A Tennessee school district dismissed a student-teacher after the young educator taught a Black History Month lesson to fourth-graders, asking them to recite graphic, violent methods to control slaves, officials said Thursday.

The student-teacher's lesson plan, given to youngsters at Waverly Belmont Elementary School in Nashville, was centered around the notorious — and perhaps apocryphal — 1712 speech by slave owner William Lynch, "The Making of a Slave," officials said.

After reading the material in which Lynch purportedly advocated for physical and psychological torture of slaves, students were asked, "To keep their slaves subservient, plantation owners should" with a series of blank bullet points for youngsters to fill in.

"A student-teacher was dismissed and asked not to return to Waverly-Belmont as a result of teaching material that was not age appropriate or within the scope of sequence for the 4th grade class," according to a statement by Metro Nashville Public Schools.

Swiss Air Lines is said to have nixed its relationship chocolate manufacturer Läderach over its owner's affiliation with pro-life, Christian causes, LifeSiteNews' Martin Bürger reported.

The airline had a business relationship with chocolatier Läderach that spanned over a decade, providing passengers with small boxes of its world-famous chocolates as a way of saying thanks for flying with the airlines.

Now, after months of protests from activists, Swiss Air has decided to sever ties with the chocolate-maker and will stop distributing its truffles and other sweets in the first half of 2020.

Why are they attacking a chocolate-maker?

A state-funded voucher program in Florida that helps students attend private schools sent $129 million to schools with anti-LGBTQ policies last year alone, an Orlando Sentinel investigation has found.

The money went to pay tuition for 20,800 students at 156 private Christian schools with homophobic or transphobic stances, and “that means at least 14 percent of Florida’s nearly 147,000 scholarship students last year attended private schools where homosexuality was condemned or, at a minimum, unwelcome,” the Sentinel reports. Thousands of schools participate in the program, which has been in existence for 20 years.

Eighty-three schools have policies denying admission to students known to be LGBTQ and providing for expulsion if their identity is found out. Another 73 “call being gay or transgender a biblical sin but do not explain how those views play out in admissions or student discipline decisions,” according to the paper.

Was it the whipping up of white working-class voters in Trump’s election campaign? Or the toxic debate around immigration during the Brexit referendum? Or was it as early as the birth of social media, when a platform was handed to racists? However it happened, public discourse around race in the last decade slowly morphed from polite political correctness and justified outrage at even a hint of racism in public to a slow accommodation with extremist views on the far-right – setting up 2020 to be the year that the veil lifts altogether, finally normalising racism in ways that we haven't seen for decades.

Racism has long existed in politics and academia, and persists in structural discrimination and everyday bias. But the idea that the ideology driving racist actions and rhetoric should somehow be given space for discussion has only recently (re)gained currency. In recent years far-right intellectuals have subtly and skilfully changed the rules of engagement, arguing for “viewpoint diversity” in the disingenuous insistence that they have been unfairly silenced. They argue that racial differences are so profound that the mere presence of immigrants is damaging a country’s genetic stock and cultural fabric.

Anyone with a grudge and someone’s address can make a ‘swatting’ call, but what was once a niche prank played by gamers has become a favored means of terrorizing famous, controversial and vulnerable people. It has also become more organized in recent years, with online forums and chat rooms dedicated to targeted attacks on individuals, including YouTube personalities, tech executives, activists, authors and journalists.

Law enforcement agencies and city officials around the country have responded with anti-swatting procedures and tools to blunt this weaponization of the 911 system. In Seattle, the police department has launched a three-pronged approach that includes special training for officers and 911 operators and — a first for the U.S. — a registry for residents who think they may become swatting targets. The registry gives first responders a warning that an emergency call about a violent situation may be a hoax.

Okay, everybody, the Worst Wellness Trend of the 2010s Tournament has officially drawn to a close, with anti-vaxxing claiming the number one slot once and for all. To be honest, we're not totally surprised. Parents who choose not to vaccinate their kids are, after all, notorious for lifting rhetoric from the reproductive rights movement and pretty much completely responsible for the revival of once-dead diseases like measles. Wellness rocks!

Joanna Williams was raised a feminist. But these days, she hesitates to identify as one.

The author and academic thinks today's feminism "lost the plot somewhere along the line," describing it as a "white middle class feminism."

"[It] seems intent upon telling women that they are victims, that they are vulnerable, that they need special protections," she says. "For me, feminism was always about fighting for liberation."

Faculty and staff at the University of Kansas sent a letter to the school's chancellor, calling for a boycott of Chick-fil-A on campus over the company's stance on LGBTQ issues, according to The Hill.

Over the summer, the university allowed Chick-fil-A to open a location inside the student union, and entered a contract agreement with the company to sponsor the "Chick-fil-A coin toss" at home football games in coming years. Faculty and staff have protested Chick-fil-A's support of organizations "hostile to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer LGBTQ people, families, and communities."

