Fall is the time for writing new bills. Therefore, this week I would like to tell you about what kinds of legislation I have been working on for next year. There are many issues facing our State right now and no State Senator can tackle all of them. Some will have to be taken up by other State Senators. Nevertheless, I want to introduce the kinds of bills that are of utmost concern to the folks living in Western Nebraska.

In regards to property tax relief, next year I will continue to push for the consumption tax. I will also work to change the wording of the destroyed property statute from “destroyed” property to “damaged” property in order to remove a loophole in the law, and I will continue seek ways to make TERC hearings speedy and fair for all property owners.

One of the bills I plan to introduce next year pertains to renewing a driver’s license. My bill will put a grace period of 30 days beyond a person’s birthday for renewing a driver’s license. Oftentimes people do not think to renew a driver’s license until their birthday arrives. But by then it is too late. The license has already expired!

Depending upon where a person lives in Nebraska, renewing a driver’s license can be a real hassle. For instance, the DMV only comes to Sidney two days per week; otherwise, a person living in or near Sidney would have to drive to a DMV in Scottsbluff or North Platte, and no one wants to drive those great distances on an expired driver’s license. Moreover, once a person arrives and tries to renew an expired driver’s license at the DMV he or she quickly learns that a birth certificate or a passport is now necessary to renew an expired license. My bill will change this by giving drivers a little extra time to renew their license and they won’t have to produce these documents to prove their identity.

Another bill that I will introduce is a bill to give K-12 public school students the entire summer off. My bill will fix the school year from Labor Day to Memorial Day. Students should not be going back to school in early August like they do now. Teachers and administrators may do their in-service teacher training during the summer months while students are out on summer vacation. Giving students a day off here and there during the academic school year is hard on working parents who may have to take a day off from work in order to care for their younger students at home. Conversely, during the summer months parents may enroll their students in various summer camps and other fun activities while they go to work.

Finally, next year I will introduce legislation to protect unvaccinated individuals from government actions and employer actions causing many Nebraskans to lose their jobs. The Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution reserves such legislation for the states. Vaccinations are a private healthcare matter between an individual and his or her physician. No government agency or employer has the right to make decisions about another person’s health. President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate is unconstitutional and violates a person’s liberty, including his or her religious rights, privacy rights, and healthcare rights.

As I said above, I am most interested in introducing legislation that concerns folks living in Western Nebraska. Therefore, if you have a good idea for legislation at the state level, then I encourage you to call my office sometime during the month of October. Now is the time for writing new bills, and my office phone number is (402) 471-2616. Nebraska is a great state. Let’s keep it that way!

The special session of the Nebraska Legislature for redistricting has now ended. The last three weeks of September have been filled with the most intense negotiations I have ever been a part of. Nevertheless, we now have new district maps which will apply for the next ten years.

It was very important for the Legislature to meet the September 30th deadline. Had we not passed this redistricting legislation in September, it would have had to wait until we could revisit it in January. Revisiting these district maps in January would have been disastrous for political candidates running for office. Passing these bills in January would have given our political candidates only three or four months to conduct their campaigns before the May primary election.

Legislative district 47, which is the district that I represent, has now changed. Banner County and Kimball County have been moved into district 48, while Grant County and all of Box Butte County, including the City of Alliance have now been added into district 47. While this was not my choice, I look forward to meeting all those who have been moved into district 47.

My vote against the legislative district map should in no way be misconstrued as a vote against Grant County, Box Butte County or the City of Alliance. Instead, I voted against the legislative district map because it took a seat away from rural Nebraska and added one to Sarpy County, giving more representation to the greater Omaha metropolitan area and worsening the rural vs. urban divide which already exists in our state.

Rural Nebraskans ended up losing a seat in the Nebraska Legislature. The new legislative district map dissolved legislative district 36. Custer County now belongs to district 43 and Dawson County now belongs to district 44. The dissolving of legislative district 36 happened in a very peculiar way.

The redistricting committee held a public hearing in the City of Grand Island in mid-September. Many folks from Custer County and Dawson County came out to testify at that hearing. In fact, the majority of those who came out to testify, testified against breaking up legislative district 36. Sen, Matt Williams, who represents legislative district 36, told the committee at the hearing that day that he would not allow the redistricting committee to dissolve or divide up the district. Two days later Sen. Williams put district 36 on the chopping block and allowed the committee not only to dissolve the district, but to split up the two counties between district 43 and district 44. It is strangely odd that Sen. Williams would oppose these kinds of changes and then agree to split up the district. Why would he do that? A map was drawn up that would have protected all legislative seats.

