Segregation, quotas and gender ideology: Minnesota’s schools are going backward

We expect it in California and New York, but Minnesota has become one of the most aggressive states in reshaping education. Defending Education has documented the statewide leftward shift, and it is a civil-rights crisis.

In October, Defending Ed filed a civil rights complaint with the U.S. Department of Education over Minneapolis Public Schools’ racially segregated classes, which appeared to be available only to black students, in violation of Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

We settled this question in 1954. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court made it clear that segregating students by race in public schools is unconstitutional.

In that same Minnesota district, students in a required Ethnic Studies class conduct a “structural analysis of racism and colonialism,” viewing everything through a race-based, anti-capitalist and Marxist lens.

The course cites Critical Race Theory, promotes the ideas of Karl Marx and peddles the notion that capitalism and Western culture are to blame for slavery, genocide, colonialism and white supremacy. Teachers then ask students to “challenge the ‘white savior’ narrative” and complete a Youth Led Participatory Action Research project that pushes them into activism.

In 2023, lawmakers required that by 2026 every high school add an ethnic studies course that can count toward graduation along with history, geography, economics and civics.

Ethnic studies is touted as a curriculum to promote tolerance and cultural understanding, but we’ve documented how it is a trojan horse for activism in the classroom, framing society as divided between oppressors and the oppressed.

Minnesota is also fighting the Trump administration’s “Gender Ideology” and “Sports Ban” orders as unlawful rewrites of Title IX. At the same time, under the banner of a group called Gender Justice, school board candidates published a joint initiative supporting “the full inclusion of transgender and nonbinary students in school athletics,” which they claim Title IX protects.

Keep reading

Texas declares war on plan to seize one of America’s richest counties and turn it into a ‘melanated’ community

Texas is suing a man state officials claim is trying to ‘overthrow the local government’ of an oil-rich county by offering black people free houses to move there and vote how he wants. 

Carpetbagger Malcolm Tanner bought two five-acre plots of land in Loving County, on the Texas/New Mexico border, according to the state’s lawsuit.

The Indiana man, who claims to be running for president in 2028, has offered the land to up to 1,000 ‘melanated people’ for free. 

‘It’s a movement going on called the “melanated people of power,” Tanner says in one Instagram reel. 

‘It don’t matter where you are on the world. It could be Africa, Asia, as long as you melanated. That’s the only thing that matters. It’s for us. It’s for us.’

‘Do not miss out on your opportunity to be a homeowner, to have a deed.’ 

Through social media posts, Tanner explains that he will take over Loving County, which he calls ‘Tanner County.’

In the state’s lawsuit, Attorney General Ken Paxton claims he will get his melanated residents to vote as he wants, easily outvoting the 64 citizens recorded by the last US census – but with a total taxable value of over $18 billion in 2024 thanks to petroleum.

Already dozens of people have taken him up on his offer to move and collect $5,000 a month, the state claimed in a lawsuit.

‘Despite there being no homes or utilities on the land, Tanner has induced dozens of people, including many women and children, to move onto and inhabit the land without any provision for the proper disposal and treatment of sewage,’ Paxton said in a press release announcing the lawsuit.

‘These individuals are forced to live in RVs or other makeshift shelters.’

Keep reading

No, Trump Did Not Just Bring Back Segregation to Schools

Once again, the mainstream media is distorting the facts. Following the Justice Department’s recent dismissal of a decades-old desegregation case in Louisiana, critics rushed to frame the action as a rollback of civil rights or, worse, a return to racial segregation in schools. But the facts do not support this narrative.

In 1966, the U.S. Department of Justice filed a lawsuit to desegregate schools in Plaquemines Parish, Louisiana. The resulting federal consent decree mandated the dismantling of the district’s racially segregated school system.

By 1975, the court found the district had achieved integration. However, the case remained open for decades due to administrative oversight, including the death of the presiding judge, and no formal court action was ever taken to close it.

In April 2025, as part of a broader review of dormant cases, the DOJ under the Trump administration formally moved to dismiss the order.

According to a joint filing with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill, there had been “zero action by the court, the parties or any third-party” in nearly 50 years.

The DOJ’s official press release, titled “Justice Department Dismisses Half Century Old Louisiana Consent Decree,” stated: “No longer will the Plaquemines Parish School Board have to devote precious local resources over an integration issue that ended two generations ago,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon.

For the school district, remaining under the outdated court order meant compiling and submitting annual data to the DOJ on hiring practices, student discipline, and demographics. It imposed a bureaucratic burden on a small district with fewer than 4,000 students.

Local officials described the process as time-consuming and unnecessary, diverting limited staff and resources from more pressing educational needs.

For the DOJ, maintaining the inactive case consumed time and attention that could be better directed toward active civil rights enforcement.

Despite these facts, critics quickly claimed the dismissal would lead to “resegregation.”

