Steve Ruis reminds us that Trump refused to participate in transition planning when he was elected and is now undermining the Biden transition. Chris Christie was in charge of Trump’s transition, prepared a voluminous briefing book, and Trump’s people threw it out. They were so convinced that the government was useless and inept that they didn’t want to know what was done or what was needed. They just knew it all.
Ruis writes:
People are noticing that the Trump official who is required by law to sign a document that releases the funds set aside for making the transition to a new president’s administration is refusing to sign that document. Oh my gosh, commenters ask, will Trump sabotage the transition?
If you weren’t paying attention, he already did.
When Mr. Trump was elected, the Obama administration spent millions of dollars preparing for the transition to Mr. Trump’s administration. Briefing books were prepared. Interviews were scheduled. Briefings were put on the calendar.
Whole books have been written on what actually happened. Trump officials didn’t show up for briefings. Others dumped the transition manuals. Other appointees were so incompetent, they didn’t bother to look up what the mandate of their department was. (Yes, I am talking about you Rick Perry.)
In some cases, when nobody from Trump showed up to be briefed and to take over, chaos ensued. Political appointees were not able to just stay on until their replacement showed up. They were required, by law, to pack their things and leave. Key employees who saw the writing on the wall used the “opportunity” to find other employment.
Emily W. Murphy is the Trumper at General Services Administration who refuses to allow transition planning for the Biden administration to move forward.
Leonie Haimson has a weekly radio show called “Talk Out of School” on WBAI in New York City. She invited Denisha Jones and me to discuss the election results and their implications for education, on the day after the election.
Denisha is a lawyer, an early childhood education advocate, and a professor. She is also a member of the board of Network for Public Education.
It is about time for someone with seasoned K12 classroom experience to hold that position. Not someone with ladder-climbing, token K12 classroom experience. Not someone who is a basketball playing pal of his buddy, the president (aka Arne Duncan). And not someone who is an activist for private schools and who admitted publicly to “not intentionally visiting schools that are underperforming” (that, of course, would be DeVos).
I am tired of being tossed to and fro by ill-conceived education platforms that chain America’s education be-all, end-all to standardized test scores. And that is why I believe a seasoned K12 classroom teacher needs to be the next US ed sec: A seasoned K12 classroom teacher knows the sting of the idiocy of standardized testing firsthand. The foolishness of trying to gauge the value of American education via test score is not an intellectual exercise to a seasoned K12 classroom teacher. It is not theoretical. It is not removed. It is a frustrating reality stretching across school years and decades.
The genuine, career K12 classroom teacher knows firsthand the stupidity of wasting time, money, and personnel pretending that grading schools and teachers using standardized tests somehow informs teachers, parents, and the public about the quality of the multifaceted educational life of a school and its students.
We need to break free of this testing prison, and we need an experienced K12 classroom advocate in our US secretary of education. Not an ideologue. Not a dictator. Not a politician. Not even a higher-ed academic.
DFER is an organization of hedge fund managers and financiers who are supporters of charter schools, merit pay, high-stakes testing, and value-added evaluation of teachers. In 2008, DFER successfully advocated for the appointment of Arne Duncan, a supporter of their goals.
Democrats for Education Reform is coordinating a behind-the-scenes push for Chicago schools chief Janice Jackson, the head of Baltimore schools Sonja Brookins Santelises, or Philadelphia superintendent William Hite, according to an email sent to supporters Monday by the group’s presidentShavar Jeffries and obtained by Chalkbeat. All three, Jeffries wrote, would represent a “‘big tent’ approach to education policy making….”
DFER was an influential actor in policy during the Obama administration, but those policies have mostly proved ineffective and/or rejected by teachers. In light of Betsy DeVos’ fierce advocacy for charter schools, DFER’s agenda is out-of-step with the Democratic Party.
In general, though, DFER has found some of its favored policies moving further from the Democratic Party’s mainstream. As a presidential candidate, Biden has proposed a slew of new federal restrictions on charter schools and been critical of standardized testing — a clear shift from the Obama administration, which promoted the growth of charter schools and teacher evaluations linked to test scores.
“It is certainly the Biden plan,” the campaign’s policy director Stef Feldman said at a recent event, describing the candidate’s agenda for schools. “The vice president is pretty committed to the concept that we need to be investing in our public neighborhood schools and we can’t be diverting funding away from them.”
A number of factors have driven the shift within the Democratic party — including disillusionment with Obama-era reforms, the increased political strength of teachers and their unions, and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who is highly unpopular among Democrats and became a figurehead for school choice.
