A friend shared this 15-minute video with me.
It is the story of a Master Sergeant in the U.S. Army who was captured with his men in World War II.
Their captors wanted to separate the Jewish troops, but this brave man would not let it happen.
We are reminded of the goodness and courage that exists in the world.
We need that reminder now.
Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan just published a new book about Melania and how she outsmarted The Donald.
When Melania Trump stayed behind in New York after her husband’s presidential inauguration, she said it was because she didn’t want to interrupt their then-10-year-old son Barron’s school year. News stories at the time concentrated on an apparent frostiness between the first couple and on the exorbitant taxpayer costs to protect Melania and Barron away from Washington.
Those stories are true, but Washington Post reporter Mary Jordan reveals in a new book that the first lady was also using her delayed arrival to the White House as leverage for renegotiating her prenuptial agreement with President Trump.
The campaign had been full of harsh news about Trump’s alleged sexual indiscretions and infidelities, from the “grab them by the p—y” Access Hollywood tape to an affair with Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal; Melania learned new details from the media coverage, Jordan writes.
The incoming first lady needed time to cool off, and “to amend her financial arrangement with Trump — what Melania referred to as ‘taking care of Barron,’ ” Jordan writes in “The Art of Her Deal: The Untold Story of Melania Trump.”
Melania’s original prenup had not been incredibly generous, Jordan reports. But she has been married to Trump longer than both his ex-wives and had bargaining power: Her perceived calming effect on him was so great that Trump’s pals and at least one of Trump’s adult children exhorted her to come to the White House as soon as possible.
She suggests that people drop the #FreeMelania hashtag because she is no different from him.
Wendy Lecker is a civil rights lawyer who writes frequently for the Stamford (CT) Advocate, where this article appeared.
The brutal police killing of yet another unarmed African-American man, Minneapolis’ George Floyd, preceded by the midnight police killing of EMT Breonna Taylor in her home in Louisville, and followed by the police killing of Louisville restaurant owner David McAtee, reinforce that Black Americans live a different reality than White Americans do.
It is not just the horrifying fact that African Americans are disproportionately the victims of police brutality. Medical research demonstrates that police killings of unarmed African Americans exacts a unique and lasting psychic toll on African Americans — beyond those directly affected by the killings. In a study published in the medical journal, The Lancet, researchers found that Black Americans exposed to police killings in their communities suffered adverse mental health effects, amounting to 55 million excess poor mental health days per year in the United States. Police killings are a serious, and avoidable, public health problem.
The spillover effect of police killings is also likely underestimated, as the researchers focused on the communities in which the killings occurred. With mainstream and social media, the effect of police killings extends far beyond that. Moreover, police killings are under-reported, thus not all were considered in the study.
The researchers found no spillover effect of these killings on White Americans, suggesting African Americans understand the killings in the context of structural racism that persists in America and impacts African Americans daily in a way that Whites do not experience.
Similar research has shown that aggressive policing, not even that rising to the level of killing, causes anxiety and trauma, particularly for young African Americans. One study, in the journal Pediatrics, reported that African-American children often suffer post-traumatic stress disorder from contact with the police. That contact can come in the form of racial profiling, arrest of a caregiver, or witnessing or suffering from police violence. Experts emphasize the need to document and monitor the effects of policing on African-American children to ensure they receive proper support.
While African Americans bear the brunt of these phenomena, they are caused by Whites. And it begins early. Studies have shown that at almost every age level, African-American boys and girls are routinely perceived as older and less innocent than they are, and than non-Black children.
These misperceptions, coupled with the negative experience children have with police, present serious implications for school policies. Schools can be places that aggravate, or mitigate, the deleterious mental health effects of structural racism. The presence of police officers in schools and punitive “zero tolerance” discipline policies have been shown to reinforce the trauma children experience outside school. Moreover, African-American children are disproportionately subjected to more and harsher discipline in school than non-Black children. This disproportionate punishment begins early, then follows children throughout their school career, contributing to the erroneous notion that African-American students behave badly. Harsher discipline is also more prevalent in more segregated schools. Disparities in discipline are linked to less academic and life success for African-American students.
