Peter Greene writes with outrage about the firing of a teacher in Georgia whose crime was to read a book to her fifth-grade students. One parent objected to the book.
He writes:
The story of Katherine Rinderle has dragged out over the summer and has now come to a predictable and yet unjustifiable conclusion. This is just wrong.
The short version of the story is that Rinderle read Scott Stuart’s “My Shadow Is Purple” to her fifth graders, after they selected it for their March book. A parent complained. The Cobb County School District suspended her and the superintendent announced a recommendation to terminate her. A tribunal appointed by the board recommended that she not be fired. The board just fired her anyway.
This is a bullshit decision.
Was this one of those graphic books with blatant displays of sex stuff? No. This is the most bland damn thing you could hand a kid. I would read it to my six year olds without hesitation.
A child plays with action figures and dolls, likes dancing and sports and ponies and planes and trains and glitter, and, in the climactic event, wants to go to the school dance in an outfit that has a suit-ish top and a skirt-ish bottom. Discouraged by the insistence that they must choose either blue or pink at the dance, the purple-shadowed child decidesd to leave, but then an assortment of friends declare their shadows are a wide variety of colors, and a happy ending ensues. “No color’s stronger and no color’s weak.”
That’s it. That’s the book. (I’ve attached a read-aloud video at the bottom so you can see for yourself.) There’s nothing about sex, barely a mention of gender, and the message is simply that there are other ways to be beyond stereotypical male or female roles.
That’s the book that this woman lost her job over.
Georgia has, of course, a “divisive concepts” law with appropriately vague language so that teachers can live in fear that they could lose their jobs over anything that some parent thinks is divisive and disturbing. Meanwhile, the boardwas trying to argue its bullshit decision, by hinting that Rinderle is a big old troublemaker:
Without getting into specifics of the personnel investigation, the District is confident that this action is appropriate considering the entirety of the teacher’s behavior and history. However, as this matter is ongoing, further comment is unavailable. The District remains committed to strictly enforcing all Board policy, and the law.
Sure. So Georgia’s teachers have been sent a clear message about staying in line and not bringing up anything remotel;y controversial ever.
And now the children of Cobb County in particular and Georgia in general have been sent an important message– if you’re different, that’s not okay, and if someone suggests that it’s okay, well, that’s illegal. Shame on Cobb County’s school board. Shame on the state of Georgia. And if you’re so sure that these kind of reading restrictions are only about protecting children from graphic pornography, take a look at this and think again.
Trump knows that a jury of his peers will convict him in a fair trial. He has therefore resorted to extra-judicial efforts to intimidate and prejudice the jury pool. His efforts are not only extra-judicial, they are undemocratic, thuggish, and illegal. Like a crime lord with feral instincts, Trump knows how to threaten without threatening and brutalize without leaving fingerprints at the scene of the crime. Instead, he grants permission to his followers to violate laws and norms, encouraging them to do the dirty work necessary to defend the indefensible.
Over the last several days, the breadth and viciousness of Trump’s assault on the legal system became manifest as MAGA extremists attacked the judge and jurors in Trump’s various criminal proceedings. Before reviewing the latest insults to the rule of law, let’s skip to the end to discuss the solution: We must recognize that Trump is engaged in political terrorism designed to frighten good people who are the backbone of democracy. We cannot let that happen. The solution is not to shrink in fear, but to swell in numbers, strengthen our resolve, and dispel the exaggerated fears created by a skulk of cowards who hide in internet shadows.
In America, there is an ever-present risk of violence that cannot be entirely dismissed. Law enforcement and prosecutors should, therefore, vigorously pursue and prosecute the small, frightened, impotent cultists who threaten jurors, judges, and prosecutors. But we must recognize that the business model of political terrorism is for a few individuals to instill outsized and unwarranted fear in the masses. Recognizing that truth should allow us to keep in perspective the fact that a few thousand online pseudo-terrorists vanish to nothingness compared to 335 million Americans.
America is bigger than Trump and his minions. We should not cower in fear but should pursue justice with confidence and righteousness. We are protecting the Constitution and our system of laws. We cannot fail in that task—and there is nothing that cowards with keyboards can do to deter us.
Against that background, let’s look at the events on the ground.
Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, threatened Judge Tanya Chutkan in a voicemail message that began with racial slurs and ended with threats of violence. Shry was quickly questioned, arrested, and charged in federal court. The magistrate ordered that she remain in pretrial detention for at least 30 days pending a determination of her danger to the community. That is type of federal response that will deter future threats….
There have also been threats against members of the Fulton County grand jury that indicted Trump and eighteen other defendants on RICO charges. See NYTimes, Officials Investigate Threats Against Trump Grand Jurors in Georgia (accessible to all). The Fulton County sheriff issued an anodyne statement acknowledging the threats and stating that the sheriff was investigating. (The statement said the sheriff was “aware of online threats against grand jurors and was working with other agencies to track down their origin.”)
