Update: Last Week’s WIR Story Reporting Three Bills and a Senate Resolution Attacking Critical Race Theory Was Just the Tip of The Iceberg
Last Monday (May 17, 2021), we reported a flurry of three bills Republican Members of Congress introduced in the House, along with a Senate Resolution, all attacking different federal programs espousing the “Critical Race Theory.” One of the Bills titled “The Stop CRT Act” lacked a Bill number and the text of the Bill at Press time last week. The House Clerk also did not have copies of the texts of two other Bills (H.R. 3046 & H.R. 3163) at Press time, even though all of these Bills had been introduced in the House three or four days before we went to “print.” (We still do not have the texts of those two Bills but have now reached out to the sponsors of these Bills to hopefully get an informal copy, at least).
Since we pride ourselves on being a “paper of record” with links to all significant documents we discuss in our WIR stories, we doubled back this week assuming that any COVID-19 driven delay would now surely be overcome and the bill numbers and texts would now be available for our readership.
Well, there are two surprises, but first we now do have the Bill number of “The Stop CRT ACT” (it is H.R. 3179.) We also now have its text. Representative Dan Bishop (R-NC) introduced this Bill on May 13, 2021 with 45 co-sponsors! The intent of H.R. 3179 is to codify former President Trump’s Executive Order 13950. The text of the Bill we have published, above, is an informal copy from Representative Bishop’s website as he introduced the Bill. It is not an official copy from the House Clerk (who is still backlogged and has not yet posted the official text two weeks after introduction. NOTE: this is usually a 1–2-day exercise, pre-pandemic.)
SURPRISE #1: House Republicans were busy two weeks ago and it turns out the House Clerk has just now caught up, in part, and has published a report of two more Bills attacking CRT:
- H.R. 3134: Representative Bishop also introduced this Bill, but it was his first offering (the day before he introduced The Stop CRT Act). Representative Bishop put this Bill forward on May 12, 2021 with 51 co-sponsors! (That is almost 12% of the 435 sitting Members of the House of Representatives and almost a quarter of all Republican House Members!) While the text of H.R. 3134 is also not yet available from the House, the text copy we have provided (above) is also an informal copy as taken from Representative Bishop’s website. The Bill states that its intent is “To prohibit the United States Armed Forces from promoting anti-American and racist theories;”
- H.R. 3249: Representative Jody B. Hice (R-GA) introduced this Bill on May 14, 2021, with 11 co-sponsors, to codify former President Trump’s now rescinded Executive Order 13950. The text of the Bill is not yet available, although we have reached out to Congressman Hice’s office to obtain at least an informal copy.
SURPRISE #2: Like a vampire in the night, this issue of teaching Critical Race Theory refuses to die! Republicans have now fastened onto the CRT issue as a classic political “wedge issue” Republicans now believe they can use to back their Democrat opponents into a corner in the coming mid-term 2022 elections. Democrats will soon be forced to answer in political debates whether they will vote to stop CRT (in several different ways per all the different Bills now pending but going nowhere in this House, of course) or whether they endorse the view that American society is inherently racist and that Whites maintain their power through unfair laws designed to hold back non-Whites. Anti-CRT theology is going to be the Republican antidote to Democrat “racial identity” politics. The controversy over CRT is not over: it’s just starting. And, it is not about the Hispanic vote; it is ultimately about the Asian vote, as Asians have profited economically the most from American law and society. (Asians overall continue to have the highest earnings compared to any other racial or ethnic group in the United States.)