Republicans Tell USDA It Can't Bully Schools

Some bullying tactics never change, but you would hope that people would eventually grow out of them. It seems the United States Department of Agriculture never did.

Last year, the USDA proposed a rule change that would pressure public and non-profit private schools into embracing the LGBTQ agenda by threatening to take away the funding for school lunches that the agency provides if it found that the schools were being “discriminatory” in any way. The proposal has received backlash from Republicans, and on Tuesday, Rep. Scott Franklin (R-Fla.) and Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) introduced resolutions of disapproval in both the House and the Senate in order to strike down the rule.

The USDA’s proposed rule would change the way the agency interprets Title IX and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by expanding discrimination on the basis of sex to account for discrimination against individuals for their sexual orientation and gender identity.

The department insisted that it would not be cutting any funding, but its Republican critics pointed out that under the change, any school that refused to allow male students who identified as female to use the women’s restroom or to participate in female sports, could be labeled discriminatory and would be disqualified from participating in the federal school lunch program.