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U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reintroduces bills to restrict abortion rights, attack Critical Race Theory

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U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reintroduces bills to restrict abortion rights, attack Critical Race Theory

Feb 02, 2023 | 4:20 pm ET
By Mitch Perry
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U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio reintroduces bills to restrict abortion rights, attack Critical Race Theory

Florida GOP U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio on Thursday reintroduced eight different bills previously co-sponsored in the past, aiming to protect Americans “from radical woke activism in all its forms.” Three of the proposals are directly linked to restricting abortion rights, according to a press release.

The first such proposal would prohibit employers from deducting expenses related to their employees’ abortion travel costs or gender affirming care for young children of their employees. It was dubbed the “No Tax Breaks for Radical Corporate Activism Act.” In the House version earlier, the bill was co-sponsored by U.S. Rep. Brian Mast of Florida.

The second proposal reintroduces the “Prohibiting Federal Emergencies for Abortion Act,” which would block the Biden administration from “abusing its executive power” to declare a public-health emergency to protect access to abortion services nationwide.  The measure was originally introduced on June 23 of last year, the day before the U.S. Supreme Court took away a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion. The measure was co-sponsored by 13 other Senate Republicans, including U.S Sen. Rick Scott.

A third proposal – the “Prohibiting Abortion on Federal Lands Act,” was introduced last July and was co-sponsored by seven other GOP members. It would “prohibit the federal government from promoting, supporting, or contracting with abortion entities, or otherwise expanding access to abortion on Federal lands or in Federal facilities,” according to the bill.

In another topic, Rubio reintroduced a bill about “Protecting Students From Racial Hostility Act.” The legislation would protect students from racially-hostile school environments created by the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) by directing the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights to enforce Title VI protections of the Civil Rights Act when a parent or student impacted by CRT submits a complaint.”

Critical race theory was originally coined decades ago as an academic term to “interrogate the role of race and racism in society that emerged in the legal academy and spread to other fields of scholarship,” according to the American Bar Association. But over the past few years, the term has been used by conservative politicians to criticize a variety of progressive-leaning politics and initiatives.

The package of bills came up when Rubio wrote a piece Thursday on the “Medium” platform titled “Americans Demand Freedom from Woke Ideology.” The anti-woke terminology has been a central tenet to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ messaging over the last year.

Here’s what Rubio said:

Many of my neighbors in Miami are immigrants from countries wrecked by socialist regimes. They came to America because they saw it as a land of liberty and common sense, free from the Marxist ideologies that turned their homelands into places of oppression. But times are changing. Today, they see the same insanity that gripped their homelands infiltrating the United States — and being embraced by the Democrat Party.

Critical race theory. Radical gender ideology. Pro-abortion fanaticism. Anti-religious discrimination. Ideas that originated on the fringe of American politics and were long relegated to Ivy League faculty lounges and socialist cells are now commonplace across major institutions, from Hollywood to the legacy media to Wall Street. Believing that the United States is an evil empire and that men can get pregnant is now a litmus test for elite status.

This is making a mockery of our nation on the world stage, but it’s not illegal to be crazy. In America, people are allowed to fill their heads with nonsense if they want to. However, no one is entitled to force that nonsense on others. That’s the problem with left-wing protestors who think they’re justified in blocking public traffic. It’s also the problem with transgender activists demanding a Christian baker celebrate their sex change. It’s a major problem when so-called American corporations go woke, relying on tax breaks to support their employees’ abortions and using shareholders’ hard-earned money to advance radical social policies.

Nothing compares to what the Biden White House is doing, though. Under the leadership of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion “experts” and a president held captive by his party’s extremist base, this administration is financing racist curricula in public schools, advocating the use of untested puberty blockers on children, and turning the Department of Veterans Affairs into a post-Roe abortion factory — all on taxpayer dollars. Meanwhile, instead of responding to record-low recruitment numbers or modernizing our dangerously out-of-date military in a time of increasing great power competition, Biden’s Pentagon is wasting valuable resources on drag queen story hours, sensitivity training, and countless other woke priorities — which I detailed in this report. (It’s called WOKE WARFIGHTERS How Political Ideology is Weakening America’s Military.)

This is simply unacceptable, a radical imposition on millions of Americans who see abortion as the killing of an innocent human being, who think kids should be safe from dangerous drugs and sexualized pageantry, and who rely on our military to defend them from foreign threats, not engage in social engineering. The government and woke institutions are colluding against common sense, and our communities and children are suffering as a result.

That’s why I am reintroducing eight bills to protect the American people from radical woke activism in all its forms. If we become a country where left-wing protestors are exempt from the law, Wall Street wields investors’ dollars as a weapon against conservatives, and the U.S. government undermines the national interest, we won’t last long. Common-sense policymakers have a duty to hold elites accountable and prevent wokeness from turning the land of the free into another Cuba, Venezuela, or Nicaragua.