Several Senators from rural Nebraska had prepared a redistricting map which preserved each of the 49 legislative districts in their same general vicinity without dissolving any of the districts. Their map was clearly the best map available, and it would have preserved district 36. Unfortunately, this map was never considered by the committee as a viable option.

I believe in preserving the voice of rural Nebraskans in the State Legislature. Although the voice of rural Nebraskans continues to diminish, rural Nebraskans remain the voice of reason and common sense throughout our state. Please know that I will always serve to represent all Nebraskans, but I will fight to make the voices of rural Nebraskans heard in the State Legislature. I would like to formally welcome all who are new to Legislative District 47 and encourage you to call my office with any of your comments or concerns. My office phone number is (402) 471-2616.

Once every ten years the Nebraska State Legislature must create new district maps for all of our State elected officials. This process is known as redistricting. The Nebraska State Senators have been meeting in a special session since September 13th redrawing district lines for the United States Congress, the State Legislature, the State Supreme Court, the University of Nebraska Regents, the Public Service Commission, and the State Board of Education.

By far, the most controversial map concerns the State Legislature. The State’s legislative districts have become the most controversial maps for several reasons; however, most of these reasons center on the rural versus urban divide that exists in our State. As populations in rural Nebraska continue to decline while populations in Nebraska’s urban centers continue to increase, the rural versus urban divide only widens. Moreover, politicians in these metropolitan areas seldom understand and appreciate the issues that confront rural Nebraskans.

In 1964 the United State Supreme Court ruled in the case of Wesberry v. Sanders that districts for the United States House of Representatives must be approximately equal in population. The U.S. Constitution had stipulated that these districts must be apportioned by population, but it had not explicitly stated that these districts had to be equal in size. What followed was a series of court cases, especially Baker v. Carr (1962) and Reynolds v. Sims (1964), which applied the same principle to state legislatures. This principle has become known as the “one person, one vote” rule, and it means that Nebraska’s legislative districts must all be comparatively equal in population.

The “one person, one vote” rule effectively started a political time bomb ticking in rural America. Because America’s urban population centers tend to grow at a much faster pace than rural areas, the balance of power naturally shifts to America’s urban centers over time. Making matters worse is the fact that rural Nebraska has been declining in population, instead of growing in population.

In the interest of preserving a voice for rural Nebraskans in the Unicameral Legislature, I advised the redistricting committee early on about how they should go about redrawing the district lines. Because each new legislative district must now comprise 40,000 residents plus or minus a 5 percent deviation, the common sense solution would be to divide the 1,098,000 people in Douglas, Lancaster, and Sarpy counties by the 27 districts they now have. That would give each urban district 40,666 people, and for the remaining 22 rural districts each would have 39,181 people per district. The urban districts would be .0165 percent above the 40,000 mark while the rural districts would be .02 percent below it. Problem solved. All of the current legislative districts would have remained intact and rural Nebraska would have maintained its current level of representation.

A very good map was developed Sen. Robert Clements and Sen. Bruce Bostelman which did exactly that. However, the redistricting committee wouldn’t even consider their map even though 29 senators had voiced their opinion that it was the map of their choice.

Last week our rural Senators finally gave in to the urban Senators and passed a legislative map by a vote of 43-5 which favors these urban centers in eastern Nebraska. Rural Nebraska has now lost one whole seat. The new map splits up legislative district 36, comprised of Custer County and Dawson County, and moves those counties into legislative district 43, and then it creates a new legislative district in Sarpy County, giving the greater Omaha metropolitan area yet another voice in the Unicameral Legislature. This means that rural Nebraskans will be even less represented in the State Legislature beginning in the year 2023.

Knowing that rural Nebraskans were set to lose another voice in the Unicameral Legislature, I voted against this new legislative district map. It saddens me greatly to see rural Nebraskans lose more representation in the State Legislature when we didn’t need to. I understand that I represent all Nebraskans, but I am also committed to doing whatever I can to preserve our rural voices in the State Legislature!

