The South appears poised to become the new center of medical education across the country as the battle over diversity, equity, and inclusion continues to rage through academia. 
Watchdog organization Do No Harm released its <a href="https://cam.donoharmmedicine.org/medical-school-index/">second annual ranking</a> of medical schools on Thursday, evaluating schools based on their embrace of merit-based standards versus DEI. The ranking, first shared with The Daily Wire, shows medical schools in states with stringent DEI bans differentiating themselves from states that have identity politics embedded in their education systems. 
“DEI and excellence are concepts that are inherently at odds and in conflict with one another,” Do No Harm’s Ian Kingsbury told The Daily Wire. “So the more the school embraces DEI, the less they embrace merit and excellence.”
Do No Harm evaluated nearly every medical school across the country on the quality of students admitted, commitment to DEI, and transparency in evaluating student performance. The rankings revealed that many schools in southern states, where Republican lawmakers have pushed to ban DEI, are rising to the top. 
The release of the second annual ranking comes as the Trump administration wages a national war on DEI programs in educational institutions across the country. While some states have fought the administration and pushed to maintain DEI, others appear to be complying with the push to abandon identity politics. 
Kingsbury, the director of Do No Harm’s Center for Accountability in Medicine, told The Daily Wire that a clear pattern was emerging across the country of schools in states where leaders have fought DEI. 
“What we see is that for the most part, the public red state universities in those states that have passed good anti-DEI legislation, especially Florida and Texas, that most of those schools do appear to be compliant and appear to have extirpated DEI,” he said. 
Five of the top 10 schools that award doctorates in medicine are state schools located in Florida or Texas. The report found that red state medical schools were less likely to have a formal DEI office while maintaining rigorous grading systems and selective academic standards. 
The number one ranked school for the second year in a row was the University of South Florida’s Health Morsani College of Medicine in Tampa. 
“They are right at the top because they have consciously made a decision that they&#8217;re not going to engage in this identity politicking, and that they&#8217;re in fact going to take their best applicants,” Kingsbury said. 
Two of the other top five schools are also in southern red states: the University of Texas at Austin Dell Medical School and Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Tennessee. The other schools that made it into the top five were the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. 
Those schools are ahead of traditional powerhouse schools like Harvard Medical School (53) and Stanford University School of Medicine (61). 
“Medical education shapes the physicians who will care for Americans for decades. Schools that prioritize cognitive excellence, reject commitments to DEI, and maintain transparent standards of student performance serve patients best,” a Do No Harm report that accompanied the rankings said. 
At the bottom of Do No Harm’s rankings were the Roseman University College of Medicine, the University of California-Riverside School of Medicine, the California University of Science and Medicine, the Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science, and Michigan State University College of Human Medicine.
Some schools are expected to improve their standings as states adopt new policies. For example, the LSU School of Medicine in Shreveport is expected to rise thanks to a new state law mandating that it adopt differentiated and multi-tier grading.
“We want this to be a resource to patients [and] to lawmakers who are concerned about the state of medical education and want to know how to improve things in their state,” Kingsbury said. “We hope that they look to these rankings as a roadmap.”

Medical Team Performing Surgical Operation in Modern Operating Room

Why The South Could Become The Next Center Of Medical Education

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Do No Harm

Education

Medical

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medicine

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EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s Fraud Team Flips Switch On Biden Decisions Costing Taxpayers Hundreds Of Millions

