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LANSING, Mich - Michigan Taxpayers would fund tampons and menstrual pads for Michigan student bathrooms under a new bill.
House Bill 6168, introduced by Rep. Mai Xiong, D-Warren on Nov. 26, aims to have the state reimburse school districts for feminine hygiene products in student bathrooms.
The bill would direct the state to reimburse school districts for at least 50% of the cost of providing tampons and menstrual pads. It says that any district seeking reimbursement must place the items in a “bathroom designated for use by females,” as well as a “bathroom designated for use by males or both males and females.”
One observer of public schools panned the idea. “This legislation represents yet another example of lawmakers directing taxpayer dollars to services that will have no impact on student learning outcomes,” said Molly Macek, education policy director at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy.
The bill was assigned to the House Appropriations Committee during the lame-duck session, when there is a rush to pass bills before the term expires. Click here to read more.
TAMPA, FLA - A woman in Florida was charged by police this week for allegedly threatening her health insurance company after they denied a claim.
The Lakeland Police Department was contacted by the FBI on Tuesday about the threat that 42-year-old Briana Boston allegedly made to BlueCross BlueShield after they denied a recent claim.
WFLA reported that at the end of the recorded phone call, Boston could allegedly be heard saying: “Delay, Deny, Depose. You people are next.”
“Delay, Deny, Depose,” were the same words that an assassin allegedly wrote on the shell casings of the three 9mm bullets that were used to murder UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week.
The arrest affidavit noted the words have quickly come to be widely recognized as a threat “directed against insurance companies.”
“She’s been in this world long enough that she certainly should know better that you can’t make threats like that in the current environment that we live in and think that we’re not going to follow up and put you in jail,” said Lakeland Police Chief Sam Taylor. Click here to read more.
LANSING, Mich - President Biden’s Department of Education has shelled out at least $1 billion on various diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives since 2021, according to a new report.
Researchers unearthed some $490 million on DEI hiring efforts, $343 million on DEI programming and $170 million on DEI-related mental health, according to a study from Parents Defending Education (PDE), a conservative organization that rallies against what it deems “harmful agendas” in the classroom.
Analysts at PDE combed through troves of public data detailing the grants doled out by the department, which sported a $238 billion budget in fiscal year 2024.
“The only people or groups to benefit from the enormous amount of grant funding are the universities, administrators, and DEI consultants, at the expense of children’s education,” PDE researcher Rhyen Staley told Fox News, which first covered the report.
“This needs to change by placing children’s learning at the forefront of education, instead of prioritizing race-based policies and DEI.” Click here to read more.
SAN ANTONIO, TX - One young woman in San Antonio, Texas, hasn't let her Down syndrome diagnosis stand in the way of her dream of owning a restaurant.
Leah Meyer, 24, will soon be launching her new gluten-free bakery and coffee shop, The Mermaid Café, with a touching slogan: Specialty coffee by special people. That's because Meyer, who has Down syndrome, has a goal that at least 70% of the staff she employs will have some sort of special needs.
"For years we have been talking about what the café would look like, what would be on the menu, and all of the people that would visit," the café's website says. "One thing we knew for sure is that we wanted it to be a place for people of all abilities to be able to work and make a valuable contribution to society. We want to positively change the perception that people have of those that may be different from themselves."
PDE cited a litany of examples in its report, including a $21.5 million grant to Montgomery County Schools featuring professional training for instructors on “equitable instructional and disciplinary practices to increase student achievement and decrease incidences of inequitable disciplinary practices.” Click here to read more.
NEW YORK, NY - The world is approaching a low-fertility future. Although by 2100 more than 97% of countries and territories will have fertility rates below what is necessary to sustain population size over time, comparatively high fertility rates in numerous low-income countries, predominantly in Western and Eastern sub-Saharan Africa, will continue to drive population increases in these locations throughout the century. This “demographically divided world” will have enormous consequences for economies and societies, according to a new study published in The Lancet.(link is external)
The research presents estimates from the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) 2021—a global research effort led by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington’s School of Medicine—for past, current, and future global, regional, and national trends in fertility and livebirths. In general, countries need to have a total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 children per person who could give birth, to sustain long-term generational replacement of the population. The TFR of a population is the average number of children that are born to a female over a lifetime, assuming childbearing at current fertility rates throughout the reproductive years. Click here to read more.
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