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Umair Haque: Code Red for Democracy!

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2024 //
21

Umair Haque, an economist, warns us that democracy is in deep trouble and only one force can save it. We the people.

He writes:

Code Red for American Democracy

The last week or two’s felt like a lifetime. It’s been body blow after body blow for democracy in America.

The Supreme Court ruled Trump was effectively already something like a dictator, enjoying “presumptive immunity.” A lunatic tried to assassinate Trump, and the far right promptly blamed it on the center and left, despite the assassin being a Republican. Meanwhile, Trump announced Vance as Vice Presidential pick. And all that came on the heels of the media carrying water for Trump, while trying their very best, it seemed, to take down Joe Biden, time and again, this time with character assassination of every stripe and form.

A lifetime.

So what does all this add up to? 

Code red. 

If this moment feel severe, historic, let me assure that it is.

Democracies rarely and barely face as much and as many troubles as all this.

Let’s now simplify some of the above. The range of forces arrayed against democracy by now includes: billionaires, a supine press, lunatics, crackpots, pundits, the judiciary. And even that’s an incomplete list. That is a long and powerful list of forces inimical to democracy.

And on the other side awaits what we can all now openly call fascism.

Are These the Final Stages of American Collapse?

It’s been a decade or so since I began predicting American collapse. And we went through a familiar cycle, many of you right along with me. I’d bet that even many of you who are long time readers might have been skeptical, then grudgingly accepting, and by now, your hair’s on fire.

By now, it’s hard to deny.

My prediction, in other words, was all too prescient, and I take no comfort from that. I warned precisely because I didn’t want this to happen.

But you might wonder: what happens next? Where are we, precisely?

America’s now in a very bad place.

Let’s now put some of the above even more formally. 

  • The Supreme Court’s mounting what amounts to a rolling judicial coup, assigning the Presidency unassailable powers.
  • The press appears uninterested in providing people facts, information, or basic knowledge with which to make informed decisions, focusing on personal attacks on Biden and other forms of tabloid journalism.
  • The GOP’s effectively been transformed into an instrument of Trumpism.
  • Project 2025 is its agenda, and it involves essentially creating a totalitarian state, or at least the beginnings of one. Who’s going to check, after all, that people are obeying all these new rules which cause them to lose their basic freedoms? 

I could go on, but the point should already be clear.

All these are forms of institutional collapse. Pretty advanced and severe institutional collapse. Democracy’s a fragile thing, and each of its institutions must work in tandem to provide it the sustenance and support it needs. Those institutions, at their most basic level, are the rule of law, the press, political “sides” not being against openly authoritarian, their bases accepting basic democratic norms of peace and consent and the transfer of power and so forth, aka civil society, and of course, leaders not openly aspiring to dictatorship.

You can think of all that as kind of a checklist for the basic health of a democracy.

And the frightening thing in America right now is that almost none of that checklist can be ticked off anymore. Almost none of democracy’s institutions work anymore. Some work partially, some barely, and many, not at all.

Worse, you can see the sort of degeneration before your eyes. Take the example of the press. A few weeks or months ago, even, its behavior today would have been unthinkable to many. Hundreds of articles attacking Biden, while portraying Trump as a hero, a martyr, a glorious and noble figure? Today, as we’ve discussed, the media’s enabling the strongman myth before our eyes, perhaps “obeying in advance,” as Timothy Snyder, the scholar, calls it.

The point is that the rate, scale, and pace of collapse is increasing swiftly. Institutions which are fundamental to democracy’s functioning are simply ceasing to function before our very eyes.

Democracy’s Last institution, and Why It’s the One Which Matters Most

All of that leaves us with one remaining institution. Have you guessed it yet?

The people.

This isn’t some kind of idealistic paean. I’m just going to tell it like it is, as a scholar and survivor of social collapse.

When the people are united, all those other institutions can fail, and democracy, in the end, can still survive. We’ve seen recent examples of just such a thing, in Poland, for example, and arguably, a very close call in other parts of Europe.

All of that brings us to Biden. Should he drop out? Shouldn’t he? This is politics as sport. Don’t fall for it. The truth is that it doesn’t matter very much. Whomever comes next? They’ll face precisely the same brutal abuse and hazing by media as Biden has, and most likely, even worse, since they’ve done it to everyone from Carter to Hillary to Al Gore and beyond.

The point isn’t the candidate. It’s the people.

Right now, America’s in a very perilous—and very singular—place. If those who are sane, and thoughtful, and on the side of democracy unite in its defense, then they will win. They’ll win decisively, in fact. At 60% turnout, it’s an easy victory, at 70%, it’s a landslide. The numbers are clear. 

The questions are unity, and motivation. In that sense, you might say, the candidate counts, but that’s an evasion. Like I said, whomever the candidate is—they’ll be portrayed as weak by a media that’s now dismally attached to the strongman myth. Weak, feminine, incompetent, inexperienced (never mind Trump being a reality TV star), shallow, inept, not an orator to rival Cicero, not as fearless as Alexander the Great, not as wise as Sun Tzu, and so on. 

The candidate counts, but only in a weak sense. And that weak sense is: are Americans willing to grit their teeth, roll up their sleeves, and unify, whomever the candidate is? Enough of them, on the side of democracy and sanity? If they’re not, then it’ll be always and altogether too easy to divide them—there’ll always be some kind of foolish myth, some kind of fatal flaw, that the press, pundits, and the enemies of democracy will cook up, and spit out, over and over again.

So are Americans on the side of democracy willing to stop playing this game of fatal flaws? And say enough is enough: whomever the candidate is, we back them? In European politics, we call this, simply, voting for your party. The GOP, by the way, excels at it, too. The Democrats, never having built a party of great solidarity, or a modern party organization, rich in networks and communities, are poor at it. So people in America, on the center and left, don’t vote for the party. They look down on it, in fact. But there is nothing to be contemptuous of here: this is precisely how Europe and Canada built social democracies to begin with.

The Myth of the Fatal Flaw, or Democracy’s Greatest Test

In other words, this is democracy’s greatest test.

It goes like this.

When the chips are down—this down—and every institution has failed, welcoming fascism with open arms, every institution save one, will the people themselves remember they are that crucial institution?

You see, this is what fascism hopes to terrorize people away from realizing. To give up on their power, and instead succumb to fatalism—that’s why it’s so loud, explosive, violent, threatening, always intimidating, never shutting up, always promising the worst. Because it’s trying to terrorize the people into submission, giving up on their own unity and togetherness, and thus ceding it all in advance. We’ll discuss all that more tomorrow.

This is democracy’s greatest test. On the one side, fascism. Now behind it, every institution that should be preserving democracy. Save one, the people. And the people, in situations like this, find themselves easily divided, because all this is frightening, upsetting, destabilizing, even terrifying. Finding themselves demoralized, the people give up, focusing on the very Fatal Flaws that a failed media and those in league with the fascists trumpet over and over again.

But in truth none of these are Fatal Flaws. Sure, Biden’s old. Would you rather have an old guy or a dictator? Easy choice—if you’re thinking rationally and sanely. But if you’re scared out of your wits, then maybe, suddenly, all that clear thinking goes foggy. 

