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What Universities Should Do About Hate Speech and Behavior

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2024 //
82

I recently visited Wellesley College to attend the lecture of lawyer-scholar Patricia Williams, who spoke about book banning, censorship and critical race theory. She was brilliant. Her lecture will be posted as soon as Wellesley releases the tape. She spoke as part of the annual lecture series that I endowed.

At the end of her lecture, a student asked a question. The student said that she had sent out a notice to all the others in her dorm denouncing genocide. Now she wanted Professor Williams to advise her on how to respond to an older alumna about genocide in a manner that was respectful and would lead to further discussion.

Professor Williams responded, and I paraphrase, “If you really want to have an honest exchange, don’t use the word ‘genocide.’ It’s a conversation stopper. Genocide has a specific legal definition, and it’s not the right word to use if you really want a discussion.”

Later, I had dinner with Professor Williams and Wellesley President Paula Johnson. Dr. Johnson described what happened when Hillary Clinton, the College’s most distinguished alumna, spoke recently on campus. Students disrupted her speech and denounced her as a war criminal. When her car pulled away from the President’s house, students surrounded the car, shouting obscenities and exercising their middle finger.

Frankly, I was appalled. Colleges and universities must protect free speech, but there are limits. You can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater. There must be other limits. The purpose of a college education is to teach critical thinking, to exemplify the value of reasoned debate, to maintain civility when there are strong disagreements, to be open to learning.

This morning, Columbia University announced that it is offering online classes because the campus is unsafe for learning, especially for Jewish students. This is outrageous. Campuses must be safe places for all students and faculty. Civility matters.

Colleges and universities should, in my opinion, establish clear rules about the speech that stifles others from speaking, about speech that diminishes freedom of discussion, about speech that threatens the physical safety of others, about speech that undermines free speech and civility. And most certainly for behavior that makes the campus unsafe for students and faculty.

Pro-Palestinian students should argue their cause without shutting down discussion and threatening Jewish students. Closing down debate, antagonizing those who disagree, creating a climate in which “academic freedom” is used to negate academic freedom is simply wrong.

There must be clear guidelines about the kind of conduct that is not permitted because it destroys the fundamental purpose of higher education, which is the freedom to teach, to learn, and to debate.

We have heard repeatedly since October 7 that expressions and behavior that are anti-Israel are not anti-Semitic. But the widespread harassment of Jewish students, even Jewish faculty, gives the lie to this claim. Such harassment is anti-Semitic.

I deplore the barbarism of October 7. I deplore the brutality of the war in Gaza and the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. I hope that peace negotiations bring about two states and a just peace.

I deplore the surge of Jew-hatred on American campuses. Jewish students and all other students, as well as Jewish faculty and all faculty, should be able to learn and teach without fearing for their safety.

Colleges and universities must establish rules that promote and protect civility. Students who harass and endanger others cancel the purpose of higher education. They should be warned and if they persist, they should be suspended, and if they continue in their actions, expelled.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Higher Education

North Carolina: Top GOP Candidates Are Extremists

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2024 //
6

North Carolina has a serious problem. Its GOP has controlled the state since 2010, despite having a Democratic Governor for 8 years, who was made powerless by the legislature (General Assembly).

The GOP that swept the state in 2010 was Tea Party. But the top three GOP candidates in 2024—for governor, for attorney general, for state superintendent—are radical extremists. Not just MAGA, but QAnon batshit crazy.

Chris Seward of the Raleigh News & Observer wrote:

The woman who would take charge of K-12 education in this state has addressed her noxious trail of online posts — including calls to, you know, kill people — by not addressing them.

Ask the Republican nominee for state superintendent of public instruction, Michele Morrow, whether and, if so, why she would write such things and she seems irked that it should matter.

For instance, when confronted by a CNN reporter following a recent Wake County GOP event, Morrow deflected repeated questions about social media posts such as the one suggesting the execution of Barack Obama by firing squad on pay-per-view TV.

“Have a good night,” she said….

Meanwhile, Morrow is fueling her campaign with rhetoric that accused the state’s public schools of teaching “political and sexual and racially explicit stuff that’s poisoning our children’s minds and keeping them from getting a good education.”

Uh, maybe it’s only us, but calls to shoot people with whom you disagree seems a lot more harmful to our young children than teaching them that slavery was a bad thing.

Then again, CNN did ambush Morrow with a microphone and a camera.

Maybe in a friendlier environment, say, on the March 25 podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, she finally could explain herself and put this issue to rest once and for all?

She did, however, describe her Democratic opponent, former Guilford County Schools Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green, as “the farthest left, extreme candidate they (Democrats) have ever thought about putting out for superintendent.”

She warned gravely: “Our state will be unrecognizable” if Green is elected.

Surely, the state GOP establishment has issues with Morrow’s over-the-edge pronouncements and provocations?

House Speaker Tim Moore, soon to take a seat in Congress in a gerrymandered district, addressed Morrow’s controversies with what probably will become a boilerplate response.

“I certainly wouldn’t have made those comments,” Moore said Wednesday.

Moore added that he plans to “support all the Republican nominees for office, and voters have to make up their own mind on what you think is a good choice for that office.”

Describing himself as a “good loyal, fellow Republican,” Moore said, “I’m going to vote for the Republican nominees for office.”

Translation: Yes, it’s a bad thing to endorse killing people. But if a Republican does it, Moore will support him or her for the good of the team.

That’s obviously the case as well with the state’s most powerful Republican, Senate leader Phil Berger. Berger earlier endorsed the GOP nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has posted or spoken out loud a veritable smorgasbord of offensive references to Jews, Muslims, Black people and the LGBTQ community.

