Archives for the month of: April, 2020
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Garrison Keillor on Easter

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2020 //
22

This is from Garrison Keillor’s “The Writer’s Almanac”:

Today is the Christian holiday of Easter Sunday, the celebration of Jesus’ resurrection from the dead three days after his crucifixion. Easter is a moveable feast; in other words, it’s one of the few floating holidays in the calendar year, because it’s based on the cycles of the moon. Jesus was said to have risen from the dead on the first Sunday after the first full moon of spring. For that reason, Easter can fall as early as March 22nd and as late as April 25th. Easter also marks the end of the 40-day period of Lent and the beginning of Eastertide; the week before Easter is known as Holy Week and includes the religious holidays Maundy Thursday and Good Friday.

The word “Easter” and most of the secular celebrations of the holiday come from pagan traditions. Anglo Saxons worshipped Eostre, the goddess of springtime and the return of the sun after the long winter. According to legend, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs, and that rabbit became our Easter Bunny. Eggs were a symbol of fertility in part because they used to be so scarce during the winter. There are records of people giving each other decorated eggs at Easter as far back as the 11th century.

Categories Education Reform

New York City: At Least 40 Educators Dead of Virus But Department of Education Refuses to Release Their Names

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2020 //
8

Chalkbeat reports that at least 40 NewYork City educators have died because of the coronavirus but the Department of Education refuses to release their names or to explain their reticence.

Christina Veiga writes:

Rosario Gonzalez, a 91-year-old paraprofessional who cared tenderly for children in an East Harlem special education program, rarely missed a day of work in more than three decades.

Claudia Shirley continued to teach in Bushwick even after retiring, and loved her job so much that she inspired her two daughters to become educators themselves.

Carol King-Grant, a special education teacher in the South Bronx, was known for her love of sudoku and beautiful singing voice.

All died in recent weeks from suspected cases of the coronavirus, according to the United Federation of Teachers. The union announced that, as of Friday, it knew of more than 40 of its members presumed to have been claimed by the pandemic, including both active educators and retirees.

The union is naming names, and releasing a tally of the lives lost at a time that the education department has refused to do so. The department’s silence has sparked an uproar among teachers, who feel the lack of recognition is a smack in the face, particularly as they continued to report for work even after the danger of COVID-19 was The education department has kept mum on the number of cases within its ranks even as other public agencies, including the police department and transportation authority, have released figures. However, the education department stopped confirming cases as community spread became rampant and the health department told New Yorkers to assume they have been exposed.

“We understand there is a lot of uncertainty across the City surrounding COVID-19,” education department spokesperson Miranda Barbot told Chalkbeat on April 2. “School employees are sometimes reporting information to their principals and superintendents, and we are determining how best to collect this information in one place.”

Teachers have demanded that the city publicly disclose deaths among their colleagues. In the absence of official information about the disease’s spread within school communities, teachers have taken it upon themselves to inform their co-workers of positive cases. They have blasted the city for keeping campuses open even as the number of sickened New Yorkers skyrocketed. well known.

Categories Accountability, Health, New York City, Safety, Teachers

A Special Message to the Readers of This Blog

By dianeravitch
April 12, 2020 //
53

This blog was started on April 12, 2012.

Today is its 8th anniversary.

During that time, you have been wonderful readers. Your support has kept me going. I’ve shared with you the news stories, posts by bloggers I respect, occasional humor, and even some personal advice.

My goal for eight years has been to create a broad awareness of the failure of privatization and standardized testing to improve education. The movement to save and improve our nation’s public schools is strong and getting stronger. When someday this terrible pandemic ends, we will continue our struggle for better education for all.

The blog is closing in on 36 million page views. There have been more than 600,000 comments by you.

All in all, the blog has given me a great opportunity to speak my mind and to engage in lively conversation every day with you and to learn from you, not only your views but what’s happening in your community and state.

Here is my gift to you. Open and enjoy.

If you want to show your appreciation for my work, send a copy of SLAYING GOLIATH to a legislator or school board member.

Thank you!

Categories Education Reform

New York: Parents Call on Mayor and Governor to Stop Squabbling

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2020 //
51

Mayor Bill DeBlasio announced this morning that the city’s public schools would remain closed for the rest of the academic year, but lessons online would continue.

