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Trump Demands That FCC Withdraw CBS License After Harris Interview on 60 Minutes

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2024 //
9

Trump is weird. He says outrageous things whenever he speaks, and no one is shocked anymore. He lies and makes things up, and it’s another day on the campaign trail. It’s just Trump being Trump.

Trump was furious at CBS “60 Minutes” for allegedly editing Kamala Harris’s comments about Israel. He called it “election interference” and demanded that the FCC strip away CBS license to broadcast. The first question that occurred to me was, how did he know what she said before the conversation was edited (which is customary)?

The Washington Post pulled no punches in its story, pointing out Trump’s authoritarian bent.

Former president Donald Trump said Thursday that CBS News should lose a broadcasting license over how it edited a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris, even though the federal government does not issue licenses for such television networks.

It was the latest example of Trump calling for media outlets that have angered him to lose their rights to broadcast — a push that evokes government control of media, which is a hallmark of authoritarianism.

Federal Communications Commission Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel denounced Trump’s latest call targeting CBS, flatly rejecting an idea the independent agency has ruled out under both the Biden and Trump administrations.

“While repeated attacks against broadcast stations by the former President may now be familiar, these threats against free speech are serious and should not be ignored,” Rosenworcel said in a statement. “As I’ve said before, the First Amendment is a cornerstone of our democracy. The FCC does not and will not revoke licenses for broadcast stations simply because a political candidate disagrees with or dislikes content or coverage.”

CBS declined to comment.

Trump has been fixated for days on Harris’s interview with “60 Minutes,” which came after he backed out of sitting for his own interview with the show, according to the network. Since Harris’s interview aired Monday night, Trump has focused on how it featured a shorter version of Harris’s answer to a question about Israel than was shown in a clip previewing the interview.

It is standard for television networks to edit interviews for broadcast, especially to fit time restraints.

“Her REAL ANSWER WAS CRAZY, OR DUMB, so they actually REPLACED it with another answer in order to save her or, at least, make her look better,” Trump claimed in a post on his social media platform Thursday morning. “A FAKE NEWS SCAM, which is totally illegal. TAKE AWAY THE CBS LICENSE.”

Trump went on to baselessly accuse Democrats of making CBS “do this,” calling it “Election Interference” and saying the party should be forced to concede the election.

He later suggested that all broadcast licenses “should be bid out to the Highest Bidder.”

Trump raised the issue again during an afternoon speech in Detroit, claiming the edited Harris interview “will go down as the single biggest scandal in broadcast history.”

The FCC says on its website that its “role in overseeing program content is very limited.” The agency licenses individual broadcast stations, not networks in their entirety.

“We do not license TV or radio networks (such as CBS, NBC, ABC or Fox) or other organizations that stations have relationships with, such as PBS or NPR, except if those entities are also station licensees,” the FCC website says.

It is not the first time Trump has called for a network to lose its broadcasting license because he was not happy with what aired or with how he was portrayed. Trump last month suggested ABC should lose its license over its moderating of the debate between him and Harris. Rosenworcel also rejected that suggestion at the time.

Even the FCC head during Trump’s presidency, Ajit Pai, had dismissed Trump’s talk of targeting broadcast licenses.

“I believe in the First Amendment,” Pai said in 2017 after Trump suggested NBC should face consequences for critical coverage of his administration. “The FCC, under my leadership, will stand for the First Amendment. Under the law, the FCC does not have the authority to revoke a license of a broadcast station based on the content of a particular newscast.”

Democrats have long criticized Trump over his authoritarian tendencies, both in his public comments and in his affinities for certain foreign leaders. He said last year that he would not be a dictator if he wins the November election — “except for Day 1,” a comment that Harris has continued to highlight through the final weeks of their race.

The “60 Minutes” episode broadcast Monday — a special pre-election episode — sparked controversy in the days before it aired. CBS said Trump pulled out of an interview with the show because it would be fact-checked, per usual. Trump’s campaign said Trump never fully committed to the interview but also acknowledged that fact-checking was an area of dispute.

Categories Censorship, Elections, Freedom of the Press, Harris, Kamala, Lies, Media, Trump

How Democracies Become Autocracies, By Burrowing from Within

By dianeravitch
October 10, 2024 //
9

In an opinion piece in Scientific American, Cecilia Menjívar of UCLA and Deisy Del Real of the University of Southern California contend that the United States and other nations are sliding toward autocracy. They believe we can learn from the experience of other nations.

They write:

An autocratic wave has crept up on us in the U.S. and over the world in the last decade. Democracy and autocracy were once seen as two separate and distant worlds with little in common, and that the triumph of one weakened the other. Now, however, autocrats across the globe, in poor and wealthy nations, in established and nascent democracies, and from the right and left, are using the same tactics to dismantle democracies from within.

As of 2021, of the 104 countries classified as democracies worldwide, 37 had experienced moderate to severe deterioration in key elements of democracy, such as open and free elections, fundamental rights and liberties, civic engagement, the rule of law, and checks-and-balances between government branches. This democratic backsliding wave has accelerated since 2016 and infiltrated all corners of the world.

With the upcoming U.S. presidential election in November, questions about the future of American democracy take on urgency. As the American public seems increasingly receptive to autocratic tactics, these questions become even more pressing. Will the U.S. slide into autocracy, faced with a presidential candidate in Donald Trump who promises to be a dictator on his first day in office? Can lessons from autocracies elsewhere help us detect democratic backsliding in the U.S.?

To answer these questions, we first need to identify how the new breed of autocrats attains and retains power: their hallmark strategy is deception. How does a roll call of modern autocrats, and wannabe autocrats, like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, Russia’s Vladimir Putin, El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, India’s Narendra Modi, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro implement this modus operandi for the latest model of autocracy? They twist information and create confusion within a façade of democracy as they seize power. They do not overthrow democracy through military coups d’état but by undoing core democratic principles, weakening the rule of law, and eliminating checks and balances between branches of government.