Recent research from Princeton University found that racial disparities in school discipline are associated with county levels of racial bias. Thus, it is not only children who bring the trauma they experience outside school into their school experience. School staff bring the bias from their communities into their daily interaction with African-American students. Furthermore, if not properly identified as PTSD stemming from negative contact with the police, a child’s behavior can be mislabeled as attentive deficit hyperactivity disorder or another ill-fitting diagnosis, resulting in that child not receiving appropriate services.
African-American education advocates have for decades stressed the need for culturally relevant curricula, African-American teachers, bias training for White staff, and restorative justice practices, to combat the effects of racism. The recent medical and social science research supports their claims. Advocates have also clamored for integrated and well-resourced public schools, so that African-American students have adequate and equitable opportunities to learn and develop.
African-American students are currently experiencing trauma on top of trauma. The pandemic has exacted disparate harm on the Black community, causing loss of lives, livelihoods, and homes. This horror is now exacerbated by the new round of police brutality, which African Americans experience in a way Whites can neither share nor fully comprehend. When African-American children return to school, it is imperative that our schools be equipped to meet them where they are, with the support, training and services to help them feel safe, to heal and to learn.
The coronavirus has caused incalculable harm to millions of people. Two million people have been infected. More than 100,000 have died. The death toll increases daily. The scientific response to the pandemic—close down the economy—caused additional harm, with most economic activity halted, millions of people out of work, businesses Closed, livelihoods lost. The economic shutdown caused a dramatic decline in state revenues, which means less funding for schools. As schools plan to reopen, classes must be smaller, more nurses and healthcare workers are needed, and costs will rise, to keep students and staff safe.
How can schools cut costs while costs are rising? They can’t.
Three scholars—Bruce D. Baker, Mark Weber, and Drew Aitchinson—propose four specific steps that are needed to enable schools to weather the collapse of state revenues due to the global pandemic.
The first of these is a federal aid package. Without federal aid, schools cannot reopen safely, cannot reduce class sizes, and cannot provide the care that students and staff need.
Congress will have to decide whether it is willing to invest in the nation’s children and their teachers. And in our shared future.
Every candidate hopes to win the endorsement of the New York Times.
The Times just published its Congressional endorsements in New York City, and the big news is that it endorsed educator Jamaal Bowman, a steadfast champion of equity, social justice, and public schools over the 16-term incumbent. Jamaal will be a breath of fresh air if he is elected, and one of the very few members of Congress who is a real educator. His voice in needed in D.C.
The Times editorial board wrote:
At a time when millions of voices are calling out for peaceful change, New Yorkers can make an immediate difference with this year’s primary elections. In-person voting begins June 13 and ends June 23; voting by absentee ballot has already begun. The nation badly needs new faces, new energy, new talent and new ideas.
This is not to say that every incumbent needs to be retired. Congressman Jerry Nadler (District 10, parts of Manhattan and Brooklyn) and Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney (District 12, the East Side of Manhattan, parts of Queens and northern Brooklyn) have shown their commitment to their districts time and again and should be returned to Congress. But in other places, where there is no incumbent or the current representative has lost the fire to fight for his or her constituents at home and in Washington, we offer these choices for Democratic House primaries, where victory means almost-certain election in the New York City region.
DISTRICT 15 (South Bronx): In a competitive race to replace the departing Congressman Jose Serrano, voters have a choice between Ritchie Torres, an unusually effective member of the New York City Council, and the Rev. Rubén Díaz Sr., a candidate opposed to equal rights for women and gay people, who doesn’t belong in today’s Democratic Party. Though the race is filled with other impressive candidates who would very likely make excellent members of Congress, Mr. Torres appears the best positioned to beat Mr. Díaz, an urgent task.
