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James Fallows: Why Does the Press have a Double Standard for Trump and Biden?

By dianeravitch
July 21, 2024 //
39

James Fallows is one of the most eminent journalists in the nation, having served as editor of The Atlantic and published in every major media outlet. I was happy to discover his blog, “Breaking the News,” where great articles like this one appear.

In a ghoulish touch during his acceptance speech, Donald Trump went over to kiss the gear of Corey Comperatore, the fire fighter who was killed in the shooting attack that injured Trump. (Later reports said that this was Comperatore’s own jacket, on which he’d intentionally left his name misspelled for years.) In the opening part of the speech, Trump followed a script in discussing the shooting before moving into an ad-libbed MAGA-rally riff that evoked images of martyrdom and resurrection. (Photo Joe Raedle/Getty Images.)

This post has one central point. It is that the press should give “fair and balanced” attention to what each of the major candidates is revealing about temperament, competence, and cognition, especially in their public performances.

Right now we have these opposing, imbalanced narrative cycles:

—For Joe Biden, every flub, freeze, slurred word, or physical-or-verbal misstep adds to the case against him. There’s an ever-mounting dossier, which can only grow in cumulative importance. “In another difficult moment for the President….” “Coming after his disastrous debate appearance…”

—For Donald Trump, every flub, fantasy, non-sequitur, “Sir” story, or revelation of profound ignorance dulls and blunts the case against him. “That’s just Trump.” “Are you new here? Never heard a MAGA rally speech before?” “It’s what the crowd is waiting for.” “Oh, here comes the ‘shark’ again!” There’s an ever-thickening layer of habituation, normalization, jadedness, just plain tedium. The first five times Trump tells the Hannibal Lecter story, reporters notice and write about it. The next hundred times, they’re checking their phones. 

Last night a member of the Washington Posteditorial board actually put it just this bluntly. Mehdi Hasan, formerly of MSNBC and now of Zeteo, asked Shadi Hamid, of the Post, about the many ludicrous and damaging claims in Trump’s convention speech, which Hamid had waved off as “just normal Trump.” Hamid chuckled and answered, “I guess what I’m trying to say is that Trump is Trump, and it’s a low bar, and that’s what we’ve got to work with.” To which Hasan replied, “Some of us are trying to raise the bar.” You can see it here. 

I’m sure that on reflection Shadi Hamid would have made the point more carefully. But his instant reaction distilled the “it’s just Trump!” framing that has prevailed through the 2024 campaign.

The obvious and unequal result: The public registers more and more about Biden’s “fitness” based on his appearances, less and less about Trump’s. 

Suppose we judged Donald Trump’s performances not on the sliding scale of “That’s just Trump” but the way we do Biden’s? That is, by comparison with the way other people who have ever run for president have sounded and behaved?

—By that standard, everyone who watched Joe Biden’s debate performance last month agreed that it was disastrous, easily the worst presentation by a major-party candidate in the history of televised debates. Not even his staunchest backers denied this reality, though many then framed it as “just a bad night.”

—By a similar real-world standard, I contend that Donald Trump’s acceptance speech two days ago should also be considered disastrous, easily the worst presentation of its type ever. I claimed as much, in a tweet, as soon as its 96-minute sprawl was done. Most GOP commentators I’ve heard or read since then have been predictably more unified and upbeat. One even claimed that the speech had “worked” because most of the audience would already have turned it off after about 30 minutes.

Maybe I’m wrong in that judgment, for which I’ll give my reasoning below. But I’m sure of the reality that the “it’s just Trump!” mindset within the press is badly distorting the public’s view of the candidates

What we should expect from the press is more stories about Trump’s fitness, to match those about Biden. Including: Why have we still heard absolutely nothing from medical authorities about the cause, nature, or consequences of his recent injury? This stonewalling is not normal, or defensible. If anything remotely comparable had happened with Biden, press demands for every forensic detail would grow more intense by the moment. (Yes, Biden is a serving president, but that’s what Trump wants to be again.)

So let’s start with this disastrous speech, in four summary points.

Why was Trump’s speech terrible?

First, it was not a “speech.” 

Eight years ago, I stood near the front of the crowd at the Republican Convention in Cleveland, listening to Donald Trump give his first acceptance speech. I thought it was dark, dystopian, and narcissistic. But it was a speech. It had a beginning, a middle section, and a conclusion. It had a theme. (That theme, unfortunately, was “everything is broken, and I alone can fix it.”) It appeared to have been “written,” and Trump appeared mainly to be saying what was set out in the text. The crowd roared when Trump gave the big, planned applause lines.

Thursday night’s speech started out that way. It had some “writerly” early segments—which you can always identify in Trump’s speeches by the way his voice and rhythm change. When he’s sounding out words from “planned” text from a teleprompter, the energy goes out of his voice, and his tone is that of a schoolboy struggling through an unfamiliar primer. Sometimes he gives a little aside of meta-commentary appreciation for a nice line he’s just read: “You know, that’s so true.”