“I just think he’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Berger said in November.

In fact, Robinson and Morrow have attracted so much attention that another GOP candidate vying for statewide office, Dan Bishop, has gone relatively unnoticed in his bid for attorney general.

Bishop, a sitting member of Congress, voted against certifying Joe Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Bishop also opposed the debt-ceiling and budget deals former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made with Democrats.

Before that, as a member of the General Assembly, Bishop sponsored HB 2, the “bathroom bill” that required transgender people to use public bathrooms matching the gender on their birth certificates. The bill, which also banned local anti-discrimination ordinances, cost the state’s economy an estimated $525 million in revenue from canceled business projects and sports and entertainments events before lawmakers partially repealed it.

Now he could become the head of the state’s Department of Justice.

What all of this means is that the norms have shifted in the Republican Party.

With the likes of Robinson, Bishop and Morrow on the Nov. 5 ballot, the GOP nominee for state superintendent may be right about at least one thing: Our state could be “unrecognizable” … not if they lose, but if they win.

We’ve got 99 problems in North Carolina, and Michele Morrow is only one of them.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Ignorance, Insane, North Carolina, Stupid

Steve Ruis: Why I’m Starting to Hate All Religions

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2024 //
137

Steve Ruis writes a blog called “Uncommon Sense.” In one of his recent posts, he explains why he is starting to hate religion, all religions. I think he is on to something. I was born Jewish. My children are Jewish, as are my grandchildren. But I am non-practicing. I am secular. I am sick of religious hatred, as Steve is. Yet I know that there seems to be something in human nature that causes people to hate others. I remember many years ago reading a book called “Idols of the Tribe: Group Identity and Political Change” by political scientist Harold R. Isaac. Isaac wrote about “the psychology of minor differences.” He gave example after example of groups that fought each other to the death, because “the other” was different. It might be religious or racial or ethnic or something else. One young person must kill another, drop bombs, for reasons long forgotten. Because.

Ruis writes:

I don’t want to hate anything . . . but . . .  I was recently watching a rather nice three-part BBC documentary on Persia and Iran. In college I took a course in ancient near eastern history but I only learned a smidgeon about Persia, so this was an opportunity to fill in the gaps in my understanding of history. Persia, one the first major empires, became over time a doormat for invaders, many, many invaders.

About 500 years ago an Islamic general decided to conquer Persia and made war and accomplished that goal. He was not conquering Persia to convert that country to Islam. Persia had been conquered by Arab invaders centuries before who had converted the entire country to Islam, essentially relegating Persia’s native religion, Zoroastrianism, to the dustbins of history. (As religions go, Zoroastrianism, to my tastes, was a superior religion, but . . . it still conferred the “divine rights of kings” onto their rulers, etc. There are an estimated 110,000–120,000 Zoroastrians left in the world from the millions previously.)

Back to the invasion of 500 years ago. The general, who made himself King of Persia, wasn’t converting the country to Islam, he was converting it from Sunni Islam to Shia Islam. For this many, many people died, economies were disrupted, buildings destroyed, etc. Then the people were forcefully converted from Sunni Islam to Shia Islam. Yes, that Islam, the religion of peace, whose holy book clearly states that no one is to come to Islam by force.

Never judge a religion based upon what they say, always look to what they do. Religions represent a terrible cost to human beings. Instead of focusing on things that make people’s lives better, wars are fought over imaginary differences. Religions make people stupid.

Obviously this is not the only case I base my conclusion upon. Currently Palestinians and Israelis are fighting a religious war. And the “Troubles” in Ireland are not that far in the past, the Nazi efforts to exterminate Jews and Gypsies, and then, the Croats and Serbs went at it . . . and then . . . there are myriad examples of religion being at the heart of wars and human misery.

The current actions of Christian nationalists here in the USA are part of the same picture.

Yes, I am an a-theist, and now I am an anti-religionist. If you are requesting special privileges because of your religion, I am against it. If you do not want your churches to pay taxes, I am against you.

A pox on all religions and their imaginary solaces and real damage they offer. If you are one who wants to convert the USA into a “Christian Nation,” fuck you and the horse you rode in on. You are just paving the way for turning us into an Islamic nation.

Categories Bigotry, Evil, Extremism, Religion

SAVE THE DATE: The Ravitch Lecture at Wellesley Is April 18, This Thursday!

By dianeravitch
April 16, 2024 //
12

All are welcome to a very important lecture at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Admission is free. Join me!

The speaker is a pioneer of critical race theory.

Professor Soo Hong, chair of the Education Department at Wellesley, released the following announcement.

We are thrilled to announce that our 2024 Ravitch Lecture in Education will be presented by Professor Patricia Williams ’72, University Distinguished Professor of Law and Humanities at Northeastern University. Professor Williams’s talk is titled, “Burying the Bodies: Book-Banning and the Legacy of Anti-Literacy Laws in Constructing Erasures of History.”

This is a topic that feels relevant now more than ever. 

The lecture will be held on Thursday, April 18, 4:30 PM in Jewett Auditorium. Please share the details of this event widely!

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Description of “Burying the Bodies: Book-Banning and the Legacy of Anti-Literacy Laws in Constructing Erasures of History” 
We live in an oddly contradictory moment: politicians who position themselves as supporters of “absolute” freedom of speech simultaneously enact laws that restrict access to books about race, gender, or critical theory, and seek to constrain conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion. There have always been “culture wars” in America—it is not surprising that conversations about traumatic histories and contested historical perspectives might be fractious. In a civil society, we commit to arguing our way to consensus, however noisily or uncomfortably, and even if it takes generations. But it is the mark of an uncivil—or authoritarian—society when we find ourselves without the right to speak, hear, write, publish, dissent, or share common space even in our disagreement. The First Amendment rightly allows us to curtail speech that poses an “imminent threat of physical harm.” But recent “anti-woke” laws banish from public spaces books and ideas that merely might inspire “shame,” “guilt,” or “discomfort.” This lecture will ponder the conceptual chasm between those two notions of constraint upon speech. What power imbalance, what uses of force are rationalized in erasing whole histories from collective contemplation? What civic dispossession is enacted when certain lives or lived narratives are discounted as intolerable, unknowable–whose mere recounting is silenced as illegal?

