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Robert Kagan: How to Stop Trump and Save Democracy

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2023 //
65

Robert Kagan wrote a gloomy essay in The Washington Post on November 30 predicting that if Trump is re-elected, he will establish a dictatorship. On December 7, he wrote another essay on how to stop Trump. The bottom line, he contends, is that Republicans must stop him. They know the danger he poses, and they alone have the credibility with Republican voters to convince them that Trump is unfit for office.

Kagan knows well that all of the other candidates for the Republican nomination (except Chris Christie) have stated that they would vote for Trump even if he is convicted of federal crimes.

But his formula to defeat Trump is to assume that Nikki Haley is best positioned to compete with Trump. He believes that the others should endorse her and that she should denounce Trump. She should make clear that Trump is unelectable because of his refusal to accept the election of 2020 and the likelihood that he will be convicted in one of his many trials.

If Republicans agree that Trump is damaged goods, he will lose a large section of his voters—not his MAGA cult, but other Republicans.

Kagan writes:

The first step is to consolidate all the anti-Trump forces in the Republican Party behind a single candidate, right now. It is obvious that candidate should be Nikki Haley and not because she’s pro-Ukraine but because she is clearly the most capable politician among the remaining candidates and the performer with the best chance, however slim, of challenging Trump. All the money and the endorsements should shift to her as quickly as possible. Yes, Ron DeSantis is likely too selfish and ambitious to drop out of the race, but if everyone else does and the remaining money and support all flow to Haley, he will quickly become irrelevant….

Trump supporters fall into roughly three categories. The great majority are completely committed to what former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman has called the “cult” of Trump. They are out of reach for Haley. Another smaller group has no problem with Trump, so long as he can beat President Biden and the Democrats next year. This faction is undoubtedly reassured by polls that say that Trump can win, so the possibility that Haley can also beat Biden is irrelevant to them. They prefer Trump, and there is no reason for them to rethink their position so long as Trump remains clearly electable. Finally, there is a small percentage of Republicans who say they will support Trump unless he is convicted; recent polls suggest these people make up roughly six percent of GOP voters in some of the key swing states…

If she is serious about trying to stop Trump, however, there is only one way to cut into his mammoth majority, and that is by raising doubts about Trump’s electability. The way to do that is to warn those Republicans still capable of listening that a Trump presidency really does pose a risk to our freedom and democracy and the Constitution. That is what will be required to win over the small percentage of Republicans who are still willing to drop Trump if he is convicted. And if Haley can begin to reel in those voters, she can begin to raise doubts in the minds of those who are supporting Trump because they think he can defeat Biden and the Democrats in November. In short, the way to beat Trump is to make him seem unelectable, and the way to make him seem unelectable is to show that he is unacceptable.

Trump will campaign on the claim that he is a victim of political persecution by the Biden asministration. If he becomes the nominee, the Republican Party will echo his claims. They will insist that the American judicial system is corrupt.

Think about that precious small percentage of Republicans who now say they would not support Trump if convicted. They are actually saying a lot more than that. These are Republicans who still regard the justice system as important and legitimate, who consider special counsel Jack Smith’s charges worthy of a jury trial and legitimate, and who for the moment think a guilty verdict, were it to come, would be legitimate. Can we count on them maintaining those views over the coming weeks and months if all they hear from Republican leaders and conservative media is that the trials are illegitimate acts of persecution? Do the people hoping to be saved by the courts think that these voters will conclude on their own that the trials are legitimate when their entire party is saying they’re not?

As Trump remakes himself into a victim of persecution, will Haley and other Republicans still insist that they will support Trump if he is the nominee? In doing so, they will be tacitly agreeing, and certainly not refuting, the claim that Biden is a dictator and Trump is being persecuted. By the time the trials get underway, that will be the standard Republican talking point. Today, it is just the most devoted Trumpers, but before long, we will see even respectable Republicans “raising questions” about the prosecutions, to the point where the entire court proceeding will be delegitimized in the eyes of the ordinary Republican voter.

What effect will that have on that small percentage of Trump supporters who now say they would drop their support if he were convicted? Those who cling to the hope that the trials will bring Trump down need to understand that the number of Republicans willing to abandon Trump because of a conviction, already small today, is going to be much smaller come spring. As the Trump narrative gains traction and becomes the baseline Republican position, Haley will become a footnote as Republicans of all stripes rally to the martyrdom of Trump…

What they need to hear right now (and for the rest of the campaign) is that they are right, that the Biden administration is not a dictatorship, that the trials are not an abuse of power, and that if Trump is convicted, justice will have been done. And they do not need to hear this from Democrats and Post columnists. They need to hear it from their fellow Republicans, from Republicans they admire. At some point, some leading Republicans are going to have to display the courage to defend the justice system even though that will put them in direct conflict with Trump and his supporters.

We probably can’t expect Haley to take the lead in making the case for Trump’s unacceptability, even though she should. But other Republicans certainly can. It is no secret what people such as Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) think about Trump. Romney’s biography is filled with whispered comments by leading Republicans privately indicating their fear and loathing of Trump. But today, those Republicans remain in their coward’s crouch, hoping to survive as they have the past eight years — by keeping their heads down, by waving off Trump’s threats and dictatorial behavior. Romney, who once had the courage to vote to convict Trump for trying to overthrow the government in 2021, now tells us “at some point you stop getting worried about what he says.” At this moment, Trump and his supporters are engaged in an attempt to obliterate history right before our eyes, to say that down is up and up is down, and that instead of destroying democracy Trump is saving democracy from the Biden tyranny, and that this is what the trials are about. And this is Romney’s response? The people who want to put their faith in the good judgment of Republican voters are counting on those voters to come to the right conclusion themselves while even their most respected Republican leaders are too frightened to defend the justice system against Trump. That is a lot of faith indeed.

But imagine a different scenario. Imagine that Republicans who know Trump poses a threat of dictatorship suddenly discovered their courage and began speaking out, and not just one or two but dozens of them — current and former elected officials, former high-ranking officials from the Trump and past Republican administrations. Imagine if the wing of the Republican Party that still believes in defending the Constitution identified itself that way, as “Constitutional Republicans” implacably opposed to the man who blatantly attempted to subvert the Constitution and has indicated his willingness to do so again as president.

