate of 5 people on a shoddy submarine seeking to tour the Titanic wreck, North Atlantic ocean temperatures went off the map. The unexpected heating of the Atlantic is, in the words of Bill McKibben, “truly terrifying news.” 

In addition, an unprecedented “heat dome” over Mexico and Texas is producing deadly storms and heat. The jet stream maps are wild. 

A meteorologist in Iowa resigned from his local TV news job due to ongoing threats from climate change deniers. 

New reporting by Cyril Mychalejko in the Bucks County Beacon shows how the right-wing donor group, the Bradley Foundation, is now helping bankroll efforts to help Republicans weaponize the Department of Justice. 

Moms for Liberty is holding their annual national summit in Philadelphia beginning next week. They will be met by protests as they host a range of Republican presidential hopefuls including Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former Trump official and South Carolina Governor, Nikki Haley. And, now we’ve learned that pseudo-populist, anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist, Robert Kenndy, Jr. will be speaking there as well. 

As the Mad Moms get ready to gather in Philly, yet another M4L chapter in Indiana is under fire for quoting Hitler approvingly in their newsletter. 

New reporting in Vice documents the close relationship M4L has cultivated with the Proud Boys and other extremist organizations. 

And let’s not forget about the leader of the Monroe County, PA M4L chapter who stole a dead woman’s Facebook identity to harass others. Seems to me that all the bad apples are in the same place. 

Info on protests in the Bucks County Beacon. 

New reporting in the Bucks County Courier-Times shows how the Harrisburg-based  right-wing religious Independence Law Firm has influenced and continues to influence Central Bucks and York schools. 

The Pennridge School Board meeting was packed once again as the far-right majority continued to force through their agenda and demonstrate their incompetence. The highlight of the meeting was a Zoom presentation by Jordan Adams, the CEO of Vermilion Education. We’ll get into that. 

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty & Their Oligarch Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty, and their oligarch friends buy our schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Aly previously spent 8 years as an environmental justice organizer at Pittsburgh UNITED and labor organizer at UFCW Local 1776. Over the years she has led campaigns to prevent the privatization of Pittsburgh’s water system, to make drinking water safer and more affordable, and organized grocery store workers to win higher wages and safer working conditions during the COVID 19 pandemic. She received her BA in Political Science from the University of Pittsburgh and her Master’s in Public Administration from Carnegie Mellon University. 

LINKS:

• Aly Shaw, "The American Petroleum Institute Love Pennsylvania, As Its Lobbying Shows," LittleSis, Eyes on the Ties | https://bit.ly/3MI4qsM 
• LittleSis.org | https://littlesis.org/ 
• Eyes on the Ties - News and analysis from LittleSis | https://news.littlesis.org/ 
• Follow Aly on Twitter @AlyMS77 | https://twitter.com/AlyMS77 

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty, & their oligarch friends buy our schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Donald Trump has officially been indicted (again) in Federal court on seven criminal counts. Let the circus begin (again). 

Smoke from wildfires across Canada blanketed much of the East Coast. The Air Quality Index showed hazardous amounts of particulate matter in the air and the skies turned orange and yellow like a scene out of Bladerunner 2049.

In a surprise decision, the US Supreme Court upheld the a provision of the Voting Rights Act in a case involving racial gerrymandering in Alabama. 

160,000 SAG-AFTRA members voted to authorize strike ahead of negotiations. 97.9% of members voting approved the authorization. This comes in the midst of the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike which began on May 2. The WGA strike is the largest job action in the television and film industry since COVID. 

A new scientific study finds that the summers in the Arctic ocean may be ice-free by 2030. That’s about a decade sooner than previously thought. 

And a new report in ProPublica finds that more than 600,000 people are already living outside of a crucial “climate niche,” and climate change is ontrack to displace more than one-third of humanity.

The full-scale dumpster fire that is the Pennridge School Board was on full display on Wednesday. After switching the meeting time several times for this week’s scheduled committee meetings, a last-minute Zoom meeting showed once again how utterly dysfunctional and disastrous the Republican controlled board truly is. The scheduled appearance of Vermillion Education’s Jordan Adams has been postponed to a date only Megan Banis-Clemens and her minions know. We’ll play you some sound from the meeting. Meanwhile, Jordan Adams tries to do the twitter two-step with a little deflection. 

Workers at the Museum of the American Revolution are demanding that the museum’s leadership cancel a planned Moms for Liberty event at the museum ahead of the extremist group’s convention in Philly from June 29 - July 2. 

Speaking of Moms for Liberty, this week the Southern Poverty Law Center has added the group to its list of hate groups and anti-government extremists. 

The Valley Forge Classical Academy (VFCA) - a new charter school in Chester County build on the kind of Christian Nationalist curriculum we’ve seen come out of Hillsdale College - is using a fictitious social media account to cause division, promote hate, and promote the VFCA. 

Great time at the Pennridge Democrats Trivia night last night at Free Will Brewery. Congrats to the Rainbow Unicorns for taking home the trophy!

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty & Their Oligarch Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Eleanor Goldfield is a creative radical, journalist, and filmmaker. Mutual aid and community organizing are cornerstones of her work and personal life, informing both her journalistic and artistic projects.

Her written and photo journalism has appeared in independent publications across the U.S. and internationally. She is one of the 2020 recipients of the “Women and Media Award” presented by The Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press. She is currently a board member of the Media Freedom Foundation.

Recently, she released her first solo EP, titled “No Solo,” after more than a decade fronting the political hard rock band Rooftop Revolutionaries.

Her recent documentary film, “Hard Road of Hope,” which covers the radical history and present struggles in West Virginia has been widely acclaimed.

Currently, Eleanor is the co-host of the podcast Common Censored along with Lee Camp as well as the Project Censored radio show with Mickey Huff.

LINKS:

• Eleanor Goldfield, "If the Police Can Decide Who Qualifies as a Journalist, There is No Free Press," in TruthOut | https://bit.ly/45OCLiK
• Eleanor Goldfield on Twitter: @RadicalEleanor | https://twitter.com/RadicalEleanor
• Common Censored podcast | https://commoncensored.libsyn.com/
• Project Censored radio show on Pacifica | https://www.projectcensored.org/radio/
• Eleanor's new documentary, "Hard Road of Hope" | https://hardroadofhope.com/
• Eleanor's new solo album, "No Solo" | https://bit.ly/3OUUKh5
• ArtKillingApathy | https://artkillingapathy.com/

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress/. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty & Their Oligarch Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Part of the debt limit deal ensures students will start paying their loans again at the end of the summer. And, Manchin will get his pipeline. 

In a separate attack on student debt holders, the U.S. Senate voted to block Biden’s student loan relief package. Biden says he’ll veto. 

The U.S. economy adds 339,000 jobs in May, way beyond economists’ expectations. 

Hundreds of Gannet newspaper journalists are set to walk off the job in protest of the company’s leadership and deep job cuts. 

A new report shows that the world’s wheat supply may be vulnerable to crisis due to climate change. 