The written part of this speech contained a “bring us together” line that died on Trump’s lips even as he said it: “I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America.” And his opening description of the shooting had an unmistakable “he is risen!” framing. For example, with emphasis added:

Many people say it was a providential moment. Probably was. When I rose [!], surrounded by Secret Service, the crowd was confusedbecause they thought I was dead. And there was great, great sorrow. I could see that on their faces as I looked out. 

They didn’t know I was looking out; they thought it was over. 

But I could see it and I wanted to do something to let them know I was OK. I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousandsof people that were breathlessly waiting and started shouting, “Fight, fight, fight.”

You don’t have be a Christian to recognize the Easter-weekend iconography. 

If he had stopped there, or even 10 or 15 minutes further in, this speech would have registered as something new and impressive from Trump. Comparison: in the first few minutes of his debate with Biden, Trump was controlled, calm-sounding, relatively clear, nothing like the figure who yelled ceaselessly at Biden during their first debate four years ago. He seemed on a mission to introduce a “new” Donald Trump, and in those opening exchanges he held it together. (Things changed as the debate went on.) 

That seems also to have been the intention in this speech, which in its “for release” version is said to have been 3,000 words long. That’s about half an hour of talking, “normal” for a live-TV evening speech of this sort.¹

But of course Trump did not stop there. He went on until after midnight Eastern time, through 96 minutes of talking, creating a transcript of well over 12,000 words. Simple math meant that three-quarters of the airtime was not a planned-and-written “speech” but instead a random-association playlist from Trump’s familiar MAGA rally themes.

On and on it went. Grievances. Attacks and ridicule. More grievances and slights. Fabrications. “Sir” stories. The return of Hannibal Lecter. Farcical claims about his greatness and Biden’s failures. Amazingly, no sharks. It was another MAGA rally. Should you so choose, you could read the whole thing here. 

I had to force myself to stay up and keep listening. We’d just gotten home from a long trip. Deb drifted away to do some unpacking, and was asleep by the time the speech was halfway done. Camera shots of the captive audience in Milwaukee indicated that they wished they could do the same thing.

To return to the theme of age and its toll on candidates: this was different from 2016. Then, Trump held the crowd throughout. Now, he came across as the guy in a bar you couldn’t get away from.

Second, it undercut its announced purpose, and missed its main opportunity.

Some of the pre-speech “analysis” was taken in by the “new Trump” opening section. For instance, here was a tweet just before Trump spoke, from Scott Jennings, a former aide to Mitch McConnell whom CNN now employs as an “analyst”:

In a similar vein, from a credulous Axios reporter:

For a sampling of even more gullible “new softness” reporting, I recommend this brilliant segment, from The Daily Show.

If Trump could have held things together for even 20 or 30 minutes, this was the opportunity he could have seized. Reporters love a “New [Person X]” story. The “New Nixon” back in 1968, potentially the “New Trump” now. And the venue itself is (along with presidential debates) among the tiny handful of occasions suited to a candidate’s re-introduction. 

JD Vance had tried this formula the night before, presenting himself not as a culture warrior (andmost definitely not as the person who called Trump “America’s Hitler”) but instead as just a lucky guy who grew up hard-scrabble. Bill Clinton’s well-conceived acceptance speech in 1992 introduced him as the young man from “a place called Hope.” John Kerry’s less-successful acceptance speech in 2004 began with him saluting and saying, “I’m John Kerry and I’m reporting for duty.”

The point is, it’s a moment, and one that can’t be recaptured or repeated. And Trump could not control or contain himself long enough to have this moment pay off the way it could have. 

He started out preaching unity, comity, and providential guidance. But here’s the kind of thing he was saying in most of his speech:

If you took the 10 worst presidents in the history of the United States—think of it! The 10 worst!—and added them up, they will not have done the damage that Biden has done. Only going to use the term once. ‘Biden.’ I’m not going to use the name anymore. [Cheers] Just one time. The damage that he’s done to this country is unthinkable. It’s unthinkable.²

Trump came alive only when on the attack. That should be as newsworthy as Biden’s stiffness when walking or his “President of Mexico” gaffes.

Categories Biden, Character, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Republicans, Trump

Reader: What You Need to Know About Medicare Advantage Plans

By dianeravitch
July 19, 2024 //
23

A reader named Quickwrit summed up why “Medicare Advantage” is inferior to Medicare. Medicare is a federal program. Medicare Advantage is run for profit by private insurance companies. They make a profit by denying services.

Quickwrit writes:

WARNING TO ALL RETIREES!!! So-called “Medicare Advantage” plans TAKE YOU OUT OF FEDERAL MEDICARE and put you into A PRIVATE INSURANCE PLAN!!! So-called “Advantage” plans are aimed at privatizing all of federal Medicare for the profit of private insurance companies. Read pages 61 and 62 of your “Medicare & Me” booklet where it tells you that Medicare Advantage plans are PRIVATE insurance plans and that “each Medicare Advantage plan can charge different out-of-pocket costs and have different rules for how you get your [medical] services.” In so-called “Medicare Advantage” plans you lose your freedom to choose your own doctors and you get hit with all sorts of out-of-pocket costs and copays. And you must use the “Advantage” plan’s so-called “Preferred Provider Organization” (PPO) doctors, specialists, and hospitals. The only “advantage” in a “Medicare Advantage” plan is for the private insurance company’s profits. More and more healthcare providers are dumping so-called “Medicare Advantage” plans and preferring Medicare Supplement (“Medigap”) plans. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2023/10/27/hospitals-terminate-medicare-advantage-contracts-over-payments/71301991007/

Quickwrit also wrote:

$600 BILLION MEDICARE ADVANTAGE FRAUD THREATENS THE CONTINUED EXISTENCE OF ORIGINAL MEDICARE

A new study published in the respected JAMA Internal Medicine reveals that privatized Medicare Advantage plans have defrauded U.S. taxpayers of at least $600 BILLION in recent years and calls for the abolition of the program before the ongoing fraud kills original Medicare.