Liberty is worth fighting and dying for. Benjamin Franklin once said, “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” In 2003 Congress used this quotation as the foundation for the Benjamin Franklin True Patriot Act, an Act which was written to preserve our civil liberties but which never became law. Because America is still the home of the brave, protecting our liberties remains an essential American principle worthy of risking both life and treasure.

Those who participated in the Boston Tea Party understood full well that they were risking their lives in order to protest taxation without representation in the British Parliament. Rather than being guided by fear, they allowed themselves to be guided by the principle of liberty. Their actions became the precursor to war against the most powerful nation on earth at the time. Nevertheless, they believed the principle that no one should ever be taxed without having some kind of representation was worth fighting for and even dying for. Even after the American Revolutionary War, our founding fathers had no idea if the free economy they fought for would even survive. Their economy not only survived, but it gave rise to the greatest nation the earth has ever known.

Unfortunately, today far too many Americans are motivated by fear rather than by principle. Working as a Nebraska State Senator I have seen this all too often. Instead of fighting for what is right, good or fair, far too many Americans today are driven by fear, and such fear infringes upon our liberties.

Recently I have been touring Nebraska and promoting the consumption tax at town hall meetings. One of the questions I almost always get at these town hall meetings has to do with potential revenue shortfalls for the State of Nebraska should the consumption tax ever become law. Skeptics worry that making drastic changes to our tax code might result in the State not getting enough money to pay its bills. While this is a legitimate question to ask, Nebraskans can no longer afford to let these kinds of fears motivate us.

Nebraskans now find themselves in the same predicament that Californians found themselves in back in the 1970’s when property taxes were out of control and people were losing their homes. In the spirit of the Boston Tea Party, California voters took matters into their own hands and passed Proposition 13 on June 6, 1978. Proposition 13 capped property taxes at 2 percent of a home’s value in 1976 and reduced the property tax burden by 57 percent, according to the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer’s Association. When a home sells in California today, the property gets reassessed at 1 percent of the new market value with a 2 percent yearly cap placed on the new assessment. As a direct result of Proposition 13, California’s economy absolutely exploded! In the years following Proposition 13 California led the nation in personal income growth, employment growth, and real estate appreciation.

If we were able to climb into a Delorean-style time machine and travel back to California to the days leading up to June 6, 1978, you would not have believed that California’s economy would have taken off and grown so rapidly in the way that it did. The messages plastered on billboards, heard over the radio waves, and watched on television sets were mostly negative messages of doom and gloom for the State of California if voters dared to actually pass Proposition 13. Nearly every state agency predicted that the sky would fall in California. In fact, the school teachers were so upset after Proposition 13 passed that they took the playground balls away from their students and blamed it on the parents for voting for Proposition 13.

Contrary to these nay-sayers, I want you to know that the Beacon Hill Institute has completed the most comprehensive dynamic study of its kind for the consumption tax in Nebraska, and that study shows that we can implement a consumption tax in Nebraska and be revenue neutral. In other words, we would get all the revenue we need to run the State through my bill for the consumption tax. Moreover, we could do it without collecting a single dime of property taxes, personal and corporate income taxes, sales taxes, and inheritance taxes. And, if we do this, Nebraska’s economy will absolutely explode!

On August 9th President Joe Biden went before the camera and blamed 80 million unvaccinated Americans for the persistent spreading of the coronavirus and mandated that all federal employees, save the U.S. Postal Service, and all employers with more than 100 employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 or get weekly virus tests. Biden insisted that “This is not about freedom or personal choice; it’s about protecting yourself and those around you…” I disagree.

Biden’s vaccine mandate is unconstitutional. President Biden swore an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution when he took office. Nowhere in the U.S. Constitution does it extend power to the executive branch of the federal government to mandate what a person must put into his or her own body, and the 10th Amendment grants over to the states those powers not specifically delegated to the federal government. The United States Supreme Court ruled in 1990 in the case of Washington v. Harper that “the forcible injection of medication into a nonconsenting person’s body represents a substantial interference with that person’s liberty.” So, this really is about personal liberty after all.