Demonstrating once again that our justice system is built for the rich, the Sacklers will not face any personal liability for the billions they made fanning the flames of the opioid crisis. 

Eugene DePasquale announces he will run for Attorney General. 

New Jersey closes sections of the NJ Turnpike due to wild fires.

And Philadelphia was covered in haze this week for the worst wildfires in Nova Scotia’s history. 

Mike Gambone has a great review in the Bucks County Beacon of a new book on the John Birch Society by Matthew Dallek.

And teens in Fort Wayne, IN point the way. After their play, “Marian, or The True Tale of Robin Hood” was canceled by their school, the teens raised money and put it on anyway. “Marian” is a “gender-bending take on Sherwood Forest’s beloved bandit,” .was canceled because of its LGBTQ content. 

If we want a progressive future, we need progressive media. Support pull-no-punches, homegrown progressive media today by becoming a patron of Raging Chicken for as little as $5/month. Simply go to Patreon.com/RCPress. We’re here for the fight and we need you. Become a patron for the price of a good beer once a month. Help keep the media in the movement and the movement in the media. Become a patron for as little as $5/month by going to Patreon.com/RCPress. Not ready to become a patron? Drop us a one time donation at PayPal.me/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty & Their Oligarch Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Ron DeSantis officially announced that he’s running for president on Twitter. Well, sort of. The planned announcement through a Twitter live audio broadcast went horribly awry as Elon Musk once again demonstrated how he’s wreaked havoc on the platform. But, maybe it’s just par for the course for DeSantis. Bring in the autocratic clowns. 

Indiana medical board reprimands the doctor who spoke publicly about providing abortion services to a 10-year-old rape victim from Ohio. The case was one of the first such stories to emerge in wake of the overturning of Roe v Wade by the U.S. Supreme Court. Ohio banned abortion after a heartbeat could be detected. That’s about 6 week. 

Steward Rhodes, founder of the right-wing extremist group the Oath Keepers, was sentenced to 18 years in jail for his role orchestrating the January 6th violent attack on the nation’s Capitol. 

Climate scientists are bailing on Twitter after Elon Musk took over the platform, reporting a growing hostile environment, increasing levels of racism and sexism, and bots pushing climate misinformation. 

Texas approves a bill that will allow public schools to replace counselors with uncertified chaplains. 

A Mom for Liberty is working to have Amanda Gorman’s poem, “The Hill We Climb,” banned from schools on the grounds that it is “not educational” and contains “hate messages.” Gorman read her poem at Biden’s inaugural. 

And on the flip-side of the book-banning fight, The Education Department’s Office of Civil Rights has released findings saying that a Georgia school district's removal from libraries books with Black and LGBTQ content may have violated students’ civil rights. 

In new reporting by Aly Shaw in LilttleSis, we learn that the lobbying arm of Big Oil, the American Petroleum Institute, has spent nearly $1.8 million in Pennsylvania to push its interests. Aly will be coming on Out d’Coup LIVE on June 12 to talk about her piece. 

A Bucks County judge issued an injunction against Republican operatives who were distributing fake sample ballots for Region 2 of the Palisades School District during the primaries.

Pennridge School Board member Ricki Chaiken turned to a Facebook parents group to issue a lengthy, paragraph challenged screed defending the Board’s shift toward extremism and discrimination. In it, she makes it clear that fellow board member, Jordan Blomgren, had been talking with Hillsdale College’s Jordan Adams well before Adams started his for-profit consultancy, Vermillion Education. 

Perkasie Farmers Market opens on June 3rd! Woot!

Pennridge Democrats are hosting a fundraising Trivia Night on Thursday, June 8 at Free Will Brewing. Check out their FB event page for details.

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty, and their oligarch friends buy our schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

• The Woodland Park school board was taken over by conservatives in 2021. They moved quickly to radically transform the district, learning from the tactics of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, and bolstered by big-money fueling Christian nationalists curricular changes. 
• These “American Birthright” curricular standards passed by the Woodland Park school board are similar to the Hillsdale College K-12 curriculum, but target State Standards as well as District ones. 

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signs a bill that dramatically limits transgender medical treatments, restricts pronoun use in schools, and forces people to use bathrooms corresponding to their birth sex. 

New York City is sinking due to the massive weight of its skyscrapers. Studies are showing that will only exacerbate the effects of climate change.

Cherelle Parker wins the hotly contested and closely watched race for Philly's next mayor. One of Parker’s campaign pledges was to hire more police in the midst of a wave of violence in the city. She is not set to become Philly’s first Black woman mayor. The most progressive candidate in the race, Helen Gym came in third. Gym’s campaign was quick to offer congratulations and support for Parker as she pledged to continue to build grassroots power. 

Sara Innamorato wins big in the Democratic primary for Allegheny County executive. Much of Innamorato’s win is rooted in the work she and other members of the progressive community in the County have done to build a strong, progressive movement. The Pittsburgh area continues to build a model of deep-rooted progressive organizing. 

As the Intercept reported, the results for Tuesday’s primary were a mixed bag for progressives. The Pittsburgh area seeing progressive gains, while Philadelphia showing a stronger preference for more moderate Democratic Party machine platforms. 

Democrats will maintain control of the Pennsylvania House following Heather Boyd’s win in Tuesday’s special election to fill the empty seat in the 163rd district in Delaware County. 

There were some promising signs in the Pennridge and Central Bucks school board races. Both of those races showed signs that some Republicans may be supporting Democratic candidates after a few years of right-wing extremism on their boards. 

Central Bucks still in the book banning business as the school board orders the removal of “Gender Queer” and “This Book is Gay,” from library shelves.

Kathryn Joyce is an investigative editor at In These Times, a freelance investigative reporter and the author of two books: The Child Catchers: Rescue, Trafficking and the New Gospel of Adoption and Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement.

Formerly a reporter with Type Investigations and Salon, a contributing editor at The New Republic and a contributing writer at Highline. Her work has also appeared in numerous publications including Mother Jones, Vanity Fair, The Marshall Project, Longreads, The New York Times Magazine, Vox, The American Prospect, The Intercept, The Nation, Cosmopolitan, Adirondack Life, The Atlantic, Ms., The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, and many others. 

She is formerly the editor of Political Research Associates’ quarterly magazine The Public Eye, and teaches as an adjunct lecturer in Brooklyn College’s political science department.

LINKS: 

• "Mad Moms: A New Christian Nationalist Front Group Claims To Champion Parental Involvement In Public Education. Critics Say There’s A More Nefarious Agenda Afoot," Kathryn Joyce, Church & State | https://bit.ly/3nQnhJJ 
• Kathryn Joyce on the web |  http://kathrynjoyce.com/
• Follow Katrhyn Joyce on Twitter | https://twitter.com/kathrynajoyce

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty, and their oligarch friends buy our schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

In "A New War on Cancer," Kristina Marusic does a deep dive into the remarkable doctors, scientists, and advocates who are upending our understanding of cancer and how to fight it. They recognize that we will never reduce cancer rates without ridding our lives of the chemicals that increasingly trigger this deadly disease.

