Student Sues School Over Pledge of Allegiance, Gov. Newsom Sues Fox for Lying
June 30, 2025
What I’m Discussing Today:
Kareem’s Daily Quote: How should we measure intelligence?
Trump Justice Dept. Pressuring University of Virginia President to Resign: Trump said the school violated students’ civil rights because they weren’t quick enough dismantling DEI. That’s some twisted logic.
Palestinian student sues Michigan school over teacher’s reaction to her refusal to stand for Pledge: The teacher wants the student to love our freedoms but never use them—or be sent back to her country of origin. Even more twisted logic.
Supreme Court sides with parents in LGBTQ+ books case: Protect the children’s education by allowing parents to make them less educated. No logic.
Anatomy of the Trump Administration’s Misinformation on Iran Bombings: A full-scale misinformation campaign is in progress from the Trump administration. Let’s break down exactly how that works.
Newsom Sues Fox News for Saying He Lied About Call With Trump: Fox clearly lied. Nice to see someone else holding them accountable.
Kareem’s Video Break: I’m practicing these dance moves right now.
Kareem’s Magical Moments in Sports: NBA clips of unpredictable moments that remind us why we love sports.
Leon Russell Sings “This Masquerade”: This song was number one on the jazz, pop, and R&B charts at the same time. Easy to hear why.
Kareem’s Daily Quote
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
Stephen Hawking (1942-2018), English physicist
Americans are especially interested in measuring intelligence. Unfortunately, we’ve got the idea of intelligence all wrong, and that has caused great harm to society. It has led us to admiring the wrong people for the wrong reasons, thereby allowing them to influence us in areas beyond their limited expertise. The best car mechanic in the world can’t operate on your heart or teach quantum physics, so why do we think that a business entrepreneur whose focus is only the bottom line can run a city, state, or country with compassion, strength, integrity, and wisdom?
We can’t turn to science to assess intelligence. Science is all about measuring. This amount produces this effect. However, the yardsticks used to determine intelligence are antiquated and inaccurate. The IQ test does measure a certain amount of knowledge combined with the ability to reason, but it’s limited by what kind of knowledge its creators finds important. I don’t dismiss it as a means to understand intelligence, but its scope is too narrow.
The other measure of intelligence that Americans value is success, particularly financial success. The amount in one’s bank account shows how smart they are. That, too, is very limited because the ability to make money reveals ambition and business ability, but it can also reveal greed, dishonesty, and single-mindedness. The real challenge of intelligence is to become successful without being underhanded. To win without cheating.
I’m looking for a new means of measuring a person’s intelligence. It’s based less on accumulated knowledge than on how one uses knowledge to achieve happiness without exploiting others. A smart person acquires knowledge: an intelligent person uses that knowledge to achieve happiness.
There’s no intelligence in gathering great wealth if it means long-term destruction of the community. If you make money manufacturing an item that pollutes the local water table and causes cancer among local residents, that may be “smart” in the short term because you can take the money and live elsewhere. But you’ve also created a precedent for others to do the same until you’ve perpetuated climate change that makes water scarce, produces fewer crops, and creates greater poverty. The country is weaker for your children and their children. Even generational wealth has its limitations if the country is weak. That shows a lack of foresight which proves a deficit of intelligence. Of course, those living in mansions, sailing on yachts, and vacationing on the Riviera don’t see it that way. Which proves the point. They lack the intelligence to see the bigger picture which is the catastrophic effects of their myopia.
A intelligent person may not be able to name Renaissance painters or who won the Battle of Hastings, but they do know that it’s not enough to help your neighbor change a flat tire, you also need to help the country change its ways when it’s faltering. You have to see the ripple effects of actions. Intelligence means committing to rational action (not just thought), based on evidence supplied from reasonable sources. It also means knowing which sources are reasonable.
Intelligence is knowing that positive change doesn’t just happen: it requires the unified effort of people. Intelligence is learning from the mistakes of the past. As bestselling marketing consultant Roy H. Williams once said, “A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether.”
Kareem’s Department of “Try to Justify This”: Civil Rights & Education Edition
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT: Each of these stories features an attack on Americans’ civil rights fostered by the Trump administration’s dislike of the U.S. Constitution. This is the daily erosion of civil rights, especially in education.
Trump Justice Dept. Pressuring University of Virginia President to Resign (The New York Times):
SUMMARY: “The Trump administration has privately demanded that the University of Virginia oust its president to help resolve a Justice Department investigation into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to three people briefed on the matter…Justice Department officials have told University of Virginia officials that hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding are at risk because of what the department says is the school’s disregard for civil rights law over its diversity practices, according to two of the people.”
