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Sheila Suess Kennedy

This column was originally published on Sheila Kennedy blog, A Jaundiced Look at the World We Live In.

By Sheila Kennedy
February 3, 2025

If you wondered whether Indiana’s new Governor, Mike Braun, would follow the agenda of his running mates–Beckwith, Banks and RoQuita, all of whom are “out and proud” White Christian Nationalists–there’s no longer any doubt. Braun is slavishly following Trump’s assault on anyone who isn’t a straight White Christian Male.

Mike Leppert has accurately described Braun’s assault, which consists of “othering” any group that doesn’t fall into that slice of Hoosier citizenship. Braun immediately followed Trump’s lead by purging state government of any DEI efforts. Then his budget proposal took an ax to disfavored “others.”

He began with the Indians.

In 2025, new Governor Mike Braun, in his first budget proposal in office, proposes
to end funding for the Native American Indian Affairs Commission. The cut comes
as part of his 15% cut to the Indiana Civil Rights Commission. That may sound
like a lot of money, but it isn’t. The state is spending less than $3 million a year on
the ICRC in the current budget.

It got worse from there.

As Leppert quite accurately noted, budget proposals from a newly elected governor are a marker, defining his priorities– and in this case, defining his character as well. In addition to withdrawing from his predecessor’s agreement with the Pokagon Indians, Braun’s budget eliminates funding for the Indiana Commission for Women, an organization created to assess the needs of Indiana women and their families and promote their full participation in Indiana society. Also gone is $10 million earmarked for Martin University, and the College Success Program. Martin University is Indiana’s only predominantly Black institution; the Success program assists minority and first generation college students.

These cuts by Braun won’t change the lives of any white, male, Christian. Except
for those comforted by real or perceived harm to the other. It’s a foundational
change in governing philosophy that is still taking shape…
Braun isn’t managing money with these cuts, he’s managing messaging.
These moves are proclamations of what he supports, or in these cases, what he
opposes. And the fallout is not simple addition and subtraction in this one document.

As Leppert says, the message is obvious: Native American, Black and female populations are now officially “the others” in Indiana. Those populations now join the GOP’s ongoing attacks on trans people–and by implication, all LGBTQ Hoosiers.

We certainly won’t see any pushback on “othering” from a legislature that owes its GOP dominance from persistent gerrymandering. Senate Bill 235, for example, coauthored by the odious Mike Young, gleefully prohibits “state agencies, recipients of state contracts or grants, state educational institutions, and health profession licensing boards” from taking account of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Indiana’s legislature has also continued and deepened its all-out assault on education. Senate Bill 202–a sweeping bill attacking academic freedom in Indiana’s public colleges and universities– has been joined by HB 1002, a “high priority” of the Republican leadership. Its 130+ pages includes three especially noteworthy efforts to dumb down public education in the Hoosier state:

• It removes all prerequisites for a person to be appointed to be Indiana Secretary
of Education, paving the way for the Governor to appoint a non-educator or
non-resident.
• It removes a requirement in current law that requires a governing body to
provide a non-charter school that students of the same age or grade can
attend.” This should be seen as a companion bill House Bill 1136, which would
dissolve IPS and other urban districts and turn all of their schools into charters.
• HB 1002 also removes an existing responsibility of charter authorizers to
ensure that the school is in compliance with applicable law. One of the ways
charter schools currently differ from the private schools that accept vouchers
is that they are subject to more stringent legal oversight; this provision would
dramatically undermine that oversight–which is entirely absent from the
voucher program.

It is impossible to miss the GOP’s agenda, both nationally and at the state level. That agenda follows the anti-democratic, anti-civic-equality prescriptions of Project 2025: ensure that straight White Christian males recover social dominance; continue and strengthen the anti-majoritarian systems (gerrymandering, electoral college, etc.) that facilitate governance by the Republican minority, make it difficult or impossible for higher education institutions to maintain intellectual integrity, and destroy the public schools that bring different students together, replacing them with religious schools that harden tribal affiliations.

And while all that is going on, eradicate sources of information inconsistent with White Christian nationalist dogma–not just educational institutions, but media outlets unwilling to bend the knee, and government websites that might accidentally contain factual information about the composition of the American polity.

Blue states might resist Program 2025, but not the racist, misogynistic, homophobic troglodytes in Indiana government.

 

Sheila Suess Kennedy is Emerita Professor of Law and Public Policy at the School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis. As an attorney, she practiced real estate, administrative and business law in Indianapolis before becoming corporation counsel for the City of Indianapolis in 1977. In 1980, she was the Republican candidate for Indiana’s then 1th Congressional District and in 1992, she became executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana. She joined the faculty of the School of Public and Environment al Affairs in 1998.

The views and opinions expressed are those of the author only and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Indiana Citizen or any other affiliated organization.

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