“Medicare Advantage plans have, in effect, stolen hundreds of billions from taxpayers,” points out

Dr. Adam Gaffney, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the lead author of the new study, said in a statement that “Medicare Advantage is a bad deal for taxpayers.”

“Money that could be used to eliminate all copayments or shore up Medicare’s Trust Fund is instead lining insurers’ pockets,” said Gaffney. “And the private insurers keep Medicare Advantage enrollees from getting needed care by erecting bureaucratic hurdles like prior authorizations and payment denials.”

Citing data from the nonpartisan Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, the report shows that Medicare Advantage (MA) plans have overcharged the federal government to the tune of $612 billion since 2007 — $82 billion last year alone.

PRIVATE MEDICARE ADVANTAGE INSURANCE COMPANIES ARE BANKRUPTING FEDERAL MEDICARE — which is the purpose for which the Medicare Advantage program was set up in the first place, so that nonprofit government insurance would die and private for-profit insurance companies could go back to business-as-usual.

Gaffney says that the time has come to abolish Medicare Advantage plans in order to save government Medicare.

Today, seniors feel trapped in so-called “Advantage” plans: https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2024/01/03/1222561870/older-americans-say-they-feel-trapped-in-medicare-advantage-plans

Categories Ethics, For-Profit, Health

Jay Kuo: Judge Aileen Cannon’s Absurd Decision to Find Special Prosecutor Unconstitutional

By dianeravitch
July 17, 2024 //
7

Jay Kuo is a lawyer, a political consultant and a musician. His blog “The Status Kuo” is lively and well-informed. In this post, he documents how far-fetched is Judge Aileen Cannon’s recent decision to throw out the documents case against Trump, who appointed her.

He writes:

On Monday, Judge Aileen “Loose” Cannon issued a mind-exploding ruling dismissing the espionage and obstruction case against Donald Trump. Her reason? The appointment of the Special Counsel was not legally authorized.

Let me first say this. Her ruling flies in the face of every legal precedent. No less than eight courts have weighed in on this question before and found to the contrary. Yet somehow Judge Cannon has defied all that legal weight and ruled against the U.S. government.

The timing of the ruling is also very suspect. Judge Cannon has been sitting on the motion to dismiss for 144 days. Yet she issued her ruling on the first day of the Republican National Convention? This smells like legal mischief. She is raising her hand for a quid pro quo appointment to a higher bench during a possible second Trump administration.

In today’s piece, I’ll walk through why Judge Cannon’s ruling is far outside of anything we have ever seen on this question. But while precedent would dictate that she should be reversed by the 11th Circuit, she could theoretically still prevail, setting up a split in the circuits for the Supreme Court to decide. And the current High Court has shown it doesn’t give a damn about decades of precedent. Indeed, that is Cannon’s likely gambit, and it is a dangerous one.

But if she loses, as is likely, she could also pay a heavy consequence: a reassignment of the case to another judge because of her clear bias for Trump.

Why she’s wrong

The language of both the Constitution and the authorizing legislation make clear that the Special Counsel is something the Executive Branch, via its Justice Department, may appoint. 

Jack Smith argued that Congress vested the appointment of “inferior Officers” like the Special Counsel in 28 U.S.C. § 533(4), in which Congress authorized the Attorney General to appoint officials “to conduct such other investigations regarding official matters under the control of the Department of Justice…as may be directed by the Attorney General.”

Pretty damn clear if you ask me.

Before jumping into the legal arguments, it’s important to recognize how long and time-honored the tradition is of appointing Special Counsel to handle politically sensitive matters. President Ulysses S. Grant appointed one some 150 years ago in 1875 during the Whiskey Ring scandal, where distillers bribed Treasury officials to increase profits and evade taxes.

In the 1920s, there was a Special Counsel for the Teapot Dome scandal, where Secretary of the Interior Albert Bacon Fall became the first cabinet member ever sent to prison after he accepted bribes in exchange for petroleum leases.

The question of the Special Prosecutor’s authority in the Watergate investigation was first broached by the Supreme Court in U.S. v. Nixon. (Special Counsel was previously termed “Special Prosecutor.”) In that case, the Supreme Court unanimously signed off on the Special Prosecutor’s authority to issue a subpoena to Nixon for tapes of conversations. 

Yet Judge Cannon, in her infinite wisdom, decided that U.S. v. Nixon  was mere “dictum,” meaning reasoning not essential to the decision before her. She wrote that because Nixon never actually contested the Special Prosecutor’s validity, the question was not squarely before the Supreme Court.