Keep reading

Trump Department of Education Launches Investigations into 45 Universities for Race-Based Exclusionary Practices and 7 for Race-Based Segregation

The Trump administration is about to unleash a massive crackdown against the widespread discrimination whites and Asians are enduring on America’s college campuses.

This morning, the Department of Education opened Title VI investigations into 45 universities for allegedly engaging in race-exclusionary programs in their graduate programs and seven colleges for race-based segregation and using impermissible scholarships.

This makes 52 schools that are trying to return to the dark days when America was separated on the basis of skin color.

Below is the list of colleges engaging in race-exclusionary practices. Note the huge number of state colleges on this list.

  1. Arizona State University-Main Campus
  2. Boise State University
  3. Cal Poly Humboldt
  4. California State University – San Bernardino
  5. Carnegie Mellon University
  6. Clemson University
  7. Cornell University
  8. Duke University
  9. Emory University
  10. George Mason University
  11. Georgetown University
  12. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
  13. Montana State University-Bozeman
  14. New York University (NYU)
  15. Rice University
  16. Rutgers University
  17. The Ohio State University-Main Campus
  18. Towson University
  19. Tulane University
  20. University of Arkansas – Fayetteville
  21. University of California – Berkeley
  22. University of Chicago
  23. University of Cincinnati – Main Campus
  24. University of Colorado
  25. University of Delaware
  26. University of Kansas
  27. University of Kentucky
  28. University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
  29. University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
  30. University of Nebraska at Omaha
  31. University of New Mexico – Main Campus
  32. University of North Dakota – Main Campus
  33. University of North Texas – Denton
  34. University of Notre Dame
  35. University of Nevada – Las Vegas
  36. University of Oregon
  37. University of Rhode Island
  38. University of Utah
  39. University of Washington-Seattle
  40. University of Wisconsin-Madison
  41. University of Wyoming
  42. Vanderbilt University
  43. Washington State University
  44. Washington University in St. Louis
  45. Yale University

Here are the seven schools under investigation for allegedly using impermissible race-based scholarships and race-based segregation. The University of Alabama and the University of Minnesota are the most prominent names.

  1. Grand Valley State University
  2. Ithaca College
  3. New England College of Optometry
  4. University of Alabama
  5. University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
  6. University of South Florida
  7. University of Tulsa School of Medicine

Do you see your college on either list?

Keep reading

Parent Slams California School For Holding ‘No Whites Allowed’ Kids Playdate

A parent at a California elementary school has slammed officials for sanctioning a playdate for kids that essentially segregated them by race, and excluded white children.

A flyer for the event at Anthony Chabot Elementary School in Oakland, CA notes that it is “for black, brown and API families.”

“If your family identifies as Black, Brown, or API or are [sic] a parent/caregiver of a Black, Brown, or API student. Come hang out while we get a chance to know each other and build our community as we kick off this schoolyear [sic],” reads the invite to the event.

Ironically it was hosted by the school ‘equity & inclusion committee’.

Taking to social media, the parent noted “I dunno about others, but I’m genuinely upset about what ultimately boils down to a “No whites allowed” playdate.”

Keep reading

Israel expanded an apartheid law last week. No one is talking about it.

There has been a lot of noise from the Israeli protests concerning the judicial overhaul. The recent central law that was passed last week reduced the supreme court’s ability to overturn government policy, the so-called “reasonableness law.” But another law also passed just a day later — an amendment to a core apartheid law known as the “Village Committees Law” of 2010, more officially named the Cooperative Societies Ordinance. It passed without opposition, and was hardly noticed. 

Adalah, the Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, explained how “these committees, which to date exist in the Galilee and in the Naqab (Negev), have the power to approve or to deny applicants who wish to reside there, based on their perceived ‘social suitability’ to the ‘social and cultural fabric’ of a community. In practice, this power has led to the exclusion of Palestinian citizens of Israel from these communities, which are built on state-controlled land.”

The amendment that was passed (nr. 12) expands the existing law, which was limited to towns of up to 400 households, by introducing a new category called a “Continued Communal Town,” which allows towns with up to 700 households to have such admission committees. “Furthermore,” Adalah notes, “in five years, the Minister of Economy and Industry will be authorized to permit admissions committees in towns with more than 700. This provision, de facto, cancels the restriction on the number of households specified in the law.”

Keep reading

Liberal Suburbs Have Their Own Border Wall

The New York City suburb of Scarsdale, located in Westchester County, New York, is one of the country’s wealthiest communities, and its residents are reliably liberal. In 2020, three-quarters of Scarsdale voters cast ballots for Joe Biden over Donald Trump. One can safely presume that few Scarsdale residents are ardent backers of Trump’s wall on the Mexican border. But many of them support a less visible kind of wall, erected by zoning regulations that ban multifamily housing and keep non-wealthy people, many of them people of color, out of their community.

Across the country, a lot of good white liberals, people who purchase copies of White Fragility and decry the U.S. Supreme Court for ending affirmative action, sleep every night in exclusive suburbs that socially engineer economic (and thereby racial) segregation by government edict. The huge inequalities between upscale municipalities and their poorer neighbors didn’t just happen; they are in large measure the product of laws that are hard to square with the inclusive In This House, We Believe signs on lawns in many highly educated, deep-blue suburbs.