This shifting ground is reflected in DFER’s recent policy agenda, which was signed onto by a few civil rights groups; the Center for American Progress, a progressive think tank; and major charter school organizations, including the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The document emphasizes areas of likely agreement with a Biden administration, including expanding access to early childhood education, increasing federal funding for low-income students and students with disabilities, and raising teacher pay. Charter schools get only a brief mention in a section about “choices in quality public schools.”
The Center for American Progress is not a “progressive” think tank. It has long advocated the Obama-era education policies that align with DFER.
Paul Waldman, a regular columnist for the Washington Post, lays out a nightmare scenario in which Senate Majority Leader McConnell stifles Biden’s presidency.
It now looks likely that on Jan. 20 of next year, Joe Biden will become president of the United States. And after the inaugural balls are over that evening, he will take off his tuxedo, put on a scratchy jumpsuit and check into a prison cell whose keys are held by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
For months, we’ve been contemplating a world in which Biden wins the White House and Democrats narrowly take control of the Senate. We asked ourselves if they should get rid of the filibuster (yes, they should) or grant statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico (also yes).
But we didn’t spend nearly enough time contemplating what it now looks like will be the reality: a Democratic president and a Republican Senate.
We’ve seen this before, most recently in the last two years of Barack Obama’s second term. But this will be far, far worse than it was then. We’re about to witness something unprecedented in American history.
In 2014, McConnell became majority leader after Obama had already achieved most of his major legislative goals, including passing the Affordable Care Act. But now he has a chance to sabotage a Democratic president right from the start. Just as important, he knows that no matter how far he goes, the Republican Party is likely to pay only a small political price. What they get in return will be worth every penny and more.
As of now, Democrats lost one Senate seat and gained two, giving them 48. While it’s theoretically possible for them to get to 50 given the races where votes are still being counted, it looks extremely unlikely. Which means McConnell will remain as majority leader.
What does that mean? For starters, you can take all those meticulously prepared policy plans Biden and his team devised during the campaign and toss them in the trash. There will be no expansion of health coverage, no aggressive legislation to address climate change, no move toward universal child care, no increase in the minimum wage, no new Voting Rights Act and no infrastructure spending. None of it.
Nor will there be a new stimulus bill to help the economy recover from the pandemic, since McConnell knows that Biden will be blamed if the economy continues to struggle. At most — and even this is no guarantee — McConnell may allow continuing resolutions that keep the government open at its current funding levels. There will be no other significant legislation as long as Republicans retain control.
That’s just the beginning. McConnell now clearly believes that conservative domination of the courts is his most lasting legacy. Between now and January, during Trump’s lame duck period, McConnell and Judiciary Committee Chair Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) will run a conveyor belt to confirm judges to every last open seat at every level.
And then the confirmation process will simply shut down. Forget about filling a Supreme Court vacancy if one occurs; McConnell won’t permit Biden to fill any judicial vacancy. Not one.
“Oh, come on,” you might be saying. “He’d never go that far.” You don’t think so? Just wait.
We’re not done. The president gets to fill about 4,000 positions throughout the executive branch, and a remarkable 1,200 of those require confirmation by the Senate. What if McConnell and the Republicans just decided to confirm none of Biden’s appointments? No secretary of the Treasury, no EPA administrator, no assistant secretary of the Interior for Land and Minerals Management — none of them. We’ve already got all those bureaucrats, Republicans will say, why do we need to keep adding more?
Or at the very least, they’ll tell Biden: You can have a secretary of State if you really want one. But we get to tell you who it can and can’t be. First rule: It has to be a Republican. Take it or leave it.
Such a comprehensive stonewall would be unprecedented in American history. But McConnell has shown not just a willingness but an eagerness to violate any norm or rule if it serves his party’s purposes and he thinks he can get away with it. He’ll come up with some ludicrous justification (“No president whose election was decided when it was 52 degrees in Washington in a year ending in zero has ever had his Cabinet confirmed!”), then every Republican will dutifully repeat it, and eventually Democrats will stop complaining, because what are you gonna do?
Biden’s presidency would then limp along pathetically until the midterm elections in 2022, when there would be at least a glimmer of hope. More Republican Senate seats will be up that year; I count six that could be vulnerable, especially in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
But midterm elections usually favor the opposition party. Are Democratic voters going to turn out in droves to help a president who has been unable to deliver on any of his promises?
Of course, this all depends on every Republican senator going along with McConnell’s plan for the Mother of All Stonewalls. Which they will. They’ve shown again and again that they don’t care what norms are violated — if they can do it, they will do it. Just ask Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Then in four years, Republicans will say, “Look what a failure President Biden has been! Democrats can’t get anything done!”