Come on, Aileen. 

It’s clear that the Supreme Court at least approved of the Special Counsel’s very existence. Otherwise, why even consider whether he could legally subpoena the President? Nixon didn’t challenge the very existence of the Special Counsel because it’s crystal clear that the Special Counsel was legally authorized, and no one on Nixon’s team even presumed to challenge the validity of the appointment. 

Judge Cannon also ignored another Supreme Court precedent from 1988, Morrison v. Olson, which upheld a law called the Independent Counsel Act. Prosecutors have cited that decision over the decades to consistently argue that special counsels did not violate the separation of powers. Cannon rejected this argument, however, ruling that the statute it upheld had lapsed. 

But Garland had cited four other statutes enacted by Congress—including the one discussed at the top of this section—that broadly authorized him to make Smith’s appointment. Yet Judge Cannon believes she somehow knows better than Congress about how to go about actually authorizing the appointment by statute.

To finish reading this column, open the link or subscribe.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Injustice, Trump

John Thompson: Ryan Walters Appoints Extremists to Revise Oklahoma Social Studies Curriculum

By dianeravitch
July 16, 2024 //
5

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, brings us up to date with the latest shenanigans of Oklahoma’s State Superintendent Ryan Walters. Recently, he mandated that the Bible be taught in the state’s classrooms. Now Walters has appointed a list of rightwing luminaries to rewrite the state’s social studies curriculum. Just when you thought it couldn’t get worse, Walters proves that it can.

John Thompson writes:

KOSU’s Beth Wallace reports that the Executive Review Committee assembled by Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters features prominent conservatives, including Dennis Prager of PragerU, David Barton of the Christian Nationalist organization, Wallbuilders, and the president of the Heritage Foundation, Kevin Roberts.” She then reminds readers that, “The Heritage Foundation is the think tank behind Project 2025, a movement that proposes to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education.”

More information was provided to NBC’s Tyler Kingkade and Marissa Parra during their interview with Walters about his plans for transforming school curriculums. They reported that “Oklahoma educators who refuse to teach students about the Bible could lose their teaching license.” Ryan Walters said that those teachers would “face the same consequences as one who refuses to teach about the Civil War. The punishment could include revocation of their teaching license.” 

Moreover, Walters expressed confidence “that his order will survive legal challenges because of the Justices then-President Donald Trump appointed to the Supreme Court.” And if Trump is elected, “it will help us move the ball forward, even more so than this.”

Until recently, Dennis Prager was the best known rightwinger selected for Walters’ committee. The Hill’s Lexi Lonas explained that Prager’s so-called education group “focused on teaching conservative principles. The conservative platform has been made its way into multiple states, with videos such as ‘Was the Civil War About Slavery?’ and ‘The Inconvenient Truth About the Democratic Party.’”

National Public Radio’s Barbara Bradley Hagerty referred to another committee member, David Barton, in a very different way, as “the most important Evangelist You’ve Never Heard Of.” Hagerty explained that Barton collected 100,000 documents and, “He says they prove that the Founding Fathers were deeply religious men who built America on Christian ideas — something you never learn in school.” Barton argued that the Constitution isn’t a secular document because it “is laced with biblical quotations.” 

However, NPR “looked up every citation Barton said was from the Bible, but not one of them checked out.” The Constitution had “no mention of God or religion except to prohibit a religious test for office.” Then Hagerty quoted, “John Fea, chairman of the history department at evangelical Messiah College,” who said, “Barton is peddling a distorted history that appeals to conservative believers.”

Hagerty also fact-checked Barton’s claim that President Thomas Jefferson “who owned nearly 200 slaves — was a civil rights visionary,” and he had plans that “would’ve ended slavery really early on,” and “they would have gone much more toward civil rights.” Barton said that Virginia law “prohibited Jefferson from freeing his slaves during his lifetime.” When that statement was shown to be false, Barton said that, “Jefferson could not afford to free his slaves.”

So, David Barton and Dennis Prager clearly aren’t qualified to recommend history curriculums, but the most dangerous member of the committee is Kevin Roberts, who is a driving force in the Christian Nationalist Project 2025, which is a detailed game plan for a Trump administration for dismantling the federal government’s administrative institutions. It seems obvious that his goal for the Oklahoma Executive Review Committee is to dismantle public education.

The Washington Post reports that Roberts recently said of Project 2025, “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”

Roberts told the New York Times’ Lulu Garcia-Navarro that “he views Heritage’s role today as ‘institutionalizing Trumpism.’” Garcia-Navarro said that Project 2025 was:

A transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power.

Roberts has praised Hungary’s authoritarian, Christian Nationalist Viktor Orban, adding that “Modern Hungary is not just a model for conservative statecraft but the model.” He’s also said that he wants to “destroy the administrative state,” and defeat “the secret Communist movement in America.” 

And since he is serving on Walters’ committee for rewriting history, it is noteworthy that Roberts said that Joe McCarthy “largely got things right.”

When asked if he believes that President Biden won the 2020 election, Roberts replied, “No.”

And that brings us to the reason why Rex Huppke writes in the Oklahoman:

Project 2025 is a governing blueprint designed by a collection of former Trump administration officials who seem to have looked at Hitler’s path to power in 1930s Germany and thought, ‘Cool!’