The next Fatal Flaw? Let’s rewind, so you really understand this. Al Gore wasn’t “likable.” Hillary was “difficult.” Carter wasn’t manly enough. Howard Dean was a “weirdo.”  Doesn’t matter—do you get the point yet? There’ll always—always—be a fatal flaw.

In fact, I can point out plenty in advance, and you should be able to, too, now that I’ve taught you how to think about all this. Kamala will probably be “unlikable,” too, like “Al Gore,” or “distant,” or even more “difficult” than Hillary. Gavin Newsom will be “slick” or too “polished” or not enough a “man of the people.” Anyone remotely to their left will be a socialist, etcetera. See how simple this is once you get the hang of it?

So this test of democracy, the greatest one of all? It’s never really about the candidates. Because nobody is perfect. Least of all politicians. This test is about the people, who must be willing to brook some degree of imperfection, and come to their senses, instead of being frightened into searching for an unattainable degree of perfection because…

That’s The Only Thing That Can Win.

That’s the reason we’re told to search for Unattainable Perfection, isn’t it? Anything less is Doomed to Lose. And yet the fact—the fact—is that united, the people can’t be defeated. That sounds trite, but let me remind you, we’re talking about statistical realities. Even in the most extreme social collapses, the majority never support the extremists, which is why they are extremists. Hitler had to seize power, the Bolsheviks had to revolt, Mao had to “re-educate” a society, and so on. The people united cannot be defeated.

But that unity is hard—incredibly hard—to come by. Because the more destabilized a society gets, the less of it it has. And so a kind of vicious cycle sets in, what in complexity theory we call an dynamic system: destabilization destroys unity, which intensifies destabilization.

That is how extreme minorities collapse societies. And it’s why despite the majority not backing the fanatics and lunatics even in the most extreme social collapses, we see social collapses. Because the unity of the majority in the thinking, sane center doesn’t hold.

So. This is democracy’s greatest test of all. When the chips are this down, so far they’re in the abyss, can the people remember that united, they can’t be defeated? That through unity, the preservation of democracy is assured—but in its absence, all history’s horrors and follies recur, like a waking nightmare?

Understand my words, my friends. I say none of this lightly. I predicted American collapse. I can tell you what happens next. But that’s not the part you need to know. It’s that you still have the power to change it.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Character, Citizenship, Civics, Courage, Democracy, Discipline, Disruption, Education Reform, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Funding, Home Schooling, Propaganda

Louisiana Criminalizes Abortion Pills

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2024 //
21

The Governor and Legislature want to make sure that women in their state cannot obtain an abortion so they passed a law reclassifying abortion drugs as controlled dangerous substances. Most abortions occur by use of the pills, which the Federal Drug Administration has declared to be safe and effective. Currently they are available by mail, but obtaining them without a prescription will soon be illegal. The new law takes effect October 1.

Louisiana lawmakers have added two drugs commonly used in pregnancy and reproductive health care to the state’s list of controlled dangerous substances, a move that has alarmed doctors in the state.

Mifepristone and misoprostol have many clinical uses, and one use approved by the FDA is to take the pills to induce an abortion at up to 10 weeks of gestation.

The bill that moved through the Louisiana Legislature this spring lists both medications as Schedule IV drugs under the state’s Uniform Controlled Dangerous Substances Law, creating penalties of up to 10 years in prison for anyone caught with the drugs without a valid prescription. Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed the bill into law in May. It takes effect Oct. 1.

The new law is the latest move by anti-abortion advocates trying to control access to abortion medications in states with near-total abortion bans, such as Louisiana. The law is the first of its kind, opening a new front in the state-by-state battle over reproductive medicine.

Categories Cruelty, Elections, Extremism, Freedom, Gender, Louisiana

A Prominent Democrat Denounced Vouchers on National TV!

By dianeravitch
July 26, 2024 //
23

I wa despairing because no prominent candidate has mentioned education. Kamala Harris spoke about public schools and teachers when she addressed the AFT yesterday in Houston. I expected that. She went to public schools and has always supported them, and that’s what a candidate says to a nation Union of teachers.

But on Jen Psaki’s show on MSNBC, Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota denounced vouchers and book bans. I had never seen him speak. He was excellent! Please watch.

Categories Censorship, Character, Community Schools, Democracy, Education Reform, Elections, Freedom, Freedom to Read, Funding, Vouchers

John Thompson: Is AI a Boon or a Danger?

By dianeravitch
July 5, 2024 //
16

John Thompson is a retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma. I admit that I steer clear of AI, in part because of my innate aversion to “thinking machines” replacing humans. I am biased towards people deciding for themselves, but as I watch the polling numbers in the race for President, I wonder if artificial intelligence might be more trustworthy than people who support a man with Trump’s long record of lying and cheating others.

John Thompson writes:

We live in a nation where reliable polling data reveals that 23% of respondents “strongly believe” or “somewhat believe” that the attacks on the World Trade Center were an “inside job.” Moreover, 1/3rd of polled adults believe that COVID-19 vaccines “caused thousands of sudden deaths,” and 1/3rd also believe the deworming medication Ivermectin was an “effective treatment for COVID-19.” Moreover, 63% of Americans “say they have not too much or no confidence at all in our political system.”

Such falsehoods were not nearly as common in the late 1990s when I first watched my high school students learn how to use digital media. But, I immediately warned my colleagues that we had to get out in front of the emerging technological threat. Of course, my advocacy for digital literacy, critical thinking, and digital ethics was ignored. 

But who knew that misuse of digital media would become so harmful? As Surgeon General Vivek Murthy now explains: 

It is time to require a surgeon general’s warning label on social media platforms, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents. 

As a special issue of the Progressive  reports, our  digital ecosystems, with their deepfakes and disinformation are distorting reality, and increasing “human tendencies toward cognitive biases and groupthink.”  It further explains that since 2019 the number of people “who cite social media as their number one source for news has increased by 50 percent.” Moreover:

Half of American adults report that they access their news from social media sometimes or often. For Americans under the age of thirty-four, social media is the number one source for news.

The Progressive further explains that young people “don’t necessarily trust what they read and watch.” They “know that private corporations manipulate political issues and other information to suit their agendas, but may not understand how algorithms select the content that they see.”

We in public education should apologize for failing to do our share of the job of educating youth for the 21st century. Then we should commit to plans for teaching digital literacy.

It seems likely that the mental distress suffered by young people could be a first driver toward healthy media systems. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information:

According to data from several cross-sectional, longitudinal, and empirical research, smartphone and social media use among teenagers relates to an increase in mental distress, self-harming behaviors, and suicidality. Clinicians can work with young people and their families to reduce the hazards of social media and smartphone usage by using open, nonjudgmental, and developmentally appropriate tactics, including education and practical problem-solving.

According to the Carnegie Council:

Social media presents a number of dangers that require urgent and immediate regulation, including online harassment; racist, bigoted and divisive content; terrorist and right-wing calls for radicalization; as well as unidentified use of social media for political advertising by foreign and domestic actors. To mitigate these societal ills, carefully crafted policy that balances civil liberties and the need for security must be implemented in line with the latest cybersecurity developments.

Reaching such a balance will require major investments – and fortitude – from the private sector and government. But it is unlikely that real regulatory change can occur without grassroots citizens’ movements that demand enforcement.

