Woke Culture

Defending religious freedoms means taking on “radical gender ideology,” allowing churches to not accept gay marriages and supporting abortion restrictions, potential and announced Republican presidential candidates told Iowans Saturday.

More than 1,200 people attended the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition spring kick-off event Saturday at the Horizon Event Center in Clive. The event was one of the first “cattle calls” of the 2024 Republican presidential nominating cycle...

No motive has been released by the police in the alleged torture and murder of Sam Nordquist, a trans-identifying woman killed in New York in early February. There is, however, sufficient evidence to confirm the alleged murder was not a hate crime.

Despite this, media reports insist on forcing that narrative, as LGBT activists demand it and Democrat leaders validate it. The facts of the case are deeply disturbing, and the obsession with manufacturing an anti-trans hate crime story is making it worse.

Walmart is making a slate of changes to its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, becoming the latest in a growing list of major corporations to halt the so-called "woke" initiatives.

Anti-woke activist and filmmaker Robby Starbuck, who has been leading a campaign exposing major corporations' woke policies, said on X on Monday that he warned Walmart executives last week that he would be doing a story on "wokeness" at the retail giant.

"Instead," Starbuck shared, "we had productive conversations to find solutions."

A pair of Senate Republicans introduced legislation on Tuesday to remove “woke requirements” from a $52.7 billion bill signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022 that sought to subsidize the domestic semiconductor industry, create more STEM jobs, and boost research in new technologies.

Earlier this week Adam Rubenstein, a former New York Times editor scapegoated in the Tom Cotton op-ed affair at the Gray Lady back in 2020, published a tell-all about his experiences at the paper.

In his lede, Rubenstein recalled being chided for identifying Chick-fil-A’s spicy chicken sandwich as his favorite after being asked a seemingly innocent icebreaker at his orientation.

On one of my first days at The New York Times, I went to an orientation with more than a dozen other new hires. We had to do an icebreaker: Pick a Starburst out of a jar and then answer a question. My Starburst was pink, I believe, and so I had to answer the pink prompt, which had me respond with my favorite sandwich. Russ & Daughters’ Super Heebster came to mind, but I figured mentioning a $19 sandwich wasn’t a great way to win new friends. So I blurted out, “The spicy chicken sandwich from Chick-fil-A,” and considered the ice broken.

Adam Rubenstein is a journalist and former opinion editor at The New York Times. As a person of right-leaning political sensibilities—Rubenstein previously worked for The Wall Street Journal and The Weekly Standard—he was brought to the Times opinion pages with a mandate to help diversify its ideological offerings. His bosses said they expected him to use his contacts in conservative media to solicit, research, and improve op-eds that would advance contrarian arguments and challenge the paper's editorial point of view, as well as its readers.

Google's public apology after its Gemini artificial intelligence (AI) produced historically inaccurate images and refused to show pictures of White people has led to questions about potential racial bias in other big tech chatbots.

As attempted book bans continue to surge in schools across the U.S., the challenges are now increasingly extending to public libraries, according to new American Library Association data.

By the numbers: ALA's Office for Intellectual Freedom data shows there were 695 attempts to censor library materials and services in the first eight months of 2023, compared to 681 during the same period in 2022 — a year that saw attempted book bans reach record levels.

There were 3,362 book ban attempts in K-12 schools across the country last school year — 33 percent more than the year before, according to a new report from free expression group PEN America.  

And those book ban attempts resulted in the removal of 1,557 individual titles.  

Since 2020, there has been a surge in book challenges as classrooms have become a new ideological battleground.