Huppke refers to Project 2025, as “a painstakingly detailed and hellishly authoritarian plan for a second Trump presidency.” He notes that “according to The Heritage Foundation itself,” Trump “embraced nearly two-thirds of the policy recommendations.”

I would just add that the leader of Project 2025, and his allies, clearly see Ryan Walters’ Executive Review Committee as one part of their plan.

Categories Accountability, Civics, Curriculum, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, History, Oklahoma, Republicans, Trump

North Carolina: Five Words for Voters: “And You’re OK with That?”

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2024 //
7

Leaders of the pro-public school organization called Public Schools First in North Carolina discovered that many public school parents and advocates are unaware that the state’s General Assembly has passed a budget that gives vouchers to the rich. They are distributing the following opinion piece from the Greensboro News to inform the public:

Our Opinion: Five words for GOP candidates: ‘And you’re OK with That?’

“And you’re OK with that?”

As Republican candidates for the state legislature begin to the make the rounds this fall, they should be hearing those five words over and over from constituents of all political stripes.

At every stop, on every stump, they should be pressed to give straight answers to that simple question on three issues:

Private-school vouchers

Even as they’ve increased taxpayer funding for private school tuition, adding wealthy families to the dole, many local public districts, including our own in Guilford and Forsyth counties, complain that they are seriously underfunded.

To be more specific, your party plans to plow hundreds of additional millions in taxpayer money into private school tuition assistance. Although 40% of that money ($96 million) would go to middle-class and working-class families earning between $57,721 to $115,440 a year (for a family of four), 44% (or $107 million) would go families earning $115,441 to $259,740.

And 16% (or $39 million) would go to those who need it the very least: wealthy families earning more than $259,741 annually.

One Democratic lawmaker likened it to asking low- and moderate-income taxpayers to help pay for a wealthy kid’s Porsche.

How do you square that with your rhetoric against “the welfare state” and profligate spending of other people’s money?

How do you square it with public school funding gaps throughout the state?

And how do you tell public schools no, that’s all we have to spend and then turn around and tell rich families y’all come. Who do we make the check out to?

Keeping secrets

Your party also slipped a provision into the state budget bill last fall that allows state lawmakers to decide for themselves whether they will make any of their documents accessible to the public. 

By law, they also get to choose whether to destroy or sell documents. They’re the decider. Which means they’re creating their own deep state right here and now on Tobacco Road.

What are they trying to hide and why?

And what gives them the right to membership in this exclusive club, but not others (the governor, the lieutenant governor, the attorney general and other North Carolina officials who are elected statewide need not apply)?

Easy money

Then there’s the provision the Republican-controlled legislature embedded within an (unnecessary) anti-masking bill that allows more “dark money” donations to political candidates in North Carolina.

As the current law stands, candidates must disclose the names of donors to their campaigns. They also are prohibited from taking donations from corporations, and contributions from individuals and political groups may not exceed $6,400.

This bill would change all that by making it legal for political parties in the state to take money from “Super PACs,” which are allowed to keep their donors secret and may receive unlimited amounts of money.

Those Super PACs would be able to collect the money and pass it on to the political parties, which could then funnel it to candidates, no questions asked.

At least your party has made no secret of the fact that it designed this new rule specifically with the GOP gubernatorial candidate in mind. Mark Robinson substantially trails his Democratic opponent, Josh Stein, in fundraising.

To recap, are you OK with:

Channeling taxpayer money to rich people as public schools go wanting?

Keeping documents and correspondence a secret from the public … unless you decide to share it?

And allowing anonymous cash to flow unfettered to candidates of both parties?

If the answer is yes, please explain how any of this benefits most North Carolinians and why we should vote for you anyway.

And how this in any way resembles government for, by and of the people.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reform, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, North Carolina, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Vouchers

Heather Cox Richardson: Republicans Continue Efforts to Cripple Federal Government

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2024 //
31

Heather Cox Richardson wrote today about two concurrent stories: on one hand, Democrats are locked in an internecine battle about their candidate; on the other, the Trump-dominated Supreme Court is shredding the balance of powers and crippling the administrative authority of the federal government.

She writes:

In this morning’s Talking Points Memo, David Kurtz observed that “much of political journalism is divorced from policy and the substance of politics.” It’s all about a horse race, he wrote, while complex questions, competing public interests, and the history of an issue get distilled to “whether it’s good or bad politically.”

Today, he noted, that horse-race coverage means that “[a]n election about whether the United States will continue its two and half century long experiment in representative democracy, where a convicted felon is running to return to the office he tried to seize through extralegal means, where the specter of a new form of fascism looms on the horizon is suddenly consumed by a political death watch for the only person at present standing between democracy and another Trump term in the White House.”

Yesterday, President Joe Biden tried to quell that political death watch by sending a letter to congressional Democrats stating that “despite all the speculation in the press and elsewhere, I am firmly committed to staying in this race, to running this race to the end, and to beating Donald Trump.” He noted that 14 million voters in the Democratic primary chose him, rather than a challenger, adding, “It was their decision to make. Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well intentioned…. How can we stand for democracy in our nation if we ignore it in our own party?” 