Then the Republican primary campaign would become a struggle between those defending the Constitution and those endorsing its possible dismantlement at the hands of a dictator. That small percentage of Republicans who now say they would drop Trump if convicted would remain in play, and those now sticking with Trump because he can beat Biden might have reason to start questioning that assumption. It would not take a lot of speeches, or well-placed interviews, or appearances on Sunday shows, by the right people to change the conversation. But that, it seems to me, is the only chance Haley has of giving Trump a run for his money in the primaries.

If Haley can’t beat Trump in the primaries, he thinks she should launch a third party campaign.

Could this coalition come into being? Yes. But it will require extraordinary action by a number of important individuals. People will have to take risks and make sacrifices, but is it asking too much? The risk of standing up today will not be nearly as great as it might be after January 2025. Does McConnell really want to go down in history as the silent midwife to a dictatorship in America? Can Romney not see that it is his destiny to lead the way at this critical moment in America’s history. Did Paul Ryan sell his soul for a Fox board seat? All these people went into public service for a reason. Wasn’t it to rise to an occasion such as this? Former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney shouldn’t have to fight this alone. For people such as Condoleezza Rice and James Baker and Henry Paulson Jr., what was the point of acquiring all this experience and respectability, if not to use it at this moment of national peril? Why are Sens. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and John Cornyn (R-Tex.) defending Trump when they must know he is a threat to American democracy and the Constitution? Where is Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, the man who courageously pushed back against Trump’s effort to steal the 2020 election? Where are all those officials who learned firsthand what a danger Trump was and who have occasionally said it out loud, people such as former attorney general William Barr and former White House chief of staff Gen. John Kelly? Where is former vice president Mike Pence, who single-handedly saved our system of government almost three years ago? Was that his last act? And for that matter, where is former president George W. Bush, who is well known to be appalled by Trump? A word from him would go a long way to emboldening others. What a service he could perform for his country.

Kagan says that stopping Trump would not take a miracle. It would take courage.

How likely is that?

He concludes:

Some readers of my last essay asked fairly: What can an ordinary citizen do? The answer is, what they always do when they really care about something, when they regard it as a matter of life and death. They become activists. They get organized. They hold peaceful and legal rallies and marches. They sign petitions. They deluge their representatives, Republican or Democrat, with calls and mail, asking them to speak up and defend the Constitution. They call out their political leaders, state and local, and give them courage to stand up as well. Americans used to do these sorts of things. Have they forgotten how? At the risk of sounding Capra-esque, if every American who fears a Trump dictatorship acted on those fears, voiced them, convinced others, influenced their elected officials, then yes, that could make a difference. Another ship is passing that can still save us. Will we swim toward it this time, or will we let it pass, as we have all the others? I am deeply pessimistic, but I could not more fervently wish to be proved wrong.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Democracy, Elections, Fascism, Trump

Robert Kagan: Will Trump End Democracy?

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2023 //
36

Over the past week, there was a surge of articles about the danger that Donald Trump poses to our democracy. Trump ratcheted up his threats to punish his enemies and to replace the civil service with Trump loyalists. When his admirer Sean Hannity asked him point blank whether he intended to be a dictator—expecting he would say “of course not”—Trump responded he would be a dictator “only on the first day,” when he would command the completion of the border wall with Mexico and “drill, drill, drill.” Trump’s rhetoric no longer sounds like a normal candidate. But he was never a normal candidate.

Some commentators noted that his threats were unprecedented, yet they barely caused a ripple. He said that certain generals who served him yet denounced him deserved to be executed. What would the press have done if Obama had made such a statement? It would have been front-page news for days, not a blip. Trump has normalized threats of violence. His base has come to expect promises of violence from him. He doesn’t disappoint them.

In his first term, he reached out to some who were not in his personal orbit. He won’t make that mistake if there is a next time.

The article that generated the most attention was written by Robert Kagan in The Washington Post, titled “A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Ibrvitable. We Should Stop Pretending.”

Kagan was a noted neoconservative but left the GOP in 2016 because he couldn’t accept Trump. His recent article is 7,500 words. I read it late at night and couldn’t sleep. Kagan’s article laid out the case that Trump will win the nomination; that no elected Republican will stand up to him; that he stands a good chance of being re-elected; and that if he is, he will surround himself with toadies and wreak havoc on our democracy. He predicted, as the title says, that Trump would have no guardrails, no respect for the norms of the Presidency, and no regard for the Constitution.

He said that would use the Justice Department to harass and punish his enemies.

A few quotes from his article:

Let’s stop the wishful thinking and face the stark reality: There is a clear path to dictatorship in the United States, and it is getting shorter every day. In 13 weeks, Donald Trump will have locked up the Republican nomination.

Once Trump sweeps Super Tuesday, he writes, Republicans will fall in line behind him and so will big donors. All of the other GOP candidates except Chris Christie will endorse him.

Meanwhile, Biden will have trouble unifying his party. The news media love to run stories about disenchanted Democratic voters who will stay home. Biden faces challenges from third-party candidates, including Jill Stein, Robert Kennedy Jr., and possibly a No Labels candidate like Joe Manchin.

Trump “enjoys the usual advantage of non-incumbency, namely: the lack of any responsibility. Biden must carry the world’s problems like an albatross around his neck, like any incumbent, but most incumbents can at least claim that their opponent is too inexperienced to be entrusted with these crises. Biden cannot. On Trump’s watch, there was no full-scale invasion of Ukraine, no major attack on Israel, no runaway inflation, no disastrous retreat from Afghanistan. It is hard to make the case for Trump’s unfitness to anyone who does not already believe it.”

Trump enjoys some unusual advantages for a challenger, moreover. Even Ronald Reagan did not have Fox News and the speaker of the House in his pocket. To the degree there are structural advantages in the coming general election, in short, they are on Trump’s side. And that is before we even get to the problem that Biden can do nothing to solve: his age.