And we must quickly start to take action to prepare for Artificial Intelligence (A.I.). In a New York Times commentary, Evgeny Morozov started with the statement by 350 technology executives, researchers and academics “warning of the existential dangers of artificial intelligence. “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority.” He then cited a less-alarming position by the Biden administration which “has urged responsible A.I. innovation, stating that ‘in order to seize the opportunities’ it offers, we ‘must first manage its risks.’” 

Morozov then argued, “It is the rise of artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., that worries the experts.” He predicted, “A.G.I. will dull the pain of our thorniest problems without fixing them,” and it “undermines civic virtues and amplifies trends we already dislike.”

Morozov later concluded that A.G.I. “may or may not prove an existential threat’ but it has an “antisocial bent.” He warned that A.G.I. often fails “to grasp the messy interplay of values, missions and traditions at the heart of institutions — an interplay that is rarely visible if you only scratch their data surface.”

I lack expertise in A.I. and A.G.I. but it seems clear that the dangers of data, driven by algorithms and other impersonal factors, must be controlled by persons committed to social values. It is essential that schools assume their duty for preparing youth for the 21st century, but they can only do so with a team effort. I suspect the same is true of the full range of interconnected social and political institutions. As Surgeon General Murthy concludes his warning to society about social media:

These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting; they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability.

The moral test of any society is how well it protects its children.

Categories Disruption, Ethics, Freedom, Technology

My View: How Should We Judge the Debate: Biden v. Trump?

By dianeravitch
June 28, 2024 //
66

Now that the initial shock of Biden’s poor performance in last night’s debate is fading, there are several bottom-line facts that should not be overlooked.

Biden has been an excellent President. Trump was a failed President, impeached twice, who inspired an insurrection intended to overthrow the government and the Constitution. Historians have judged Trump to be the worst of all presidents.

Biden has many legislative accomplishments: the Infrastructure bill, which directed billions of dollars to repair our nation’s crumbling bridges, tunnels, roads, and other vital parts of the economy. His CHIPS act brings high-tech jobs back to the U.S. and has already encouraged more than $300 billion in new investments. His efforts to create good union jobs and to revive unions strengthen the middle class. He has also relentlessly tried to reduce the massive debt that college students are saddled with.

By contrast, Trump’s only legislative accomplishment was a massive tax cut for the 1% and corporations.

Biden has aggressively promoted action to curb climate change. Trump opposed any effort to deal with climate change, forbade the use of the term, and insists that it is a hoax.

Biden appointed highly accomplished people to his cabinet, with few exceptions; Trump appointed rightwing extremists and had a high turnover among the few qualified people he appointed.

Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who were prepared (though they didn’t admit it in their hearings) to overturn Roe v. Wade and to gut gun control. if re-elected, he will have the opportunity to appoint more extremists to the Supreme Court who want to roll back the New Deal.

Biden has revived NATO. Trump wants to withdraw from NATO.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, Biden rallied Europe to defend Ukraine against Russian aggression. Trump wants to abandon Ukraine and let Putin take whatever he wants in Europe.

Biden respects the Constitution. Trump does not. Trump refuses to admit that he lost the 2020 election, despite losing more than 60 court decisions against his claims. Trump refused during the debate to accept the results of the 2024 election. Trump undermines respect for the Constitution, the electoral system, the judicial system.

Biden is not a good speaker. He is not a good debater. He has a slow gait. He is a good President. He is actually a GREAT President.

And Trump is a demagogue, a world-class liar, a wannabe Fascist, and a danger to the nation and the democratic institutions that are the soul of our nation.

I repeat, Biden has been a great President. If he doesn’t step aside, as many nervous people urge, I will support him. With my heart, my soul, and my wallet.

Categories Biden, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Gender, History, Lies, Trump

Biden Vs. Trump on D-Day, History and the World Order

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2024 //
23

Susan Glasser of The New Yorker wrote about President Biden’s speech commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the invasion that began the end of World War II. Others contrasted Biden’s speech with President Ronald Reagan’s 40th anniversary speech on the same occasion. Conservatives in the usual media outlets (FOX) jeered Biden for trying to sound like Reagan. Both of them spoke as patriots, as defenders of democracy, and of critics of isolationism.

Here is Biden’s speech. Rightwing commentators thought that he was “plagiarizing” Reagan because he talked about the heroism of the Army Rangers and the importance of democracy and freedom, for which the troops fought. Pray tell, what else would an American President talk about on such an occasion?

Biden is not the speaker that Reagan was; after all, Reagan was a professional actor who could read his lines with sincerity and fervor. Biden too is a patriot, and he knows what is at stake if we lose the world order created by so much sacrifice and loss of life. What would Trump have said of the Army Rangers hailed by Biden? Would he have expressed his familiar question “What was in it for them?” Would he have said as he did of John McCain, “I don’t like losers.” To Trump, who never served in the military (nor did his sons), winners don’t get captured or killed. Biden’s son Beau served in Afghanistan and subsequently died from brain cancer, which was attributed to the burn pits.

Glasser writes:

Anniversary speeches are, generally speaking, the trivial bane of an American Presidency. They are, by definition, backward-looking. The obligatory patriotic rhetoric, the flag-drenched backdrops—it is hard for them to read as anything other than tired and trite. Speaking in Normandy on Thursday to commemorate the eightieth anniversary of the Allied landings that spelled the beginning of the end of the Second World War, Joe Biden faced all those hurdles, and a few more besides. He is, after all, running for reëlection as America’s oldest-ever President, an octogenarian whose campaign is beset by increasingly pointed questions about whether he is still up to the job. Born in the midst of the war, Biden is all but certain to be the last U.S. President who was alive on June 6, 1944; there will not be another. The solemn D Day commemorations could have easily backfired on him—serving as a reminder that he, like the one hundred and eighty veterans of the Normandy operation able to return for this year’s ceremony, is but a superannuated relic of a bygone era. I have no doubt that in the unkinder, Trumpier precincts of the Internet, this is exactly how his appearance there was received.

It is true that Biden walked slowly during the proceedings and at times stumbled over his words; the White House would do well to stop pretending that, at age eighty-one, the President has not lost a step or two. It is also true that he did not suddenly transform overnight into a spellbinding orator. But, for what may well be his final D Day encore before the great battle passes from living memory, Biden met the moment with a message that was bracing, urgent, and clarifying. In a speech at the Normandy American Cemetery that was anything but generic, he called out both Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and, though he did not use his name, Donald Trump’s isolationism—the dual threats that have animated this last political campaign of Biden’s, in a long life full of them. “The autocrats of the world are watching closely,” he said, and it was not a warning, really, so much as a statement of blunt fact about the stakes in this year’s U.S. election and the foreign-policy consequences that will flow from it. His opponent is an admirer of Putin, and, reportedly, of Hitler even. Trump truly supports neither Ukraine nor nato.