Rather than eradicating democratic institutions as leaders like Chile’s Augusto Pinochet or Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko did in the past, today’s established and emergent autocrats (as is the case of Maduro or Orbán, for instance) corrupt the courts, sabotage elections and distort information to attain and remain in power. They are elected through ostensibly free elections and connect with a public already primed to be fearful of a fabricated enemy. Critically, they use these democratic tools to attain power; once there, they dismantle those processes. Autocratic tactics creep into the political life of a country slowly and embed themselves deeply in the democratic apparatus they corrupt. Modern autocracy, one may say, is a tyranny of gaslighting.

We gathered a group of scholars who have looked at successful and failed autocracies worldwide in a special issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, to identify common denominators of autocratic rulers worldwide. This research shows that modern autocrats uniformly apply key building blocks to cement their illiberal agenda and undermine democracies before taking them over. Those include manipulating the legal system, rewriting electoral laws and constitutions, and dividing the population into “us” versus “them” blocs. Autocrats routinely present themselves as the only presumed savior of the country while silencing, criminalizing and disparaging critics or any oppositional voice. They distort information and fabricate “facts” through the media, claim fraud if they lose an election, persuade the population that they can “cleanse” the country of crime and, finally, empower a repressive nationalistic diaspora and fund satellite political movements and hate groups that amplify the autocrats’ illiberal agenda to distort democracy.

In February, Bukele, the popular Salvadoran autocrat and self-described “world’s coolest dictator,” spoke at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), an annual convention for U.S. right-wing elected officials and activists. There he received a standing ovation after he flaunted his crackdown on crime in his country and suggested the U.S. should follow his tactics. His speech demonstrates how, regardless of political history and ideology, or their nation’s wealth and place on the global stage, autocrats today deploy a similar “toolbox of tricks” aimed at legalizing their rule. That’s because they copy from one another and learn from one another’s successes and failures. Vast interconnected networks enable autocrats to cooperate, share strategies and know-how, and visit one another in public shows of friendship and solidarity to create an international united front. Just ask Orbán, the Hungarian prime minister and autocrat, who received a warm reception when he spoke at the CPAC in 2022, reminding the crowd of the reason for his visit: “I’m here to tell you that we should unite our forces.”

Global networks of autocratic regimes also provide economic resources to other autocrats and invest in their economies, share security services to squash popular dissent, and sometimes interfere in each other’s elections.

Modern autocrats do not act alone; their connections with one another are complemented and sustained by a varied cadre of legal specialists, political strategists and academics who tend to be economically secure, well-educated and cosmopolitan. These individuals, like Michael Anton and those tied to the Trump-defending Claremont Institute, the over 400 scholars and policy experts who collaborated on Project 2025— the extreme-right game plan for a Trump presidency—and Stephen K. Bannon, who called for the “deconstruction of the administrative state” by filling government jobs with partisans and loyalists, move in and out of government positions and the limelight. They are nimble and, moreover, fundamental to the autocrats’ strategies, as they create videos and podcasts and write books to fabricate good images of the autocrats, write detailed blueprints for an autocratic form of government, and consult aspiring autocrats on best practices.

Evidence indicates that we are in a critical moment in U.S. democracy. Will the U.S. inevitably descend into autocracy? No, not with an alert and well-informed electorate. Recognizing the strategies that autocrats use and share, veiled behind a façade of democratic elections and wrapped in fearmongering, equips us to understand the harmful consequences of these strategies for democracy, and perhaps to stop the wave in time.

Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a Nicaraguan opposition politician and prospective presidential candidate, was accused of treason, arrested and banished simply for running as an opposition candidate by the regime of President Daniel Ortega and Vice President Rosario Murillo (who is also first lady). In exile, Chamorro has described a danger countries face: autocrats who come to power through democratic systems are “like a silent disease—the early symptoms of this silent disease are usually dismissed, but once it begins to consume the body, it is usually too late to stop it.”

This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author or authors are not necessarily those of Scientific American.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Higher Education, International, Lies

Brazil Banned Twitter; Three Weeks Later, Elon Musk Folded

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2024 //
7

On September 9, Lisa Dye of Public Notice wrote about why Brazilian authorities banished Twitter (or, as its proprietor calls it, X). She wrote that he sticks up for his rightwing buddies, not free speech. In 2022, Brazil’s strongman leader Bolsonaro bestowed a prestigious national award on Musk.

She writes:

As of this writing Brazil’s 215 million citizens cannot access X (or “twitter” as we’ll call it). And yet, they are still living in the dumbest timeline.

Elon Musk, the world’s foremost “free speech absolutist,” has picked a fight with the Brazilian government over its demand that he censor rightwing misinformation. It’s a classic situation of “why can’t they both lose?” But right now, the only ones losing are the Brazilian people.

The saga began with former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, a rightwing conservative who lost his bid for reelection in 2022 to leftwing politician Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. On January 8 of last year, Bolsonaro’s supporters stormed Congress and the Supreme Court in a failed attempt to keep him in power. 

The reaction of the Brazilian government to January 8 stands in stark contrast to official reaction to January 6 in the US. In Brazil, hundreds of people were immediately arrested, including some senior government officials. Bolsonaro was barred from running for office again. And Supreme Court justice Alexandre de Moraes led an operation that was both investigatory and preventative. In short, they wanted to figure out why their government had been attacked, and they wanted to make damn sure that it never happened again. 

To that end, Judge de Moraes sought to banish rightwing incitement, the so-called “digital militias,” from social media. In sealed rulings, he ordered Meta, Instagram, and Telegram to remove posts and users who flogged misinformation about the attack on government and advocated for Bolonsaro’s return. 

Meanwhile, Bolsonaro fled to Florida, where he launched a second act as hero of the American right. The Brazilian leader spews the same jingoistic populism, fueled by hatred of minorities and LGBTQ+ people, that animates Trumpism. He even consulted Steve Bannon on his 2018 campaign. And perhaps most importantly, he reinforces their bedrock belief that election fraud is rampant.