Trump also enjoys another advantage. The national mood less than a year before the election is one of bipartisan disgust with the political system in general. Rarely in American history has democracy’s inherent messiness been more striking. In Weimar Germany, Hitler and other agitators benefited from the squabbling of the democratic parties, right and left, the endless fights over the budget, the logjams in the legislature, the fragile and fractious coalitions. German voters increasingly yearned for someone to cut through it all and get something — anything — done. It didn’t matter who was behind the political paralysis, either, whether the intransigence came from the right or the left.

Today, Republicans might be responsible for Washington’s dysfunction, and they might pay a price for it in downballot races. But Trump benefits from dysfunction because he is the one who offers a simple answer: him. In this election, only one candidate is running on the platform of using unprecedented power to get things done, to hell with the rules. And a growing number of Americans claim to want that, in both parties. Trump is running against the system. Biden is the living embodiment of the system. Advantage: Trump…

If Trump does win the election, he will immediately become the most powerful person ever to hold that office. Not only will he wield the awesome powers of the American executive — powers that, as conservatives used to complain, have grown over the decades — but he will do so with the fewest constraints of any president, fewer even than in his own first term.

What limits those powers? The most obvious answer is the institutions of justice — all of which Trump, by his very election, will have defied and revealed as impotent. A court system that could not control Trump as a private individual is not going to control him better when he is president of the United States and appointing his own attorney general and all the other top officials at the Justice Department. Think of the power of a man who gets himself elected president despite indictments, courtroom appearances and perhaps even conviction? Would he even obey a directive of the Supreme Court? Or would he instead ask how many armored divisions the chief justice has?
Will a future Congress stop him? Presidents can accomplish a lot these days without congressional approval, as even Barack Obama showed. The one check Congress has on a rogue president, namely, impeachment and conviction, has already proved all but impossible — even when Trump was out of office and wielded modest institutional power over his party.

Another traditional check on a president is the federal bureaucracy, that vast apparatus of career government officials who execute the laws and carry on the operations of government under every president. They are generally in the business of limiting any president’s options. As Harry S. Truman once put it, “Poor Ike. He’ll say ‘do this’ and ‘do that’ and nothing at all will happen.” That was a problem for Trump is his first term, partly because he had no government team of his own to fill the administration. This time, he will. Those who choose to serve in his second administration will not be taking office with the unstated intention of refusing to carry out his wishes. If the Heritage Foundation has its way, and there is no reason to believe it won’t, many of those career bureaucrats will be gone, replaced by people carefully “vetted” to ensure their loyalty to Trump.

Trump might decide he wants a third term. Who will stop him? The Constitution? The 22nd Amendment? The Congress? Not likely.

Trump as President will pursue those who tried to stop him. He pledged in his Veterans Day speech to “root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our Country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American Dream.” Note the equation of himself with “America and the American Dream.” It is he they are trying to destroy, he believes, and as president, he will return the favor.

What will that look like? Trump has already named some of those he intends to go after once he is elected: senior officials from his first term such as retired Gen. John F. Kelly, Gen. Mark A. Milley, former attorney general William P. Barr and others who spoke against him after the 2020 election; officials in the FBI and the CIA who investigated him in the Russia probe; Justice Department officials who refused his demands to overturn the 2020 election; members of the Jan. 6 committee; Democratic opponents including Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.); and Republicans who voted for or publicly supported his impeachment and conviction.

But that’s just the start. After all, Trump will not be the only person seeking revenge. His administration will be filled with people with enemies’ lists of their own, a determined cadre of “vetted” officials who will see it as their sole, presidentially authorized mission to “root out” those in the government who cannot be trusted. Many will simply be fired, but others will be subject to career-destroying investigations. The Trump administration will be filled with people who will not need explicit instruction from Trump, any more than Hitler’s local gauleiters needed instruction. In such circumstances, people “work toward the Führer,” which is to say, they anticipate his desires and seek favor through acts they think will make him happy, thereby enhancing their own influence and power in the process.

Prepare for a new McCarthyism as Trump and his MAGA lackeys go after the “anti-American” Democrats whom he calls “”Communists,””Marxists,” “Fascists,” and “vermin.”

How will Americans respond to the first signs of a regime of political persecution? Will they rise up in outrage? Don’t count on it. Those who found no reason to oppose Trump in the primaries and no reason to oppose him in the general are unlikely to experience a sudden awakening when some former Trump-adjacent official such as Milley finds himself under investigation for goodness knows what. They will know only that Justice Department prosecutors, the IRS, the FBI and several congressional committees are looking into it. And who is to say that those being hounded are not in fact tax cheaters, or Chinese spies, or perverts, or whatever they might be accused of? Will the great body of Americans even recognize these accusations as persecution and the first stage of shutting down opposition to Trump across the country?

Kagan says that the odds of a Trump dictatorship are growing by the day. In 2016, it was completely improbable that a man such as trump would win the Republican nomination, and completely unlikely that he would win the Presidency. And it was unthinkable that when he lost in 2020, he would insist that he won in a landslide, and even crazier that his base would believe the Big Lie. Republicans will cower in fear before him; Democrats will protest, maybe take to the streets, but Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act to shut them down.

Who will have the courage to stand up to Trump when the risk is not just losing your political office but arrest, detention, public humiliation, and the loss of your freedom?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Character, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Fascism, Republicans, Trump

Orlando Sentinel to Zieglers: Resign! I Disagree.

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2023 //
26

Christian and Bridget Ziegler have been leaders of the extreme rightwing in Florida. They are (or were) close to Governor DeSantis and Donald Trump. But when they became ensnared in a sex scandal, they were exposed as rank hypocrites. Christian thus far insists he won’t step down as chairman of the Florida Republican Party. Bridget Ziegler was one of the three co-founders of Moms for Liberty, which led the fight to ban books about homosexuality and to harass transgender students. The website of Moms for Liberty now claims there were only two co-founders; she has been written out of their narrative. She’s a non-person. The editorial board of the Orlando Sentinel says it’s time for both of them to resign. Karma is a bitch.

The deepening troubles of Christian and Bridget Ziegler would be just another local news story if they were two private people. But they are highly public figures who are suddenly in a heap of trouble, and their sex life is in headlines.