MY TAKE: After all the turmoil and sacrifices of the civil rights movement of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, I never thought I’d see the day when the DOJ would fight to oust university presidents for implementing civil rights policies that leveled the playing field for all people. I didn’t think we still lived in an America that would tolerate such overt racism from an administration. Yeah, we’ve become those people.
It’s an ironic habit that we often name streets after what we destroyed in order for that street to exist (e.g., Orange Grove Ave., Cherokee Lane). Now we have Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., to transport America back to the 1950s of White supremacy. In the end, MASA (Make America Stupid Again) won: James Ryan resigned from the University of Virginia, and the school, education, and American democracy is the worse because of it.Palestinian student sues Michigan school over teacher’s reaction to her refusal to stand for Pledge (AP)
SUMMARY: “The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Wednesday on behalf of a 14-year-old student who said a teacher humiliated her for refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance in protest of U.S. support of Israel’s war in Gaza…Danielle Khalaf’s teacher told her, “Since you live in this country and enjoy its freedom, if you don’t like it, you should go back to your country,” according to the lawsuit…Danielle, whose family is of Palestinian descent, declined to recite the Pledge over three days in January…As a result, Danielle “suffered extensive emotional and social injuries,” including nightmares, stress and strained friendships, the lawsuit says.”
MY TAKE: The pledge that developed into today’s version was written in 1892 by Francis Bellamy, a Christian socialist, which endorses a form of socialist economics based on the teachings of Jesus and rejects capitalism based on the sin of greed. I mention this only because GOP politicians are always accusing their opponents of being socialists, yet they want to force children to recite socialist propaganda. (FYI: There is some contention among experts about the authorship of the Pledge of Allegiance, but that is a relatively recent argument and probably very few in the Republican Party know about it.)
The real issue here is the failure of education to enforce critical thinking in how it presents notions of patriotism. The teacher told her, “Since you live in this country and enjoy its freedom, if you don’t like it, you should go back to your country.” That teacher should immediately be put on suspension for 1. forcing their own political beliefs on the student, and 2. for not understanding the major logical flaw in their thinking.
The teacher claimed the student was enjoying the country’s freedoms, one of which is the freedom of speech, expression, and dissent. In essence, the teacher is telling the student, if you actually want to use the freedoms of this country, you should leave it. As for the common “love it or leave it” refrain from “patriots” who complain about people using free speech, someone should tell the ill-informed teacher that at least eight of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were immigrants, and that seven of the 39 signers of the U.S. Constitution were immigrants. This teacher would clearly have been on the side of the British when we were forming this country, forcing the children to pledge allegiance to Britain—and those who didn’t were invited to leave.
This teacher, as well as any school district that mandates reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, is actually promoting anti-American values of using schools for political propaganda and punishing practitioners of free speech.
Credit: D-Klein/gettyimages Supreme Court sides with parents in LGBTQ+ books case (USA Today)
SUMMARY: “The Supreme Court has ruled that a Maryland school district's reading program unconstitutionally infringed on Christian and Muslim parents' rights to freely exercise their religion under the First Amendment…The case, Mahmoud v. Taylor, centered on parents' rights to opt their children out of a reading program in the Montgomery County Public Schools, one of the nation's largest and most ethnically diverse districts in the country…Some of the book titles in the reading program featured LGBTQ+ characters and themes of inclusion. Parents argued that a lack of an opt-out from the program infringed on their rights to freely exercise their religion under the First Amendment.”MY TAKE: While parents should be able to exercise religious freedom in raising their children, the law makes it clear that those rights are restricted if they include behavior that is detrimental to the community at large. For example, if religious beliefs keep parents from vaccinating their child and that child becomes contagious, the state can keep them from attending school. If a parent’s religious beliefs include not seeking medical care for a sick child or physically punishing them, the state can intervene.
This is no different. The parents are deliberately preventing their children from receiving a thorough education that includes critical thinking that may conflict with religious beliefs. Since the parents still have the option of teaching whatever religious beliefs they want at home, they should not have the right to interfere with the school’s curriculum. Should parents be able to opt out of science books that teach the world isn’t flat or that Black people aren’t inferior despite the once-popular Christian justification for slavery that Noah’s curse of Ham meant that Ham was Black and his descendants were conveniently condemned to slavery? Alexander Crummell, a free Black man who had attended Cambridge University, said in 1862 that “the opinion that the sufferings and the slavery of the Negro race are the consequence of the curse of Noah [is a] general, almost universal, opinion in the Christian world.” So, books that disputed that or showed Blacks as equals should also be banned? Which would be more offensive to Jesus: people of the same sex expressing love for each other, or intellectual abuse of children and abuse of people expressing love?
