Dems Push for 'Educational Gag Order' Over Palestine Lessons in California
For years, California Democrats have defended their landmark program to put ethnic studies classes in high schools across the state.
In the face of national right-wing media attacks and local critics, the state's governing supermajority passed a law in 2021 making ethnic studies a graduation requirement, which supports school boards to develop their own curricula for the courses.
But one particular area of study threatens to unravel the Democratic consensus: Palestine.
In the past year, state lawmakers have teamed up with community groups and the lobbying coalition Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, or JPAC, in a push to regulate the ethnic studies program. They're aiming to pass a law that curbs local school board control over ethnic studies curricula in response to classwork focusing on the history of Israel and Palestine that they say has promoted unprecedented bigotry against Jewish students.
The bill's backers are framing the effort as a way to ensure that ethnic studies 'will combat all forms of hate,' as one of the bill's authors, Assemblymember Dawn Addis, wrote in a March 30 op-ed. 'At a time when the federal government is trying to rewrite American history by banning diversity initiatives, California must persist in elevating the lived experiences of everyone in this country,' wrote Addis, whose office did not respond to inquiries from The Intercept.
But as right-wing groups oppose the bill and ethnic studies more broadly, a coalition of critics warn that the new controls could lead to the same type of state censorship in schools that has been put into law in conservative states like Texas and Florida.
'This language goes far beyond supporting culturally-responsive education in a general sense, and echoes educational gag order legislation we've seen in other states nationwide,' said PEN America spokesperson Suzanne Trimel in a statement. 'This could result in state officials forcing a school or educator to pull certain materials they believe aren't 'fair' or don't provide enough variety of perspective, concepts that are difficult to define.'
Assembly Bill 1468 introduced in February, would create new state standards for the ethnic studies classes that California schools must offer by the beginning of this coming school year.
The discipline has its roots in California's college student strikes of the 1960s and was codified into state education law after years of deliberation in 2021. In that legislative process, teachers and scholars advocating for a more explicitly anti-imperialist approach in line with its radical origins lost out: Lessons on Palestine were excised from the law before it passed, and the left wing of the ethnic studies movement was sidelined from the process.
But still, the law required schools to begin offering an ethnic studies course by the fall of 2025, and schools teaching the course had the choice to develop curricula on their own, working with consultants and local communities or drawing upon guidance from the state.
Under the new law, standards will be written by a panel of academic experts in a specific subset of disciplines — African American studies, Latinx/Chicanx studies, Asian American/Pacific Islander studies, and Native American studies — with additional input from representatives of communities most frequently impacted by hate crimes according to state law enforcement.
The bill's author has also promised more 'traditional' scholars will be chosen by the governor. The state's current model curriculum on human rights and genocide, within the history and social science category, briefly characterizes the Nakba as an event in which 'Palestinians left Palestine.'
The California Department of Education would also receive all materials approved by local districts by 2026 and post their curricula online, with an eye for avoiding 'abstract ideological theories' and focusing on the 'domestic experience.'
On a call in March, the bill's backers gathered on a webinar to discuss the game plan.
State Sen. Josh Becker, a Silicon Valley Democrat co-authoring the bill, said the bill 'doesn't ban anything.' He told the audience that his 12th-grade son received a presentation in an ethnic studies class that had a puppeteer's hand holding strings and said, 'Israel is a country created on Palestinian land. The United Nations says this is illegal.'
'We all knew the U.N. created Israel, and there was no Palestine before that, and Gaza was controlled by Egypt,' Becker said, in remarks that were cut from the final video posted on Youtube. 'And we all know the history, this was not that.' Becker's office did not respond to requests for comment, but he later posted on social media on the comments: 'I don't mean and haven't meant to say or imply anything minimizing the Palestinian connection to the land.'
David Bocarsly, executive director of JPAC, explained to hundreds of listeners why he saw a new state law as a necessary step. 'District-by-district outreach became a game of whack-a-mole, and we knew that we needed a statewide solution,' he said.
Part of PEN America's criticism is that A.B. 1468's compliance provisions take a 'one-size-fits all approach to education' that 'could amount to educational intimidation.'
But a large segment of California's Democratic establishment is lining up behind this bill. Thirty-one state Democrats, including all but one member of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, have already signed on as co-authors of the bill.
The state superintendent of public instruction, Tony Thurmond, who plans to run for governor in 2026, has endorsed an earlier version of the bill that was held by the author in an August committee hearing. And his office recently investigated a San Jose ethnic studies teacher, finding that they violated Jewish students' rights by failing to intervene with another perspective during a student project on genocide with a slide titled 'Genocide of Palestinians.' (The investigation notes no students complained, and the district told The Intercept it will be responding to the state's findings.)