DISTRICT 9 (Park Slope, Crown Heights, Prospect Heights, Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Flatbush, Midwood, Sheepshead Bay and more): For nearly 14 years, Congresswoman Yvette Clarke has represented this large, vibrant area of Brooklyn. In 2018, we supported Adem Bunkeddeko, a talented challenger with ambitious plans for affordable housing who is back for a second try. This time, Isiah James, a promising young Army combat veteran and democratic socialist who has also promised to focus on housing, is in the race, too, though he has struggled with fund-raising. Another candidate, New York City Council member Chaim Deutsch, hasn’t shown up for the debates and is instead vying for votes with a campaign of fearmongering.
In 2018, Ms. Clarke barely won the primary race against Mr. Bunkeddeko, with 53 percent of the vote. In her current term, she has taken a more active role in her district, a welcome change.
But once again, Mr. Bunkeddeko represents the best chance at getting a more vibrant voice for the district. Mr. Bunkeddeko, 32, grew up in Queens and is focused on securing federal dollars for public and affordable housing. He also wants to create a federal program that would help moderate- and lower-income New Yorkers become homeowners, exactly the vision needed in the district and in Congress. As he put it, housing needs were “a five-alarm fire” even before the job losses of the coronavirus pandemic. He has also supported a public option for Medicare as a way to move toward Medicare for all.
His life story is inspiring. Mr. Bunkeddeko is the son of refugees from Uganda who has earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He has experience in government working for the Empire State Development Corporation, the state entity that helps drive economic investment into New York. He deserves the support of voters in the Ninth District.
DISTRICT 14 (eastern Bronx and north-central Queens): Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez needs no introduction. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez may be the most talented young politician in the country. In her first term, she helped build a national progressive movement, becoming a leading voice on climate change, income inequality and racist policing. Her masterly questioning of the former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen before the House Oversight and Reform Committee last year helped reveal the extent of Mr. Trump’s misconduct.
If, as we hope, she wins a second term, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez should devote energy and resources to constituent services, one area where her community is hungry for more of her attention. Her competitors in this year’s primary, including Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former Republican and CNBC journalist who says she wants to focus on jobs, have tried to capitalize on Mr. Ocasio-Cortez’s national, rather than local, focus.
Ms. Ocasio Cortez’s shortcomings as a community representative, which can be remedied if she puts her mind to it, are not reason enough to deny re-election to someone who has been such a determined champion of vulnerable people everywhere.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioning Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, at a House Financial Services Committee hearing last fall.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez questioning Facebook’s chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, at a House Financial Services Committee hearing last fall.Credit…Pete Marovich for The New York Times
DISTRICT 16 (northern parts of the Bronx and southern half of Westchester County, including Mt. Vernon, Yonkers, New Rochelle and Rye): The current representative — Eliot Engel — has been in Congress since 1989, and his connections to the district seem to have frayed.
He was criticized for not returning home even as the coronavirus raged through communities he represents, particularly New Rochelle. When he did return for this race, he was caught on a hot mic pushing for a chance to speak during a protest rally, saying, “If I didn’t have a primary, I wouldn’t care.”
His main challenger is Jamaal Bowman, an educator for more than 20 years and a fierce advocate for public schools. Mr. Bowman helped found a public middle school in the Bronx, the Cornerstone Academy for Social Action, and promises to work for all of the district, including sections he says have been neglected during Mr. Engel’s time in Congress.
Mr. Bowman says he wants to see the United States adopt a kind of Marshall Plan for climate change, jobs, housing and education. “We need political imagination,” he said. In a district that needs new energy, Mr. Bowman will bring it.
DISTRICT 17 (Rockland and northwestern Westchester Counties): The retirement of Nita Lowey after 31 years in office has made for quite a race, with seven contenders fighting it out.
The best candidate to replace her is Mondaire Jones, an official in the Department of Justice in the Obama administration and a former lawyer in the Westchester County Law Department.
For Mr. Jones, policy is personal. The child of a single mother who relied on food stamps and lived in Section 8 housing, he eventually graduated from Stanford University and Harvard Law School, and he supports universal child care and tuition-free college. Mr. Jones is a candidate who can finally bring representation to every part of this diverse district, which spans Rockland and Westchester Counties, and includes great wealth as well as pockets of deep poverty.