Governor Andrew Cuomo promptly contradicted the mayor and asserted the decision was his, not the mayor’s.

Parents were outraged by the childish food fight.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Natasha Capers, 347.610.2754, ncapers@nyccej.org

PRESS STATEMENT:
Parent Groups Respond to School Closure Decisions:
During a Health Crisis, Leaders Demonstrate a Lack of Leadership

New York City, NY (April 11th, 2020)- Early today, Mayor Bill DeBlasio under the advice of public health experts, announced that schools would be closed for the remainder of the school year due to the raging coronavirus pandemic. At the epicenter of the decision is the crippling impact the virus has had on our city and people. Later today, Governor Cuomo announced that there was no decision to close schools yet and that as governor it was legally his sole decision to make.

This squabbling between the mayor and the governor is embarrassing and causing tremendous stress for families, students, and educators. Their inability to come together, and make decisions informed by the well being of students and families, is immoral and will continue to have disastrous consequences for our communities, especially those so deeply impacted by the inequity in healthcare and testing. Parents need clarity in this moment, but Governor Cuomo’s constant need to have control once again takes precedence over him making the right decision for families.

Delayed decision making has led New York City and the surrounding suburbs to become the epicenter of the pandemic in the United States, with far more cases than many countries have. It is time for Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio to end their narcissistic feud and start working together for the benefit of all of New York’s students and families.

We need leaders to put aside egos during this crisis and prioritize the well-being of students and their families. We need them to show leadership and to be on one accord for the health and safety of New York State and City. The consequence is unnecessary confusion and additional stress in a time when school communities are already traumatized.

Categories Bill de Blasio, Closing schools, Cuomo, Andrew, New York City

Weber Middle School Chorus: “Seasons of Love”

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2020 //
16

The Port Virtual Choir from the Port Washington, New York, school district sings “Seasons of Love.”

A great way to overcome social isolation!

Categories Art

The Getty Museum Invites Home Artists to Create Their Own

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2020 //
8

The Getty Museum in Los Angeles invited the public to select a favorite work of art and recreate it in their home, using familiar objects.

The results are impressive.

Categories Art, Creativity

What Public School Employees Need to Know about the CARES Law

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2020 //
9

Terri Michal is a member of the elected board of education in Birmingham, Alabama.

She writes:


I love public education employees. They are the most resourceful group of people you could ever meet. They have to be. These employees work in an atmosphere of politics and nepotism.

They suffer through Legislators and administrators that create policies for them even though many of these policy makers have never worked in a school a day in their lives. Because of this, school-based employees have had to learn to MacGyver their way through each and every day.

These employees do this because they know what’s at stake; The future of the 51 million students who attend our public schools as well as the future of our country that one day those students will run.

Recently being made aware of a new piece of federal legislation that could impact the lives of public education employees, I did a quick survey of all my friends that work in that sector. I found that a large portion of them are not aware of this new law.

You see, they are working hard trying to ensure that students are fed, that packets of school work are assembled, and that the digital divide, which this pandemic has now thrust into the spotlight, is addressed as best it can be.
They are busy trying to MacGyver their way through a pandemic that education policy does not address, yet they are still expected to somehow provide continuity in teaching and learning.

But at what cost? How much will our students actually benefit from these weeks of taped and spliced together hybrids of online and paper and pencil learning, and is that greater than the sacrifices our employees’ may ultimately make?

How much responsibility should school districts share in making sure the most vulnerable in our communities are fed? Under a pandemic and amidst shelter in place orders, at what point do schools step back and local governments and other agencies step up?

I think these are just a few of the questions that are being asked by those in position to educate public school employees about their rights under the new FFCRA, and they just don’t have the answers. So they are saying very little, fearful that what little societal infrastructure public education can provide during this pandemic will fall apart.

Lacking any universal definition of what public education is today and what its responsibilities truly are, public education employees are expected to be and do it all. With a smile on their faces. Because it’s “for the children”. The rest will be sorted out later.

Well, this pandemic has thrust this topic to the forefront. It’s time to sort it out. It’s time to recognize public school employees as employees, not martyrs or miracle workers, or folks with big hearts that are willing to sacrifice it all.