Two candidates running to replace Thurmond in 2026 have also indicated support for JPAC's efforts on ethnic studies. One of them, Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi, chairs the committee where the bill will face its first hearing. His office did not respond to questions from The Intercept.
The current movement to clamp down on teaching Palestine in ethnic studies curriculum coalesced around a story out of Orange County. The Santa Ana Unified School District, adjacent to one of the nation's largest Arab American communities, approved two world history ethnic studies courses in April 2023 that briefly taught about Israel and Palestine, including content about the Nakba and settlements. After pro-Israel organizations objected, the district's superintendent vowed not to remove any group's narrative in May 2023.
But in September of that year, an Anti-Defamation League-backed coalition sued on procedural grounds. During the messy litigation, lawyers pressed district staff and board members for their thoughts on Zionism and Hamas, and in August 2024, they uncovered text messages indicating senior district officials sought to avoid scrutiny by passing courses on a Jewish holiday. Two congressional Republicans subsequently called for the district to undergo a federal investigation.
District leaders, meanwhile, responded by shelving the contested courses as part of a February 2025 settlement, inviting the litigants to provide input to the course process while denying claims of discrimination. The agreement also promises not to include several references to the oppression of Palestinians from a book about ethnic cleansing by a British sociologist.
A few days after the Santa Ana settlement, A.B. 1468 was introduced in the California legislature, and JPAC published five examples of what it called 'examples of antisemitism and harmful rhetoric' in ethnic studies classrooms.
But JPAC didn't provide any sources for their claims, and in some situations it's unclear exactly to which materials they are referring. Bocarsly, the executive director of JPAC, did not respond to requests for comment or more information on the list.
JPAC included the Fort Bragg Unified School District on the list for its lesson with a map of Palestinian dispossession and land loss. Superintendent Joseph Aldridge said that he first learned of JPAC's allegation from The Intercept and is now removing the lesson from the unit, which has not yet been taught and also includes a lesson on Middle Eastern Jewish communities.
Aldridge said that he wished that JPAC had gotten in touch to discuss the issue before putting the district on the list. 'I was a little disappointed to see our district's name out there without at least some chance to have a conversation about it,' he said.
A spokesperson for another district on the JPAC list, San Francisco Unified, responded 'we are looking into this,' when contacted by The Intercept. Following up, its spokesperson later said that the district was in alignment with state law. Maria Su, the district's superintendent, did not respond to inquiries.
Janet Schulze, the superintendent of Pittsburg Unified School District, told The Intercept she was 'very surprised and puzzled' to see JPAC's claim that the district used a biased definition of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement in its course, and said that they had been working with the curriculum consulting firm Community Responsive Education for years.
'We have not received any negative feedback or reports of anti-semitism from our community regarding this course or any of the other courses we have that meet the Ethnic Studies requirement,' she said in a statement. A representative from the national pro-Israel group StandWithUS, a member of JPAC's coalition, did however criticize the contract with Community Responsive Education in a 2024 school board meeting.
The push to clamp down on ethnic studies curricula picked up political momentum in the wake of the October 7 attacks in Israel and the subsequent anti-war movement in the U.S., but one of the bill's authors has made it clear that the fight stretches back to the late 2010s.
Los Angeles Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur has called opponents to A.B. 1468 advocates who have been 'peddling' radical curricula to school districts. 'They have a big presence in the Cal State system, they're organized, there are liberated ethnic studies adherents within the teachers unions,' he warned listeners on the JPAC webinar in March. His office declined an interview request and did not respond to questions from The Intercept.
After losing out in the legislative wrangling over the original ethnic studies bill, the spurned left wing of the expert body convened by the state Department of Education created a consulting firm in 2020 called the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, with the goal of helping school districts interested in the more radical vision of the discipline construct their courses. The group has been in the crosshairs since, while similar firms and coalitions have popped up nationwide.
A federal judge in November threw out a lawsuit alleging that LESMCC covertly spreads antisemitism and bias throughout Los Angeles and California schools, writing in his decision, 'It would be of great concern for the educational project and for academic freedom if every offended party could sue every time they did not like a curriculum or the way it was taught.' The case is being appealed.
None of the districts cited by JPAC have contracts with the group, though CRE, which works with the Pittsburg district, was co-founded by Allyson Tintiangco-Cubales, an Asian American studies professor at San Francisco State University who is on the LESMCC leadership team.