He is chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, close to both Gov. Ron DeSantis and former president Donald Trump. She is a nationally known conservative culture warrior, a Sarasota County School Board member and a co-founder of the book-banning Moms for Liberty, which denounces all things LGBTQ. She is also a DeSantis appointee to the Disney World oversight board.

Christian Ziegler is accused, though not formally charged, of raping a woman at her apartment in Sarasota. She told police of a previous three-way sexual encounter with both Zieglers and said she was “mostly in” for Bridget — not him.

Sarasota police and the Florida Trident — the reporting arm of the nonprofit Florida Center for Governmental Accountability — say Bridget Ziegler confirmed the previous threesome. They had recorded Christian Ziegler promising his accuser that there would be another. Text messages showed that the woman had told him not to come to her house without Bridget. He went there anyway and admits to having sex with her, but insists it was consensual.

DeSantis wants Ziegler out, but claims to be powerless to remove him. (To that we say: Since when has that stopped him?) So do other leading Republicans: Sen. Rick Scott, all three Cabinet members and both leaders of the state Legislature. Conspicuously missing from their statements are expressions of concern for the possible rape victim.

The state party vice chairman, Evan Power, has called a closed-door Dec. 17 executive committee meeting in Orlando to “censure or discipline” the chairman after Ziegler refused to call the meeting himself.

Bridget Ziegler remains on the school board, feeding the nationwide mockery over the blatant hypocrisy between her private life and her public preaching. She is also under pressure to resign.

The presumption of innocence

Christian Ziegler is legally innocent unless he’s convicted. There is nothing on the public record that Bridget Ziegler could be charged with, since hypocrisy is not a crime. Neither is a ménage à trois among consenting adults. Her virulent hatred for all things LGBTQ in public while conducting a bisexual tryst in private is damning only in the court of public opinion.

But the Zieglers show contempt for public opinion and for the Republican political machine that enriched them and made them prominent public figures. They should retire discreetly to private life while the criminal investigation proceeds.

Whether she can ever again be a credible member of a school board, or maintain any connection with Moms for Liberty, is in serious doubt. She should resign, too.

Even if she doesn’t, DeSantis clearly holds power over the position he gave her, on the board of the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. Why hasn’t he yanked that appointment, or demanded that she step down?

“She is nothing but a distraction from before and only getting worse and it will never go away as long as she sits there,” fellow School Board member Tom Edwards told the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

A pariah to the cause

Some organizations see the hypocrisy in the own ranks.

Moms for Liberty, its credibility further damaged, raced to distance itself from Ziegler and announced that she left its national leadership three years ago, even as she continued to propagate its ideology of intolerance.

She’s also been jettisoned from an organization that “trains conservatives.” Her latest financial disclosure form lists $64,101 in income from the Leadership Institute LLC in Arlington, Va., nearly twice her school board salary of $33,916. Until Wednesday, it listed her as vice president of its School Board Leadership Program. Her name disappeared later that day from the staff list…

Christian Ziegler, meanwhile, regurgitates the standard defense of influential men accused of sexual assault. He claims he’s the victim, if you can believe that.

‘A country to save’

“We have a country to save, and I am not going to let false allegations of a crime put that mission on the bench as I wait for the process to wrap up,” he said.

Like Trump, who supported his election as party chair, and like DeSantis, whose slogan is “Never Back Down,” Ziegler advised a Moms for Liberty national conference to “Never apologize. Ever.” It was a reference to a Moms for Liberty chapter that apologized for using a quote from Adolf Hitler in its newsletter.

As a political strategist, he is ruthless. “Until we get every Democrat out of office and no Democrat considers running for office, we’re going to continue to step on the gas and move forward in Florida,” he said on X, formerly Twitter, last February, when he was elected party chairman.

Until no Democrat dares to run?

Across Florida, teachers are afraid to acknowledge to their students that same-sex relationships exist. Books are being taken off library shelves because they tell the truth about the modern implications of slavery and racism. Works of towering literary merit are being treated like smut because of brief passages describing sexual encounters. Teenaged victims of rape face the possibility that they will be forced to carry their attackers’ babies to term. Transgender Floridians are terrified they’ll lose access to the health care they depend upon.

This is the world the Zieglers helped to make. Now they should live by its narrow, hateful strictures.

I disagree with the editorial. Christian and Bridget committed no crime. He is a bully, but everyone knew that. Let him remain as the face of the state Republican Party. Bridget inveighed against the dangers of gay sex, but she indulged in it herself. She even harassed a member of the Sarasota school board because he is gay. She should remain on the school board and own up to her bisexuality. Maybe contrition will lead her to new views, inspire her to empathy, and enable her to retract her intolerance. We can always hope.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, DeSantis, Florida, Hypocrisy, Scandal, Trump

Peter Greene: Vouchers Are NOT “Saving Poor Kids from Failing Schools”

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2023 //
7

A quarter-century after the launch of vouchers in Milwaukee, we now know a lot that we didn’t know then. The sales pitch was always humanitarian: vouchers, said its rightwing advocates, would “save poor kids from failing schools.” Except they didn’t. We now know, writes Peter Greene, that vouchers do not save poor kids from failing schools. They are a subsidy for students who were already in private and religious schools. Maybe that was their purpose all along.

One other thing we have learned about vouchers: the first voucher program is for low-income kids, but it is the camel’s nose under the tent. The income restrictions will be raised again and again, and more groups of eligible students will be eligible for vouchers. And one day, there will be vouchers for everyone, without regard to income or need.

He writes:

Voucher program after voucher program is launched with the same promise–this program will rescue disadvantaged students from public schools that can’t get the job done. But now that they’ve been around for a few years, we can see pretty clearly what they actually do.

They expand.

They subsidize private school costs for families that were already in private schools.

Arizona’s program is growing into a state budget buster. New Hampshire’s state subsidy for private school tuition is mushrooming in just three years, and roughly 90% of the students using vouchers are still students who were already in private school. Iowa’s program cost looks to be tremendous, with 19,000 students approved for vouchers.