As I write this, it still seems insane, unimaginable, that these are sentences about a once and possibly future American President. But they are real, if unfortunately so familiar by now that Trump often benefits from our failure to be shocked all over again. Just two days before Putin’s attack on his neighbor, Trump called him a strategic “genius.” On the campaign trail, Trump frequently speaks about his great relationships with the world’s current crop of autocrats and tyrants, praising Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un for their strength, while ranting about the weakness of the West. When Trump was President, he told his White House chief of staff, John Kelly, a decorated former Marine general, that he wanted America’s officers to be more like Hitler’s in their unquestioning loyalty to him. He routinely calls his enemies “vermin” and “human scum,” echoing Hitler’s language, and Kelly has said that Trump even told him that “Hitler did some good things.”

While listening to Biden’s speech, I thought about a resignation letter that Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff appointed by Trump, wrote but did not send to him in 2020. “It is my deeply held belief that you’re ruining the international order, and causing significant damage to our country overseas, that was fought for so hard by the Greatest Generation that they instituted in 1945,” Milley said in the letter, a draft of which I obtained in the course of writing a book on the Trump Presidency. “It’s now obvious to me that you don’t understand that world order. You don’t understand what the war was all about. In fact, you subscribe to many of the principles that we fought against.”

Biden did not have to mention any of this to make it the inescapable context of his remarks on Thursday. “To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable,” Biden told the audience pointedly, adding, “Were we to do that, it means we’d be forgetting what happened here on these hallowed beaches.” And yet so much forgetting has happened, and I am not thinking here about the lessons of the past century as much as I am about the lessons of just one four-year Presidential term ago. Does anyone still remember Trump in Helsinki in 2018, tripping over himself as he took Putin’s word over that of America’s intelligence agencies? Or Trump in France, for another set of world-war commemorations later that year, fresh off midterm-election losses and skipping a cemetery visit because he reportedly did not want to get his hair wet? Or Trump, in 2019, blackmailing Ukraine’s young new President, Volodymyr Zelensky, by holding up hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military assistance needed to fight off Russia as he demanded Zelensky dig up dirt on Biden?

It is thinkable, then, all too thinkable. At the time of Biden’s speech, the polling averages showed Trump slightly ahead of him. What will happen to Ukraine if he should win?

“Their generation, in their hour of trial—the Allied forces of D Day did their duty,” Biden said, concluding his remarks. “Now the question for us is: In our hour of trial, will we do ours?”

Just a week ago, Trump became the only former President to be convicted of a crime. In a round of interviews defiantly rejecting both the verdict and the legal system that produced it, Trump made the following observation about America’s adversaries: “So you have Russia, you have China. But if you have a smart President, you always handle them quite easily, actually,” he told the hosts of the Fox News weekend morning show. “But the enemy within—they are doing damage to this country.”

Could there be a bigger contrast with Biden’s words in Normandy? “The enemy within” is not the language of a democratic President but of a dangerous demagogue who cares more about loyalty tests than geopolitical realities. Their clashing world views are underrated—or not rated at all—as a campaign issue, in a race overwhelmed by questions about Biden’s age and Trump’s sanity, and dominated by concerns over inflation, immigration, and the general sour mood of the country. And yet I cannot think of a starker delineation between the current President and his predecessor. It says something about the politics of 2024, indeed, that rather than seeing foreign policy as Trump’s vulnerability, some now view it as a problem for Biden, who struggled for months to get the Republican House of Representatives to provide billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine, a delay that caused battlefield setbacks and a drop in morale, even as his own Democratic Party grew painfully divided over the President’s strong public support for Israel in its war against Hamas.

On the eve of Biden’s trip to France, Time magazine released a lengthy interview with him, a striking counterpoint to an interview that the magazine conducted with Trump earlier this spring. Biden’s was dominated by his concerns over the unravelling of the postwar order that he warned about again on Thursday; Trump’s was a portrait of a man consumed by grievances, whether against the “very unfair” European allies who Trump thinks should be contributing more to Ukraine’s defense, or the criminal court cases against him that he blames on Biden. When the Time interviewer told him that many Americans found his rhetoric about being a dictator “for a day” and the suspension of the Constitution contrary to “cherished democratic principles,” Trump’s reply was chilling. “I think a lot of people like it,” he said.

Reading back through the interview the other day, I was struck that Trump had said, almost word for word, the language about Russia and China and “the enemy within” that he repeated once again this week: “I think the enemy from within, in many cases, is much more dangerous for our country than the outside enemies of China, Russia, and various others that would be called enemies depending on who the President is, frankly.” This, then, was not an idle observation of Trump’s but a theme of his campaign—the theme of his campaign.

Biden must have read Trump’s interview, too, as preparation for his own. It clearly informed his passionate case for why Trump is a danger to the international order, his focus on the threat posed by Russia—Trump, in his own interview, had bragged about how well he got along with Putin—and his best off-the-cuff line: “All the bad guys are rooting for Trump, man. Not a joke.”

Neither stirring battlefield rhetoric nor snarky one-liners, though, can explain how Biden can extract himself from his current predicament, running dead even at best against a felonious ex-President who diminishes the threats from America’s adversaries abroad because he is consumed by purging disloyal citizens at home. Tell that to the boys of Pointe du Hoc. I don’t think they’d believe it. ♦︎

Categories Biden, Democracy, Elections, Freedom, History, Trump

Ken Burns on the Lessons of Life and History

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2024 //
24

The filmmaker and historian Ken Burns has produced some of the best documentaries ever shown on American television. He has brought history to life with gripping stories of people and momentous events. He is the master of the voice of ordinary people, many of whom are extraordinary.

He recently gave the Commencement speech at Brandeis University. It’s one of the best I have ever read or heard. Here is the link. Read it or listen to it. It’s magnificent.

A memorable paragraph about the current moment:

There is no real choice this November. There is only the perpetuation, however flawed and feeble you might perceive it, of our fragile 249-year-old experiment or the entropy that will engulf and destroy us if we take the other route. When, as Mercy Otis Warren would say, “The checks of conscience are thrown aside and a deformed picture of the soul is revealed.” The presumptive Republican nominee is the opioid of all opioids, an easy cure for what some believe is the solution to our myriad pains and problems. When in fact with him, you end up re-enslaved with an even bigger problem, a worse affliction and addiction, “a bigger delusion”, James Baldwin would say, the author and finisher of our national existence, our national suicide as Mr. Lincoln prophesies. Do not be seduced by easy equalization. There is nothing equal about this equation. We are at an existential crossroads in our political and civic lives. This is a choice that could not be clearer.

Categories Citizenship, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Environment, Freedom, History

Where Do We Stand Today in the Struggle to Save Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2024 //
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A few days ago, I joined a discussion with Dr. Tim Slekar and Dr. Johnny Lupinacci about the current state of public education. It was aired on their show “Busted Pencils,” which is dedicated to teachers, students, and public schools.

We talked about charters, vouchers, testing, and how to get involved. Everyone can stand up for what they believe.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Civics, Community Schools, Corporate Reform, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom, NCLB (No Child Left Behind), Privatization, Race to the Top, Resistance, Teachers, Vouchers

Ryan Walters Wants to Turn Our Schools into Religious Indoctrination Centers

By dianeravitch
May 3, 2024 //
40

Juan Perez Jr. of Politico painted a portrait of the State Superintendent who is leading the charge to put God into America’s classrooms. Whose God? The God of Protestants? Catholics? Jews? Muslims? Buddhists? Hindus? Or which sect of any of these religions or the scores not listed here? And what about atheists?