Theresa Montaño, an LESMCC founder and California State University, Northridge professor of Chicano/a studies, said that lawmakers 'seem to want to label' all the material they dislike as 'liberated ethnic studies.' She said that school districts and teachers choose to work with her group's teacher training or classroom materials of their own volition. What they choose to teach 'is their sentiment, and it's the sentiment of a lot of their students,' Montaño said.
But she noted that her group is just a small part of a larger movement in education, and many districts arrive at curricula that some consider controversial on their own. 'When you're engaged in a movement, it's organic, it's dynamic, it's ever changing, it's created from the grassroots up,' she said. 'Nobody controls that movement, not liberated ethnic studies, not community responsive education, not any consulting group around ethnic studies.'
Opposition to CRE's work in the Pajaro Valley Unified School District, which covers a majority Latino farm area south of Santa Cruz, sparked a year-and-a-half long fight over whether to renew the group's contract. That came to a close just last week, when the board voted to renew the CRE contract on the grounds that they found no antisemitism in the actual curriculum. But the ADL California and StandWithUs have continued to push back, demanding school board members apologize for statements that they say drew on antisemitic tropes, which drew an official warning from the superintendent of Santa Cruz County Schools.
Other small, diverse California communities are speaking out against the new bill. Cudahy, a 96 percent Hispanic city of just 21,000 in Los Angeles County, unanimously passed an April 15 resolution saying the bill 'undermines local control.' 'This is clearly a way to manipulate the narrative of the genocide in Palestine. If we read the language of the text of the bill, it's pretty evident,' said Councilmember Daisy Lomeli at the meeting.
Though some are reevaluating their courses, hundreds of California districts are moving forward with the ethnic studies program in the face of significant political pressure, and without the over $200 million in funding the state estimated was necessary for developing their classes.
The bill is set to be heard on April 30 in the Assembly Education Committee in what is expected to be a lively hearing, unless lawmakers vote to extend the deadline in advance. 'Those pushing to inject harmful content into our classrooms are loud,' reads one message from JPAC to supporters. 'We need to be louder.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
San Francisco Chronicle
38 minutes ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Less than 20% of troops deployed to L.A. are on the ground. A former commander calls that ‘awful'
Less than 20% of the nearly 5,000 National Guard and Marine troops deployed to Los Angeles were actually on the ground in the city as of earlier this week, according to text messages by a state official with direct knowledge of staffing. That level is so low a former National Guard commander called it 'awful' in an interview with the Chronicle and questioned whether the $134 million deployment is justified. Of the 4,946 National Guard members and Marines deployed by President Donald Trump to Los Angeles in response to protests of immigration raids, just 978 were in the city, the state official with firsthand knowledge of National Guard staffing levels wrote Wednesday in the text messages obtained by the Chronicle. 'Federalized National Guard and USMC forces are grossly underutilized,' the state official wrote to another state official. 'That's at 19.77% utilization rate. Insane.' The officials were discussing how the deployment was pulling soldiers away from the National Guard's wildfire mitigation work. The Chronicle is not naming the officials in accordance with its policy on anonymous sources. The former National Guard commander, Brig. Gen. Peter Cross, told the Chronicle that the less than 20% rate is consistent with what he's heard in his role as president of the National Guard Association of California. Even accounting for soldiers working in shifts, he said, soldiers should be working at a rate much closer to 100%. 'It's awful. … So far as I understand, we're not even approaching, under that shifting model, full utilization of the soldiers,' he said. 'That's extremely concerning to me as a former military commander." Democrats have been saying for weeks that the deployment is a waste of money. 'You really have to use the National Guard as a last resort,' said Cross, a retired military police officer who was deployed to the 1992 Los Angeles riots and has served in Iraq and Afghanistan. 'This is literally the most expensive option we as a society, as a country, can utilize.' Many of the troops deployed in Southern California in response to the protests are stationed at the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, where the military has constructed massive tents to house them. The base is about 30 miles from downtown Los Angeles in Orange County. It typically is used for the National Guard and Army Reserves. Trump began federalizing National Guard troops, who are normally under governors' control, nearly two weeks ago in response to protests over aggressive immigration raids in Los Angeles. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass opposed the deployment, saying that local and state police were sufficiently staffed to handle the protests. Trump argued that the protests had gotten out of hand. 