Archives for the month of: June, 2024
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

Ohio: The Corrupt GOP Politicians Defunding Public Schools and Their Students

By dianeravitch
June 24, 2024 //
6

Marilou Johanek is a veteran journalist in Ohio. She writes here about the Republican politicians who used their power to impose universal vouchers on the state. The main beneficiaries are children of the affluent who are already enrolled in private and religious schools and who can already afford the tuition. The losers are the vast majority of public school students, whose schools are underfunded.

What does the future hold for states that skimp on the education of the next generation while lavishing billion-dollar subsidies on the families of the well-off?

Johanek writes:

My way or the highway may be your boss’s motto and your cross to bear. But if that is the mantra of publicly elected officials in a representative government — as it sure seems to be in Ohio — all of us have a problem. A big one. 

The political bosses in Ohio conduct the people’s business with take-it-or-leave-it ultimatums. They’re not running a democracy; they’re dictating decisions made. They do not entertain questions about their extremist agenda to ban invented threats, ignore real ones, claw back rights, reduce women to breeders, welcome polluters to state parks, or defund public education to pay for private schools. 

When challenged over their arguably lawless mandates, Ohio Republican leaders mount a full court press to dismiss, disparage, intimidate, and circumvent countervailing forces that dare confront absolute power. Consider the all-out effort of GOP chieftains to scuttle a statewide lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the Republican fetish to fund private schools with hundreds of millions of apparently unlimited public tax dollars.

The partisans sprang into action to protect the $1-billion-dollar-and-counting boondoggle they created last year with universal vouchers that pay private school tuition for the affluent few at the expense of the many — a majority of Ohio students who attend traditional public-school districts. Ever since GOP lawmakers — led by Ohio Senate President and go-to financier of diocesan schools Matt Huffman — opened the government dole to any private school student with their voucher change slipped into the state budget, unaccountable public spending on private schools has exploded.

The amount of tax dollars going to students already attending private, mostly religious schools tripled the first school year uncapped voucher money was there for the taking. Many of the private school families sweeping up the easy cash earn north of $250,000 annually. The initial Republican rationale for diverting state educational funding from public to parochial schools was that the public handouts offered low-income families in failing school districts access to better school options. 

But that excuse was a ruse to subsidize religious education with taxpayer money and gradually starve public education of critical financial support. The flood of public funds to prop up Catholic schools came from the same general revenue pool that was supposed to keep public school districts afloat not be shortchanged by private education giveaways.  

The fallback for fiscally depleted districts is school levies that fail more often than not. Which, as every public school parent knows, means likely cuts to staff, extracurricular programs, student support services, and capital improvements, decades overdue, shelved again.

Little wonder that more than 200 school districts across Ohio have joined a growing coalition contesting the unprecedented release of public funds to every private school family — regardless of income or quality of home district — in a lawsuit bound for trial. 

They argue the private school “EdChoice” voucher expansion breaking the public education budget violates the state constitution by creating a separate, unequal and segregated school system of privatized education bankrolled with money the state is constitutionally obligated to spend on public education alone. Meanwhile public school students go to class in crappy buildings erected in the 1950s (because there’s no money to build a new ones) and enjoy fewer, if any, electives in music and art, or reading tutors, or enough counselors, AP course offerings, gifted services, or small class sizes, etc. 

The billion-dollar windfall to offset private school tuition many families can afford would be a godsend to public schools making do with less. God bless those who choose to send their students to expensive parochial institutions. But none of us agreed to collectively finance your private school choice that, frankly, serves a private interest, not a public one.

We agreed instead to fund what serves the greater good, not what satisfies individual preference. We do the same with other public services (besides free public education) when our taxes support local law enforcement, fire protection, mental health resources, metro park amenities and other community systems that benefit everybody. The lawsuit to strike down Ohio’s harmful universal vouchers recently added the Upper Arlington school district, in a suburb of Columbus, to its ballooning list of participants.

Ohio’s Republican Lt. Gov. Jon Husted personally pressured the district to pass on the legal fight before the school board voted to join it. Ohio’s Republican Attorney General Dave Yost tried and failed to get a Franklin County court to dismiss the voucher lawsuit altogether. Huffman, the architect of the school privatization scheme in the legislature, refused to sit for a lawsuit deposition. 

He even balked at submitting written answers. Finally, the Lima Republican appealed to the Republican-majority state supreme court (he engineered) to judge him above accountability per the litigation. The GOP my-way-or-the-highway bosses aren’t finished trying to out-maneuver public school advocates fighting for fair and equitable public funding. But their secret is out. 

In the school year that just ended, taxpayers forked over a billion dollars’ worth of tuition payments for a slice of well-off students enrolled in pricey private schools. That’s not okay with public school families eying another school levy or their kids will do without. The state’s autocrats bosses should be on notice; their take-it-or-leave-it dictate on universal vouchers went too far. 

It provoked a public education crusade willing to see you in court, Messrs. Huffman, Yost and Husted. So save the trial date. It’s Nov. 4. 

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Education Industry, Fake, Funding, Ohio, Privatization, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame, Vouchers

Jeff Bezos Interrupts His Holiday to Comment on the Mess at The Washington Post

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2024 //
9

The super-rich are different from us. Very different. Jeff Bezos is worth more than $200 billion. Right now, he is the richest person in the world, which must be annoying to Elon Musk.

Bezos probably worries about a lot of things, but not money. However, he did worry about his prize trophy, The Washington Post, which had gotten bad press for the last few weeks (see previous posts today), due to Bezos filling the top ranks with journalists from the Murdoch empire. Bezos took a few minutes to send a reassuring email to Post executives, according to Richard Johnson at the New York Daily News. Did he worry about morale? Nah. Does he worry about morale at Amazon? Nah. He is having a really good time right now in the Greek Islands with his fiancée.

Johnson wrote:

Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, interrupted his holiday in the Mediterranean to deal with a crisis at The Washington Post, which he owns.

In a Tuesday email to Post execs backing his embattled publisher Will Lewis, Bezos said, “The journalistic standards and ethics at The Post will not change.”

Lewis, a Brit, is under fire for some of the sleazy reporting tactics used at papers he worked for in London.

The Amazon founder — worth $211 billion — and his fiancée Lauren Sanchez were on the Greek island Mykonos.

The loved-up duo flew into Greece on one of their three private jets, worth $65 million apiece, to sail around the Greek islands for a week.

