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A host on liberal MSNBC claimed that teaching students the Bible off-campus during school hours would make them a part of what she called the “Church of Trump” and help “determine what happens at the ballot box.”
Alex Wagner’s remarks came in the most recent in a series of three reports over the past two weeks on MSNBC and/or parent company NBC on the nonprofit LifeWise Academy, whose buses pick up some 30,000 students across the country during the school week and take them to an affiliated church or other off-campus religious institution, presents them with Bible lessons, then returns them to their schools.
The three news and/or commentary pieces were critical, to varying degrees, of the nonprofit for supposedly “blurring” the lines of church and state, with one claiming that LifeWise has become a tool of the Right to turn liberal, Democrat-run cities more conservative.
In the most recent piece, Wagner even sought to link LifeWise to former President Donald Trump.
The left-leaning host said that Trump has “managed to turn his Christian followers into politically pious voters, members of the Church of Trump.”
The connection of Trump to the Bible-teaching nonprofit, Wagner claimed, lies in that LifeWise influences “the minds of public school kids in progressive cities like Columbus [in Ohio].” She went so far as to say the Bible program would “determine what happens at the ballot box.”
Neither MSNBC nor NBC responded to requests for comment at the time of publication.
LifeWise’s practices might surprise some, but they’re entirely legal in the United States, says Joel Penton, the nonprofit’s founder and CEO.
The Supreme Court, in a 1952 case, Zorach v. Clauson, permitted New York City students to leave their classrooms for religious instruction. Since that case is largely unknown, Penton says, many parents are often surprised when offered the option of midday Bible lessons for their children. Parents often assume that the government has full control over their child’s school day.
“I know what people are feeling,” Penton said. “They’re feeling that the school owns that time—the state owns the time of 8 a.m. [to] 3 p.m., or whatever the school day is, and that’s just not true.”
Currently, LifeWise serves 323 schools in 12 states, totaling about 30,000+ K-12 students, Penton said in a recent phone interview.
The nonprofit founder says that LifeWise serves students in 12 states, from kindergarten through 12th grade. Some 250 of the programs serve elementary schools, a majority of the total.
There’s no charge for participation in LifeWise, Penton said, for either school systems or the student participants.
“We want to make the Bible available to all of them [students]. And that’s what we’ve been trying to build, a plug-and-play program any community can implement,” he said. Forthcoming programs are set for schools in Washington state and even California, in a Los Angeles County school.
He said he hopes to have LifeWise operating in at least 20 states and 500 schools by this fall.
The post K-12 Bible Lessons Program Akin to Proselytizing for ‘Church of Trump,’ MSNBC Host Claims appeared first on The Daily Signal.
Democrats in the Virginia General Assembly insist that Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican, illegally appointed the director of the state’s renamed Office of Diversity, Opportunity, and Inclusion. And they say they’re willing to give over $2 million more to commercial marijuana sellers to dramatize that point.
Created in 2020 under Youngkin’s predecessor, Democrat Ralph Northam, the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion sprang from a concept popularized by the Left and commonly known as DEI.
However, in his second week as governor, Youngkin signed an executive order Jan. 19, 2022, removing the term “equity” from the office’s name and replacing it with “opportunity.“
In November 2022, the Republican governor appointed Martin Brown, who is black, as Virginia’s chief diversity, opportunity, and inclusion officer—as well as director of the renamed Office of Diversity, Opportunity, and Inclusion.
In response to Youngkin’s name change for the diversity office, Virginia Senate Majority Leader Scott Surovell, D-Fairfax, successfully offered an amendment to the state’s budget bill requiring that the office revert to its original name.
Youngkin has criticized the budget passed March 9 by the Virginia General Assembly, and the spending plan awaits the Republican governor’s signature. Democrats hold a 21-19 majority in the state Senate and a 51-49 majority in the House of Delegates.
In a statement emailed Monday to The Daily Signal, Surovell said he “introduced the amendment because the governor has refused to hire a chief DEI officer which is a position created and titled in state law.”
“If the governor is going to violate state law, the money needs to be directed,” the Senate majority leader added, apparently meaning “redirected.”
Surovell’s budget amendment requires Youngkin to change “Diversity, Opportunity, and Inclusion” back to “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” by June 1, or the diversity office’s $2.3 million funding would go to the Virginia Cannabis Equity Business Loan Fund, a program to help licensed marijuana sellers.
“Governor Youngkin has been clear that he doesn’t have any interest in a retail market for marijuana; instead, we should be working to fix a backward budget written by Democrats that has $2.6 billion in new taxes on Virginia families,” Youngkin press secretary Christian Martinez said Monday in a written statement to The Daily Signal.
“Since the beginning of the administration, the governor has challenged the groupthink of the progressive Democrats’ pursuit of equity at any cost, instead focusing on advancing equal opportunities, not equal outcomes for all.”
Surovell didn’t respond before publication to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on why his amendment tied the sale of marijuana to the diversity office’s name change.
Last year, Surovell and Virginia House Speaker Don Scott, D-Portsmouth, wrote to Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares, a Republican, inquiring whether Youngkin’s name change for the office violated state law.
In the letter, the two Democrats argued that Youngkin illegally renamed the office, saying the action violated the 2020 law that established the office in the executive branch with a director of diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Here is the letter that @DonScott757 and I sent to @JasonMiyaresVA seeking an opinion regarding the Governor DEI actions – our first question is whether the Governor is bound by Virginia Law because apparently he doesn't think he is@FairfaxNAACP @charlottewords @LVozzella pic.twitter.com/E2PzbTvGL6
— Senator Scott Surovell (@ssurovell) May 2, 2023
The Senate and House leaders argued in their letter to the attorney general that Youngkin illegally named Brown as director since the governor didn’t appoint him to the office named in state law.
In his written statement to The Daily Signal, Surovell said Youngkin had “hired someone for that office [and] renamed the person a diversity, opportunity, and inclusion officer who then made offensive comments regarding equity.”
“DEI is dead,” Brown said last April in a speech at Virginia Military Institute referencing the office’s name change.
“We’re not going to bring that cow up anymore. It’s dead,” Brown said. “It was mandated by the General Assembly, but this governor has a different philosophy of civil discourse.”
The move caused an uproar in the General Assembly as many Democrats, joined by the Virginia chapter of the NAACP, demanded Brown’s resignation.
The governor’s office defended Brown at the time, saying that Youngkin would “continue to advance equal opportunities—not equal outcomes—for all Virginians.”
“This is too important of an issue to succumb to those seeking to cancel Chief Brown for challenging the groupthink of the progressive Left’s pursuit of equity at any cost,” the statement said.
Ken McIntyre contributed to this report, which was modified with additional details within 24 hours of publication.
The post Youngkin Stands Firm as Virginia Democrats Prefer to Give Millions to Pot Instead of Opportunity appeared first on The Daily Signal.
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