There is good reason that our Founding Fathers wanted to separate church and state. They were well aware of the havoc and wars that religious sectarians had inflicted on Europe for centuries. They did not want to import that religious divisiveness here. So while they were perfectly willing to praise religion in general, they wanted every sect to practice its own religion and they wanted to bar the state from imposing any religion. They made that clear in the First Amendment to the Constitution.

Ryan Walters of Oklahoma is leading the charge to make America’s schools religious. He knows that the rightwing domination of the U.S. Supreme Court has taken a sledgehammer to the wall that was supposed to separate church and state in recent rulings; consequently, states may now fund religious schools. SCOTUS unleashed the recent wave of voucher legislation in red states.

TULSA, Oklahoma — “You are at Ground Zero of the left’s war on education,” Oklahoma State Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters told the crowd inside a barbecue joint on a blazing August afternoon last year.

The day’s Tulsa County Men’s Republican Club meeting opened with a prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance and an ovation for the gathering’s featured speaker. Walters, a 38-year-old ex-teacher, was not here just to chat up a friendly audience and raffle off some Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh books. He was here to make a case that, in a country he sees as corrupted by liberal indoctrination and beset with a civil war over young minds, God has a place in public schools.

“I’m going to get to the biggest assault that you see,” Walters said to the hushed gathering of predominantly older, white voters. Something, he said, “that makes the left the most mad”: “If you say a prayer. If you mention God. If you were to even quote the Declaration of Independence and say we’re endowed — by who? — our Creator with certain inalienable rights. Folks, that is key to our young people’s understanding of what made this country great.”

Walters became superintendent, a role that oversees all public education in the state, a year ago after winning a commanding margin during 2022’s midterm elections, and he’s quickly catapulted himself to the forefront of social conservatives’ influence over education just as the 2024 presidential election promises enormous consequences for American schooling. Wielding a doctrine of brimstone-salted classroom policy, he is the incarnation of a post-pandemic GOP school takeover attempt that has boiled over from local boards to higher-profile jobs like state superintendent and beyond.

Walters has tried to use his office to back a courtroom battle over the nation’s first public religious charter school — a Catholic institution that would be financed by taxpayers but free to teach, enroll and expel students based on faith-based doctrines just like a private parochial school.

Supporters view the concept as the natural outcome of a growing school choice movement that claims legal backing from a conservative-controlled Supreme Court. Opponents say it’s the next frontier in a “full-on assault on church-state separation and public education.” Either way, Walters and his allies are advocating an enormous shift in how schools work in the United States.

But he hasn’t restricted himself to just that cause. He’s instead interjected himself into a consistent string of news cycles. He’s described teacher unions as Marxist terrorist organizations (in the same state where domestic terrorists bombed a federal building and killed 168 people three decades ago). He explored a takeover of the Tulsa Public Schools system, Oklahoma’s biggest, after a fight with the district’s former leader that ultimately led to her resignation. He appointed Chaya Raichik, the far-right social media star who runs the Libs of TikTok account, to a state library committee in January, months after her criticism of a satirical video from a Tulsa school librarian sparked bomb threats.

His staunch opposition to LGBTQ+ rights has come under increasing national focus over the past month following the death of Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary student in Owasso who, according to a preliminary medical examiner report, died from an apparent suicide after a bathroom altercation at their high school. Last week, Benedict’s family released more detailsthat documented “numerous areas of physical trauma over Nex’s body that evidence the severity of the assault” while calling on public officials and schools to “come together to prevent any other family from having to suffer through the heartache now borne by Nex’s loved ones.”

Hundreds of civil rights, education and LGBTQ+ organizations have demanded legislators remove Walters from office and investigate his department, asserting his conduct “shows a willful rejection of his duty to protect the health and welfare of the children in Oklahoma’s public schools.” In response, his office said: “Superintendent Walters will never back down to a woke mob.”

Walters has addressed lawmakers in Washington on Capitol Hill and spoken at the past year’s biggest conservative gatherings. He endorsed Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential bid — after, he said, receiving a call from the former president himself.

But unlike some of his ideological allies, Walters must tend to more than messaging. He is responsible for running a massive, complex government agency that oversees more than $3 billion in spending plus the education of hundreds of thousands of young people. While his hard-line politics have put him at the vanguard nationally, and often in line with the Republican base, his views have alienated an unexpected cohort of former allies and fellow conservatives in Oklahoma — and prompted a battery of unflattering coverage from a dogged corps of local journalists.

Last year state Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt removed Walters as education secretary, another role he’d been appointed to and in which he was serving simultaneously. A flood of employees has abandoned the state education agency, including high-profile departures who have publicly criticized Walters’ leadership and sued him for wrongful termination. An Oklahoma City-area school district is also suing Walters’ office, challenging orders to remove two books — including the 2003 novel The Kite Runner — from its high school libraries after the state library committee proclaimed they contained pornographic material. The superintendent’s office used state resources to hire a communications firm tasked with boosting Walters’ national profile, according to one local investigation that has raised questions about improper spending.

“What’s a shame is that he and I — we didn’t agree on a lot of things — but we agreed on public education and educating our kids,” said Republican state Rep. Mark McBride, an assistant floor leader and education appropriator who now is one of Walters’ fiercest conservative critics. “Since he got elected, he just has gone off the rails. I can’t support much of anything he does.”

Walters is also facing more potential legal trouble; the FBI and Republican Attorney General Gentner Drummond have looked into questions surrounding Walters’ campaign and a prior role he held leading a prominent education nonprofit once known as Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, according to four people familiar with the probes. Democrats have sought to impeach him. Republicans have subpoenaed him.

“My speculation, and I have heard that he’s made this comment, is that he would like to run for governor,” said McBride, who proposed legislation to curb the superintendent’s power soon after Walters took office. “I’m sure that he might consider himself as a [federal] secretary of Education … or something like that if he’s crazy enough.”

Yet if Walters is chastened by his array of opponents, he does not show it publicly. In a statement to POLITICO Magazine, Dan Isett, a Walters spokesperson, said staff departures were necessary to “end a union stronghold in Oklahoma’s education,” that Walters has never been interviewed or subpoenaed by federal investigators, and that “the liberal media and jealous liberal activists” have sought to undermine the superintendent.

And after Tulsa’s GOP gathering emptied, Walters compared his work to one of his political idols. “He took some hard-line stands,” Walters told me of Winston Churchill in a slight Oklahoma drawl, between sips of sweet tea. He wore a black “W.W.J.D.” band around his wrist. Dressed in designer blue jeans, a navy sportcoat and brown roper boots, Walters seemed at ease as he deployed Fox News-ready talking points, peppered his answers with ‘Yes, sir’ and never raised his voice.

“Oklahomans see very clearly, the left are the ones who politicized the classroom,” Walters told me. “My goal is to take those politics and rid them from the classroom.”

Years before he captivated crowds at national rallies for influential conservative groups such as Moms for Liberty, Walters was his hometown’s star teacher.

He grew up in McAlester, a predominantly white southeastern Oklahoma town of about 18,000 people that is home to the state’s infamous penitentiary, a major Army ammunition plant and a string of prominent state Democrats.Walters said he was enchanted as a kid by classroom lessons on American history. He credits his childhood educators, plus supportive parents who serve as a minister and elementary education director at a local church, for nurturing his interest in teaching. He left home for college, attending Harding University, a private Christian institution in Arkansas. But a year after he graduated in 2010, he was back at McAlester High as a teacher.