Sanchez, who has a pilot’s license, flew one of their helicopters from the airport and landed on their $500 million super yacht Koru, which means “new beginnings” in Maori.

The boat features a topless figure of Freyja, the Norse goddess of love and fertility, on the bow.

To get to dinner, the couple choppered off their boat and landed in town where they were whisked to Noema, a restaurant in the old part of the city, in a black SUV with tinted windows followed by a van with four security guards.

Because no cars are allowed in the historical part of the city, the couple had to walk to the restaurant trailed by armed guards.

Sanchez, in a low-cut and figure-hugging yellow dress, and Bezos, dressed in cream-colored short-sleeved shirt and navy slacks, smiled and waved to the crowds who started yelling out his name and giving him the thumbs up.

The pair requested a corner table for themselves and another couple. Bezos’ security made it clear to the staff that the mogul didn’t want to talk to anyone and “wanted to get in and out in one hour.”

Bezos ordered the boîte’s famed fresh lobster over pasta while Sanchez ordered a selection of sushi.

Observers said the tanned and fit couple looked “madly in love,” noting that on the way out Bezos gallantly held Sanchez’s hand as they navigated the steep steps and the narrow, rocky road back to their chopper.

Insiders say Bezos installed a cutting-edge beauty salon on the boat for Sanchez, who travels with a hairdresser, makeup artist, and manicurist, to be camera ready at all times.

The billionaire also keeps a second $80 million support craft near his main boat where he keeps his staff and all the “water toys.”

One can’t help wondering why he was upset about the Post losing $77 million last year. And why he had to buy out 240 employees.

Categories Billionaires, Media

Washington Post Covers the Scandals Associated with Its New Leadership

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2024 //
4

Four reporters collaborated on a long article about the unethical practices of some of the newspaper’s new leaders, chosen by Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post. The Post is known for its fearless and principled journalism. British newspapersce identlybget scoops any way they can, ethics be damned.

They wrote on June 16:

LONDON — The alleged offense was trying to steal a soon-to-be-released copy of former prime minister Tony Blair’s memoir.

The suspect arrested by London police in 2010 was John Ford, a once-aspiring actor who has since admitted to an extensive career using deception and illegal means to obtain confidential information for Britain’s Sunday Times newspaper. Facing potential prosecution, Ford called a journalist he said he had collaborated with repeatedly — and trusted to come to his rescue.

That journalist, according to draft book chapters Ford later wrote recounting his ordeal, was Robert Winnett, a Sunday Times veteran who is set to become editor of The Washington Post later this year.

Winnett moved quickly to connect Ford with a lawyer, discussed obtaining an untraceable phone for future communications and reassured Ford that the “remarkable omerta” of British journalism would ensure his clandestine efforts would never come to light, according to draft chapters Ford wrote in 2017 and 2018 that were shared with The Post.

Winnett moved quickly to connect Ford with a lawyer, discussed obtaining an untraceable phone for future communications and reassured Ford that the “remarkable omerta” of British journalism would ensure his clandestine efforts would never come to light, according to draft chapters Ford wrote in 2017 and 2018 that were shared with The Post.

Winnett, currently a deputy editor of the Telegraph, did not respond to a detailed list of questions. Ford, who previously declined to be interviewed, did not respond to questions about the draft book chapters.
Winnett is now poised to take over the top editorial position in The Post’s core newsroom, scheduled to start after the November U.S. presidential election. He was appointed by Post CEO and Publisher William Lewis, who has mentored Winnett and worked with him at two British papers. Lewis is also mentioned in Ford’s draft chapters.
The drafts are part of a collection of previously unreported materials representing Ford’s recollections of his activities and associations with Winnett, some of which The Post was able to match with published stories and other public documents. The prospective book project never came to fruition.
The claims raise questions about Winnett’s journalistic record months before he is to assume a top position at The Post. His appointment has increased focus on the different ways journalism is practiced in the United States and Britain.

In one passage, Ford describes working with Winnett on an array of stories about consumer and business affairs. The collaboration, in his account, was part of a broader arrangement with the Sunday Times in which Ford delivered confidential details about Britain’s rich and powerful by using dishonest means, including changing their bank passwords and adopting false personas in calls to government agencies. A Sunday Times editor later acknowledged some of these practices but said they were deployed to serve the public interest.
Winnett, who went on to become a respected business reporter and editor with a record of scoops, has not publicly spoken about relying on or interacting with Ford, a trained actor with a talent for accents.
But a review by The Post of Winnett’s reporting at the Sunday Times, as well as Ford’s unpublished book chapters and other documents that have since been made public, reveals apparent overlap between Winnett’s stories and individuals or entities that Ford said he was commissioned to target. They include pieces on the fate of the Leeds United Football Club, the finances of former prime minister Blair and the efforts by some of Britain’s wealthiest elites to buy a new vehicle from Mercedes-Benz that cost 250,000 pounds.
At The Post and other major American news organizations, the use of deceptive tactics in pursuit of news stories violates core ethics policies. In Britain, “blagging” — using misrepresentation to dupe others into revealing confidential information — has been a known feature of a certain brand of tabloid journalism, especially before a public reckoning over press ethics began in 2011. Blagging has been less frequently documented in the broadsheet titles where Winnett and Lewis built their careers.

Blagging is illegal under the United Kingdom’s 1998 Data Protection Act, but a defense is available if the acts can be shown to serve the public interest, legal experts said.

Winnett was tapped to lead The Post’s newsroom as part of a Lewis shake-up that led to the abrupt departure this month of Sally Buzbee, the first woman to serve as The Post’s executive editor.
Addressing the Post newsroom this month, Lewis touted Winnett as a “world class” journalist. “He’s a brilliant investigative journalist,” Lewis said. “And he will restore an even greater degree of investigative rigor to our organization.”
Lewis’s own journalistic record also has come under scrutiny.
The New York Times on Saturday reported that Lewis, as an editor at the Sunday Times in 2004, had assigned a reporter to write a story about a prominent businessman that the reporter believed was based on hacked phone records. The Post has reviewed unpublished writing by Ford in which he claims to have changed the password on the bank account of that businessman, Stuart Rose, so as to gain unauthorized access to Rose’s records…

In recent weeks, Lewis has faced accusations of seeking to suppress stories about a long-running civil court battle in London concerning his time as a top executive in Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
In January 2011, London police asked Murdoch’s company to turn over evidence of phone hacking by one of its papers, and last month, a judge cleared the way for plaintiffs to air claims that Lewis and others were involved in plans to subsequently delete millions of emails allegedly related to the hacking. Lewis has denied wrongdoing and is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit. He has also denied trying to quash stories on the topic.

