That Thing Democrats Say Never Happens Just Happened Again In California

It makes perfect sense once you understand that the neutrality was never the point. The point was to remove Christianity from the public square. Every other religion, ideology, and worldview fills the vacuum on its own terms.

The bill itself contains an important distinction the headlines miss. It does not mandate statewide school closures for Eid. Local districts could close if their boards reach union agreements to do so. State employees could take Eid as a holiday credit, similar to existing credits for Diwali and Lunar New Year. What it does mandate is the most troubling part: authorizing curricula to celebrate Islamic holy days, with the State Board of Education empowered to develop model lesson plans for those exercises.

Public schools can celebrate the meaning and importance of Islamic holidays. They cannot hold Christmas pageants. That’s the California that just voted 64-1.

The organizations behind the bill deserve scrutiny. CAIR — the Council on American-Islamic Relations — is listed as a supporter. California’s Department of Social Services approved at least $41 million in funding to CAIR-CA over five years. A federal court in litigation stemming from the Holy Land Foundation terrorism prosecution found “ample evidence” of an association between CAIR and Hamas, though CAIR was not prosecuted. Texas and Florida have designated CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood as foreign terrorist organizations under state authority. California’s Treasury Department is preparing to review CAIR’s tax-exempt status for different reasons entirely.

The left’s coalition on this is worth examining plainly. California Democrats champion women’s rights and LGBTQ+ causes as core commitments. Islam, as practiced by the majority of its adherents worldwide, explicitly rejects both. The progressive coalition’s embrace of Islamist-adjacent organizations while simultaneously purging Christianity from public life is not a contradiction they seem troubled by.

California stripped Christmas from its schools for “neutrality.” It just voted to celebrate Islam in those same schools. The vote total tells you everything about how the neutrality argument was always being used. If Gavin Newsom signs this, it’s a disqualifier for him to become president, straight up.