Tag: political correctness

BC nurse ordered to pay almost $100k for opposing gender ideology

British Columbia nurse Amy Hamm has been ordered to pay nearly $100,000 for publicly declaring that gender is defined by biology.

In an August 14 press release, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) announced that the British Columbia College of Nurses and Midwives (BCCNM) mandated that Hamm pay $93,639.80 in legal fees and has suspended her license for one month for her statements opposing LGBT ideology.

“In our view, the panel made a number of legal and factual errors that make the decision unsound, and we look forward to arguing these points before the BC Supreme Court,” JCCF lawyer Lisa Bildy declared. “We are now considering whether to appeal the penalty decision as well.”

“This decision effectively penalizes a nurse for expressing mainstream views aligned with science and common sense,” she continued. “The Panel’s ruling imposes a chilling effect on free expression for all regulated professionals.”

In March, a ruling from the BCCNM disciplinary panel found that Hamm committed “unprofessional conduct” by publicly discussing the dangers of the LGBT agenda in three articles and a podcast appearance.

Later that month, Hamm shared on social media that Vancouver Coastal Health fired her from her nursing position without severance after she was found guilty of “unprofessional conduct.”

Hamm found herself targeted by the BCCNM in 2020 when she co-sponsored a billboard reading, “I (heart) JK Rowling.” This sign was a nod to the famous British author’s public comments defending women’s private spaces from being used by gender-confused men.

The BCCNM accused Hamm of making “discriminatory and derogatory statements regarding (so-called) transgender people” while identifying herself as a nurse or nurse educator.

According to the college, Hamm’s statements were “made across various online platforms, including but not limited to podcasts, videos, published writings, and social media” between July 2018 and March 2021.

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‘Shadow Government’ Bureaucrats Exposed For Stoking Woke Insanity In Red States

A new report from the State Leadership Initiative (SLI), released Wednesday, is sounding the alarm on how conservative states are quietly adopting woke policies, driven by little-known national bureaucratic organizations.

The report, first reported by Fox News, details how a web of well-funded national associations, often posing as nonpartisan or professional groups, is behind this trend, pushing what SLI calls “shadow governance.” These groups set policy frameworks, control federal funding, and offer “best practices” that lean heavily into left-leaning priorities, according to Fox News.

Among the organizations exposed in the report are the National Association of State Treasurers (NAST), the National Association of Medicaid Directors (NAMD), and the National Association of State Boards of Education (NASBE). SLI’s report examined 23 of the largest associations and found widespread embrace of DEI initiatives, transgender ideology policies, and ESG principles.

One example highlighted in the report points to NAMD’s push for equity over outcomes in Medicaid reform. In its 2021 Regulatory Priorities document, NAMD listed 11 “broad issues” for improving state Medicaid programs, with “advancing equity in Medicaid” as the top focus. The document reads, “Equity work should include a focus on racial and ethnic minorities, rural populations, Tribal populations, and any other groups experiencing disparate health outcomes, with an understanding that inequities are multidimensional and often fall across multiple population characteristics or categories. We also see discrete areas where focus would be beneficial, bearing in mind that the work to advance equity in Medicaid is holistic and branches across all issue domains.”

“Conservative leaders are fond of declaring victory,” the report reads. “They win elections, pass legislation, and appoint agency heads with great fanfare, yet, on issue after issue, the administrative state trudges forward in open defiance of their mandate: enforcing equity initiatives, embedding climate policy, and advancing bureaucratic priorities wholly alien to the voters who ostensibly elected the government. This disconnect is not incidental. It is structural.“

“The ideological left does not need to win a single statehouse so long as it controls the bureaucratic bloodstream,” the report added.

In a statement to Fox News, SLI founder and president Noah Wall said about the revelations that, “Every single one of these associations pushes DEI.” “It doesn’t matter how specific—whether it’s a fish and wildlife group or a treasury department—DEI is a core part of their programming.”

Wall demanded Republican governors to crack down on the quiet push for far-left policies and called for accountability.