Evelyn Farkas, another candidate in the race, has significant support from the Democratic establishment, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, Representative Tom Malinowski and Emily’s List. A former deputy assistant secretary of defense specializing in Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, Ms. Farkas helped create a strategy to protect Ukraine from Russian military intervention and was among the first to warn about Russian aid to Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign.
Also among the leading candidates is State Senator David Carlucci, who is backed by powerful unions like Teamsters Local 445, a union that represents bus drivers, construction workers, warehouse workers and more. Mr. Carlucci promises to expand tenant protection and create mixed-use housing across the district. He was part of a breakaway group of Democrats in the New York Senate who worked with the Republicans who controlled the chamber at the time. Though he argues that his defection was meant to aid a district moving rapidly from rural to urban, Mr. Carlucci was also a great help to Republicans in blocking Democratic reforms.
Assemblyman David Buchwald, who represents part of the Congressional district, has strong local support and some credibility fighting corruption in Albany. His vote against a landmark housing bill last year that restored sorely needed protections for renters in New York City and elsewhere is, however, disqualifying.
Allison Fine, a former chair of NARAL-Pro-Choice America who calls herself an “unapologetic feminist,” argues that it’s time for someone “outside the system to bring in new ideas and energy.”
Asha Castleberry-Hernandez is a major in the Army Reserves, a former State Department adviser and a lecturer in foreign policy and global security. Though she is not our choice for this seat this year, Ms. Castleberry-Hernandez has the kind of talent that deserves to be encouraged.
Voters in the 17th District are fortunate to have so many talented people vying to represent them in Washington. Mondaire Jones has earned our endorsement as the most promising and the most prepared.
Forget about the fact that we are in the dst of a global pandemic. Forget about the fact that Trump refuses to wear a protective face mask. Forget about the national and international protests against racism and police brutality.
What are Senate Republicans investigating?
Wait for this: Lindsay Graham wants to know who in the FBI and CIA started the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election, because Trump said it was a hoax. Senator Graham is Trump’s Lapdog, and whatever Trump says must be true.
What about her emails?
Dana Milbank has the story about the Senate Republicans’ farce.
American justice is in crisis: Civil rights demonstrators fill the streets, most Americans say law enforcement is discriminatory, and, in front of the White House, the attorney general orders federal police to trample the constitutional rights of peaceful demonstrators.
This would be a good time for the august members of the Senate Judiciary Committee to protect the Constitution they swore to uphold.
Instead, committee Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) convened his panel this week to launch yet another investigation into the Obama administration.
Who cares about the virus, economic collapse and unrest? President Trump has said he wants Graham to investigate the investigation into Russian election interference, and Graham complied. With party-line votes, he circumvented decades-old rules to give himself unilateral power to issue subpoenas to Trump’s favorite villains: John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Nellie and Bruce Ohr, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, John Podesta, Susan Rice and more.
Graham made perfectly clear his motive: vengeance. “Comey and McCabe and that whole crowd — their day is coming,” he vowed at the hearing Thursday. He declared Robert Mueller “off script” and he proposed alternatives for Russia-probe investigators: Either people “need to be fired, they need to be disciplined,” or “they are good candidates to go to jail.”
“Somebody needs to be held accountable,” he decreed. In fact, getting to the bottom of the FBI’s actions four years ago is what Graham called his “promise [to] the American people.”
That’s his promise?
That very day, markets plunged 6 percent after the Federal Reserve said millions have lost jobs permanently. While the pandemic resurges and racial unrest roils the country, Trump speaks up for Confederate symbolism and floats bizarre conspiracy theories. The defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff disavow the White House’s crackdown on the First Amendment.
But by all means, let’s talk about Hillary’s emails.
“The committee has never received any emails from the Democratic National Committee or Clinton campaign even though we repeatedly asked for them,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) complained at Thursday’s session. He then traveled memory lane, from Fusion GPS to the Steele dossier, to alleged “Russian collusion” by the Clinton campaign. “What did Hillary Clinton know about the dossier and when did she know it?” Grassley demanded.
