The whole story on Common Core

Read the sourced and footnoted response to the National Review Online and get all the facts you need to know about Common Core HERE. Compiled by American Principles project and Glenn's research team.

Common Core is the new set of federal education standards being pushed by the Obama administration and several leftist organizations but it’s even seeing some support from some conservatives. National Review Online wrote a piece defending Common Core, and Glenn gave the definitive response on radio today.

"Common Core is something that we didn't really get for quite some time and again it's something we've learned from the 9/12 project and concerned parents all around the country that have been bringing this to our attention. When we started in on this work, we thought it was pretty bad. The more we do, the worse it becomes," Glenn said.

Below are some of the points made by the National Review Online in defense of Common Core, followed by Glenn's response.

National Review Online (NRO): Common Core is not “ObamaCore,” as some suggest. While President Obama often tries to claim credit, the truth is that the development of Common Core was well underway before he took office in January 2009.

Glenn: First of all, that's just not true. Even though I've never called it Obama Core or alleged that it came solely from the president, the development of Common Core itself didn't happen until 2009.

NRO: Some argue that states were coerced into adopting Common Core by the Obama administration as a requirement for applying for its Race to the Top grant competition (and No Child Left Behind waiver program).

Glenn: Okay. I would imagine when they say some are implying, that would be me. Yes, some argue that states were coerced because they were coerced. $4.35 billion was earmarked for states who would take the bait. The money was offered in the stimulus package and, of course, 45 states immediately jumped on it. We warned you not to at the time. We didn't know why it was a bad thing. We just knew this was a bad thing: Don't jump on that money. Now we know.

NRO: Education policymaking — and 90 percent of funding — is still handled at the state and local levels. And tying strings to federal education dollars is nothing new. No Child Left Behind — George W. Bush’s signature education law — linked federal Title I dollars directly to state education policy, and states not complying risked losing millions in compensatory-education funding (that is, funding for programs for children at risk of dropping out of school).

GLENN: Okay. So now what does this mean? That we've linked it and it's been linked since George W. Bush. Yes. Yes. Progressives. Progressive steps. So you can always say it's the frog in the water. Remember? You boil a frog, you just put them in there while the water's cool and he never, he never ‑‑ but you throw him in the hot water and he jumps right out. Right? This is nothing new. You've been in that pot for a while. It was cold water. Sure, it might be getting a little warmer now but it's the same pot. This is more of the, "George Bush did something sort of like this. So it has to be okay with you guys, right?" No. No. I and you should absolutely reject that line of thinking.

NRO: Perhaps the clearest evidence that states can still set their own standards is the fact that five states have not adopted Common Core. Some that have adopted it might opt out, and they shouldn’t lose a dime if they do.

GLENN: Seeing and hearing this kind of ridiculous nonsense, I can't help but wonder if this was written by maybe a fifth grader that, you know, will be tested soon. The fact that 90% of the states took the money and the program, that's your clearest evidence that states can still set their own standards? I mean, that's frightening. I mean, I hope, I hope two of the, you know, experts that wrote this defense aren't actually involved in the education of our children. The bribe kids worked for 90% for those who were offered the bribe and that proves that bribes don't work.

First of all, Texas is one of those states that opt out. We got instead CSCOPE. Just as bad. And the Republicans are doing CSCOPE. Just because some have adopted might opt out. Listen to that. Some have adopted and they might opt out. And they shouldn't lose a dime if they do. Okay. They might opt out, and monkeys might fly out of my pants. And if they do, I shouldn't lose a dime.

Have the two of you right‑leaning educators seen a single news report in the last ten years? Because there's a lot of stuff that shouldn't happen that has.

"They deny in this article that there is any need for concern over the leftist indoctrination. Common Core is funded by Bill and Melinda Gates and Linda Darling‑Hammond, an education adviser for Barack Obama's campaign. Oh. Well, pardon me if you got ‑‑ if you got Bill and Melinda Gates and the, what was it, the education adviser for Barack Obama, I mean, I don't know why I'd be a tad skeptical of that group," Glenn said.

Glenn also heavily criticized the emphasis on informational texts over classical literature.

New Republic Online: The most prominent criticism of Common Core is that it abandons classical literature and instead forces students to read dry government manuals. This claim reflects a profound and perhaps deliberate misunderstanding of Common Core literacy standards, which do encourage increased exposure to informational texts and literary nonfiction. The goal is to have children read challenging texts that will build their vocabulary and background knowledge, a strategy grounded in what education scholar E. D. Hirsch has shown: A broad, content-rich curriculum reduces the achievement gap between the middle class and the poor.

