#red states

[mysharona1987]

[odinsblog]

More than 300 children, including two 10-year-olds, were found working at McDonald's restaurants across Kentucky and several other states in violation of federal labor laws, the Labor Department said Tuesday.

In one case, investigators found two 10-year-olds were working unpaid and until as late as 2 a.m. at one McDonald's restaurant in Louisville operated by Bauer Food LLC, which is based in Louisville, the department said in a news release.

The two children prepared and distributed food orders, cleaned the store, worked at the drive-thru window and operated a register, investigators found. One of them was also allowed to operate a deep fryer, a task prohibited for workers under the age of 16 under federal law.

Most of the restaurants, 45 of the 62, were in Kentucky, according to data released by the department.

The revelation was part of an investigation into the child labor law violations in the Southeast. The agency also found three franchisees that own more than 60 McDonald's locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Maryland and Ohio, "employed 305 children to work more than the legally permitted hours and perform tasks prohibited by law for young workers" the Labor Department said in a statement.

The franchisees, Bauer Food, Archways Richwood and Bell Restaurant Group, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. CNN has also reached out to McDonald's for comment.

(source) (source)

[queerism1969]

[liberalsarecool]

Red State Brain Drain aka 'common sense'.

[oatsandeggs]

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[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

[lilithism1848]

[contemplatingoutlander]

America has legislated itself into competing red, blue versions of education

This is an excellent article in The Washington Post about how our school systems have begun to reflect the political divisions in our nation, with many red states legally banning discussions on racism, sexism, and gender issues, and many blue states legally requiring those kinds of discussions. This is a gift🎁link, so anyone can read the entire article, even if the don't subscribe to the Post. Below are some excerpts:

Three-fourths of the nation’s school-aged students are now educated under state-level measures that either require more teaching on issues like race, racism, history, sex and gender, or which sharply limit or fully forbid such lessons, according to a sweeping Post review of thousands of state laws, gubernatorial directives and state school board policies. The restrictive laws alone affect almost half of all Americans aged 5 to 19. [...] The divide is sharply partisan. The vast majority of restrictive laws and policies, close to 9o percent, were enacted in states that voted for Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election, The Post found. Meanwhile, almost 80 percent of expansive laws and policies were enacted in states that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

The explosion of laws regulating school curriculums is unprecedented in U.S. history for its volume and scope, said Jonathan Zimmerman, a University of Pennsylvania professor who studies education history and policy...states have never before stepped in so aggressively to set rules for local schools. [...] [A] nationally representative study from the Rand Corp. released this year found that 65 percent of K-12 teachers report they are limiting instruction on “political and social issues.” “What the laws show is that we have extremely significant differences over how we imagine America,” Zimmerman said. [...] In practice, these divisions mean that what a child learns about, say, the role slavery played in the nation’s founding — or the possibility of a person identifying as nonbinary — may come to depend on whether they live in a red or blue state. [...] Almost 40 percent of these laws work by granting parents greater control of the curriculum — stipulating that they must be able to review, object to or remove lesson material, as well as opt out of instruction. [...] Another almost 40 percent of the laws forbid schools from teaching a long list of often-vague concepts related to race, sex or gender.

[...] At the college level, among the measures passed in recent years is a 2021 Oklahoma law that prohibits institutions of higher education from holding “mandatory gender or sexual diversity training or counseling,” as well as any “orientation or requirement that presents any form of race or sex stereotyping.” By contrast, a 2023 California measure says state community college faculty must employ “teaching, learning and professional practices” that reflect “anti-racist principles.”

Some experts predicted the politically divergent instruction will lead to a more divided society. “When children are being taught very different stories of what America is, that will lead to adults who have a harder time talking to each other,” said Rachel Rosenberg, a Hartwick College assistant professor of education.

[kp777]

By Miles Parks

NPR

June 7, 2023

Why are Republicans abandoning one of the best tools the government has to catch voter fraud? That simple question is the focus of a new NPR investigation, published Sunday.

The tool is the Electronic Registration Information Center, better known as ERIC. It was created almost a decade ago as a way for states to share government data, in an effort to keep their voter rolls up to date. It allows election officials better insight into when their voters move and die and the rare times when they vote twice in different states, which is illegal.

"The little secret is that maybe more than 10 years ago, if somebody voted in Ohio, in Florida, in Arizona and Texas, you would have never known," Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said in an interview with NPR in February. "With ERIC, we can compare our voter rolls to those states."

Eight Republican states have now pulled out of ERIC, including many with voting officials who are on the record as praising the partnership as recently as a few months ago. Ohio pulled out a month after LaRose spoke to NPR.

J. Christian Adams, a conservative elections attorney, has long been a critic of how ERIC operates. But he told NPR: "It's this crazy zeal to get out of ERIC ... that is going to cause voter fraud to flourish."

So what happened? Here are five takeaways from NPR's investigation:

1. A far-right website kicked things off

The story starts in January 2022, when a far-right website called the Gateway Pundit, which has pushed conspiracy theories in the past, began writing about ERIC. Up until then, the partnership was considered a quiet bipartisan success story, with member states that spanned the political spectrum.

