Tag: political correctness

Calls for new Labour mayor to be sacked because he dressed up as Adolf Hitler for charity event

A newly appointed Labour mayor who dressed up as Adolf Hitler at a charity event is facing calls to resign. 

Photographs of Seve Gomez-Aspron MBE wearing a German Army uniform, complete with swastika, and a fake moustache, previously surfaced online in 2019 when he was serving as a councillor for St Helens. 

The series of snaps were taken at a fancy dress dinner in aid of Claire House Hospice, which supports seriously and terminally ill children, in 2009, when he was not yet a councillor.

Mr Gomez-Aspron said at the time the outfit was inspired by Mel Brooks‘ satirical comedy The Producers. He described the decision to wear it as ‘clumsy’.

But despite his apology, there is still much furor surrounding his recent appointment, with more than 1,000 people signing a petition for his removal as mayor. 

According to the Sun, 11 councillors also walked out in protest during his swearing in ceremony on May 14. 

‘He is reviled throughout St Helens for his inappropriate behaviour and attitude,’ a councillor told the newspaper.

‘Many feel that he is not fit for public office, never mind the prestigious role as mayor,’

The councillor told the Liverpool Echo the first time the photos went viral that they were taken in his early twenties, before he was a Labour Party member

He added at the time: ‘I have matured and learnt a lot since then, and it goes without saying that I would not do this now.

‘I know how this could be seen as insensitive and how it could cause hurt and offence.

‘That was not at all my intention and I sincerely apologise. I have part-Jewish ancestry and I recently visited Israel to commemorate those killed in the Holocaust and the war.’

But, for Mr Gomez-Aspron – who also once appeared on ITV’s Million Pound Drop where he scooped £100,000 with a pal – this scandal was not his first. 

Just last year the then deputy leader of St Helens Council was forced to apologise for ‘offensive’ comments made towards a councillor during a meeting about a proposed rise in council tax. 

Mr Gomez-Aspron described the councillor’s reasoning for voting against a 4.99% rise as ‘diatribe’ and claimed he has ‘not a clue what he is talking about’. 

He went on to describe the man and another councillor as the ‘Earlestown Brain Trust’, before correcting himself by saying ‘it was wrong to imply there was a brain’.

Keep reading

Democrat-Run States Risk Billions To Push Race Discrimination In Schools

As nearly half the states battle the federal government to maintain discriminatory equity and inclusion practices in public institutions, billions of taxpayer dollars are at stake.

Nineteen Democrat-run states have sued the federal government rather than comply with the Trump administration’s enforcement of race and sex antidiscrimination laws for K-12 and higher education institutions. According to the data-tracking website Burbio, the risk of funding loss for schools is enormous. 

In 2024, California received more than $2.2 billion in federal Title I funds. New York received nearly $1.5 billion. Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Michigan all received between $5 and $8 hundred million, Burbio found. All are part of the 19-state coalition arguing they should continue receiving these massive amounts while still teaching race and sex discrimination. These massive dollar amounts typically increase in the millions annually. 

In a memo to states issued April 3, the Trump administration reiterated states’ legal obligations in exchange for receiving federal financial assistance and certification under Title VI of federal education code and the 2023 Supreme Court decision against racial discrimination Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. The certification letter stated that “any violation of Title VI- including the use of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (‘DEI’) programs to advantage one’s race over another is impermissible,” and included a late April signature deadline. 

Twenty-one states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico announced their intent to sign the letter, but 19 of 22 states that hesitated to sign sued the federal government April 25. Furthering the funding conflict, three federal judges in Maryland, New Hampshire, and Washington D.C. blocked the federal attempts to enforce antidiscrimination measures April 24. 

The judges declared schools to be in compliance with civil rights laws that bar race-based discrimination, supporting DEI programs and policies that explicitly promote racial divisions. Attorney generals from the suing states called Trump’s enforcement of the law “onerous” and said threatening $14 billion in taxpayer funds would be “catastrophic” for students. 