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Joe Biden

Trump Administration

American education is overdue for disruption. For generations, we have educated children in roughly the same way: grouping them by age, following a standardized schedule, ringing a bell, and sending them to the next class. Whatever the merits of that model, it was built for a different era, and as Americans, we should be asking whether it is still the best way to educate our children today.
It makes sense then that <a href="https://alpha.school/">Alpha School</a>, an innovative new education model, has received so much fanfare, including Education Secretary Linda McMahon recently praising it on CNN. Alpha School flatly rejects the “teacher-at-the-front-of-the-room” model. It rejects teachers completely, for that matter, while claiming that its AI can teach students “2x in 2 hours.” For a minimum of $40,000 a year, your child will spend an average of two hours each morning completing core academics through customized, AI-driven tutoring, then spend the rest of the day developing skills like entrepreneurship, leadership, public speaking, and financial literacy.
There is much to laud in this model. It embraces the very principles that the homeschooling movement has understood for decades: the traditional 7-hour school day is a relic, most children can be autodidacts with assistance, and parental ownership of the children’s education is non-negotiable.
Alpha School has released non-independently verified data to back up their claims, and their standardized scores are impressive. But measuring the success of their method on the motivated children of the top 1% is a little like asking Michael Jordan if his shoes helped him dunk a basketball. When the outcome is more or less inevitable, the interventions are cosmetic.
Replacing human teachers with software in the name of disruption is problematic, as is Alpha apparently <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/ai-teacher-inside-alpha-school/?_sp=62c45d7d-3fbf-4d10-9797-6aa2ab1aed74.1787888712242">surveilling children in their own bedrooms</a> in the name of accountability. And I worry that Alpha’s AI-as-teacher approach and American educators’ broader embrace of tech in the classroom rest on an unexamined premise: that mandatory hours of screen time over traditional methods have no downside.  Given what we know about how the <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10194945/">brain processes reading on paper versus screens</a>, as well as the benefits of <a href="https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11943480/">writing over typing</a>, both of these processes are crucial to recruit more of the brain to work together through neural integration, which then leads to more lasting memory.
Alpha’s gamified, metric-heavy approach is also concerning.  Think Khan Academy, but infused with an Orange Theory Fitness metric-based vibe. The constant assessment, while motivating for some, can easily grind down the wonder inherent to a child’s constitution. And hotwiring a child’s internal dopamine regulation system to achieve results may also have long-term negative effects. Learning is not meant to be easy or even fast. Confusion, frustration, and failure are not bugs in the process. They are part of how competence is built, and technology that circumvents the human element is likely to be a long-term detriment.
And while knowing the etymology, spelling, and meaning of every word helps you ace standardized tests, should that come at the expense of getting to sit with your elementary school classmates, the windows open to the sweet spring breeze, while your teacher reads you Jack London’s “Call of the Wild” or E.B. White’s “Charlotte’s Web?” Can an AI replicate that experience with a screen and headphones?
By uncoupling judgment, depth, and emotion from knowledge through their choice of software over humans, Alpha seems to be arguing that knowledge in and of itself can beget judgment. But human teachers naturally pass on much more than sterile knowledge; they pass on how and when to apply that knowledge to the broader world through empathy and wisdom.
Every generation gives children new tools. In the broader education landscape, the question is not simply whether the tool is powerful, but whether the child has first developed the judgment required to use it well. That becomes especially important when the tool promising to accelerate learning can increasingly perform the thinking itself.
My concern is not what we don’t know about AI, but rather what we already know about human beings. We tend toward the path of least resistance. LLMs in the hands of experts, people who have already done the difficult work of learning, failing, struggling, and developing judgment, is a reasonable proposition. It can augment abilities that already exist. AI in the hands of children is an entirely different proposition.  LLMs effectively hobble their users’ ability to originate thought. Outsourcing that capacity before developing it should give us all pause. Descartes rightly connected thinking to human existence itself, so why then surrender even a part of that most essential human function?
As a civilization, we are now grappling with the &#8220;Matrix&#8221; problem: do we prefer a sterilized version of reality to the real thing? &#8220;The Truman Show&#8221; or Solzhenitsyn? AI-composed jazz or Miles Davis? Is there a difference? And if so, do we need our children to be able to discern the difference? And if we do, does the difference even matter? I would answer in the affirmative to all three.
In addition, an LLM is predisposed to flatter its user to the point of <a href="https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8f65w258">sycophancy</a>. It imitates confidence while devoid of it, emulates originality without possessing any, and does so because it was told to, but not because it wants to. In the words of a Christian apologist, “How can an object that wants nothing, fears nothing, enjoys nothing, needs nothing, and cares about nothing have a mind?” 
And this leads us to the following paradox: that the best preparation for an AI-infused world may be a largely analog education. In short, a disciplined, sound mind is the best way to delineate the superficial from the real. The student with a grounding in history, a command of philosophy and mathematics, and a developed capacity for independent judgment can use AI as a tool without becoming dependent upon it and will most certainly not be technologically incompetent.
Conversely, the intellectually ill-equipped who have outsourced their thinking may become the most dependent upon AI while simultaneously being unable to discern its errors. That asymmetry should matter enormously to educators because intellectual skill is not just producing an answer but knowing whether the answer deserves to be believed.
As McMahon herself articulated later in the same CNN interview, speaking about higher education, it is open debate and the “collision of ideas” that move education forward. She’s exactly right. But so is Princeton professor <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/07/conservative-students-college-ideology/678934/?utm_campaign=the-atlantic&amp;utm_content=true-anthem&amp;utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter">Lauren Wright</a>, who has found that conservative students at progressive universities get “sharper and sharper” because they are forced to encounter arguments they reject and defend their own beliefs. This friction builds intellectual grit.
Our children need to be challenged, not placated. We have no longitudinal evidence showing what happens when children outsource learning to artificial intelligence, especially in their earliest years. Our children are, in a very real sense, the experimental group, and by the time we understand the consequences, it may be too late.
The Trump administration has an extraordinary opportunity to rethink an educational model that no longer serves many American children. It should be ambitious enough not merely to digitize the old one.
In one telling of the legend, Arthur was not worthy because he possessed the sword, Excalibur; he possessed Excalibur because he had proved himself worthy. Before students are given a tool capable of doing so much intellectual work for them, they should first develop the intellectual and moral capacity to wield it.
Perhaps Alpha’s most important lesson is not that children need more AI, but that children need more life. More conversation, competition, failure, responsibility, and all the messy human experiences through which children develop. Teach children to think before a chatbot thinks for them. Teach them to write before AI writes for them.  And above all, teach them to look for the “why” instead of just the “what.”
The goal of American education should not be to prepare children merely to operate the technologies of their time. It should be to prepare them to judge those technologies wisely.
***
Dr. Benjamin Chacko is an Emergency Medicine Physician and the father of two sons.

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The Best Preparation For An AI World Is An Analog Education