As former congressman and current Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes told CNN, “The way his narrative is built, to a large extent, as a copy or a mirror image of the narrative that they have in the US is very useful in the sense of showing people this is happening in other places, too. This proves the whole idea that there is a global conspiracy, a global leftwing conspiracy to keep us, the people who represent the real people, out of power.”

However, Musk has 20 million Twitter subscribers in Brazil, and they were drifting to other platforms, like Mark Zuckerberg’s Threads. Worse, the Brazilian Supreme Court took $2 million from Musk’s Starlink to satisfy its claims against Musk’s X. What did Musk do when threatened with fines and the loss of market share?

The New York Times reported on September 21:

Elon Musk suddenly appears to be giving up.

After defying court orders in Brazil for three weeks, Mr. Musk’s social network, X, has capitulated. In a court filing on Friday night, the company’s lawyers said that X had complied with orders from Brazil’s Supreme Court in the hopes that the court would lift a block on its site.

The decision was a surprise move by Mr. Musk, who owns and controls X, after he said he had refused to obey what he called illegal orders to censor voices on his social network. Mr. Musk had dismissed local employees and refused to pay fines. The court responded by blocking X across Brazil last month.

Now, X’s lawyers said the company had done exactly what Mr. Musk vowed not to: take down accounts that a Brazilian justice ordered removed because the judge said they threatened Brazil’s democracy. X also complied with the justice’s other demands, including paying fines and naming a new formal representative in the country, the lawyers said.

Brazil’s Supreme Court confirmed X’s moves in a filing on Saturday, but said the company had not filed the proper paperwork. It gave X five days to send further documentation.

The abrupt about-face from Mr. Musk in Brazil appeared to be a defeat for the outspoken businessman and his self-designed image as a warrior for free speech. Mr. Musk and his company had loudly and harshly criticized Brazil’s Supreme Court for months, even publicly releasing some of its sealed orders, but neither had publicly mentioned their reversal by Saturday morning.

The moment showed how, in the yearslong power struggle between tech giants and nation-states, governments have been able to keep the upper hand.

Mr. Musk has had to come to terms with that reality in other countries, including India and Turkey, where his social network complied with orders to censor certain posts. But in Brazil and Australia, he complained about government orders he disagreed with and accused local officials of censorship. His company’s responses to governments have often been in line with his personal politics.

In the U.S., where Musk will never be censored, he has restored accounts of neo-Nazis, election deniers, and COVID science deniers. His own Twitter feed is an advertising platform for Trump. He frequently highlights outrageous pro-Trump, anti-Harris messages.

It’s sad to think that this hateful, bigoted man “owns” the world’s town square, where no one ever fact-checks him or moderates his Tweets.

Just proves, as if proof were needed, that money is power.

Categories Censorship, Education Reform, International, Media, Politics, Propaganda, Trump

Chris Tomlinson: Do Politicians Have a First Amendment Right to Ban Books?

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2024 //
21

Most people would promptly respond to the question that is the title of this post: NO! the First Amendment was written to protect the people against government over-reach. The very question is absurd on its face. Yet Republican Attorneys General have argued that the First Amendment protects their right to ban books. No, no, no, a million times NO!

Chris Tomlinson, a columnist for The Houston Chronicle, wrote about the case:

Book banners in Llano County and Florida’s attorney general will try to convince a federal appeals court Tuesday that the First Amendment grants elected officials the unlimited right to remove books from public libraries.

Conservatives will turn freedom of speech on its head by arguing that politicians are expressing themselves when they ban books, and therefore, the Constitution protects book bans. In a perverse twist, they will make this argument during Banned Books Week, the time of year when writers defend the right to share ideas.

The Little v. Llano case will undoubtedly go to the U.S. Supreme Court. Seventeen Republican state attorneys general have joined Ken Paxton in defending the Llano County Commissioners Court’s order to remove 17 books from the public library. Not the school library, mind you, but the library system for all residents.

The banned books include the award-winning “They Called Themselves the K.K.K: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group,” by Susan Campbell Bartoletti, “Caste” by Isabel Wilkerson, and “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex and Sexual Health,” by Robie Harris.

Llano is not alone. Texas has led the nation in book bans, according to PEN America, a nonprofit freedom of speech group of which I am a member.

Historically, the U.S. Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment severely limits the power of government to control speech and other forms of expression. Governments are not allowed to ban books based solely on their viewpoint; there must be a public safety issue.

Llano County residents sued in federal court last year to have the books returned. U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman found that Llano officials only banned the books because they disagreed with the content and determined the commissioners had no compelling government interest to remove them. He ordered all the books restored to library shelves.

The county appealed to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which split in a preliminary decision. The full 17-judge court will hear arguments Tuesday.

The 18 Republican attorneys general who have joined the case want the judges to accept a new interpretation of the First Amendment, one first pushed in Florida. They argue government officials have free speech rights, and the court must protect them as much as a librarian’s, a writer’s or a reader’s civil liberties.

“The county’s decisions over which books to offer its patrons in its public libraries, at its own expense, are its own speech,” the states argued in a court filing last month. “The government does not violate anyone’s free speech rights merely by speaking — no matter what it chooses to say or not to say.”

If Little v. Llano makes it to the Supreme Court, and the justices agree with this argument, they will hobble the foundation of our democracy: the free exchange of ideas. The flip side of the freedom to write is the freedom to read. One is useless without the other.

Libraries play a crucial role in a free society. They are repositories not only of history and entertainment but of accumulated knowledge and new ideas. Books are expensive, and libraries make them available to the entire community.

Public libraries are, by definition, government entities financed with taxpayer dollars. In a free society, they must be nonpartisan and contain a wide range of content absent political litmus tests. A conservative victory for Llano would turn politicians into thought police.

The conservative activists who complained about the Llano library books relied on a list of 850 titles published by former state Rep. Matt Krause, a Fort Worth Republican, in 2021. Krause focused on books about racism, LGBTQ issues or anything else that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish.”

Krause was among the state lawmakers who limited how teachers can discuss slavery and discrimination against African Americans because it might make descendants of slaveholders uncomfortable. Possessing “The 1619 Project” is now a firing offense at Texas public schools.