I wish I could say that the voters will rise up in outrage and cast them out. But right now it’s hard to feel optimistic.
Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect explains the dilemma of divided government:
Can Biden Govern With a Republican Senate?
It now looks like Biden will squeak through by taking Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. But in the Senate, Republicans will likely have 51 seats.
If Mitch McConnell is leader of a Republican majority again, what then? For starters, Biden will have to govern as a more centrist president. It will take some doing for him to get a Cabinet confirmed.
The most important players will be the three Republican Senate moderates: Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Susan Collins of Maine. Biden will need to reach out to them and see if they will occasionally break Republican caucus discipline and vote to pass crucial legislation and confirm nominees.
Something similar occurred in 2009 when President Obama found three Republican senators to help him pass the Recovery Act—Arlen Specter (Pennsylvania), Olympia Snowe (Maine), and, yes, Susan Collins. Their price was a much weaker act that redirected hundreds of billions from public investment to tax cuts.
Thus the danger. To get nominees confirmed, Biden would need to shop them first to McConnell and then to the three moderates. That means his Cabinet will be even more centrist than it already was going to be. And forget Rooseveltian legislation in the first two years.
One ray of hope: There is a very vulnerable class of GOP senators up in 2022. But in the meantime, Biden has to deliver something to an anxious electorate.
Once again, the polls misled us. We were expecting an overwhelming defeat for the incompetent racist-misogynist-xenophobic liar Trump, but it didn’t happen. As of 2:35 am, when I wrote this, the election was undecided. Trump held on to most of the states he won in 2016. Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are not decided, although the polls showed comfortable leads for Biden in all three. The blowout that the polls told us to expect did not happen.
Republicans Joni Ernst, Mitch McConnell, and Lindsay Graham were re-elected, perhaps even the pusillanimous Susan Collins. It’s not yet clear which party will control the Senate.
As awful as Trump is, as badly as he has damaged the Western alliance, as surely as he has mishandled the pandemic, there’s a chance that we will have four more years of this mendacious buffoon. What does that say about the American people? What does it say about the Republican Party?
Four more years of DeVos or someone just like her? Heaven help us. Trump would wind the clock back to 1925, before the New Deal. No restraints.
If Biden ekes out a victory and has a Republican Senate, he won’t be able to fulfill any of his promises. A sad day.
NBC investigators Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny pursued the origins of a document that was widely circulated on rightwing media.
One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden’s laptop, a fake “intelligence” document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden’s son and business in China.
The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake “intelligence firm” called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents.
The author of the document, a self-identified Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, is a fabricated identity, according to analysis by disinformation researchers, who also concluded that Aspen’s profile picture was created with an artificial intelligence face generator. The intelligence firm that Aspen lists as his previous employer said that no one by that name had ever worked for the company and that no one by that name lives in Switzerland, according to public records and social media searches.
One of the original posters of the document, a blogger and professor named Christopher Balding, took credit for writing parts of it when asked about it and said Aspen does not exist.
Despite the document’s questionable authorship and anonymous sourcing, its claims that Hunter Biden has a problematic connection to the Communist Party of China have been used by people who oppose the Chinese government, as well as by far-right influencers, to baselessly accuse candidate Joe Biden of being beholden to the Chinese government.
The document and its spread have become part of a wider effort to smear Hunter Biden and weaken Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, which moved from the fringes of the internet to more mainstream conservative news outlets.
An unverified leak of documents — including salacious pictures from what President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and a Delaware Apple repair store owner claimed to be Hunter Biden’s hard drive — were published in the New York Post on Oct. 14. Associates close to Trump, including Giuliani and former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, have promised more blockbuster leaks and secrets, which have yet to materialize.
The fake intelligence document, however, preceded the leak by months, and it helped lay the groundwork among right-wing media for what would become a failed October surprise: a viral pile-on of conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.
The story about Hunter Biden’s laptop first appeared in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post in mid-October. The gist of the story is that Hunter Biden allegedly dropped off computers at a repair shop in Delaware in 2019, telling the shop owner that they had suffered water damage and needed to be fixed. He never returned to pick them up.
The shop owner decided to examine the contents of the hard drive and discovered emails that showed that Hunter had introduced his father to officials in Ukraine, that he had persuaded his father to get involved in a business deal in China in 2017 (when Joe Biden was a private citizen), and salacious videos of Hunter Biden. The shop owner says he turned over the hard drive to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal attorney, and to the FBI. Giuliani then distributed the contents of the hard drive to the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal.