Kristina Marusic is an award-winning journalist who covers environmental health and justice for Environmental Health News. She holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of San Francisco, and her personal essays and reporting on topics ranging from the environment, LGBTQ+ equality, and politics to feminism, food, and travel have been published by outlets including CNN, Slate, Vice, Women's Health, the Washington Post, MTV News, The Advocate, and Bustle, among others. She lives in Pittsburgh with her partner of ten years, Michael, and the cutest dog in the world, Mochi. You can visit her online at KristinaMarusic.com

LINKS:

• Kristina Marusic, "A New War on Cancer: The Unlikely Heroes Revolutionizing Prevention" | https://bit.ly/3NphIwa
• Kristina Marusic webpage | https://www.kristinamarusic.com/ 
• Environmental Health News | https://www.ehn.org/

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Republican fraudster representative from New York was arrested and accused of 13 crimes ranging from money-laundering, to fraud, to lying about his finances on congressional disclosure forms. Santos, of course, pleaded not-guilty and has pledged to not resign. 

Elon Musk gives Tucker Carlson a platform a new show on Twitter.

When is BlueSky launching again? Anyone got an invite they can sent my way for the Beta?

The Writers’ Guild Strike strike is going strong and the billion-dollar industry’s refusal to negotiate in good faith for a fair contract is going to hit your binge watching. 

Pennridge School Board meeting goes off the rails again and Board members shut down public comments and threaten community members with forceful removal. That paved the way for passing the far-right board’s discriminatory bathroom policy. The Board even went as far as calling the local police, who were overheard saying “what are we doing here?”

At the same Pennridge meeting, community members and teachers showed up in large numbers to demand the board negotiate in good faith with the teachers’ union. The teachers’ contract is set to expire at the end of June. 

Meanwhile public comments became heated again in the Central Bucks SD school board meeting on Tuesday. Community members and parents spoke out against the Board’s use of a far-right Christian Law Firm to produce a report about the board’s discriminatory LGBTQ policies. Several people also accused right-wing members of the board of bullying and abusive behavior toward other members of the board and the community. 

The PA primary elections are this coming Tuesday, May 16. The future of the Pennridge School District is on the line as is the future of many school boards across the Commonwealth. If you are not registered, it’s too late to register for the primaries. But it’s a GREAT time to register for the general election this fall. Go to Vote.PA.Gov and fill out your voter registration today. Don’t wait if you are not already registered. 

Ryan Padovani, a former Kutztown University student, was killed in Kingston, PA earlier this week. Ryan was a fierce advocate for LGBTQ and disability rights. At this time Ryan’s killer is still at large and Kingston police are asking anyone with any information about the case to contact the Kingston Police Department, Detective Robert Miller at 570-288-3674, ext. 420 or rmiller@kingstonpd.org.

Scientists are looking into whether Spacetime comes from “magic.” I kid you not. 

The corruption doesn’t stop when it comes to Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas. New reporting in the Washington Post this week exposed that Leonard Leo the architect of the right-wing legal juggernaut, the Federalist Society, instructed Kellyanne Conway to use her nonprofit organization to pay Clarence Thomas’s wife, Ginni Thomas, tens of thousands of dollars. Leo told Conway to make sure to leave Ginni Thomas’s name off all the paperwork. 

That reporting comes on the heels of revelations by ProPublica that billionaire Harlan Crow paid the private school tuition for Thomas’s great-nephew, who Thomas was raising “as a son.” Thomas did not disclose the tuition payments as part of his legal obligations to do so. 

North Carolina becomes the latest state to try to further restrict abortion. The Republican majority in passed a new 12 week abortion ban, but the state’s Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, says he’ll veto the legislation. 

Bernie Sanders unveils a new bill that calls for an increase of the federal minimum wage to $17/hour.

Meanwhile, Iowa becomes the latest state to rollback labor protections for children, now allowing for children as young as 14 to work in roofing, construction, demolition, light manufacturing, and assisting customers with fireworks. 16 and 17 year olds will also be able to serve alcohol in restaurants. The bill joins similar ones passed in Arkansas and Missouri that are part of a push by conservative lobbying groups. 

Labor market is going strong as unemployment declines to 3.4%, adding 253,000 jobs. 

Republican frontrunner for NC governor mocked school shooting survivors and once justified shooting protesters

The Freedom Foundation is holding a conference in Denver this July to train right-wing school board activists, anti-union teachers, and white-washed curriculum. 

PA House passes bill that will add LGBTQ protections to the state’s nondiscrimination law. 

Moms for Liberty is holding their conference in Philadelphia this summer ahead of this year’s school board and municipal elections. 

Criticism of  president of Thomas Jefferson Hospital Mark Tykocinski blew up following revelations that he has a habit of liking tweets that question the science behind COVID an call gender reassignment surgery “child mutilation.”

Artificial Intelligence pioneer, Geoffrey Hinton, leaves Google and warns about the potential dangers of rapidly deploying AI.

Vermillion Education is a four-month old company founded by former Hillsdale College teacher, Jordan Adams. Adams is a graduate of the private, conservative Christian Hillsdale College and served as the Associate Director for Instructional Resources in the Barney Charter School Initiative at Hillsdale College. The Barney Charter Initiative seeks to establish a national network of charter schools using Hillsdale's K-12 curriculum.

LINKS:

• "Pennridge School Board wants to hire company with ties to Hillsdale College to help write curriculum," Jenny Stephens, Bucks County Beacon | https://bit.ly/3NnczF0
• "Hillsdale College Comes to Pennridge School District via Vermillion Education," Peter Greene, Bucks County Beacon | https://bit.ly/3LJadil
• Pennridge school board hires consultant with ties to conservative college to review curriculum," Maddie Hanna, Philadelphia Inquirer | https://bit.ly/3oOrKN6
• "What is Vermillion Education and why Florida school boards should care," Katie LaGrone, ABC Action News, Sarasota, FL | https://bit.ly/3VnYCIN
• Florida School Board rejects consultant with ties to Christian college after backlash," Kristina Watrobski, ABC7, Sarasota | https://bit.ly/3LjaIOV
• Jordan Adams at 2020 White House Conference on American History, led by Hillsdale College President, Dr. Larry Arnn. The panel followed President Trump's executive order to create a commission to promote "patriotic education." Adams is the last speaker, but the whole panel provides useful context CSPAN/White House | https://www.c-span.org/person/?127772...
• Influence Watch | Barney Family Foundation | https://bit.ly/3NB3NTI

Don’t Let Paul Martino, Moms for Liberty, & their oligarch friends buy our schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

NOTE: we ran into a little issue with François's mic around 19m 15s. It only lasts about a minute, then we get it fixed. 

In the wake of unabashed anti-union tactics during the recent Temple University graduate university workers’ strike and an overwhelming vote of no-confidence by the faculty union, Temple University president Jason Wingard resigned. However, as we'll talk about today, Wingard's ideas for higher education will, in the words of François Furstenburg, “continue marching across the landscape of higher education like zombies, transforming the content and purpose of curricula in the image of our post-industrial, financialized moment," unless a broader coalition mobilized to stop them. 