Biden’s mandate also violates federal law. In sinister fashion, the Biden administration tried to get around the high court’s 1990 ruling by forcing the Department of Labor to impose his new rule through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). If businesses require vaccination of their employees or testing once per week, then nobody is forcing an injection upon a non-consenting person, right? Well, not so fast. The mere fact that the new rule only applies to businesses with more than 100 employees makes Biden’s new rule arbitrary. Such an arbitrary or capricious standard means that Biden’s new rule violates the Administrative Procedure Act. Under this Act a rule is invalid if it is “arbitrary, capricious, an abuse of discretion, or otherwise not in accordance with law.” Because there is no necessary line of distinction between a business with 99 employees and one with 100 employees, Biden’s new rule constitutes an arbitrary violation of the Administrative Procedures Act.

Biden’s vaccine mandate is bad for business. Why would any business owner want to let go of good employees when help is so hard to find these days, especially when they know that there is no one waiting on the sidelines to replace them? Biden’s mandate comes one month before the start of the Christmas holiday shopping season. While employers are looking to hire more holiday help, the federal government is now mandating that these same employers downsize their companies, and that makes the Biden mandate very bad for business.

Biden’s vaccine mandate is also bad for government. Consider what would happen if all 80 million unvaccinated people decided to wait until they got fired or let go by their employers instead of quitting their jobs. This would result in 80 million people suddenly filing for unemployment benefits! In order to help you see this, consider what happened in Chicago last month when 73 school bus drivers suddenly resigned due to the city’s new vaccine mandate. The mayor and school administrators found themselves frantically talking to Uber and Lyft about transporting 2,100 students to school, including 990 special education students. Because of their contracts, the Chicago Public Schools must now pay families $1,000 upfront and $500 per month to drive their own students to school.

Biden’s vaccine mandate also ignores science. Some 14 studies have now been completed showing how natural immunity is better at preventing COVID-19 than the vaccines. Moreover, Biden continues to ignore the weakness of the vaccines. For example, 40 percent of coronavirus cases in the United Kingdom last month came from people who had already received at least one shot of the vaccine, and Yale University epidemiologist Harvey Risch has stated publicly and for the record that “the majority of those infected become so after being vaccinated.” According Risch, 60 percent of cases in America come from people who have already been vaccinated.

President Joe Biden is now threatening to run over any governor who stands in his way. Gov. Ricketts has opposed Biden’s vaccine mandate and he needs some help. For this reason, I called Gov. Ricketts last Friday and urged him to call the State Legislature back into a special session just to deal with this problem. We especially need to protect those small businesses with fewer than 100 employees in Nebraska. No one in Nebraska should ever have to lose his or her job or be compelled to get a vaccination they do not want in order to feed their family and pay their bills. Biden’s vaccine mandate constitutes a declaration of war against personal liberty, and so the State Legislature is now compelled to act.

In case you haven’t heard the news, the Nebraska State Board of Education voted 5-1 on Friday to indefinitely postpone development of their new health education standards. Voting in favor of the proposal to halt the process were board members Robin Stevens, Lisa Fricke, Patti Gubbels, Maureen Nickels and Patsy Koch Johns. Voting against the proposal was Jacquelyn Morrison. Deborah Neary abstained from the vote and Patricia Timm was absent from the meeting.

This represents a huge victory for the people of Nebraska. Therefore, I would like to congratulate and thank every Nebraskan who weighed in on this issue. Many people testified in person at the public hearings and even more wrote letters, made phone calls, and sent emails to the Education Commissioner and to the members of the State Board of Education. Your voice has made a big difference.

I also want to thank the members of our local school boards for adopting resolutions against these new health education standards. I commend our local school board members for their bravery and fortitude. They stood up for what was right and held their ground against a forceful tide of political correctness which was pressuring them to go against their own convictions as well as the traditional family values they were raised with.

Nebraskans won an important battle last Friday, but the war is not yet over. Nebraska’s Attorney General, Doug Peterson, has joined 20 other states in a federal lawsuit to halt the Biden administration’s efforts to extend federal sex discrimination protections to LGBTQ students at school. In June the federal Department of Education made a policy change, claiming that discrimination based upon a student’s sexual orientation or gender identity violates Title IX of the 1972 federal law which protects against sex discrimination in school.

The federal lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Tennessee by that state’s own Attorney General, Herbert Slatery, argues that the federal Department of Education had no authority to make the change in policy. Such authority, the lawsuit says, “properly belongs to Congress, the States, and the people.” I share this with you today so that you may never forget that the power of American government resides ultimately in the people. As Abraham Lincoln said at the close of his Gettysburg Address, “…that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Engraved over the north steps of the Capitol Building in Lincoln it says, “The Salvation of the State is Watchfulness in the Citizen.”