Ford’s draft chapters from 2017 and 2018, shared at the time with a cohort of journalists and others, reflect his efforts to blow the whistle on hacking and other illicit newsgathering methods.
Those efforts prompted a 2018 Guardian profile, in which Ford said, “I was nothing more than a common thief.” He counted private investigators among his clients and said he performed most of his work for the Sunday Times, never taking on a formal role or even entering its office, but estimating that he was paid 40,000 pounds a year for his exploits. He said in that profile that he pursued leading politicians, including Blair and another former prime minister, Gordon Brown; celebrities such as Paul McCartney; and a former head of MI6, the secretive foreign intelligence service.

Ford wrote in his draft chapters that he came to know Winnett as a young reporter at the Sunday Times, where Winnett began writing as a student in 1995.
Lewis became business editor of the Sunday Times in 2002. He remained there until 2005, when he became city editor of the Telegraph, a center-right paper identified with Britain’s Conservative Party. He quickly climbed the ranks of that outlet.

Winnett joined Lewis at the Telegraph in 2007, and two years later they worked closely together on an investigation into phony expenses by members of Parliament that rocked the political establishment and forced a wave of resignations.
The stories that the Telegraph published in 2009 arose from data that the paper had acquired as part of a transaction in which they paid about 150,000 pounds to a private investigator seeking to sell the material on behalf of another source, according to an account Lewis later provided as part of a public inquiry into media practices. Lewis has described the Telegraph’s work as a high-water mark for the British press, “one of the most important bits of journalism, if not the most important bit of journalism, in the postwar period.”
Within a year, the British industry’s practices were engulfed in an expanding scandal, fueled by revelations that News of the World, a best-selling tabloid in Murdoch’s media empire, had engaged in widespread hacking of the phones of politicians, celebrities and even victims of violent crimes in the pursuit of salacious stories.
Lewis left the Telegraph in 2010 to join the Murdoch-controlled News International as a senior executive. Within months, he would be charged with helping to manage the fallout from the phone-hacking scandal, a position that involved overseeing the provision of evidence to a Metropolitan Police investigation that swelled to include hundreds of officers.

Categories Accountability, Character, Education Reform, Ethics, Media, Scandals

Why Are Murdoch Veterans Taking Over the Washington Post?

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2024 //
6

I’m worried about what’s happening at The Washington Post. The newspaper has long been an icon for its integrity and its high journalistic standards. The Graham family owned it from 1933, when Eugene Meyer, father of Katherine Graham, bought it at a bankruptcy auction, until 2013, when the newspaper was sold to Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.

In 2021, the Post’s executive editor Marty Baron retired and was replaced by veteran journalist Sally Buzbee, who had spent her career at the Associated Press.

Bezos won plaudits for not injecting himself into the newspaper’s editorial decisions. He wanted the newspaper to grow from a regional newspaper to a global one.

The newspaper won Pulitzer Prizes, but it suffered a loss of $77 million in revenues in 2023, as well as declining readership.

Bezos decided to shake things up by cutting the staff of the Post and bringing in fresh blood. In October 2023, the buyouts affected 240 members of the staff (10% of all Post employees), including most of the research team, whose work was vital for investigative reporting. For those who remained, this was a stunning blow. They assumed that Bezos, currently the richest man in the world with a net worth of $209 billion, would ignore the losses to keep the historic newspaper strong.

They were wrong.

In late 2023, Bezos selected William Lewis to become publisher of the Post. Lewis was a veteran journalist who had worked for British newspapers, including Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, editor of the politically conservative Daily Telegraph, publisher of Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal, and CEO of Murdoch’s Dow Jones.

In early June of this year, Buzbee resigned after clashing with Will Lewis and was replaced as executive editor by Matt Murphy, former editor-in-chief of Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal.

Lewis added fellow British journalist Robert Winnett as editor of the Post. Winnett spent 17 years at The Daily Telegraph.

With the new lineup, the trouble began.

In December 2023, David Folkenflip reported on NPR that Will Lewis helped Murdoch to navigate his way through the phone hacking scandal that engulfed News of the World and led to its demise. He wrote about Bezos’ choice of Will Lewis as the new publisher of The Washington Post:

The man picked to lead the Post — a paper with the slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness” — stands accused of helping to lead a massive cover-up of criminal activity when he was acting outside public view.

In lawsuits against News Corp.’s British newspapers, lawyers for Prince Harry and movie star Hugh Grant depict Lewis as a leader of a frenzied conspiracy to kneecap public officials hostile to a multibillion-dollar business deal and to delete millions of potentially damning emails. In addition, they allege, Lewis sought to shield the CEO of News Corp.’s British arm, News UK, from scrutiny and to conceal the extent of wrongdoing at News of the World’s more profitable sister tabloid, The Sun.

Folkenflik revealed in June that Will Lewis had offered him an interview if he would not write about his role in the phone hacking scandal. Lewis said that he had a conversation with a person at NPR before he assumed his duties at the Post.

And then all hell broke out.

The staff was demoralized and angry. They didn’t like the way Buzbee was sidelined, and they didn’t trust Lewis. Lewis told them about his plans for the future, and they were confused, not mollified.

Bezos took the unusual step of meeting with the newsroom staff. That was not enough to quell their anger about the layoffs and the new team at the top.

Media critic Dan Froomkin wrote about this meeting:

It was during a contentious, dismissive meeting he held with newsroom staffers a few hours after unceremoniously driving out executive editor Sally Buzbee and replacing her with two additional white male former Murdoch henchmen.

“If we keep doing the same things in the same ways,” the publisher said, according to one report, “we’re nuts,”

The big question, of course, is what he and his new Praetorian guard want to do differently. Thus far, he’s only shared the radical yet unformed idea of splitting the main newsroom in two and devoting the second one to the wildly enigmatic goals of “service and social media” to attract a new audience.  That’s the sort of plan you announce when you either have no plan or have one that you know won’t survive the scrutiny of your peers…. [Diane’s note: Other accounts of Lewis’ vision say that he plans for three newsrooms: one for opinions; one for the core daily news; and a third for social media and digital platforms geared toward younger audiences].

And given their previous affiliations with Murdoch and with the fiercely right-wing Telegraph newspaper – sometimes referred to as the Torygraph — there is a palpable fear in and out of the Post newsroom that the three men will drag the Post’s political coverage in a more pro-Trump direction.