Where does it end if politicians have a free speech right to ban books? We know politicians try to outdo each other with ideological purity tests. Activists on the left and right will draft lists of authorized and prohibited books, and libraries will have to restock their shelves after every election.

As for those who argue libraries are full of pornography, I say poppycock. The American Library Association and professional librarians follow well-considered procedures in choosing what titles to carry, and one person’s taste should not determine what a library buys.

If politicians do end up determining what we can find at the library, you’ll have fellow Texans to thank.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Librarians, Libraries, Literature, Texas

Carl A. Cohn: How to End the Culture Wars in Our Schools

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2024 //
14

Carl Cohn is one of my personal heroes of American education. He served as superintendent in Long Beach and in San Diego, also as a member of the state board of education. Currently he is Professor Emeritus and Senior Research Fellow at Claremont Graduate University. I first met him when I was researching my book The Death and life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. At the time, I was studying the San Diego schools as the site where corporate reform had its first try-out. Carl was brought in by the school board to put the district back together after nearly a decade of disruptive and punitive reforms. What I remember most from our candid, off-the-record conversation was his advice: the most important connection between the superintendent and teachers is trust. He subsequently published an essay about trust for “Education Week,” and I quoted him in my book.

Carl Cohn wrote this essay for School Administrator magazine.

Last summer, I attended a raucous school board meeting in Orange County, Calif., where a conservative school board majority had fired a popular superintendent, started remov-
ing books from libraries, banning
LGBTQ+ symbols and considering a new parental notification policy that would, in effect, restrict the protected rights of certain students under both state and federal law.

After sitting in a crowded room with adult culture warriors going back and forth for several hours with heated exchanges, I was struck by the bravery of a young transgender high school student who had the courage to go to the podium to address her elected school board with the following request: “I just want to feel safe at school. Please make that happen!”

Fast forward to the March 5 Super Tuesday primary elections here in California, one that was characterized by historically low turnout, which usually gives prominence to the voting habits of older, whiter and more conservative voters.

A new progressive coalition of parents, teachers, organized labor and community members successfully recalled two of the conservative members of the school board majority there and recently appointed progressive replacements for them. The other two members of the previous conservative majority are up for re-election on the November ballot.


A Hopeful trend


This outcome caught the political pundits and experts by surprise. The 25,000-student Orange Unified School District in Orange, Calif., sits in the heart of historic Ronald Reagan country, which is trending purple rather than solidly red in high-turnout elections. It was not seen as a likely place to launch the progressive pushback against the culture wars that have dominated public school debates at the local level, starting with the COVID-19 pandemic shutdowns.


Evidence of this hopeful new trend is emerg- ing in school district elections around the country, including the critical battleground states that are the key to the upcoming November presidential election outcome.


The emerging evidence from Bucks County and Reading in Pennsylvania, Clarksville in Ten- nessee, Lexington in Kentucky, Middletown in Ohio, Plattsmouth in Nebraska, suburban New Jersey and other parts of the country suggests that new coalitions of parents and allies are say- ing emphatically that the interests of all K-12 school children should be the main agenda rather than this recent proxy for the adult culture wars. The latter often creates real-time chaos and dis- ruption in public school districts.

Most of these conservative school board agen- das in the past four years generally have flown under the seemingly common-sense banner of something called “parental rights,” which suggests that a majority of parents absolutely know what is best when it comes to policymaking at their local public schools. Who could possibly disagree with such a valid notion?


I would argue that anyone who has studied the legitimate history of the United States would disagree vehemently because the sad truth is that parental rights often have been used in America to take away the rights of certain children under the guise that parents know best under all circumstances.


Did those Louisiana parents know best when they tried to deny an education to six-year-old Ruby Bridges back in 1960? The mob that yelled at that innocent young black girl was argu-
ing absurdly that parents know best under all circumstances.


Or in liberal-learning California and Mas- sachusetts in the late 1970s when school board members declared that parents in Boston and Los Angeles’ San Fernando Valley should control who attends the public schools there?
Consider the fact the civil rights division of the U.S. Department of Education has logged a record number of complaints this past year, con- firming that the rights of vulnerable students are under systematic assault throughout our nation.

Communities push back


Writing for The Christian Science Monitor, reporter Courtney Martin describes the rust-belt community of Middletown, Ohio, made famous by Senator J.D. Vance’s 2016 best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” as an emerging success story in fighting back against the school culture wars that dominate so many communities in America.

The school district’s first Black superintendent, Marlon Styles, rather than getting defensive, decided to engage with the parents and commu- nity members who criticized his emphasis on cul- turally responsive approaches to school discipline, reducing inequality and full-on embrace of equity.


Styles sat down with the Middletown Area Ministerial Alliance and began a dialogue, listen- ing and learning tour that was critical to reas- suring the respected faith leaders that the school district he headed had not adopted policies inconsistent with the family values they all shared and supported.


Unlike Middletown’s rust-belt status, the Pennridge School District of Bucks County, Pa.,
is a suburban middle-class community just north of Philadelphia, where a progressive alliance suc- cessfully ousted a 5-4 Moms for Liberty school board majority last November 2023 that was determined to adopt a curriculum from conservative Hillsdale College along with banning policies on diversity, equity and inclusion, Pride flags and books with questionable content.


This is yet another example of a community of voters putting the brakes on efforts to adopt extremist policies at the local school board level. As in other communities, these progressive forces do not have the monetary resources that often give a huge advantage to their better-funded conservative opponents.


One of the more interesting progressive groups fighting back against the conservative parental rights groups has emerged in suburban New Jer- sey. It calls itself SWEEP, or Suburban Women Engaged, Empowered and Pissed. Its members often work with Districts for Democracy, the New Jersey Public Education Coalition and Action Together New Jersey to push back against well- funded conservative alliances.


While open discrimination against LBGTQ+ students through forced outing policies is often the galvanizing force in many of the emerging
progressive pushback efforts, book banning is another significant issue drawing the ire of voters in some communities.