The story was supposed to be the Trump campaign’s October surprise, an expose that would destroy Biden. But the mainstream media was wary and treated the story skeptically. The reporter for the New York Post who wrote it refused to put his name on it. Some wondered why Hunter Biden, who lives in Los Angeles, would fly to Philadelphia and take a train to Wilmington to have his computer repaired, then forget to retrieve it.
As soon as the New York Post published the expose about Hunter’s emails, Devin Coldewey of TechCrunchwrote that the provenance of the laptop was extremely fishy. Some suspected that Russian disinformation was involved. Coldewey wrote, “But even supposing no global influence effort existed, the provenance of this so-called leak would be difficult to swallow. So much so that major news organizations have held off coverage, and Facebook and Twitter have both limited the distribution of the NY Post article.” As a techie, he finds the whole story not credible. He gives several reasons why it defies common sense. He writes:
It is beyond the worst operational security in the world to give an unencrypted device with confidential data on it to a third party. It is, however, very much a valid way for someone to make a device appear to be from a person or organization without providing any verification that it is so...
The repair shop supposedly could not identify Hunter Biden, who lives in Los Angeles, as the customer. But the invoice (for $85 — remarkably cheap for diagnosis, recovery, and backup of three damaged Macs) has “Hunter Biden” written right on it, with a phone number and one of the email addresses he reportedly used. It seems unlikely that Hunter Biden’s personal laptop — again, loaded with personal and confidential information, and possibly communications with the VP — would be given to a small repair shop (rather than an Apple Store or vetted dealer) and that shop would be given his personal details for contact...
The idea that Biden or his assistant or whoever would not return to pick up the laptop or pay for the services is extremely suspicious. Again, these are supposedly the personal devices of someone who communicated regularly with the VP, and whose work had come under intense scrutiny long before they were dropped off. They would not be treated lightly or forgotten. On the other hand, someone who wanted this data to be inspected would do exactly this…
That the laptops themselves were open and unencrypted is ridiculous. The serial number of the laptop suggests it was a 2017 MacBook Pro, probably running Mojave. Every Mac running Lion or later has easily enabled built-in encryption. It would be unusual for anyone to provide a laptop for repair that had no password or protection whatsoever on its files, let alone a person like Hunter Biden — again, years into efforts to uncover personal data relating to his work in Ukraine. ..
That this information would be inspected by the repair shop at all is very suspect indeed. Recovery of an ostensibly damaged Mac would likely take the form of cloning the drive and checking its integrity against the original. There is no reason the files or apps themselves would need to be looked at in the course of the work in the first place. Some shops have software that checks file hashes, if they can see them, against a database of known child sex abuse material. And there have been notable breaches of trust where repair staff illicitly accessed the contents of a laptop to get personal data. But there’s really no legitimate reason for this business to inspect the contents of the devices they are working on, let alone share that information with anyone, let alone a partisan operative. The owner, an avid Trump supporter, gave an interview this morning giving inconsistent information on what had happened and suggested he investigated the laptops of his own volition and retained copies for personal protection.
The data itself is not convincing. The Post has published screenshots of emails instead of the full text with metadata — something you would want to do if you wanted to show they were authentic. For stories with potential political implications, it’s wise to verify.
Since Trump can’t explain his inability or unwillingness to control the pandemic, since he refuses to admit that his administration is trying to have the Affordable Care Act thrown out by the Supreme Court, since he can’t produce the health insurance plan that he claims will be better than the Affordable Care Act, since he has no policies that he can defend, all he has left is throwing mud at Joe Biden. Let’s hope the American people are not fooled.
Donald Trump’s presidency has been a horror show that is ending with a pandemic that is out of control, an economic recession and deepening political polarisation. Mr Trump is the author of this disastrous denouement. He is also the political leader least equipped to deal with it. Democracy in the United States has been damaged by Mr Trump’s first term. It may not survive four more years.
If the Guardian had a vote, it would be cast to elect Joe Biden as president next Tuesday. Mr Biden has what it takes to lead the United States. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden cares about his nation’s history, its people, its constitutional principles and its place in the world. Mr Trump does not. Mr Biden wants to unite a divided country. Mr Trump stokes an anger that is wearing it down.
The Republican presidential nominee is not, and has never been, a fit and proper person for the presidency. He has been accused of rape. He displays a brazen disregard for legal norms. In office, he has propagated lies and ignorance. It is astonishing that his financial interests appear to sway his outlook on the national interest. His government is cruel and mean. It effectively sanctioned the kidnapping and orphaning of migrant children by detaining them and deporting their parents. He has vilified whistleblowers and venerated war criminals.