Finally, I would also like to extend a hand of gratitude to all of the volunteer fire fighters who fought to extinguish fires in the Panhandle this summer. This has been a remarkable year for wildfires in Western Nebraska and it took a mighty and capable fire fighting force to battle the fires around the Panhandle. Thank you for being so readily available, for risking your own health and wellbeing, and for keeping us all safe.

How well informed are you? Do you get all of the news or only snippets of the news? Unfortunately, keeping up with all of the news today is like taking on a second full-time job. Few of us have the time, the energy, or the interest in researching every angle on every story. Complicating matters is the fact that our major media outlets slant the news according to their own political worldviews.

Mainstream journalism (not our local press) is very biased. Seldom does a person ever get both sides of a story by reading a single newspaper, website, or watching a newscast on television. In order to stay well-informed today, a person has to find trustworthy news sources. Therefore, today I would like to inform you about some things you probably missed in the news last week.

Last week many of us heard about how the mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, mandated that all city employees get vaccinated against COVID-19. However, what you may not have heard is how the police union refused to comply with her order. The president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, John Catanzara, resisted the order saying, “We are 100% against mandated vaccines for our members.”

Many of us heard the news last week about how the whacky governor of Oregon mandated mask-wearing outdoors. However, what did not get reported is how the United Kingdom lifted their mask mandate for all of their public schools. The U.K.’s Department of Education released new teacher guidelines saying, “Our priority is for you to deliver face-to-face, high quality education to all pupils.”

Last week many of us heard how COVID-19 cases have been rising in Nebraska and about how we all need to get vaccinated. Perhaps you even heard about how Douglas County was denied their request for a new Directive Health Measure (DHM), yet one was implemented in Lancaster County by mayor, Leirion Gaylor-Baird. However, what hardly got reported at all was the fact that 25 percent of coronavirus infections in Los Angeles County occurred among fully vaccinated residents. According to the CDC among more than 43,000 reported infections of individuals over the age of sixteen, 10,895 or 25.3 percent had been fully vaccinated against the disease.

Last week you may have heard about how the FDA finally approved the Pfizer vaccine for COVID-19. However, what you likely did not hear is that it is not the same Pfizer vaccine that is currently being administered under the emergency use authorization. The vaccine which received FDA approval is actually the BioNTech vaccine, which is similar to the Pfizer vaccine but has yet to be manufactured. Dr. Robert Malone, who invented the mRNA technology used in both vaccines, has warned that the American public does not have enough information yet to decide if getting the shot is worth the risk.

Some other stories that you likely missed include how the U.S. Department of Justice forced the new Sing Tao Daily newspaper to register as a foreign agent because it is a subsidiary of a Chinese company. You may have also missed how 100 Afghans who have been evacuated from Kabul are on our own intelligence agencies watch lists. And you may have missed how CNN falsely reported that no Democrats were running to become the next governor of California in the upcoming recall election to oust Gov. Gavin Newsome. CNN was forced by the courts to correct their story after they got sued by Kevin Paffrath, a Democrat who is running in the election.

I share each of these stories with you today in order to show you how journalistic integrity is severely lacking in our mainstream press today. Today most of the news which comes to us is biased and only tells one side of the story. The truest measure of journalistic integrity is when both sides of a story get reported. Unfortunately, journalistic integrity is very hard to find in the mainstream press today.

The cancel culture runs strong in America today. The cancel culture seeks to destroy anyone who dissents from the political agenda of the Left. For instance, after My Pillow founder, Mike Lindell, publicly questioned the election results of 2020, he was ditched by 20 retailers who refused to continue selling his products. If Thomas Jefferson lived today, he would likely find himself being cancelled by Google and having his account suspended by Facebook.

Those who seek to regulate truth on the Internet have especially proven themselves to be terrible arbiters of truth. The standards of these self-avowed guardians of truth are extremely inconsistent. For instance, on January 8, 2021 Twitter announced that it had permanently suspended President Donald Trump’s Twitter account due to a post they deemed promoted violence, yet Twitter has refused to cancel the account of Hamas leader, Ismael Haniyyeh, who tweeted, “God is great…” after the May 2021 rocket bombing of Tel Aviv.