Wellesley Logo

Soo Hong

The lecture will be taped and available online at a later time.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Education Reform, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Racism

North Carolina: Michelle Morrow Is Not Qualified to Be Superintendent of Public Instruction

By dianeravitch
April 8, 2024 //
2

Gwen Frisbie-Fulton is a columnist for the News & Observer in North Carolina. She explains in this column why extremist Michelle Morrow is unqualified to be elected as state superintendent of public instruction. What the public knows about her is that she homeschools her children, she has called the public execution of Obama, Biden, Clinton, and other leading Democrats. But there’s more.

Frisbie-Fulton writes:

After years of being a science nerd, devouring books about space and astrophysics, my son recently became very athletic. This came as a surprise — he comes from a long line of artists and wanderers.

I embraced this new development wholeheartedly and cheered enthusiastically for his team from the sidelines. Next to me, always, was his coach, yelling support until his throat was raw.

A book-smart high school logic teacher, his coach was also learning the sport. He threw himself all in, researching and bringing different hill sprints and threshold runs into their practices. He read, researched and frequently solicited advice from others. The team never became top- tier, but every single runner improved their times and they made it to the regionals. Measured by wins, he might not have been the greatest coach — but he was a very solid leader.

This year, North Carolinians will head to the polls. While elections are inherently about politics, we will also be tasked to determine which candidates are equipped to lead.

To lead, someone must of course be experienced, but he or she also must be curious and open to about the world around them. And that is why I think that my son’s coach — whose politics I disagree with substantially —would be a better, more qualified candidate for superintendent of public instruction than GOP nominee Michelle Morrow.

Experience matters in leadership and Michele Morrow’s experience is extremely limited. While my son’s coach spends nine hours a day at the school, plus another two hours outside it on practice days, Morrow has homeschooled her children. Nonetheless, she has formed rigid opinions about North Carolina’s public schools, calling them “socialism centers” and “indoctrination centers” (WRAL).

Morrow not only lacks experience with public education, but she also lives a life very distant from what most students who rely on our schools know. While my son’s coach lives in an apartment complex where, no doubt, many of his students also live, Morrow lives in a wealthy suburb of Raleigh in a house valued at more than twice the average North Carolina home. In contrast to the Morrows, nearly half of all students in North Carolina are considered economically disadvantaged (with family incomes less than 185% of the federal poverty line). Morrow might believe that “the whole plan of the education system from day one has actually been to kind of control the thinking of our young people” (WRAL), but she fails to understand the supportive, stabilizing impact of public schools in children’s lives.

Good leaders are curious. While my son’s coach has a lot of experience with kids and schools, he didn’t have a much experience coaching — which is why he read, researched and sought advice from others. Morrow appears curiously uncurious. Active on the internet, she puts herself in an echo chamber of views, falling victim to conspiracy theories. During the pandemic, she used the QAnon hashtag #WWG1WGA multiple times and she spread disinformation about vaccinations (Fox 8).

Offline, Morrow further surrounds herself with people who will reinforce, not challenge or grow, her understanding of the world. She was photographed at a far-right candidate training session alongside John Fisher, a Proud Boy, and Sloan Rachmuth, an extremist provocateur who famously trolls and harasses her opponents on social media. Morrow served on the board of one of Sloan’s anti-public education projects (Libertas Prep, which appears to have never launched) alongside extremist Emily Rainey, who at one point claimed to have information about the attack on Moore County’s electrical grid. This insular clique mimics one anothers’ anti-diversity, anti-LGBTQIA+, and anti-education stances, just as Morrow parroted insurrectionist talking points while filming herself on her way to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6: “If you’re going to commit treason, if you’re going to participate in fraud in a United States election, we’re coming after you,” she said into her livestream.

If you don’t have experience, and you don’t surround yourself with different ideas and opinions, you must at least have a deep, principled commitment to fight for everyone to be a leader. My son and his coach spar regularly about politics and culture, but he makes sure my kid is always included, respected and heard. On the contrary, Michele Morrow prides herself on her intolerance, calling repeatedly for the “execution” of people she disagrees with (CNN).

She supports banning Islam (HuffPost), though our state has the 10th-largest Muslim population in the country. She has made anti-inclusivity a cornerstone of her campaign, railing against the LGBTQIA+ community, saying “There is no pride in perversion” (Media Matters). Morrow’s ability to lead schools that include many Muslim and LGBTQIA children is, in a word, impossible.

Having opinions doesn’t make you a leader: Experience, curiosity and the desire to work for everyone does.

When fully funded and at their best, North Carolina’s schools are creating our state’s future leaders — and our students need to see what good leadership looks like. The many teachers and coaches who model good leadership to our children day in and day out are not running for office this year; unfortunately Michele Morrow is.

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Home Schooling, North Carolina, Privatization

Dana Milbank: Trump Forgot But We Should Not

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2024 //
16

Dana Milbank, columnist for The Washington Post, wrote that Trump is counting on voters to forget how chaotic it was when he was President. Even now, we are daily inundated with the chaos that, as Nikki Haley said, always follows in Trump’s wake.