Alpha School

DW Opinion

Linda McMahon

The largest Muslim charity organization in the United States published — and then quickly removed — an education &#8220;guide&#8221; blaming the 9/11 terrorist attacks on American support for Israel.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations initially released the materials as part of the &#8220;Back to school resource guide&#8221; that went live on Monday — and it laid out a number of dubious claims about the 2001 attacks in which nearly 3,000 Americans were killed between the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and four hijacked commercial flights.
One such claim, shared by <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/08/28/us-news/cair-blamed-9-11-on-us-support-for-israel-recommended-bin-ladens-writings-in-back-to-school-guide/?utm_medium=social&amp;utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=nypost">The New York Post</a>, was that the attacks themselves had not been planned and carried out by Islamic terrorists, but rather by a &#8220;group self-identifying as Al Qaeda hailing from the mountains of Afghanistan.&#8221;
The resource material, titled &#8220;Muslim Studies Curriculum,&#8221; also asserted that American involvement in the region was reasonable justification for attacks on the United States. Continued support for Israel and the United States military&#8217;s role in the Gulf War were also cited.
The group&#8217;s assessment of the situation after the 9/11 attacks went even further, suggesting that the United States had created an &#8220;Islamophobic&#8221; culture with the ensuing Global War on Terror. Specifically, the group asserted that the words &#8220;terrorism&#8221; and &#8220;terrorist&#8221; were reserved solely for Muslims.
&#8220;While Islamophobia and anti-Muslim racism existed long before the 9/11 attacks, this time period marked a stark shift in US policy and state sponsored Islamophobia in the U.S. and abroad. There was immediate backlash against anyone perceived to be Muslim,&#8221; the materials read, and presented arguments suggesting that political violence from non-Muslims was often met with less backlash.
Terrorist leader Osama bin Laden&#8217;s &#8220;Letter to America&#8221; was included in the guide as a &#8220;resource material&#8221;: &#8220;Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy.&#8221;
Nicholas Haros Jr., whose mother Frances was killed on 9/11, said he believed the misinformation campaign was intentional: &#8220;The further we get from 9/11, this new generation of kids will learn to blame our country. These kids are going to be poisoned – and that’s the intent.&#8221;
Senator <a href="https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-to-mcmahon-pro-hamas-organization-has-no-place-in-american-schools">Tom Cotton</a> (R-AR) sounded the alarm on CAIR almost a year earlier in a letter to Education Secretary Linda McMahon dated September 9, 2025.
&#8220;I write to alert you to the Council on American-Islamic Relations’s (CAIR) efforts to influence K-12 schools &#8230; It is well documented that CAIR has deep ties to pro-Hamas terrorist organizations and publicly supports Hamas’s terrorist activities,&#8221; Cotton wrote in part.
&#8220;Such an organization should never have access to our nation’s children,&#8221; he asserted, adding, &#8220;The organization offers &#8216;educational&#8217; materials on its website that perpetuate pro-terrorist, anti-Israel rhetoric. CAIR Philadelphia recently issued guidance for educators titled &#8216;Remembering and Reflecting: Teaching September 11, 2001, in Diverse Classrooms.&#8217; The guide directs teachers to avoid using &#8216;inaccurate and inflammatory terms such as ‘Islamic terrorists,’ ‘jihadists,’ or ‘radical Islamic terrorists,’&#8217; when describing the September 11 terrorists.&#8221;
&#8220;The U.S. Department of Education must ensure that CAIR is not given an opportunity to push its radical, pro-terrorist, anti-Israel ideology on American schoolchildren,&#8221; he concluded.