Free speech is quickly becoming a thing of the past in America. Because freedom of speech is protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, I believe the time has come to regulate these self-proclaimed purveyors of truth on the Internet. Legislation is needed both on the federal level as well as on the state level to safeguard the rights of American citizens to tell their side of the story on the Internet. By now, most of us know someone who has had his or her social media account suspended or who has had a post unfairly removed by the self-proclaimed guardians of truth on the Internet.

The cancel culture is doing great harm to American society by squelching debate. Getting the truth out to the public has now become a very difficult task for the average American. Social media ought to be a place for the free exchange of ideas; instead, it has become a platform where its users must toe the Left-wing party line and operate within the bounds of how some people define social justice.

What the cancel culture has effectively done to the social justice movement in America is turn it into a form of mindless control and mob rule. Without the free exchange of ideas the social justice warriors of the Left have now become no different than the Nazi Party’s Brownshirts during World War II. Just as the Brownshirts tried to purge all dissenting opinions from Nazi Germany, today’s social justice warriors on the Internet seek to purge all dissenting opinions from cyberspace.

In order to see what I am talking about one needs to look no further than how talk about COVID-19 gets treated on the Internet. For example, the nation of India has almost completely eradicated the Delta variant of the coronavirus through its use of the drug Ivermectin, yet for some reason, we are not allowed to talk about this drug on the Internet. Mention the drug Ivermectin and you will be cancelled.

Wikipedia is one such place where talk of Ivermectin is not allowed. For instance, the folks who run Wikipedia won’t allow any mention of peer-reviewed studies by Dr. Tess Lawrie, Dr. Pierre Kory, or Dr. Andrew Hill. In fact, more than 60 studies have been completed on the use of Ivermectin, revealing up to a 96% success rate at preventing coronavirus deaths, yet for some reason no one is allowed to talk about it on Wikipedia.

America is descending back into the Dark Ages. During the Dark Ages scientists such as Galileo were not permitted to make models of the solar system because the scientific data contradicted the pope’s belief that the earth was at the center of the universe. Much like the popes of the Middle-Ages those who regulate information on the Internet today are not genuine truth seekers. Instead, they are nothing more than political hacks, who are pushing an extremist Left-wing agenda at the expense of our First Amendment right to freedom of speech. Contrary to the cancel culture, I believe every American has the right to speak freely.

Have the Regents at the University of Nebraska spun out of control? Recent decisions by the Board of Regents suggests that the University of Nebraska is no longer the land grant University system that it once was. Because the University of Nebraska system is a land grant University, the Board of Regents are supposed to be accountable to the people of the State. Unfortunately, today they are beholden to students, faculty, the teachers’ union, and political activists, who do not share the same views as the vast majority of Nebraskans.

The University of Nebraska was chartered in 1869 as a Morrill Act land grant college. The Morrill Act granted federally controlled lands to states for the purpose of establishing colleges. The Morrill Act was intended to provide the general population with the opportunity to pursue higher education with practical relevance to daily living; however, much of what gets taught today at our land grant universities has little or no practical value whatsoever for daily living. For instance, what value is there in teaching critical race theory, especially when it teaches students to despise their white race and to deny their white privilege?

Last Friday the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska rejected a resolution to ban “any imposition of critical race theory” at the University. The Regents heard testimony from numerous faculty, students, teachers’ union representatives, and political activists, who do not represent the views of the vast majority of Nebraskans when it comes to teaching critical race theory. Despite the fact that the testimonies of the ordinary citizens were largely against the teaching of critical race theory, the resolution failed by a vote of 5-3.

Many of the political activists who testified at the hearing distorted American history in order to try to make their point, which is precisely what critical race theory teaches them to do. For instance, one such activist accused the writers of the Declaration of Independence of calling Native Americans “merciless savages,” but closer examination of the document shows that the Founding Fathers were actually accusing the British of turning some Native Americans into merciless savages in order to harass the colonists. If the intention of the Founding Fathers was to label all Native Americans as “merciless savages,” then one would also have to believe that the Founding Fathers were also calling every white colonist a domestic insurrectionist because both ideas appear in the same paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. Clearly, the Founding Fathers were not labelling all of the white colonists as insurrectionists nor were they calling all Native Americans merciless savages, yet this is precisely what critical race theory teaches students to do.