Let’s do the time warp again.
Never mind that the Justice Department’s inspector general has already issued a 478-page report on the matter. Never mind that the Senate passed a bipartisan bill adding more safeguards to future investigations, but Trump has blocked it. Never mind that Attorney General William Barr assigned a friendly prosecutor for an election-season investigation of the investigators.
Graham is so singularly focused on delivering for Trump that he blocked Democrats from adding to the subpoena list past or current Trump advisers Michael Flynn, Michael Cohen, Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Rudy Giuliani, Roger Stone and anybody else whose testimony might shift the focus from Obama. Republicans even shot down a request for the unredacted Mueller report.
Senate Democrats want to know whether Attorney General Bill Barr ordered peaceful protesters to be teargassed. No way, say the Republicans. Let’s talk about Obama and her emails.
These spineless sycophants deserve to go down to defeat in November.
Politico Morning Education reports:
DEVOS’ INTERIM FINAL RULE: The rule carries out DeVos’ policy, first announced in April, that is being challenged by two lawsuits for restricting which students can receive CARES Act (H.R. 748 ) grants. It will take effect immediately after publication in the Federal Register, which the department said would happen on June 15.
— DeVos said in a statement that the rule was aimed at eliminating any “uncertainty” for colleges about how they must distribute the funds, while carrying out the department’s “responsibility to taxpayers to administer the CARES Act faithfully.”
— Democratic lawmakers have pushed back, saying the rule violates the intent of the CARES Act. “As students across the country are struggling to make ends meet in the face of unprecedented financial challenges, Secretary DeVos’ efforts to deny some much-needed aid is cruel,” said Senate HELP ranking member Patty Murray (D-Wash.). “These extreme eligibility requirements will not only harm students, but they are also contrary to Congressional intent.” Read more from Michael Stratford.
TRUMP TO CONGRESS: ENACT SCHOOL CHOICE: President Donald Trump on Thursday said he is renewing his call on Congress to “finally enact school choice now.” During his State of the Union Address earlier this year, Trump promoted his administration’s proposal to create a new $5 billion federal tax credit to expand school choice. The Education Freedom Scholarships and Opportunity Act, introduced in the House as H.R. 1434 (116) and the Senate as S. 634 (116), has no Democratic cosponsors in either chamber. “School choice is a big deal,” he told his audience during a “Transition to Greatness” roundtable in Texas.
— Trump said unions and “others” are against school choice for the wrong reasons. “Access to education is the civil rights issue of our time,” he said, adding that he has heard that for “the last, I would say year, but it really is.” He said, “And it creates competition and other schools fight harder because all of a sudden they say, ‘Wow, we’re losing it, we have to fight hard.’”
— DeVos tweeted a video clip of Trump’s statement and wrote, “Education is the pathway to a stronger tomorrow and a stronger America for all. Thankful for @realdonaldtrump’s unwavering commitment to ALL our nation’s students and their success.
Trump tweeted that he absolutely opposed renaming military bases named to honor Confederate heroes. The renaming was proposed by military leaders and the Defense Department.
Hours later, the Republican Senate Armed Services Committee voted to rename the bases.
The Democratic Appropriations Committee Will attach a requirement to the $740 billion defense budget that the bases must be renamed.
Will Trump veto the defense appropriations—which includes pay raises for the troops—to protect the names of the bases that honor Confederate heroes (who made war against their nation and killed more Americans than all other wars combined)?
From The NY Times:
WASHINGTON — A key Senate committee voted on Wednesday to require the Pentagon to strip military bases and equipment of Confederate names, monuments or symbols within three years, setting up an election-year clash with President Trump on the issue amid a rapidly building national outcry against historical representations of racism.