A stronger statement from the sheriff and the quick arrest of several perpetrators would go some distance to damping the false bravado of other beer-fueled couch terrorists. A stronger reaction is necessary because the online threats are directed not only against the grand jurors, but future jurors who will preside over Trump’s criminal trials.
But there is more.
Trump released a video in which he attacked special prosecutor Jack Smith as a “deranged lowlife” for obtaining Trump’s Twitter feed. See Forbes, Trump Attacks Jack Smith For Gaining Access To His Old Twitter Account. This is the type of statement that should cause Judge Tanya Chutkan to remand Trump into custody. At the very least, the statement should be added to the list of offenses that will finally cause Trump to be detained pending trial.
Detaining Trump before tria is not only inevitable but also necessary. Trump’s continued attacks are having a corrosive effect that seeps into the nooks and crannies of the justice system everywhere. Many readers have commented on the raid on a Kansas newspaper because of efforts by the newspaper to report on the failure of local police to enforce DUI laws against a local businessman. Based on a questionable search warrant issued by a local magistrate, police seized computers, cell phones, and files—a gross violation of federal protections granted to members of the news media.
The public outcry and obvious illegality of the seizure forced the police to return the seized items and the local prosecutor to withdraw the questionable warrant due to ‘insufficient evidence’. But the question remains, “How could this happen? How is it that local police and magistrate could ignore constitutional and statutory protections for the press?” Some of the sordid answers are detailed in this investigative piece by The Wichita Eagle, Judge Laura Viar, who approved newspaper raid, has DUI arrests.
Apart from the local magistrate’s questionable potential bias due to her own history of DUI troubles, another answer is that the police and magistrate are modeling themselves after a national GOP in which the rule of law is an impediment to power. In short, they thought they could get away with trampling the Constitution. Fortunately, they were wrong—and will likely be charged with crimes and serve time in jail. As should Trump.
If Americans see that Trump is punished for his attacks on the justice system pending trial, others will realize that they, too, must respect the justice system. We owe the Constitution nothing less.
The State Secretary of Education in Oklahoma Ryan Walters has been threatening to take control of the Tulsa public schools, replace the elected school board and fire the district superintendent. State takeovers have a long history of failure. Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum wrote a strongly worded letter to the Oklahoma State Board of Education and told its members in no uncertain terms, “hands off our public schools and our elected board!”
It’s a terrific letter. Open the link and read it. If only every city had leadership who stood up for their public schools like Mayor Bynum did!
Of course, Houston’s Mayor opposed the state takeover of HISD but Governor Abbott and his state Commissioner Mike Morath were determined to destroy democracy in Houston because the people there vote Democratic.
Speaking of Houston, the state-imposed Superintendent Mike Miles celebrated his arrival with a splashy musical performance, while teachers sat obediently in their seats at the NRG Arena.
The Texas Observer reported:
Hundreds of Houston’s teachers gathered at the NRG Center early morning Wednesday, where they were directed to wear school colors, wave school banners, and shake sparkly pom poms. Facilitators started the Harlem Shuffle dance in the aisles. And then, as the teachers were motioned back into their seats, the room turned dark and silence fell.
A single spotlight shined on a student performer in an aisle belting the lyrics to West Side Story’s “Something’s Coming”:
Something’s comin’, something good If I can wait! Something’s comin’, I don’t know what it is But it is Gonna be great!
The stage lit up to reveal a 1950s diner with red and white checkered tablecloth tables and red rubber stools. In walked new district superintendent Mike Miles, playing “Mr. Duke,” owner of the joint who doubles as a counselor who listens to the teachers’ and students’ grievances.
Since March, when the Texas Education Agency seized control of the Houston Independent School District (HISD), citing the failure to meet state standards at one high school, Houston’s teachers and parents have seen the battle with the state-appointed school board and superintendent play out in community meetings and in the press. Now, during a week of district-mandated conferences at the NRG Center, teachers were watching the takeover play out on stage. Miles directed the script—an hour-long musical that took six weeks to prepare, depicting how the new superintendent will rekindle the extinguished spirits of burnt-out teachers, give hope to hopeless students, and bestow a visionary plan to save public education.
“We are lost as a profession,” a teacher said on stage.
“My dreams are getting smaller and smaller,” a student later echoed.
“Well, maybe that new guy—you know, super … super …”
“You mean Superintendent Miles?”
“Maybe Superintendent Miles will make things better for us.”
Maybe.
But teachers who spoke to the Texas Observer said Miles’ performance wasted the district’s time and money and mocked their professional experience and concerns.