Besides failing to act on critical race theory, the Board of Regents of the University of Nebraska have also overstepped their bounds of authority when it comes to regulating student health. This year students at the University of Nebraska are being asked to download and use the Safer Community App onto their cell phones. The Safer Community App violates a student’s right to privacy, especially in regards to his or her medical history.

Students at the University of Nebraska this year are being asked to get vaccinated against COVID-19 despite the fact that the coronavirus has minimal effects on young people or that a student may already possess his or her body’s own natural immunity against the disease. Instead, those who refuse to get vaccinated must get tested once per week. The Safer Communities App monitors each student’s vaccination status, reminding unvaccinated students to get tested and warning students whenever they have been exposed to someone with the virus. Moreover, the Safer Communities App is what will be used to grant students access to the University’s buildings. Forget to get tested and you won’t be allowed to attend class until you get it done!

The Board of Regents need to remember who they work for. They do not work for the students, the teachers, the teachers’ union, or the political activists. Instead, they work for the people of Nebraska. Because the University of Nebraska is a land grant university, the people of Nebraska have every right to hold them accountable for every poor decision they make.

The time has come to formally call for the resignations of every member of the Nebraska State Board of Education, including Education Commissioner, Matthew Blomstedt. Each of the members of the Nebraska State Board of Education needs to resign because the board has failed to listen to the people of Nebraska, failed to adequately reform the sex education standards, and has failed to educate Nebraska’s students. Instead of doing what the vast majority of the people want and what is best for our students, they have insisted upon promoting their own Left-wing ideological agenda while failing to adequately educate Nebraska’s K-12 students.

When it comes to analyzing the second draft of the State Board of Education’s sex education standards, I am reminded of the old song, “I’m Henry the Eighth, I Am,” especially the line which says, “Second verse, same as the first!” Second draft, same as the first. Instead of removing LGBTQ+ activists from the drafting committee, the State Board of Education has relied upon them to write the second draft. For instance, the group Sexual Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), which is an LGBTQ+ advocacy group who helped write the first draft, contributed to the wording of the second draft. SIECUS cares absolutely nothing about the concerns of Nebraska’s parents; they only care about promoting their own LGBTQ+ agenda, which is overtly stated on their website. Once again, missing from the writing committee were conservative parents, private school administrators, and clergy.

The second draft of the sex education curriculum effectively changed nothing. For instance, section H.E. 7.7.2.d of the standards teaches students to: “Recognize that biological sex and gender identity may or may not differ.” Worded this way, the new state standards will allow even the most extreme activists for the LGBTQ+ movement to indoctrinate students inside our schools with their own views on sexual orientation and gender identity. Nebraska’s parents asked the State Board of Education to remove this item altogether, not to reword it in a more palatable and less offensive way. So, the board has refused to listen to the people.

The Nebraska State Board of Education has failed to adequately educate our students. Instead of writing pro-LGBTQ+ sex education curriculum, the Nebraska State Board of Education should have concerned themselves with improving education in Nebraska. When it comes to educating our children, Nebraska is the worst state in the country, including Washington, D.C. But you do not have to accept this ranking from me; instead, accept it from the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). You may view their ranking yourself online by going to: www.alecreportcard.org.

Two weeks ago I attended the ALEC convention for state legislators in Salt Lake City, Utah only to learn how terrible our education system is in Nebraska. According to ALEC, Nebraska ranks 51st in the nation for educational performance. The ALEC Report Card ranks each state’s educational system according eight different criteria, and when those criteria are added up, Nebraska ranks as the absolute worst educational system in America.

Missing from the ALEC criteria was anything having to do with promoting an LGBTQ+ agenda for the State. Instead, the folks at ALEC focus on matters that are actually relevant to education. Therefore, what the ALEC ranking tells me is that our State Board of Education has been spending far too much time catering to the LGBTQ+ activists and promoting their own Left-wing agenda for our State and not spending nearly enough time working on improving educational standards in our State. It is downright shameful that Nebraska should have the worst education system in America!

Because the Nebraska State Board of Education has insisted upon flinging the door wide open for the LGBTQ+ activists to indoctrinate our students, and because the State Board of Education has refused to listen to the vast majority of Nebraska’s parents, and because the State Board of Education has given us the worst education system in America, each and every member of the State Board of Education, including the Education Commissioner needs to resign immediately.