Froomkin thought that the Post had a golden opportunity to be a forceful voice for the principles of democracy and truth, since the New York Times was committed to normalizing Trump and downplaying his threat to the nation.

He wrote:

So there is an extraordinary opportunity here for the Post to be the first elite newsroom to abandon the both-sides and pox-on-both-your-houses reporting style and instead actively warn readers that at this moment in our history, one party’s faults are wildly more dangerous than the other’s to both the free press and to a free country. That means relentless truth-telling along with remedial civics education and nonstop coverage of the stakes of the 2024 election

The Times’s egregiously restrained political coverage has left this lane wide open for the Post. And nothing could be more appropriate for the Post’s brand. The Post’s brand is bringing down a corrupt president; bold truth-telling that holds power to account. That’s an enormously powerful brand, both nationally and internationally, if the newsroom can deliver.

Was the ex-Murdoch team at the top likely to go in that direction?

The revelations about Will Lewis’s brand of Murdoch journalism kept coming, especially from NPR’s David Folkenflik. He wrote that Lewis and Winnett engaged in practices that might be okay in England but are considered unethical in the U.S. They paid people for stories (“checkbook journalism”), they used stolen records as the basis of scoops.

He wrote:

A vast chasm divides common practices in the fiercely competitive confines of British journalism, where Lewis and Winnett made their mark, and what passes muster in the American news media. In several instances, their alleged conduct would raise red flags at major U.S. outlets, including The Washington Post.

Among the episodes: a six-figure payment for a major scoop; planting a junior reporter in a government job to secure secret documents; and relying on a private investigator who used subterfuge to secure private documents from their computers and phones. The investigator was later arrested.

On Saturday evening, The New York Times disclosed a specific instance in which a former reporter implicated both Lewis and Winnett in reporting that he believed relied on documents that were fraudulently obtained by a private investigator…

Allegations in court that Lewis sought to cover up a wide-ranging phone hacking scandal more than a dozen years ago at Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers are proving to be a flashpoint for the new Post publisher.

On at least four occasions since being named to lead the Post last fall, Lewis tried to head off unwelcome scrutiny from Post journalists — and from NPR.

In December, before he started the job, Lewis intensely pressured me not to report on the accusations, which arose in British suits against Murdoch’s newspapers in the U.K. He also repeatedly offered me an exclusive interview on his business plans for the Post if I dropped the story. I did not. The ensuing NPR piece offered the first detailed reports on new material underlying allegations from Prince Harry and others.

Immediately after that article ran, Lewis told then-Executive Editor Sally Buzbee it was not newsworthy and that her teams should not follow it, according to a person with contemporaneous knowledge. That intervention is being reported here for the first time. The Post did not run a story.

Eventually the Post did cover the scandalous behavior of its new leaders.

On June 20, CNN reported that two Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post journalists blasted the leadership at their newspaper:

“I don’t know a single person at the Post who thinks the current situation with the publisher and supposed new editor can stand,” David Maraniss, an associate editor who has worked at The Post for nearly five decades and won two Pulitzer Prizes at the newspaper, wrote in a candid Facebook post. “There might be a few, but very very few.”

Maraniss also zinged Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Post who installed Lewis, writing that he is “not of and for the Post or he would understand.”

Scott Higham, another Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist at The Post, echoed Maraniss’ call for Lewis to exit the newspaper.

“Will Lewis needs to step down for the good of The Post and the public,” Higham replied in a comment on Maraniss’ post. “He has lost the newsroom and will never win it back.”

Spokespersons for Bezos and The Post did not immediately comment.

The backlash from The Post’s journalists comes after serious questions were raised about Lewis, who has been the subject of several explosive reports in recent days scrutinizing his journalistic integrity.

The New York Times reported over the weekend that, in his Fleet Street days, Lewis assigned an article that was based on stolen phone records. And The Post itself reported in a 3,000-word front page expose Sunday that a “thief” who used deceptive tactics to obtain private material had ties with Lewis’ hand-picked incoming top editor, Robert Winnett.

On June 21, Will Lewis announced that Robert Winnett had decided to stay in London and would not be joining the Post as editor.

It’s by no means clear that dropping Winnett will be enough to satisfy the newsroom.

Just yesterday, an article in the Post revealed that Will Lewis retains a financial interest in a small, digital-based firm that has contracts to work for The Post. The newspaper said the agreement does not violate its conflict-of-interest policy. But it smells funny.

Stay tuned. The fate of a great newspaper is at stake.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Media, Trump

Louisiana: Attacks on Librarians Intensify and Inspire Fear and Courage

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2024 //
4

Governor Ron DeSantis unleashed a rightwing barrage against school libraries and public libraries, and even he has backed off (a bit) as a small number of angry censors, led by groups like Moms for Liberty, have barraged librarians with demands for censorship. These “Moms” don’t want “Liberty”; they want to impose their views on others.

Sarah Ravits of the Gambit in Louisiana describes the intense attacks on libraries and librarians, by groups whose purpose is to restrict access to books they don’t like.

She writes:

Amanda Jones never thought of herself as a controversial person.

A beloved librarian in a small, tight-knit South Louisiana community, she’d earned numerous awards for her commitment to education over the years, including the coveted National School Librarian of the Year honor in 2021.

“I had a rock-solid relationship with my community, and I was in good standing,” she says. “I grew up here, and I devote so much time to my school, community and children.”

But her life took a sudden, bizarre turn in 2022 when she spoke at a public library board meeting.

During a heated discussion about whether a local library should restrict access to certain books for teenagers, Jones echoed what many educators have been saying for years.

Challenges to books are often “done with the best of intentions,” but frequently target the Black and LGBTQ communities, she said. Removing or relocating those books could be “extremely harmful to our most vulnerable — our children. Just because you don’t want to read it or see it does not give you the right to deny [it to] others.”

Jones certainly wasn’t the lone, dissenting voice that evening — she says at least 30 other people in attendance expressed similar sentiments.

But the next day she found herself being viciously targeted in a smear campaign by the ultra-conservative nonprofit Citizens for a New Louisiana, and the Facebook account Bayou State of Mind.

“They made memes about me and posted my picture and where I work,” Jones told Gambit. “They said that I advocate for teaching anal sex and that I want to give 6-year-olds pornography and erotica.”

As false and ridiculous as the claims were, they took off like wildfire across the internet and spilled over into everyday life as Jones, her family and her colleagues were bombarded with threatening messages and phone calls, including from people who said they were going to kill her.