Keep reading

Ideological Capture At Professional Societies

Disassembling and “deleting” federal agencies is proving to be a difficult task for the Trump administration, which has been working to slash bureaucratic red tape and federal spending, especially for left-wing radicalism like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).

Unlike some of the intermediate steps President Trump has taken through Executive Order, truly closing an agency will require a 60-person majority in a Senate vote, a tall order with only 53 Republicans in the upper chamber.

But there are still some low-hanging fruits left for the administration to pick. Chiefly, it can end relationships with all professional societies promoting principles of DEI and radical gender ideology.

The federal government contracts with a myriad of these organizations across all the major agencies. Professional societies set the atmosphere and guidelines for practitioners in their fields, and they can have hundreds of thousands of members.

If those organizations become ideologically captured, the impact will be felt across society.

There is no reason for the federal government to fund such organizations. DOGE should identify these organizations and give Congress and taxpayers the information they need to make informed budget decisions.

Doing so will allow state and local governments to make better decisions as well.

As DOGE continues the work of identifying bloat, some of those activities and decisions will shift to state and local government where they rightly belong. But elected officials will still be presented with the same outside groups seeking their business. Officials at the state and local level, and taxpayers who fund those entities, have the right to know more about organizations seeking public funds.

Keep reading

‘New McCarthyism:’ Professors investigated by their own universities speak out

Nearly two dozen professors investigated by their universities are now sounding the alarm on what they say were essentially witch hunts against them for doing something that upset the campus status quo.

The recently published book “Professors Speak Out: The Truth About Campus Investigations” contains 20 personal vignettes authored by professors who argue that the probes were largely unnecessary and unfounded, in some cases malicious, and certainly biased against them.

The topics of the probes centered around three main issues: sex; race and ethnicity; and religion and politics.

Edited by Nicholas Wolfinger, a professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah, the book details the experiences of scholars who faced so-called kangaroo courts, and some were fired from their jobs.

“The book features conservatives attacked for their views, and progressives attacked for theirs. Other cases, such as mine, were essentially apolitical,” Wolfinger told The College Fix in an email interview.

Anyone concerned with cancel culture or academic freedom, or who’s been critical of the modern academy, should read the book, he said, adding administrators who want to improve their institutions should also get a copy.

Keep reading

Now woke schools teach pupils that Stonehenge was built by black people… while Waterloo and Trafalgar go untaught

Children are being taught that Stonehenge was built by black people and the Roman Emperor Nero married a trans woman as woke narratives increasingly infiltrate schools, according to an education think-tank.

They are also being told – in pro-transgender resources – that genital mutilation of slaves was a form of ‘gender transition’.

But landmark British victories such as those at Waterloo and Trafalgar go largely untaught – with as few as one in ten pupils learning about them.

A Policy Exchange investigation has warned that schools have ‘taken it too far’ as they adapt history curriculums in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests.

The prestigious centre-Right unit found that George Floyd’s death in 2020 led to schools hastily including material about ethnic minorities to appear ‘anti-racist’.

Former history teacher and chairman of Campaign for Real Education Chris McGovern said it was ‘clear that the subject has been captured by the Left’.

The report added that some resources, such as the book Brilliant Black British History, push ‘contested narratives’ – such as black people building Stonehenge.

The book is marketed as ‘a must-have in any school library’ but its claim that early black Britons built the world-famous Neolithic stone circle is ‘hotly contested and outside mainstream historical thinking’ yet ‘presented as fact’, according to the think-tank.

While in some cases these initiatives have a ‘positive effect’, such as exposing pupils to ‘wider world history’, the report flagged serious concerns about replacing facts with biased narratives.

It warned: ‘In too many cases this process has gone too far, leading to the teaching of radical and contested interpretations of the past as fact, or with anecdotes of interesting lives replacing a deeper understanding of the core drivers of history.’

One resource, from the Classical Association’s ‘Queering the Past’ project, claims the Roman Emperor Nero married a trans woman called Sporus but omits the fact that they probably underwent a forced castration rather than consensual gender reassignment. 