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Judge Permanently Blocks Trump’s Actions Aimed at Eliminating DEI at Universities

A Maryland-based federal judge on Thursday permanently blocked two of President Trump’s memos aimed at eliminating Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at universities.

Earlier this year, the Department of Education issued an ultimatum to all federally funded educational institutions: eliminate DEI programs within 14 days, or face the complete withdrawal of federal funding.

The directive, outlined in a letter from the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), was in response to “pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences” that have turned America’s schools into indoctrination camps.

The letter explicitly warns schools, universities, and state education agencies that their reliance on DEI initiatives—which serve as racial discrimination—violates federal civil rights law.

Under the order, educational institutions receiving federal aid must immediately:

  • Dismantle DEI offices and programming that promote race-based policies.
  • End race-based hiring and admissions practices that disadvantage certain groups.
  • Cease funding or collaborating with third-party organizations that push DEI initiatives.
  • Halt racially segregated graduations, scholarships, and other programs under the guise of inclusion.

Failure to comply, the Department warns, will result in swift consequences—including the potential revocation of federal funding.

US District Judge Stephanie Gallagher said the Department of Education violated the law.

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B.C. Supreme Court recognizes Aboriginal title over most of Richmond

The British Columbia Supreme Court quietly issued its long-awaited decision in Cowichan Tribes v. Canada on Thursday.

In a decision that is sure to ruffle feathers, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Barbara Young declared the Cowichan Tribes have established Aboriginal title to roughly 800 acres in Richmond.

A B.C. Supreme Court judge has recognized the Cowichan Nation’s Aboriginal title to parts of Lulu Island and the Fraser River’s south arm, concluding a five-year, 513-day trial — described as the longest in Canadian history.

The plaintiffs, including five tribes and several individuals, sought declarations of Aboriginal title over approximately 1,846 acres on Lulu Island, which now forms part of Richmond, home to B.C.’s largest airport.

“I agree that Aboriginal title is a prior and senior right to land,” Young writes in the ruling.

“The question of what remains of Aboriginal title after the granting of fee simple title to the same lands should be reversed. The proper question is: what remains of fee simple title after Aboriginal title is recognized in the same lands?”

Six defendants opposed the claim: the federal and provincial governments, the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority, the City of Richmond, and two other First Nations groups.

The 863-page judgment will have wide-reaching legal implications.

The court confirmed the Cowichan Nation has legal ownership, known as Aboriginal title, over specific lands on Lulu Island and parts of the Fraser River’s south arm.

The court found that when the government issued private land ownership (fee simple) and transferred certain highway lands in Cowichan territory, it wrongly interfered with the Cowichan Nation’s Aboriginal title.

Subsequently, except for lands tied to the Vancouver Airport Fuel Delivery Project, the court ruled that land titles held by Canada and the City of Richmond in Cowichan territory are legally flawed and invalid.

It instructs the federal government to negotiate a fair agreement with the Cowichan Nation that respects their Aboriginal title.

The provincial government must also negotiate “in good faith” with the Cowichan Nation to resolve conflicts over private land titles and highway lands in their territory, ensuring the process honours the Crown’s duty to act fairly.

The judgment is likely to be appealed given its potentially broad implications, but the immediate effect is the legal recognition of Cowichan title over specific lands.

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Leftists Melt Down over Trump Administration Targeting DEI Broadband Subsidies

Congressional Democrats are panicking over the Trump Administration’s reforms to the wasteful Biden-era Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) Program. Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill allocated a whopping $42.5 billion to distribute to states to subsidize high-speed internet for primarily rural and underpopulated areas, which the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunication and Information Authority (NTIA) distributes.

Like most of Biden’s “infrastructure” programs, BEAD was filled with DEI mandates, climate regulations, and crony favoritism, which limited most funding to fiber internet, while virtually banning low-earth-orbit satellite internet. The Trump administration and Republicans in Congress signaled early this year that such wasteful programs would be targeted by the Trump White House.