Jones, terrified and suffering from severe mental distress, eventually took a medical leave of absence…

Right-wing activists have led efforts nationwide to attack books while targeting libraries and their workers. That, in turn, has led Republicans enthralled to these radical interests to push legislation forwarding their agenda in states across the country.

The war against libraries has been felt especially hard in Louisiana, where multiple parishes have become engulfed in legal and political battles centered around book censorship…

While some of the most egregious bills failed to even make it out of legislative committees, these efforts have nonetheless had a chilling effect on library workers.

One librarian in the New Orleans area, who spoke to Gambit under condition of anonymity, says they are “disillusioned and annoyed,” by the implication that librarians distribute obscene materials.

“I’m not a criminal,” the librarian says. “My job is to provide people with good information….”

Adding to librarians’ frustrations is the fact that book challengers often take passages wildly out of context, and it takes already-strained library board members and workers months to fully audit books after they’ve been challenged.

In St. Tammany Parish, for example, more than 150 books were challenged last year, according to the Louisiana Illuminator.

Going after so many books at once was a clear tactic to overwhelm librarians, who are required to produce reports on each book called into question. For every complaint, the library’s policy was to pull the book from circulation and refer it to a committee for review. Eventually, the number of challenged books was so high the library created a policy that it will not pull books from shelves while they are under review.

Many of the complaints came from just a handful of activists who don’t even have library cards or kids who use the library. In fact, in many states these complaints aren’t even coming from people who live in the state, let alone the local community…

Some of those involved passing legislation to bring criminal charges to librarians, which passed in fellow red states like Arkansas, West Virginia and Missouri.

The Arkansas law, for example, states school and public librarians can be sentenced up to six years in prison for distributing “obscene” or “harmful” material to students under 18.

That law, however, is currently blocked by a federal judge…

Then there are the ongoing attempts by the Legislature to discredit the American Library Association, considered to be the top professional library association, by blasting it as being too “woke” and “Marxist.”

One particularly shocking bill, authored by Livingston Parish Republican Rep. Kellee Dickerson, sought to imprison public librarians with hard labor and slap them with huge fines if they dared to get reimbursed for attending ALA conferences.

“If you’re going to put librarians in jail for even trying to associate with (their) profession’s national organization, that kinda gives away the game,” says one of the librarians Gambit spoke with…

Some of the more problematic bills, like throwing librarians in jail for attending the ALA conferences with public funds, died immediately in committee….

Then there are everyday citizens who have joined the fight to stand up for librarians and books.

Lisa Rustemeyer, a semi-retired mother of grown children in St. Tammany Parish, has become an activist in recent months.

Rustemeyer previously never thought she’d see public libraries being targeted, and said she felt a “gut instinct” to stand up when she saw they were under fire.

Lately she has found herself writing letters, making phone calls, attending public meetings and urging legislators to reconsider their bills.

Rustemeyer says she has always turned to libraries during “tough times,” while looking for answers, or simply for entertainment. “It’s where you meet other people and see your neighbors,” she says. “Libraries represent democracy and free speech.”

The way she sees it, dismantling and undermining public trust in libraries is a step toward dismantling and undermining trust in democracy itself.

“This doesn’t really come from a logical place,” she says. “(Lawmakers) are not scared of guns, but they’re scared of books? There’s no logic in it, which makes it infuriating. There’s no evidence that any kid has ever been harmed by a book. And here we are at the bottom of literacy, we’re at the bottom in (education) for as long as I can remember. We should not take award-winning books out of the hands of children. That is insane….”

Amanda Jones, meanwhile, has decided to double down on her advocacy work.

While the groups who targeted her expected Jones to be a shrinking violet, she says her commitment to literacy and free speech has only grown stronger.

“I was a hot mess for about a year, and then I decided to make lemonade out of lemons,” she says. “Screw them … No one wants to be famous for being defamed and called a groomer.”

Because she was already well-known in the library world, she says she has decided to share her story far and wide.

“I decided I wanted to tell my story, speak out and try to help other people know, they can also speak out,” she says.

What helps motivate her, she says, is that moment most librarians can probably relate to: when a book resonates with a new reader.

Jones calls it a “home run” moment.

“When you put a book in a kid’s hand, and it becomes their ‘home run’ book — it’s when you hook them into reading,” she explains. “And you know that because they read that book, they’re going to read one or two more, and then become a lifelong reader.”

She has seen it happen over and over throughout her career.

She says, “Every student deserves to see themselves reflected in the characters on our shelves.”

Categories Censorship, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy

Louisiana Requires “10 Commandments” in Every Public School Classroom

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2024 //
67

Louisiana became the first state to enact a law requiring that the “Ten Commandments” be displayed in every public school classroom. Others have proposed such laws, but they didn’t pass. Governor Jeff Landry, who is Catholic, signed the law in a Catholic school, which is somewhat strange since the law applies only to public schools.

The New York Times reports that the bill is part of a larger agenda to turn the U.S. into an explicitly Christian nation. Despite the fact that the Founders wrote extensively against religion controlling the state and said in the Constitution that there could be no religious test for office-holders, the religious right continues to shove their religion—and only their religion—on everyone else

The crowd at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lafayette, La., applauded Gov. Jeff Landry as he signed bill after bill this week on public education in the state, making it clear he believed God was guiding his hand.

One new law requires that transgender students be addressed by the pronouns for the gender on their birth certificates (“God gives us our mark,” he said). Another allows public schools to employ chaplains (“a great step for expanding faith in public schools”).

Then he signed into law a mandate that the Ten Commandments be hung in every public classroom, demonstrating a new willingness for Louisiana to go where other states have not. Last month, Louisiana also became the first state to classify abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances.

“We don’t quit,” Mr. Landry, a Republican, said at the signing ceremony.

Taken together, the measures have signaled the ambition of the governor and the Republican-led Legislature to be at the forefront of a growing national movement to create and interpret laws according to a particular conservative Christian worldview. And Mr. Landry, a Catholic who has been vocal about his faith’s influence in shaping his politics, wants to lead the charge.

It’s ironic to see a Catholic leading the charge, because for many years, the U.S. was strongly anti-Catholic. Governor Landry’s new evangelical allies would not have welcomed him into the country or their tent. Anti-Catholic sentiment was so powerful in the 19th century that most states wrote into their state constitution that no public money could be sent, directly or indirectly, to any religious institution. Thomas Jefferson wrote eloquently about the “separation of church and state.”