“For him to turn our concerns into satire is really insulting,” HISD teacher Melissa Yarborough said. “It reeks of propaganda.”
“He wasted our time when we could be in our classrooms preparing our lesson plans before school starts,” said Chris, an elementary school teacher who asked only to be identified by his first name.
Jessica, who has been teaching for 24 years, told the Observer Miles’ musical “was very condescending. The message was that we don’t know what we’re doing. And he’s coming in to show us how to do it right.”
A few fine arts teachers who spoke to the Chronicle said Miles is hypocritical for spreading his message through a musical theater production even after disrespecting fine arts teachers, who at NES schools will be paid far less than their peers teaching reading, math or science.
“He claims reading and math are the forefront and he wants to get rid of fine arts. Yet he used fine arts to promote his ideologies,” said one fine arts teacher, who called the production a “slap in the face.”
Another fine arts teacher said it was “the very definition of irony.”
“The fact he used HISD fine arts teachers and students in his presentation, the day after saying in his evaluation sessions that we are not as essential … creates a sense of rage and despair I cannot even describe,” said the teacher, who was told they could be fired for making negative public statements about the district.
Only staff from NES campuses attended the live event at NRG, while educators from other schools watched convocation remotely from their own campuses following a last-minute scheduling change.
Funnily enough, Miles also staged a splashy musical with him as the star when he began his tenure in Dallas in 2012. All of the district’s 18,000 teachers were summoned to watch. The video has been removed from the internet. But The Texas Observerran a great story about the event, with a photo of him dancing with students. At that performance, he laid out his vision for making DISD the best urban district in the nation by 2020 using ideas he learned at the Broad Superintendents Academy. He was, he said, a believer in disruptive change, like Arne Duncan. “Miles epitomizes today’s school reform movement, convinced that anything worth doing in a classroom can be measured.” But three years later, he was gone.
At the urging of Governor DeSantis, Florida’s legislature rubber stamped his proposal to expand vouchers to all students in the state without income restrictions. As Leslie Postal reported in The Orlando Sentinel, demand for vouchers in the state surged by 44%. Many of the applicants are already enrolled in private and religious schools. In other states where vouchers were made universal, most of the vouchers were claimed by students who never attended public schools. Thus, instead of “saving poor kids from failing public schools,” vouchers have become a subsidy for affluent families.
By Aug. 11, more than 382,000 students had received vouchers for the 2023-24 school year, giving them access to money for private school tuition, homeschooling services or therapies for children with disabilities, according to Step Up For Students, the private group that administers most of Florida’s scholarship programs.
That represents a 44% increase from a year ago when about 264,400 scholarships were awarded by the same date….
The scholarships are worth an average of about $7,800 a year, though actual amounts vary by student’s grade level and by county. The voucher programs are still required to prioritize giving awards to children whose families earn no more than 185% of the federal poverty limit, or a family of four earning $55,000 a year or less. But everyone, whether middle class or very rich, is now eligible to apply….
The hike in scholarships was expected after Gov. Ron DeSantis in March signed the new law, which he called a “major game changer” that would boost educational options for families. The law was celebrated by GOP leaders, school choice advocates and parents already paying for private school who are now eligible for state assistance.
They argued families who never opted for free public schools still pay school taxes and so it makes sense to provide them school vouchers to help offset private school costs.
This week, the Archdiocese of Miami credited the new law with boosting enrollment at its Catholic schools and creating waitlists at some campuses. “Step Up Blew Up,” it wrote on its website, like many, using Step Up as shorthand for Florida’s school scholarship programs.
The archdiocese noted that at one Catholic school in Coral Gables, with about 900 students, the number of families receiving state scholarships leapt from 160 last year to more than 560 this year.
“The public dollars that they have given to private schools, those are our public school dollars that they are now giving to people to go to a private school,” Castor Dentel said. “Those are public school dollars they are now handling over to unaccountable private schools where you don’t have to have a qualified teacher.”
Private schools that take state vouchers are mostly religious schools, and they make their own decisions as far as teacher qualifications, curriculum and facilities. Some have hired teachers without college degrees and employees with criminal convictions, set up in rundown buildings and offered curriculum outside mainstream academics, the Orlando Sentinel has reported.
Providing scholarships to families whose children already were in private school or were being homeschooled “is absolutely taking away from public school dollars,” said Norin Dollard, a senior policy analyst with the Florida Policy Institute, a progressive think tank that warned back in February that the new law would cost the state billions of dollars.
Dollard said the state earmarked about $3.3 billion for all its scholarship programs this school year and likely will run through that by the end of October, given the number of awards announced so far.