They are employees, and in the United States employees have rights.

In that vein, public education employees, you need to know what your rights are so that you can decide what is right for you and your families.

If you are being asked to work in a building and you feel that you cannot or should not be doing it, if you cannot work (telework included) due to childcare issues, if you or a family member are sick with COVID-19, or you take care of anyone that is in a high risk category, there are now some federal job protections for you.

The Families First Coronavirus Response Act (FFCRA) contains several provisions that will provide meaningful assistance to school district employees. It took effect April 2, 2020, and will end on December 31, 2020.
The FFCRA provides two types of leave for employees impacted by COVID-19: Emergency Paid Sick Leave and Emergency Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) Leave.

First, let’s talk about the Emergency Paid Sick Leave.

It provides 10 days of paid sick leave to an employee who is unable to work or telework if:

1. The employee is subject to a federal, state or local quarantine or isolation order related to COVID -19;

2. The employee has been advised by a health care provider to self-quarantine due to concerns related to COVID-19;

3. The employee is experiencing symptoms and is seeking a medical diagnosis;

4. The employee is caring for someone described above;

5. The employee is caring for the employee’s child if the school or place of care for the child is closed, or if the childcare provider of the child is unavailable due to COVID-19 precautions.

6. The employee is experiencing any other substantially similar condition specified by the Secretary of Health and Human Services in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Secretary of Labor.

How much it pays:

If an employee is unable to work due to the conditions described in 1-3, the employee is entitled to their regular rate or the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher, up to $511 per day over a 2-week period.

If an employee is unable to work due to the conditions described in 4 or 6, such as a lack of child care, the employee is entitled to pay at 2/3 their regular rate or 2/3 the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher, up to $200 per day for 2 weeks.

If an employee is unable to work due to the conditions described in 5 the employee is entitled to pay at 2/3 their regular rate or 2/3 the applicable minimum wage, whichever is higher, up to $200 per day for 12 weeks.

If the employee is part-time, the employee is entitled to be paid for a number of hours equal to the number of hours that the employee works, on average, in a 2 week period.

All full-time and part-time school system employees are covered by the Emergency Paid Sick Leave and are eligible for the two weeks of emergency paid sick leave if they meet one of the six criteria listed above.

Now let’s discuss the Emergency FMLA Leave.

It allows an employee to take up to 12 weeks of leave if the employee is unable to work or telework due to a need for leave to take care of the employee’s child if the school or place of child care has been closed, or if the child care provider is unavailable due to a public health emergency.

How much it pays:

The first 10 days (2 weeks) of leave may be unpaid, except that an employee may choose to use the new emergency sick leave (as identified above) or any other accrued paid leave.

The remaining 10 weeks of FMLA leave provided by this law will be paid at 2/3rds of the employee’s regular rate, up to a maximum payment of $200 per day ($10,000 total).

Emergency FMLA applies to any full-time or part-time employee who have been on the payroll for 30 calendar days.

Another important fact for employees who lack childcare or are caring for an ill child:
Employees in those circumstances can combine both emergency leaves. Here how combining the two may work:

• Weeks 1-2 – Emergency Paid Sick Leave at 67% regular salary up to $200/day

• Weeks 3-12 – Emergency FMLA Leave at 67% regular salary up to $200/day

In the case of lack of childcare, an employee may choose to use accrued leave and emergency paid sick leave together in order to make 100% of his or her salary for that period of time up to two weeks.

Remember it is illegal for an employer to discharge, discipline, or otherwise discriminate against an employee taking leave.

If you feel you need to use one or both emergency leave options, please notify your organization for further guidance. If you are not a member of an organization contact your supervisor to obtain the proper paperwork.

I am not advocating for or against utilizing the FFCRA, but I will say this: IF these MacGyvered forms of distance learning do get shut down due to the fact that public school employees exercised their legal rights, parents don’t worry, we can make up any time in the classroom that may have been lost.

How?

The easiest and cheapest way to do this would be to end high stakes testing.

