Settling the School Wars

Durable changes: This midterm season, activist groups have set their sights on amending state constitutions as a way of skirting never-ending culture war battles.

In Nebraska, voters are being asked to consider “enshrin[ing] in its constitution an existing law that prohibits transgender students from playing on girls’ and women’s sports teams,” reports The Washington Post. “It also would require school teams to be designated as male, female or co-ed.” The campaign behind it, Fairness for Girls, turned in 211,000 signatures in June, and its $3.1 million in cash contributions as of July 31 came entirely from a single nonprofit, Restore the Good Life Inc.

Voters in Washington, Colorado, and Arizona will see similar measures on their ballots related to transgender athletes and what schools should allow—though these would change state law rather than constitutions. Arizona’s was put on the ballot by the Republican Legislature, while Colorado’s and Washington’s came from citizen petitions. Transgender students who say they are girls are already barred from girls’ school teams under Arizona state law; the state’s Proposition 318 would now ban student athletes from using restrooms, locker rooms, and showers that don’t match an athlete’s sex at birth, plus extend the rules to private schools and club sports.

Meanwhile in Alabama, voters will be asked whether the state’s constitution should be altered to require public schools to allow prayer—led by students—at the start of the day. The same amendment would also put the daily Pledge of Allegiance, which state law already requires, into the constitution. Students couldn’t be forced to take part in the prayer and would be able to opt out of the pledge.

Interestingly, Alabama has been here before. In Wallace v. Jaffree (1985), the Supreme Court struck down an Alabama statute authorizing a moment of silence “for meditation or voluntary prayer.” It’s not clear why they’re trying basically the same thing all over again. (“What is the oversight power of the school in something like this?” Steven P. Brown, a professor of political science at Auburn University, asked the Alabama Reflector. “If you have a kid who stands up and wants to give a prayer to Satan, there is no question the school is going to step in.” It’s a fair question!)

“This year has brought a total of 19 ballot initiatives related to K-12 and higher education, the most since the midterms in 2018, according to a database maintained by the National Conference of State Legislatures,” reports The Washington Post. It seems like activists are growing tired of constantly relitigating culture-war issues, and instead hope to create a more durable consensus via amendments to state constitutions and voter-approved statutes that are harder for legislators to alter.

Dissent: House Speaker Mike Johnson (R–La.) has sounded off about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s idea of livestreaming the execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army major who killed 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009.

Johnson says the video of the execution by firing squad could become “a recruiting tool for future terrorists,” according to Johnson. “We’ve got to think through the policy implications of all that,” Johnson told CBS News on Monday.

Scenes from New York: “Mayor Zohran Mamdani said on Monday that the Police Department had strengthened its accountability systems after an officer was allowed to retire before facing a disciplinary trial over the death of a teenager,” reports The New York Times. “Mr. Mamdani also ordered the police to conduct a review of their use-of-force policies, which were central to an oversight board’s decision to recommend excessive force charges against the officer, Salvatore Alongi, in the death of the 19-year-old Win Rozario in 2024.”

QUICK HITS

• “Federal agents searched the Washington, D.C., home of Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) Monday as part of a criminal investigation,” reports The Wall Street Journal. There’s not much additional detail available at this time, though “Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin told a conservative podcaster in September that there was a continuing federal investigation into Omar, who he said ‘married her brother to try to bring him into the United States'” which is a claim Omar has denied.
• “A federal judge issued a temporary order Sunday blocking the Trump administration from airing taxpayer-funded campaign-style television commercials. But the administration blew past a Sunday evening deadline and ran two of the ads into the early hours of Monday, advertising data from AdImpact shows,” reports The Washington Post. 
• “That’s a moderate (or perhaps even conservative) view that I think derives naturally from an ethic of ‘I believe in parks and libraries and buses and public pools because I intend to use them personally,'” writes Matt Yglesias at Slow Boring. “This is also relevant to perennial political-economy conflicts between users of public services and their providers, where, again, the notion that you need to be tougher on public sector unions is sometimes right-coded. But I do think it also raises the question of what the correct and authentically progressive attitude is toward these things. After all, a pool that is appealing to an upscale liberal who can afford membership in a private pool club is also a pool that is doing a good job serving hard-working low-income families who can’t afford a private pool.”
• “Eleven sailors were missing at sea on Tuesday from ​a ship sunk by a drone attack off the coast of Bulgaria, possibly the second deadly sinking of a ‌cargo vessel in the area in a week, prompting Bulgaria to summon Russia’s ambassador,” reports Reuters. “Two cargo ships were hit by drones overnight and one was sunk, Bulgarian officials said. Bulgaria stopped short of explicitly accusing Russia of carrying out the attacks but Prime Minister Rumen Radev said their outcome ‘benefits the Russian Federation.'”