9/11 Terrorist Attack on World Trade Center

Islamic Charity Group Blames 9/11 On American Support For Israel

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Islam in America

Four male high school students entered a Muslim prayer room at their public school, where two Jewish students prayed and sang in Hebrew and one did a handstand. Within moments, they were accused of “trashing” the room, making sexual maneuvers and engaging in offensive conduct they say never happened.
The incident at the public Academy at Palumbo in Philadelphia is the subject of a federal lawsuit against the School District of Philadelphia, with the students alleging that school officials failed to correct false accusations about what happened or protect them from threats that followed.
A federal judge ruled Friday that the lawsuit can move forward against three Philadelphia school officials, rejecting their effort to have the case thrown out. The judge found that the students had made a sufficient case that their constitutional rights may have been violated when they were disciplined for entering the prayer room.
According to the lawsuit, the students were confronted by classmates, threatened, and subjected to increasingly serious allegations about what they had done inside the room on June 11, 2024. Two families eventually left the Philadelphia School District, the lawsuit says, so their sons could finish high school elsewhere.
<div id="attachment_1163875" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1163875" class="size-large wp-image-1163875" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/5-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/5-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/5-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/5-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/5.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Outside the Muslim Prayer Room at Academy at Palumbo in Philadelphia (Courtesy)</div>
Only two of the four students were Jewish, but that apparently didn&#8217;t matter. The lawsuit claims the school district subjected them to different treatment because they were “not Muslims and were—or perceived to be—Jewish,” and because some of them expressed Jewish and pro-Israel views inside a prayer room used by Muslim students.
&#8220;Philadelphia high school boys had their lives threatened for daring to enter a room they later learned was reserved only for Muslim students,” Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of the Deborah Project, which is representing the boys, told The Daily Wire. “The School District did nothing to protect these boys and instead their actions fanned the flames of hatred against them.&#8221;
The room was labeled a “Quiet Room” with a Palestinian flag on the door on the outside, but the lawsuit describes it as a Muslim prayer space. Inside were exclusively Islamic religious images, Arabic prayers, and materials identifying the room with the school’s Muslim Student Association. In a police report following the incident, Palumbo Principal Kiana Thompson herself described the dispute as involving “a particular room designated for one religion and with a particular flag on it.” The lawsuit also alleges that the room had gender designated times for Muslim students and that the Muslim Student Association held its meetings there.
<div id="attachment_1164017" style="width: 532px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1164017" class="size-large wp-image-1164017" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-9.40.13-AM-522x576.png" alt="" width="522" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-9.40.13-AM-522x576.png 522w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-9.40.13-AM-272x300.png 272w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-9.40.13-AM-768x848.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-9.40.13-AM.png 1080w" sizes=" (max-width: 522px) 100vw, 522px" />Police report by the principal of Academy at Palumbo (Courtesy)</div>
The judge’s opinion notes that the plaintiffs allege access to the room was effectively restricted to Muslim students. It also cites a large sign welcoming students to the “Prayer Room” and wishing them a “Happy Ramadan,” as well as guidelines from the Muslim Student Association.
The lawsuit says the students entered the room after seeing the door open. Several Muslim girls were inside, and the boys remained there for fewer than 10 minutes.
One of the Jewish students, M. Danowitz, said a brief Jewish prayer in Hebrew, told the girls he had a right to pray, asked why they were laughing and said he was a “proud Zionist.” Another Jewish student, identified as J2, who was recording the encounter, sang “Am Yisrael Chai,” meaning “the people of Israel live,” while Danowitz did a handstand and removed one poster and placed it on the floor.
The two non-Jewish students, identified as Hiester and Parmar, did not say anything.
The encounter was recorded on video but cannot be published because a court order protects the identities of the minors involved.
Within moments of leaving the room, the boys began facing threats from other students, according to the lawsuit. 
Hiester received 11 phone calls from A.B., a Muslim Palumbo student who had previously assaulted him and made death threats. Hiester ignored the first 11 calls but eventually answered one, at which point A.B. demanded to know where Hiester and Danowitz were because he had “unfinished business” with them and wanted to fight them. A.B. allegedly told the boys that if they did not return to school, he would come to their homes.
The lawsuit says the boys took the threats seriously because of A.B.’s history of assault and previous threats against both Hiester and Parmar. Hiester also received multiple threatening phone calls, text messages and FaceTime calls from other students who were close to A.B., according to the complaint.
<div id="attachment_1163877" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1163877" class="size-large wp-image-1163877" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/6-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/6-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/6-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/6-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/6.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Muslim prayer room at the Academy at Palumbo in Philadelphia (Courtesy)</div>
Meanwhile, Parmar and J2 returned to their computer lab, where A.B. and several other students confronted them, the lawsuit says. A.B. and five other students allegedly entered the classroom, surrounded the boys and demanded to know what they had done in the prayer room, accusing them of “trashing” it. 
When one student said he had been praying, A.B. allegedly shouted, “Which religion?”
The allegations quickly grew more serious. According to the lawsuit, Thompson later told the mother of one of the students that girls inside the room had accused her son of saying he “hates Muslims,” making sexually suggestive movements, including “humping the floor,” ripping posters from the walls and trashing the room.
Two days after the incident, Philadelphia School District teacher Kristin Luebbert addressed the Board of Education, despite not teaching at Palumbo and having no firsthand knowledge of what had occurred. No District investigation had yet begun, according to the complaint.
Luebbert described the incident as an “appalling display of sacrilegious defilement” and alleged that male students had entered a prayer space where Muslim girls were gathered, ripped items from the walls, thrown prayer rugs around and “grind and writhe on the floor in an imitation of sex acts.”
“Take that in,” Luebbert told the board. “This was a planned action that included acts which any Muslim girl or woman would be deeply offended and traumatized by.”
She called on the District to publicly denounce what she described as “anti-Muslim and anti-Black hate.”
The lawsuit notes that Luebbert made her comments long before any investigation was conducted by the school and relied on rumors.
The families say the school failed to stop the allegations from spreading or adequately respond when the boys began receiving threats. When three of the students’ parents went to Palumbo seeking help, the lawsuit says that Thompson refused to meet with them because they did not have appointments. When one mother emphasized that her son was receiving threats, Thompson allegedly laughed and responded, “Well, there’s multiple sides to that story.” The complaint says Thompson then called school security and police to remove the families from the building.
The families later went to the School District&#8217;s central office, where they provided statements and showed officials the video, according to the lawsuit. The plaintiffs allege that despite being given evidence contradicting the allegations, District officials failed to adequately protect the students or correct the accusations.
<div id="attachment_1163879" style="width: 569px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1163879" class="size-large wp-image-1163879" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-9.40.55-AM-559x576.png" alt="" width="559" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-9.40.55-AM-559x576.png 559w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-9.40.55-AM-291x300.png 291w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-9.40.55-AM-768x791.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/08/Screenshot-2026-08-24-at-9.40.55-AM.png 832w" sizes=" (max-width: 559px) 100vw, 559px" />Prayer room at Academy at Palumbo in Philadelphia (Courtesy)</div>
The two boys were then suspended at the direction of Assistant Superintendent Richard Gordon, purportedly because they had snuck Danowitz, who was no longer a Philadelphia School District student, into the school building through a back door. The boys disputed that account, saying they had not let Danowitz into the building and that security footage supported their version of events.
Although the school had possession of that video, its leaders allegedly did not look at it before suspending the boys, which validated the rumors that the boys had trashed the prayer room and did sexual maneuvers in the room.
The judge ultimately dismissed Danowitz’s claims for damages and injunctive relief, finding that he lacked standing because he was not a member of the Palumbo school community and was on school property without permission.
But the judge found that Hiester and Parmar had sufficiently alleged a violation of their due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. They were never told they were being suspended for helping an unauthorized visitor enter the school. Officials only questioned them about entering the prayer room.
The two non-Jewish families said the dispute eventually drove them out of Philadelphia, so their sons could finish high school elsewhere.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court last year, alleges that the students&#8217; treatment violated their constitutional rights and that school officials discriminated against them because they were Jewish or perceived to be Jewish.
In explaining his decision, U.S. District Judge John Milton Younge wrote that “a reasonable jury could find” that school officials violated the Establishment Clause by disciplining the students for entering the prayer room. He also rejected the officials’ claim of qualified immunity, writing that their argument was “unpersuasive.”
Younge also dismissed the students’ Title VI claims without prejudice, finding that the complaint did not plausibly establish that school officials acted with antisemitic animus or that the harassment itself was antisemitic. The judge said the threats against Hiester and Parmar appeared to stem from accusations that they had desecrated the prayer room and harassed Muslim girls, rather than from their perceived Judaism.
&#8220;We&#8217;re thrilled that the judge has sustained our claims under the First Amendment&#8217;s Establishment Clause and the Due Process claim and given us leave to amend all the other claims so that this case will proceed,” Marcus said. “The injured families can now proceed to rectify what happened to them because of the failures of the Philadelphia School District to comply with the law and to protect all future students.&#8221;
The Philadelphia School District did not respond to a request for comment.