François has been a professor of history at Johns Hopkins University since 2014. He previously taught at the Université de Montréal from 2003-2013. He is the author of various books and articles on early American and Atlantic history, as well as co-author on a college textbook. He began writing essays on the state of higher education during the pandemic, in 2020, when he became alarmed by the corporatization of American universities. His writing on the topic can be found at the Chronicle of Higher Education, the American Prospect, and the AAUP magazine and blog.

LINKS: 

• François Furstenburg on his article, "Higher Ed's Grim, Soulless, Ed-Techified Future," in The Chronicle of Higher Education | https://bit.ly/3HcCwTU
• François Furstenburg's webpage | https://bit.ly/3H95G6a

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress/

Don’t Let Paul Martino & His Oligarch Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

It seems that flooding our communities with guns and stoking fear, hate, and misinformation on conservative media is producing a new form of gun violence. This week, several young people were shot - and some killed - as they accidentally knocked on the wrong door or mistakenly got into the wrong car. This is the culture of vigilantism that conservatives funded by the NRA and the gun industry have been grooming us for. 

In Liberty, MO, Ralph Yarl, a 16 year old African American kid, who was going to pick up his sister, but knocked on the wrong door. He was nearly killed.

In Fort Edward, NY, Kaylin Gillis, a 20 year old white woman, was looking for a friend’s house and mistakenly drove up the wrong driveway. She was shot and killed.

In Elgin, Texas, Two competitive cheerleaders, Heather Roth and Payton Washington, were shot after mistakenly getting into the wrong car. Roth suffered a grazing wound while Washington was sent to a hospital in critical condition. 

According to new reporting in Politico, the Rutgers University faculty unions are considering getting back on the picket lines because the administration is dragging its feet in finalizing their “framework deal” that led the unions to suspend their historic weeklong strike. It was the first strike by faculty in Rutgers’s 257 year history. 

The strike won historic victories on wages and job security for adjunct faculty. At the same time, graduate student workers and workers at Rutgers Biomedical Health were still expressing concerns about the deal as several key issues about their working conditions remained to be hammered out. 

After a gun store opened up near several schools in Lower Merion, PA, the township’s board of commissioners unanimously passed a new ordinance that limits where guns can be sold in the township. Starting immediately, firearms businesses can no longer operate within 1,000 feet of public schools, they cannot operate out of homes, can only operate in commercially zoned areas, and they must follow new safety regulations. Commissioner Dan Bernheim said if the new ordinance “moves the needle ever so slightly…that’s the right thing to do.”

On Wednesday night an old, 660 pound satellite came crashing down to Earth in a part of the Sahara desert, near the Sudan-Egypt border. 

And SpaceX’s first test flight of its massive Starship rocket exploded a few minutes after launch. 

Chris Ullery has been a reporter with the Bucks County Courier Times since 2015, covering municipal government, infrastructure and the Central Bucks School District. His mostly self-taught skills in the Python computer programming language have helped him flesh out and analyze years of voter registration data, track COVID-19 cases at the start of the pandemic in 2020, and build a 10-year database of 911 call logs in Bucks County. In addition to using his programming experience to track extremist movements, he will work with local newsrooms in the USA Today Network to help tell stories by the numbers. Chris Graduated Frostburg State University in 2014 with a B.S. in English (major in Literature, minor in Journalism) near his hometown of Cumberland, Maryland.

LINKS:

• Chris Ullery, "Libraries to locker rooms: How a religious law firm is changing PA school policies," Bucks County Courier Times | https://bit.ly/3ojlrki
• Follow Chris on Twitter | https://twitter.com/ulleryatintell
• All Chris's reporting | https://www.phillyburbs.com/staff/5573447002/chris-ullery/

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress/. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

A Federal appeals court refused to suspend the FDA’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone, but upheld a ban on patients being able to sent the pills by mail. That pretty much guarantees the case will be headed to the right-wing dominated US Supreme Court. 

A 21-year-old Air National Guardsman was arrested for his role in leaking on Discord classified documents related to the war in Ukraine. According to the New York Times, Jack Teixeira led a group of “20 to 30 people, mostly young men and teenagers, as they bonded over guns, racist memes, video games and international politics.”

Marjorie Taylor Green does the only thing she’s consistent on - inject reactionary bile into the public discourse. This time she comes out in support of the National Guardsman to leaked classified documents to Discord tweeting out, “Jake Teixeira is a white, male, christian, and antiwar. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. And he told the truth about troops being on the ground in Ukraine and a lot more. Ask yourself who is the real enemy?”

Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Germany’s largest media company and new owner of Politico, is all in on a dystopian climate future. In a series of internal emails and messages published in Die Zeit this week, “I am all in for climate change, arguing that humans have always done better in warmer periods. “We shouldn’t fight climate change but adjust to it,” he said. For good measure, he also wrote in a longer message on his foreign policy views, “Free west, fuck the intolerant Muslims and all the other riff-raff.”

The Fort Lauderdale, FL area received more than two feet of rain over 12 hours on Wednesday, flooding the region and shutting down major airports. The rain amounts to about a third of Fort Lauderdale’s annual rainfall in one shot. The area’s previous record rainfall set in 1979 was 14.59 inches.

Chris Ullery and Bethany Rodgers published an explosive investigation in the Bucks County Courier Times on how the religious law firm, the Independence Law Center, is writing anti-LGBTQ policy for school boards all across Pennsylvania. 

Abortion rights and health care advocates urged state lawmakers and Gov. Shapiro to stop sending public money to support the anti-abortion organization, Real Alternatives, which uses deceptive practices to push patients away from having an abortion while posing as reproductive health clinics. The Wolf Administration allocated more than $7.2 million to Real Alternatives and Gov. Shapiro is continuing the practice, with $6 million in his proposed budget. 

Will Bunch makes the case for a state-takeover of Temple University. He argues, “The best way to restore Temple as a public good — once again serving Philadelphia and surrounding communities as an affordable and accessible way up the ladder — would be to make it (and, arguably, the three other state-supported schools) a fully public university.” 

And award-winning author, Jean Kwok, flew in from the Netherlands to address the Central Bucks School Board about their moves to ban her book. 

Amazon enters the AI race with “Bedrock.”

Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, rocked. 

Currently reading Rick Perlstein’s, “Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus,” and The Bone Shard Emperor, by Andrea Stewart, which is book #2 of the her Drowning Empire trilogy.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & His Oligarch Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Tennessee House Republicans expelled two black representatives for protesting guns. 

It doesn’t get any better for the Catholic Church. A new report on the Baltimore Diocese released last week shows more than 150 priests sexually abused more than 600 children over the past 80 years. The Church knew and covered it up. NOT just a couple bad apples. 

New court rulings look to ban the abortion medication Mifepristone as two cases are likely headed the Supreme Court. 

Jean Kwok, author of Central Bucks newly banned - sorry, “challenged” - book, Girl in Translation is heading to the school board to contest the board’s move. 