In an apparent attempt to get beyond the horse-race politics Kurtz identified and to make clear the substance of this election, Biden explained: “We have an historic record of success to run on.” He cited his administration’s creation of more than 15 million jobs, leading to historic unemployment lows; revitalization of American manufacturing; expansion of affordable health care; rebuilding the country’s infrastructure; lowering the cost of prescription drugs; providing student debt relief; and making a historic investment in combating climate change.

That vision, Biden wrote, “soundly beats” that of Trump and the MAGA Republicans, who are “siding with the wealthy and big corporations,” while the Democrats are “siding with the working people of America.” Trump and his people want another $5 trillion in tax cuts for the rich, he noted, and they plan to cut Social Security and Medicare, as well as end the ability of the government to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies to bring drug prices into line with prices in other countries. “We are the ones lowering costs for families,” he wrote, “from health care to prescription drugs to student debt to housing. We are the ones protecting Social Security and Medicare. Everything they’re proposing raises costs for most Americans—except their tax cuts which will go to the rich.” 

He went on to note that the Democrats are “protecting the freedoms of Americans,” while Trump’s people are “taking them away.” He pointed to the right-wing attacks on abortion rights, IVF, contraception, and gay marriage. Biden reiterated that he will sign a law making Roe v. Wade the law of the land if the nation elects a Democratic House and Senate. Finally, he pointed out that Democrats are protecting the rule of law and democracy, while Trump is actively working to destroy both. Trump, he wrote, has proven himself “unfit ever to hold the office of President.” “My fellow Democrats,” Biden wrote, “we have the record, the vision, and the fundamental commitment to America’s freedoms and our Democracy to win.” 

Hours later, the New York Times joined the tabloid New York Post in noting that visitor logs showed that Dr. Kevin Cannard, an expert on Parkinson’s disease, visited the White House eight times between July 2023 and March 2024. After pressing White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre for information beyond her statements that Biden is not being, and has not been, treated for Parkinson’s and that he sees a neurologist as part of his annual physical exams, a CBS News White House reporter accused Jean-Pierre of deliberately withholding information. Jean-Pierre pointed out that “personal attacks” are not appropriate from the press corps and that the press team does its best to give the information they have. She said she took offense at the reporter’s tone. 

Last night, White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor sent to Jean-Pierre a letter clarifying that the White House Medical Unit serves thousands of patients, many of whom are military personnel with neurological issues related to their service. Cannard was one of the team of specialists that annually examine the president. O’Connor’s office released the results of that examination in a letter dated February 28, he pointed out. It said, “An extremely detailed neurologic exam was again reassuring in that there were no findings which would be consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder, such as stroke, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s or ascending lateral sclerosis, nor are there any signs of cervical myelopathy.” The president does have “peripheral neuropathy in both feet. No motor weakness was detected. He exhibits no tremor, either at rest or with activity.”

As media attention remains focused on Biden, a Supreme Court decision from last week that upends the modern American state and another that overturns the central concept of our democracy have disappeared from public discussion. In Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, the court overruled the longstanding legal precedent establishing that courts should defer to a government agency’s reasonable interpretation of a law. Instead, it said, judges themselves will decide on the legality of an agency’s actions. 

In Public Notice, Lisa Needham noted that right-wing judges have already blocked Biden administration rules that protect overtime pay for workers, prohibit noncompete clauses for truckers, and prohibit discrimination based on gender identity. As right-wing plaintiffs launch suits challenging rules they dislike, she notes, we should expect to see many more federal judges “deploying junk science and personal opinions to get to their preferred conclusion while ignoring the expertise of agency employees.”

Loper Bright was a slashing blow at the federal regulations that make up the framework of today’s government, but it paled in comparison to the Supreme Court’s decision in Donald J. Trump v. United States. In that stunning decision, the six right-wing justices—three of whom Trump himself appointed—declared that a president is immune from prosecution for crimes committed as part of his “official duties.” 

This astonishing decision overturned the bedrock principle of the United States of America: that no one is above the law. But to be clear, the court did not give this power to Biden. Because it is not clear what official acts are—since no one has ever before made this distinction—it claimed for itself the right to decide what illegal behaviors are official acts and which are not. Since at least one of the justices (Samuel Alito) has flown flags demonstrating support for overthrowing Biden’s government and putting Trump back into office, and the wife of another (Clarence Thomas) worked with those trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, it seems likely that their decisions will reinforce Trump’s immunity alone. 

An extraordinary effort to use the courts to set up a Trump dictatorship appears largely to have been hidden under the horse race.

And now that this scaffolding is in place, Trump’s team has begun to try to make him look more moderate than he is. On July 5, Trump claimed not to know anything about the extremist Project 2025, which calls for an authoritarian leader to impose Christian nationalism on the United States, despite the fact that his own appointees wrote it, his own political action committee advertised it as his plan, and his name appears in it 312 times. 

