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Former vice president Mike Pence has repeated his attack on critical race theory, claiming that it teaches kindergarten-age children to be "ashamed of their skin color."

Pence made his latest remarks on critical race theory, or CRT, during a speech at the Family Leadership Summit in Des Moines on Friday. He accused Joe Biden's administration of replacing "patriotic education" with "political indoctrination."

He said: "They abolished our 1776 Commission and authorized teaching critical race theory in our schools. Instead of teaching all our children to be proud of their country, critical race theory teaches children as young as kindergarten to be ashamed of their skin color.

"Critical race theory is state-sanctioned racism, pure and simple, and it should be opposed by every American, every day."

CRT is an academic framework that examines history through the lens of racism and argues that racism is embedded in U.S. law and institutions.

But conservatives have turned it into a political rallying cry, claiming it is an effort to rewrite U.S. history and persuade white people that they are inherently racist.

Pence repeated his claims about critical race theory at Friday's inaugural Feenstra Family Picnic in Sioux Center.

"It's far past time to discard the left-wing reflex to find systemic racism in every institution in the country," he said. "America is not a racist country. America is the most just, noble and inclusive nation ever to exist on the face of the earth."

There is little to no evidence that critical race theory is being taught to K-12 public school students, according to the Associated Press.

Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, has said it is mostly taught in universities and not in elementary, middle and high schools.

But so far, 26 states have introduced bills or taken other steps to limit how race and racism can be taught in classrooms, according to an analysis by Education Week. Eleven Republican-led states have enacted bans, either through legislation or other actions.

Friday's speech wasn't the first time Pence has decried critical race theory and claimed it was being taught to children in kindergarten.

In a speech last month, he said the Republican Party must look to "restore the classics to education in our schools" and "eliminate critical race theory at every level."

"Critical race theory teaches children as young as kindergarten to be ashamed of their skin color. It represents a full-throated assault aimed at the heart of the American experiment," Pence added.

Earlier this week, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy invoked the words of Martin Luther King Jr's famous "I Have A Dream" speech while decrying critical race theory.

It prompted his daughter, Bernice King, to respond by advising the Republican leader to study her father's teachings more closely.

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Mike Pence Claims CRT Teaches Kindergarteners to Be 'Ashamed of Their Skin Color' - Newsweek

After reporters requested Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkans text messages in June 2020, they were told those messages had been deleted. KUOW has received a log for those text messages, which show some of her messages the mayors office says that most of her messages were via iMessage, which are not included in the log.

We have fresh insight into who Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan was text messaging last year previously a question mark after it was discovered that 10 months worth of Durkans text messages had disappeared.

Following this revelation, we requested the citys telecom provider's text message logs, which included the names and numbers of people in communication with the mayor from January to August of last year. Missing from the logs are the text messages themselves.

Among the most notable names in the text logs is Zach Bauer, close aide, or body man, to former Vice President Mike Pence. The log shows at least 100 messages exchanged between Mayor Durkan and Bauer during March and April of last year, as the coronavirus pandemic was first beginning.

According to Stephanie Formas, the mayors chief of staff, Durkan met with former Vice President Mike Pence last year. Pence was, at the time, leading the White House Coronavirus Task Force. Durkan remained in contact with Pences office over procuring Covid-19 test kits, personal protective equipment, and the field hospital at CenturyLink Field.

The mayor also exchanged 13 text messages with Andy Jassy, Amazon CEO, on July 23 and 24, 2020.

Formas said their conversation seemed to center on scheduling a call to discuss public safety and the Seattle City Council's proposed actions. Formas noted that in July 2020, the City Council was considering cuts to the Seattle Police Department and Chief Bests salary.

The Seattle City Council also passed the JumpStart Seattle tax on big businesses like Amazon, in July, two weeks before the text message conversation appeared to take place.

In mid-June, as protests against police brutality were ongoing, the mayor was in contact with Ray Duda, the FBIs special agent in charge in Seattle at that time. Weeks before, on May 31, she received a couple messages from Gen. Brett Daugherty, adjutant general and director of the Washington Military Department.

Missing from the text message logs, however, is any record of conversations the mayor had between June 1 to June 9 a contentious time between protesters calling for the defunding of police and Seattle officers. It was on June 8 that Seattle police abandoned their East Precinct on Capitol Hill.

KUOW had requested the mayors text messages from early June 2020, in hopes of learning what transpired when Seattle police left their East Precinct on Capitol Hill, and who made the call. (Last week, we published a story that pointed to Assistant Chief Thomas Mahaffey.)