In a new report for The Century Foundation, I contrast Scarsdale with another Westchester County suburb, Port Chester, which is just eight miles away but has remarkably different demographics. Scarsdale’s median household income, in excess of $250,000, is nearly three times that of Port Chester, as is the portion of residents with a college degree. And whereas three-quarters of Port Chester’s elementary students qualify for free or reduced-price meals at school, zero percent of Scarsdale’s students do. In Scarsdale, 87 percent of residents are non-Hispanic white or Asian American, whereas 69 percent of Port Chester residents are Black or Hispanic.

Keep reading

Segregation forever? Atlanta separates blacks from whites in ‘academic recovery’ summer program

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) took more than a year to open an investigation into allegedly intentional racial segregation in Atlanta Public Schools and purported retaliation against parents who complained.

The feds may soon face a similar complaint: keeping predominantly black and white elementary schools apart in a summer program intended to mitigate learning loss due to COVID-19 policies.

The nonprofit Committee for APS Progress asked district officials why majority-black Hope-Hill Elementary School in Atlanta would not be housed on the same site as “the rest of the cluster schools” in Midtown — majority-white Mary Lin, Morningside and Springdale — for this summer’s Academic Recovery Academy, a departure from last summer.

The program website confirms that HHES, which has far smaller enrollment than each of the other three, will continue meeting at its own site while the others will meet at Mary Lin. Only three APS elementary schools among 40 are being kept alone for the summer program.

The arrangement resembles a larger version of the race-based “affinity groups” that are popular in higher education but have prompted litigation when applied to K-12 students and municipal employees. OCR has received several complaints about affinity groups for faculty, according to anti-woke medical advocacy group Do No Harm.

Keep reading

Christian Crowdfunding Site Hosting Neo-Nazi Trying to Build Whites-Only Community

The rightwing Christian alternative to GoFundMe is allowing a neo-Nazi leader to raise thousands of dollars on their platform, according to online records reviewed by VICE News.

GiveSendGo, which had already made headlines for allowing far-right groups like the Proud Boys raise millions of dollars off of its platform, is currently hosting a former Marine and neo-Nazi named Christopher Pohlhaus, who among other activities, wants to build an all-white community in Maine. 

Pohlhaus has commanded a sizable Telegram following for years and once gave a live stream on how best to hypothetically shoot truckers in order to disrupt the supply chain. He has also had connections to everyone from Riley June Williams—the January 6 attacker who broke into then Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office—to NSC-131, a neo-Nazi activist network in New England that was founded by a former member of a designated terrorist group

Despite those credentials, GiveSendGo, a site that promotes itself as the “#1 Free Christian Fundraising Site”, has yet to boot Pohlhaus from their platform. GiveSendGo was notified at least twice last year about the avowed neo-Nazi and his affiliations to the violent far-right. In September, an analyst at the Counter Extremism Project (CEP), a non-profit terrorism watchdog, contacted GiveSendGo to say Pohlhaus was using it as a platform for making money and establishing a white nationalist community. 

Pohlhaus served in the Marines for four years in the 2000s and gained prominence among the far-right when he promoted a countrywide and racist banner drop on the first anniversary of George Floyd’s murder. Pohlhaus then planned a migration among some of his followers to turn Maine into an all-white ethnostate. He took the cause to GiveSendGo, where Pohlhaus began to raise money for a homestead in a remote part of the state that could one day serve as a community and a place where his group can “train.” So far, records from the fundraising site show he has accumulated just over $2000, with two large donations over $800 each, coming nearly two months ago (the campaign also received 23 “prayers”, which is a button on GiveSendGo pages). 

Within that span of time, Pohlhaus caused outrage when he and several other members of his group, which he calls a tribe, showed up armed at a children’s drag queen story event in Ohio, giving the Sieg Heil salute with their arms, yelling racial slurs, and reportedly chanting “there will be blood!”

Keep reading

UCSB Black Student Union Holds Segregated Movie Screening: White People Not Welcome

The University of California Santa Barbara’s Black Student Union held a private screening of the new Marvel adventure Wakanda Forever on Wednesday night.

In their announcement of the event on Instagram, organizers made it clear that the event was segregated and white people were not welcome.

Organizers shared, “We are lovingly curating this space to support and affirm Black people and Black joy. We ask that our non-Black allies support our intention of creating a Black affinity and celebration space.”

The Daily Mail reports:

The University of Southern California‘s Black Student Union invited students to a free, private screening of the recently released Wakanda Forever, but asked white students not to attend.

The screening of the eagerly-anticipated Black Panther sequel was held at the local Santa Barbara Arlington Theatre.

UCSB Media Relations Manager Kiki Reyes told the College Fix that members of the BSU had not informed the school that the event was going to be segregated.

Keep reading