Agenda 47, the official Trump campaign website, has offered more information about how he will wield the absolute power he now claims. As Judd Legum pointed out today in Popular Information, a key author of Project 2025, Christian nationalist Russell Vought, has advanced a plan for killing any aspects of government his people dislike, and Trump has adopted that plan, vowing to cancel agencies or laws he dislikes by refusing to spend money Congress appropriates. This is known as “impoundment,” and Congress made it illegal in 1974 after President Richard Nixon used it to try to bend the government to his will. Trump says the 1974 Impoundment Control Act is unconstitutional because it interferes with the power of the presidency. He promised to use it to “crush the Deep State.” First on the chopping block will be the Department of Education.  

The effort to make Trump sound more moderate continued yesterday, when the Republican National Committee released the party’s 2024 platform, in which it tried to fudge the issue of abortion while leaving language that supported a national abortion ban. The New York Timespublished an article reinforcing the idea that Trump is moderating, reporting: “Following Trump’s Lead, Republicans Adopt Platform That Softens Stance on Abortion.” 

In the midst of this political coverage, a key story has been largely overlooked. Not only does the stock market continue to set record highs, but also, as Jim Tankersley of the New York Timesreported, the so-called left-behind counties, distressed after the collapse of manufacturing in them, have “added jobs and new businesses at their fastest pace since Bill Clinton was president.” “That turnaround,” he notes, “has shocked experts.” More than 1,000 counties, mostly in the Southeast and Midwest, that grew at less than half the national rate in terms of both people and income from 2000 to 2016, have surged. From 2016 to 2019—mostly during Trump’s administration—those rural left-behind counties, which make up about 18% of the U.S. population, added 10,000 jobs. In 2023 alone, they added 104,000. 

Tankersley notes that Trump overwhelmingly won the support of voters in these counties, but their circumstances did not improve during his administration. Under Biden, they added jobs five times faster than they did under Trump. Still, voters there appear to continue to back Trump. 

Now that’s a story. Are they backing Trump because they care more about culture wars than their economic security? Or are they ill informed?

Meanwhile, Republicans in the House today passed the Refrigerator Freedom Act and the Stop Unaffordable Dishwasher Standards (SUDS) Act, prohibiting the Secretary of Energy from prescribing or enforcing energy efficiency standards for residential refrigerators, freezers, and dishwashers. 

After noting that the average monthly cost of operating a dishwasher is two to four dollars, and establishing that the people pushing this measure had no idea how much a dishwasher costs, Representative Katie Porter (D-CA) said: “This bill… Congress at its worst. A bunch of people who haven’t unloaded a dishwasher ever telling the American people what dishwashers they should or should not have.” 

Categories Biden, Democracy, Democrats, Disruption, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Extremism, Injustice, Republicans, Trump

Florida Turns Down $259 Million in Federal Funds to Feed Hungry Children

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2024 //
12

The Orlando Sentinel reported that Florida has rejected $259 million in federal funds to feed hungry children. The reasons of the DeSantis administration: we don’t need the money, and besides, it would cost $22 million to administer the program.

TALLAHASSEE– State officials said they passed up millions of dollars in new federal food assistance money because they have more than enough programs to feed Florida’s hungry children this summer.

But advocates for the hungry say the numbers tell a different story.

“The perception put forward by the state is that there is no need for other programs in the state,” said Sky Beard, the Florida director for the non-profit No Kid Hungry organization. “I wish it were true!”

While it’s too late for Florida to change course in time to affect kids this summer, 185 groups that seek to end hunger recently sent a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state leaders urging Florida to apply for the money by the Aug. 15 deadline for 2025.

“Every summer is a hungry time for kids.” Beard said.

One in five children in Florida are experiencing hunger because their families cannot afford enough groceries to make up for the free meals they got at school during the academic year, according to a recent report by Feeding America, a nationwide network of food banks, pantries and community organizations dedicated to ending hunger.

Fewer than 10% of the 672,324 elementary school children in Florida who get free or reduced-price lunches during the school year receive a summer lunch, says a report by the Food Research and Action Center, a nonprofit organization working to end poverty-related hunger.

Categories Cruelty, DeSantis, Ethics, Evil, Florida, Injustice

The Case of Shani Robinson, Wrongly Accused of Cheating in Atlanta, Is Finally Resolved

By dianeravitch
July 10, 2024 //
27

In 2009, Atlanta’s school superintendent, Dr. Beverly Hall, was honored by the American Association of School Administrators as National Superintendent of the Year for the city’s amazing progress in the past ten years.

The scores seemed too good to be true for skeptical journalists. So that same year,the Atlanta Journal Constitution analyzed test results in the city’s schools and found some extraordinary gains that seemed improbable. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation launched a probe and released a report in July 2011 claiming that there was cheating in 44 out of 56 schools. The GBI charged 178 educators with changing answers to raise scores.

Dr. Hall was charged with multiple crimes in 2013. She was accused of putting pressure on teachers to raise scores and creating an atmosphere of intimidation and fear. She never went to trial. She died of cancer in 2015 at the age of 68.

Ultimately 35 educators were indicted and punished with jail time, fines or both. Twelve educators refused a plea deal, insisting on their innocence. Using the RICO statute, intended for racketeering, District Attorney Fani Willis continued to prosecute the 12 holdouts.