His first year in the classroom was challenging. He later remembered that it hit him “like a ton of bricks.” But he proved popular both with students and the administration at his alma mater and soon was teaching Advanced Placement history and government courses. He was named McAlester’s teacher of the year in February 2015 and five months later was picked as one of 12 finalists for the state’s highest teaching honor. “An outstanding educator,” Walters was quoted as saying at the time, “can transcend racism, poverty, and all other barriers that stand between a child and success.”

He developed a reputation as a charismatic instructor and tennis coach with a Twitter habit and a regular classroom wardrobe of suits and skinny ties. But in the early days, he largely kept his politics to himself. His online feed was filled with posts admiring Bachelor in Paradise and Game of Thrones, and predictions that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 presidential election. “You can hear this from my former students; they didn’t know I was conservative,” Walters said.

Walters does not offer much detail on the precise events that shaped his current politics. Former students and some of his onetime colleagues have told me and other journalists that they have trouble reconciling Walters’ political persona with the person they once knew. Walters didn’t seem keen on answering more questions about his evolution, either. He and his advisers were eager to talk when I first started reporting this story last year. But Walters canceled follow-up interviews as controversies piled up through the winter and spring.

Walters did suggest, though, that some of his political views intensified around the time he was nominated for the state’s teacher of the year award. He claims educators he encountered during that time “lashed out” at his support for school choice, though it’s not clear how stridently he made his views known publicly. He also remembered defending Thomas Jefferson during one teacher training that he said criticized the founder’s legacy as a slaveholder. His hard-right views later “crystallized” during his campaign, he said.

“I had these moments where I started to see what’s going on,” Walters said. “There was this dramatic shift, even in a state like Oklahoma, towards these associations and groups in place that are pushing a viewpoint that I just don’t see out of most Oklahomans.”

He started writing op-eds for conservative media outlets The Federalist and Daily Caller, where he suggested defying “unconstitutional court rulings” and criticized the Supreme Court decision that legalized gay marriage. Yet he hadn’t fully adopted his current culture warrior persona. In 2018, he served on a committee that helped write the state’s straightforward social studies curriculum — and praised the final product in 2019 without a single complaint about the type of “woke ideology” he denounces today.

Randy Hughes, McAlester’s former superintendent, would later describe Walters as “one of the most remarkable educators to have served students at McAlester Public Schools.”

And that could have been the extent of Walters’ career, if it wasn’t for a major political patron.

“This guy is nothing without the governor,” said one knowledgeable Oklahoma power broker who requested anonymity to discuss Walters because of the volatile political situation. “He is coaching tennis in McAlester without Kevin Stitt.”

The governor has said the two became friends after meeting at high school tennis tournaments during Stitt’s 2018 campaign while his daughter was competing, and Walters was coaching one of the other teams. “I just knew that his heart was all about kids, it was all about outcomes and it was all about becoming top 10 in education,” Stitt said of Walters in a 2021 Harding University video feature about Walters.

After the governor took office in 2019, Stitt appointed Walters to serve as a member of the state’s Commission for Educational Quality and Accountability. Weeks later, Walters became the executive director of Oklahoma Achieves, a nonprofit established by the state Chamber of Oklahoma in 2013 to advocate on education with the business community.

When he took the job, Walters insisted that he be allowed to continue teaching at McAlester — and start a new second teaching gig at an Oklahoma City high school — in a kind of hybrid in-person and virtual role that augured the sort of classes endured by millions beginning the following year. In the first Covid-19 summer of 2020, Oklahoma Achieves folded into a new nonprofit — with Walters still at the helm — called Every Kid Counts Oklahoma.

Stitt soon announced a $30 million federally funded school pandemic assistance program that featured private education tuition subsidies and grants for families to purchase remote learning curriculum, technology or tutoring. Every Kid Counts Oklahoma and Walters were responsible for awarding the remote learning funds.

The U.S. Education Department and local investigators later documented significant problems with how Oklahoma administered and spent school pandemic assistance funds. Authorities said Walters, in his role at Every Kid Counts Oklahoma, organized a meeting with a company known as ClassWallet before the state gave the firm a no-bid, $18 million contract to help administer Stitt’s tuition and remote learning initiatives. Those programs were also beset with improper spending and insufficient documentation, authorities said.

Back in 2020, though, those issues weren’t yet public knowledge. That September, Stitt cited Walters’ pandemic spending leadership when the governor appointed him as the state’s education secretary. Less than a year later, Walters launched his campaign for state superintendent.

Walters’ entry into electoral politics came at a time when Covid-19 and the country’s racial reckoning had Oklahoma primed to fight over education. Two months before Walters officially launched his campaign in July 2021, Stitt signed state laws that curtailed school mask mandatesand barred educators from requiring courses or teaching concepts that cause individuals to “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress” due to their race or gender.

During the campaign, Walters praised H.B. 1775, the state’s race and gender teaching requirement, when the American Civil Liberties Union launched a still-ongoing lawsuit to overturn the law. He said the Biden administration was “way out of line” after a state mask mandate ban sparked a fight with the White House. “Only a parent should be able to make the decision if their child receives the vaccines or wears a mask to school,” Walters said while hundreds of mask and vaccine opponents rallied at the state capitol.

By early 2022, Walters’ campaign was defined by taking stances on everyday education issues — such as early childhood reading, school choice, and private sector-friendly school reform — and weaponizing them with a culture war message that resonated with social conservatives. Republican Govs. Glenn Youngkin and Ron DeSantis had already pioneered similar models in Virginia and Florida, noted Matt Langston, Walters’ main campaign aide who would eventually become his chief policy adviser after he took office.

“You can take education and put it into a much broader worldview,” Langston told me. “And that becomes a way of building a very credible base of individuals who may not be ‘education voters,’ but they are looking at it and saying ‘We’re very frustrated. We are very disenchanted with a lot of things that are happening within the country and the state.’”

Social media became a focal point for the campaign’s strategy. That left Walters facing a choice between positive messages that garnered a handful of retweets and impressions, or something darker.

“To be clear, in Oklahoma, our schools are not going to go woke,” Walters said in a widely shared March 2022 video that praised the country’s Christian roots after a religious group criticized his embrace of the state race and gender law. He then wrote in a Fox News op-edthat “the far-left’s attempts to destroy our nation’s history and indoctrinate our children must be stopped.”

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The next month Walters attacked a Stillwater Public Schools policy that had allowed students to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity, a policy that had been in place for years without incident, according to the district. “You have chosen radicals over your students, ideology over biology, and ‘wokeness’ over safety,” Walters told the board. The firestorm garnered more media coverage and culminated later in the year with a state law that restricted transgender students’ restroom use.

“When you start looking at those comparisons,” Langston said, “whether he weighs in on ‘We need more teacher pay’ or ‘Our teachers are the greatest here in the state and this is why’ versus rolling out a position on ‘We have to stop porn in schools,’ or ‘We have to stop liberal indoctrination’ — it’s not even close to the amount of attention either one of those gets.”