Unbeknownst to us at the time, we were given text messages involving the mayor, obtained from other city employees devices. Some of these recreated messages were sent between June 1 and June 10. When asked why these records werent noted on the text message log, Formas said the log only included the mayors text messages, and not iMessages, messages sent directly from iPhone to iPhone. Thats because cellular companies do not track iMessages, just SMS messages.

The mayors missing text messages, and a related whistleblower complaint alleging public records law violations, came to light in May of this year.

Public records staff in the Mayors Office reported that they had been recreating the mayors text messages, narrowly interpreting requests asking for the mayors texts, and not informing requesters. This was done under the direction of Michelle Chen, who at the time was overseeing how the mayors records requests were handled, and also acted as the mayors legal counsel.

Chen has since been removed from public records work, a spokesperson with the mayors office said.

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Who Seattle Mayor Durkan texted with last year: Mike Pence's body man, and an Amazon CEO - KUOW News and Information

Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was reportedly worried that Donald Trump might declare war on Iran as part of a last-ditch attempt to overturn his election loss, according to a New Yorker report on Thursday.

Miley was "engaged in an alarmed effort to ensure that Trump did not embark on a military conflict with Iran as part of his quixotic campaign to overturn the results of the 2020 election and remain in power," journalist Susan B. Glasser wrote. "Trump had a circle of Iran hawks around him and was close with the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu," she continued, "who was also urging the Administration to act against Iran after it was clear that Trump had lost the election."

The report stems from a forthcoming book by Glasser and her husband, New York Times reporter Peter Baker. It echoes bombshell allegationsinanother forthcoming book bytwo Washington Post reporters.

According to Glasser, the former president had floated the idea of engaging militarily with Iran on a number of occasions during his final months in the presidency. His proposals, the book's authors wrote, reflected Trump's seeming willingness "to do anything to stay in power."

During one meeting in which the president was not present, Milley pressed former Vice President Mike Pence on "why they were so intent on attacking [Iran]."

Pence reportedly answered: "Because they are evil."

In another episode, after weeks of the former president "pushing for a missile strike in response to various provocations against U.S. interests in the region" following his election loss, Milley told Trump point-blank: "If you do this, you're gonna have a f---ing war."

By early January, it appeared, Trump had been successfully subdued when former National Security Adviser Robert O'Brien and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo both told the former president in a White House meeting that they were against military action. Walking Trump through the potential pros and cons of a military engagement, Pompeo and O'Brien told the former president that "too late to hit them."

Last month, the New York Times revealed that in early 2020 Netanyahu had given the former president a "hit list" of Iranian targets for him to consider. One of these targets, a suspected nuclear production plant, was in fact the very factory that the U.S. attacked with a drone strike in June.

U.S. tensions with Iran already simmering under former President Obama were significantly exacerbated during the Trump administration. On top of withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal back in 2018, Trump applied severe sanctions on the country, which have proven to be crippling to Iran's economy. In January of 2020, Trump also ordered the assassination of Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani a move that nearly engaged the U.S. in a full-fledged war.

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Mike Pence and Benjamin Netanyahu pushed Donald Trump to bomb Iran after losing the election: rpt - Salon

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Fox Newss Bret Baier fact-checked former President Donald Trump on Monday, going one-by-one through a list of election fraud claims Trump made in a statement released on Friday about his loss in Arizona. The former president points to a third-party audit presented to the Arizona state senate showing 168,000 ballots were printed on illegal paper. An elections official in Maricopa County says it uses paper approved by Dominion Voting Systems, which makes the tabulation equipment, Baier said, later adding, Former President Trump says 74,000 mail-in ballots were received that were never mailed. That claim appears to be based on data that does not show the total mail-in vote. It does not reflect the total early vote either, something acknowledged by the third-party audit itself. Baier went on to address Trumps claims about voter rolls, election servers, and a long-debunked allegation about access logs.

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Local Matters: Mike Pence and other GOP heavyweights to address evangelicals in Iowa - Yahoo News

Trump supporters near the U.S Capitol, on January 06, 2021 in Washington, DC.

Shay Horse | NurPhoto | Getty Images

Former President Donald Trump told reporters he wanted the same thing that members of the mob during the violent Jan. 6 Capitol riot wanted: overturning the election of President Joe Biden.