Philadelphia School Muslim Prayer Room

Jewish Students Hounded For Entering School’s Muslim Prayer Room Score Big Legal Win

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City Of San Francisco Announces Lawsuit Against Food Manufacturers Over Ultra-Processed Foods

Mom Tries To Police Kid Lunches And The Group Chat Goes Unhinged

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Parenting

Schools

Torrey Pines High School is facing a <a href="https://timesofsandiego.com/education/2026/08/21/torrey-pines-high-students-sue-discipline-pro-trump/">lawsuit</a> alleging that teachers and administrators retaliated against two students who expressed pro-Trump views during a February protest — landing one of them in a psychiatric hospital on a mandatory hold.
Two students at Torrey Pines High School — identified in the suit only as A.F. and M.F. — attended a February 6 rally on the San Diego, California, campus meant to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but showed up instead to voice support for President Donald Trump&#8217;s administration, <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/08/23/us-news/san-diego-high-school-attacked-students-over-pro-trump-lgbt-poster-suit/">according</a> to the New York Post. M.F. carried a printout of the letters &#8220;LGBT&#8221; — each letter paired with an image: the Statue of Liberty for &#8220;L,&#8221; a rifle for &#8220;G,&#8221; a glass of beer for &#8220;B,&#8221; and a photo of Trump for &#8220;T.&#8221;
M.F. reportedly returned to class after the rally still carrying the flyer — prompting his teacher to become upset and immediately leave the classroom. Three days later, according to the suit, Assistant Principal Angela Guerrero called M.F. and another student into her office and informed them they would serve two days of detention because the flyers had &#8220;frightened&#8221; other students on campus.
That same week, M.F. was called into the vice principal&#8217;s office alone to face more serious accusations: that he&#8217;d made &#8220;disturbing searches&#8221; on a school computer, including &#8220;how to load a Glock,&#8221; &#8220;how to load a magazine,&#8221; and &#8220;how to dispose of a body.&#8221;
M.F. denied making the searches and said other students routinely use classmates&#8217; unprotected school computer logins. Guerrero apparently believed him and sent him back to class. The next day, however, five to six police officers arrived at the school and interrogated M.F. themselves.
&#8220;School officials refused to allow M.F.’s parents to see him, instead requiring them to speak with a crisis social worker. The crisis social worker stated that [M.F.’s teacher] requested the police because the searches made Defendant [Theresa] Barnes feel ‘scared’ and ‘unsafe,'&#8221; the suit claims.
M.F. was then taken into custody, and police delivered him to a mental health facility on a 5150 psychiatric hold.
While he was being held overnight, law enforcement executed a search of his home and his bedroom — but they found nothing to support the accusations against him.
&#8220;M.F. did not research how to load a ‘glock,’ did not confess to murder, was not watching homicide videos, and did not target the LGBT community. The claims were completely false, as school officials were fully aware,&#8221; the suit states.
The harassment, according to M.F., did not end there. Although police found nothing and he was allowed to return to school, administrators referred to him as an &#8220;LGBT bully,&#8221; barred him from playing varsity baseball, forced him into counseling sessions, and pushed him toward testing for &#8220;Special Education placement and ongoing mental health monitoring.&#8221;
The same school landed in hot water over a different protest when students were allowed to carry signs comparing ICE to the KKK — but one student was suspended over flyers that read, &#8220;We love I.C.E. — real Americans.&#8221; That suspension was later reversed by the district following pressure from the free speech group FIRE.