NPR's investigations team analyzed hundreds of thousands of social media posts on a handful of social media sites frequented by election deniers. We found the Gateway Pundit's coverage started the far right's fixation on the program:

See Chart.

Roughly a week after the first Gateway Pundit article, Louisiana Secretary of State Kyle Ardoin, a Republican, announced his state would become the first to pull out of ERIC, citing "concerns raised by citizens, government watchdog organizations and media reports."

2. Local "election integrity" groups are a political force

NPR found that while Ardoin did not make a big public show out of pulling out of ERIC, he did bring the announcement to maybe the only constituents at that time who would even care: a local group of conservative activists gathered in Houma, La.

The crowd, assembled for an "election integrity town hall," applauded for 15 seconds when Ardoin announced he was pulling the state out of ERIC. The event was publicized less than 24 hours before Ardoin's office released its statement on ERIC.

NPR's investigation also found these sorts of community election integrity groups to be critical in the effort to discredit ERIC across the country.

A group called Protect Your Vote Florida published a page on its website called "How to Influence Florida Legislators to Suspend Contract with ERIC!"

"The STRATEGY is to run a campaign directed at key Florida legislators," the group wrote in the post, which included a list of the state's lawmakers and contact information. "Hand delivered letters, emails, phone calls, and social media activity will all be utilized to maximize impact."

Emails acquired by NPR through public records requests showed election officials began to field questions from voters and state lawmakers shortly after these calls went out.

3. A Trump ally has coordinated an election denial machine

Cleta Mitchell is known by many for working with former President Donald Trump to try to overturn the 2020 election. The attorney was on the infamous call where Trump asked Georgia election officials to "find votes."

In the time since, she's been building an election denial infrastructure.

Her podcast, "Who's Counting," has become a central hub for stolen election narratives, and she's also started a coalition of grassroots groups across the country called the Election Integrity Network.

NPR's investigation found Mitchell to be a ringleader of sorts for the effort to dismantle ERIC.

She even hosted a secret ERIC summit with red state lawmakers last summer, according to documents shared with NPR by a nonprofit watchdog group called Documented.

Secretaries of state from the first five states to withdraw from ERIC attended the event, according to one attendee.

See chart.

4. Republican primaries are a driving force behind the ERIC exodus

In Louisiana, when Ardoin made the decision to leave ERIC, he was gearing up to run for reelection in a state Trump won by almost 20 percentage points. He was facing numerous challenges on his right. And ERIC was becoming a priority for Republican voters.

"We started hearing it on the campaign trail," added Alabama Secretary of State Wes Allen in an interview with NPR.

Allen ran for his office last year, and shortly after the Gateway Pundit published its first article, he made a campaign promise to pull out of ERIC if he won. This January, he followed through, and Alabama became the second state to withdraw.

Secretaries of state in Missouri, West Virginia and Ohio — all states that have pulled out — have announced campaigns for higher office next year, or are expected to run.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis is a candidate for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. DeSantis appointed Cord Byrd as his secretary of state last year, and the state's stance on ERIC shifted almost immediately.

NPR's investigation found that before he was secretary, Byrd regularly joined election integrity calls hosted by Mitchell.

5. ERIC withdrawals will make for "dirtier voter rolls" and an emboldened far right

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, put it simply in an interview with NPR: The states that have left ERIC "indirectly said, 'We're going to have dirtier voter rolls.' "

Brianna Lennon, a Democrat who oversees voting in Boone County, Mo., told NPR that will surely be the case in her county.

Before Missouri joined ERIC, the elections office relied on returned mail to find out if a voter moved to another state.

"That's what we'll have to go back to using," she said.

Election experts say less accurate voter rolls have a direct impact on voters, from longer lines at precincts to mail ballots and information getting sent to the wrong places.

Lennon told NPR she's worried about what the ERIC saga means for the 2024 election cycle. She had gotten a sense recently that community election integrity groups were gaining more traction in her state, but she says the secretary of state's decision was the first major policy decision she's seen that lined up so directly with their goals.

"I'm sure there are going to be ripples that come from this particular move and I'm not exactly sure what the end will be," she said. "I don't think this is an isolated thing."

Read or listen to the full investigation here.

[izooks]

Best quote ever: "voting is not some grand statement of human identity ... it is an opportunity to use a lever of power to make the country better or to make the country worse...”

This issue will be the end of MAGA. Mark my words. Women don't want to go back to those dark times!

[mysharona1987]

[odinsblog]

[queerism1969]

[whatareyoureallyafraidof]

Moscow Marge.

[vile-images]

“…if we want to win, leftists need to start organizing at our workplaces and in our unions, when we're lucky enough to have them. As the experience of the red state revolt illustrates, the revival of organized labor is inseparable from the project of rebuilding a militant minority.”

-Eric Blanc, Red State Revolt, Pg. 207