Arkansas is joining the crowd, and provides a fine example of how these programs grow and who they actually benefit.

Arkansas’s voucher program was set up to start with disabled and low-income students. One immediate effect has been a boom in the Fake Your Way To Disability industry in Arkansas, where options to “prove” your eligibility include “a note from your doctor.” And the Arkansas Times has learned that many students qualifying for vouchers didn’t not even clear that low bar. It’s a bit of a Catch-22, as students often have difficulty getting admitted to a private school if they have an IEP, 504 plan, or disability. Still, almost half of Arkansas’s voucher students were approved based on some sort of claim of disability.

That may contribute to Arkansas’s numbers– of its voucher users, 95% did not attend a public school last year.

And the program is only slated to expand as the bars for qualifying are lowered even further.

Proponents of vouchers, like Governor Reynolds of Iowa, point at the expansion and huge cost runs as signs that families were “hungry for educational freedom.” Well, no. What it shows is that families like free money from the state to help pay for the expenses they have already freely chosen for their children.

Please open the link to finish the article.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Funding, Lies, Vouchers

John Thompson: The Most Important Lesson That Students Need Today

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2023 //
21

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, write about what matters most to students today: learning to pay attention in a world of screens and distractions.

He writes:

D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh, and Peter Schmidt begin their New York Times opinion piece, “Powerful Forces Are Fracking Our Attention. We Can fight Back,” with an eloquent version of a statement that should have long been obvious:

We are witnessing the dark side of our new technological lives, whose extractive profit models amount to the systematic fracking of human beings: pumping vast quantities of high-pressure media content into our faces to force up a spume of the vaporous and intimate stuff called attention, which now trades on the open market. Increasingly powerful systems seek to ensure that our attention is never truly ours.

Then Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt use equally insightful language to explain why “We Can Fight Back” against “the little satanic mills that live in our pockets.” They recall that “for two centuries, champions of liberal democracy have agreed that individual and collective freedom requires literacy.” Today we face widespread complaints that reading is being undermined by “perpetual distraction,” due to commercial use of digital technologies. They add, “What democracy most needs now is an attentive citizenry — human beings capable of looking up from their screens, together.”

“Powerful Forces Are Fracking Our Attention. We Can Fight Back” calls for a “revolution [which] starts in our classrooms.” They explain, “We must flip the script on teachers’ perennial complaint. Instead of fretting that students’ flagging attention doesn’t serve education, we must make attention itself the thing being taught.” They draw upon the work of “informal coalitions of educators, activists and artists who are conducting grass-roots experiments to try to make that possible. Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt call it “attention activism.

Due to these worldwide efforts, “common ground is rediscovered in the weave of collective attention.” They seek ways “to create, beyond the confines of our personalized digital universes, something resembling a shared world.” One set of starting places, museums, public libraries, universities, as well as classrooms, remind me of a time when I was a student, and the first half of my teaching career, when field trips were widely celebrated, and before critical thinking was subordinated to test prep.

“Powerful Forces Are Fracking Our Attention. We Can fight Back” recommends another practice that I’ve long struggled with, “observations of absolutely whatever unfolds in the world,” in order pay “particular attention to the supposedly mundane … events that might under normal circumstances have gone unnoted.” It reminded me of a conversation with a student where we agreed that we don’t want to depend on beer or marijuana in order to fully appreciate a sunset. It was hard for me to later realize that I also took that shortcut in order to slow down and fully appreciate such beauty.

Next, I left my computer, and my dog and I got into our complicated new hybrid car to take a short ride to the park for a walk. Of course, the irony of driving to the walk is obvious. Then I figured out how to push the buttons for defrosting the window, rather than scrape the ice off. But then, technology taught me a new skill for paying attention to “normal circumstances” that had “gone unnoted.” I became enthralled the bubbles that broke loose from the coat of ice as it melted and dripped down the windshield. (Perhaps due to that experience, the park’s beautiful fall colors were even more awesome.)

Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt also reminded me of conversations I had had as a young Baby Boomer with family members, neighbors and other mentors. So many adults coached me on developing “inner directedness,” not “outer-directedness,” and to not be “like the Red River, a mile wide and a foot deep.” I was taught that my real goal shouldn’t be higher grades, but “learning how to learn.” And I’ll never forget the elementary school principal who took us to the junior high to watch Edward R. Murrow interviewing John Maynard Keynes, about the real purpose of school – which was not getting a job. Our goal should be learning how to learn how to be creative after technology reduced the workweek into 15 hours.

Of course, that hopefulness seems laughable today, but it brings us back to Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt and their diagnosis of why today’s technology has become so destructive. They linked to ATTENTION LIBERATION MOVEMENTS(or ALMS) that resist the “powerful new financial, commercial, and technological system that is commodifying human attention as never before.” It promotes “RADICAL HUMAN ATTENTION” to nurture “unrivaled access to the goodness of life;” and second, “that present circumstances present new and imperiling obstacles to human attentional capacities.” For instance, these bottom-up efforts seek to educate young people how, “We operate in a world in which attention is increasingly bought and sold. Bought and sold by powerful interests, pursuing wealth — pursuing ‘eyeballs,’” on screens.

And, of course, the subsequent undermining of inner-directedness, social ties, and critical thinking paved the way to today’s rightwing assault on democracy.

Although I was never as eloquent as Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt, but I’ve unsuccessfully advocated for their type of approach for a quarter of a century. My first encounter with a cell phone occurred the day after a gang-related murder when my students affiliated with the “Crips” stared at a new student, a “Blood,” who was secretly typing into a gadget I’d never seen before, who was requesting armed backup. Given the way that cell phones, predictably, increased violence and, predictably, undermined classroom instruction, I lobbied for our school to commit to regulating phones and engaging in cross-generational conversations about digital literacy and ethics.

Although I personally communicated with my students about “using digital technology,” but “not being used by it,” our school system refused to touch these issues. Before long, watching students who were glued to their phones, it seemed obvious we were also facing a crisis of loneliness, made much, much worse by screen time.

My personal experience thus gives me reasons for both hope and pessimism. Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt build on the same human community strengths that were crucial for me, and embraced by students in our phone-free classroom. But I can’t ignore the three decades of refusals by the systems I’ve worked with to tackle the challenge.