The strategy paid off. Walters won 41 percent of the vote in a four-way GOP primary, then 53 percent in a party runoff. During the general election, he didn’t stray from appealing to the conservative base. He called to revoke the licenseof a high school teacher who resigned in opposition to Oklahoma’s banned-concepts law and accused his opponents of supporting “radical gender theory.” Former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and her spouse each donated to Walters. Americans for Prosperity and other national conservative groups sent hundreds of thousands of dollars to support Walters. Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was another backer, and Walters posed for selfies with Youngkin ahead of the election.

Walters won with nearly 57 percent of the general election vote — putting him at the forefront of a new wave of Republican state school chiefs in Arizona, Idaho, Georgia, South Carolina and Wyoming.

The protesters crowded against the barricades outside Moms for Liberty’s summit in Philadelphia last summer may not have known about the teacher from McAlester. But one of the country’s most influential conservative education groups offered an ideal venue to build Walters’ national profile.

“The reality is the forces that you all are fighting — these are folks that want to destroy our society,” Walters told the gathering’s Republican audience during a panel with education chiefs from South Carolina, Arkansas and Florida.

“They want to destroy your family,” Walters said. “And they want to destroy America as we know it. This is the fight that we’re in, folks. The stakes couldn’t be higher.”

Walters has asserted that his political opponents are waging “civil war” against children and conspiring to topple religion, and he’s defended a highly disputed conservative philosophy that rejects the separation of church and state. “There’s no basis for it in the Constitution,” Walters told me. “This was not something the Founders talked about. This wasn’t a core fundamental principle. And what we’ve seen is the left weaponize this term to actually mean the state will promote atheism and target any other faiths.”

Instead, Walters wants to inject religion into public schooling. Last year, he called to enforce an Oklahoma law that requires a daily minute of silence at schools — and said students must be told they can pray during that time. He seized onto a dispute over a graduation ceremony prayer delivered by a Tulsa Public Schools board member amid a broader clash with former district chief Deborah Gist over academics and financial controls. (Walters even floated a state takeover of the district before Stitt downplayedthe idea and Gist stepped down amid pressure from the superintendent and his allies.)

But most significantly, Walters has used his megaphone to support Oklahoma’s campaign to open explicitly religious public charter schools.

Religious liberty and public schools have tangled in the Supreme Court for decades. Yet church leaders and conservative advocates say Oklahoma’s campaign for religious public schools promises a monumental leap for school choice and religious liberty. Instead of simply giving families subsidies they can use on private school tuition — as other states have implemented — this new model promises a direct injection of taxpayer funds into religious schools that can hire educators, enroll students and teach classes based on church doctrine.

“We’re all looking at the same end in mind,” said Brett Farley, executive director of the Catholic Conference of Oklahoma, “which is ultimately breaking the monopoly of public schools on education so that parents have real, universal choice. That’s the end goal.”

A series of conservative arguments lie at the center of this campaign: Judeo-Christian beliefs are historically bound with education in the United States. Government has improperly imposed secular standards on public schools in an infringement on religious liberty. And public funding must support religious schools if the public is going to pay for education at all.

Some of those views got a boost from three Supreme Court cases that expanded faith-based institutions’ access to public funds — Carson v. Makin in 2022, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue in 2020, and Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia v. Comer in 2017.

Former Oklahoma Attorney General John O’Connor, while leaving office after losing his primary to now-AG Drummond, cited those cases when he declared in 2022 that the state could not block churches from using taxpayer dollars to create public schools that teach religion like private schools.

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Catholic authorities used O’Connor’s nonbinding opinion to justify their attempt to open the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, which would be the country’s first public charter to function as a religious institution. Groups aligned with the conservative legal movement and its financial architect, Leonard Leo, have promoted the publicly funded Christian school in the hopes of creating a test case that would change the Supreme Court’s interpretation of the First Amendment’s separation of church and state.

“The Supreme Court has been wrong. There is no separation of church and state in the Constitution or Declaration of Independence. It doesn’t exist,” Walters told a convening of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., last fall. “So we will bring God back to schools and prayer back in schools in Oklahoma, and we will fight back against that radical myth.”

The idea has divided even conservatives. Drummond withdrew O’Connor’s opinion under the argument that it misused “the concept of religious liberty by employing it as a means to justify state-funded religion” and he is suing to stop the school from opening. An array of civil rights groups, faith leaders and secular organizations have also sued to block the school and excoriated the embrace of religious orthodoxy in public education.

“What’s happening with Ryan Walters and his cabal is happening all around the country, as part of this emboldened Christian nationalist movement,” said Rachel Laser, who leads Americans United for Separation of Church and State. “And one of their key frontiers for making America a Christian nation and retaining their power and privilege in America is a takeover of public schools.”

Walters had weathered a bumpy start in office. Stitt reappointed him to continue serving as education secretary in January 2023, which would have granted Walters sweeping authority in an unusual double-barreled state role if lawmakers approved. But Drummond, the new Republican AG, soon opined that Walters could not legally hold two state offices, and later said the superintendent’s unilateral attempt to require schools to notify parents if their child changed their gender identity and ban “pornographic” library content should be voided. Just months into the job, Walters’ new employees told journalists the education department had become “toxic” after he took office.

“The culture changed within a matter of weeks,” said one of Walters’ former colleagues, who requested anonymity to discuss the superintendent’s tenure. “The real fear that people felt across the agency was not only that they might be fired but that they would be caught up in something illegal and they would be responsible for it. I had never seen a culture like that.”

In response to written questions about the staffing turmoil, Dan Isett, the department’s director of communications, said: “Many of the staff departures have been necessary and long needed to end a union stronghold in Oklahoma’s education. Change is sometimes difficult and necessary.”

In April 2023, Stitt replaced Walters as education secretary with an Oklahoma State University professor. People close to the situation told me Walters was furious to be cut from a second role.

His replacement, Katherine Curry, then resigned just months after taking office citing the “complexity and political environment” surrounding the secretary job. Curry later told The Oklahoman that the state superintendent’s office would not turn over information on how the agency budgeted and spent money. Another department grant official, Pamela Smith-Gordon, abruptly left her office in the fall citing similar concerns. She also told the Tulsa Worldthat she never saw Walters in the office.

“I don’t know if he doesn’t know what the job is that he ran for, or if he’s scared to do the job that he ran for, or he doesn’t know how to do the job that he ran for. What I do know is that he isn’t doing it,” Gist, the former head of Tulsa schools, told me a few days before she resigned. “The superintendent’s actions have made it clear that he’s focusing on political talking points rather than the real work of serving the community.”

‘We’re being overshadowed by the antics of our state superintendent’

New controversies continue to blossom. Walters pushed out an Oklahoma City-area principal who moonlights as a drag queen. Walters reposted an altered version of a librarian’s satirical video that spurred school bomb threats when it was amplified by the Libs of TikTok account. Benedict’s death is now the subject of a federal Education Department civil rights investigation. Hostile onlookers are not an unusual presence at state board meetings.

And questions swirl about the superintendent’s potential legal entanglements and ability to work with policymakers. The FBI and state attorney general have investigated Walters’ stewardship of federal pandemic relief funds and activities related to campaign and nonprofit roles he held before winning office, according to four people with knowledge of the investigations who requested anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter. (Walters resigned his nonprofit job upon taking the superintendent position last year.) The Oklahoman first reported the existence of the FBI’s investigation.