Milbank reminds us of the character of the man who would be President again or dictator for a day:

The Very Stable Genius is glitching again.
This week, he announced that he is not — repeat, NOT — planning to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He apparently forgot that he had vowed over and over again to do exactly that, saying as recently as a few months ago that Republicans “should never give up” on efforts to “terminate” Obamacare.

“I’m not running to terminate the ACA, AS CROOKED JOE BUDEN DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES ALL THE TIME,” the Republican nominee wrote this week on his Truth Social platform. Rather, he said, he wants to make Obamacare better for “OUR GREST AMERICAN CITIZENS.”

Joe Buden disinformates and misinformates? For a guy trying to make an issue of his opponent’s mental acuity, this was not, shall we say, a grest look.

The previous day, Trump held a news conference where he nailed some equally puzzling planks onto his platform.

“We’ll bring crime back to law and order,” he announced.

Also: “We just had Super Tuesday, and we had a Tuesday after a Tuesday already.”

And, most peculiar of all: “You can’t have an election in the middle of a political season.”

If he can’t recall that elections frequently do overlap with political seasons, then he surely can’t be expected to remember what was happening at this point in 2020. “ARE YOU BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE FOUR YEARS AGO?” he asked last week. The poor fellow must have forgotten all about the economic collapse and his administration’s catastrophic bungling of the pandemic.

Or maybe he didn’t forget. Maybe he’s just hoping the rest of us will forget. In a sense, Trump’s prospects for 2024 rely on Americans experiencing mass memory loss: Will we forget just how crazy things were when he was in the White House? And will we forget about the even crazier things he has said he would do if he gets back there?

This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments from antiabortion forces who want to ban mifepristone, the pill used in about 60 percent of abortions. But just as the justices were taking up the case, Trump’s own proposal to ban the abortion pill vanished.

The Heritage Foundation-run Project 2025, to which Trump has unofficially outsourced policymaking for a second term, said that a “glitch” had caused its policies — including those embracing a mifepristone ban — to disappear from its website. The Biden campaign said it was “calling BS on Trump and his allies’ shameless attempt to hide their agenda,” and the missing documents returned — including the language calling abortion pills “the single greatest threat to unborn children” and vowing to withdraw regulatory approval for the drugs.

About seven in 10 Americans believe the abortion pill should be legal. So it’s easy to see why Trump might wish to erase his plan to ban the pill — just as he would like to erase his calls for the repeal of Obamacare, which has the support of 6 in 10 Americans.

The extremism isn’t just at Project 2025, stocked with former Trump advisers. The House Republican Study Committee, which counts 80 percent of House Republicans as members, put out a budget last week that would rescind approval of mifepristone, dismantle the “failed Obamacare experiment” and embrace a nationwide abortion ban from the moment of conception.

Trump and some vulnerable congressional Republicans might wish that Americans will forget such things by November. But it’s all there in black and white.

Trump is a man of greatness. So says Trump. “It is my great honor to be at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach tonight, AWARDS NIGHT, to receive the CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY & THE SENIOR CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY,” he proclaimed over the weekend. “I WON BOTH!

So much winning. “Congratulations, Donald,” President Biden tweeted. “Quite the accomplishment.”

Trump won a more significant victory on Monday, when an appellate panel reduced the bond he needs to post as he appeals a fraud verdict against him to $175 million from $454 million. Trump didn’t have enough cash to secure the larger bond. But at a news conference he assured reporters that he was still really, really rich: “I have a lot of money … I don’t need to borrow money. I have a lot of money. … I have a lot of cash. … I have a lot of cash and a great company. … I have very low debt. … I built a phenomenal company that’s very low leverage, unbelievably low leverage with a lot of cash, a lot of everything else.”

Give that man another trophy.

Trump seemed particularly hurt that the judge in the fraud case valued Mar-a-Lago at $18 million, he said, when “half of the living room is worth more than that. So it’s worth anywhere from 50 to 100 times that amount.”

Give that man $1.8 billion for Mar-a-Lago, and another trophy.

Actually, Trump’s supporters have already given him about $5 billion this week — at least on paper — for doing nothing at all. His Truth Social went public, and even though it had a loss of $49 million in the first nine months of 2023 on revenue of just $3.4 million, it was valued at more than $8 billion. That’s because Trump’s fans, wanting a piece of the action, bid up the price. The stock in the company will almost certainly collapse. The only question is whether Trump can unload his shares before then (he’s supposed to keep them for six months) and leave his supporters once again holding the bag.

Trump uses Truth Social to post doctored articles about him that omit negative details, and now he’s making up stuff about Truth Social. He said he didn’t list the company on the New York Stock Exchange because it would be “treated too badly in New York” by Democratic officeholders. So he instead listed the company on Nasdaq, which is based in … New York. Trump said the “top person” at the NYSE “is mortified. … He said, ‘I’m losing business.’ ” As CNN pointed out, neither the president nor the chair of the exchange is a “he.”

Trump must not have a lot of faith that he’ll make off with his billions before the Truth Social bubble bursts, because he’s actively seeking other ways to grift. This week he started hawking bibles.

“Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again,” Trump posted. “As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible.” He directed his supporters to a website selling the Good Book for $59.99 a copy.

The website boasts: “Yes, this is the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” Read on and you find out that the bible mongers are using Trump’s name and likeness “under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC,” a company owned by Trump.
Trump is getting kickbacks for selling the gospel — marketing God the same way he sold Trump-branded “Never Surrender High-Tops” sneakers last month for $399 a pair and, before that, digital trading cards showing Trump as a superhero.