Then again, on the same day that the New York Times commentary was published, National Public Radio reported that California “joins a growing movement to teach media literacy.” The next day, the Washington Post called on parents to support a ban on smartphones. So, maybe the time is right for the wisdom of Burnett, Loh, and Schmidt, who make the case for “what democracy most needs now is an attentive citizenry — human beings capable of looking up from their screens, together.”

Categories Education Reform, Students, Teachers and Teaching, Technology

Leonard Leo Is Pushing for Public Funding of Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2023 //
11

Leonard Leo is one of the most powerful people in the nation. Get to know him. He led the conservative lawyer’s group The Federalist Society. He personally prepared the list of judges for Trump’s selection to the Supreme Court. He can take credit for the appointment of dozens of federal judges in district courts and appellate courts. In tribute to his effectiveness, a Chicago businessman gifted him with $1.6 billion to use as he wished to advance conservatism.

Politico reports that Leonard Leo’s latest cause is promoting religious charter schools, which would be fully funded by the public. The target, which he hopes to demolish, is separation of church and state.

At issue is the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Oklahoma’s push to create the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the nation’s first religious school entirely funded by taxpayers. The school received preliminary approval from the state’s charter school board in June. If it survives legal challenges, it would open the door for state legislatures across the country to direct taxpayer funding to the creation of Christian or other sectarian schools.

Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, acknowledges that public funding of St. Isidore is at odds with over 150 years of Supreme Court decisions. He said the justices have misunderstood Thomas Jefferson’s intent when he said there should be a wall separating church and state, but that the current conservative-dominated court seems prepared to change course.

“Jefferson didn’t mean that the government shouldn’t be giving public benefits to religious communities toward a common goal,” he said. “The court rightly over the last decade or so has been saying, ‘No, look, we’ve got this wrong and we’re gonna right the ship here.’ ”

Behind the effort to change the law are Christian conservative groups and legal teams who, over the past decade, have been beneficiaries of the billion-dollar network of nonprofits largely built by Leo, the Federalist Society co-chairman.

Leo’s network organized multi-million-dollar campaigns to support the confirmation of most of the court’s six conservative justices. Leo himself served as adviser to President Donald Trump on judicial nominations, including those of Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett…

“The Christian conservative legal movement, which has its fingerprints all over what’s going on in Oklahoma, is a pretty small, tight knit group of individuals,” said Paul Collins, a legal studies and politics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “They recognize the opportunity to get a state to fund a religious institution is a watershed moment,” said Collins, author of Friends of the Supreme Court: Interest Groups and Judicial Decision Making, adding that“They have a very, very sympathetic audience at the Supreme Court. When you have that on the Supreme Court you’re going to put a lot of resources into bringing these cases quickly.”

In Oklahoma, the legal team representing the state’s virtual charter school board, the Alliance Defending Freedom, helped develop arguments that led to the end of Roe v. Wade. It is significantly funded by donor-advised funds that allow their patrons to keep their identities secret but which receive large amounts of money from Leo-aligned groups.

They include Donors Trust, often called the “dark money ATM” of the conservative movement. In recent years, Donors Trust has been the largest single beneficiary of Leo’s primary dark money group, the Judicial Education Project. Donors Trust, in turn, gave $4 million to Leo’s Federalist Society in 2022, according to the IRS filings.

Since 2020, when Leo received a $1.6 billion windfall from Chicago electronics magnate Barre Seid, among the largest contributions to a political advocacy group in history, other groups funded by Leo’s network have become substantial contributors to ADF. For instance, Schwab Charitable Fund, which has given at least $4 million to ADF, received $153 million in 2021 from a new Leo-aligned nonprofit that received the Seid funding.

ADF Senior Counsel Phil Sechler said in an emailed statement that his group is defending the board “in order to ensure people of faith are not treated like second-class citizens.” Sechler, who said he “cannot predict” whether the case will land at the Supreme Court, did not comment on the group’s funding.

St. Isidore is represented by the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Initiative, a legal clinic created by the law school at the University of Notre Dame. At Notre Dame, law professor Nicole Stelle Garnett has worked with St. Isidore from the start of its application process.

In the same timeframe, Garnett joined the board of the Federalist Society, where Leo is co-chairman. She also joined the advisory council of a Catholic University law school initiative funded by a $4.25 million anonymous gift directed by Leo, according to a March 2021 press release. Justice Samuel Alito is its honorary chairman.

The Notre Dame clinic’s director is another alumni of Leo’s network, Stephanie Barclay, an attorney who spent multiple years at another legal nonprofit named after a Catholic martyr where Leo sits on the board: the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.

The clinic itself was announced a few monthsbefore the confirmation of Barrett, who was a Notre Dame law professor for 15 years. The June, 2020, announcement of the clinic’s creation stated that Barclay would take a leave of absence to clerk for Gorsuch during the same time period — 2021 and 2022 — that the group was working with the Oklahoma archdiocese on its St. Isidore application. In June of 2022, the court also overturned Roe; a month later, the clinic funded a trip for Justice Alito to be feted at a gala in Rome.

Clinic spokeswoman Kate Monaghan Connolly declined to say if Barclay has done any work on behalf of St. Isidore, including before, during or after her clerkship. The clinic declined comment on its funders.

The clinic “has defended the freedom of religion or belief for all people across a wide variety of projects,” including Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and an Apache tribe, said Monaghan.

As St. Isidore and its allies readied for legal battle, Farley said, Notre Dame brought in a corporate team at the law firm Dechert LLP, including Michael McGinley, who worked on selecting judicial nominees at the Trump White House at the time Leo was advising the president. McGinley clerked for Gorsuch when he was a 10th Circuit appeals judge and for Alito at the Supreme Court. He accompanied Gorsuch to his confirmation hearings. He is not employed by Notre Dame, said Connolly. He is working “pro bono” for St. Isidore, Farley said….

Those backing the St. Isidore application face a formidable array of critics and opponents. Charter schools are required by Oklahoma statute to be non-sectarian, and in its application, the archdiocese says the school would be part of the “evangelizing mission of the Church.”

Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, a Republican, says the proposed school violates both the U.S. and the state Constitution, and he is suing to stop it. Separately, a group of 10 plaintiffs including public school parents and faith leaders represented by groups including Americans for Separation of Church and State filed a lawsuit warning that the creation of the school will erode a pillar of American democracy: the wall of separation between church and state.

The plaintiffs in that case are calling on the Oklahoma judge presiding over it, C. Brent Dishman, to recuse himself. Dishman sits on the board of the College of the Ozarks, an evangelical college that was represented by ADF in a suit against the Biden administrationover transgender bathroom policy.

The school’s detractors say the national implications of the dispute are not getting enough attention. They include Melissa Abdo, a practicing Catholic and school board member in Jenks, Oklahoma, and Robert Franklin, a Republican-appointed member of a state virtual charter school board who last summer voted against the school’s application.

If the law were to allow public funding of religious schools, legislatures in conservative states would come under immediate pressure to help bail out troubled religious school systems: Catholic and Protestant churches are shuttering due to significant declines in church attendance and financial support as Americans become increasingly secular.

The 1.8 million-student Catholic education system received a lifeline through the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision in the case of Carson v. Makin, which required states with voucher systems to help students afford private schools to allow the money to be spent on religious academies. The influx of public money was already helping the Catholic Church to stave off parish closings, according to a 2017 National Bureau of Economic Research studythat called vouchers “a dominant source of funding for many churches.”

“It’s not about the 500 kids. The game is to get this to the Supreme Court,” said Franklin. “If the court approves this, it changes everything” about public education in America, he said.

“It’s been extremely unsettling,” said Franklin, noting that the state already has six virtual schools to serve children of all faiths and that some of the school’s biggest backers, including Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, had previously bashed virtual learning as ineffective.

Please open the link to read the full article.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Elections, Funding, Oklahoma, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Trump, Vouchers

Israeli Peace Activist: Teach Compassion, Not Hate

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2023 //
55

Christiane Amanpour interviewed Robi Damelin, an Israeli peace activist, about her organization’s work to replace hatred with compassion. Damelin’s teenage son was killed by a Palestinian sniper 21 years ago, and she has dedicated her life since then to building a parents group of both Israelis and Palestinians.

She advocates listening to the stories of others. She recognizes the terrible suffering of Palestinians, and she works with Palestinian friends to foster understanding.

The hope for the future of both Israelis and Palestinians lies with enlightened leadership, which neither side has now. Damelin remains steadfast in believing that change will come, built on a mutual desire to end the cycle of fear and death.

Damelin speaks for me, and I hope, for most people. She wants peace and dignity for all sides, and an end to shouting and hatred, which only breeds more shouting and hatred.

Please watch the interview. It is inspiring.

Categories Equity, History, Hope, International, Love

Alexandra Petri: If You Need Medical Advice in Texas, Call State Atty-General Ken Paxton

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2023 //
13

Kate Cox of Dallas, Texas, learned recently that the baby she is carrying has a genetic condition that is typically deadly, trisomy 18. She asked a court to allow her to have an abortion, and the judge agreed to permit the abortion (the judge is female).

But Ken Paxton, the State Attorney General, has threatened to punish any doctor and hospital that participate in the abortion. The Texas Supreme Court issued a temporary injunction blocking an abortion. Fox has had two caesarean births and fears that she may never be able to conceive again if forced to deliver a baby that has little chance of survival.

Who decides? Kate Cox’s doctor? Ken Paxton? The Texas Supreme Court?

Alexandra Petri, humorist for The Washington Post, comments on Paxton’s intervention:

“Judge Guerra Gamble is not medically qualified to make this determination and it should not be relied upon. A TRO is no substitute for medical judgment.”

— Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, writing to doctors who have received a court order allowing an abortion to end a nonviable pregnancy

There is no substitute for medical judgment, except the judgment of me, Ken Paxton.

Am I a doctor? No. I’m something better than a doctor: a Ken. My accessories include: no medical expertise and a boundless reservoir of cruelty. And one time, I saw a horse. I have also been told that my handwriting is bad and that I am not patient. This all screams “doctor” to me.

If we were on a plane or in a theater and someone yelled, “There is an emergency! Is there a doctor in the house?” I would absolutely raise my hand. “I am a man in a position of political authority in Texas happy to make life hell for all pregnant people. In the state of Texas, that’s better than a doctor!”

Indeed, the process for obtaining an abortion in Texas is simple. All you have to do is get a recommendation from your doctor that one is medically necessary, hire a legal team, get your case in front of a judge and obtain a court order! And then a man named Ken gets to say, “No! Let’s take this to the Supreme Court. Also, if you proceed, I will threaten your doctors!” And then the Texas Supreme Court gets to affirm Ken’s preference and halt your order. Simple. Routine. Elegant.

Texas Supreme Court temporarily halts order that allows pregnant woman to have an abortion

“This seems like a horrible, ghoulish way to behave when a person needs to access emergency medical care,” you might say. Sure! But we are not talking about a person in this case. We are talking about a woman. Totally different, in my medical opinion.

Am I a doctor? Look, I’ve always felt that nothing should limit what you can be or do, except the objections of a man named Ken in the state of Texas. Well, I’m a man named Ken in the state of Texas, and I think I am probably a doctor. And the state Supreme Court agrees.

I mean, of course, in all ways that count (chiefly, I get to make medical decisions for you), I am a doctor. Actually, maybe it would even be better if I weren’t! That would keep me from being unduly hidebound and unimaginative when faced with questions like: Which pregnancies are viable? Which are life-threatening? For too long, we’ve been constrained by what was medically possible. No more. I always try to bring an open mind and lots of questions. Should blood really be inside the body rather than outside? Maybe, instead of an epidural, we should try prayer? If a body has a uterus, then is there any room in it for legal rights? Questions of that kind!

What I don’t know about women’s health could fill a book! A book that I would refuse to read, on principle.

I am a small-government conservative. I believe that the government should be so small that it can fit into your uterus and make all medical decisions for you. Don’t try to expel it! That’s not allowed. Not in Texas! I am not a doctor, but, as a doctor, I will tell you: It is not medically safe.