Think about it. Most school systems spend weeks after spring break doing test prep and high stakes testing. If schools are able to go back into session in August (which I PRAY is the case!) then they could use the first four weeks to make up what was lost and omit the high stakes testing at the end of the year. This is a slightly altered version of a suggestion made by Dr. Eric Mackey, Alabama’s State Superintendent.

Let’s not aid the destruction of public education by buying into the false narratives that these last few weeks of school are critical and must continue at all costs, that the sky is falling if we don’t get our children behind a digital device, and that our schools are solely responsible for the care and feeding of our students. Instead let’s recognize how out of focus our vision has become concerning our expectations of public education and public education employees, and let’s begin a discussion asking parents, communities, and community leaders what their responsibilities are when it comes to our children and youth.

Public Ed can come back from this better and stronger, but only if we take action to correct the inequities and misguided policies that this pandemic has thrust onto the National stage.

Finally, to our public school employees, please take this time to care for yourself and your families. We will need you more than ever once our school doors reopen.

Categories Funding, Health, Teachers

William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg: This Is What Should Change After the Pandemic

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2020 //
25

The standards and testing cabal wants to preserve the status quo ante and double down on accountability and NCLB-style measures after the pandemic. The choice crowd wants to push their agendas subsidizing anything and everything while slashing public schools.

William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg have a different vision. They want learning to be creative and joyful. They describe their ideas on Valerie Strauss’s “Answer Sheet” blog:

William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg, public school fathers in New York City and Sydney, respectively, are co-authors of “Let the Children Play: How More Play Will Save our Schools and Help Children Thrive.”

The coronavirus crisis has shattered one of the most dysfunctional pillars of childhood education. On March 20, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos suspended the federal requirement for the mass standardized testing of children, announcing “Neither students nor teachers need to be focused on high-stakes tests during this difficult time.” Other countries, including England and Australia, are doing the same. These decisions should be made permanent, and the job of assessing learning should be returned to classroom teachers, not politicians and for-profit testing companies.

More than 1.5 billion young people around the world have been affected by school closures due to the covid-19 pandemic. Our own young children are among them. Like countless other parents, we now have to home-school, remotely work, and keep our families safe in an atmosphere of uncertainty about the future.

Some day, hopefully in the not-too distant future, our schools will open their doors again. When they do, we should give our children a much better education system. To do this, we should build our schools upon a foundation of what the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) calls “the ideal educational and developmental milieu for children”: play, in all of its forms.

The evidence is clear. A wide range of research indicates that intellectual and physical play confers a host of cognitive, social, emotional and health benefits. Play is the learning language of children, and pediatricians know it has the power to supercharge more conventional, and equally necessary, forms of academic instruction.

Over the last 20 years, politicians in the United States and elsewhere and have tried to improve public schools with policies based on the high-pressure standardized testing of children. Instead of improving learning, these policies have demoralized teachers and students, pushed out the arts, recess and learning through play, and wasted billions of dollars for marginal gains, by doing little to relieve the inequities, segregation and student disengagement that plague many of our schools.

In the United States, for example, recess in public schools is widely restricted, and even denied as a punishment for wiggling in class or late homework — despite the scientific evidence that physical activity improves behavior and academic performance. Before the school shutdowns, millions of American children were already spending their days in cruel, unnatural conditions of forced physical restraint in our public schools. According to one report, 30 percent of American kindergartners have no recess anymore, due to academic pressure on 4-, 5- and 6 -year-olds.

Now, well over a billion children will be almost totally cooped up indoors at home, perhaps for months to come.
“We have to assume that the incidence of PTSD and anxiety disorders as a function of what we are as a society going through, for both parents and children, is going to be huge,” pediatrician Michael Yogman told us. “ … We need to think about how are we going to help children recover from the trauma of this experience.”

According to Yogman, principal author of the American Academy of Pediatrics 2018 landmark report “The Power of Play,” a worst-case scenario would be for schools to say, “We missed four months of academic subjects and tests, so we’re going to compress it all into a month and catch up.” He considers this kind of thinking a terrible idea, since “it would just accentuate the stress children are already experiencing and undermine their capacity for productive learning.”