“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in the video promoting his new bible hustle.
Trump has an arms-length relationship with the Bible, which he brandished outside a church near Lafayette Square after protesters were dispersed with tear gas; he once referred to a passage from Second Corinthians as “Two Corinthians” and, at another point, couldn’t come up with a favorite Bible verse.

But the man does have a God complex. His campaign has promoted a video at rallies announcing that “God Gave us Trump.” He has called himself “the chosen one” and has shared a post calling him “the second greatest” after Jesus.

This week, Trump shared another post with a verse from Psalms, topped by a message likening Trump’s suffering in the fraud case to the Crucifixion: “It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you,” the message said, along with Trump’s reply: “Beautiful, thank you!”

A crucial difference, however, is that Jesus was not facing a trial over hush money paid to a porn actress. The judge in that case, Juan Merchan, said the trial will begin on April 15. Trump responded to this news by attacking the judge because his daughter works for a Democratic consulting firm. The judge slapped a gag order on Trump blocking him from harassing jurors and people who work for the judge or for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and their families. Trump responded with another attack on the judge and his daughter (who weren’t included in the gag order). Merchan is “suffering from an acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Trump said of the judge, postulating that “maybe the Judge is such a hater because his daughter makes money by working to ‘Get Trump.’”

If there is a trophy for pretrial self-sabotage, Trump wins that one, too.

Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party grew yet tighter this week. The Post’s Josh Dawsey reported that those seeking employment at the Republican National Committee have been asked during job interviews whether they believe the 2020 election was stolen. (The correct answer, from the RNC’s perspective, is “Hell yes.”)

Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump, installed as RNC co-chair this month as part of a pro-Trump purge, this week brought Scott Presler to party headquarters. “Exciting things to come!” she promised. No doubt: Presler was on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, promotes QAnon conspiracy ideas, planned “stop the steal” events, and organized “March Against Sharia” protests in his work for an anti-Islam group.
As for the Trump effort to win over disenchanted Nikki Haley voters, Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman report in the New York Times that he has opted to “bypass any sort of reconciliation” with her. Said former Trump adviser Steve Bannon: “Screw Nikki Haley — we don’t need her endorsement.”

But the MAGA takeover goes far deeper than personnel. Consider the wild conspiracy theories that came from the Trump crowd right after a massive cargo ship lost power and struck Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, collapsing it. “Is this an intentional attack or an accident?” asked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), demanding an investigation. Fox’s Maria Bartiromo invited speculation about the “potential for foul play given the wide-open border.” Others blamed racial-diversity policies.
Nothing shows the thoroughness of the MAGA takeover of the GOP as well as the House’s Republican Study Committee budget. The group is the GOP mainstream now, counting some 172 of the 218 House Republicans as members, including many from swing districts and five — Juan Ciscomani and David Schweikert (Ariz.), Mike Garcia (Calif.), Don Bacon (Neb.) and Brandon Williams (N.Y.) from districts Biden won.

Yet here the RSC is, embracing a nationwide abortion ban without exceptions; a ban on the abortion pill, an increase in the retirement age for Social Security; defunding the police (through cuts to the Community Oriented Policing Services program); ending Amtrak funding and selling it off; eliminating broadband provided by the Affordable Connectivity Program; and blocking the “red flag” provisions that keep guns from dangerous people.

This is what Republicans will do next year if Trump wins the White House and Republicans control Congress. Don’t forget it.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, For-Profit, Republicans, Stupid, Trump

William S. Becker: How to Fix the Supreme Court

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2024 //
6

William S. Becker is a former U.S. Department of Energy central regional director who administered energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies programs. He is executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, a nonpartisan initiative founded in 2007 to develop action plans for facing the climate crisis.

In this post, he proposes ways to restore the integrity of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The U.S. Supreme Court is the ultimate authority on the Constitution and the nation’s laws. But who judges the justices when they violate the public trust? 

It’s not a hypothetical question. In recent decisions and revelations, the current court has shown it is co-opted by right-wing ideology and corrupted by a certain ex-president trying to escape justice on more than 90 felony charges. 

So, who ultimately judges the justices?  

As usual, the answer is voters. Our Supreme Court must abide by higher standards for objectivity and fairness than any other government institution. Yet public respect for the court has been declining for years.  

Earlier this month, a Politico poll found that a big majority of Americans want Donald Trump to stand trial before the November election. A third said his conviction would make a difference in how they vote, but 75 percent don’t fully trust the Supreme Court to be fair and nonpartisan.   

Unfortunately, voters have no direct authority to restore the court’s integrity. The people’s recourse is to elect a Congress willing to force the court to reform. The next opportunity is Nov. 5. 

So, what are the several ways the Roberts Court has undermined public trust?  

Until recently, it refused to subscribe to the ethics standards set for other members of the federal judiciary. Even after the news media found at least two members engaged in apparent conflicts of interest, the justices hesitated for months before adopting an ethics code. It turned out to be neither binding nor enforceable. 

Second, the court has abandoned the standard of judging without fear or favor. Its conservative majority has bent over backward to protect Trump from accountability for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. The justices even agreed to hear Trump’s specious claim that he enjoys total immunity for his alleged crimes. It delayed oral arguments until next April, making it unlikely Trump’s trial will occur before the election. 

In another case, the justices decided to protect Trump by rewriting the Constitution rather than enforcing it.  

The 14th Amendment disqualifies people from public office if they swear to support the Constitution, then aid an insurrection. It says oath-swearing insurrectionists can escape disqualification only with a two-thirds vote of the House and Senate. The court’s conservatives gave Congress a new role, saying no insurrectionist can be sanctioned unless Congress says so, apparently on a case-by-case basis. So, a highly partisan body, rather than the Constitution, will make these decisions. 