I can’t believe that these judges are trying to interfere in a medical decision, as we have forced them to do under Texas state law. The effrontery! The gall! A substance I believe that I know a lot about, from my years practicing medicine! It’s what the brain is made of!

TO BE CLEAR, I AM TECHNICALLY NOT A DOCTOR, but I do get mad when people call Jill Biden one. I am only not a doctor in the sense that I haven’t been to medical school, was never a resident and think that there is a strong chance babies are carried by storks. Teach the controversy! I also have not read an anatomy book. (I hear they contain inappropriate pictures! More information requested from those in the know!) But in every other sense, I am a doctor: I am a male Republican Texan in a position of authority.

Want an abortion? In Texas, we believe in bodily autonomy and control over your medical choices. For me, Ken. Not for you, yourself. You can’t be trusted with it! But don’t worry. In Texas, there is no substitute for medical judgment. Oh, sorry! Typo. In Texas, there is no (substitute for medical judgment). The “No!” is from me, Ken Paxton.

Categories Gender, Health, Stupid, Texas

Virginia: The Long Forgotten Story of the Danville Massacre of 1883

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2023 //
4

Many states have passed laws that ban the teaching of accurate history. Sometimes these laws ban “divisive concepts,” some ban anything that might cause students to feel uncomfortable, some find other language to warn teachers and textbook publishers to omit the shameful events of the past, especially the racist treatment of people of color.

In Florida, where the state went to great lengths to whitewash the teaching of Black history, one man has devoted himself to telling the truth. That man is Dr. Marvin Dunn. Dr. Dunn was a keynote speaker at the annual conference of the Network for Public Education. In the meanwhile, you can read his book A History of Florida Through Black Eyes.

In response to Dr. Dunn’s moving presentation, a friend of NPE sent me the following article about the Danville Massacre of 1883. We now know that Reconstruction was a period of impressive racial progress. Formerly enslaved people voted, opened small businesses, and asserted their newly won rights.

But the former Confederates found this rebalancing of racial relationships intolerable. The Danville Massacre put an end to a period of reconciliation and installed Jim Crow, cancelling out the gains of Reconstruction.

The author of the article could not remember learning about this important event in the state’s history.

Learning the truth about history doesn’t make children uncomfortable. It makes them informed.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Extremism, Fake, History, Virginia

National Education Policy Center: Closing the Gap Between Research and Practice in the Teaching of Reading

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2023 //
20

The National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado posted a useful analysis of research in the field of reading and how it should inform practice.

Key Takeaway: Some research claims of the “science of reading” movement are overly simplistic, so policymakers should seek different approaches to legislating reading.

Find Documents:

Publication Announcement: https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication-announcement/2022/09/science-of-reading
NEPC Publication: https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/science-of-reading

Contact:

Alex Molnar: (480) 797-7261, nepc.molnar@gmail.com
Faith Boninger: (480) 390-6736, fboninger@gmail.com
Paul Thomas: (864) 294-3386, paul.thomas@furman.edu

Learn More:

NEPC Resources on Reading Instruction

BOULDER, CO (September 13, 2022) – How students learn to read and how reading is best taught are often the focus of media, public, and political criticism. In a new NEPC policy brief, The Science of Reading Movement: The Never-Ending Debate and the Need for a Different Approach to Reading Instruction, Paul Thomas of Furman University explores the controversial history of the reading reform movement.

Throughout the decades, a striking amount of attention has sporadically been focused on how teachers teach reading—typically with a specific concern for phonics instruction. This attention has then spread to standardized test scores (including international comparisons) and a changing list of hypothetical causes for disappointing test scores (including progressivism, whole language, and balanced literacy).

Disappointing reading achievement has been sometimes attributed to how reading is taught, sometimes to social influences on students (such as technology and media), and sometimes to both. Widespread and ongoing criticism over the last 80 years has targeted a wide array of culprits:

  • State and federal reading policy;
  • The quality of teacher education and teacher professional development;
  • Theories of learning to read and reading instruction;
  • The role of phonics and other reading skills in teaching reading; and
  • The persistent gaps among classroom practices, reading policy, and the nature or application of science and research.

These discussions have not been evidence-free. In fact, scholars and literacy educators have over this time conducted extensive research into these and other issues. But the research has only limited impact on policy and practice.

Specifically, in contrast to much of the public debate and policymaking, these researchers have found reading instruction and learning to be complex, complicating the design of effective policy and classroom practice. Overall, this robust research base supports policies and approaches that acknowledge a range of individual student needs and that argue against “one-size-fits-all” prescriptions. Among literacy educators and scholars, then, important reading debates continue but do so without any identified silver-bullet solutions.

The current public debate is different. Since 2018, the phrase “science of reading” has been popularized as loosely defined shorthand for the broad and complex research base characterizing how children learn to read and how best to teach reading. Simplifying the issue for the public and for political readers, and failing to acknowledge the full complement of research findings, prominent members of the education media have used the term when framing the contemporary debate—often as pro-phonics versus no phonics. Various types of vendors have also found the shorthand term “science of reading” highly useful in branding and marketing specific phonics-oriented reading and literacy programs.

As the “science of reading” movement has grown, scholars have cautioned that advocates and commercial vendors often exaggerate and oversimplify both the problems and solutions around reading achievement and instruction. Yet these advocates have been extremely effective in lobbying for revised and new phonics-heavy reading legislation across most states in the U.S., producing rigid and ultimately harmful policy and practices. Still, in pursuing reform to address identified challenges, the movement does provide an opportunity for policymakers to investigate different approaches to reading instruction and to develop more nuanced policy.

Accordingly, Professor Thomas provides recommendations for state and local policymakers to provide teachers the flexibility and support necessary to adapt their teaching strategies to specific students’ needs.

Find The Science of Reading Movement: The Never-Ending Debate and the Need for a Different Approach to Reading Instruction, by Paul Thomas, at: https://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/science-of-reading

Categories Education Reform, Literacy, Research, Teachers and Teaching
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