The Omaha World-Herald reported on the suc- cessful recall earlier this year of a newly elected school board member in the small community
of Plattsmouth, Neb., about 20 miles south of Omaha, who argued that about 50 books needed
to be immediately removed from school libraries based on her objections to their adult content.
In addition, the board member argued, “People that voted for me should have been very well
informed on who I was and what I was going to do.” Her book removal campaign led to a grass- roots coalition of parents, students and commu- nity members who came together to recall her from the school board after she served on the board for only a single year.


PEN America, a free speech organization, is tracking a record number of book bans in U.S. school districts, encompassing 23 states and more than 4,000 books removed in the first five months of 2024. It’s no surprise Florida leads the nation in book bans with 3,135 removed in 11 school districts during the fall 2023 semester.


On a personal note, I volunteered in the same 1st-grade classroom for 20-plus years at Colin Powell School in the Long Beach Unified School District, which I headed for 10 years as super- intendent. In spring 2023, at the start of the baseball season, I read my 1st graders a book that is banned in Duval County, Florida’s fourth largest school system. It’s a delightful children’s book by author Jonah Winter titled Roberto Clemente, Pride of the Pittsburgh Pirates. It captures the iconic story of the great Puerto Rican baseball player and humanitarian who died when his plane crashed while transporting relief supplies to earthquake victims in Nicaragua on New Year’s Eve in 1972. My 1st graders loved the story of this Caribbean island hero.


Before reading it to my students, I searched for what the objectionable content might be. The only thing I could find was a single sentence that referenced the fact “White sports writers called him lazy when he first came up to the Pirates from the minor leagues.” As most sports fans know, sports writers of all colors are sometimes wrong about future Hall of Famers.


Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District, with 19,000 students about 40 miles north of Anchorage, is the center of the most recent book banning controversy to come under federal court scrutiny with a lawsuit brought by
the ACLU and the Northern Justice Project last
fall, according to Alaska Public Media.

The plaintiffs, representing students and par-
ents, are arguing that the school district’s removal of 50-plus books that citizens had complained about is unconstitutional and violates the free speech rights of students. A ruling from a U.S. District Court judge is expected later this year on the plaintiffs’ request for an injunction halting the school district’s removal of the books in question.


A policy under consideration in Wyoming’s largest school district, Laramie County School District 1, would ban any book containing “sexu- ally explicit content” in elementary schools and discourage their use in junior high and high schools, according to news coverage in the Cow- boy State Daily.


The battle there is joined by the Cheyenne chapter of Moms for Liberty on one side and the Wyoming Family Alliance for Freedom on the other. Both sides are gearing up for battle as the school board considers final adoption of this strict policy.


Students First


This past spring, I moderated a panel discussion in Sacramento, Calif., on the embattled political landscape of public schools in California. The
speakers included the dynamic executive direc- tor of our statewide administrators association, a heroic new member of our state legislature and a 17-year-old high school senior who was about to graduate from Chaparral High School in the Temecula Valley Unified School District. The latter is a district whose board, endorsed by an evangelical church, has embraced the notion that the public schools are “the devil’s playground.”

The brilliance of the public school student leader, about to go off to college, stole the show as she confidently articulated what she had learned from outstanding teachers who had exposed her to an honest history of our country and diverse literature that inspires. Proudly sitting in the front row of this large hotel ballroom and cheering her on was her mother, who pointed out that caring and dedicated teachers presenting the truth was what she wanted and demanded from her local public school district. This student and her parent are part of the progressive One Temecula Valley PAC that recently recalled the church-sponsored school board president there.

As we examine the extraordinary stakes in
this fall’s election, school leaders would do well to remember that satisfied students and parents are the best allies and advocates that we could possibly have in the fight to defeat extremists and their blatantly false narratives about America’s public schools.


CARL COHN, a retired superintendent, is professor emeritus and senior research fellow at Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, Calif.


Marlon Styles, former superintendent in Middletown, Ohio, convened members of the faith community to recon- cile differing points of view.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Read

Russia Closes Down Access to YouTube

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2024 //
7

Putin wants to control all access to information that citizens of Russia can see so he cut off YouTube. The channel was popular in Russia, as it is here in the U.S. He previously closed all independent Russian media.

The Washington Post reported:

Russians are losing access to YouTube, the last major Western social platform freely available in the country, cutting them off from information independent from the Kremlin and alarming internet freedom advocates, journalists and opposition activists.


The throttling of YouTube, widely used for everything including watching cartoons and exposés on government corruption, comes amid fears that Russia will also shut down the Telegram messenger app after its founder, Pavel Durov, was detained by France.


The move comes as Russia is increasingly cracking down on any alternative sources of information, especially online, and has been pushing its citizens away from foreign-based social media apps to locally developed ones over which it has tighter control, such as its video-streaming alternative RuTube.


In early August, Russian users who had grown used to playing cartoons on YouTube to distract their children or having meals with shows playing in the background began reporting that the videos were not loading. By Aug. 3, state media reported that the service stopped playing high-resolution videos in almost all browsers running the desktop version in Russia.

Categories Censorship, Evil, Fascism

Florida: School District Restores 36 Banned Books, to Settle Lawsuit

By dianeravitch
September 13, 2024 //
1

A school district in Florida agreed to settle a federal lawsuit by restoring 36 banned books to school libraries. The censorship of books that contain references to LGBT+ people or to race/racism was launched by Governor DeSantis, who wanted to “protect” students from topics he personally finds objectionable. DeSantis considers such topics to be “woke,” which he has vowed to expel from the state. Other lawsuits are pending in the state.

TALLAHASSEE — Authors of the children’s book “And Tango Makes Three” and parents of students have reached a settlement with the Nassau County school district that will lead to 36 books returning to school libraries after being removed last year, according to court documents filed this week.

The settlement came in a federal lawsuit filed in May amid widespread controversy about removing books from school libraries in Florida and other states. Two federal lawsuits are pending, for example, about the Escambia County School Board’s removal of books.

“And Tango Makes Three,” which tells the story of two male penguins who raised a penguin chick at New York’s Central Park Zoo, has become a prominent part of the debate in Florida. Lawsuits allege it has been targeted for depicting same-sex parents raising a child.