Fortunately, the Senate recently confirmed Arielle Roth to lead NTIA, which will administer the program and implement the Trump administration’s reforms. Roth served as the top telecom staffer for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and the Senate Commerce Committee, where she helped the Senator document the BEAD program’s abuses, giving her the perfect experience and skills to implement these reforms.

As Sen. Cruz noted, BEAD’s “technology bias against non-fiber broadband will drive up costs by billions of dollars and likely deprive some communities of any broadband access at all.”  Four years after the Bill’s passage, BEAD failed to connect one household to the internet.

Fiber internet is often inefficient in sparsely populated areas. Some proposals, approved by the Biden NTIA, charge tens of thousands of dollars per home across many states. The Biden NTIA even proposed giving $547,254 for one “underserved” location in Washington, D.C. (hardly an underserved area for high-speed internet).

Trump’s FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, called BEAD a “$42 billion program for expanding Internet infrastructure into a thicket of red tape and saddled it with progressive policy goals that have nothing to do with quickly connecting Americans,” specifically calling out the “DEI requirements,” “Climate change agenda,” and “technology bias.”

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North Carolina DMV Hits All DEI Targets, Misses Road Safety Goals

North Carolina’s Division of Motor Vehicles achieved 100 percent of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) benchmarks in 2024 but failed to meet several core performance goals related to safety, infrastructure, and fiscal responsibility, according to the Department of Transportation’s most recent annual report.

The report from the North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) reveals that the state’s Division of Motor Vehicles (DMV) reached its DEI target for 2024 while falling short on several other key performance metrics, including road safety, infrastructure maintenance, and fiscal management.

According to the 2024 Annual Performance Report (page 65), the DMV fulfilled its DEI goal entirely. However, it did not achieve full success in four other categories:

  • “Maintain fiscal responsibility”
  • “Make transportation safer”
  • “Improve the reliability and connectivity of the transportation system”
  • “Deliver and maintain our infrastructure efficiently and effectively”

The report comes as former Gov. Roy Cooper (D), who appointed DMV Commissioner Wayne Goodwin in 2022, has launched a campaign for U.S. Senate in the 2026 race.

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‘Whitelash’: Professors say white students get angry, frustrated by ‘anti-racist education’

Two social work scholars argue that their “anti-racist education” efforts in the classroom faced “whitelash” from white students, who became emotionally distraught, pushed back by using “color-blind rhetoric,” or later wrote negative course reviews.

Quinn Hafen from the University of Wyoming and Marie Villescas from Colorado State University recently published an article in the Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research detailing their experience creating a “pedagogy of discomfort” to challenge white supremacy in the classroom.

The method was criticized by two scholars in interviews with The College Fix, who called the experiment somewhat abusive.

“[T]he more I reflect on that paper, the more I find it cruel to shame students based on immutable identities they hold, regardless of identity,” one observer said via email. “For the professors, it appeared that White and male students were their target.”

The College Fix reached out via email to both Hafen and Villescas regarding some of the concerns raised about their teaching methods. Hafen and Villescas did not reply.

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Scholars & Schemers: How The Left Ruined Higher Education

Despite denials from the left, US higher education has been captured by leftist faculty, students, and administrators. This is not a figment of anyone’s imagination, as for most of this century colleges and universities have changed dramatically.

Anyone who has been to college in the past half-century would attest to what then was called the “liberalism” of most of their professors, and, in the post-World War II era, the probability that one’s professor was a registered Democrat has been high. Yet, this is not what we mean by the “radicalizing” of American higher education, for even those professors that classified themselves as “liberals” and faithfully supported the Democratic Party would not have considered themselves to be radicals.

However, there also were demands for academic integrity 50 years ago, and certainly most of my professors at the University of Tennessee (1971-75) would have given at least a good effort to place their academic role above politics. In fact, I cannot recall being subjected to any politicized curricula—and I was a journalism major during the Watergate crisis, which practically invited politics into the classroom.