U.S. Economy Caught In Trump Tug-Of-War Over Reopening Schools

Student Committed To Psych Ward Over Pro-Trump Flyer, Lawsuit Says

School Got Teen Student Placed In Psych Ward Over Pro-Trump Flyer

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Nathan Cofnas, the academic who exposed plagiarism allegations against former Cambridge professor Jason Arday, has been suspended by a Belgian university over public statements about the scandal and placed under disciplinary investigation.
Ghent University announced Thursday that it had suspended a postdoctoral researcher as a “precautionary measure” while it investigates whether disciplinary action is warranted. Cofnas identified himself as the researcher and said he expects the university to fire him.
“I was just suspended by Ghent University. They will almost certainly fire me,” Cofnas wrote on <a href="https://x.com/nathancofnas/status/2090416033072861245">X</a> Thursday.
The university did not name Cofnas in its <a href="https://www.ugent.be/en/news-events/statement-respect-human-dignity-opposition-discrimination.htm">statement</a>, but said the investigation concerns “recent public statements” by a postdoctoral researcher about Arday, who was found dead in his London home last week after resigning from Cambridge amid an investigation into his academic record.
“Ghent University stands for respect for human dignity and opposes discrimination, hatred, and racism,” Rector Petra De Sutter and Vice-Rector Herwig Reynaert said. “We attach great importance to academic freedom and to open academic debate, even when views are controversial. However, that freedom is not unlimited.” 
The university said it imposed the suspension pending a preliminary disciplinary investigation to determine whether there are sufficient grounds to refer the matter to its disciplinary body.
Cofnas, however, argues that he is being punished for reporting facts that powerful academic institutions failed to confront. 
“I’m an easy scapegoat,” Cofnas wrote in a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/opinion/free-expression/how-i-became-the-scapegoat-in-the-jason-arday-affair-dc134088?st=8ddArw&amp;reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink">Wall Street Journal op-ed</a> published Friday. “The lesson can’t be that it’s unacceptable to point out wrongdoing that implicates powerful public figures.”
Cofnas first published his allegations against Arday on July 21 in a Substack article titled “<a href="https://substack.com/home/post/p-207415162">DEI Fraud and Cover-Up at Cambridge</a>.” Using plagiarism-detection software, Cofnas identified what he said were extensive similarities between portions of Arday’s doctoral thesis and an earlier thesis by another academic. Subsequent reporting raised additional questions about Arday’s academic credentials, employment history and extraordinary claims about his personal life.
Arday, who had been celebrated as Cambridge’s youngest black professor, denied plagiarism but acknowledged mistakes in his academic work. Cambridge initially defended him, describing criticism as a “vile campaign to undermine his credibility.”
That position changed after further reporting prompted the university to launch an investigation into Arday’s academic qualifications and honorary appointments. Arday resigned from his professorship the same day Cambridge announced the investigation.
“I no longer wish to feel as though I am living under a constant spotlight, where every aspect of my life is subject to public examination and judgement,” Arday wrote in his resignation statement.
Nine days later, Arday was found unresponsive at his home in south London and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/professor-recently-outed-for-fraudulent-biography-found-dead">pronounced dead</a>. Police said the death was unexpected but was not being treated as suspicious. 
Cofnas has acknowledged that his reporting contributed to the chain of events that followed, but rejects the suggestion that he bears moral responsibility for Arday’s death. 
“I set off a series of events that led to a death,” Cofnas wrote Friday. “If I say I have no regrets, it sounds like I don’t appreciate the horrific nature of the outcome. If I say I do regret it, it sounds like I’m accepting moral responsibility for what happened.”
“But the lesson can’t be that it’s unacceptable to point out wrongdoing that implicates powerful public figures,” he continued. “That’s what I did when I exposed fraud and institutional corruption at Cambridge.”
Cofnas has also pointed to the scale of the media coverage that followed his original article. He wrote that he published one article while British newspapers subsequently published 249 articles about Arday over a 22-day period. 
“Although no one has found so much as a mistaken comma in the article I wrote about Arday, I’m apparently not entitled to protection against attack for telling the truth,” Cofnas wrote.
The National Union of Journalists has criticized Cofnas following Arday’s death, describing his role as “deeply concerning” and noting that he has previously described himself as a “race realist.”
Cofnas is a controversial figure in academia. Cambridge investigated him in 2024 and concluded that his published views were offensive to many but did not breach university rules. He subsequently sued Emmanuel College alleging discrimination, but lost his case and is appealing the decision.
He later moved to Ghent University as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Philosophy and Moral Sciences. 
In its statement, Ghent University said it recognizes the importance of academic freedom but that such freedom “goes hand in hand with responsibility and may be restricted to protect the rights of others.” The university did not specify which of Cofnas’ statements it believes may constitute discrimination, citing the confidentiality of personnel and disciplinary proceedings.
Cofnas argues that the disciplinary investigation is itself evidence of the tension between academic freedom and ideological conformity that he has spent years criticizing. 
“The university has laid the groundwork to fire me,” Cofnas told the <a href="https://www.wsj.com/world/uk/the-controversial-academic-who-ignited-the-jason-arday-furor-1071e7fc">Wall Street Journal</a>. “I’m the scapegoat for everyone.”

Memorial Held For Former Cambridge Professor Jason Arday In Trafalgar Square

Scholar Who Exposed Black Cambridge Prof’s Plagiarism Suspended As School Decries ‘Discrimination’

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Florida students are heading back to school this year with a new addition to their history curriculum: a comprehensive study of communism, including its history, domestic movements, and the atrocities committed by communist regimes.
The new standards are the culmination of a five-year effort by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis and Florida lawmakers to expand civics education and ensure students learn about the dangers of totalitarian ideologies.
The effort began in 2021, when DeSantis <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/desantis-signs-law-requiring-students-to-learn-evils-of-communism-real-patriots-who-escaped-it">signed a package</a> of legislation overhauling civics education in Florida. One of those measures required high school students to receive instruction comparing political ideologies such as communism and totalitarianism with the principles of freedom and democracy underlying the American founding. The legislation also created the state&#8217;s “Portraits in Patriotism” initiative, which uses the stories of people who fled persecution in countries including Cuba and Venezuela to teach students about the value of American liberty.
In 2022, DeSantis signed legislation <a href="https://www.fox13news.com/news/desantis-signs-law-requiring-lessons-on-victims-of-commmunism-in-florida-schools">establishing</a> Victims of Communism Day in Florida. Beginning in the 2023-24 school year, public schools were required to provide at least 45 minutes of instruction addressing communist regimes and the suffering of their victims, including poverty, starvation, migration, political violence, and the suppression of speech and religion.
Then, in 2024, DeSantis signed <a href="https://www.flgov.com/eog/news/press/2024/governor-desantis-signs-legislation-further-enhancing-floridas-education-standards">Senate Bill 1264</a>, expanding the state&#8217;s existing requirements to include the history of communism in the United States, domestic communist movements and their tactics, as well as the atrocities committed by communist regimes around the world. 
“We’re going to tell the truth about communism in the state of Florida. We’re going to tell the truth about the evils of communism,” DeSantis <a href="https://www.fox13news.com/news/desantis-signs-bill-requiring-communism-education-courses-in-florida-public-schools">said</a> when signing the legislation in 2024.
The State Board of Education <a href="https://www.fldoe.org/newsroom/latest-news/state-board-of-education-approves-new-history-of-communism-standards-.stml">approved</a> the resulting History of Communism standards in November 2025, with implementation beginning during the 2026-27 school year. The standards are designed to extend across the K-12 curriculum, with the state emphasizing that instruction will be age-appropriate at each grade level. Then-Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas said at the time, “With the resurgence of communist ideologies across the United States and throughout the world, it is more important than ever for students to understand the catastrophic failures and human suffering caused by communist regimes.&#8221;
The curriculum will cover more than the familiar history of the Soviet Union. It includes communism&#8217;s development in the United States, domestic communist movements, the tactics used by communist organizations, and the consequences of communist rule internationally. It also requires students to compare communism and totalitarianism with the principles of freedom and democracy that underpin the American system of government. 
The reforms have particular resonance in South Florida, where generations of Cuban, Venezuelan, and Nicaraguan immigrants have personal or family histories of fleeing communist and socialist regimes. When DeSantis signed the 2024 legislation, he was joined by veterans of the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. 
“The most important fight against communism is the one that’s done in the schoolrooms,” Rafael Montalvo, president of the Brigade 2506 Veterans Association, said at the time. “That’s where the battle is happening right now.” 
Florida&#8217;s effort represents a sustained attempt to make anti-communism and civic literacy a formal part of public education rather than leaving those lessons to individual teachers or schools.
As students return to classrooms for the 2026-27 school year, the reforms that began with DeSantis&#8217; 2021 civics push are finally becoming a regular part of what Florida students are taught about America&#8217;s founding principles — and the ideologies that have historically opposed them.