Nassau County officials said they removed “And Tango Makes Three” and two other books last year because of a lack of circulation, according to the settlement. District officials said they removed 33 other books because of alleged “obscene” material that would violate state law.

But the lawsuit contended “And Tango Makes Three” was removed because of anti-LGBTQ bias, and the settlement includes a statement that district officials “agree that And Tango Makes Three contains no ‘obscene’ material in violation of the obscenity statute, is appropriate for students of all ages, and has pedagogical value.”

The settlement lists 22 other books that are slated to be returned to libraries by Friday. Examples include “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison and “The Clan of the Cave Bear” by Jean Auel…

The law firm Selendy Gay PLLC, which represents “And Tango Makes Three” authors Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson and the parents, issued a news release Thursday that described the settlement as “major.”

“This settlement — a watershed moment in the ongoing battle against book censorship in the United States — significantly restores access to important works that were unlawfully removed from the shelves of Nassau County, Florida’s public school libraries,” Lauren Zimmerman, one of the firm’s attorneys, said in a prepared statement. “Students will once again have access to books from well-known and highly-lauded authors representing a broad range of viewpoints and ideas.”

Categories Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Florida, Freedom to Read

Moms4Liberty Meet and Embrace Trump, Of Course

By dianeravitch
September 5, 2024 //
5

The AP wrote about the annual conference of Moms for Liberty, where the guest speaker was convicted felon Donald Trump. The organization is supposed to be “non-political,” to preserve its tax-free status, but its partisan political views are undisguised. The rightwing group favors censorship, book banning, and unhinged alarmism about teachers “grooming” students to be gay or transgender.

WASHINGTON (AP) — In her welcoming remarks at Moms for Liberty’s annual gathering in the nation’s capital on Friday, the group’s co-founder, Tiffany Justice, urged members to “fight like a mother” against the Democratic presidential ticket.

Later that evening, after she had interviewed Republican nominee Donald Trump onstage, she made a point to say she was personally endorsing him for the presidency. Their talk show style chat was preceded by a “Trump, Trump, Trump” chant from the audience.

The weekend’s gathering, drawing parent activists from across the country, has showcased how Moms for Liberty has moved toward fully embracing Trump and his political messaging as November’s electiondraws nearer. The group is officially a nonpartisan nonprofit that says it’s open to anyone who wants parents to have a greater say in their children’s education, yet there was little pretense about which side of the nation’s political divide it has chosen.

A painting that was prominently displayed on an easel next to the security station attendees had to pass through before being allowed into the conference area showed Vice President Kamala Harris kneeling over a bald eagle carcass, a communist symbol on her jacket and her mouth dripping with blood. A Moms for Liberty spokeswoman said she hadn’t seen the gruesome painting and noted that the only official signage for the event included the group’s logo….

Many communities where Moms for Liberty candidates took over a majority of the school board have been frustrated by their laser-like focus on removing books, questioning lessons around race and rejecting LGBTQ+ identities. A lack of progress toward academic improvement has in turn led to a counter movement among more moderate and liberal parents and teachers unions.

Moms for Liberty says it won’t make an official endorsement in the presidential race, but it isn’t shying away from getting involved. The group’s founders recently wrote an open letter to parents warning that Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, a former high school social studies teacher, would be “the most anti-parent, extremist government America has ever known.”

The group spent its first three years becoming synonymous with the “parents’ rights” movement in local school boards but recently has become more involved in national politics. It participated in the controversial conservative blueprint for the next Republican administration, Project 2025, as a member of its advisory board. The group also has invested more than $3 million in four crucial presidential swing states. The money has paid for advertising in Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Wisconsin, including messages critical of the Biden administration.

But, here’s some good news:

Around the country, some school board members backed by Moms for Liberty or who carry out the group’s agenda have been recalled in recent months by community members who say their policies have caused chaos.

In Woodland, California, north of the state capital, a school board member backed by Moms for Liberty members was recalled in March after she raised fears that children were coming out as transgender “as a result of social contagion ” during a school board meeting in 2023.

In Southern California, a trustee with the Temecula Valley Unified School District Board of Education was recalled after he and two of his colleagues voted to reject a social studies curriculum because it included a history of the gay rights movement.

And in Idaho’s heavily Republican panhandle, community members from across the political spectrum rose up to recall two right-wing members of their board last year who sought to root out critical race theory and institute a conservative agenda.

Katie Blaxberg, a Pinellas County candidate who will run against the one remaining Moms for Liberty-linked candidate for that county’s school board this fall, said the “nastiness” and “divisiveness” of the group “isn’t conducive to any sort of good wor

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Harris, Kamala, Trump

Dan Rather: Trump Is Lying About Project 2025

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2024 //
78

When Project 2025, the definitive guide to Trump’s second term, began to generate negative reactions, Trump claimed he was taken by surprise. All of a sudden, he played dumb about Project 2025: He said he didn’t know who was behind it and had barely heard about it.

As Dan Rather and his team at “Steady” determined, he was lying again. Nothing new there, but he wanted to discourage the public from learning more about Project 2025.

Dan wrote:

Donald Trump and his campaign may have disavowed it, but don’t think for a moment that Project 2025 is going anywhere. A newly released hidden camera interview with one of the project’s authors, who also served in Trump’s Cabinet, reveals that the Republican nominee has “blessed it.” 

First, a little background.

Project 2025, the MAGA blueprint to completely overhaul the federal government, is being spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, the daddy of conservative think tanks, with input from more than 100 other right-wing organizations. “The Mandate for Leadership 2025: The Conservative Promise,” the official title, consists of four pillars:

  • A 900-page policy guide for a second Trump term
  • A playbook for the first 180 days, consisting of 350 executive orders and regulations that have already been written
  • A LinkedIn-style database of potential MAGA personnel 
  • A “Presidential Administration Academy,” a training guide for political appointees to be ready on day one

On July 24, Russell Vought, Trump’s former director of the Office of Management and Budget, Project 2025 author and Republican National Convention policy director, met with two people he thought were potential donors to his conservative group, Center for Renewing America. They were actually working for a British nonprofit trying to expose information about Project 2025. The two secretly recorded the two-hour conversation.

