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Julian Vasquez Heilig: How to Respond to the Department of Education DEI Tipline!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2025 //
3

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a scholar of diversity, equity and inclusion. His blog is called Cloaking Inequity. He was Provost at Western Michigan State University. He recently stepped down to further his scholarship and advocacy as a professor. Julian is a founding member of the board of the Network for Public Education.

His advice for the DEI tipline: “Let’s flood it with truth.”

He writes:

In yet another attempt to weaponize the federal government against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in education, the U.S. Department of Education—at the urging of Moms for Liberty and other far-right extremist groups—has launched the “Stop DEI Portal” (https://enddei.ed.gov).

This taxpayer-funded snitch line is designed to invite anonymous complaints against public schools, colleges, and universities that are actively working to create inclusive and equitable environments for all students. Their goal? To stoke fear, intimidate educators, and dismantle efforts to address racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequities in education.

Let’s be clear: this is not about stopping discrimination—it’s about silencing efforts to eliminate it.

But here’s the thing: if this portal is truly meant to address discrimination, then let’s make sure it serves that purpose.

Let’s Turn the Tables: Report REAL Discrimination

If the Department of Education wants reports of discrimination, let’s give them exactly that. But let’s report real, documented cases of discrimination—the kind that actually harms students and families every single day, especially in underregulated charter and voucher-funded schools.

Here’s what they don’t want reported, but what we should be flooding their portal with:

1. Discrimination Against Students with Disabilities

• Many charter and voucher schools systematically exclude students with disabilities, either by refusing to provide necessary accommodations or pushing them out with discriminatory discipline policies.

• Special education students in voucher programs often lose their federal protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) when they transfer to private schools.

• Some schools refuse to admit students who require additional supports, effectively segregating students with disabilities from their peers.

📌 If you or someone you know has experienced this, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov

2. Discrimination Against LGBTQ+ Students

• In some states, charter and private schools receiving taxpayer-funded vouchers have explicit policies that allow them to deny admission to LGBTQ+ students or expel them for their identity.

• LGBTQ+ students often face harassment, deadnaming, misgendering, and bullying—sometimes by school officials—without intervention.

• Books and curriculum that acknowledge LGBTQ+ history and experiences are being banned, erasing the existence of LGBTQ+ students and families from the classroom.

📌 If you’ve seen LGBTQ+ students being targeted or erased, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov

3. Racial Discrimination and Segregation in Schools

• Many charter and private schools resegregate students by race and income, creating de facto segregation that mirrors the Jim Crow era.

• Black and Brown students face harsher disciplinary actions than their white peers for the same behaviors.

• AP African American Studies, ethnic studies courses, and other curriculum that acknowledges systemic racism are being banned or watered down, denying students an accurate understanding of history.

📌 If you have evidence of racial discrimination in schools, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov

4. Discrimination Against Low-Income Students

• Voucher programs siphon public dollars away from neighborhood schools, making it harder for low-income students to access well-funded, high-quality education.

• Private voucher schools are not required to provide free or reduced-price lunch programs, effectively shutting out students who rely on school meals.

• School choice programs increase economic segregation, allowing affluent families to access better resources while leaving lower-income students in underfunded public schools.

📌 If you know of schools pushing out or underfunding low-income students, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov

Weaponizing the Portal Against Its Own Purpose

The Stop DEI Portal is not about protecting students—it’s about political theater and furthering a radical agenda to dismantle public education.

Conservative groups like Moms for Liberty, the Heritage Foundation, and other well-funded organizations have pushed for Project 2025, a policy plan designed to eliminate federal civil rights protections, dismantle DEI initiatives, and privatize public education.

They want to create a parallel education system where only privileged, wealthy families benefit—while marginalized students are left behind.

What You Can Do Right Now

✅ Step 1: Submit REAL complaints to the Stop DEI Portal

Visit https://enddei.ed.gov and report discrimination against students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, students of color, and low-income students.

✅ Step 2: Share this far and wide

Encourage educators, parents, and students to flood the portal with real discrimination complaints.

✅ Step 3: Support organizations fighting back

Groups like Our Schools Our Democracy (OSOD) and the Network for Public Education (NPE) are exposing the harms of privatization and the discriminatory practices of charter and voucher schools.

✅ Step 4: Stay engaged in the fight to protect public education

The NPE/NPE Action Conference on April 5-6 in Columbus, Ohio is bringing together educators, advocates, and policymakers to discuss how to defend public schools and stop the Project 2025 playbook. I’ll be there. 

There’s no time to sit on the sidelines. The Stop DEI Portal is just the beginning of a much larger battle. If we don’t fight back now, the next generation will inherit an education system built on exclusion, discrimination, and privatization.

Let’s make sure the truth is louder than deception.

🔗 Submit your complaint now: https://enddei.ed.gov

🔗 Support OSOD and the Network for Public Education

🔗 Register for the NPE/NPE Action Conference before spots fill up!

This is about more than DEI. This is about democracy, justice, and the future of public education. Let’s fight back—together.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, Hoax, Injustice, Racism, Trump

Sara Stevenson: Fully Fund Texas Public Schools Instead of Handouts for the Wealthiest

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2025 //
5

Sara Stevenson is a retired school librarian and Catholic school English teacher. She is a fearless advocate for public schools. Her article was published in The Austin American-Statesman. At this very time, the Texas Legislature is debating voucher legislation. It has already passed the State Senate. It is now being considered in the House.