Perkiomen Valley students stage a walkout to protest new moves to ban books at their schools.  

Kutztown University joins in the austerity game, putting four programs in moratorium including Spanish, Philosophy, German, and Spanish Education.

This October the PA Climate Convergence will bring advocates, activists, and concerned residents to Harrisburg to tell Gov. Shapiro, lawmakers, and regulators that they are having the wrong conversation on climate and need to change their stance. We’ll talk about why lawmakers are keeping PA from being part of the solution to the climate crisis and what all of us can do to change that. 

LINKS:

• Berks Gas Truth: https://gastruth.org/
• PA Climate Convergence: https://www.pennsylvaniaclimateconvergence.org/
• Better Path Coalition: https://www.betterpathcoalition.org/

Trump’s indictment comes less than a week after he launched his presidential campaign with a large rally and speech in Waco, TX. Waco was the site of the 1993 raid of the militant Branch Davidian religious compound that led to the deaths of nearly 80 people. Waco has been a rallying cry for white supremacists and the extreme right ever since. 

38 migrants were killed and 27 seriously injured in a fire at a Mexican detention center in Ciudad Juarez. The continued unjust and cruel immigration policies in the U.S. - the “Remain in Mexico” policy, for example - helped create the conditions for the deaths. Will Bunch was dead on: 

"I wonder how much of the American downplaying of this nightmare in Ciudad Juárez is willful ignorance on our part — a refusal to confront our own shameful role in this episode. That’s because the reason that refugees are overrunning the Mexican city — some estimates place the number at 20,000 — is that U.S. policy is forcing these migrants to stay south of the American border, their actual goal."

According to a new report from the Kaiser Family Foundation, up to about 15 million people are now at risk of losing health insurance as COVID era rules that expand Medicaid and CHIP benefits are rolled back.

A new study in the journal Nature, projects that deep water current around Antarctica could slow by 40% by 2050 if the current trajectory of climate change is not dramatically altered. A disrupted current could dramatically affect the climate, the flow of fresh water and oxygen, and the circulation of nutrients necessary to sustain marine life. 

Some first-graders in Waukesha, Wisconsin won’t be singing “Rainbowland,” by Miley Cyrus and Dolly Parton. They were supposed to sing the song about acceptance, coming together, and loving one another in their spring concert. Why? Because school administrators concluded that the song violated the district’s new “Controversial Issues in the Classroom,” policy initiated by a new right-wing dominated school board.  

This week’s horrific mass school shooting in Nashville is being used by right-wing politicians and pundits to stoke anti-trans hate. 

New reporting by Maddie Hanna in the Philadelphia Inquirer shows that Paul Martino’s PAC, Back to School USA, is gearing up for the culture war. The PAC’s website says it will be “taking the fight directly to the liberal teachers’ union and special interest groups that are responsible for indoctrinating our children.” The Back to School USA PAC is planning on holding an April 7th fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago with right-wing founder of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe. 

Newly elected Representative Summer Lee is wasting no time in making her voice heard. Summer Lee is a co-sponsor of the newly introduced “Assault Weapons Ban of 2023.” She took to the House floor this week 

PA Senators Bob Casey and John Fetterman and OH Senator Sherrod Brown introduced the “Railway Accountability Act” that would help prevent the kind of disasters we just witnessed in East Palestine, OH. 

A coalition of more than two dozen environmental, faith, business, and healthcare groups sent a letter to Gov. Josh Shapiro this week urging him to keep Pennsylvania’s commitment to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative as part of Shapiro’s stated commitment to getting PA to net-zero emissions by 2050. 

And Temple University’s president Jason Wingard steps down after an authorization of a no-confidence vote by the Temple’s faculty union; a strike by graduate students, and the murder of Temple University Police Sgt. Christopher Fizgerald.

And, yes, the Dungeons and Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves hits the big screen today!

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

LINKS:

• Bucks County Beacon: https://buckscountybeacon.com/
• Support the Beacon: https://buckscountybeacon.com/support-the-beacon/

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

On March 13, Biden green lighted the Willow Project - massive new oil-drilling operation on federal lands in Alaska. The project is projected to produce around 600 million barrels of oil at a time when the UN’s IPCC is warning us that all new fossil fuel extraction must be prevented if we have any hope of preventing catastrophic impacts of climate change. Lots of younger voters and people who are deeply concerned about climate change perceive Biden’s actions as a “slap in the face.” 

Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds has signed a pair of bills that force transgender students to use bathrooms of their gender assigned at birth and that ban gender affirming medical care. The Iowa law was signed one day after Arkansas signed its own “bathroom bill,” and Idaho is waiting for its Governor to sign theirs. The AP reports that more than 25 Republican-led bills across 14 states are targeting transgender individuals, looking to make them targets in their culture-war electoral strategies.

Biden issues his first veto against a Republican “anti-woke capitalism” investing resolution that would have banned retirement fund managers from considering “social issues” in their investment strategies. Things like fossil fuels, commitment to diversity, good record on inclusion. You get the gist. 

NPR cancels four podcasts in the latest round of cuts in media organizations. Facing a projected $30 million decline in revenue, popular podcasts such as Invisibilia, Rough Translation, Louder than a Riot, and Everyone and Their Mom will get the ax. 

Massive three day strike by Los Angeles public school workers - bus drivers, custodians, special education assistants, and cafeteria workers - highlights the poor salaries and working conditions of those who help schools operate. 

The Washington Post reports that “Electric cars are creating a new economy and leaving some towns behind.” And important article, but corporations are let off the hook.

Donald Trump raised over $1.5 million in the three days after he took to his Twitter knock off site and predicted he was going to be arrested this past Tuesday. But, we still haven’t seen an indictment. Early this morning he took to that same platform to warn of “potential death and destruction” if he is charged in the criminal case about his hush-money payments to porn star, Stormy Daniels. 

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

On April 15th, Gratz will be one of the Featured Speakers at the 25th Annual Kutztown University Children's Literature Conference. In the wake of the decision by the Kutztown Area School District to cancel their "One School, One Book" program, he made extra time to meet with the community while in town. He will be doing two events at Firefly Bookstore in Kutztown on April 15th as well. At the evening event, he will be interviewed by Joslyn Diffenbaugh, founder of the local Teen Banned Book Club. Details for the events can be found on Firefly Bookstore's Facebook page and through the links in the show notes. 

Alan Gratz is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of nineteen novels and graphic novels for young readers, including Two Degrees, Captain America: The Ghost Army, Ground Zero, Refugee, Allies, Prisoner B-3087, and Ban This Book. A Knoxville, Tennessee native, Alan is now a full-time writer living in Asheville, North Carolina with his wife and daughter. Learn more about him online at www.alangratz.com.