Third, the justices disregard “settled laws” decided by and repeatedly affirmed by previous courts. The most egregious example was its reversal of Roe v. Wade. Now, state politicians decide whether women have the right to make their own reproductive decisions. The court also gutted the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, reasoning, perhaps naively, that racism is no longer a problem in the South. 

Fourth, the court opened the floodgates for corporations to make unlimited anonymous monetary contributions to political campaigns. The majority reasoned unrealistically that campaign contributions don’t influence how members of Congress vote. It also stretched credulity by ruling that money is speech and corporations are people. As a result, corporations and wealthy Americans gained even more power to shape the nation’s laws to their benefit. 

So, Supreme Court reform should be a top objective for voters this year. That requires a Congress committed to the goal. In a previous article, I pointed out that Congress has the necessary powers. Democrats (ideally joined by moderate Republicans and independents) should promise to use them if voters give them a trifecta: control of the White House, House, and Senate.  

Congress could: 

  • Allow President Biden to create better ideological balance on the court by adding four new justicesduring his second term; 
  • Establish by rule that the Senate’s duty in confirming Supreme Court nominees includes maintaining ideological balance on the court. The rule also should require that the Senate act on presidential appointments to the court regardless of their proximity to elections; 
  • Require the Judicial Conference of the United States to create and enforce a strict code of ethics for justices, including mandatory disclosure of potential and apparent conflicts of interest. The code should require justices to recuse themselves from cases where real or apparent conflicts exist; 
  • Establish term limits of 18 years for justices and require them to retire at or before age 70. This would bring the Supreme Court in line with the District of Columbia and 32 states that have set mandatory retirement ages for appellate court judges; 
  • Send President Biden legislation to restore Roe v. Wade and a strong Voting Rights Act as the laws of the land; 
  • Pass legislation to strengthen the Federal Elections Commission, end gerrymandering and voter suppression, and eliminate unlimited and anonymous campaign contributions.  
  • By statute or proposed constitutional amendment, clarify that the president of the United States a) does not have absolute immunity for violating laws, b) can be prosecuted while in office, and c) can be permanently disqualified from public office under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment without an act of Congress. 
  • Under Article III of the Constitution, strip federal appellate courts including the Supreme Court of jurisdiction over certain classes of cases, including those involving women’s reproductive rights and the obligation of governments to protect “public trust assets” for current and future generations. 
  • Discourage growing abuses of the First Amendment by racists, militants, domestic terrorists, accelerationists and other extremists by compelling the court to define unprotected speech by contemporary standards. For example, pass a law that clarifies when predictions of civil violence and “blood baths” cross the line into true threats; when hate speech becomes discriminatory harassment; and when threats of violence or death constitute unprotected “true threats.” 

These and other commitments for reforming the Supreme Court should be part of the next Congress’s Contract with America. 

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Justice

North Carolina: Court of Appeals Rejects Removal of Confederate Monument

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2024 //
32

The North Carolina NAACP petitioned the state courts to remove a Confederate statue from the front of the Alamance County courthouse.

The News & Observer reported:

An appeals court has rejected the NAACP’s arguments for removing the Confederate monument standing outside the Alamance County courthouse, citing state law that prohibits its removal.

Both the state and Alamance branches of the civil rights group filed suit in 2021, arguing that the 30-foot rebel soldier’s statue is an enduring symbol of white supremacy and should be relocated to a “historically appropriate location.”

The suit followed a nationwide string of protests that saw Confederate statues pulled down in Raleigh, Durham and Chapel Hill, along with numerous Black Lives Matter protests in downtown Graham, including one in 2020 that saw demonstrators pepper-sprayed during a march to the polls.

In their lawsuit, lawyers for the NAACP argued that the monument in Graham violates the state Constitution by ”maintaining and protecting a symbol of white supremacy in front of an active courthouse.”

They further argued that Alamance officials kept the statue in its place out of a spirit of discrimination, which would violate the state’s equal-protection clause.

But the court brushed these arguments aside by invoking the Monuments Protection Law passed by the General Assembly in 2015.

“The record conclusively shows that the Monument is a monument located on public property which commemorates military service that is part of North Carolina’s history,” read the N.C. Appeals Court’s decision. “In so concluding, we note our federal government recognizes that service in the Confederate Army qualifies as “military service. … We conclude that, under the Monument Protection Law, (Alamance County and its commissioners) lack authority to remove the Monument.”

Read more at: https://www.newsobserver.com/article286861880.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Bigotry, History, North Carolina, Racism

Deconstructing Trump’s Fascist Speech: Victim, Martyr, Liar

By dianeravitch
March 21, 2024 //
23

Anand Giridharadas is a brilliant thinker who has a blog called The Ink. In his latest post, he prints whole sections of Trump’s incendiary campaign speech in Vandalia, Ohio, and gives a close reading to his language. (Something oddly appropriate about the location since Trump is the King of Vandals.)

Anand’s parsing of Trump’s words is incisive. I’m posting only part of it, and Anand has made this post available for free. I urge you to open the link and read it all.

He writes:

Former President Donald Trump’s fascist performance art this past weekend in Vandalia, Ohio, was ostensibly a stump speech for someone else. But you could be forgiven for forgetting that. In what was effectively his first real rally since clinching the GOP nomination, Trump offered a grim vision of America and a patchwork of unhinged tirades against his usual targets. Yet there was more to it than that.

There is little value in fact-checking the former president’s words, given that the great majority of them bore so little relationship to reality that you quickly realize their purpose could only be to destabilize reality altogether. They simply restate dozens of well-worn lies, from birtherism up through the Big Lie, interspersed with a smattering of playground insults, projection, and a stew of misunderstood economic schemes and xenophobic delusions that do the work of standing in for policy ideas. This is a hole of lies that cannot be filled with facts.