Representing the nation’s 67,000 children’s doctors, the American Academy of Pediatrics has declared that “the importance of playful learning for children cannot be overemphasized.” In fact, the doctors assert, “It could be argued that active play is so central to child development that it should be included in the very definition of childhood. Play offers more than cherished memories of growing up, it allows children to develop creativity and imagination while developing physical, cognitive and emotional strengths.”

In direct opposition to the prevailing wisdom of some American self-styled “education reformers” who have slashed recess and play in inner-city schools, the AAP has noted that for children in poverty, “play should be an integral component of school engagement.” According to the pediatricians, “the lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing.”

Play is urgently relevant to the new education world that will emerge from the coronavirus pandemic. “Play can mitigate stress,” Dr. Yogman tells us. “The executive function skills that kids develop through play can promote resilience, and play can restore safe and nurturing relationships with parents, teachers and other children, which also promotes resilience. That’s got to be our goal when kids get back to school. At every level, in our schools, homes, and communities, our social structures have to acknowledge the magnitude of stress all families, especially those with young children will experience, and design programs that mitigate that, including lots of physical activity and play.”

In these times of uncertainty, pain and fear, play can be a big part of the cure. During this crisis, parents should resist the temptation to overstress their children with excessive, often screen-based “remote at-home learning” in an attempt to “not fall behind.” In this bizarre, tragic chapter in world history, children need parental attention and love, comfort, safety, nondigital play, healthy routines, songs, books, blocks, basic art supplies, and, whenever possible, physical activity, much more than they need academic pressure, graded assignments and excessive screen time. We recently asked our own children, age 8 and 12, what they think their own weekday study schedule at home should look like during the crisis. They sketched out time for learning, practice and rest, and also blocked out slots of time through the day for recess, play and physical activity breaks — just as pediatricians recommend. We should listen carefully to both children and their doctors, who together represent qualified experts on childhood.

In this health emergency, government leaders around the world are urgently seeking the advice of medical and scientific experts. They should do the same when it comes to education. When the covid-19 pandemic passes and the world opens up again, we should redesign our schools using the best expert evidence, just as we are doing in response to the global health pandemic. We should give our children schools that follow doctor’s orders, by giving them lots of physical activity and play to energize learning and boost health and happiness.
The mission of childhood education can no longer be the generation of standardized test data, but learning powered by the physical, mental and emotional health and well being of every child and every teacher.
Schools should be the favorite place of every child. It’s time we made them so.

Categories Creativity, Education Reform, Joy, Play

Is Distance Learning the Wave of the Future?

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2020 //
23

We have known for a long while that the worst scandals in the charter sector are intertwined with online learning and cyber charters. Consider the bankruptcy last year of ECOT (the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow) in Ohio, whose owner collected $1 billion from the state over nearly 20 years, but declared bankruptcy rather than pay the state $60 million for inflated enrollments.

Then there is the infamous A-1 scandal in California, where the owners and several cooperating school districts were indicted in San Diego nearly a year ago for the theft of $50 million from the state, a scheme that involved phantom students.

Yet here we are in the midst of a pandemic and most schools have been shutdown to protect students and staff from exposure to the coronavirus. Almost overnight, millions of students were required to continue learning by going online. The platforms are different, but tens of millions of students are engaged in distance learning.

Kathleen Porter-Magee of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute sees this asa fortuitous moment, an opportunity to revolutionize education. She calls it “A Revolution in Education, Born of a Necessity.”

She says, seize the moment.

She writes:

Said more simply: Those working “in the arena” to run great schools and support great teachers are charging full steam ahead to make the most of this period of remote learning. Those who have been quick to dismiss distance learning as “ineffective” are looking in the rearview mirror and imagining a world where past must be prologue, rather than embracing the innovation that this moment may well have sparked.

You will not be surprised to learn that I disagree. From what I see and read and hear, I believe that parents want to get back to their own work. They don’t want their children home all the time, learning at a screen. Those who want to home school are already doing it. More important, I think that students must miss their friends, their teachers, their social life, their teams and activities. Home Alone is a drag.

And then there is the inconvenient CREDO study of 2015, which found that students in virtual charter schools fell behind their peers in brick-and-mortar public schools. In a school year of 180 days, the online students lost 44 days in reading and 180 days in math.

If you want our whole society to go backwards, distance learning and cyber schooling will do it.