LINKS:

• Alan Gratz's home page: https://www.alangratz.com/about/
• Get Two Degrees at your local bookstore: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781338735673
• Firefly Bookstore events on April 15: https://bit.ly/40nVH4m
• Article: "In Kutztown schools, the right's culture warriors block a book on climate change," by Will Bunch, The Philadelphia Inquirer: https://bit.ly/3Kk3ACR
• Article: "Kutztown One Book, One School literacy program halted after outcry over book's focus on climate change," by Lisa Mitchell, The Reading Eagle: https://bit.ly/3ZMzywI
• Kutztown Organized for Educational Excellence (KOFEE): https://www.kofee.info/

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Biden’s pick to serve as an FCC commissioner, Gigi Sohn, withdrew her name after 16 months of targeted pressure and harassment by communication’s industry lobbyist groups. Sohn has a long history as a public interest advocate and would have been the first openly gay FCC commissioner.

Weirdness in Congress in the House Oversight hearing on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and the so-called controversy over the Twitter files. Matt Taibii may be a clown, but what exactly is the Democrat’s game plan?

NPR profiles far-right group in Florida - National Socialist Florida. The story reveals the group’s organizing tactics and savvy use of social media to spread hate and expand recruiting. 

Pennridge School District is now facing a lawsuit after playing games with the Right-to-Know law and playing hide-and-seek with books the school board wants banned. 

Delaware County lawmaker Mike Zabel, steps down following credible allegations of sexual harassment. 

Gov. Shapiro’s first budget under fire by education advocates who say he failed to adequately address the demand of a recent court ruling that found PA is in violation of its Constitutional obligations to adequately fund all schools. His higher ed proposal is under the rate of inflation which amounts to a cloaked cut.

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Rohan's piece, "Slaying the Gold-Hungry Dragon" reports on the Dungeons & Dragons community epic victory against corporate greed. In "Anime Voice Actors Speak Out: It's Not Kawaii When We Aren't Paid," he dives into organizing fights by anime voice-actors for fair pay and better working conditions. 

Rohan Montgomery is a journalist and fact-checker. His work has appeared in the BBC, The New Republic, and In These Times. 

LINKS:

• Rohan Montgomery, "Slaying the Gold-Hungry Dragon," In These Times | https://bit.ly/3kTyebQ
• Rohan Montgomery, "Anime Actors Speak Out: It's Not Kawaii When We Aren't Paid," In These Times | https://bit.ly/41MPCQc
• Follow Rohan on Twitter @RohanMontroro | https://twitter.com/RohanMontroro

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Patricia Roberts-Miller, formerly Director of the University Writing Center and Professor Emeritus in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing at the University of Texas at Austin, is a scholar of train wrecks in public deliberation—that is, times that communities made decisions they later regretted, although they had all the information they needed to make better ones.

In addition to Demagoguery and Democracy, she is the author of Speaking of Race: Constructive Conversations About an Explosive Topic (2021), Rhetoric and Demagoguery (2019; finalist Rhetoric Society of America book of the year), Fanatical Schemes: Proslavery Rhetoric and the Tragedy of Consensus (2009), Deliberate Conflict: Composition Classes and Political Spaces (2004), Voices in the Wilderness: The Paradox of the Puritan Public Sphere (1999), and various book chapters and articles.

LINKS

• Get the book, Demagoguery and Democracy, by Patricia Roberts-Miller: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781615196760
• Patricia Roberts-Miller on the web: https://www.patriciarobertsmiller.com/
• More books by Patricia Roberts-Miller: https://bit.ly/3KK4x7M

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Robyn Undersood has a BSc and PhD in entomology (study of insects) and specialize in honey bee research. She is the Mom of two kids who have been in the district their whole lives and are now in the high school. Robyn hesitantly began acting as an activist when she saw things she did not like happening at school board meetings. Now she leads KOFEE (Kutztown Organized for Educational Excellence).

LINKS:

• Check out KOFEE's FB page: https://www.facebook.com/KOFEE.kasd
• KOFEE's main webpage: https://www.kofee.info/
• Learn about the canceling of KASD's "One Book, One School" program: https://bit.ly/3kgPtnb
• Will Bunch's article on KASD's canceling of "One Book, One School": https://bit.ly/3Kk3ACR

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

In Oklahoma, a judge stripped a lesbian mom’s parental rights to her son and handed them over to her sperm donor. Legal experts are concerned that this case will only exacerbate attacks on marriage equality. 

Kentucky Supreme Court ruled to keep a near-total ban on abortion in place while a lower court deliberates on the constitutionality of the law. The current Kentucky law only allows abortion to save the life of a pregnant person. 

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of the United State is hearing two cases that have challenged Biden’s student loan forgiveness program. Writing in Vox, Ian Milhiser makes clear that the student loan forgiveness program is explicitly authorized by the 2022 Heroes Act, but “the Court’s Republican majority is unlikely to care.”

New report shows that we could enter a climate “doom loop” that could “become so overwhelming that they undermine humanity’s capacity to tackle climate change’s root causes.” 

This week’s mass shooting at Michigan State University killed three students and critically injured another 5. That brings the number of mass shootings this year to 71. 

Central Bucks School district has targeted an additional 60 books to consider banning from its libraries. The books targeted for banning are based on a site created by the far-right group Moms for Liberty. 

52 school board directors from 25 Pennsylvania school districts are calling on Central Bucks School District to repeal their recently passed ban against so-called “advocacy activities.” The group of directors condemned Central Bucks school board majority for “fostering intolerance,” “discrimination,” and targeting LGBTQ students for “political purposes.” 

Temple University graduate students strike as university administrators turn to class anti-worker, union-busting tactics. Support TUGSA and the strike here: TUGSA STRIKE https://www.tugsa.org/strike

Sen. John Fetterman voluntarily checked into Walter Reed Medical Center for treatment of clinical depression. Depression is common for stroke survivors. Last week, Fetterman was hospitalized after feeling lightheaded during a Senate retreat.  

Alyssa received her PhD in History from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2021 with an interest in fascism and antifascism, solidarity and social movements, immigration/exile and transnational history. She has bylines in the Nation and in Truthout, where she is a regular contributor. More of her public writing can be found on True North Research’s website and Substack. 

Follow Alyssa on Twitter @AlyssaAnnBowen

LINKS:

• Alyssa Bowen, "The Right Has Expanded Its Dark Money Strategy for Dominating School Boards," TruthOut | https://bit.ly/3HG4ab1
• Lisa Graves & Alyssa Bowen, "Tax Docs Link Right-Wing 'Parents Group' to Leonard Leo’s Dark Money Network," TruthOut | https://bit.ly/3RWIIDn

RESOURCES:

• True North Research: https://truenorthresearch.org/
• Documented: https://documented.net/
• Center for Media and Democracy: https://www.prwatch.org/
• Racial Justice Training Series with H.E.A.L. Together: https://bit.ly/3f3vBRG
• All H.E.A.L. Together trainings: https://www.raceforward.org/trainings

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Biden does some effective political theater of his own, by saying some Republicans wanted to cut Social Security. On the spot, Biden got all the Republicans to stand and cheer that they do not want to gut Social Security or Medicare. Well done sir. 

And, AR-15 lapel pins accompanied American flag pins on Republican members of Congress at the State of the Union this week. 

And, do we need to talk about that balloon?