'If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can't do their jobs, which everyone knows they can't, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!' the president wrote in a post on his social media website on Saturday, June 7. Shortly after the post, Trump issued an executive order federalizing 2,000 members of the National Guard for 60 days to respond to protests. The order does not specify that the troops be deployed in California or Los Angeles. Trump has since called up additional National Guard members and has also deployed 700 Marines to respond. The protests in Los Angeles, which grew after Trump deployed the troops, have since calmed significantly. Earlier this week, Bass lifted a curfew she had imposed last week for the area of downtown that has seen the most protests. Newsom has sued to regain control of the National Guard troops. He argues that Trump's federalizing of the troops is illegal and amounts to a dangerous overreach by the president. On Thursday, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Trump could retain control of the Guard troops while legal challenges proceed in lower courts. 'This brazen abuse of power by a sitting President inflamed a combustible situation putting our people, our officers, and the National Guard at risk,' Newsom said in a speech several days after Trump deployed the troops. 'When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard, he made that order apply to every state in this nation. … California may be first — but it clearly won't end here. Other states are next.' Most of the 300 National Guard members who had been working on a vegetation management team called Joint Task Force Rattlesnake have been taken off the wildfire prevention work as part of the Los Angeles deployment, according to Newsom's office. Newsom has also criticized the deployment for moving National Guard troops who had been doing drug interdiction work at the border. 'You just pulled National Guard I placed at the border who were stopping fentanyl smuggling,' Newsom wrote on social media in response to a post from a Trump administration official. 'Now they're twiddling their thumbs in LA.' Lt. Carl Trujillo, a spokesperson for the California Military Department, referred all questions about the deployment to U.S. Army North Public Affairs. He said that when National Guard troops were deployed to assist with wildfire recovery in Los Angeles earlier this year, they were stationed at the Rose Bowl and a base in Malibu, not the training base in Los Alamitos. He said the base is not typically used to station large numbers of troops for extended periods of time because it is relatively small. U.S. Army North Public Affairs declined to respond to questions about staffing levels and whether it was typical that less than 20% of the deployed troops would be used in Los Angeles on any given day, citing security concerns. The office said that the National Guard troops are being housed at Los Alamitos, while the Marines are located at Naval Weapons Station Seal Beach, also in Orange County. Photos posted online by the military show the tents at the base in Los Alamitos, with some housing rows upon rows of cots and folding tables set up like a cafeteria. Images taken by a Chronicle photographer from a helicopter that flew near the base show multiple massive tents and other temporary structures that have been erected on the base. Other photos obtained by the Chronicle from inside the base also show soldiers in fatigues walking around the area as well as construction projects with cranes and wooden pallets. A nearby resident, who declined to give his name, said he has a good view of the base from his backyard. He said it's common for troops to stage there for training. He said troops had camped in smaller tents when they arrived, but now are staying in a massive tent that he estimated is longer than a football field but about the same width. The resident described the National Guard troops as 'wonderful neighbors' even if they make noise early in the morning. Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, he said he could hear troops marching down the middle of a road near his home. Cross said it's not surprising that National Guard soldiers would be stationed at the base in Los Alamitos and that it's normal protocol to build massive tents to house soldiers. But he noted that the activity at the base underscores why deploying the Guard is also the most expensive option available in a situation like this. It also takes a personal toll on the soldiers who are deployed, who must leave their families, their jobs and their educational pursuits behind. Typically the Guard should be deployed only when all local law enforcement options are exhausted. That doesn't seem to be the case here, he said. 'This melodramatic talk about people worried about the military shooting someone or being more violent than is necessary — I'm just not worried about that because of the training we have,' he said. 'I'm just skeptical whether we were needed.' In his current role with the California National Guard, Cross oversees the Youth and Community Program, which runs educational programs for struggling teens. The programs have continued to function, he said, even as many of the soldiers who work on them have been deployed. But if the deployment is still happening in a few weeks when the new school session starts, he's worried he'll have to turn more troubled teens away. 'When you're called up, you're pulled up from your employer, from your life,' Cross said. 'You want it to have value, you want it to have purpose, and if you're sitting in your armory, not tasked, that will erode your morale.'
