Top Three Takeaways – July 8th, 2021

Top Three Takeaways – July 8th, 2021

1. Florida’s not free of CRT. I warned about then, when Florida’s Board of Education effectively banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory, and you have fair warning now. It’s not over and if you want to keep Critical Race Theory out of the classroom, you, as a parent, have a role to play. Not only do many of Florida’s teachers have designs on teaching CRT, you need look no further than their teachers unions - which are telling parents that they – determine what’s taught in the classroom and the NEA just approved funding for increasing the implementation” of “critical race theory” in K-12 curricula, promoting critical race theory in local school districts, and attacking opponents of critical race theory, including parent organizations and conservative research centers. No kidding, and that’s the largest teacher’s union in the country. And aside from the threat of the unions, of which 78% of Florida’s public-school teachers are members, 69 teachers in Florida didn’t wait that long. 69 teachers, including 13 in South Florida, have signed a pledge that they’ll teach CRT regardless of Florida’s law. You’ve got work to do to take back our classrooms. We all do. 
2. Dem’s freefall in Florida Continues. Florida’s latest monthly voter registration information is in and the survey says... Democrats lost another 20,000 plus voters in Florida last month. In fairness, Republicans dropped another 6,000 voters too as NPA’s continue to post the only gains, but the defections are mounting for Democrats. Their voter registration advantage over Republicans, which was as high as 36% decades ago, is down to only 0.5% today. Clearly Floridians aren’t picking up what Biden and company are putting down and Florida’s Democrats, which have never trailed in voter registration, are very much at risk of doing so before next year’s elections. 
3. Big Tech Backlash. While Florida’s law attempting to reign in big tech has been put on hold by a federal court, Donald Trump’s lawsuit against them is just reaching the courts. In launching lawsuits seeking class-action status against Facebook, Google and Twitter he had this to say: There is no better evidence that big tech is out of control than the fact that they banned the sitting president of the United States earlier this year. That’s logic that’s hard to argue with. So too is the fact that twice the United States Supreme Court has ruled internet speech is protected speech under the 1st Amendment. While the platforms might in theory be “private”, there isn’t any platform without the internet and Trump is legally challenging the notion that they retain the same “private” rights due to their use of Section 230 protections under the Communications Act to protect themselves from liability for what’s posted on their platforms. Like most things in the legal system this will likely go nowhere fast, however while you wait to see if you’ll be able to ride the Trump train again, if it’s granted class status, you might have the opportunity to join Trump’s lawsuit.