A new campaign wants corporations like AT&T and Amazon to stop giving money to anti-LGBTQ politicians. Until that happens, the organization suggests consumers stop putting dollars in those companies’ accounts.

The political arm for CREDO Mobile, a mobile virtual network directing revenue to progressive causes, launched a petition campaign today targeting AT&T, T-Mobile, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Dell. Officials say those companies alone have donated more than $5 million to homophobic politicians, all while providing corporate sponsorship to Pride events and marketing to LGBTQ consumers.

"It is unacceptable for corporations to co-opt the pride flag in order to make a profit off the LGBTQ community while simultaneously giving millions to some of the most hateful, homophobic members of Congress,” said Campaign Manager Thaís Marques. of CREDO Action.

Dear Care and Feeding,

My husband and I want to have our first kid soon. Before we start trying, we need to figure out how to handle my mother.

We aren’t close at all. I maintain a polite relationship with her to minimize guilt trips and dramatics that arise when I keep the much-greater distance I would prefer. She’s learned that there will probably be a kid eventually, and she’s become obsessed with moving near me and being “Grandma’s Babysitting Service.” I’ve tried telling her that wouldn’t work for us, but she says, “You have no idea how hard it will be, especially after the second” or “Why have babies if you’re going to dump them at some day care?” or “You can’t afford good child care.”

We can afford day care, and while it’s expensive, more importantly, it’s not my mother. She was a big believer in corporal punishment and severe “Tiger Mom” parenting methods. I would never leave a kid with her unattended for even a few minutes.

We have major differences in values, and she thinks it’s her responsibility that her grandchildren participate in her religion (she embraces its most judgmental and hateful aspects), which is unacceptable to my husband and me. I don’t want her “help” raising my child, and I don’t want to deal with her guilt trips, unsolicited advice, and other intrusions into the happy and stable life I’ve built for myself.

She claims all her friends live near their grandbabies and take care of them when the parents have to go to work, and that it’s not fair that she might not get to do the same. She has started looking at homes in our area (where she knows no one but us), and, as she can’t afford to live in the city, she’s started telling us to move to the suburbs and get a house with enough room for her to live with us. This is not happening. Is there a way to handle this short of full estrangement while she’s living in a fantasy world and not my metro area?

As a woman practicing medicine, raised by a first-generation immigrant father and Hispanic mother, I fit the image of an underrepresented minority. Yet my education and position belie that stereotype.

As a young girl, I remember walking in our small town in Maryland watching my Indian father’s expression harden and eyes dim as he held back from reacting to racially directed comments—shouted as we walked by—urging him to return to his “home country.”

I didn’t understand at the time what racism meant or the traumatic impact that repeated experiences could have on health. Lately I have understood it all too well.

A New York City high schooler who took her own life after she was allegedly bullied and forced to perform sexual acts on other students had experienced the abuse since she began attending the school, and school staff knew about it but did not intervene, a lawsuit by the girl's parents alleges.

Mya Vizcarrondo-Rios jumped 34 stories from the roof of her apartment building with her backpack still on shortly after 2 p.m. on Feb. 28, 2018, and was pronounced dead at the hospital about an hour later. She was 15 years old.

The Health and Human Services Department (HHS) announced Friday that it is proposing a rule that would change a regulation under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) that expanded anti-discrimination protections to transgender individuals.

The new regulation would change the 2016 rule that banned discrimination -- on the basis of sex and against trangender people -- by health care providers that receive federal funding.

In a release announcing the proposed change, HHS pointed to a Texas judge's December 2016 injunction that kept the Obama-era rule from being implemented. U.S. District Judge Reed O'Connor sided with the state of Texas and other plaintiffs who argued that the Obama rule would force health care providers and insurers to enable transgender people to be treated and get coverage for gender transitions and abortions, despite their religious beliefs or against their medical judgment.

We all feel a higher calling sometimes. Maybe it’s to be a teacher. Maybe it’s to leave your six-figure job and be a full-time drag queen. Or maybe, if you’re the CEO of Chick-fil-A, it’s a calling to donate to anti-LGBTQ+ organizations.

In an interview with Business Insider, Chick-fil-A’s vice president of corporate social responsibility and executive director of the Chick-fil-A Foundation Rodney Bullard said that the company felt a “higher calling” to donate its money to anti-LGBTQ+ organizations.

The Department of Health and Human Services today announced its final “conscience rule” excusing health care personnel from participating in procedures to which they have religious or moral objections.

Activists have warned that the rule could jeopardize health care for LGBTQ people, such as those seeking gender-confirmation procedures or HIV treatment and prevention services, as well as women seeking contraception or abortion.

A draft of the rule was released in January 2018 so that HHS’s Office for Civil Rights could receive comments from the public on it. Donald Trump announced the finalization of the rule during a Rose Garden speech this morning for the National Day of Prayer, and HHS published the final rule on its website.