Walters has not been formally accused of criminal wrongdoing. Drummond’s office declined to comment, saying it does not speak on the existence or nonexistence of any investigation. FBI policy prohibits confirming or denying the existence of an investigation, a bureau spokesperson said. Allegations of criminal conduct are reviewed by the FBI for their merit, the spokesperson added, but such reviews do not necessarily result in a full investigation.

Walters told me in August that he was not aware of whether he was a target of any state or federal investigation. “Ryan Walters has never been subpoenaed or questioned by federal law enforcement,” the superintendent’s spokesman said this month in a statement. “This has been an active lie promoted by the liberal media and jealous liberal activists. Superintendent Walters is transparent with taxpayer dollars and every program that he’s involved in.”

People with knowledge of the matter said federal agents have asked some of Walters’ former colleagues and supporters about the superintendent’s campaign fundraising and reporting practices. Former colleagues told me they witnessed the superintendent’s executive assistant at Every Kid Counts Oklahoma collecting campaign donations for Walters at fundraisers, raising questions about whether firewalls were in place to isolate Walters’ government work from the nonprofit and his political campaign. Authorities have also sought information on lax controls related to the millions of federal pandemic relief dollars that Walters helped oversee in his former nonprofit role.

Oklahoma State Auditor Cindy Byrd’s office is in the final stages of conducting a forensic audit of the state education department, a highly detailed investigation that often helps prosecutors investigate criminal allegations. The U.S. Education Department also conducted a routine review of the state’s implementation of federal programs earlier this year and is finalizing a report that will be shared with Walters’ office.

At the same time his national profile has increased, Walters has at times been sidelined on education policy at home. Oklahoma lawmakers have approved a massive tax credit program for private school tuition, teacher pay raises worth thousands of dollars, a $150 million school safety program, literacy programs and hundreds of millions of dollars in new education funding. “We did every bit of that without our state superintendent,” Republican state Rep. Rhonda Baker told me. “Because we knew that he could not be part of it or the whole thing would blow up.”

“In Oklahoma, the legislature is really trying to move the needle in education,” said Baker, a veteran educator and chair of key education committees in her chamber. “And frustratingly enough, we’re being overshadowed by the antics of our state superintendent.”

McBride, Baker and state House Speaker Charles McCall subpoenaed Walters for a series of records in late December, including his emails from his tenure at Every Kid Counts Oklahoma. Walters responded to most of their inquiries but said he couldn’t provide any emails. Lawmakers have managed to obtain a trove of his messages anyway, McBride told me. Ongoing controversy over Walters’ national media campaign has prompted notable criticism from Stitt and McCall. Walters’ office did not respond to questions about whether the superintendent believes he still has the governor’s support.

But even as he faces dissent from sectors of his party at home, his meteoric rise in the national spotlight hasn’t slowed down. Walters demurs when asked about his political ambitions, including a gubernatorial run. His spokesman added: “While he has many options for the future, those choices are for a later date.”

Even some of Walters’ detractors agree that he’s tapped into deep-seated anger over a changing country. “He has become a lightning rod for decades of frustration,” Robert Franklin, a former Democrat who switched parties and leads the state’s virtual charter school board, told me.

You can hear that from the voters at the Tulsa County Men’s Republican Club, or the Christian radio personalities who urge followers to take back their schools on long stretches of interstate that span between Oklahoma City, Tulsa, McAlester and beyond. A new generation is now in power.

“Folks are sick and tired of people that say one thing to get elected and go in and do the exact opposite once elected,” Walters told me last summer. “I looked every voter in the eye throughout the entire campaign and I told them what I was going to do.”

Categories Administrators, superintendents, Bigotry, Education Reform, Freedom, Oklahoma, Religion, Separation of church and state

Robert Hubbell: Trump Tells TIME What He Will Do if He Wins

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2024 //
18

Robert Hubbell summarizes Trump’s goals, as he explained them to TIME magazine in an interview. They sound remarkably fascistic. All power to the imperial President. No checks or balances. Remember and ask yourself: is this the country we want to live in? I suppose we should be glad that Trump is turning 80 this year. With any luck, he won’t have time to abolish the Constitution and make himself President-for-life.

Hubbell writes:

On a day of many important stories, the most important news came from Donald Trump’s interview with Time Magazine. See Donald Trump on What His Second Term Would Look Like | TIME. In the interview, Trump confirmed that he will attempt to exercise dictatorial powers in a second term.

We have been warned.

We ignore Trump’s threats at our peril and the peril of our democracy.

In describing his fever dream of autocratic powers, Trump said he would take (or allow) the following actions:

  • Allow states to monitor the pregnancies of women to ensure they comply with abortion bans (a grotesque violation of liberty, privacy, and dignity).
  • Fire US attorneys who refuse to prosecute defendants targeted by Trump (a violation of US norms dating to the creation of the Department of Justice).
  • Initiate mass deportations of alleged illegal immigrants using the US military and local law enforcement (neither of which are authorized to enforce US immigration law).
  • Pardon insurrectionists who attacked the Capitol on January 6.
  • Prosecute President Biden (for unspecified and non-existent crimes).
  • Deploy the National Guard to cities and states across America—likely those with predominately Democratic populations (presumably under the Insurrection Act, a deployment would violate the terms of the Act and implementing regulations).
  • Withhold funds from states in the exercise of his personal discretion (a violation of the Impoundment Control Act of 1974).
  • Abandon NATO and South Asian allies if he feels the countries are not paying enough for their own defense.
  • Shutter the White House pandemic-preparedness office.
  • Fire tens (hundreds?) of thousands of civil servants and replace them with Trump acolytes with dubious qualifications (other than loyalty to Trump).

Most readers of this newsletter understand the seriousness of Trump’s threats and are working tirelessly to prevent a second Trump term. But tens of millions of Americans seem oblivious or apathetic in the face of an imminent and dire threat.

If elected, will Trump succeed in achieving any of his stated goals? No—not if Democrats continue their resistance in the courts, in Congress, in state legislatures, and in the hearts and minds of most Americans.

However, whether Trump succeeds in achieving his stated objectives is beside the point. He will attempt to do so—and his attempts will tear at the fabric of democracy and destroy legal norms that have served as the bedrock of our republic since its founding.

To be clear, I am not attempting to frighten readers of this newsletter. To the contrary, I believe that we can and will defeat Trump—or outlast him, whatever it takes. But the interview confirms that we are not frantic alarmists exaggerating the threat posed by Trump.

No, far from it.

When we challenge the milquetoast, both-siderism reporting of the media or the normalization of Trump by spineless politicians, we are not overreacting. We are sounding the alarm in a responsible, necessary way. For reasons that defy comprehension, our warnings have been unheeded—often dismissed, minimized, or patronized.

We must redouble our efforts. Commit the above list to memory. Copy the URL so you can forward this newsletter or the Time Magazine article to friends, colleagues, and complete strangers who doubt that Trump is a danger to democracy. Pick two or three issues and be prepared to discuss them when the moment arises. We have been warned—and we must act accordingly. 

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Immigration, Trump
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