GLENN: Common Core also shifts away from classic literature and allows for the reading of informational texts. Now, what is informational texts? And by the way, it shifts as the years progress. When you're in ‑‑ when you're in first grade, you read fewer and fewer informational texts and you read more of the classic literature that is approved. But by the time you hit high school, I think you're at 60%, or is it 80% of informational texts? And what are the informational texts? Those are ‑‑ those are handbooks from the EPA on how to make sure that your siding and your insulation is good in your house. Who in their right mind wants to read the government handbooks?

...

This will invite greater and greater indoctrination and bias in the selection and teachings of the texts. You're narrowing things down. You've only got 20% or 40% that is going to be able to be a classic by the time they're in high school, and what kid will learn love of reading from reading any, any government handbook? Who ‑‑ what kid will learn anything except to go dead inside? The article, co‑written by Kathleen Porter McGee, she's a fellow at the Fordham Institute, she makes a ‑‑ she makes the claim, the Fordham Institute has carefully examined Common Core and compared it with existing state standards and it's found that for most states Common Core is a great improvement with regard to rigor and cohesiveness.

"The battle, my friends, is on," Glenn said. "The missiles are coming not just from the left but also the right. As we fight this insidious menace to our children and to our families ‑‑ and that's exactly what it is ‑‑ we are going to have a difficult time discerning who our allies are."

"This article appeared in the National Review Online, attacking me and Michelle Malkin for daring to speak out against Common Core, defending this horrific mess, a mess that is without any question the darling of Barack Obama. This article came from scholars who supposedly are right‑leaning. What is their motivation? I have no idea. I don't know them. I've never heard of either of them. But the point is the shells will come from both sides. So you're going to have to do your own homework unlike you've ever done before. You're going to have to know what you're talking about."

"The defense of Common Core doesn't even mention all of the data mining that will take place from Microsoft, the biowristbands they want to use on our kids, the FCAT scans that are in the Department of Education's own paperwork. The rest of the 1984 tight monitoring systems, all of it, all of it of course is simply going to be done to help your children. It will help educators help your kids. It will make them safer, smarter, more secure. This is the progressive movement coming in for the kill. And believe me, if we don't stop it, this will be the kill. But we can't and we won't allow it."

The THREE ways RFK Jr. will Make America Healthy Again

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One of President Trump's most popular campaign promises was to "Make America Great Again," and he has employed the help of his former opponent, RFK Jr., to make that promise come true.

In an interview with NPR, RFK Jr. revealed the three directives Trump has tasked him as the new head of the Department of Health and Human Services. These directives aim to cut out the "cancer" that Glenn exposed in his latest TV special that has spread throughout theentire federal government.

Here are the three directives Trump gave RFK Jr.:

1. Rid health agencies of corruption and conflicts.

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It is no secret that the departments that fall under the HHS, such as the FDA, NIH, and CDC, are rife with corruption. After the COVID lockdowns raised suspicion that these federal agencies did not have the American people's best interests at heart, Americans have been increasingly distrustful of these institutions. Glenn exposed several instances of corruption across the HHS, from Dr. Fauchi's Covid powertrip to the insidious relationship between private entities like Big Food, Big Pharma, and the federal agencies that regulate them.

RFK Jr. has been one of the most vocal critics of the corruption that has turned these federal agencies against the very people they were created to protect and is the best person to reform these institutions.

2. Return agencies to the gold standard of empirically based, evidence-based science and medicine.

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Under Biden, the HHS has degraded even further than it had before. Scientific methodology and empirical data are no longer the backbones of these institutions. They have been replaced with DEI and other woke agendas. The Department of Health and Human Services is the second largest federal agency, only behind the Pentagon, with a budget of 1.7 trillion dollarsand over 83 thousand employees. The opportunity for waste and negligence is monumental.

Biden appointed former California Attorney General, Xavier Becerra, to the head of HHS, along with Rachel Levine, a transgender woman, as the Assistant Secretary for Health. Before long the second-largest federal agency started looking like a university DEI office, with hundreds of DEI hires adding to government bloat. Instead of battling the diseases and sicknesses that plague our country, the HHS spent the past four years going after pro-life investigators who were exposing how Planned Parenthood sells body parts of aborted babies, opposing the merger of religious-based hospitals to protect transgender and abortion "rights," and wrestling over Obama-era contraceptive mandates with a group of Catholic nuns. This is quackery and waste on an unprecedented scale.