“Separation” benefitted both the church and the state, by keeping churches free of government regulation, and by keeping the government free of sectarian meddling. Under our Constitution, everyone is free to practice their religion or no religion, and the state cannot (should not) be used to enforce religious doctrine.

But the goals of the new religious dominionists is to make America “a Christian nation” and to impose their beliefs through law on everyone else, whether they are Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, Deist, Unitarian Universalist, Satanists, or any of the hundreds of other religions or sects in this country.

The Ten Commandments is purely symbolic. It’s one step in the plan to outlaw abortion, ban in-vitro fertilization, ban contraception, ban same-sex marriage, criminalize homosexuality, and restore the primacy of the father in families. It is the leading edge in a rightwing putsch to control the government and all of us.

Will posting this religious document solve any problems? Will it reduce crime or promiscuity or adultery? Donald Trump is a philanderer who has broken that commandment.

The Ten Commandments say nothing about abortion or gay rights or the rights of racial minorities or voting rights.

The Ten Commandments are a wish list . We should all strive to be better people. Hanging the Commandments on the wall doesn’t change anyone’s behavior. If they did, they should be hung in every prison cell. Let’s see how that works.

Categories Extremism, Hypocrisy, Louisiana, Religion, Separation of church and state

Dana Milbank: Trump Plays the Fascist Card

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2024 //
14

Dana Milbank calls out Trump for repeatedly sending fascist signals to his base. When Congress holds hearings on anti-Semitism, they should call Trump to testify.

Dana Milbank writes about Trump in The Washington Post:

As you’ve probably heard, Donald Trump has once again raised a führer.

The former president’s Truth Social account posted a video posing the question “What happens after Donald Trump wins?” and providing a possible answer: In the background was the phrase “unified Reich.”

This follows Trump’s echoing Adolf Hitler in campaign speeches, saying that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and calling his opponents “vermin.”

And that, in turn, followed Trump’s dining at Mar-a-Lago with high-profile antisemite Ye (Kanye West) and white supremacist leader Nick Fuentes, who likened incinerating Jews to baking cookies.

Under the three-Reichs-and-you’re-out rule, Trump should be on the bench. Yet he keeps swinging — and this week provided a sobering measure of how numb we have become to his undeniably fascist rhetoric.

Almost exactly eight years ago, Trump attacked Gonzalo Curiel, then the district judge in the Trump University fraud case, saying that his “Mexican heritage” posed “an inherent conflict of interest.” In the uproar that followed, even Republican leaders were appalled, and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan said Trump’s statement was “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

This week, Trump did almost the same thing when he left court on Tuesday after his defense rested in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. “The judge hates Donald Trump,” he said. “Just take a look. Take a look at him. Take a look at where he comes from.” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan emigrated from Colombia as a child. But this time there was little outcry from the inured populace, and if Republican leaders had any complaints about Trump’s textbook racism (or on his third Reich moment of this campaign) I must have missed them.

Vilifying migrants is a standard fascist trope. So is the constant claiming of victim status. Trump falsely alleged in a fundraising email this week that his opponent conspired to kill him. “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger” during the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago for missing classified documents, Trump wrote. He separately claimed that Biden’s Justice Department “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.” In reality, the FBI took extra precautions to avoid a confrontation by conducting the search when Trump was away and alerted the Secret Service. Agents were operating under the same standard rules of engagement they used when searching Biden’s home: Lethal force can be used only if in “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.”

Also this week, Trump, asked by Pittsburgh’s KDKA-TV whether he favored restricting Americans’ access to birth control, responded: “We’re looking at that, and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly.” After the televised interview was broadcast, Trump said the notion that he would advocate restrictions on contraception was “a Democrat fabricated lie.”

That maneuver — floating an outrageous policy and then pretending he had done no such thing — is another tool that Trump routinely uses. After Trump’s Truth Social account shared the video with the slightly-blurred “unified Reich” message during a lunch break in Trump’s trial in New York, his spokeswoman claimed the video had been “created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word, while the president was in court.” The campaign removed the post.

Sound familiar? During the 2016 campaign, Trump tweeted an image that had been used by white supremacists of a Star of David atop a pile of cash. The campaign removed the offending post and Trump said it had been posted by a staffer. He later told a crowd that his aides “shouldn’t have taken it down.”

During that same campaign, Trump also tweeted an image of an American flag containing an image of what appeared to be Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers. The campaign removed this post, too, and blamed an intern.

The disavowal is part of the game, says Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor who specializes in the rhetoric of fascism. “You do it and then you deny it and it’s just systematic, over and over and over again,” he told me in a phone call. “The people who want to hear it hear it, and it signals the direction you want to go in.” And for those uncomfortable with the extremism, the denial provides “a way of lying to themselves and telling themselves this is not what’s really going on.”

But it is. From Nazi Germany to Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Stanley says, people invariably thought the rhetoric of the rising authoritarian was exaggerated and just for dramatic effect. “Historically, people always, always don’t take it seriously,” he said. Perhaps they don’t realize that Trump is deploying the exact same tropes — against migrants, judges, gender nonconforming people, universities, the media, “Marxists” — now being used by autocrats in Russia, India and Hungary. “If you look at what Trump is saying … everywhere in the world the authoritarians are saying that.”

And yet we drift, placidly, into autocracy. Okay, Trump is unifying the Reich. But Biden is so old!

Trump’s fascist rhetoric is supported by an array of authoritarian polices, which he and his campaign have helpfully divulged.

Trump has said that his (false) election fraud claims justify “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He said he wouldn’t be a dictator, “other than day one,” when he would use absolute power to seal the border and drill for oil. He has proposed that those shoplifting from stores should “fully expect to be shot.” He said he would round up as many as 20 million illegal immigrants and, perhaps, put them in mass deportation camps, taking money from the military if necessary.

He said he would appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden, his family and “all others involved with the destruction of our elections, borders and our country itself.” He said he would order prosecutors to “go down and indict” his political opponents if they are “doing well and beating me” — and he would fire prosecutors who don’t follow such orders. He said he would use the National Guard, and perhaps the regular military, to crack down on protests against him.

He would strip civil service protections so he could replace federal workers with Trump loyalists, and he might take over independent agencies, including the Federal Reserve. He suggested he would change laws to attack what he perceives as “anti-White” bias.

Speaking at the National Rifle Association on Saturday, Trump asked the crowd whether he should “be considered three term or two term?” Several in the crowd shouted out: “Three!”

