After lawmakers narrowly passed the legislation 213-208, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said the Parents’ Bill of Rights would face a "dead end" in the Senate.
Passage of the bill in the House, he said, is evidence the GOP-led House has been overtaken by “hard right MAGA idealogues,” according to an Associated Press story.
According to that story by the liberal AP wire service, critics of the bill oppose a “far-right movement that has led to book bans, restrictions aimed at transgender students and raucous school board meetings across the country.”
Left unmentioned in that AP story is those banned books are being targeted because they are sexually explicit. The graphic passages in “All Boys Aren’t Blue” depicts sex scenes among youths. Gender Queer, which is written in a comic-book style, depicts sexual scenes that can’t be described in this story or flashed on the screen of a local TV news segment.
The “transgender students” mentioned in the Democrat-defending AP story are male athletes who are showering and changing clothes with females, and are also competing against them, defeating them, and injuring them in girls-only sports.
Regarding those “raucous” school board meetings, the once-boring school board meetings became heated after parents learned their own school boards are hiding “woke” curriculum from them that teaches white students they are racist and that teaches children to choose their genders and new pronouns - all without parents' knowledge.
Those same frustrated parents have also learned their own federal government, unhappy with the grassroots activism, has declared them domestic terrorists. Alarmed by those "raucous" school board meetings, the Department of Justice formed a joint task force that includes the Criminal Division, National Security Division, Civil Rights Division, the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, the FBI, the Community Relations Service and the Office of Justice Programs, according to the DOJ announcement from October 2021.
Yet the Democratic Party is suggesting "hard right" Republicans are wasting time with a bill they are calling dangerous.
Now that Republicans in Congress are finally and belatedly catching up to the culture war happening in the classroom, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) said last week she was voting against the bill to "keep the culture war out of classrooms."
"When we talk about progressive values, I can say what my progressive value is and that is freedom over fascism," she said during floor debate.
McCarthy concessions led to Parents' bill
All of those controversies, which were local-level culture battles, finally got national attention late last year when Republicans gained a majority in the U.S. House. To win enough votes to become House Speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy agreed with the House Freedom Caucus to allow bills to come up for a vote without being blocked by GOP leaders.
According to the AP story, the Freedom Caucus demanded - and McCarthy agreed - to allow an open amendment process that allows those bills to hit the floor. A portion of the Parents' bill that addresses male athletes was added by Rep. Lauren Boebert, the AP story said.
Last week, McCarthy said Republicans made a promise on the campaign trail to bring up and pass the legislation.
"Parents will have a say in their kids' education," he said of the bill.
Tiffany Justice, of Moms for Liberty, tells AFN the Parents’ Bill of Rights was introduced in Congress because the American public demanded it after fighting for the right to be heard and to be respected by their public schools.
Justice herself was serving as a public school board member in Florida when she helped start Moms for Liberty to defend parental concerns and parental rights.
"If there are concerns, let's hear them,” she says of Democrats' opposition to the bill. “If there are amendments to be made, let us hear them.”