One of them, Shani Robinson, wrote a book insisting on her innocence. The book is titled None of the Above. I read the book and was persuaded that she had suffered a grave injustice. Shani was a first-grade teacher. Her students’ scores did not affect the district’s ratings. There were no stakes, no rewards or punishments attached to them.

She was offered a deal: Confess or turn someone else in, and all charges would be dropped. Because Shani refused to do either, she was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison, four years of probation,a fine of $1,000, and 1,000 hours of community service. She believes someone else named her to escape punishment. She has appealed repeatedly and has spent a decade in limbo, worrying about whether she would be sent to prison. Meanwhile, she married and has two children.

I wrote the following posts on her behalf and sent an affidavit to the judge.

In April 2019, I reviewed Shani’s book and became persuaded of her innocence.

In September 2019, I posted a video in which Shani insisted that she was innocent.

In February 2022, at Shani’s request, I wrote a post about my letter to the judge, in which I said,

Shani taught first grade, where the tests have no stakes for students or teachers. She had no motive or reason to cheat. 

I believe she was unjustly prosecuted by overzealous investigators. She could have pleaded guilty or accused others to avoid prosecution but she insisted on her innocence. 

I believe her.

In February 2023, I wrote an update, quoting two Atlanta lawyers who excoriated the prosecution, calling the case “a textbook example of overcriminalization and prosecutorial discretion gone amok…”

In October 2023, Shani wrote an update on the case for my blog.

She wrote:

This RICO indictment has hung over my head for the past 10 years, leading to a diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The impact of PTSD and the fallout from the trial has taken a significant toll on my family. I have 2 small children, sothe thought of going to prison and being separated from them is agonizing. There are 6 defendants, including me, still appealing convictions. We’ve all been able to remain out of prison thus far due to being on appeal bonds. But the case has been handled so poorly; the entire appeals process restarted this year with no end in sight. Millions of tax players dollars have already been spent on this trial. 

 Last year brought a ray of hope: Judge Jerry Baxter granted a new sentence for a principal who was convicted, enabling her to avoid prison and do community service instead. I’m hopeful that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Judge Jerry Baxter will come to the realization that RICO was misused in our case and find a peaceful resolution. 

The long ordeal is finally over.

A few days ago, Shani and the other holdouts arrived at a plea deal. They had to make a public apology to the children of Atlanta, admitting their guilt, in exchange for no prison time. In addition, she is required to pay a fine of $1,000 and give 1,000 hours of community service.

I believe Shani. I believe she is innocent. I think it’s a travesty that she had to admit guilt in order to avoid prison. That was the deal. I wish she could sue the city of Atlanta for destroying her profession and ruining 15 years of her life.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Cheating, Cruelty, Ethics, Fraud, Georgia, Teachers

Chris Hayes: What Is Project 2025? A Frightening Plan for Trump’s Next Term: LINK ADDED

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2024 //
50

It occasionally happens that I forget to add a link. I forgot to add the link for this great segment by Chris Hayes. I was embroiled in a computer glitch all day (my computer and printer are not communicating). Please watch the segment to learn what horrors Trump has in store for us.

Chris Hayes has a regular evening news program on MSNBC.

In this short video, he explains Project 2025, which spells out plans for major changes in the government and in our freedoms.

It’s a short video. Please watch.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Civil Rights, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Privatization, Shame, Trump

Nancy Bailey: Project 2025 Will Hurt Students with Disabilities

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2024 //
2

Nancy Bailey, retired teacher and veteran blogger, explains how Trump’s Project 2025 will strip away the federally-guaranteed rights of students with disabilities.

She writes:

The Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 is generally troubling, and its education plan is worrisome. It involves Milton Friedman’s undemocratic ideas to privatize public education, and its voucher plan for students with disabilities will continue to end public school services as we know them.

Project 2025 will eliminate the costs and hard-fought legal protections for children with special education needs instead of strengthening the public school programs.

The All Handicapped Children Education Act

Since its start in 1975, The All Handicapped Children’s Education Act, now called the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), has opened public schools to children with disabilities. Before then, children had limited services, and many were mistreated in poor institutions.

The momentous passage of this act was a proud moment for America! For years afterward, public education focused on improving education for students with disabilities.

However, many politicians and policymakers have worked to undermine these school programs, believing this law is too expensive or wanting to privatize those services.

They reauthorized the Act in 1997 and 2004, when it changed to IDEA. They shuttered long time programs, turning a blind eye to states and local school districts that have pushed children out of services.

Consider how Texas officials denied children services for years, as did New Orleans  by converting public schools to charters after Hurricane Katrina. Those reading this might have their own examples of how their local schools reneged on the necessary services.

In these cases the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE) did not perform due diligence to stop states from rejecting students. A stronger federal department should have ensured that students who needed disability services got them.

As disability services have been whittled down throughout the years, parents have become increasingly frustrated with public schools and convinced they should remove their students with a voucher, even though other school options lack accountability and are often less than ideal.

Project 2025 is correct that there are too many lawsuits by parents unhappy with public school programs, but without public schools, parents will have no rights!

Please open the link and read the post in full to learn how Project 2025 will hurt the most vulnerable children.

Categories Bigotry, Education Industry, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Special Education, Trump
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