The LGBTQ+ issue is meant to be the wedge in the door that leads to more and more banning of books and the teaching of critical thinking and actual history. The idea among religious stalwarts is that the general public cares less about the LGBTQ+ population and therefore won’t stand up for them. Once that group is dispatched, they can move on to marginalizing Jews, women, etc. This Supreme Court ruling is another step in the government’s endorsement of discrimination.
FYI: Hungary’s strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whom Trump admires, on Friday warned people to stay away from Gay Pride Parade, which he banned to protect children from “homosexual propaganda.” He threatened “clear legal consequences” for anyone taking part. In reaction, the parade, which originated in 1995 and usually attracts only a few thousand, this year brought together over a hundred thousand Hungarians. The liberal mayor renamed the parade Budapest Pride Freedom, declaring it was a celebration of Hungary’s freedom when the Soviet Union withdrew in 1991. Still, the government said it was illegal and threatened to jail him. Sound familiar? (“At least 5 elected officials have been arrested or confronted by police while protesting Trump’s immigration policies”). This demonstration of defiance and unity is how people fight against injustice.
Kareem’s Video Break
When I see someone who can move like this, I feel a lightness in my own aging body. I know it’s an illusion, but it still feels good.
Anatomy of the Trump Administration’s Misinformation on Iran Bombings
WHY THIS IS IMPORTANT: Trump and his loyalists got caught in a lie about the effectiveness of the U.S. bombing of Iran, and their response is the worst kind of ranting, childish name-calling, deflection, and misinformation that is not befitting a democracy. If the public allows this behavior to continue, we will have abdicated our power in influencing the government.
A preliminary Pentagon report leaked to CNN indicated that “the bombing of Iran’s nuclear sites sealed off the entrances to two of the facilities but did not collapse their underground buildings…It also reportedly suggested that much of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium was moved before the strikes. Some of that material has been moved to secret nuclear sites maintained by Iran.”
Trump’s outrage over the reports that U.S. bombings have possibly been less effective than he indicated led to ranting irrational statements that should frighten all Americans about his impulse control and cognitive decline. To be clear, I’m not against bombing a target when it is an urgent threat to the U.S. That wasn’t the case here. And Trump might be right that the preliminary report was inaccurate. But the main issue I’m discussing is simply how truthful the Trump administration is being with the American public. We need to be fully informed when it comes to matters this crucial to our survival, not be fed lies to bolster the GOP’s political ambitions.
Let’s examine these statements a little closer. [My comments will be in brackets and bolded, like this.]
Trump tried to discredit the report by saying, “It’s not even a very exciting report at this point.” [What would its level of exciting reading have to do with the contents? Clearly, the public is excited about the revelations, or he wouldn’t be so upset.]
Trump said he spoke to one of the pilots, who told him it was a “perfect” bomb drop. [This is not related to the issue. To a pilot, the “perfect” bomb drop would be hitting the target. They would have no way of knowing the extent of the damage underground.]
Trump: “They’re the best shots in the world. They call them shots, that’s what they are, and wait a minute, and I just hope you can give them the respect they deserve because they came home to fake news and like gosh, oh gee, there was hardly any damage.” [Trump continued to blame the press for creating fake news. But the assessment that the actual damage may have been far less than reported by Trump came from the Defense Intelligence Agency within the Pentagon. The news media only reported their findings. Nothing fake involved.]
Trump to reporter: “You should be proud of those pilots, and you shouldn’t be trying to demean them.” [No one reporting the news demeaned pilots or any other military personnel. This is an attempt to falsely characterize the messenger in order to discredit the message. In other words, he’s spewing fake news. He’s also trying to dictate what the news media should be covering, which in this case was “patriotic” fluff.]
Trump: “I got a call from Missouri, big state that I won three times by a lot, and I got a call that the pilots and the people on the plane were devastated because they were trying to minimize the attack, and they all said it was a hit.” [Trump’s true motivation is revealed by his comment that he won Missouri three times, which is irrelevant to his point, but he can’t pass up an opportunity to aggrandize himself. This is a case where he wants to characterize the press as evil because they are hurting the feelings of the pilots. As mentioned above, no one disputes they did their job well and that they hit the target. The issue is Trump telling the truth. Who in Missouri called him to tell him the pilots were sad? Also, Trump’s sudden concern for the military isn’t reflected in his cuts to the VA programs and other social programs that help veterans. I wonder if any soldiers’ feelings were hurt when he called those who died in combat “losers” and “suckers.”]
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth complained that the report was probably leaked for political purposes and said the FBI is conducting an investigation into the matter. “We are doing a leak investigation with the FBI now, because this information is for internal purposes—battle damage investigation—and CNN and others are trying to spin it to try and make the president look bad when this was an overwhelming success.” [If by “political purposes” he means someone wanted the truth out there because Trump was lying to the public, then yes. That’s obvious. The Pentagon intelligence report says that the bombing may not have been as successful as Trump claimed. Hegseth admitted the report was genuine. So, how can he claim the attacks were “an overwhelming success”? CNN is making the president look bad by reporting facts, but they couldn’t do that if Trump had been honest. It’s a case of the bully pushing a kid down the stairs, then complaining when the kid tells the bully’s parents, because the truth made the bully look bad.]