But that doesn’t mean the speech wasn’t worth paying attention to. And, being of the reading sort, we suggest there is value in reading the text, not just rage-consuming the viral videos everyone has been rehashing.

We think all Americans need to take Trump’s speech both seriously and literally as the what-you-see-is-what-you’ll-get messaging of a would-be dictator. These are things that are actually being said, in public, by a person who has already occupied the world’s most powerful position and seeks to occupy it again. It’s an advertisement for autocracy that — give it this at least — complies with the notion of truth in advertising. And as Masha Gessen has reminded us, “Rule no. 1 is to listen to and believe the autocrat.”

What we look at below is how Trump’s rhetorical performance works, how it functions. In many of these examples, the “meaning” isn’t important, and that’s why the goal here isn’t to question his command of the facts. He’s making these statements without much pretense to knowing the facts in the first place; rather, he’s looking for maximum emotional impact. He fights entirely on the battleground of emotion, and that, Ruth Ben-Ghiat has reminded us, is pretty much what autocrats have always done. 

Trump’s language here — from stabs in the back to dystopian visions of foreign nations seeking to flood the American body politic with their unwanted criminals — has plenty of precedent in the words of the strongmen of the past and present. He goes out of his way to praise Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, perhaps returning thefavor for Orban’s snub of the sitting U.S. government on his recent visit to the U.S. 

And it’s the fact that this speech follows that well-established playbook that demands we pay attention. His words may be murky. What he plans to do to us is clear.

We’ve made this piece free and open to all. We hope it will make you think about these critical issues in new ways, and give you a glimpse of the posts that go out to our supporting subscribers each week. We encourage you to join our community, and to share our work with yours! And we have a rare special offer to entice you: 20% off forever!

The Victim King

Because I’m being indicted for you and never forget our enemies want to take away my freedom because I will never let them take away your freedom.

I’m being persecuted. I think more than anybody, but who the hell knows? You know, all my life…you’ve heard of Andrew Jackson. He was actually a great general and a very good president. They say that he was persecuted as president more than anybody else. Second was Abraham Lincoln. This is just what they said. This is in the history books. They were brutal. Andrew Jackson’s wife actually died over it, they say, died of a broken heart, but she died over it. He was never quite the same.

But they say Andrew Jackson, they say Abraham Lincoln was second, but he had a, you know, in all fairness, he did have a civil war. So you would think that would cause a problem, right? So you could understand it. But nobody comes close to Trump. 

Elementary school historical analysis aside, this passage is a reminder that, more than anything, Trump relishes playing the role of the Victim King. He’s casting attacks on him as attacks on his subjects, and valiantly stepping into the breach to block the slings and arrows so his loyal supporters won’t suffer. It’s part of the personalization of leadership that’s always been at the center of cults of personality — the devotional, movement-building side of authoritarianism.

The notion that the leader acts as both weapon and human shield is a central rhetorical tool in the arsenal of autocrats. And of course he’s done this better — or maybe just “more” — than anybody. More than Lincoln; more than Jackson. 

Trump’s victimhood here is absolute. He’s devoted himself entirely to protecting his flock. An attack on him is an attack on them; a win for him a win for them.

We dig here more deeply into Trump’s pursuit of absolute power through his performance of weakness.

The Horst Wessel song

And you see the spirit from the hostages, and that’s what they are, is hostages. They’ve been treated terribly and very unfairly. And you know that. And everybody knows that. And we’re going to be working on that soon. The first day we get into office, we’re going to save our country, and we’re going to work with the people to treat those unbelievable patriots, and they were unbelievable patriots and are. You see the spirit, this cheering. They’re cheering while they’re doing that. And they did that in prison. And it’s a disgrace, in my opinion. 

Here Trump returns the favor, in a sense, to his shock troops. The speech opened with a playback of “Justice for All,” the MAGA fundraising release by the “J6 Prison Choir” that interpolates Trump reciting the Pledge of Allegiance over a backing track of the inmates singing “The Star-Spangled Banner.” 

The track is meant as a legal defense effort for the January 6 insurrectionists, but the role it plays here is to define those insurrectionists as true patriots, and to link Trump’s own persecution with that endured by his most devoted followers — the ones who’ve demonstrated their willingness to go into battle on his account. It’s a barter of martyrdoms.

This, as with the rest of the rhetoric here, is a classic authoritarian strategy. If you consider the insurrectionists cast in the role of Sturmabteilung(“SA,” the original paramilitary forces of the Nazi Party) martyr Horst Wessel (Ashli Babbitt specifically, though the group as a whole plays the same part generally here), this patriotic mashup recalls the Nazi anthem.

The Big Lie

I happen to think we won most of the country. You want to know the truth. If the voting…if the voting were real, I actually think we won most of the country.

Central to Trump’s identity is infallibility, and, given that, his mass popularity is without question. Again, this is classic autocratic positioning. Thus his obsessions with ratings, with polls, with casting primary victories that were never in doubt as fantastic triumphs.

Jokes about huge numbers aside (and the speech is rife with riffs on poll results), there is simply no way that he could have lost a legitimate electoral contest, and any such contest he might have lost would be, by definition, illegitimate. One need only look to Vladimir Putin’s “landslide” victory this week for an example of the way elections function in an authoritarian state.

The Big Lie is Trump’s truth, and it’s not just a boast. It’s key to the story he’s trying desperately to sell to the crowd, the story of a guy who can’t lose.