It comes as the Government conducts its curriculum review to ‘reflect the issues and diversities of our society’ – which the report says may be unnecessary as schools already do it.

Backed by former education secretaries Lord Blunkett and Nadhim Zahawi, it also calls for pupils to be impartially given a better overview of British history.

A Classical Association spokesman said its teaching resources were ‘complicated and nuanced’ where ‘more than one interpretation is possible’.

A Department for Education spokesman said: ‘The curriculum and assessment review is considering how to ensure young people have access to a broad and balanced curriculum.’

Meanwhile, Mr McGovern warned history is ‘seen as a vehicle for undermining and destroying British national identity’.

Keep reading

FEMA’s Woke Disaster: $2 Billion Fraud, Reverse Discrimination, and Retaliation Buried for Six Years

For six years, FEMA has quietly buried one of the worst scandals in federal disaster response—a toxic mix of reverse discrimination, fraud, and whistleblower retaliation tied to the Hurricane Maria recovery in Puerto Rico. I led the contractor team that uncovered it firsthand.

In 2018, I deployed as the technical lead of a Lean Six Sigma team made up of straight, older, white veterans and executives.

Our mission was to bring order, transparency, and efficiency to a FEMA operation crippled by dysfunction. What we found was not just inefficiency—it was corruption: theft, favoritism, and rot embedded deep in FEMA’s culture.

We documented widespread violations of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) and the Anti-Deficiency Act.

FEMA leadership stole contractor-developed intellectual property and inflated performance metrics in a $1.5 billion scheme to mislead Congress.

Unqualified personnel were promoted—not for merit, but for checking the right identity boxes. This was not mismanagement. It was deliberate.

FEMA’s culture was dominated by DEI politics—identity trumped merit, and promotions were rigged. One insider told us: “Straight white men are at the bottom here.” That was not just talk. It was policy.

At the heart of it was a tight-knit special interest group dubbed internally by FEMA insiders the “LGBTQ Mafia.”

They wielded outsized influence, shielded by management and FEMA’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) and FOIA offices, which buried complaints and blocked accountability.

Keep reading

Priorities at U. Rhode Island include hiring more ‘faculty, staff of color’

A goal in the University of Rhode Island’s “Strategic Plan 2023-2033” to “prioritize” hiring people “of color” is raising concerns about equal protection violations among civil rights experts.

The multi-part plan describes various priorities for the university over the decade-long period. Specifically, “Priority 3: Foster an Inclusive Culture” outlines ways the university intends to advance “anti-racist” and “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” efforts in faculty and leadership positions, according to the university website.

One of the goals of “Priority 3” expresses the university’s intentions to “enhance search and hiring processes to prioritize the recruitment, hiring, and retention of faculty and staff of color.”

Two outside civil rights and legal advocates told The College Fix that this practice could be a violation of the law.

“Prioritizing color over merit and qualifications sets a bad precedent that on its face can be discriminatory,” Linda Lee Tarver said as an ambassador of Project 21, an African-American civil rights initiative at the National Center for Public Policy Research.

Tarver, a former Michigan civil rights commissioner, told The Fix in a recent email that such practices undermine merit-based hiring.

Keep reading

David Hogg, Victim of Wokeness

David Hogg is a 25-year-old political activist and, for now, vice chair of the Democratic National Committee. A survivor of the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, Hogg first drew national attention for speaking out vigorously in favor of gun control. He has since become an all-purpose progressive campaigner.

He is controversial, even among Democratic circles, because he has clashed with the party’s establishment. He previously pledged to spend $20 million to primary members of his own party, though he insisted that he would only target Democrats who reside in safe districts. His thinking is that elected Democrats are too old and that the current iteration of the party fails to appeal to younger voters, particularly young males. Hogg is definitely onto something there: Donald Trump made huge inroads with Gen Z voters, in part because Democratic messaging to young men failed to resonate with them.

Hogg made a version of this argument on Bill Maher’s show last weekend, and the comedian was impressed enough to give Hogg a standing ovation and shake his hand. Hogg also won over centrist Democratic strategist James Carville, who had previously called him a “twerp.”