Mr Trump trades in racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. Telling the Proud Boys, a far-right group that has endorsed violence, to “stand back and stand by” was, in the words of Mr Biden, “a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn”. From the Muslim ban to building a wall on the Mexican border, the president is grounding his base in white supremacy. With an agenda of corporate deregulation and tax giveaways for the rich, Mr Trump is filling the swamp, not draining it.
A narcissist, Mr Trump seems incapable of acknowledging the suffering of others. Coronavirus has exposed a devastating lack of presidential empathy for those who have died and the families they left behind. Every day reveals the growing gap between the level of competence required to be president and Mr Trump’s ability. He is protected from the truth by cronies whose mob-like fealty to their boss has seen six former aides sentenced to prison. A post-shame politician, Mr Trump outrageously commuted the sentence of one of his favoured lackeys this summer. The idea that there is one rule for wealthy elites and another for the ordinary voter damages trust in the American system. Mr Trump couldn’t care less.
The people’s enemy
Like other aspiring autocrats, Mr Trump seeks to delegitimise his opposition as “enemies of the people” to mobilise his base. In 2016, the institutions that should have acted as a check on Mr Trump’s rise to power failed to stop him. This time there has been some pushback over a Trump disinformation campaign about Mr Biden’s son. It is an indictment of the Trump age that social media companies acted before politicians in the face of a clear and present danger to democracy.
Mr Biden has his flaws, but he understands what they are and how to temper them. Seen as too centrist in the Democratic primaries, his election platform has borrowed ideas from the progressive wing of his party and incorporated a “green new deal” and free college for the middle class. Mr Biden should not retreat into his comfort zone. The failures of capitalism have been thrown into sharp relief by the pandemic. If elected, he will raise taxes on richer Americans and spend more on public services. This is the right and fair thing to do when a thin sliver of America has almost half the country’s wealth.
It’s not just Americans for whom Mr Biden is a better bet. The world could breathe easier with Mr Trump gone. The threat from Pyongyang and Tehran has grown thanks to President Trump. A new face in the White House would restore America’s historic alliances and present a tougher test to the authoritarians in Moscow and Beijing than the fawning Mr Trump. On climate change, Mr Biden would return the United States to the Paris agreement and give the world a fighting chance to keep global temperatures in check. With a President Biden there would be a glimmer of hope that the US would return as a guarantor of a rules-based international order.
Perhaps no country has so much to lose from Mr Biden’s victory as Britain. It has the misfortune of being led by Boris Johnson, whom Democrats bracket with Mr Trump as another rule-breaking populist. Mr Biden, a Catholic proud of his Irish roots, has already warned the Johnson government that it must not jeopardise the Good Friday agreement in its Brexit negotiations. Having left the EU, the UK can no longer be America’s bridge across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, Britain has a prime minister who led the country out of Europe just when an incoming President Biden would be looking to partner with it.
Faustian pact
Whether Mr Trump is defeated or not next week, Americans will have to learn to live with Trumpism for years to come. The first impeached president to run for re-election, Mr Trump avoided being the first to be removed from office because the Republican party has lost its moral compass. The party of Abraham Lincoln has become subsumed by the politics of grievance and entitlement. The GOP turns a blind eye to Mr Trump’s transgressions in return for preserving the privileged status of white Christian America.
The most obvious sign of this Faustian pact is the Senate’s confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett to the US supreme court — Mr Trump’s third justice. Conservatives now have a 6-3 advantage in the highest court in the land. Compliant judges are key to retaining the status quo when Republicans face a shrinking electoral base. The Republican strategy is twofold: first is voter suppression; if that fails, Mr Trump appears ready to reject the result. He has spent years conditioning his supporters, especially those armed to the hilt, to mistrust elections and to see fraud where it doesn’t exist.
We have been here before. In 2000, Al Gore won the popular vote by more than half a million ballots. The election turned on a handful of votes needed to capture the electoral vote in Florida. But the votes that counted were not found in the Sunshine State. They were cast by the five supreme court justices named by Republican presidents who gave the election to George W Bush.
In the 2018 midterms, a coalition of millions marched into polling booths to disavow the president. It is heartening that more than 60 million people have cast their ballot in early voting at a time when the president is doing much to call US democracy into question amid baseless claims of a “rigged election”. Americans are busily embracing their democratic right, and a record turnout in this election may show that voters, worried about whether democracy would endure, strove to save it. Anything other than a vote for Mr Biden is a vote to unleash a supercharged Trumpism. All pretence of civility would be dropped. The divides of race, class and sex would become even wider. Mr Trump is a symptom of America’s decline. Finding a solution to this problem begins with a vote for Mr Biden.