"Personally, what I wanted is what they wanted," Trump said of the rioters, according to an article Monday in Vanity Fair that excerpts the new book "I Alone Can Fix It," by Washington Post journalists Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker.

The former president downplayed the deadly violence at the Capitol that day, while repeating several lies and erroneous claims about the integrity of the election, according to the article.

"They showed up just to show support because I happen to believe the election was rigged at a level like nothing has ever been rigged before," Trump told the two reporters during an interview in late March at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.

"There's tremendous proof. There's tremendous proof. Statistically, it wasn't even possible that [Biden] won. Things such as, if you win Florida and Ohio and Iowa, there's never been a loss," he said.

Trump also claimed in the interview that Capitol Police welcomed members of the mob that day into the halls of Congress, and warmly greeted them after thousands of his supporters marched from a rally outside the White House, where he had urged them to fight against the confirmation of Biden's win by Congress.

"In all fairness, the Capitol Police were ushering people in," Trump said.

"The Capitol Police were very friendly. They were hugging and kissing. You don't see that. There's plenty of tape on that," he said in the article, headlined: "'Im Getting the Word Out': Inside the Feverish Mind of Donald Trump Two Months After Leaving the White House."

Former U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during the Conservative Political Action Conference CPAC held at the Hilton Anatole on July 11, 2021 in Dallas, Texas.

Brandon Bell | Getty Images

The article notes that "Trump didn't mention the countless accounts of horrific violence that of a riotous mob shoving a police officer to the ground, later threatening to shoot him with his own gun, or that of an insurrectionist bashing a flagpole into another police officer's chest, or that of yet another officer howling in pain as he was compressed in a closing door."

However, Trump did allude, obliquely, to the violence, albeit after he talked about the "loving crowd" at his rally before the riot at the Capitol.

"There was a lot of love. I've heard that from everybody. Many, many people have told me that was a loving crowd," Trump said, before adding: "It was too bad, it was too bad that they did that."

More than 500 people have been arrested in connection with the riot, which invaded the Senate chamber, caused then-Vice President Mike Pence and members of Congress to hide in secure locations, and disrupted for hours a joint session of Congress that was in the process of confirming Biden's win.

Five people died in connection with the riot, among them Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick. More than 100 other cops were injured in the melee.

Members of U.S. Capitol Police try to fend off a mob of supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump as one of them tries to use a flag like a spear as the supporters storm the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington, January 6, 2021.

Leah Millis | Reuters

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Trump griped during his interview with the Post reporters about the failure of Pence and Barr to follow through on his claims, and take steps to keep him in office. Pence oversaw the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6.

"The greatest fraud ever perpetrated in this country was this last election," Trump said in the interview. "It was rigged and it was stolen. It was both. It was a combination, and Bill Barr didn't do anything about it."

D.C. Police Officer Daniel Hodges

Source: D.C. Police Dept.

"Had Mike Pence had the courage to send it back to the legislatures, you would have had a different outcome, in my opinion," the former president said.

Trump also faulted the U.S. Supreme Court, which has three justices whom he appointed, for failing to take up his campaign's election claims.

"I needed better judges. The Supreme Court was afraid to take it," Trump said. "It [Biden's win] should have been reversed by the Supreme Court. I'm very disappointed in the Supreme Court because they did a very bad thing for the country."

Trump also trashed other Republicans, as well as members of his own administration in the interview, among them Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, former U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley, Dr. Anthony Fauci, Dr. Debora Birx, the late Sen. John McCain, Sen, Mitt Romney, Sen. Ben Sasse and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.

Trump called McConnell, whose wife Elaine Chao served as Trump's Transportation secretary, "a stupid person" for refusing to eliminate the Senate's filibuster and for not convincing Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, to become a Republican.

He also boasted about the seaside location of Mar-a-Lago, the size of one of its window panes and his four years in office. His press secretary handed the reporters copies of a bound document titled "1,000 Accomplishments of President Donald J. Trump: Highlights of the First Term," the article said.

Trump also suggested that he was and remains unbeatable in an election against any other live candidate.

"I think it would be hard if George Washington came back from the dead and he chose Abraham Lincoln as his vice president, I think it would have been very hard for them to beat me," Trump said.

Correction: Trump's press secretary handed the reporters copies of a bound document titled "1,000 Accomplishments of President Donald J. Trump: Highlights of the First Term," the article said. An earlier version misidentified the parties involved.

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Trump says of Capitol rioters who sought to overturn Biden's win: 'What I wanted is what they wanted' - CNBC