The move by the Armed Services Committee to insert the mandate into a must-pass defense authorization bill, which was supported by Republicans and Democrats alike, came as Mr. Trump publicly declared his refusal to even consider removing any of the names. He raged about it on Twitter on Thursday, exhorting members of his party to resist the effort even as a growing number of Republicans on Capitol Hill said they were open to removing symbols of the Confederacy.
The conflict underscored how isolated the president is becoming, even from members of his own party, as protests of police brutality against black people fuel a broader discussion of race and identity in America.
The break is more than rhetorical. The move to include the proposal, written by Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, raised the prospect of an election-year Senate vote on the issue.
“The American people know these names have to go,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a news conference on Thursday. The president, she continued, “seems to be the only person left who doesn’t get it.”
Republican lawmakers’ willingness to break with the president on the issue comes as they have also distanced themselves from his bellicose response to the protests, instead scrambling to come up with a plan to combat racism in policing.
Dramatizing the rift between Mr. Trump and members of his own party, he lashed out on Twitter on Thursday afternoon, apparently dismayed by the support the measure was picking up in Congress.
“Seriously failed presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth ‘Pocahontas’ Warren, just introduced an Amendment on the renaming of many of our legendary Military Bases from which we trained to WIN two World Wars,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “Hopefully our great Republican Senators won’t fall for this!”
But the president’s message came as many Republicans on Capitol Hill had already endorsed or expressed openness to the idea, including the top leader in the House and several Republican senators. He posted it the day after the closed-door vote on the proposal, which would require the Defense Department to set up a panel to develop a plan to rename, within the next three years, military bases and other assets currently named for Confederate figures. The vote happened after Mr. Trump announced that his administration would not consider the idea.
A federal appeals court overturned a landmark ruling that affirmed the right to an education. Education is necessary for full citizenship, so voters can be fully informed. However the appeals court did not agree.
In April, a 3-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued a landmark decision in the Detroit literacy case, Gary B. v. Whitmer, holding that there is a “fundamental right to a basic minimum education” under the U.S. Constitution. The two-to-one decision of the three-judge panel defined the right in terms of “access to literacy.”
However, in May, the full complement of 6th Circuit judges moved to review the case “en banc”, and eradicated the decision of the three judge panel. In the meantime, the Plaintiffs had settled the case with Governor Whitmer, the main defendant. Accordingly, they informed the Court of the settlement and said that the case was now moot and should be dismissed. Certain other defendants and the legislative leaders sought to continue the case, but earlier this week, the Sixth Circuit issued a ruling that accepted the plaintiffs’ position and dismissed the case. The net effect of the complicated history of the Gary B appeal is that although two U.S. Court of Appeals judges issued a landmark ruling holding for the first time that there is a limited right to education under the U.S. Constitution, that decision is now a legal nullity. However, as Mark Rosenbaum, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs, put it, “The decision was vacated but the words will never disappear.”
William Doyle and Pasi Sahlberg have reimagined the school: Let the children play!
They are the authors of a new book with that title.
They write in an article for CNN:
When the novel coronavirus is no longer as great a threat and schools finally reopen, we should give children the one thing they will need most after enduring months of isolation, stress, physical restraint and woefully inadequate, screen-based remote learning. We should give them playtime — and lots of it.
As in-person classes begin, education administrators will presumably follow the safety guidelines of health authorities for smaller classes, staggered schedules, closing or regularly cleaning communal spaces with shared equipment, regular health checks and other precautions. But despite the limitations this may place on the students’ physical environment, schools should look for safe ways to supercharge children’s learning and well-being.
We propose that schools adopt a 90-day “golden age of play,” our term for a transitional period when traditional academic education should be balanced as much as possible with learning through play, physical and creative outlets and mental health counseling to provide support for children who will need it.
Play gives children a wide range of critical cognitive, physical, emotional and social benefits. The American Academy of Pediatrics, representing the nation’s 67,000 children’s doctors, stated in a 2012 clinical report that “play, in all its forms, needs to be considered as the ideal educational and developmental milieu for children,” including for children in poverty, and noted that “the lifelong success of children is based on their ability to be creative and to apply the lessons learned from playing.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 