Stronger Than Evil Triumphant
The civil rights lawyer who dislikes civil rights
Welcome back to KTB.
I was on the road last week, so KTB did not publish a full post. But I did tweak the KTB Substack in two ways that I hope will make it more useful to readers.
First, I added an Index of Names to the title bar. The index lists in alphabetical order all the Trump functionaries and MAGA minions who KTB has called out.
Second, KTB now has chat for subscribers. Use it to share your thoughts, announce your own posts, etc. I won’t be actively policing it - but I do reserve the right to remove comments (and spam) should I choose.
Also last week, I got caught up on KTB’s hate mail. KTB’s prior post received some transphobic comments. I’ve already deleted them from the comments section - but I don’t like leaving bigotry unanswered, so here I’ll respond to two of them:
There are no “trans” children. No one is “trans.” Girls who might grow up to be lesbians are being “transed” - robbed of their breasts, their sexual functioning, even their fertility. “Trans” ideology is lesbophobia on literal steroids. Please stop erasing lesbians. Please stop erasing our spaces. Please LISTEN TO LESBIANS.
Yes, lesbians (and all people) should be listened to - so long as their words do not silence others. Others including trans people: adults and, yes, children who are not objects “being transed,” but are transgendered just because that is what they are.
Transphobic? A made up term frequently from just the last few years. Phobia means fear. No one is afraid of a man in a dress. The High Court in Great Britian [sic] has ruled that a biological truth is there is two genders. How do you know better? You don’t. This is a battle of competing virtues with your side surprisingly hateful given your tolerance virtues.
Actually, neither I nor the High Court “know better.” Trans people are the ones who know better - they know themselves better than I or a court ever could. So I defer to their self-awareness as evidence that trans human beings exist. And I accept that they don’t stop existing just because a court or someone else says otherwise.
Also, KTB does not do tolerance. It does not tolerate trans people - it affirms and welcomes them, and does the same for people of any gender identity.
Now, on to this week’s naming and shaming.
A threat to justice everywhere
Craig Trainor calls himself a civil rights lawyer. But unlike most civil rights lawyers, Craig hates civil rights laws and what they have done for our country:
The 1964 Civil Rights Act - and its subsequent innovations - has become…“the little law that ate the Constitution.” There is no area of American life that has not been adversely affected by the anti-discrimination regime as currently constituted.
All of American life has been harmed by anti-discrimination?
Craig thinks so. Those words are one of Craig’s answers to the questionnaire he filled out for the Heritage Foundation’s Presidential Personnel Database, a database of individuals who want jobs in the Trump Administration.
Craig did get a Trump job: Craig, who dislikes civil right laws, was made acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights at the Department of Education.
Weeks later, Craig wrote Ed’s now infamous “Dear Colleague letter,” an open letter to America’s colleges and universities. It accused them of harming white students by “smuggling racial stereotypes” through “insidious” DEI programs.
(You knew the DEI trope was coming, right?)
Craig’s letter ordered all American colleges and universities to abolish DEI. And not only DEI, but also any other campus goings-on that Craig might see as diversity-related “in all other aspects of student, academic, and campus life.”
So long to campus offices that protect the civil rights of minority students; to sociology, history, and philosophy courses on race; to Divine Nine parties; to student-led anti-racism clubs; to law clinics that promote civil rights; to hosting guest speakers on racial justice; and to similar parts of college life.
Parts of college life that will, apparently, leave college kids “toxically indoctrinated...with the false premise that the United States [ever] advanced discriminatory policies.”
Those laughably alarmist - and disturbingly ahistorical - words were also in Craig’s letter. As was a threat: any college or university that does not immediately meet Craig’s demands will have all of its federal funding withheld.
What did Craig cite as his authority to withhold funds? Title VI of the Civil Rights Act - you know, that law he believes has ruined American life? Meaning…
An Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights is using the Civil Rights Act to punish colleges and universities that are committed to civil rights.
Craig is making good on his threat: he has begun formal investigations of several colleges and universities, the first step toward withholding their funds.
Craig has also launched investigations of colleges and universities for allowing too much criticism of the war in Gaza; and he is investigating several K-12 school districts for having non-discrimination policies toward transgendered kids.
To Craig, bullying so many institutions with so many unwarranted investigations must feel just like old times: Craig’s prior job was with the House Judiciary Committee, helping MAGA Congressman Jim Jordan harass and bully Donald Trump’s enemies with Jordan’s own unwarranted investigations.
Before working for Jordan, Craig worked for the America First Policy Institute, a MAGA think tank. At AFPI, Craig wrote a comment for the Federal Registry about how Title IX of the Civil Rights Act should be used to discriminate against trans women and a long op-ed about his hatred of Critical Race Theory.
(You knew the CRT trope was coming, right?)
Craig also wrote what he called a “demand letter” to a public school district in Iowa. Craig demanded that its high school stop teaching an elective called “Social Justice in Literature” because, in Craig’s words, “one cannot throw a social justice rock...without hitting a CRT and sex-scapegoating ideological commitment.”
So, I’m not sure what that confusing metaphor means, but I think it’s just Craig’s messy way of saying he really dislikes social justice.
And as for teaching social justice…
This course…undermine[s] Iowa’s commitment to the American Founding, the Constitution, republican government, a colorblind society, meritocracy, individualism, equal opportunity and equal justice under law, and honest history.
Wow. Who would have guessed that a high school elective could do all that?
Happily, Craig’s “demand letter” was ignored by its demandees, and Iowa’s schools survived just fine; let’s hope that the colleges and universities that are targets of Craig’s “Dear Colleague letter” will be as fortunate.
That outcome seems more likely if Craig leaves Education for the new job to which Trump has nominated him: Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity at Department of Housing and Urban Development.
That job requires Senate confirmation, and Craig has already had his nomination hearing which is posted here and is a must watch. Craig squirmed around in his chair as senators criticized his writings and his actions at Department of Education. And he floundered as he tried to avoid answering their questions about whether he really supports even the most basic tenets of civil rights.
No wonder he dodged. In his questionnaire for the Heritage Foundation’s database, Craig said that the Civil Rights Act has spawned not just bad laws, but
norms and ideas that are antithetical to the American founding, its Christian moral foundation and traditions, the Constitution, and a free and well-ordered society.
Craig, the main norm and idea that emerged from the Civil Rights Act is that Americans shouldn’t discriminate against each other, a very basic principle that most Americans have embraced - and that only MAGA would see as antithetical to America, Christianity, the Constitution, and a good society.
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Fascinating that white, allegedly Christian, male supremacists would claim that there is no descrimination, yet ICE thugs have been kidnapping legal residents and citizens based on skin tone, accent, or language spoken. They would hate living near DC which has a very diversified popuplation. Guess that fascists don't like anyone learning how cruel, mean, nasty, horrible, bullying they can be to fellow humans living in the USA.
I used to work with this asshole!!!! Hell, we technically were in college together although we didn’t share classes. We both worked in the writing lab at a CUNY college, and even then, he railed against the concept of…writing labs, lol.
In person, he was, if I recall, not a bad guy - he admitted he would go further right on things just to instigate, but that in itself was his problem: he had this weird pathological obsession with arguing, simply to get attention.
Sad to see nothing has changed.