This does not mean that professors didn’t have political opinions or that the university itself was free of politics. I’m sure that most of my professors were Democrats but I don’t remember any of them attempting to influence my own political views (which, at best, were a mishmash of a lot of nonsense). There were, however, the effects of the cultural revolution that had begun before I went to college were already taking hold on the language, such as calling freshmen “freshpersons” and chairman a “chairperson.” For most of us, these things were eye-rolling but not really harmful. Furthermore, if some of us insisted on using the term “freshman,” there was no attempt to impose a campus-wide shaming campaign.

Today, the situation is very different. Higher education has been thoroughly politicized to a point where even if things were to turn around today, it would take an entire generation before things could be where they were even 30 years ago. There are no academic areas left in higher education that have not been corrupted by leftist thought.

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Cancer Patient Denied Treatment Because of Her Conservative Christian Views

An Oregon hospital refused a Catholic cancer patient treatment because she voiced her views on “transgenderism.”

The staff at the Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) disregarded Marlene Barbera’s concerns when she commented on the office’s prominently-displayed “transgender” flag. After she had a disagreement over the phone with a staff member, the clinic dropped her as a patient, informing her in an email:

“Effective immediately, you are discharged from receiving medical care at the Richmond Family Medicine Clinic. This action is being taken because of ongoing disrespectful and hurtful remarks about our LGBTQ community and staff… Please note that you are also now dismissed from all OHSU Family Medicine clinics, including Immediate Care clinics.”

In a message to her doctor last year, Barbera had written this:

I have been threatened on Twitter by trans activists with rape and death — so it is daunting to go for medical treatment with that banner proclaiming that what I am, an adult human female, is a mere opt-in category for any gender non-conforming male and not a reality. May I please have a telephone appointment to discuss how I may access your medical care without walking under a banner that seeks to negate all I am?

Barbera thought the message was private, but it was shared with other staff. When she tried to leave a message for her doctor about her medical situation, the receptionist refused and insisted she make an appointment. When she called back, she was still refused service.

“I asked, guessing ‘Did I hurt the trans person’s feelings?’ And the receptionist took offense to the question, asking ‘What did you say?’ slowly and with great emphasis,” Barbera told Reduxx.

A few weeks later, on June 29, the practice manager, Stein Berger, messaged her to say that she had made “transphobic remarks” that harmed the staff of the “inclusive” clinic. That day, the clinic notified her that she could no longer get care at the clinic, effective July 29.

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Law schools face pressure to discriminate under ABA accreditation ‘monopoly’: report

The American Bar Association places pressure on top public law schools to implement “unconstitutional” race and sex-based preferences in admissions and hiring, according to a new report by the Pacific Legal Foundation.

The foundation’s report, published in July, says the ABA does this through its “monopoly” accreditation process.

However, a bar association official denied any unlawful discrimination when contacted by The College Fix.

Pacific Legal, a public interest law firm focused on defending individual liberties, based its findings on accreditation reports from 45 of the top 50 public law schools through open records requests from 2014 to 2023.

The report found that 20 of the responding schools were criticized for failing to meet the ABA’s “diversity standards,” thus risking their accreditation status. These criticisms include failing to hire a sufficient amount of faculty from minority groups, having  “limited DEI curriculum integration,” and “not having enough LGBTQ+ support groups.”

According to the report, these standards often require or encourage practices that conflict with the U.S. Constitution and state and federal civil rights laws.

“The ABA has told law schools that they have to implement the ABA’s own problematic diversity standards, even if state or federal law might prohibit them from doing so,” Zack Smith, senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, told The Fix recently when asked about the report. Smith previously worked as an assistant U.S. attorney in Florida.

The findings center on the bar association’s accreditation Standards 205 and 206, which obligate law schools to demonstrate a commitment to diversity and inclusion regarding students, faculty, and staff in terms of race and sex by the virtue of “non-discrimination,” according to the foundation’s report.

Schools that fail to meet these standards risk punishment and a loss of accreditation, according to the report.

The report documents examples of schools being pushed to adopt racial preferences despite state-level prohibitions. In one case, Charleston School of Law was denied accreditation until it agreed to appoint a diversity director to remediate concerns regarding sufficient racial diversity in the school.

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