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Reading, Writing, Communism: Inside New Curriculum Teaching Kids About Evil

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Family members are blaming &#8220;misinformation&#8221; and a &#8220;campaign of harassment&#8221; for the death ex-Cambridge professor Jason Arday.
&#8220;Jason was subjected to a campaign of sustained abuse for more than three years since he accepted the role of professor at Cambridge University by those who would leave no stone unturned in their quest to undermine him,&#8221; <a href="https://nypost.com/2026/08/14/world-news/family-of-dead-ex-cambridge-professor-jason-arday-says-he-was-victim-of-misinformation-campaign-despite-plagiarism-allegations/">Arday&#8217;s family</a> said in a statement first published by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/14/jason-arday-found-dead-after-resigning-from-cambridge-over-plagiarism-claims">The Guardian</a>.
&#8220;The campaign of misinformation was too much for Jason, who was a gentle man and who always wanted to see the best in everyone. We are in shock to have lost this amazing father, partner, brother, uncle and son,&#8221; they wrote, adding, &#8220;We won’t comment further at this point beyond asking the press to leave us alone now, and to stop the campaign of harassment which has been waged against Jason and his family for too long.&#8221;
Arday, 41, was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/professor-recently-outed-for-fraudulent-biography-found-dead">found unresponsive</a> in his South London home on Friday — just over a week after he left his position at the prestigious university. Prior to leaving his post, he&#8217;d been accused of plagiarism and of embellishing his life story ahead of the release of his memoir, &#8220;Great and Unfortunate Things.&#8221;
Cambridge initially backed Arday, the youngest black professor to ever teach there, saying in a statement that Arday was &#8220;the victim of a vile campaign to undermine his credibility.&#8221;
In the days that followed, however, Arday filed a &#8220;harassment&#8221; claim against a journalist who was investigating his work — and Cambridge University launched an investigation as well.
&#8220;The University of Cambridge has begun an investigation following new information about Professor Arday’s academic qualifications and honorary appointments. In order to ensure a fair process, we will not comment further until this has concluded,&#8221; the university&#8217;s statement read.
Arday&#8217;s death, according to local authorities, is being treated as &#8220;unexpected&#8221; but not &#8220;suspicious.&#8221;

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Family Of Ex-Cambridge Professor Blames ‘Campaign Of Misinformation’ For His Death

Family Of Ex-Cambridge Professor Blames 'Campaign Of Misinformation' For His Death