Hegseth: “When you talk to the people who built the bombs, understand what those bombs can do, and deliver those bombs, they landed precisely where they were supposed to.” [Again, Trump and Hegseth can’t seem to distinguish between the bombs hitting the target and how much damage was actually done. No one disputes the bombs landed where they were intended.]
What we have to worry about now is whether the leaking of this report will cause a clamping down of any information that will contradict the official versions touting Trump’s infallible decisions. The truth has never been Trump’s friend—and he wants to make sure it isn’t ours.
FYI: On Sunday, June 29, a second intelligence leak detailed intercepted calls of Iranian officials describing the damage from U.S. attacks on three nuclear sites as “less devastating than expected.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed the reporting by claiming, “The notion that unnamed Iranian officials know what happened under hundreds of feet of rubble is nonsense.” Which is more nonsensical: that Iranian officials know how much damage there was, or that Trump knows?
Welcome to the Resistance
Newsom Sues Fox News for Saying He Lied About Call With Trump (The New York Times)
SUMMARY: Gov. Gavin Newsom of California sued Fox News on Friday, accusing the network of defaming him in its coverage of a phone call he had with President Trump this month.
The suit, filed in Delaware where Fox News is incorporated, seeks damages of at least $787 million and a court order prohibiting Fox from broadcasting or posting segments that mistakenly say Mr. Newsom lied about his call with Mr. Trump.
…Mr. Newsom’s lawyers also sent Fox News a letter demanding a formal retraction and an on-air apology from Jesse Watters, a host who said on his show that Mr. Newsom had lied about the call with the president. If those conditions are met, the letter states, Mr. Newsom will dismiss the lawsuit.
MY TAKE: Lately, Gov. Newsom has given me a lot of tsuris (Yiddish for difficulties). At first, he took a hard line against Trump’s policies (which I admired), then he seemed to cozy up to the president (which I loathed), then his stance on transgender athletes contradicted his other civil rights opinions, emboldening Trump to persecute California over Title IX “violations” (which disappointed me)—and now he’s back to standing up to Trump (which is about time).
A look at the facts will vindicate Newsom and Fox knows it. They did indeed deliberately lie about the call in order to disparage Newsom because the GOP sees Newsom as a major threat as a presidential candidate for the Democrats in 2028. Fox will be forced to apologize or go to court and be found guilty as they were in the Dominion case.
Sadly, even apologizing won’t matter to Fox’s viewership who prefer lies to truth, if those lies support their political bias. That’s not cynicism, but proven by polls showing that 52% of Fox viewers believed we had found Weapons of Mass Destruction after the Iraq War, even after Fox and President Bush had to admit we didn’t. Their network campaign warning us of WMD to justify the war was so overwhelming to their viewers that even facts didn’t dissuade their viewers from their belief. Fox News has become the equivalent of the high school bleachers where the worst students hang out to smoke and smugly discuss how stupid their teachers are because the Earth is actually flat.
If Newsom can keep his courage and be consistent in his policies, he may actually be a presidential contender.
Kareem’s Magical Moments in Sports
We love sports because something extraordinary happens all the time. Sometimes those moments are triumphs and sometimes they aren’t. We delight in the unpredictable.
Kareem’s Jukebox Playlist
Leon Russell: “This Masquerade” (1972)
As the video tells us, Leon Russell’s “This Masquerade” was the first song to occupy the top spot of the jazz, pop, and R&B charts at the same time. Within four years of Russell releasing his version, the song was covered by Helen Reddy (1972) The Carpenters (1973), and George Benson (1976). It also won a Grammy Award for Record of the Year in 1977.
Russell wrote the song to explain his breakup with Carla Brown, the mother of his first child. That sadness comes through as they recognize that their connection is still there, but not strong enough to overcome the distance that has come between them. The song has been recorded by over 190 artists, but no one quite captures the heartbreak and inevitability of their parting like Russell alone at his piano.
Thank you, Kareem, for reminding me of when I first arrived in the States from England in February of 1958. I was put into 7th grade based on my age and had to adapt quickly. But I never said the pledge throughout high school. I think I stood (so that I wouldn’t be conspicuous) but no one ever questioned that I was silent. I was naturalized years later with the belief in freedom of speech and the separation of Church and State in this country.
Thank you for the Leon Russell. What a song! Coupled with the dancing and the Westbrook travel lightens up the day. Not to mention the insight into the Pledge.