I was asking Jim Jordan about it because he was commenting that we have the largest crowds in the history of politics. Nobody comes close. If Ronald Reagan came to a place called Dayton, Ohio — have you heard of it? If he came to Dayton, Ohio, honestly, J.D., if he had three or 400 people in a ballroom, that would be great. We get 25-30,000 people for a small rally…We had 88,000 people show up in South Carolina.

An addendum: In his bid for recognition as the greatest of all Republicans, Trump is even willing to throw Ronald Reagan under the bus if it helps make the case.

Not even people

They’re very smart, very streetwise. And I would do the same thing. If I had prisons that were teeming with MS-13 and all sorts of people that they’ve got to take care of for the next 50 years, right? Young people, they’re in jail for years. If you call them people, I don’t know if you call them people. In some cases, they’re not people, in my opinion. But I’m not allowed to say that because the radical left says that’s a terrible thing to say…

We have so many people being hurt so badly and being killed. They’re sending their prisoners to see us. They’re sending and they’re bringing them right to the border and they’re dropping them off and we’re allowing them to come in. And these are tougher than anybody we’ve got in the country. These are hardened criminals. And we’ve got hundreds of thousands of them. 

If you take Trump at his word here — and we think you should — the leaders of countries around the world are conspiring to conduct an organized invasion, deploying their criminals to the United States in order to submerge it in violence. On one level, there’s nothing here but racism and xenophobia, but this works on the level of the conspiratorial ideas of mysterious foreign threats to the body politic that have long been part and parcel of the autocrat’s appeal. 

Migrants, in this account, aren’t fleeing refugees or people looking for a better life against all odds, but have been mobilized and directed against the U.S., a superhuman and yet subhuman army, “dropped off” by a shadowy cabal of foreign interests who aren’t content merely to sell us cheaper cars and fentanyl precursors.

Just insert “bankers” or “Jews” or “capitalist roaders” or even “globalists” here and you’re on the right track towards understanding what Trump’s trying to do.

Migrant crime

These are the roughest people you’ve ever seen. You know, now we have a new form of crime. I call it Biden migrant crime, but it’s too long. So let’s just call it migrant crime. We have a new category. You know, you have vicious crimes. You have violent crimes. You have all these. Now we have migrant crimes, and they’re rough. They’re rough. And it’s going to double up. And you see what’s happening. 

You know, throughout the world right now, I don’t know if you know this. Crime is way, way down. You know why? Because they sent us their criminals. That’s why. It’s true. It’s true. They sent, you know, Venezuela is down 66 percent because they sent us their gang members and gangsters. They sent us their drug dealers and their murderers. They’re all coming into our country. And Venezuela now, their crime is down 66 percent.

The supposed statistics here are just a “gish gallop,” in which the speaker simply overwhelms the opponent (or in this case the audience) with a flurry of inaccurate statements, knowing that the very attempt to correct them will both derail any reasonable argument and delay a response until the time has run out.

But this, again, is the story of the alien threat, here described as entering at the behest of their domestic collaborator, Joe Biden. It’s a “stab-in-the-back” accusation (there are several in the speech), in which a leader is identified as a secret traitor, betraying the nation to foreign interests.

The truth is that crime rates are down worldwide, and these statistics are pulled out of the air. The fear people have of the loss of control of the border, and of what it means to be “American” is real, however — even if Trump’s helped in its creation — and that’s what he’s playing to so effectively.

Please open the link and continue reading this insightful exegesis of Trump’s rhetoric. He is a talented orator. So was Hitler.

Categories Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Fascism, Fraud, Ignorance, Immigration, Lies, Trump

Maine: Federal Court Says Religious Schools Must Obey State Bias Law if They Get State Money

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2024 //
4

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Maine must pay the tuition of children at religious schools if it pays any private school tuition. Maine has a historic system of paying for students to go to private high schools if their own district does not have a public high school.

The state of Maine insisted that it would not pay tuition to schools that violate the state’s anti-discrimination. The two Christian schools that won the case did not accept LGBT students or students who practice a religion different from that of the church.

The state refused to pay Bangor Christian Academy for violating its human rights law. BCA sued. The court barred then from receiving public funds.

The Christian Post reported:

A Christian school in Maine must adhere to the state’s LGBT antidiscrimination policy to qualify for a state tuition assistance program while the lawsuit against the state continues, a federal judge has ruled.

U.S. District Judge John Woodcock, a George W. Bush appointee, denied a preliminary injunction Tuesday requested by Bangor Christian Schools run by Crosspoint Church, concluding that the church’s lawsuit against assorted state officials is not likely to succeed.

He ruled that Bangor Christian Schools must follow all the Maine Human Rights Act provisions.

“The Court determines that the educational antidiscrimination provisions do not violate the Free Exercise Clause because they are neutral, generally applicable, and rationally related to a legitimate government interest,” wrote Woodcock.

“The Court concludes further that the educational provisions do not violate the Free Speech Clause because they regulate conduct, not speech. Finally, the Court concludes that the employment provisions do not proscribe any constitutionally protected conduct.”

First Liberty Institute Senior Counsel Lea Patterson, who represents Crosspoint, denounced the decision and expressed plans to appeal the ruling.

“Government punishing religious schools for living out their religious beliefs is not only unconstitutional, it is wrong,” said Patterson, as quoted by Bangor Daily News.

In 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Carson v. Makin that Maine cannot lawfully stop parents from using a state tuition program to send their children to Christian private schools.

The lawsuit that led to the Supreme Court ruling was driven by parents from Bangor Christian School who sued Maine over the ban on state tuition assistance for families sending their children to a private school that includes sectarian aspects in its curriculum.

Categories Bigotry, Ethics, Maine, Privatization, Religion, Vouchers
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