School District Allows LGBTQ Lesson Opt-Outs After Legal Threat by Muslim Parents

Christian, Jewish and Muslim families in suburban D.C. are waiting for a federal appeals court to determine whether their school district can continue requiring their children to read LGBTQ “storybooks” without parental knowledge or consent.

Eleven hundred miles away in a similarly blue jurisdiction led by the United States’ first known Somali-American mayor, Muslim immigrant families who escaped a war-torn country didn’t have to go to court to have their parental rights honored.

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School District Misled Court on Why It Banned Opt-Out for LGBTQ Lessons, Religious Groups Say

Newly revealed teacher-training materials and sworn affidavits show Maryland’s Montgomery County Public Schools misled the federal court hearing a lawsuit by religious families against the district’s no-exemptions policy for gender and sexuality instruction in the English Language Arts curriculum, a national Muslim group claims.

School officials in the affluent suburb bordering Washington, D.C. told a judge last month it rescinded opt-outs and parental notification this spring because of the logistical challenges created by too many families choosing to remove their children from the “Pride storybooks,” which teach children as young as 3 about sex workers, kink, drag, gender transitions and prepubescent same-sex romance.

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Second Facebook Whistleblower Offers to Testify in Congress

Another former Facebook employee says she is willing to testify before Congress on the tech giant’s business practices.

Sophie Zhang is a former Facebook data scientist and whistleblower who, in September 2020, revealed “influence” operations perpetrated by “authoritarian regimes” that took place on Facebook. Zhang told CNN in an interview Sunday that she provided information regarding “potential criminal violations” by Facebook to a U.S. law enforcement agency at the time. Zhang also said that she is willing to testify before Congress about her allegations of criminal conduct by Facebook.

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Commentary: The Numbers Support Trump’s Decision to Leave Syria

by Gunnar Heinsohn   Proclaim victory and pull out! On December 19, Donald Trump tweeted his own version of this classic military maxim as the president announced the withdrawal of America’s 2,000 soldiers from the war against the ISIS caliphate in Syria. Allies reacted with shock. Enemies mocked and gloated.…

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Democratic Socialist Candidate Elected to Congress in Michigan to Replace Disgraced John Conyers

Newly elected Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American woman, will represent the district in Detroit that had been filled by a place-holder after Democrat John Conyers, who had represented Michigan for over 50 years, resigned from Congress in 2017 amid allegations that he sexually harassed female staffers for decades. Tlaib (pronounced tah-LEEB)…

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Muslim Celebration of ‘Unity and Power’ at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minnesota, With Chants of ‘Allahu Akbar’

More than 20,000 Muslims are expected to gather at U.S. Bank Stadium Tuesday morning in celebration of the Islamic holiday known as Eid al-Ahda commemorating the sacrifice of Abraham. As such, the holiday, known as the “Feast of Sacrifice,” often involves the ritual sacrifice of an animal, though organizers of…

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