CNBC
39 minutes ago
- CNBC
Republican Party has nearly five times more cash on hand than the Democrats
The Republican National Committee has almost five times the cash on hand as its Democratic counterpart, as Democrats seek to regain their footing following a disappointing 2024 cycle. The RNC reported having $72 million on hand at the end of May, compared to just $15 million for the DNC, according to campaign filings out Friday. While the RNC has for months held a cash advantage over the Democratic National Committee, the $57 million gap is the widest disparity between the two parties since at least July 2020, according to California Target Book's Rob Pyers. It's still early, but the GOP's cash edge could give the party an early boost as it looks to build out campaign infrastructure ahead of next year's midterms. "The single most important thing the DNC can and should be doing right now is raising money," Democratic strategist Adrienne Elrod told CNBC. The filings come as the DNC has faced internal tension since President Donald Trump's return to the White House. Earlier this month, leaders of two large labor unions each declined their nominations to continue serving on the committee, dealing a blow to Chair Ken Martin. Martin has also overseen internal divisions over ex-DNC Vice Chair David Hogg's bid to challenge sitting Democratic incumbents. Hogg stepped down from his role earlier this month amid backlash. Some Democrats say that the fundraising gap underscores deeper concerns within the party. "The base of the party and donors alike do not have confidence in the direction of the party," said Cooper Teboe, a Democratic strategist in Silicon Valley. Teboe said that the party has not presented "a positive, inspiring vision." The DNC, however, points to a surge in grassroots support. The party says it raised roughly $40 million in individual donations since Martin became chair in February, a record for that four-month period. The contributions go to a range of areas, according to the DNC, including "building up critical infrastructure from tech to organizing to in-state investments for critical, target races." "This is only the start, but it's a record-setting start that allows Democrats to meaningfully invest in every part of the country," Martin said in a statement. The DNC's war chest is roughly double what it held during the same period in 2017, suggesting there is time for them to catch up. "The goals Chair Martin has set out — investing in all 50 states and building the state of-the-art infrastructure necessary to win back the White House in 2028 — are ambitious and necessary, but they can only be achieved by raising money," Elrod said. Looking ahead, Teboe said that Democrats may be successful in next year's midterms "as a reaction to Trump's overreach but it will take a new generation of voices to get the party out of this mess." "Those voices will emerge in the 2028 primary and we will have the chance to rebuild a stronger Democratic Party outside of the influence of the old guard that seems incapable of understanding what motivates normal Americans," he said. The Republicans' money advantage comes after a 2024 election cycle during which Tesla founder Elon Musk poured nearly $300 million into helping elect Republicans. Musk's surge of donations to help elect Trump certainly took some pressure off the rest of the party's fundraising apparatus. It's unclear what the RNC might have decided to pay for last year's elections, were it not for Musk's millions. Musk last month said that he was going to do "a lot less" political spending in the future. It's also unclear how Trump will use the millions he has raised in a group of PACs since he won the November election. Should Trump choose to donate to Republican candidates and get out the vote efforts next year, the RNC could again find itself under less pressure to shell out cash than the DNC. But Trump's financial support has traditionally not been geared towards helping the party at large. Rather, Trump has contributed relatively small amounts to help elect his closest allies. He has also played a significant role in Republican primary races, endorsing MAGA candidates who, in some cases, have struggled to win the backing of moderate Republicans and independent voters.
an hour ago
Ex-Texas US Rep. Blake Farenthold, who left office amid harassment allegations, dies at 63
Former Texas Republican U.S. Rep. Blake Farenthold, who left Congress amid sexual harassment allegations, has died. He was 63. He died in a Corpus Christi hospital and suffered heart and liver problems in recent years, Steve Ray, his former longtime political consultant, said. Farenthold's wife, Debbie Farenthold, confirmed that he died Friday. Blake Farenthold was elected in 2010, upsetting long-serving Democratic U.S. Rep. Solomon Ortiz. Seven years later, Farenthold announced that he wouldn't seek reelection. In a video he posted on his campaign's Facebook page at the time, he denied a former aide's three-year-old accusations, which included that he'd subjected her to sexually suggestive comments and behavior and then fired her after she complained. He apologized for an office atmosphere he said included 'destructive gossip, offhand comments, off-color jokes and behavior that in general was less than professional.' He said in the video that if he stayed in Congress, he would have spent months trying to vindicate himself. 'We all make mistakes,' Ray said Saturday. 'He made some mistakes.' Ray described him as a 'techie' who was interested in the internet and technology before getting involved in politics. 'He did a tremendous job as congressman for this area,' Ray said, noting that Farenthold cared about fighting crime and promoting transparency. 'His heart was really always in the right place.' Before becoming a congressman, Farenthold was a sidekick for a conservative radio talk show host, Ray said. 'When he decided to run, nobody in the world thought he was going to win,' Ray said. When he left office, Farenthold started his own radio show, which he continued until he died. In addition to his wife, Farenthold is survived by two adult daughters, Morgan Baucum and Amanda Lawrence, Ray said.