RFK Jr. is tasked with rooting out the corruption that sprang forth with the Biden administration's DEI agenda and put science back in our health policy.

3. End the chronic disease epidemic with measurable impacts within two years.

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Today, despite our modern technology, Americans are sicker than ever before. 129 million Americans have at least one chronic disease, 42 percent have two or more, and 12 percent have more than five. Life expectancy is at a twenty-year low despite the fact that we are spending more than ever on health care. Even our children are sick, with a staggering 40 percent of school-aged kids having at least one chronic disease. One in nine kids has ADHD, and one in 54 has autism, both representing a steep increase over past decades.

America is sick, and Big Pharma is just rolling in the profits. This is where RFK Jr. comes in. He aims to find the cures and preventions to these diseases and make Americans healthy instead of lifelong patients.

POLL: Is Matt Gaetz in trouble?!

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Trump is assembling a dream team to take on the deep state that has burdened the American people for far too long.

It's no surprise Democrats have been pushing back against Trump's nominations, but one person in particular has been experiencing the most resistance: Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, Trump's pick to serve as his Attorney General. The controversy centers around a years-long House ethics probe regarding sexual misconduct allegations made against Gaetz several years ago. Despite the FBI conducting its own investigation and refusing to prosecute Gaetz, his nomination re-ignited interest in these allegations.

Democrats and some Republicans demand the House Ethics Committee release their probe into Gaetz before his Senate confirmation hearing. Conveniently, earlier this week, an anonymous hacker obtained this coveted report and gave it to the New York Times, which has yet to make the information public.

Glenn is very skeptical about the entire affair, from the allegations against Gaetz to the hacker's "anonymity." Is it another case of lawfare by the Democrats?

Glenn wants to know what do you think. Did Gaetz commit the crimes he's accused of? Will he still be appointed attorney general? Let us know in the poll below:

Is Matt Gaetz guilty of the crimes he is accused of committing? 

Will Matt Gaetz still be appointed to Trump's cabinet?

Was the "hacker" really some Democratic staffer or lawmaker? 

3 BIGGEST lies about Trump's plans for deportations

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To the right, Trump's deportation plans seem like a reasonable step to secure the border. For the left, mass deportation represents an existential threat to democracy.

However, the left's main arguments against Trump's deportation plans are not only based on racially problematic lies and fabrications they are outright hypocritical.

Here are the three BIGGEST lies about Trump's deportation plans:

1. Past Deportations

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The left acts like Donald Trump is the first president in history to oversee mass deportations, but nothing could be further from the truth. Deportations have been a crucial tool for enforcing immigration laws and securing the country from the beginning, and until recently, it was a fairly bipartisan issue.

Democrat superstar President Obama holds the record for most deportations during his tenure in office, clocking in at a whopping 3,066,457 people over his eight years in office. This compares to the 551,449 people removed during Trump's first term. Obama isn't an anomaly either, President Clinton deported 865,646 people during his eight years, still toping Trump's numbers by a considerable margin.

The left's sudden aversion to deportations is clearly reactionary propaganda aimed at villainizing Trump.

2. Exploitative Labor

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Commentators on the left have insinuated that President Trump's deportation plan would endanger the agricultural industry due to the large portion of agricultural workers in the U.S. who are illegal aliens. If they are deported, food prices will skyrocket.

What the left is conveniently forgetting is the reason why many businesses choose to hire illegal immigrants (here's a hint: it's not because legal Americans aren't willing to do the work). It's because it is way easier to exploit people who are here illegally. Farmowners don't have to pay taxes on illegal aliens, pay minimum wage, offer benefits, sign contracts, or do any of the other typical requirements that protect the rights of the worker.

The left has shown their hand. This was never about some high-minded ideals of "diversity" and "inclusion." It's about cheap, expendable labor and a captive voter base to bolster their party in elections.

3."Undesirable" Jobs

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Another common talking point amid the left-wing anti-Trump hysteria is that illegal aliens take "undesirable" jobs that Americans will not do. The argument is that these people fill the "bottom tier" in the U.S. economy, jobs they consider "unfit" for American citizens.

By their logic, we should allow hordes of undocumented, unvetted immigrants into the country so they can work the jobs that the out-of-touch liberal talking heads consider beneath them. It's no wonder why they lost the election.

Did the Left lay the foundations for election denial?