The Miami Herald published an editorial describing the climate of fear that’s descended on the classrooms of Florida. That’s exactly what Republicans want, says the editorial board. Once people start self-censoring, the battle for censorship is won.
The editorial board wrote:
The fear is the point.
Schools in Florida have been canceling — and then, in some cases, reinstating — Advanced Placement psychology courses for high school students because they’ve been told by the College Board, or simply believe, the classes would violate the state’s ban on lessons involving sexual orientation and gender identity.
The worry is understandable — and a bonus for a state intent on waging culture wars in schools and crushing any dissent. If you can get people to self-censor, you’ve pretty much won the battle.
School districts in Miami-Dade and Broward counties announced Wednesday that they would be among those offering the course, although in Broward it will be require parents to “opt-in.” The districts’ decisions came after Education Commissioner Manny Diaz Jr., who is from Miami and once taught in the public schools here, said the class could be taught.
But the fact that school districts have to publicly announce their intent to teach a class that has been around since 1993 is indicative of the problem. Under Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his lockstep Legislature, fear has seeped into schools. Teachers and school districts are rightfully worried about violating the Parental Rights in Education Act, the “Don’t say gay” law that outlawed sexual orientation and gender identity teachings. The penalties for a violation are potential career-enders, teaching licenses suspended or revoked..
This all happened after the College Board, the New York City-based nonprofit that manages AP courses in the United States, said last week that it wouldn’t recognize Florida’s AP psychology course and — critically — wouldn’t give students college credit for it because the state wanted any mention of sexual orientation and gender identity stripped out. Any course that censors required content cannot be labeled “AP” or “Advanced Placement,” the board said. Students applying for college rely on AP credits as a plus on their applications.
And school is about to start — next week in Miami-Dade and the following week in Broward.
So now the state says it’s OK to teach the course, but the education world is jittery, with good reason. Can the state be trusted?
In Leon County, where Tallahassee is located, Superintendent Rocky Hanna said the district would offer the class, but he is clearly wary. On Twitter, he wrote: “Our teachers have some concerns but we are going to take the commissioner of education’s word when he says that Advanced Placement Psychology may be taught in its entirety,” Hanna said.
He added that he has told the staff to “respect the law and follow the law but not to fear the law.”
This is where we are in Florida: Instead of supporting our public school teachers, we are instilling fear and worry. Instead of celebrating their hard work, we are threatening them with license suspensions if they dare to cross the power of the mighty state.
Teaching has always required courage. In Florida, it now requires a whole new brand of bravery.
John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, believes that Ryan Walters, the state superintendent, may take control of Tulsa Public Schools, despite the fact that he has no idea how to improve them and that state takeovers have seldom (if ever) improved any schools. It’s ironic that Walters is eager to fire Tulsa superintendent Deborah Gist, since Gist received national plaudits for threatening to seize control of the impoverished Central Falls school district in 2010 when she was state superintendent in Rhode Island.
Thompson writes:
We’ve known that State Superintendent Ryan Walters was rapidly ramping up his attacks on public education, especially the Tulsa Public Schools (TPS), but the intensity of his assaults keeps growing at a frightening rate. Even though I’ve been worrying that Walters would combine the destructive rightwing extremists’ venom with the worst of the discredited neo-liberal corporate privatization reforms, it sounds like on August 24, he may do it in the worse possible way. Rather than remove the TPS’s accreditation and/or its superintendent, Walters may order a rushed takeover of the district patterned after the recent takeover of Houston’s schools.
As Nondoc reported on Tuesday, on Saturday Walters said at a Moms for Liberty event, “Tulsa Public Schools is getting money from the Chinese communist government,” He said, “They funneled it through a nonprofit — I mean, money-laundered it through a nonprofit in Texas.” On Monday, “Walters appeared at the Tulsa County Republican Party headquarters to discuss the district,” saying that it must “Reorient finances to serve students, increase reading proficiency scores to the state average, and lift its schools off of the state F-list.” “Now,” Nondoc reports, “state board members could choose to place TPS on full probation.” Moreover, Walters has “also declined to rule out a non-accreditation vote on TPS, though it is unclear how that action would play out for a district of 33,000 students after the school year has already started.”
Clearly, the removal of Superintendent Deborah Gist is a major priority. Ironically, Walters is challenging the honesty of TPS administrators as his “administration of federal GEER funds is being investigated by FBI agents and the Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office, according to people with direct knowledge of the inquiry.”
Even worse, Walters says he is regularly consulting with the Texas education commissioner, Mike Morath, about “strategies Texas used in its takeover of HISD.” The new Houston superintendent, Mike Miles, has long relied on mass exiting of teachers, and he’s already ordered educators at 28 schools to reapply for their jobs, and ordered the closures of many “reformed” schools’ libraries. So, it is no surprise that the President of the Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association, Shawna Mott-Wright, says that “the uncertainty over the district’s future already has some teachers stepping away from their jobs.”
In response, TPS board member, Jennettie Marshall, “said during the board’s 90-minute discussion of the district’s accreditation status. ‘We are under attack. If you’re not keeping up with Houston, … if we continue the course we’re on, that’s where we’re headed. That shouldn’t be.’” She warned, “We can’t afford to lose our educators, support groups and people who provide wraparound services. We can’t afford for this district to lose its accreditation.”
To understand why Walters’ new attack could be an existential threat to public education in Tulsa, one should listen to Nancy Bailey’s analysis of such takeovers:
State takeovers aren’t new. Nor are they known for innovation, but for creating school voids, cutting services, and firing key staff, promising to close learning gaps. Takeovers usually only weaken schools, breaking them up and leaving communities with fewer and poorer schools.
Moreover, the Hechinger Report cited a study by Brown University and the University of Virginia which “looked at all 35 state takeovers between 2011 and 2016. ‘On average, we find no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits.’” But the Hechinger Report added, “Race, meanwhile, plays a role in the likelihood of a district being taken over.”
The HIDC takeover campaign sped up in 2018 when “four of Houston’s 274 schools, all of them in the city’s economically distressed north and east sides, hadn’t met the standards for four years running.” By the time the takeover was ordered, “all but one of the district’s four failing schools was meeting state standards” but a rule change caused Phillis Wheatley High School to “narrowly” miss the mark. By 2021-22, Phyllis Wheatley had already improved from an F to a high C grade. Persisting in the takeover thus added support to researchers who concluded, “Now red-state governors increasingly use the takeovers to undermine the political power of cities, particularly those governed by Black and Hispanic leaders.”
We must also remember the history of the disastrous reigns of non-educator Mike Miles, a Broad Foundation corporate reform trainee, who Texas commissioner Morath placed in charge of Houston. When Miles was selected, apparently nobody asked about “the 26% drop in high school enrollment during the 6 years he was superintendent over Harrison School District Two in Colorado.” In Dallas, Miles set a target of “at least 75 percent of the schools are ‘partially proficient’ in four areas that focus on classroom instruction.” One of many reasons why that goal was impossible was “the loss of 6000 teachers in just three years.” His dictatorial mindset was illustrated by Miles ordering the removal by the police of a board member visiting a middle school where he had “replaced the principal, two assistant principals and 10 teachers.”
Dallas student outcomes had been increasing before Miles took over but student performance largely stagnated during his administration. As the Dallas Morning News reported, his tenure was marked by “disruptions, scandals, clashes.”
Now, Houston is facing the same situation where “sweeping changes include longer instructional days, lessons scripted by planners, not teachers, and new evaluations for educators that tie pay to academic performance.” The focus will be on math and reading. Cameras will be placed in each classroom to monitor behavior. Not surprisingly, Nancy Bailey notes that as the “HISD is losing qualified teachers, school libraries, and librarians,” it is “advertising for 350 long-term substitutes who don’t require a college degree.” She presciently concludes, “Watch as these kinds of reforms become prevalent in other school districts if they haven’t already.”
I have long had serious problems with Superintendent Gist, but I would have never called her “Woke Barbie” as her opponents have. To me, this is similar to the situation when Democrats joined with former Rep. Liz Cheney in defending our democracy. And, if we unite, the damage that Walters is promising to inflict on the TPS, and the Tulsa metropolitan area as a whole, could undermine his extremist campaigns. On the other hand, if we don’t recognize the extent of the threats of a HISD-style takeover, he might unite the worst of the corporate reform privatizers, with his Moms for Liberty extremism, and impose irreparable damage on the TPS and other school systems.
Thom Hartmann is an insightful, incisive journalist and blogger. In this terrifying post, he describes what to expect if the Republican Party wins the presidency.
Please read and react.
Thom Hartmann
So, yeah, let’s take seriously the existential threat a GOP president represents to our nation, the nations of the world, and all life on Earth. The stakes have literally never been higher…
Hartmann writes:
Every day that goes by, even with yesterday’s newest indictment, looks more and more like Donald Trump will be the GOP’s standard bearer in 2024. After all, his popularity stood at 44 percent when NY DA Alvin Bragg indicted him; it then rose to 49 percent when he was indicted in the documents crime; following his conviction for raping E. Jean Caroll it rose to 54 percent among Republicans.
But even if he’s not the candidate, Republican primary voters will demand a candidate with the same affection for Putin and other dictators; the same disdain for racial, religious, and gender minorities; the same abusive attitude toward women and girls; the same faux embrace of Confederate and hillbilly values and hatred of city-dwellers and college graduates; the same cavalier attitude toward guns and fossil fuels.
There’s also the growing possibility that Trump or another MAGA Republican could win the White House. Yesterday, both the New York Times and CNN reported on polls showing that Trump and Biden are right now at a dead heat.
And even if Trump collapses in the polls as the result of the indictments, which is unlikely (Netanyahu is under indictment for bribery and some pretty terrible stuff and he just got re-elected), there are numerous other Republicans who would love to take his place.
And no matter who it is, if they are MAGA inclined, Trump has shown them where there are levers of power and corruption that are consequential in ways that they never dreamed of before him.
Joe Biden, at 81, faces multiple possible personal scenarios that could pull him out of the race. No Labels and the Green Party’s candidates (presumably Joe Manchin and Cornell West) could pull enough votes from Biden to hand the election to Trump as Jill Stein did in three swing states in 2016 (she pulled more votes in each of those states than Trump’s margin of victory).
The prosecution of Trump (which almost certainly won’t be resolved before the election — and it’s not even remotely possible that appeals would be resolved by then — because of Garland’s dithering for two years) could backfire politically and make him into a popular martyr even with Republicans who disliked him before.
And don’t discount the impact Putin throwing millions of rubles into social media can have: his previous fleet of trolls overwhelming social media helped get Trump elected in 2016 and drove Brits to make the crazy decision to separate from the European Union.
So, it’s important to examine what a second Trump or 2025 MAGA presidency would look like, what effect it would have on America and the world, and how it will impact average Americans.
Forewarned, after all, is forearmed, and all these predictions are based on past behavior and public statements:
Women make up 51 percent of the American populace but they won’t be spared by a MAGA presidency.
MAGA voters celebrate Trump’s “proof of manhood” through his multiple sexual assaults, from his alleged rape of 13-year-old Katie Johnson (with Jeffrey Epstein) to the adult E. Jean Carroll and more than 20 others. He publicly bragged that he just “grabs them by the…” whenever he wants, and Republicans — including more than half of all white women voters — ran to the polls to mark his name on their ballots.
The MAGA base supports bans on abortion: the white nationalist part of that base is fervent about having more white babies (and middle class white women are the most likely to get abortions when they’re legal, according to these people).
Catholics and evangelicals even support bans on birth control, an issue that’s already been floated by Clarence Thomas on the Supreme Court and in several state legislatures. Fully 195 Republican members of the House of Representatives voted against protecting birth control from state bans. And all of the Republicans on the Court are conservative Catholics (Gorsuch attends his wife’s church, but was raised Catholic).
Additionally, MAGA Republicans support ending no-fault divorce and limiting alimony, putting women back under husband’s thumbs; lowering the marriage age for girls to as low as 12, as Republicans have already attempted in Idaho, Wyoming, Tennessee, Missouri, and Louisiana; and seizing and monitoring the health and doctor’s records of all childbearing-age women to catch early pregnancies so those women can be detained or surveilled “for their own good” (yes, it’s already happened).
The LGBTQ+ community will come under assault in ways not seen for decades.
Like in Germany in 1933, the trans communitywill be the first to come under assault, a process that’s already begun as Red state after Red state enacts laws banning gender-affirming healthcare. Drag queens are already criminalized in multiple states.
Gays and lesbians won’t be far behind; Republicans are already trying to outlaw gay marriage and adoption. Three-quarters of all House Republicans voted against a Democratic bill protecting gay marriage; all but one Republican on the House Appropriations Committee voted for a Republican bill that would allow states to ban gay and lesbian parents from adopting.
Stochastic terrorism against the LGBTQ+ community will explode, and, in a throwback to the 1980s (when Reagan refused to say the word “AIDS” for 8 long years as tens of thousands, including close friends of mine, died) and before, rural law enforcement will often yawn when queer people are assaulted or even murdered.
Terror against racial and religious minorities will become routine.
The last time Trump was president and sanctioned a “very fine people on both sides” climate of hate and bigotry, incidents of lone-wolf terrorism exploded. Jews executed at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue; Blacks gunned down in a supermarket in Buffalo and executed at Mother Emmanuel church in Charleston; Hispanics slaughtered in El Paso. All of the killers cited or wrote what were essentially MAGA or MAGA-aligned propaganda instruments as part of their motivation.
When minority communities rise up in indignation and step out into the streets to demand protection from roving bands of street Nazis, armed vigilantes will threaten and even kill them with impunity. As I noted yesterday, Kyle Rittenhouse is now lionized by Republicans and three states have passed into law provisions that hold people who kill protestors with their cars free from prosecution.
American support for democracy around the world will end and Putin will destroy Ukraine.
During his first four years, Trump did everything he could to ridicule and minimize our democratic allies and suck up to strongman dictators around the world.
He tried to blackmail Ukraine’s president and then withheld defensive weapons from that country when Zelenskyy refused to go along.
He told the world that he trusts Putin more than America’s intelligence services. After meeting privately with Putin, he demanded a list of all of America’s spies and their stations around the world; within months, the CIA reported that their assets were being murderedwith an unprecedented speed and efficiency.
He or his son-in-law conveyed top-secret documents to the brutal murderer MBS in Saudi Arabia that enabled him to stage a coup and seize control of that nation, a gift for which the Trump family has already received at least $2.5 billion with more coming every day.
Trump has now said that he will end the Ukraine war “in 24 hours.” His strategy? As Mike Pence (who would know) said, “The only way you’d solve this war in a day is if you gave Vladimir Putin what he wanted.”
Putin’s allies, in fact, have told the press that his main strategy for seizing all of Ukraine is to wait for Trump to re-take the White House (and, of course, he’ll do everything he can to make that happen). And just last week, in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump came right out and saidthat he’d end all arms support to Ukraine on day one.
Seeing that America will no longer defend democracies, China will take Taiwan and North Korea may well attack South Korea. It could trigger a nuclear World War III, although instead of America being the “bulwark of freedom” as we were in the 1940s, that burden will fall to Europe, Japan, and Australia.
Reagan’s Republican War on Workers will resume and even pick up steam.
The Heritage Foundation already has a 900+ page plan to change the American government, stripping the DOJ, FBI, FCC and the Fed of their independence while ending most union rights and effectively outlawing strikes.
Billionaires will receive more tax cuts, Social Security and Medicare will be fully privatized, and public schools will be replaced with vouchers for private, segregated, religious academies as has already happened under Republican administrations in Arizona and Florida.
The EPA and other regulatory agencies that protect workers, consumers, and the environment will be gutted to the point of impotence in the face of corporate and billionaire assaults.
Efforts to mitigate the climate emergency will be rolled back and fossil fuel extraction and use will explode.
The world just lived through the hottest month in human history; ocean waters off Florida are at the temperature Jacuzzi recommends for their hot tubs; the world’s oceans are dying and winter sea ice isn’t forming in Antarctica.
Right now we humans are adding heat to the atmosphere (because of higher levels of greenhouse gasses) at a rate identical to 345,600 Hiroshima bombs going off in our atmosphere every day: four nuclear bombs per second, every second, minute, and hour of every day.
In response, our planet is screaming at us.
Fossil fuel billionaires and their shills, however, are unconcerned as they continue to fund climate denial nonprofits and Republican politicians who claim it’s all a hoax. They apparently believe their vast wealth will insulate them from the most dire effects.
And they’re probably right: a third of poverty-stricken Bangladesh was underwater this year, as drought, floods, wildfires, heat domes, bomb cyclones, tornadoes, derechos, and typhoons ravaged America with unprecedented ferocity. Increasingly, those without the financial means to withstand weather disasters are killed or wiped out, losing their family homes and often their livelihoods.
Scientists tell us we may have as few as fiveyears, and certainly not more than 20, to end our use of fossil fuels and fully transition to clean renewables. Even within the five-year window it’s technically feasible, but if Trump or another MAGA Republican is elected, civilization-ending weather and the death of much of humanity is virtually assured.
We must wake up America.
So, yeah, let’s take seriously the existential threat a MAGA president represents to our nation, the nations of the world, and all life on Earth. The stakes have literally never been higher.
Jennifer Mangrum is an intrepid warrior for public schools. She ran for public office twice, first challenging the most powerful man in the General Asembly, then ran for state commissioner of education and nearly won. She’s now signed on with the AFT to organize a state teachers’ union. Jen Mangrum is fearless.
Long odds don’t discourage Jennifer Mangrum.
Mangrum, an associate professor of teacher education at UNC-Greensboro, ran unsuccessfully against the state’s most powerful Republican, state Senate leader Phil Berger in 2018.. She followed that long-shot effort with an unsuccessful run in 2020 for North Carolina superintendent of public instruction, where she drew 48 percent of the vote.
Now the Democratic go-getter is embarked on a new mission: She wants to unionize the state’s public school teachers.
“I couldn’t make politics work. After both losses, I felt discouraged,” Mangrum, a former teacher, told me this week. ”But I had teachers reaching out to me saying, ‘Can you help me with this?’ “
As one person, she can’t help them all, but maybe a union could.
After two years of pushing unionization as a volunteer, Mangrum has taken a part-time, paid consulting role with the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second largest teachers union with 1.7 million members. Her job is to explore the union’s potential to organize a significant share of the state’s 94,000 public school teachers.
