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Floor Speech
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Mr. KENNEDY. Mr. President, I saw something last week that I didn't believe. I read the article, and then I searched the internet for other articles saying the same thing to confirm that it was true, and it was true. I am still in disbelief.
The largest public school system in America is in New York City. I love New York City. I think it is the greatest city in the world. And the New York public schools publish a monthly newsletter. It is called--let's see what it is called--the Office of Student Pathways Newsletter. Every month, the public school system in New York City sends this newsletter. They blast it out to teachers, and they blast it out to parents--not just in New York City but all across the country.
In the latest newsletter they blasted out, they had one of those bullet points that they made in the newsletter that is kind of--when you look at it on the internet, it is kind of pale blue. You can click on it, and it sends you to another site.
The bullet point on the newsletter that the public schools of New York sent out was called ``Guidelines for teaching about genocide.'' ``Guidelines for teaching about genocide.'' And if you clicked on this phrase in the newsletter, it sent you to another site. Do you see what the site was? ``Stop Gaza Genocide Toolkit.'' ``Stop Gaza Genocide Toolkit.'' The administration of the New York public schools, the largest in the country, is sending this out to its teachers and its students and to the world.
If you take a look and you say ``What is in this toolkit, this `Stop Gaza Genocide Toolkit'?'' it contains the biggest bunch of anti-Semitic rot you can imagine. The toolkit, among other things, breaks down how to mobilize pro-Palestinian campaigns on social media. It tells you--it tells our students and our teachers how to boycott and encourage divestment from pro-Israel organizations. It encourages readers to print out ``Palestine'' yard signs and calls our kids and our parents to action.
Now, the head of the public schools in New York was embarrassed once people started going: What is going on? Why are you publishing this anti-Semitic, anti-systemic rot accusing Israel of genocide, after it was Israel that was attacked, after it was Hamas that started the war? The chancellor, Ms. Melissa Aviles-Ramos, said it was just a ``troubling oversight.'' That is what she said: ``troubling oversight.''
But then the article goes on to say that it has been discovered that a similar version of the toolkit--this oversight--was published in the newsletter in the prior month. It was in the October-November 2024 newsletter. That document called on all the teachers and all the students in the New York public schools and everybody else reading the newsletter--it called on them to participate in ``rage week'' and ``resist genocide'' by mobilizing on Saturday, October 5, for a ``day of action'' ahead of the anniversary of Hamas on October 7, 2023. That was the date of the terrorist attack on Israel, which apparently the administration of the public schools wants to celebrate.
Here is what one of the teachers in the public school system said when she discovered this: It is systemic rot.
``It's the systemic rot,'' said Karen Feldman, an educator of over 26 years, who resigned. She resigned.
It should not go unnoticed that in addition to this oversight--we know it wasn't an oversight; I mean, pigs may fly someday, but I doubt it; this wasn't an oversight--now we find out recently that New York State education officials have rejected President Trump's administration's demand to do away with certain diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts that call for quotas, racial quotas, which are illegal in the United States of America under recent Supreme Court precedent. These State officials wrote President Trump, and this is what they said:
[T]here are no federal or state laws prohibiting the principles of D.E.I.
I don't understand that. Racial quotas are illegal. You can't use race in America, according to well-settled law, to hurt a person or to help a person. But these officials at the State level--not the local level--they said no State or Federal laws prohibit the principles of DEI, and they said that they are aware of no jurisdiction--no jurisdiction--that the Federal Government has to withdraw funding.
Well, you know what, I hope we find out. I hope we find out. This kind of stuff makes me want to jump out of a moving car, and this is the kind of, in the words of the teacher who resigned, systemic rot, rank anti-Semitism, that in New York they are sending to our teachers and to our kids and to the world.
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