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Did Glenn predict the future?

Just a few days after the election and President Trump's historic victory, the New York Times published a noteworthy article titled "How Russia Openly Escalated Its Election Interference Efforts," in which they made some interesting suggestions. They brought up several examples of Russian election interference (stop me if you think you've heard this one before) that favored Trump. From there, they delicately approached the "election denial zone" with the following statement:

"What impact Russia’s information campaign had on the outcome of this year’s race, if any, remains uncertain"

Is anyone else getting 2016 flashbacks?

It doesn't end there. About two weeks before the election (October 23rd), Glenn and Justin Haskins, the co-author of Glenn's new book, Propaganda Wars, discuss a frightening pattern they were observing in the news cycle at the time, and it bears a striking similarity to this New York Times piece. To gain a full appreciation of this situation, let's go back to two weeks before the election when Glenn and Justin laid out this scene:

Bad Eggs in the Intelligence Community

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This story begins with a top-secret military intelligence leak. Over the October 19th weekend, someone within the U.S. Government's intelligence agencies leaked classified information regarding the Israeli military and their upcoming plans to Iran. The man responsible for this leak, Asif William Rahman, a CIA official with top security clearance, was arrested on Tuesday, November 12th.

Rahman is one of the known "bad eggs" within our intelligence community. Glenn and Justin highlighted another, a man named Robert Malley. Malley is an Iranian envoy who works at the State Department under the Biden/Harris administration and is under investigation by the FBI for mishandling classified information. While Malley was quietly placed on leave in June, he has yet to be fired and still holds security clearance.

Another suspicious figure is Ariane Tabatabai, a former aide of Mr. Malley and a confirmed Iranian agent. According to a leak by Semafor, Tabatabai was revealed to be a willing participant in an Iranian covert influence campaign run by Tehran's Foreign Ministry. Despite this shocking revelation that an Iranian agent was in the Pentagon with access to top-secret information, Tabatabai has not faced any charges or inquires, nor has she been stripped of her job or clearance.

If these are the bad actors we know about, imagine how many are unknown to the public or are flying under the radar. In short, our intelligence agencies are full of people whose goals do not align with American security.

Conspicuous Russian Misinformation

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The story continues with a video of a man accusing former VP candidate and Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz of sexual assault. The man alleged to be Matthew Metro, a former student of Walz claimed that he was assaulted by the Governor while in High School. The man in the video gave corroborating details that made the claim seem credible on the surface, and it quickly spread across the internet. But after some deeper investigation, it was revealed this man wasnot Matthew Metro and that the entire video was fake. This caught the attention of the Security Director of National Intelligence who claimed the video was a Russian hoax designed to wound the Harris/Walz campaign, and the rest of the intelligence community quickly agreed.

In the same vein, the State Department put out a $10 million bountyto find the identity of the head of the Russian-owned media company Rybar. According to the State Department, Rybar manages several social media channels that promote Russian governmental political interests targeted at Trump supporters. The content Rybar posts is directed into pro-Trump, and pro-Republican channels, and the content apparently has a pro-Trump spin, alongside its pro-Russia objectives.

Why Does the Intelligence Community Care?

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So what's the deal? Yes, Russia was trying to interfere with the election, but this is a well-known issue that has unfortunately become commonplace in our recent elections.

The real concern is the intelligence community's uncharacteristically enthusiastic and fast response. Where was this response in 2016, when Hillary Clinton and the Democrats spent months lying about Donald Trump's "collusion" with Russia? It has since been proven that the FIB knew the entire story was a Clinton campaign fabrication, and they not only kept quiet about it, but they even played along. Or what about in 2020 when the Left tried to shut down the Hunter Biden laptop story for months by calling it a Russian hoax, only for it to turn out to be true?

Between all the bad actors in the intelligence community and their demonstrated repeated trustworthiness, this sudden concern with "Russian disinformation" that happened to support Trump was just too convenient.

Laying the Foundations for Election Denial

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This is when Glenn and Justin make a startling prediction: the Left was preparing for a potential Trump victory (remember, this was two weeks before the election) so they would have something to delegitimize him with. They were painting Trump as Putin's lapdog who was receiving election assistance in the form of misinformation from the Kremlin by sounding the alarm on these cherry-picked (and in the grand scheme of things, tame) examples of Russian propaganda. They were laying the foundation of the Left's effort to resist and delegitimize a President-elect Trump.

Glenn and Justin had no idea how right they were.