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A top conservative women&#8217;s organization has rolled out a sweeping family policy agenda that aims to make it easier for Americans to raise children, care for aging parents, and afford family life — all while avoiding any new federal entitlement programs.
Independent Women&#8217;s <a href="https://www.independentwomen.com/flourishing-families-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;Flourishing Families&#8221;</a> project, shared exclusively with The Daily Wire, includes proposals on maternity leave, child care, education, elder care, housing, health care, workplace flexibility, and taxes. Each issue is addressed with a focus on choice and finds ways to help families while avoiding big government policies that conservatives recognize don&#8217;t work.
Among the report&#8217;s most notable proposals is so-called &#8220;Earned Leave,&#8221; Independent Women&#8217;s signature paid leave plan that seeks to give new mothers and caregivers more time at home without creating a new taxpayer-funded benefit.
Rather than establishing a federal paid leave entitlement, the proposal allows moms to voluntarily access a portion of their Social Security benefits they&#8217;ve already earned after a child&#8217;s birth or adoption. Parents who use the benefit would &#8220;repay&#8221; the cost by delaying their retirement benefits for several months later in life, making the proposal budget-neutral.
<a href="https://www.independentwomen.com/flourishing-families-report" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ THE FULL &#8216;FLOURISHING FAMILIES&#8217; REPORT HERE</a>.
&#8220;The weeks after welcoming a new baby are one of the most important times in a family&#8217;s life,&#8221; Independent Women President Carrie Lukas told The Daily Wire. &#8220;Many parents want more time at home with their newborn but simply can&#8217;t afford to take unpaid leave. Earned Leave was designed to solve that problem without forcing taxpayers to finance a new government program.&#8221;
Lukas said parents could plan ahead by filing paperwork with the Social Security Administration before the birth of their child, allowing them to access benefits immediately after welcoming a child.
The idea has significant support. Independent Women commissioned a national poll of more than 2,000 Americans that found Earned Leave outperformed a traditional tax-funded federal paid leave program, according to Lukas. The survey found 78% of Americans believe workers should have as much control as possible over benefits they&#8217;ve earned, while 67% said paid leave proposals should remain budget-neutral and avoid imposing costs on people who never use them.
&#8220;Everyone recognizes that new parents — especially moms — need time off after the birth of a child,&#8221; she said. &#8220;The problem with government entitlement programs is they often impose costs on everyone while changing incentives for employers who are already providing benefits.&#8221;
Lukas emphasized that Earned Leave gives Americans access to benefits they&#8217;ve already earned, as opposed to state-run paid leave systems that are funded through mandatory payroll taxes. &#8220;Most people won&#8217;t use it because they won&#8217;t want to delay retirement,&#8221; she said. &#8220;But for families who truly need it, it can be a lifeline during one of the most important moments of their lives.&#8221;
&#8220;We believe it&#8217;s possible to support families without making government bigger,&#8221; Lukas added. &#8220;Earned Leave is about giving parents more flexibility and more choices using benefits they&#8217;ve already earned rather than creating an entirely new government program.&#8221;
Another notable proposal deals with elder care. Heather Madden, Independent Women&#8217;s vice president for policy initiatives, said the organization&#8217;s American Caregivers Act was specifically designed for older Americans who don&#8217;t require full-time medical care, but still need help at home.
&#8220;There are many older Americans who don&#8217;t need a nursing home or intensive medical care, but also can&#8217;t safely manage entirely on their own,&#8221; Madden told The Daily Wire. &#8220;They may simply need someone to drive them to appointments, prepare meals, help around the house, or provide companionship.&#8221;
The proposal would allow qualified organizations to recruit, screen, train, and place college students with seniors who need non-medical assistance. Students would receive housing and a stipend in exchange for helping with daily tasks, which would in turn give families a lower-cost alternative before more intense care becomes necessary.
&#8220;Instead of forcing families to choose between doing everything themselves or moving a loved one into a nursing home before it&#8217;s truly necessary, the American Caregivers Act gives them another option,&#8221; Madden said.
The proposal wouldn&#8217;t just benefit seniors. &#8220;It would also provide much-needed relief for family caregivers who are balancing careers, raising children, and caring for aging parents,&#8221; Madden explained. &#8220;Public policy should make it easier for families to care for one another, not leave them with impossible choices.&#8221;
Madden also noted the program could help lower the cost of college for participating students, comparing the initiative to the State Department&#8217;s au pair program.
The report also makes school choice and parental rights a focus, acknowledging that parents, not government officials, know what&#8217;s best for their children.
For example, Independent Women calls for expanding Education Savings Accounts, charter schools, and other school choice options. The group also proposes strengthening parental rights laws that guarantee curriculum transparency, access to student records, and parental consent on issues that relate to gender and sexuality.
Education Savings Accounts would allow families to use public education dollars for approved educational expenses, including private school tuition, tutoring, homeschooling materials, and other learning services. The concept has already proven popular in states that have adopted similar programs. Florida, for example, enacted an Education Savings Account-style scholarship program that has been widely praised by participating families and supporters as a major expansion of school choice.
The report also outlines changes for increasing housing affordability by reducing regulations, strengthening health care price transparency, protecting flexible work arrangements, and reforming tax and welfare policies to reward work while making it easier for Americans to start and sustain families.

Family

READ IT: The Sweeping Family-First Policy Agenda That Won’t Make Government Bigger

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The University of Michigan&#8217;s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts will eliminate letter grades from first-semester transcripts for incoming freshmen under a new pilot program to help new freshmen acclimate to college.
Instead of traditional letter grades, students will receive a &#8220;Pass&#8221; (P) or &#8220;No Credit&#8221; (NC) during their first semester. The <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/academics/lsa-first-semester-grade-covering-pilot-program.html">university says</a> the change is intended to reduce stress tied to early grades and improve student mental health.
&#8220;Beginning in fall 2027, the College will designate all LSA first-year students’ first-semester grades as pass (P) or no credit (NC) on their transcripts,&#8221; the website explains. &#8220;While LSA students will still receive grades and instructor feedback in every course as they always have, final grades will not be recorded on their external transcripts and will not be reflected in their GPAs. LSA students’ official transcripts will state that all grades in the first semester are automatically designated as P/NC.&#8221;
The College of Literature, Science, and the Arts had <a href="https://lsa.umich.edu/content/dam/lsa-site-assets/documents/LSA-At-A-Glance.pdf">nearly 20,000</a> undergraduate students enrolled last year, making it the largest of the university&#8217;s schools and colleges.
One goal, according to the program, is to encourage students to try new things and take classes across a wide variety of subjects without worrying that their grades will hold them back if they find those subjects a struggle. Another is to ensure that students can build confidence in their academic abilities as they first acclimate to campus culture and the demands of college-level coursework.
&#8220;Helping all students establish early momentum has been recognized as the most important element in U-M’s campus-wide Student Success Initiative. We believe that covering grades will help students start strong and curb the mental health crisis unfolding among college-aged individuals,&#8221; the website reads.
The only students eligible for this pilot program will be incoming freshmen who start at the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts in the 2027 fall semester, and the &#8220;grade covering&#8221; will apply only to their first semester grades.
Although they will not appear on individual transcripts, some people will still have access to the students&#8217; actual letter grades and official GPA. The financial aid office will be able to access official grades to determine whether students are meeting required standards for scholarships and grants, and the athletic department will also be able to access grades to determine athletic eligibility.

College of Literature, Science, And The Arts Building at the University of Michigan

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