Earlier this spring, the American Conservative published an article titled “Trump 2028” that argued the 22nd Amendment, which limits a president to two terms, “is an arbitrary restraint on presidents who serve nonconsecutive terms.” The group is part of Project 2025, to which the Trump campaign has informally outsourced its policy planning.

Trump has hinted that he would pardon those sentenced for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He included in his courtroom entourage this week two convicted felons, Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner he pardoned, and Chuck Zito, a former Hells Angels leader. During testimony, defense witness Robert Costello showed the same sort of contempt for the judge as Trump did outside the courtroom. He rolled his eyes, talked under his breath, called the proceedings “ridiculous” and complained with a “jeez” when he disagreed with Merchan’s ruling.

Trump has promised “retribution” against his political opponents, and outside Trump’s trial this week, his allies amplified the threat. “They fear Donald Trump and they fear what’s going to happen if he becomes president again — and, I tell you, they should fear,” said Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.).

“Yes,” agreed Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Tex.), at his side, wearing a necktie with Trump’s face printed on it.

Trump had one final thing to say before he left the courthouse this week. Just a day after his post about the “unified Reich,” he offered a message for “Jewish people that vote for Biden and the Democrats: They should have their head examined.”

Well, I have had my head examined, and it was found to contain the following memories of things Trump has said and done:

He told his White House chief of staff John Kelly that “Hitler did some good things” and complained that U.S. generals weren’t “totally loyal” to him the way Nazi generals were to Hitler. He spoke of the “very fine people” marching among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. He closed out his 2016 campaign with an ad that singled out three prominent Jews with suggestions that they manipulate a “global power structure.” He was reluctant to disavow David Duke or supporters of his who harassed and threatened Jewish journalists. He has shared innumerable messages on social media from white supremacists. He has repeatedly questioned the loyalty of American Jews.

Long ago, Vanity Fair reported that Trump’s ex-wife Ivana said he read from a book of Hitler’s speeches, which he kept in a cabinet by his bed. Trump confirmed that he had the book but denied that he read it. By coincidence or design, there has been a startling overlap in their language of late.

Trump speaks of immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” and “coming in with disease.” Hitler said that great civilizations died “as a result of contamination of the blood,” and he called Jews “the worst kind of germ-carriers in poisoning human souls.”

Trump calls his political opponents “radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” Hitler called Jews “an inferior race that multiplies like vermin.”

Trump says that “the enemies from within are more dangerous, to me, than the enemies of the outside. Russia and China, we can handle.” Hitler spoke of “the greater inner enemy” and said that when “the internal enemy was not recognized … all efforts to resist the external enemy were bound to be in vain.”

Trump complains that “fake news is all you get, and they are indeed the enemy of the people.” Hitler complained of “the lying Marxist press” and said “the function of the so-called liberal press was to dig the grave for the German people.”

Trump claims that “we’ve never done worse than we’ve done now. … We’re so disrespected. The whole world is laughing at us.” And he warns: “If we don’t win this election, I believe we will no longer have a country.” Hitler claimed that “the Reich had fallen from a height which can hardly be imagined in these days of misery and humiliation.” He warned that “one year of Bolshevism would destroy Germany” and transform it “into chaos and a heap of ruins.”

Trump, at the end of his speeches, likes to say: “We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.” Hitler spoke of a “world conspiracy” made up of “Jews and democrats, Bolshevists and reactionaries” and motivated by a “hatred” of Germans.

No, Trump isn’t Hitler, and the 21st century United States isn’t Weimar Germany. But Trump’s words, so obviously ripped from history’s darkest pages, lead no place good. The only thing poisoning the blood of our country is his copycat fascism.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Florida: Three Moms Fight Back against Book Bans

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2024 //
16

According to PEN International, Florida is the state that bans more books than any other state. The state denies that it bans any book, because a controversial book can be obtained from public libraries or bookstores or online. Most of the challenges to books come from a small number of people, often affiliated with the odious Moms for Liberty.

Three mothers in Florida are pushing back against the book banners. They sued the state because it provides support to those who want to ban books, but not to those who oppose the bans. The stories were written by Leslie Postal of The Orlando Sentinel.

Three Florida mothers sued the state Thursday, claiming it violated their First Amendment rights by providing help to parents who want books yanked from public schools but denying that same aid to them when they want to fight school book bans.

“It’s just not fair,” said Stephana Ferrell, an Orange County mother of two and one of the plaintiffs.

The state, she added in a statement, “should not be able to discriminate against the voices of parents they disagree with.”

Two St. Johns County parents are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Tallahassee, the latest chapter in the ongoing debate about what books should be available to Florida’s schoolchildren.

The lawsuit argues that “Florida’s leaders only welcome input from those parents advocating for removing books from schools.”

In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, a spokesperson at the Florida Department of Education said via email, “There are no books banned in Florida. However, sexually explicit material and instruction are not suitable for classrooms.”

At issue is the controversial state law (HB 1069) adopted last year by the Republican-led Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis. It expanded the prior year’s law “parental rights in education law,” which critics dubbed “don’t say gay.”

The law “allowed parents who wanted certain books removed from schools to appeal to the state, if their local school district did not side with them. But the three parents said that when they objected to their school districts’ decisions to remove or to restrict the availability of certain books, they had no recourse.”

Orange County Public Schools, for example, last year decided to remove the book “Shut Up!” by Marilyn Reynolds from all campuses after a parent complained the book, used in a class at Timber Creek High School, was “explicit and pornographic.”

The book deals with child sexual abuse, and the School Library Journal called it a “wise novel” that “is an important addition for any collection serving teens.”

Ferrell, who helped found the Florida Freedom to Read Project to fight school book bans, tried to challenge OCPS’ decision. But both the district, and eventually state Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, denied her request, saying the “state review process” was only for parents who wanted books removed and were unhappy their district did not agree.

Those parents can appeal to the state for a special magistrate to review the school board’s decision. The special magistrate then makes a recommendation to the State Board of Education — made up of DeSantis appointees — and the board then issues a final decision.

If the state board agrees with the parent, the cost of hiring the magistrate must be paid by the school district that had its decision overturned.
The two St. Johns parents objected when their school district last week said only 11th and 12th graders could take out the novel “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, and several other books, including “The Freedom Writers Diary,” about a high school teacher and her students who “used writing to change themselves and the world around them,” and the memoir by Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was kidnapped at age 11 and held prisoner for 18 years, giving birth to two children by her abductor.