Senator John Fetterman was admitted to the hospital after feeling light-headed during a Senate retreat on Wednesday. Tests found that Fetterman did not have another stroke, and were running additional tests. 

PA Democrats swept the three special elections, giving them the outright majority in the state assembly.  

The Zombie Fungus continues to spread as the voices of those infected by right-wing media and extremist politics flood a local Telford, PA council meeting. The Council wants to slash the public library’s budget and hand it over to the police. The police already receive half of the town’s resources. And, can you guess why they want to cut funds to the library? I bet you can. 

Walter Masterson of political satire group The Good Liars, showed up at the Central Bucks School Board meeting as the district continues to be a laboratory for extremist politics. 

And the Pennridge High School principal was arrested for a DUI this past weekend.

Hannah is a writer, historian, and PhD Candidate at NYU. Her dissertation in progress, “Becoming Lesbian: Sex, Politics, and Culture in Transatlantic Circulation, 1970-1998,” chronicles the spread of lesbian culture in the United States and Europe in the wake of Women’s Liberation. Her research has been published in Gender & History, and her writing has been featured in Jacobin, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Public Seminar, Eurozine, and Sinister Wisdom. Her first chapbook, A Thirst for Salt, was published by Gazing Grain Press in 2018.

LINKS:

• Follow Hannah on Twitter: @hanleffingwell | https://twitter.com/hanleffingwell
• "The Academic Career is Broken," The Chronicle of Higher Ed | https://bit.ly/3JkVOYS
• "I Love Higher Education. It Isn't Loving Me Back," Jacobin | https://bit.ly/3DhDyf5

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Later today the Memphis, TN police will release video of the brutal and fatal police beating of 27-year-old Tyre Nichols. The five police officers who fatally beat Nichols have been fired and are facing second-degree murder charges. 

PA-based libertarian billionaire, Jeffrey Yass, is funding a new poliitcal action committee called “The Moderate PAC” that will target progressive primary challengers in favor of centrist and corporate Democrats. 

Colleges and Universities are starting to hire “Chief Experience Officers” to “ensure that consumers are having satisfying interactions” with the institutions - a practices imported from the corporate world. 

We’re seeing the new censorship policy in the Central Bucks School District in action. A librarian at Central Bucks South high school was told by his principal to take down a quote from Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate Holocaust survivor, because it violated the district’s new ban on advocating “partisan, political, or social policy issues” to students. The principal later reversed his order, but left a chilling effect on speech behind. 

Turns out that Central Bucks is using a conservative Christian law firm with ties with anti-LGBTQ, Christian nationalist organization the Family Research Council. The Family Research Council is recognized as a extremist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. 

The Pennridge School District school board is seeking to impose versions of the Hillsdale College 1776 curriculum on teachers and students. Hillsdale College is an infamous right-wing, Christian college in Michigan that has been fueling flames of resentment and pushing a whitewashed curriculum in charter and public schools. The president of Hillsdale College, Larry Arnn III, provides a window into the college’s believes. In 2013, he referred to minority students as “dark ones” in legislative hearings; earlier this summer - in the midst of Hillsdale’s partnership to take over charter schools in the state - Arnn told the Gov. of Tennessee that “teachers are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country." Hillsdale’s 1776 curriculum was launched in the wake of Trump’s 1776 Commission to push back against the 1619 Project.

New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, announced that she’ll step down in a few weeks. 

A new Pew Research Center survey found that only about half of Americans think that colleges and universities are “having a positive effect on the way things are going in the country these days. About 38% say they are having a negative effect. And, as I bet you are already thinking, yes, there is a big partisan divide on the issue. 

Florida is banning a new Advanced Placement test on African American Studies that was to be offered in its high schools. The Florida Department of Education said “the content of this course is inexplicitly contrary to Florida law and significantly lacks educational value. That law is the new law passed last year and signed by Gov. DeSantis restricting discussions of racism in schools. 

Anti-Abortion activists gather in DC to demand a federal ban on abortion. 

Google announced layoffs of about 12,000 workers, which amounts to about 6% of its total, global workforce. 

Josh Shapiro sworn in as Pennsylvania’s 48th governor. 

In one of his first acts in office, Shapiro removed the college degree requirement for most government jobs in the Commonwealth. That means about 65,000 jobs will not be open to people regardless of if they went to college. 

Wizards of the Coast (owned by Hasbro) is in hot water with the Dungeons and Dragons community over attempts to roll back its Open Gaming License or OGL. Now gaming companies like Kobold Press, are looking to launch new Tabletop Roleplaying Gaming systems that will remain open access. Wizards of the Coast finally relented to community pressure. But damage is done.

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Catastrophic weather continues. In California at least 18 people are dead following climate change-charged “atmospheric rivers” that led to widespread flooding, mudslides, and power outages. The National Weather Service reports that Central California received more than half of its average yearly precipitation in just two weeks. In Alabama, at least 7 people were killed as a series of tornados and extreme weather rolled across the state. 

Meanwhile, researchers released findings from Exxon internal documents that Exxon scientists were strikingly accurate in their climate change modeling as early as the 1970s. The researchers call the documents a “smoking gun” that Exxon knew the devastating consequences of burning fossil fuels even as it invested heavily in climate change denial propaganda. 

New York City nurses won a huge victory after a three day strike. 

New research shows that the Heritage Foundation spent big bucks in 2021 to help undermine voting rights. 

On Tuesday, the Central Bucks School Board approved a policy 321, banning what they call “advocacy activities.” The policy takes aim at teachers to display LGBTQ pride symbols or “safe space” stickers in the school. 

Students in the Pennridge School District say they feel “erased” after that district instituted a similar ban there.

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money. You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

LINKS:

• Bucks County Beacon | https://buckscountybeacon.com/
• Support the Beacon | https://buckscountybeacon.com/support-the-beacon/
• Follow Cyril on Twitter | https://twitter.com/cmychalejko
• Bucks County Beacon on Twitter | https://twitter.com/BucksCoBeacon

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress/. 

You can also help out the show by heading over to our YouTube channel if you are not there already and smash that subscribe button, like the stream for this show, and hit that notification bell so you’ll know every time we go live. 

Welcome to our new Mastodon community. Yes, as part of the Twitter exodus, Raging Chicken is now on Mastodon. You can find us on Mastodon @rcpress@union.place.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & His Oligarch Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, supporting local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmasking the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

White nationalists, Euro ultranationalists, and right-wing Republicans met up in NYC for the New York Young Republican Clubs gala calling for “total war” against their designated enemies. 

The group’s president, Gavin Wax said: “We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets…This is the only language the left understands. The language of pure and unadulterated power.”

Marjorie Taylor Green reflected on the January 6 insurrection saying, “I will tell you something, if Steve Bannon and I organized that, we would have won. Not to mention, it would’ve been armed.”

Newsweek continues to become a forum for the radical-right. 