In the video posted on CNN, Vought described the project as the “tip of the America First spear.” He said that after meeting with Trump in recent months, the former president “is very supportive of what we do.” The project would create “shadow agencies” that wouldn’t be subject to the same scrutiny as actual agencies of the federal government. Vought also told members of the British nonprofit that he was in charge of writing the second phase of Project 2025, consisting of the hundreds of executive orders ready to go on day one of a new administration. 

When asked how the information would be disseminated, his deputy said it would be distributed old-school, on paper. “You don’t actually, like, send them to their work emails,” he said, to avoid discovery under the Freedom of Information Act.

Last week, ProPublica, an investigative journalism nonprofit, obtained more than 14 hours of training videos, which are part of Project 2025’s effort to recruit and train tens of thousands of right-wing appointees to replace a wide and deep swath of current federal civil servants. 

“We need to flood the zone with conservatives,” said Paul Dans, who was in charge of Project 2025 until he was fired because it’s become such a headache for Trump. “This is a clarion call to come to Washington,” Dans said in 2023. 

Project 2025 is not a new plan; it has been in the works for decades. The first version was published just after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981. In 2015 the Heritage Foundation gave the incoming Trump administration the seventh iteration. Should you think that Trump and his cronies know nothing about any of this, the Heritage Foundation boasted that Trump instituted 64% of the policy recommendations in that document, including leaving the Paris Climate Accords.

Trump has tried and largely failed to distance himself from Project 2025. Perhaps because two high-ranking members of his administration were directors of the project. On Truth Social, Trump posted, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it….” As for those training videos, most of the speakers in them are former Trump administration officials.

Many of Project 2025’s recommendations are deeply unpopular with Americans. A survey conducted by YouGov found that almost 60% of respondents opposed several big tenets, including: eliminating the Department of Education, giving tax cuts to corporations, ending the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), and changing the law to allow the president to fire civil servants.

It is difficult to convince voters that the project’s policy recommendations are real because they are so radical. Anat Shenker-Osorio, a political strategist, spoke about the challenges of discussing Project 2025 with focus groups on the podcast “The Wilderness.”

“When we actually cut and paste verbatim from the Heritage document, people are like, that’s a bunch of bull****. Like, why did you make that up? And what is wrong with you? And why are you lying to us?” she said. 

To that end, here are just a few of the most democracy-threatening suggestions, verbatim:

On child labor: “With parental consent and proper training, certain young adults should be allowed to learn and work in more dangerous occupations.”

On education: “Federal education policy should be limited and, ultimately, the Federal Department of Education should be eliminated.“

On climate change: “Climate-change research should be disbanded … The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) should be broken up and downsized.”

On LGBTQ+ rights: “The next secretary should also reverse the Biden Administration’s focus on ‘LGBTQ+ equity,’ subsidizing single-motherhood, disincentivizing work, and penalizing marriage, replacing such policies with those encouraging marriage, work, motherhood, fatherhood, and nuclear families.”

On families: “Families comprised of a married mother, father, and their children are the foundation of a well-ordered nation and healthy society … The male-female dyad is essential to human nature and … every child has a right to a mother and father.”

Not to mention several highly publicized recommendations on abortion and women’s rights that are an effort to return to America of the 1950s.

The architects of and adherents to Project 2025 want a white, heterosexual Christian nation. The ideals of our 250-year-old form of government, in which majority rules, are anathema to them. They want to inflict their beliefs on everyone, representative democracy be damned. 

I cannot state it strongly enough: Project 2025, with Donald Trump at the helm, is the greatest existential threat to American democracy in recent history. And make no mistake, should Trump win in November, he will usher in many if not most of the project’s recommendations. 

Perhaps Project 2025 should be referred to as Project 1925. In Trump’s mind, that was the time that America was “great,” and they want to go back to that era of low taxes, no abortions, white Christian male domination, no civil rights laws, low taxes, and a very limited federal government.

No thanks. We are not going back!

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Environment, Extremism, Freedom, Gender, Health, School Choice, Science, Trump, Vouchers

The Hartman Report: Please Don’t Lie to Students!

By dianeravitch
August 1, 2024 //
14

Greg Palast wrote a guest column for Thom Hartmann about the mendacity of “divisive concepts” laws, which require teachers to lie or suppress the truth, because the truth night make someone uncomfortable. Let’s all be happy by imbibing a steady diet of lies!

Palast writes here:

A Sunday special editorial by my good friend Greg Palast for The Hartmann Report.  Catch Palast this week on Thom.TV

Do you know about Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order 13950?  If you don’t, be afraid.  Be very afraid.

Just weeks before he was fired by America’s voters in 2020, President Trump issued this piece of nastiness which was quickly rescinded by just-inaugurated President Biden.

The Executive Order is a “DCL,” what the right-wing brilliantly calls a, “Divisive Concepts Law.”   These DCL’s terrorize teachers with the threat of losing their jobs if they dare teach the truth of America’s racial history:  That white people enslaved Africans, that the Klan enforced racial vote suppression with the hanging rope.  And God forbid, they teach that women were banned from the vote until the 20th Century.  The Executive Order bans teaching  any historical facts if, 

“….any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex….”

As a practical matter, it means teaching the truth of America’s racial stain will get you fired.   In 2021, Tennessee high school teacher Matt Hawn lost his job because a student accused him of teaching—cover your children’s ears—“Critical Race Theory.”  Hawn said he’d never heard of Critical Race Theory when he was canned.

(Critical Race Theory, taught in law schools, says many of America’s laws and their enforcement, contain a racial bias.  Well, D’oh!].

On Thursday, Vice-President Harris told the American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston, epicenter of the anti-CRT hysteria,

“While you teach students about our nation’s past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation’s true and full history; including book bans! Book bans — in this year 2024!  Just think about it: we want to ban assault weapons and they want to ban books.”  