Those books were challenged by a woman who has filed 92 of the 114 book challenges dealt with in St. Johns County schools since 2021, according to Jax Today, and she objected to them because they included references to “sex abuse, violence and hate.”

The lawsuit noted that the woman who challenged the books did not have children in the public schools when the St. Johns County School Board took up her objections last week.
The St. Johns mothers, Nancy Tray and Anne Watts Tressler, objected to the school board’s decision, with Tray telling the board parents could keep their own children from reading those books, or others they disliked, “without eliminating availability for every single high school student in St. John’s County, ” the lawsuit said.

Both mothers were told there was no avenue for them to appeal the school board’s decision and realized it would be “futile” to appeal to the state, the lawsuit added.

The sponsors of HB 1069 touted the law as a way to “protect the rights of parents to have a say in their children’s education,” the lawsuit noted, but “this legislation only benefits those parents who hold the State’s favored viewpoint: agreement with removing books and other material from schools.”

The law, and the regulations adopted to implement it, provide different benefits “depending on a parent’s perspective” so “they violate the First Amendment’s ban on viewpoint discrimination, and should be invalidated,” the lawsuit said.

Here are some of the books that the state or rightwing parents consider “sexually explicit:”

Hundreds of books, including a classic by Leo Tolstoy and a storybook by beloved children’s author Maurice Sendak, have been pulled from Florida school libraries this fall as administrators continue to scrutinize collections for works they fear violate new state laws.

Seminole County Public Schools has removed more than 80 books, including the National Book Award winner “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” this school year, and restricted access to 50 others by requiring parental permission or making them available only to high school students, according to Katherine Crnkovich, a district spokeswoman.

In Hernando County north of Tampa, six picture books were removed recently from school libraries, including Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen” and David Shannon’s “No, David!” They all have illustrations that show kids’ naked bottoms, or, in one case, a goblin’s bare derriere..

In Collier County in southwest Florida, more than 300 novels have been taken from shelves, packed up and put in storage. They include works by Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Flannery O’Connor, Ayn Rand, Leo Tolstoy and Alice Walker.

The novels “Moll Flanders” (published in 1772), “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (published in 1937), “Slaughter-House Five” (published in 1969) and “The Kite Runner” (published in 2003) all met the same fate as did Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” (published in 1878).

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was banned as was Little Rock Nine by Marshall Poe about the integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.

.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida

NYC Prosecutors Seek to Extend Trump Gag Order Because Of Death Threats

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2024 //
17

Anyone who stands up to Trump puts their life at risk. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has received hundreds of death threats since his prosecution began. Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies because of his rigging the election by paying off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep his sexual encounter with her out of the news before the vote in 2016. While he throws around claims that Democrats “would rig the election” in 2016 and claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen,” it was he who rigged the election by paying Daniels for her silence.

Trump claims that his inability to attack the jurors and prosecutors violates his First Amendment rights. He is vile.

The New York Times reported today:

Prosecutors in Manhattan said on Friday that a judge should keep in place major elements of a gag order that was imposed on Donald J. Trump, citing dozens of threats that have been made against officials connected to the case.

The order, issued before Mr. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial began in mid-April, bars him from attacking witnesses, jurors, court staff and relatives of the judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have sought to have the order lifted since Mr. Trump’s conviction in late May. But in a 19-page filing on Friday, prosecutors argued that while Justice Merchan no longer needed to enforce the portion of the gag order relating to trial witnesses, he should keep in place the provisions protecting jurors, prosecutors, court staff and their families.

The New York Police Department has logged 56 “actionable threats” since the beginning of April directed against Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case, and against his family and employees, according to an affidavit provided with the filing.

Such threats, evidently made by supporters of Mr. Trump, included a post disclosing the home address of an employee at the district attorney’s office, and bomb threats made on the first day of the trial directed at two people involved in the case.

The 56 threats that were logged, prosecutors said, did not include the hundreds of “threatening emails and phone calls” that were received by Mr. Bragg’s office in recent months, which the police are “not tracking as threat cases.”

Mr. Trump was convicted on May 30 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payoff made to the porn star Stormy Daniels. The money was meant to cover up a sexual tryst she says she had with Mr. Trump in 2006, a decade before he was elected president. (Mr. Trump, 78, has continued to deny ever having had sex with Ms. Daniels.)

If he didn’t have sex with Daniels, why did he pay her $130,000?

Categories Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Safety, Trump

North Carolina: GOP Plans to Approve Politically Connected Charter School Without Usual State Review

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2024 //
8

The Republicans in North Carolina have submitted legislation in the General Assembly to authorize a charter school with powerful political connections.

Ann Doss Helms of WFAE reported:

Buried deep in the 271-page House budget bill introduced Monday night, there’s a provision that would allow an unnamed charter school to bypass state review and open in August.

The description is very specific: The “expedited opening” would apply only to applications filed in 2024, for schools in the state’s largest statistical metropolitan area, in a fast-growing county and a school district serving fewer than 25,000 students.

Also, “the proposed charter school will be located in a fully furnished school facility purchased from a local board of education.”

That description applies to Trinitas Academy, which bought the old Mt. Mourne School in Mooresville from Iredell-Statesville Schools in 2022.

Trinitas hasn’t even begun the state review process that ensures its board is ready to educate students and responsibly handle millions of dollars of public money.

But it does have a website describing it as a K-8 classical academy. It lists a board that includes:

  • Susan Tillis, wife of Republican U.S. Senator Thom Tillis and founder of the Susan M. Tillis Foundation. She’s described as having  “an extensive background in state and national politics.” (Her name was removed from the site Wednesday, after this story aired.)
  • Will Bowen, communications director for Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry.
  • Marcus Long of Mooresville, described as a retired chief circuit judge from Virginia.
  • Board Chair Mark Lockman, described as having been “part of the district leadership at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Iredell-Statesville Schools. Additionally, Mark was instrumental in building the State of North Carolina’s first data-based instructional growth model for public K-12.”

They couldn’t immediately be reached. Trinitas board member Mikail O. Clark, a Charlotte lawyer, confirmed that Trinitas plans to open in August, but said he didn’t know enough about the House Bill to discuss it. “We’ve obviously engaged counsel to assist us with this matter,” he said, and hung up before answering a question about the status of the Trinitas application…

State Charter Schools Director Ashley Baquero said Tuesday that she knew nothing about the plan to bypass the approval process.

Open the link to finish the story of cronyism.

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, North Carolina
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »