Karen Francisco retired as editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. She grew up in Muncie and graduated from Ball State University. She is a fearless advocate for public schools. I invited her to write about what happened in Indiana to turn Republicans against public schools.
She wrote this article for the blog.
The corporate-controlled American Legislative Exchange Council in 2011 rolled out a set of model bills designed to weaken one of its primary targets: public schools. “The Indiana Education Reform Package” was patterned after the destructive legislation pushed through by Indiana’s Republican legislative supermajority and then-Gov. Mitch Daniels.
Indiana has been setting the bar for public-school carnage ever since, quietly advancing a near-universal voucher program and advancing education privatization efforts. But the newly introduced House Bill 1136 is designed to serve as a death blow for public education in Indiana. It would immediately dissolve five school districts, including Indianapolis Public Schools, and effectively set every other district in the state on a path to elimination.
The bill requires the dissolution of districts that have lost more than 50% of students within the district’s boundaries to other schools. The districts’ schools would be converted to charter schools by July 1, 2028. The first schools converted would be those with the lowest test scores.
The legislation cleverly builds on those “education reform” measures designed to cripple public school districts. Ever-changing assessment standards kept the schools chasing arbitrary benchmarks. Sky-high income limits allowed wealthy families to abandon neighborhood schools for parochial and private schools. Inadequate funding and legislation favoring charter schools left districts without the resources needed to serve the at-risk students who are not welcome at voucher or charter schools.
Indianapolis Public Schools, in particular, has been hammered by Republican lawmakers and the city’s Democratic mayors. From an enrollment of nearly 40,000 in 2005, IPS now serves only 21,055 students, having lost thousands of students to voucher schools, charters and poor-performing “innovation schools.”
Why is Indiana, known for its conservatism, such fertile ground for radical education policy? Blame it on a perfect storm of anti-democratic forces. Out-of-state billionaires like Netflix founder Reed Hastings and the heirs to the Walmart fortune have poured millions of dollars into the state to destroy teacher unions. Powerful Republican lawmakers have built careers off education privatization. Indiana’s strong evangelical community, including its newly elected lieutenant governor, has recognized the potential of expanding Christian Nationalist influence with taxpayer-supported schools.
The bigger mystery is why Indiana voters have allowed the continuing destruction of their public schools, electing and re-electing representatives actively working against the voters’ best interests.
I would like to believe House Bill 1136 is the proverbial bridge too far. But 40 years of newspaper experience in Indiana tells me most Hoosiers will show little interest in the imminent threat to two urban school districts and three small rural school corporations. Sadly, race and class play heavenly into opinions about Indiana public schools, and too many Hoosiers will dismiss the danger as “not my problem.”
House Bill 1136 starts the process of disbanding locally elected school boards, replacing them with boards filled by the governor, local officials and the director of the partisan Indiana Charter School Board. It’s only a matter of time before every elected school board in the state is eliminated.
Look for the American Legislative Exchange Council to update its 2011 “Indiana Education Reform Package” with this crowning piece of anti-democratic legislation and for ALEC’s disciples to carry it across the nation.
The New York Review of Books is offering a free review of a book about Jeff Bezos’ life, written a decade ago. Bezos didn’t like the book, so he forbade readers from preordering it on Amazon. It’s time for Brad Stone to update his book. The past decade has shown new sides to Bezos’ character.
Free from the Archives
Today is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s sixty-first birthday. For our July 10, 2014, issue, Steve Coll reviewed The Everything Store, Brad Stone’s account of both Bezos’s life and Amazon’s transformation from an upstart digital bookstore into the kind of corporate behemoth that saw fit to prevent customers from preordering Stone’s book in paperback, or from preordering other titles from Stone’s publisher.
“The real problem of ‘the Age of Amazon’…does not concern antitrust economics or consumer prices. It concerns the future of reading and writing. There is no evidence that high retail book prices today discourage reading. The problem is the opposite: because of the digital revolution, the price of information has collapsed in a very short time. Free news, stories, YouTube videos, games, and other content generated by users but enabled by online aggregators and pirates have undermined the leverage of authors and publishers who depend on copyright protection to make a living.”
Typically, in this country, elections are decided by the voters. The candidate who gets the most votes wins. But that’s not what is happening in North Carolina, where a corrupt Republican Party pulls every imaginable trick to steal seats, gerrymander districts, and throw out votes–anything to win.
There’s little that stuns me these days from Republican bad faith actors. But yesterday’s headlines out of North Carolina made me catch my breath, at least until I heard myself cursing aloud.
Here’s the top line news: The GOP-dominated North Carolina state supreme court has halted the election certification of one of its Democratic members, Justice Allison Riggs. That’s right, the Court has decided that it will decide who will sit on the bench among its justices.
Let me be very clear. This election is over, and Justice Riggs won. The race was very tight, as it often is in that state. Riggs won by just 734 votes out of a total of 5.5 million cast. No less than two recounts confirmed her victory. As a point of comparison, when a Democratic supreme court candidate lost an even closer race by 401 votes in 2020, he conceded after the second recount.
The recounts should have been the end of it, but no. The Court has now agreed to hear a case filed by Justice Riggs’s opponent, Judge Jefferson Griffin of the state Court of Appeals, demanding that over 60,000 mail-in votes cast in that election be disqualified. If the Court agrees with this madness, state law would require a complete do-over of that election (and of course, no other election, including Trump’s electoral win in the state).
It’s an unprecedented, dangerous, anti-democratic move that, as I’ll discuss below, even the most extreme election denialists wouldn’t touch as part of their strategy. Together with the GOP’s other recent attacks on democracy in that state, North Carolina is in danger of tipping into one-party rule, just as we’ve seen in Florida. This is happening even as—or perhaps precisely because—the state’s voters have consistently elected Democrats to the highest statewide offices.
Filling in the missing blanks?
The gist of the lawsuit is so absurd as to be laughable, except that no one is laughing now. To understand how we got here, we need to go back to 2004. The North Carolina legislature passed a law that year requiring a driver’s license or social security number when registering to vote. That’s a bit stricter than other states and often results in disproportional disenfranchisement of minority voters, but it’s not unheard of.
But here’s where it gets wonky. A widely used voter registration form printed at the time failed to include a place for registrants to actually provide the required ID. As a consequence, over the years thousands of voters unwittingly registered without providing an ID required under state law.
It is reasonable, and logical, to presume that completing an official state form as printed should result in a proper voter registration. But no! Griffin now argues that any registrations that failed to provide an ID number simply should not count today.
In his challenge, Griffin has targeted over 60,000 mail-in votes, with the greatest impact on racial minorities who tend to vote Democratic. An analysis of the voter challenges by the local News & Observer in North Carolina found that Black voters were twice as likely to have their votes challenged as white voters.
Further, mail-in votes in general tend to skew Democratic ever since the pandemic and as a result of Trump’s false and conspiratorial statements about the security of mail-in voting. And in a twist, the affected registrations happen also to include both of Justice Riggs’s elderly parents.
Griffin asserts this claim, and the state Supreme Court has agreed to hear it, even though there is no evidence that any voter who cast a ballot was otherwise ineligible to vote; most mail-in ballots provided proof of identification anyway; and the missing information was not the applicants’ fault.
In short, the GOP is seeking to change the rules after the fact and get handed a win by a partisan court. So you can understand Justice Riggs’s astonishment and frustration and the profound concerns of democracy activists.
Indeed, the idea of going back to the voter registrations and trying to find ones you could throw out on technicalities like this was raised and considered by some of the worst organizations that promote outright election denialism, such as the so-called “Election Integrity Network.” And even there, the idea met with resistance and got shot down. As ProPublica reports,
“Months before voters went to the polls in November, a group of election skeptics based in North Carolina gathered on a call and discussed what actions to take if they doubted any of the results. “One of the ideas they floated: try to get the courts or state election board to throw out hundreds of thousands of ballots cast by voters whose registrations are missing a driver’s license number and the last four digits of a Social Security number.”
But that idea was resisted by two activists on the call, including the leader of the North Carolina chapter of the Election Integrity Network. The data was missing not because voters had done something wrong but largely as a result of an administrative error by the state. The leader said the idea was “voter suppression” and “100%” certain to fail in the courts, according to a recording of the July call obtained by ProPublica.
Similarly, when Griffin first lodged his protest in December before the state’s Elections Board, lawyers for Justice Riggs argued that the claim “amounted to a ludicrous request for a do-over”:
“Whether playing a board game, competing in a sport or running for office, the runner-up cannot snatch victory from the jaws of defeat by asking for a redo under a different set of rules,” they said. “Yet that is what Judge Griffin is trying to do here.”
Democrats in North Carolina are understandably fighting mad about the suit, accusing Griffin and the state GOP of seeking to overturn the election results. As state Democratic Party Chair Anderson Clayton said in a news release, Justice Riggs “deserves her certificate of election and we are only in this position due to Jefferson Griffin refusing to accept the will of the people. He is hellbent on finding new ways to overthrow this election but we are confident that the evidence will show, like they did throughout multiple recounts, that she is the winner in this race….”
The state’s Supreme Court has already shown its partisan stripes before and even affected national politics. Recently, it allowed the GOP to re-gerrymander the state’s district lines and squeeze three Democratic congressional seats out of realistic contention. This happened just one election after the same Court, then with a liberal majority, approved maps apportioning the purple state fairly at seven seats for each party. Those three lost seats cost the Democrats the Congressional House majority in 2024, proving that local and state politics can have lasting national consequences.
This past fall, following statewide elections that saw Democrats prevail up and down the ticket, the GOP legislature, which itself is ensconced through brutal gerrymandering, voted to strip the new Democratic governor of his power to appoint state Elections Board members. This is a dangerous move now under challenge by the governor’s office. If ultimately successful, it would hand the GOP the power to control and administer elections in the state.
If the move to disenfranchise over 60,000 North Carolina voters over an immaterial and unknown technical defect is any indication, a remaking of the Elections Board by the GOP would deal another heavy blow to democracy in the state. The GOP there has demonstrated time and again that it will act in bad faith in the pursuit of raw power, and now the ultimate question—one of democracy itself—has reached the cynical and feckless majority of the state Supreme Court.
It sadly may prove true that the only message the GOP in North Carolina will ever understand is one of resounding electoral defeat. That worked in Wisconsin, when in 2023 a progressive Supreme Court candidate destroyed the MAGA one by double digits in a special election where voters had grown tired of extremists’ dirty political tricks. That state’s grotesque gerrymanders are now a thing of the past, and party representation at the state level (and soon national level) far better reflects realities on the ground in that state.
A similar wake-up and shake-up in North Carolina is long overdue.
David Shipley, editor of the Washington Post editorial page, took responsibility for spiking the cartoon by Ann Telnaes, an act that touched off a firestorm of controversy.
The cartoon showed several billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, paying homage to Trump.
Shipley stopped publication because, he said, the cartoon was repetitious of articles on the same subject.
Shipley sent the following letter to staff at the Post. By now, they must be deeply demoralized, given Bezos’ intervention to block the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris., his gift of $1 million to Trump for his inauguration, and the Amazon payment of $40 million to Trump for the license to the life story of Melania, produced by Melania. Bezos owns Amazon.
Shipley wrote:
Dear DOO,
It’s been nearly a week since Ann Telnaes resigned. I’ve been gathering my thoughts in that time and there are a few things I’d like to share. Given the depth of the response, and some of the assumptions that have been made, I hope you’ll read to the end.
Let me start with the basics.
Our owner, in his own words, is a “complexifier.” Jeff supports a news organization while having significant interests (and work) elsewhere. His support allows The Post to exist and produce excellent, independent journalism; it also means that editorial decisions can be viewed by the outside world through the prism of his ownership.
My decision not to run a cartoon by Ann in which Jeff was depicted is being viewed through this prism. I believe I made a sound editorial decision. Ann felt otherwise. She offered her interpretation. I’d like to offer mine.
First, I decided not to run the cartoon because it was repetitive. When I learned of Ann’s piece, we had just published a column on billionaire visits to Trump (with a clear mention of our owner) and we had a satire piece on the same topic underway (also with a clear reference to our owner). Yet another piece in the span of a few days struck me as overkill.
This is a subjective judgment, but it is a subjective judgment in sync with a longstanding approach. In my time here, we have focused on reducing the number of articles we publish on a given topic and from the same point of view within a given time frame – all as a way to improve the overall quality and variety of our report.
To that same end, I did not feel the cartoon was strong. Could it have been made better? Possibly. In fact, we’d recently worked with Ann on a cartoon that had gone through edits and was published after she and editors had finished working together.
In this regard, I regret that we did not have the opportunity to revisit this possibility. In what (unfortunately) turned out to be my final conversation with Ann last Friday afternoon, it was my understanding that she and I had agreed to take the weekend to consider options and that we would speak on Monday. I respect Ann’s work and was actively considering her suggestions bar one – the idea that we add language to her contract restricting editing – when she put out her Substack on Friday night, closing the door on any possibility of further discussion.
The decisions on redundancy and quality were both judgments on my part. I stand by them. At no point did I discuss any of this with Will Lewis or Jeff Bezos. This was my call.
Now let me share a couple broader thoughts. Do I pay extra attention if Jeff is in a column or a cartoon or the subject of a story? Of course I do. Does this prevent us from commenting on him? No. Look at the record. The two other pieces we ran – pieces I saw and was aware of – should dispel that bit of mythology. Do we allow dissent? Yes. Erik Wemple published a chat taking issue with my actions. Letters to the editor will do the same. If you have additional doubts, look at our published response to the decision not to run a presidential endorsement. If the work is good, if it is relevant, if it advances the story, we’ll publish it. This is my prism.
My job is a balancing act. Was I extra careful here? Sure. It’s obviously true that we have published other pieces that are redundant and duplicative. We have also published things that others judged strong and effective, and I did not. So, yes, scrutiny is on high when it comes to our owner.
But this extra scrutiny has a purpose. I am trying to ensure the overall independence of our report. Though we have a “complexifying” owner, I will not use that as a reason to exempt him from the evenhandedness we ought to extend to any public figure (an evenhandedness other news organizations extend to their owners). Nor will coverage of him be an exception to our strategic turn toward heightened curation and diminished repetition. By exercising care, we preserve the ability to do what we are in business to do: To speak forthrightly and without fear about things that matter.
I know many of you are concerned that we might be wavering in this regard. I get that concern, but I don’t think it’s true. I believe that The Post’s business success depends on its integrity and its independence. These things cannot be separated. If you don’t have them, you don’t have a business – nor are you adhering to the mission that this newspaper has always held dear. As the person responsible for this department, I am guided by this belief. And if I believe we can’t act on it any longer, I will share that feeling with you and act accordingly. But that’s not what’s happening now.
America and the world are entering a complicated moment. It’s one in which honesty, clarity of thought, fair-mindedness and courage will be required. These are the values that will guide our coverage – and my judgments. This is who we are, and it’s my belief that our work shows it.
D.
P.S. Many of you have already shared your (varied) views on the situation; please know that my door is always open to discuss decisions. I want to hear your thoughts about how we do what we do.
It is my review of Trump’s plans for K-12 education.
NYRB is the most distinguished literary-political journal in the nation. It has a huge readership. It reaches a different audience than education journals.
If you subscribe to NYRB, you can open it in full. If you don’t, it costs $10 for 10 issues. Or, if you wait, I will post it in full in a few weeks.
For-profit healthcare companies, many of which are owned by private equity, are aggressively expanding their efforts to trick seniors into abandoning their enrollment in traditional Medicare and joining for-profit Medicare Advantage plans.
About half of all seniors are now enrolled in Medicare Advantage. The pitch for MA plans is seductive. They offer bells and whistles that are not part of Medicare. If you enroll in a MA plan, you will get free gym membership, prescription drug coverage, dental coverage, and a variety of other attractive benefits.
What’s wrong with MA? It’s great when you are not sick. It’s very bad when you have a serious illness.
When you have surgery or other serious illness, Medicare and your secondary pays almost all of your medical costs. MA may or may not. MA has panels to decide whether to pay your bills. You may be denied and stuck with huge bills.
Privatization produces worse service because the corporation must turn a profit. Make no mistake: MA is privatization.
How does MA make a profit? By denying the claims of patients.
I had open heart surgery in 2021. I was hospitalized for a month. I spent a week in the ICU (intensive care unit). When the total hospital bill arrived many weeks later, I almost had a stroke: it was over $839,000! After Medicare negotiated with the hospital, the actual cost to me was $300. That’s a miracle. Why give up that kind of coverage?
A new Medicare privatization scheme developed under President Donald Trump and now being expanded under President Joe Biden is forcing hundreds of thousands of seniors onto new private Medicare plans without their consent.
The development represents a troubling new dimension in the fight by corporate interests to privatize Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people 65 or older. Medicare Advantage, which allows for-profit health insurers to offer privatized benefits through Medicare, already results in unexpected costs for routine procedures and wrongful denials of care. Private plans have cost Medicare an astonishing $143 billion since 2008, and are now drivingsome health insurers’ record profits.
The new Direct Contracting Entity (DCE) program similarly adds a private-sector third party between patients and Medicare services. Medicare allows these intermediary companies to offer unique benefits, like gym membership coverage. But as for-profit operations ranging fromprivate insurers to publicly traded companies to private equity firms, these intermediaries are incentivized to limit the care that patients receive, especially when they are very sick.
While Medicare Advantage patients choose to sign up for private insurance plans, patients are being enrolled in these DCE health care plans without their informed consent. As Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) noted in a January op-ed, “Seniors in traditional Medicare may be ‘auto-aligned’ to a DCE if any primary care physician they’ve visited in the past two years is affiliated with that DCE. That means Medicare automatically searches two years of seniors’ claims history without their full consent to find any visits with a participating DCE provider as the basis for enrollment.”
President Biden is battening down the hatches before Trump returns to the White House. Today he extended protection to nearly one million immigrants currently in this country.
The Biden administration on Friday extended temporary humanitarian protections for nearly 1 million immigrants living in the United States, announcing the move days before the start of a possible deportation campaign by the incoming Trump administration.
Immigrants from Venezuela, El Salvador, Ukraine and Sudan who have a form of provision residency known as temporary protected status will be eligible to renew their permits for 18 months, the Department of Homeland Security said.
Lawmakers and immigrant advocates had been urging the department to extend the protected designation for these nationalities and others under a 1990 law that shields immigrants from being deported to countries engulfed in conflict or natural disasters.
Angela Kelley, a former Biden official who is now an adviser to the American Immigration Lawyers Association, said the extension was “right over home plate” because it met DHS’s legal requirement to assess conditions in beneficiaries’ home nations. “These countries merit it,” Kelley said, “and these people are already here.”
Mr. Trump has derided the program and vowed to end it, at least for certain countries. Immigrant advocates had been urging the Biden administration to extend it for many of those countries before he takes office.
In his first term, Mr. Trump terminated the status for about 400,000 people from El Salvador and other countries, and then faced legal challenges.
According to the Congressional Research Service, more than a million migrants from countries in Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa and the Middle East had Temporary Protected Status as of 2024.
The move makes it legally difficult for Mr. Trump to roll back the protections for citizens of the four countries, at least until they expire some time in 2026.
“Because President Biden has extended protection for the nationals of all these countries, President Trump will be unable to deport these individuals any time soon, “ said Steve Yale-Loehr, an immigration scholar at Cornell Law School.
”Trump can’t ignore what Congress wrote into law in 1990,” he said.
About 600,000 Venezuelans who currently have the protection will be allowed to renew and remain in the United States until October 2026, and approximately 232,000 immigrants from El Salvador will be able to do so. More than 100,000 Ukrainians will be able to remain in the United States until August 2026. Some 1,900 people from Sudan will also be allowed to renew their status.
The program was signed into law by President George H.W. Bush to ensure that foreign citizens already in the United States can remain in the country if it is not safe for them to return to their home country because of a natural disaster, armed conflict or other upheaval.
Jeff Tiedrich’s blog on Substack is called “Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion.” He uses language that I ban from this site. But he’s so exceptional in his insights, his humor, and his ability to weave incidents into a narrative that I have to post him despite his flagrant use of the F word.
The judge who presided over Trump’s criminal trial, Juan Merchan, issued a sentence of “unconditional discharge”, meaning the president-elect will be released without fine, imprisonment or probation supervision for his conviction on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records. While the sentence makes Trump a convicted felon, he will face no penalty other than this legal designation.
in the end, A Very Special Boy received the slightest possible punishment, being told in effect to go think about what a bad boy you’ve been. but at least Donny will go down in history as America’s only convicted felon president. you know the big grievance-baby is never going to stop letting it gnaw away at his insides — and for that, ha fucking ha. sucks to you be you, Donny.
Donny had tried like hell to put off his sentencing until how about never, running first to the New York Court of Appeals and then to the New York State Supreme Court, insisting that the imaginary doctrine of “pre-presidential immunity” meant that he couldn’t be sentenced for any crimes at all.
both courts told Donny to get stuffed — and so he went scampering off to his besties on the Supreme Court. late last night, the Supremes surprisingly did the right thing, and ruled 5-4 that Donny could eat an entire bag of dicks.
three of the four dissenters were Luxury Vacation Clarence, Fishin’ Trip Sammy, and Blackout Brett — the bought-and-paid-for Federalist Society hacks who vote the way their oligarch overlords tell them. the fourth was Nihilist Neil, whose own motivation is that he hates government and just wants to see everything burn.
wrap your mind around that. there are four Supreme Court Justices willing to go beyond the already-corrupt concept of ‘presidential immunity’ and insist that Donny is A Super-Duper Extra-Special Boy who can do all the crimes he wants, any time, for any reason, with no accountability at all, ever.
one vote is how close Donny came to escaping even the limited form of justice that was meted out this morning.
“if you noticed yesterday, the hydrants were empty. they didn’t have any water, any of them. they said twenty percent but now I just heard fifty percent and now none of them have water and that fire’s still raging. when he turned that down, I was going to give him unlimited water, it would come down, it really comes down from the north, way up north, including parts of Canada, it’s so much water that they wouldn’t know what to do with. just the opposite would have happened. but and uh, that’s the reason that this happened. he wouldn’t do what we wanna— and we’re gonna force that upon him now, but it’s very late.”
where do you even begin with this nonsense?
Donny somehow believes that Gavin Newsom rejected an imaginary offer of water that apparently comes from some mysterious source “way up north.” (Donny stopped short of repeating his ‘big Canadian faucet’ fairy tale.)
“There was no ‘water restoration declaration’ for him to sign,” Jeffrey Mount, a senior fellow in the Water Policy Center at the Public Policy Institute of California think tank, said in a Wednesday interview.
“There was never a ‘water restoration declaration’ in California that the Governor refused to sign,” Brent Haddad, an environmental studies professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in a Wednesday email.
let’s go back to the clip.
“we’re gonna force that upon him now.”
he’s going to force water on Gavin Newsom? how does that work?
“Governor Newsom, there’s a delivery man here with a hundred million tons of water, he wants to know where to put it.”
Donny’s never been all that big on the concept of consent. remember when he promised to quote-unquote “protect women,” whether they like it or not?
“I said, ‘Well, I’m going to do it, whether the women like it or not,’” Trump said. “I’m going to protect them.”
how fucking creepy is that? “I’m doing this to protect you” is the kind of thing the serial killer says as he handcuffs you to the radiator.
Donny famously bragged about grabbing women by the pussy — because when you’re a star, they let you. now Donny’s going to hydrate California — because when you’re a president, they let you.
reporter: “what’s the price tag?” Donny: “well, maybe no price tag. y’know, look, we’re going to have to see what happens. because Denmark — we need this for national security. we need Greenland very badly. you look— the Russian ships, the China ships, they’re all over the place, they’re surrounding. now they have for a long time, that’s a lane. but uh, we need that for national security. so, I don’t know that Denmark has any right title and interest, so we’re going to find it— but I can tell you, you saw the clips that were released. the people of Greenland would love to become a state of the United States of America. I— we were greeted with tremendous love and affection and respect. the people would like to be a part of the United States. now Denmark maybe doesn’t like it, but then we can’t be too happy with Denmark, and maybe things have to happen with respect to Denmark having to do with tariffs. because they have to do this, I think, for the free world. we need that to protect the free world.
listening to Donny try to form coherent thoughts on the fly is like watching a chimpanzee play with a hand grenade. you know it’s going to end badly, but you can’t look away.
what is this nonsense? “I don’t know that Denmark has any right title and interest.” that Greenland is a territory of Denmark is not open to conjecture. there’s no maybe they and maybe they aren’t. it’s a fact, and facts are not malleable. Donny lives in a fantasy world of his own construction.
now, as to these people in Greenland who are so fucking psyched to become Americans — are they in the room with us right now? because when Cokey McSniffles Jr. and that weird little garden gnome Charlie Kirk did their failed Greenland photo op earlier this week, they had to bribe unhoused locals to wear MAGA hats and pretend to be supporters.
Danish public media organization DR News reports that many of the Trump supporters pictured dining with the president-elect’s son were unhoused and “socially disadvantaged” people asked to wear MAGA merch and offered a free dinner at Hotel Hans Egede in the town of Nuuk.
so yeah, that sounds like a groundswell of enthusiasm right there.
“also in California, you might have recalled a news story from last year. there was some interest in the fire departments and the firefighters in California. and the interest was that there were too many white men who were firefighters. and we need to have a program in California to make sure we don’t have enough white men as firefighters. we have DEI, we have budget cuts, and yet I’m wondering now if your house was burning down, how much do you care what color the firefighters are?”
Scott Jennings seems to care a lot what color the firefighters are. sounds to me that if Scott Jennings’ house were on fire and black firefighters showed up, he’d demand to know where the white firefighters are.
fuck this implication that black people aren’t up to the job of fighting fires, and that they’re being allowed to ride on the firetruck as some kind of unearned favor.
Tex. Rep Jasmine Crockett was having none of it.
“we are looking at qualifications. what diversity, equity, and inclusion has always been about is saying, you know what, open this up. don’t just look at the white men. open it up and recognize that other people can be qualified. if we have been good enough to build this country, we are good enough to serve and die overseas, we are good enough to serve in other ways.”
the Most Unwelcome Man in the World inflicted himself on Jimmy Carter’s memorial service yesterday, and there are two things you need to know.
first, the narcoleptic old dotard immediately drifted off into slumberland — and second, Melania apparently now does her shopping at the Pilgrim Warehouse.
but the real hero of the day was the photographer from the Carter Center, who positioned his camera so that Donny and Melly, who were sitting to the right of Obama, were blocked by a granite column.
Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice demonstrates that Republicans won control of the House thanks to gerrymandering. Legislatures in red states drew districts that were designed to favor members of their party.
In other words, they rigged the elections.
Democrats have also gerrymandered districts to win seats, but never as methodically or as systematically as Republicans.
He wrote:
Many things propelled Donald Trump’s election victory. Inflation. A worldwide anti-incumbent backlash. Anger at institutions. A swing to the right among working-class voters of all racial backgrounds. And more. Analysts are still chewing on all the data (and Democrats are chewing on each other).
As we sift through the results and look forward, Republican control of the House of Representatives will matter greatly. That control is very, very narrow. And it turns out to rest on a shaky foundation of gerrymandering and manipulated maps, all encouraged by the Supreme Court.
The last time a new president took office without a “trifecta” of House and Senate control was 35 years ago. But this will be the slimmest House majority on record. With yesterday’s announcement by Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz that she will not participate in the Republican caucus, control may effectively come down to one vote.
And according to my colleague Michael Li in a new analysis, Republicans won a net 16-seat advantage due to manipulated maps drawn for party advantage. (Democrats garnered an edge in 7 seats through gerrymandering, but the GOP gained a total of 23 seats that way — hence, 16 seats.)
How did this skew happen? Simply, Republican legislators control the drawing of many more districts than Democrats do. In some states, nonpartisan commissions or state courts have actually produced fairer maps. But in most places, politicians are free to press for partisan advantage.
North Carolina is split relatively evenly between Republican and Democratic voters. This year, Trump won the state even as Democrat Josh Stein swept into the governor’s mansion. However, the heavily gerrymandered legislature drew congressional maps that produced 10 seats for Republicans and only 4 for Democrats. The state high court had blocked the gerrymander, a move upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Moore v. Harper. But then a judicial election shifted partisan control of the North Carolina court, which abruptly blessed the gerrymander it had previously banned. That judicial reversal alone gave the GOP an extra 3 seats in Washington — enough to control the House.
Today Republicans are strutting, but that swagger may not last long. Speaker Mike Johnson will have to manage a fractious majority that could be defeated by one or two defections. Individual members will be empowered to extort policy concessions, no matter how extreme.
In fact, what may matter even more than the gerrymandered seats is the collapse of electoral competition. Only 27 districts nationwide saw margins of less than 5 percent. Lawmakers will look more nervously at the prospect of primary challenges than at the risk of alienating the broad mass of persuadable voters.
It did not have to be this way. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, which had prevented the most egregious gerrymanders along racial lines. Then in 2019, John Roberts led the justices to rule that federal courts could not police partisan gerrymandering at all.
Congress has the power to act, and in 2022 it tried — coming within two Senate votes of passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which together would have barred gerrymandering for congressional seats nationwide. Both parties would have been forced to compete on a level field. (This legislation would also have undone other damage wrought by rulings such as Citizens United, which legalized the campaign system that saw Elon Musk spend a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump.)
All this is a reminder that the rules of American politics, often arcane, often hidden, bear tremendous weight. It should caution us from drawing too many conclusions about any recent victor’s supposed “mandate.”
Voters are mad as hell about a government they feel does not deliver for them. Rigged rules are a big part of why Washington too frequently does not work. Partisans must do more than battle for inches of advantage. To truly reconnect the seats of power to a sullen electorate, real reform and real competition must be part of the answer.
Sherrilyn Ifill is a veteran civil rights litigator and one of the most thoughtful leaders of the democratic resistance to authoritarianism. She is a former President of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
In this post, she offers sound advice about how to survive until the next election (in 2026) and then in 2028). Never give up!
She writes:
Sherrilyn Ifill
In one of the most important and climatic scenes in the 2006 film Titanic, Rose and her beau Jack are holding on as they stand on tiptoe outside the rails of the upside down ship. As the ship begins its final, rapid descent into the dark, cold waters of the Atlantic, Jack tells Rose, “This is it.” They have received instructions from the ship’s architect on how they might survive once they are in the water. They are both clear about the goals: survive and stay together.
This feels like the moment this country faces as we approach Trump 2.0. In just a few short weeks Donald Trump will return to the White House, bringing with him a coterie of some of the most incompetent and vile miscreants to serve in some of the highest and most consequential civil positions in our government. Their intentions are clear. Their penchant for lies and targeting has already been on display. Their ham-fisted approach to governance is clumsy, cruel, and unethical, but that won’t stop it from being effective. They are prepared to fight battles small and large. With the wind of a conservative Supreme Court and Republican-controlled Congress at their backs, Trump and his team are feeling bold and unstoppable. The outcome seems clear.
But like Rose and Jack, we have goals as well. To survive personally and nationally, with the remnants of democracy still in place so that we have a platform on which to build a new, stronger, healthier democracy. Our other goal is to stay together. We can and must do both.
The greatest obstacle to our fight to survive as a democracy (even a deeply flawed one) and to hold together a semblance of unity among those who believe in the fight for equality and justice in this country, is the inclination to give up – to believe that Trump’s plans cannot be stopped. I agree that they cannot be stopped in total. But I do believe that they can be upended in part, and we must use what powers we have to thwart as many of his harmful policies and plans as we can. It’s also critical for us to play for the future and not just for the present moment. That means it matters that we make a record – a record of Trump’s excesses and lies, but also of police, prosecutor, and judicial misconduct, of corruption – documents and money exchanged, of quid pro quos, and of collaboration with foreign enemies.
Many of us are fighting powerful exhaustion and an ongoing measure of shock that this giant, seemingly unsinkable state-of-the-art democracy (however flawed) can really be about to sink. That exhaustion and disbelief can lead to paralysis, something we can ill afford. I’m reminded that the first thing Jack and Rose did was take deep breaths before holding one long breath as the ship descended. And we must do the same. First pulling in as oxygen those things that nourish us and keep us going. I have encouraged people to lean-in to art, and nature and family and spiritual practice. Establishing a regimen of these things that you will engage and absorb regularly over the next four years is critical. An exercise schedule, morning meditation or prayer, monthly museum visits or concerts, a book club, monthly family dinners, Netflix nights, leaning into your favorite sports team. All of this can help ensure that you are regularly oxygenated throughout what I can guarantee will be moments that will take our breath away in their cruelty and audacity.
Lastly, like Jack and Rose, hold hands. Stay connected to our cohort of democratic survivors. Those determined to make it to shore. There’s room on the floating door for more than one if we don’t panic and if we understand that our fate is inextricably linked to those who share our vision for democracy, justice and equality.
Generosity and encouragement will be key. Our hands may come apart from time to time, but we can still stay close. Fight those who are opposed to democracy, equality and justice. Not those who are your allies. You can disagree with your allies. Correct them, edify them, firmly push back against them when necessary. But try to reserve your fight for your opponents.
Once we’ve established our oxygen routine, we will have to focus. There will be many things competing for our attention. But we must decide what are the things or areas to which we’ve committed ourselves. We cannot exhaust ourselves. There are civil rights and civil liberties organizations ready to file suit. Support them. There are representatives in Congress who know the rules and are ready to resist the excesses of the Republicans. We don’t have to do their work – but we must support them.
But there is work for every citizen to do. When your friends or family members get tired, and start thinking we can’t survive this, give them the number to call their Senator or House member. Remind them that it matters. And remind yourself. Never make it easy for those in power to trample our rights. Make them hear your voices, no matter what. Speak, write, call, march. If we stop doing those things, it won’t be long before we no longer remember where the line is for decency, truth, justice and democracy.
There’s another reason it matters. Remember that the fear of losing their jobs is the prime motivator of most elected representatives, and they are in constant fear that they have lost sight of which way the wind is blowing. The 2022 midterms loom large, and Republicans remain in disarray. They too, are exhausted just from trying to keep up with what Trump, or Musk have ordered in their most recent tweets.
So when you call, leave messages, send texts and emails, send postcards and letters. Trust me – they worry, and they waver. And if you are blessed to have terrific representatives, then they need the encouragement and the reminder of who they are fighting for. We must call our our elected representatives when they do wrong, but we must also pat them on the back when they do right.
Get engaged locally. Go with a friend or family member to the next school board meeting. Showing up at city council meetings. Visit your library as a way of showing your community who you are, and that you care. Do not cede the space to your opponents. They win whenever we fail to show up. Our presence is powerful and destabilizes the sense that we are intimidated. This is especially important if you live in a blue state or district. We need to hold the spaces, cities and states we have.
When you reel your resolve flagging, look at your children, your young cousin, your niece, or nephew and ask yourself if you are too intimidated to protect their future. If the answer is no, then act like it. Enter the space that is yours. Decide that in 2025 you will be come an active citizen, not an observer.
For my friends in media, many of you are already failing this preliminary moment. Tighten up your language. Stop conceding the rationality of things that are fundamentally irrational and the legality of things that are illegal. Musk and Ramaswamy are leading at best a “project on government accountability.” Maybe and “ad hoc committee” or study group. It is not a “Department” which is a legal term for federal agencies. The creation of federal departments requires an Act of Congress, not the mere whim of a president-elect and his benefactor. Think “Department of Homeland Security.” There is no “Department of Government Efficiency.” And if giving legal imprimatur to this ad hoc initiative is not reason enough to refrain from referring to it as DOGE, engaging in cost-free advertising for Elon Musk’s cryptocurrency (called DOGE) should be reason enough.
Restore your obligation to help your readers understand what is out-of-the-ordinary and antidemocratic. Trump’s stated plans to seize the Panama Canal, to make Canada the 51st state, and to “buy” Greenland is not “Trump being Trump.” It is not a “policy plan.” And it is certainly not an “approach to diplomacy.” If you had 11th grade social studies you know that it reflects imperialist ambitions, that it is an act of hostility towards those nations, and that is destabilizing to those nations, their people, and their markets. Report on it as such. Trump is the President-elect. When he makes these kinds of threats they should be treated seriously and presented as the threat they constitute. This is not normal behavior. It could and may yet lead to trade wars or armed conflict.
It is also critical that the media compel elected representatives to stand with or against Trump’s most excessive plans. I would have expected a responsible press to be camped outside of Senator Marco Rubio’s house who, as Trump’s Secretary of State nominee, would be charged with handling the fallout from Trump’s intemperate and menacing threats against sovereign nations. What are his views about Trump’s stated plan to seize the Panama Canal? There is a pretty healthy Panamanian American population in Florida. What is Rubio saying to that community?
The Matt Gaetz ethics report was an explosive revelation. Seems long ago. He has moved on to prime-time show on OANN. That does not mean the press should move on. This is the man Trump wanted as Attorney General – to represent the United States and lead the largest law enforcement force in the world. His selection of Gaetz is, in and of itself, disqualifying. But he has yet to be pressed on the Gaetz report and what he knew about it. If he didn’t know then he didn’t do basic due diligence before selecting a nominee. If he did, well then, the Senate has no reason to give any Trump nominee the benefit of the doubt -something one might remind those Democratic senators who have announced their willingness to consider voting for RFK, Jr. as HHS Secretary.
The public doesn’t sustain its outrage because the news moves on to something else. Stop letting Trump set the news cycle. Your job is to keep the citizenry educated so that we can make good decisions. Trump’s election is evidence that this has failed. But it’s never too late to do better.
For all of us, even when the media fails, we are still obligated to stay informed. Start following the terrific lawyers, journalists, activists, and writers who have shown that they have the ability to meet the moment and who can share with you information you are unlikely to get other places.
Faith leaders who believe in democracy and justice? There’s work for you to do, and it is urgent. Now is the time to reach out to your local police precinct captains. Make sure they know who you are. Ask for a cell number where you can reach them. Invite them to your places of worship and let them know what you expect. When and if we see our neighbors being targeted, taken away by ICE or other law enforcement, faith leaders should be on-call for their communities, with a direct high level point of contact to find out where individuals have been taken and how they can be reached. Let your local police know that you expect humane treatment of arrestees and detainees.
Finally, we all end the year with a little less money than we would like but make a decision once your finances stabilize about which two or three public, non-profit sources of information or advocacy you will support. PBS? Democracy Now? Pro Publica? Wikipedia (now under threat from Elon)? Your library? Black press? Your town’s alternative weekly? Then do it. Do it now.
Begin printing out articles that contain important information and social media posts that shed important light on controversial issues. There’s a great deal of “scrubbing” happening on the internet right now and many of the most nefarious figures of this time that have stayed under the radar will reappear in the days of our future rebuilding, espousing brand-new positions and ideas.
I intend to use this space to shed light and do some deep dives on the meaning and context behind the anti-democratic plans and proposals that are unfolding, especially those that strike at the heart of our constitution’s guarantee of equality, so please tune in. As I always say, I don’t have all the answers. I’m only absolutely clear about the need to fight.
Diane Ravitch's blog 