“We have members across the state,” Magnum said. “Two years ago we didn’t have any.” Just how many, she wouldn’t say, but she allowed that it’s more than 100.
The North Carolina Association of Educators, an affiliate of the National Education Association, currently advocates for teachers and other school employees, but it is an association, not a union.
Along with low pay and lack of resources, teachers have endured disrespect by the Republican-controlled General Assembly. They’ve been accused of indoctrinating students with progressive values and told how to teach about the role of race in the nation’s past and present. Extra pay for teachers with master’s degrees and other higher degrees was eliminated a decade ago.
But there are obstacles to translating teachers’ frustration and anger into unionizing. The highest barriers are that North Carolina is a right-to-work state – workers can’t be compelled to join a union or pay dues in a unionized workplace – and state law bars collective bargaining by public employees.
In addition, the legislature’s beating down of teachers has weakened their will to fight back. Many are leaving teaching – the state had more than 4,400 teacher vacancies at the start of the last school year. Older teachers are counting down to retirement and don’t want to join an uphill struggle. Others are intimidated by school boards and administrators and fear losing their jobs if they join a union…
Once union chapters take root, Mangrum said, the next move would be to push for legislation allowing collective bargaining. Teachers in Virginia achieved that goal in 2020, ending the state’s prohibition on collective bargaining for local government workers.
Nationally, union organizing is growing. Given the abuse of North Carolina’s teachers, it’s time that that power came here. If Democrats regain control of the legislature, organized teachers may be able to turn North Carolina from a right-to-work state to one where teachers – and their students – regain the right to thrive.
Two conservative law professors, experts in constitutional law, maintain in a law review article that Trump is barred from running for president again because he participated in an insurrection. The article created a media sensation.
William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas in Minneapolis, both members of the Federalist Society, wrote an article in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review in which they maintain that Trump violated Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment by engaging in an effort to overthrow the Constitution.
Two prominent conservative law professors have concluded that Donald J. Trump is ineligible to be president under a provision of the Constitution that bars people who have engaged in an insurrection from holding government office. The professors are active members of the Federalist Society, the conservative legal group, and proponents of originalism, the method of interpretation that seeks to determine the Constitution’s original meaning.
The professors — William Baude of the University of Chicago and Michael Stokes Paulsen of the University of St. Thomas — studied the question for more than a year and detailed their findings in a long articleto be published next year in The University of Pennsylvania Law Review.
“When we started out, neither of us was sure what the answer was,” Professor Baude said. “People were talking about this provision of the Constitution. We thought: ‘We’re constitutional scholars, and this is an important constitutional question. We ought to figure out what’s really going on here.’ And the more we dug into it, the more we realized that we had something to add.”
He summarized the article’s conclusion: “Donald Trump cannot be president — cannot run for president, cannot become president, cannot hold office — unless two-thirds of Congress decides to grant him amnesty for his conduct on Jan. 6.”
Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment says:
No Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice- President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Steven Yoder writes in the Hechinger Report about the state takeover of the Houston Independent School District and the dismal record of state takeovers.
Houstonians see the takeover as the vengeful punishment of a Democratic district by a mean-spirited Republican governor. Takeovers typically don’t improve academic performance. They stifle the democratic voices of Black and brown citizens. Given the research, it’s the silencing of democracy that is the purpose of takeovers.
Yoder writes:
On June 1, the TEA took over Houston’s school district, removing the superintendent and elected board. Critics say it’s an effort by a Republican governor to impose his preferred policies, including more charter schools, on the state’s largest city, whose mayor is a Democrat and whose population is two-thirds Black or Hispanic. In other districts where state-appointed boards have taken over, academic outcomes haven’t improved. Now red-state governors increasingly use the takeovers to undermine the political power of cities, particularly those governed by Black and Hispanic leaders, according to some education experts.
The state took over HISD because one school—Wheatley High School—had been failing for years. But before the takeover, Wheatley improved its test scores, and no school in HISD was failing. But the state took control of the state’s largest district anyway.
At least three studies have found that takeovers don’t increase academic achievement. The latest, a May 2021 working paper by researchers from Brown University and the University of Virginia, looked at all 35 state takeovers between 2011 and 2016. “On average, we find no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits,” the researchers concluded.
Takeovers are premised in part on the idea that improving school board governance improves test scores. But the 2021 paper concluded that may be wrong: “These results do not provide support for the theory that school board governance is the primary cause of low academic performance in struggling school districts,” the researchers wrote.
Why did Governor Abbott and State Commissioner insist on taking control of HISD? Because they could. Because they are vengeful and arrogant. Because they know nothing about research. Because it’s amusing for a hard-right conservative like Abbott to grind down a district that didn’t vote for him. Because Mike Morath was never an educator and knows nothing about how to improve schools.
