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Gas prices remain high ‘This is a cult’ How wealthy Santa Barbara foreshadowed the fight against crackpot curriculum
Editor’s note: This is the second story in a series. This article originally appeared in the Daily Wire, which publishes its articles at dailywire.com. Luke Rosiak is an investigative journalist for The Daily Wire. By Luke Rosiak The Daily Wire
In the fight to protect school children from radical curricula, the canary in the coal mine was a California coastal community once home to former President Ronald Reagan’s personal ranch and now home to ultra-wealthy white liberals as well as a large underclass of poor Hispanics. Critical Race Theory (CRT), which holds that American institutions and culture are systemically racist and categorizes people as either victims or oppressors based on skin color, has generated a backlash in recent years from parents. But a parents group called Fair Education Santa Barbara began fighting four years ago, filing what is believed to be the nation’s first lawsuit against CRT and related pedagogy, which critics say poison the minds of young children. Although a federal judge ruled in 2019 that the group lacked standing to assert its claims of intentional discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, religion, and sex, the suit foreshadowed a national fight for curriculum transparency. “Fair Education’s first-in-thenation lawsuit lit the spark for the prairie fire that has spread across America, to provide parents with the information and knowledge needed to fight the racially divisive, antiAmerican, sexually over-the-
Current gas prices are shown at a Fuel Depot gas station, which until recently was a Shell gas station, at the corner of Fairview Avenue and Calle Real in Goleta on Sunday. The average price of gas in California is $5.964, while in Santa Barbara County the average is $5.953. In nearby counties, San Luis Obispo County’s average is $6.153, Ventura County’s is $6.014 and the average in Los Angeles County is $6.013.
City council considering eminent domain for bridge project By KAITLYN SCHALLHORN NEWS-PRESS STAFF WRITER
KENNETH SONG / NEWS-PRESS PHOTOS
Border observers: Illegal immigration surge helped fuel U.S. drug overdose spike By CASEY HARPER THE CENTER SQUARE
(The Center Square) – Drug overdoses spiked last year alongside a significant rise in illegal immigration, raising questions about how the increased traffic at the border could be leading to more drug deaths. Newly released data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed a significant rise in drug overdoses last year at a record 107,000 deaths. At the same time, U.S.
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Customs and Border Patrol reported a surge in illegal immigration in 2021. “In FY 2021, CBP recorded a total of 1.72 million enforcement encounters, including 146,054 encounters of unaccompanied children, 478,492 encounters of individuals in family units, and 1,098,500 encounters of single adults,” the agency said. Illegal immigration has continued to soar this year as well. CBP said in March this month, border patrol agents encountered 221,303 illegal immigrants.
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Border agents also have continued to seize large amounts of illegal drugs at the border. Customs and Border Protection’s Air and Marine Operations reported interdicting 62 tons of illicit drugs in the first three months of this year alone. The seizure of some substances in the U.S., like fentanyl-laced pills, have skyrocketed. Those pills are a key cause of overdoses since users are often unaware they contain fentanyl or of how much fentanyl they contain. Please see BORDER on A6
The Santa Barbara City Council will discuss using eminent domain for the De La Vina Street Bridge replacement project on Tuesday. The council is considering adopting a resolution deeming eminent domain necessary for the project located on upper De La Vina Street between Alamar Avenue and Vernon Road. The project includes the removal of the bridge — initially built in 1916 but widened in 1926 — and replacing it with one meeting current seismic, safety and design standards. The city needs to acquire parcels at 2733 and 2735 De La Vina St. in order to complete the project, according to a staff report, as well as 2726 and 2728 De La Vina St. Other temporary and permanent easements will also need to be constructed at various other properties at De La Vina Street and Vernon Road, according to the plan presented
in the staff report. According to the staff report, city staff and a consultant have been working with the owners of the property but negotiations have stalled — thus resulting in the eminent domain issue before the city council this week. The bridge design is 95% completed with construction slated to begin next year, according to the report. Additionally Tuesday, the city council will continue to hear an update on its 2023 Housing Element Goals. This is a continuation of a joint meeting of the city council and Planning Commission in late April. The city council is scheduled to meet Tuesday at 2 p.m. at City Hall located at 735 Anacapa St. The meeting will be held in person but can also be viewed online at https:// santabarbaraca-gov.zoom. us/webinar/register/WN_ BHXU9bk1SWq0ntGHplRq0Q or http://www.santabarbaraca. gov/CAP. email: kschallhorn@newspress.com
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top indoctrination occurring daily in our schools beginning in kindergarten,” Sheridan Rosenberg and James Fenkner, local parents and co-founders of the group, wrote in a January submission to the Santa Barbara News-Press. The parents charged that the district required all students to take extreme “ethnic studies” courses as a condition of graduating, put a radical activist group in charge of other programming, and refused to allow parents to see the curriculum. One specific claim asserted that the district segregated students for “training” sessions, telling white children that all whites are racist. One student allegedly contemplated suicide because he felt deep shame over not speaking Spanish. Opponents say CRT is part of a larger, radical curriculum being imposed on public school children under a series of names that seem to change when opposition builds. School officials and Democrats claim, despite clear evidence, that CRT isn’t in schools while also vehemently opposing growing efforts to ban it. While the battle is new for some, Santa Barbara parents have seen it play out longer than most. They say activistteachers have been working to turn children into political foot soldiers, and they warn that the radicalism steadily ratchets up over time. “Ethnic studies” is a particularly militant cousin of CRT. In 2011, an ethnic,studies program in Phoenix was canceled after the state of Arizona charged that it violated Please see SBUSD on A2
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