“We want to cross the Rubicon. We want total war. We must be prepared to do battle in every arena. In the media. In the courtroom. At the ballot box. And in the streets,” NYYRC president Gavin Wax declared to a room full of supporters 

Elon Musk suspends at least 8 journalists and the @ElonJet account from Twitter for posting “basically assassination coordinates” for him and his family. Most of the reporters who were banned had been covering Musk’s rule change banning “live location information” - presumably because @ElonJet was posting publicly available flight data from Musk’s private jet. Ahh…the power of ownership. 

Students at West Chester University are organizing around housing after students receive letters saying their spots in public university owned dorms won’t be available, but “private” dorms - at double the cost - will be. 

Temple University launches a center to combat racism, antisemitism and LGBTQ+ bigotry and xenophobia. 

Meguerian is an experienced litigator and trial lawyer licensed in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the State of New Jersey. He has represented clients in both state and federal courts. He is AV peer review rated from Martindale-Hubbell reflecting achievement at the height of professional excellence and integrity.

Meguerian received his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center in 1995, where he served as an Associate Editor of the American Criminal Law Review. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Honors Philosophy from Villanova University in 1992, where he was awarded the University's Valedictory Medallion.

Meguerian is a member of the National Employment Lawyers Association, and the Chester County Bar Association.

LINKS:

• "The US Supreme Court Intends To Dismantle Democracy," Garen Meguerian. Bucks County Beacon https://bit.ly/3VWHzwo
• "Moore v. Harper, Explained," Eliza Sweren-Becker & Ethan Herenstein. The Brennan Center for Justice https://bit.ly/3Hm8JJi
• "Explaining Moore v. Harper, the Supreme Court Case That Could Upend Democracy," Ari Savitzky & Kristi Graunke. ACLU https://bit.ly/3VStRea

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

This week the Supreme Court heard arguments in Moore v. Harper. The case will test the Court’s willingness to embrace a fringe Constitutional theory - the so-called “independent state legislature” theory - which would give power to state legislatures to override the results of democratic elections. 

Raphael Warnock wins the Georgia runoff. 

U.S. colleges and universities are facing a “crisis.” The shock doctrine “sky-is-falling” narrative tells a tale of natural disaster while political choices and destructive managerial policies and trends are largely excused. 

Kyrsten Sinema announced that she is changing her party affiliation to “independent.” 

WNBA star Brittney Griner returns to the U.S. after spending months in a Russian prison.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Education has released standards for “culturally relevant and sustaining education” that seeks to integrate policies similar to DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) initiatives that drove right-wing extremists to flood school board meetings with conspiracy theories and vitriol.  

Pennridge School District moves forward with a plan to cut social studies requirements despite strong opposition from parents, teachers, students, and members of the community. The school board voted 5-4 to move ahead with the cuts after a contentious debate even among members of the board. 

Starbucks in Whitehall, PA voted to unionize! The Starbucks on MacArthur Road in Whitehall Township now has a union. The location’s staff voted 16-10 in favor of forming a union with Starbucks Workers United. 

Raelyn and her team work to fight back against the spread of online election disinformation and hold social media platforms accountable for their role in the spread of election lies. Raelyn provides trainings that encourage anyone and everyone to stop cyber suppression. During monitoring shifts, she leads volunteers in recognizing, searching for, and reporting bad actors who threaten democracy by spreading election lies.

If you want to read more about Raelyn and Common Cause’s work, check out Jenny Stephen’s article in the Bucks County Beacon, "Social Media Disinformation Is a Threat To Democracy, and You Can Help Fight It."  

LINKS:

• Raelyn Roberson on Twitter: @RaelynR3 - https://twitter.com/RaelynR3
• Common Cause: https://www.commoncause.org/
• Common Cause - Combating Cyber Suppression: https://bit.ly/3B8y71k
• Common Cause - Social Media Monitoring Training: https://bit.ly/3VTaf9U
• Public Disinformation Tipline: https://reportdisinfo.org/
• Article on Raelyn's work in Bucks County Beacon, "Social Media Disinformation Is A Threat To Democracy, And You Can Help Fight It," by Jenny Stephens: https://bit.ly/3Y0tIHA

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Today: Railway workers & Democrats' debacle; UC #highered strike; Twitter in tatters; Magnolia Mothers; Dimock win; Palisades teachers contract; & much more!

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

Sean Crampsie has been the director of Government Relations for APSCUF since 2017 where he advocates for the faculty, coaches, and students, Pennsylvania's state owned universities. Sean lobbies for state funding for public higher education, tuition affordability, and protection of workers’ rights. Prior to joining APSCUF, Sean spent four years with the PA School Boards Association working on K-12 education issues.

Sean is also serving his second term as a Councilman for the Borough of Carlisle. During his time on Council Sean has advocated for his community and has helped pass an anti-discrimination ordinance, approve affordable housing, and help pass a rental inspection ordinance.

Sean received his bachelor’s degree in political science from Bloomsburg University and lives in Carlisle, PA with his wife Brittany and son Carter.

LINKS: *

• APSCUF: https://www.apscuf.org/ Twitter at @APSCUF https://twitter.com/APSCUF
• Follow Sean on Twitter at @seancrampsie https://twitter.com/seancrampsie
• Follow APSCUF Government Relations @APSCUFGR https://twitter.com/APSCUFGR

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress.

Don’t Let Paul Martino & His Oligarch Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

You can support this show by becoming a patron for as little as $5/month at https://www.patreon.com/rcpress. 

Don’t Let Paul Martino & Friends Buy Our Schools and push extremist politics in our community. Raging Chicken has teamed up with LevelField to launch a truly community-rooted PAC to invest in organizing, support local and state-wide progressive candidates, and unmask the toxic organizations injecting our communities with right-wing extremism. We’re putting small-dollar donations to work to beat back the power of Big Money.  You can get more information and drop your donation at  https://ragingchicken.levelfield.net/.

Join our Discord to continue the conversation all week long: https://discord.gg/BnjRNz3u

The UN climate report also find that the world is on pace to INCREASE emissions 10.6% by 2030. 

Elon Musk finalizes his takeover of Twitter. On day one he tweeted that the “bird is free,” and marked the occasion with the firing of several key executives at the company. Musk says he’ll remove lifetime bans which will pave the way for the return of Donald Trump, QAnon, and science denying conspiracy theorists to the platform. 

And, Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul was attacked with a hammer in his home this morning. 

Montgomery Township Dems flag weird Mastriano “voter fraud” door hangers. 

PA candidates for Senate, John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, took to the stage this week in their first and only debate ahead of the rapidly approaching midterm elections. The midterms are just over a week away and the polls are showing a virtual dead heat. Real Clear Politics has Fetterman ahead by just .3%, which is well within the margin of error. 

Of course, it didn’t take long for national Republican leaders to take to the airways to mock Fetterman who is still recovering from a stroke. Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel jumped on right-wing radio to joke that maybe between Biden and Fetterman, they could get a full sentence out. This is just another example of how Republicans have no shame in weaponizing their discrimination and cruelty. 

Democrat Josh Shapiro is still holding a six point lead in the race for PA Governor against Christian Nationalist Republican, Doug Mastriano. 

The International Space Station had to dodge some Russian space junk this week. 

The House of Dragon finale.