Categories Education Reform, Online Education, Technology, Virtual Charter Schools

Dana Milbank: When You Drown Government in a Bathtub, People Die

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2020 //
39

Dana Milbank, opinion writer for the Washington Post, says that the a Republican right wing finally have the helpless federal government they have longed for, and people are dying because of the government’s incompetence. Is this a polite way of saying that the Tea Party libertarians have blood on their hands? Note: there are only two areas where these people are eager and willing to lavish public funds: the military and religious schools.

He writes:

I had been expecting this for 21 years.

“It’s not a matter of ‘if,’ but ‘when,’” the legendary epidemiologist D.A. Henderson told me in 1999 when we discussed the likelihood of a biological event causing mass destruction.

In 2001, I wrote about experts urging a “medical Manhattan Project” for new vaccines, antibiotics and antivirals…

I repeat these things not to pretend I was prescient but to show that the nation’s top scientists and public health experts were shouting these warnings from the rooftops — deafeningly, unanimously and consistently. In the years after the 2001 terrorist attacks, the Bush and Obama administrations seemed to be listening.

But then came the tea party, the anti-government conservatism that infected the Republican Party in 2010 and triumphed with President Trump’s election. Perhaps the best articulation of its ideology came from the anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, who once said: “I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

They got their wish. What you see today is your government, drowning — a government that couldn’t produce a rudimentary test for coronavirus, that couldn’t contain the pandemic as other countries have done, that couldn’t produce enough ventilators for the sick or even enough face masks and gowns for health-care workers.

Now it is time to drown this disastrous philosophy in the bathtub — and with it the poisonous attitude that the government is a harmful “beast” that must be “starved.” It is not an exaggeration to say that this ideology caused the current debacle with a deliberate strategy to sabotage government.

Overall, entitlement programs continued to grow, and the Pentagon’s many friends protected its budget. And Trump has abandoned responsible budgeting. But in one area, the tea party types, with their sequesters, debt-limit standoffs and other austerity schemes, did all too well. Between 2011 and 2018, nondefense discretionary spending fell by 12 percent — and, with it, the government’s already iffy ability to prevent and ameliorate public health emergencies unraveled.

John Auerbach, president of Trust for America’s Health, described for me the fallout: Over a dozen years, the Public Health Emergency Preparedness grants to state and local public health departments were cut by a third and the Hospital Preparedness Program cut in half, 60,000 jobs were lost at state and local public health departments, and similarly severe cuts were made to laboratories. A $15 billion grant program under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, the Prevention and Public Health Fund, was plundered for other purposes.

Now Americans are paying for this with their lives — and their livelihoods.

If the United States had more public health capacity it “absolutely” would have been on par with Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, which have far fewer cases, Auerbach said. South Korea has had four deaths per 1 million people, Singapore one death per million, and Taiwan 0.2 deaths per million. The United States: 39 per million — and rising fast.

To have mitigated the virus the way Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan did would have required spending about $4.5 billion a year on public health, Auerbach estimates. Instead we’re spending trillions to rescue the economy.
Democrats aren’t blameless in pandemic preparedness. And some Republicans tried to be responsible — but the starve-the-beast crowd wouldn’t hear of it.

After Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) voted for the 2009 stimulus bill because he secured $10 billion for the National Institutes of Health, he was essentially forced out of the GOP. Rising in the party were people such as Rep. Jim Jordan (Ohio), whose far-right Republican Study Committee in 2011 proposed a plan, applauded by GOP leadership, to cut NIH funding by 40 percent.

In 2014, NIH chief Francis Collins said there likely would have been a vaccine for the Ebola outbreak if not for a 10 percent cut in NIH funding between 2010 and 2014 that included halving Ebola vaccine research. Republicans jeered.

In 2016, when President Barack Obama requested $1.9 billion to fight the Zika virus, Republicans in Congress sat on the request for seven months and then cut it nearly in half.

Since then, Trump has proposed cuts to the NIH and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention so severe even congressional Republicans rejected them. And last month they fed the “beast” a $2.2 trillion feast to fight the pandemic.

Now they know: When you drown the government in the bathtub, people die.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Funding, Health, Republicans
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