It was a century ago, that Tennessee was the laughingstock of the nation for prosecuting a schoolteacher for telling his class about human evolution, a story recounted in the film, Inherit the Wind.   Now, a hundred years later, Trumpsters are again passing wind over Tennessee.

And he’s baaaaack!  Trump has put his fixation with censoring “divisive concepts” into the GOP platform.  Details are provided in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 master plan for the master race. 

Ill wind out of Georgia

This ill wind originated in Georgia when Gov. Brian Kemp signed HB1084, threatening the jobs of  teachers fot teaching ‘divisive concepts’ that could make a white child feel “discomfort.”

Who would feel “discomfort” about the uncensored history of Georgia? Well, maybe it’s Gov. Kemp himself.  Because it was the Kemp family, then known as the Habershams, that first brought Africans in chains to Georgia.

Maybe Kemp and family should feel a bit of discomfort.  I spoke with Janie Banse, who told me she is she is heartsick that her cousin, Gov. Kemp, won’t admit that their family’s wealth originated in the African slave trade.  Kemp’s ancestors held the largest auction of human beings in American history, still remembered by Black Georgians today as “Weeping Time,” when 436 men, women and their children were separated and sold.

Georgia’s HB 1084, passed in 2022, 

Prohibit[s] the use of curricula that addresses the topics of slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, or racial discrimination, including topics relating to the enactment and enforcement of laws resulting in racial oppression, segregation, and discrimination in a professionally and academically appropriate manner and without espousing personal political beliefs;

And what if a teacher expresses a personal distaste for slavery?
Since Georgia was among the first to pass a “DCL,” and at least 16 states have followed.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, dubbed his DCL the “Stop WOKE Act.”

He banned the College Board’s AP African American Studies course and supported new Black history standards that include the requirement to teach, “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

I can’t make this up.

Since 2021, at least 27 states have imposed or proposed bans or restrictions on teaching topics related to race and gender. Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona and Oklahoma all passed these Divisive Concepts laws.  What do these states have in common?  According to rankings by US News and World Report, they are all in the nation’s bottom third in educational achievement.  Apparently, they won’t teach uncensored history—but then, it’s not clear that they teach much history at all.

Killing Killers

Trump’s DLC brigade is not just putting a blindfold over students regarding slavery and Jim Crow.  Oklahoma’s Divisive Concepts Law has effectively silenced the true story of the state that was once known officially as, “Indian Territory.”

Jim Gray, former Principal Chief of the Osage Nation, told me that teachers throughout the state have been yanking copies of David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon off their classroom shelves.  Killers, on which the Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio movie is based, tells the true story about how, in the 1920s, over 100 Oklahoma Osage were murdered for their oil rights.

The insidious brilliance of the Oklahoma law is that it has a fuzzy general prohibition on “divisive” concepts—with teachers facing loss of their teaching credentials and the entire school district losing funding.  Because teachers have to guess which books or films will get them fired, the result is mass self-censorship, with Killersculled from classrooms across the state.

A RAND corporation study found that a breathtaking two out of three K-12 teachers, “have decided on their own to limit instruction about political and social issues in the classroom.”  Can you blame them?

Any student or parent can put a legal gun to a school principal’s head.  But when the law says, “students,” as a practical matter, they don’t mean young kids on the Reservation.  Every year, on April 22, Oklahoma celebrates “Sooner Rush Day”, the day in 1889, when any white man could simply stand on a plot of land and seize the surrounding 160 acres of what was, by treaty, Indian Territory.  Indigenous kids have to re-enact the theft of their property whether they feel discomfort or not.

I have included this story of the Sooner Rush land grab in my documentary, Long Knife: the Osage Nation, Koch Oil and the new Killers of the Flower Moon.  And for that alone, says Chief Gray, the chance it will screen in an Oklahoma school, even a state university, is zilch.

But some states are not shy about creating Black Lists of books to ban.  Assigning anti-racist classics Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird, could kill a teacher’s career.  PEN America counted 3,132 books banned in nine states in the 2022-23 school year.
 

Evicted from the Historical Society

Cui Bono? Who benefits from historical amnesia?  Kemp alone was not the only white boy to make his fortune from a slaver’s whip.  Historic amnesia is a profit center covering many historic misdeeds from Jim Crow to union busting to corporate corruption.

I found this out when I was physically ejected from the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah.  I was having a polite interview with the Society’s in-house historian, Dr. Stan Deaton, who was explaining that the Klan took over control of the South when, in 1876, Republicans lost both the popular vote and the Electoral vote—yet a pact between the Klan-backed Southern Democrats and northern Republicans used a sly maneuver to overturn the vote and install the GOP candidate as President.  It came down to one official, Dr. Deaton noted, then added, “We saw Mike Pence in that situation recently.”

The second the historian uttered the words, “Mike Pence,” the door flew open and the Society’s PR man halted the interview and expelled me from the building, saying, “We have to protect the new corporate donors on our board.”

I was curious.  Who were these “donors” needing protection from history?  I found their gala dinner on YouTube with their tuxedoed corporate money men:  Georgia Pacific (owned by Koch Industries), Home Depot (owned by right-wing union buster Ken Langone), and Southern Company, whom I investigated some years ago for racketeering and the inexplicable death of whistleblowers.  And the Chairman of the Historical Society?  Gov. Brian Kemp.

The Occupation

Just below Savannah, at the Kemp family’s old plantation, I spoke with caretaker and Councilman Griffin Lotson whose own great-grandmother was sold at Weeping Time by Kemp’s progenitors.

Lotson emphasizes the connection between this legally enforced historical amnesia and the fight for voting rights. He says,  “Suppressing history is suppressing the vote.” 

Back in Oklahoma, the current Principal Chief of the Osage, Geoffrey Standing Bear, explained that if Oklahoma were to admit that its “Sooner Rush” was simply theft from the indigenous owners of the land, then it would force open eyes to what he calls, the “military occupation [of Native land] that continues today.”

Napoleon famously said, “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” Trump’s DCL crusade sees history as a set of truths silenced

.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, History, Lies
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