But Hogg has not won over everybody. On the contrary, the DNC is trying to oust him as vice chair. And the reason for that is, frankly, hilarious.

Kalyn Free, a 61-year-old woman with Native American ancestry and a rival candidate, filed a complaint that Hogg’s election as vice chair had violated certain DNC bylaws designed to promote gender-based equity. Essentially, she argued that the process was unfair because it was not sufficiently rigged in favor of her as a woman. For now, the DNC is buying it and has taken steps to void Hogg’s election. The party may schedule a redo, which would require Hogg to rerun for the vice chair position.

What’s funny about all this is that it illustrates the DNC’s precise problem with appealing to young male voters. Essentially, the DNC is clinging to its principles of identity politics, affirmative action, and gender-based preferencing—concepts that are toxic to most voters, including many Democratic voters—to undo the election of a younger,  more rebellious political actor in favor of an older woman.

Keep reading

DEI’s defenders are massive First Amendment hypocrites

The Trump administration’s efforts to rein in diversity, equity, and inclusion policies plaguing public schools suffered a setback last month when judges in three states ruled in favor of advocacy groups defending the status quo. In one complaint, the American Federation of Teachers claimed the Trump administration policy change “will chill speech and expression.”

As a recently retired teacher who was a member of the union for decades, color me skeptical of the union’s commitment to the First Amendment. When I spoke against a union-approved DEI program and came under fire from school officials for my opinion, the union hung me out to dry.

Nineteen states, including my home state of Connecticut, followed the teachers’ union’s lead by suing the Department of Education over its plan to condition federal school funding on an end to DEI. The state coalition similarly claims that Trump’s policy change “threaten[s] to chill … speech[.]” But in my case, Connecticut school officials made it clear they can and will silence any speech they don’t like.

Such rank hypocrisy may not affect outcomes in court, but it should alert voters and teachers that when it comes to DEI, those cloaking themselves in the mantle of free speech view it as a one-way street.

This past fall, I ended a 35-year career teaching and training students in Hartford Public Schools. In that time, I successfully worked with kids from nearly every ethnic background.

But then I was told minority students couldn’t learn from me because I didn’t share their skin color, and that as a male I could not effectively teach female students. My privilege and implicit biases, according to DEI indoctrination, made me inadequate for the job — and possibly even a threat to the success of the children I thought I was helping.

What had changed? Not me. In 2017, new school administrators brought with them a race-focused agenda and sought to implement it through classroom teachers. They enlisted the Hartford Federation of Teachers, a local affiliate of the American Federation of Teachers, to support their new direction.

Keep reading

UCLA med school allegedly discriminates against white, Asian applicants: Lawsuit

A class action lawsuit from Do No Harm and Students for Fair Admissions alleges that the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA is illegally discriminating against white and Asian applicants by holding some applicants to a much lower admissions standard.

“(Jennifer) Lucero and the Admissions Committee routinely admit black applicants with below-average GPA and MCAT scores — even significantly below-average scores — while requiring whites and Asians to have near-perfect scores to even be seriously considered,” wrote the plaintiffs in their class action complaint.

Jennifer Lucero was appointed associate dean of admissions of David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA in 2020. She also serves as vice chair for inclusive excellence — formerly called diversity, equity and inclusion — for the Geffen Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine.

In 2020, UCLA was ranked by U.S. News and World Report as the sixth-best medical school for research.

But UCLA fell to 18th by the time U.S. News and World Report stopped ordinal ranking of medical schools and eliminated reputational ranking of departments within medical schools after numerous former top medical schools boycotted submitting data to USNWR over “equity” concerns.

The number of students failing exams has increased tenfold since 2020 for some subjects, according to reporting from the Free Beacon.

Under Proposition 209, passed by California voters in 1996, it is illegal for state entities to consider race in hiring, contracting and education. In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that race-based affirmative action policies for college admissions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The complaint details several notable incidents in which Lucero engaged in unusual behavior during admissions committee meetings.

Keep reading