She writes:

Many years ago at a school financing conference, I approached an East Texas House member from a rural district. I asked him, “Do y’all even have private schools for vouchers in your district?” He answered, “Hell, no. Private school vouchers are a tax break for families that already send their kids to private schools.” I thanked him for clearing that up.

Now most of those rural House Republicans opposing private school vouchers are gone. Jeffrey Yass, a Pennsylvania billionaire investor in TikTok, gave Governor Greg Abbott $10 million to primary them out of office.

Texas has been trying to pass a school voucher or (ESA: Educational Savings Account) bill since 1995, but the bills keep failing session after session. In their earlier forms, these bills called for ESAs (using public tax dollars to pay for private school tuition) as a way to help poor children or those with disabilities trapped in Texas’s “failing public schools.”

Sidenote: If Texas schools are failing, the Republican party is responsible since it has dominated the Legislature for more than two decades and has controlled the governor’s office since 1994.

But over time, the proposed bills kept demanding more, not only in the amount of tuition money offered, but in the expanding pool of students qualified to receive them.

With this year’s version, Senate Bill 2, which passed the Senate, the GOP is saying the quiet part out loud. No longer are the ESAs solely for the families who can’t afford private school tuition or those with disabilities; now a family of four, making as much as $161,000 a year, five times the federal poverty level, can still receive up to $10,000 toward private school tuition or $11,500 for students with disabilities.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick then reassures us that 80% of the vouchers will go to special needs or “low-income” children. Since eligibility is universal, 20% will go to families making more than $161,000 per year.

I remember in 1976 when Ronald Reagan talked about people who abused the welfare system by getting government handouts they didn’t need. He called them “welfare queens.” In those days the GOP praised the working poor for their dignity in refusing a government handout.

Fast forward to 2025. Now families making over $161,000 per year are entitled to your tax dollars to send their children to private schools with little to no accountability. In fact, Sen. José Menendez’s Amendment 36, requiring the state to collect data to determine if the program is even successful, failed.

In earlier iterations, the student had to be enrolled in a failing public school before receiving a voucher. Now children already enrolled in private schools are eligible. Promoters argue this is only fair because private school families pay thousands each year in property taxes to schools their children don’t attend. Well, if they deserve a taxpayer refund, what about all the Texas property taxpayers, including seniors, who have NO children currently attending Texas schools?

No, because contributing to public education is a common good; an educated citizenry benefits all Texans and the Texas economy.

And speaking of children with disabilities, this bill clearly states that these students receiving vouchers must waive any rights for accommodations guaranteed by IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act).

Although SB 2 boosters contend the bill promotes school choice for parents, the bill really means “schools’ choice” for private schools. While public schools must accept every child, private schools, including those receiving vouchers, are free to turn away or expel any child for any reason. For instance, they can continue to prefer legacies and the siblings of current students.

SB 2 earmarks $1 billion for this program in order to give vouchers to just 100,000 students. In contrast, 5.4 million Texas students currently attend public school, 10% of all U.S. school children.

Let’s first pass Senate Bill 1, the budget bill, and include increasing the basic student allotment to fully fund our public schools. Since Texas ranks 44th among the states in per pupil spending, let’s first invest in the school system we already have rather than spend a billion dollars to fund another one.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Hoax, Religion, Separation of church and state, Shame, Texas

Trump’s Shameless DEI Hoax

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2025 //
20

Trump would have us believe that the hiring of anyone other than white Christian men is the reason for everything that goes wrong. He has signed executive orders that ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the government and in schools and higher education institutions, as well as any institution that receives federal funding, such as scientific research.

When Trump heard about the horrific airplane-helicopter crash on the Potomac River last week, his reaction was to blame DEI, as well as Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. To him, diversity equals incompetence. That is, women, Blacks, Hispanics, and people with disabilities are incompetent.

Two points are clear:

First, DEI programs were funded and strengthened during Trump’s first term in office. How did it suddenly become the cause of all that is evil? Why must it be rooted out if every part of American life?

Second, let’s be clear about what DEI IS. It is a knowing effort to seek out and include women and nonwhite minorities and persons with disabilities in the workforce, on faculties, in student bodies.

In other words, those who oppose DEI are using the term to smear the beneficiaries of these policies as undeserving and unqualified, regardless of their experience and qualifications.

Plain English translation: Trump’s anti-DEI policy is RACISM, MISOGYNY, and XENOPHOBIA, and whatever the term is to discriminate against people with disabilities.

When he said the cause of the DC crash was DEI, it was immediately understood that he meant that a woman or a person of color was either the air traffic controller or a pilot. He knew this to be true, he said, not because he had evidence, but because (he said) he had “common sense.”

His instincts told him that a DEI hire did it. Someone, he guessed, was hired to direct the air traffic or to pilot one or both of the aircraft who was not a white Christian man. His “common sense” told him so.

But now we know more about the DEI policy in place. It started under Barack Obama. It was expanded under Trump.

Trump did not know who the air traffic controller was. Nor did he know who was piloting the airplane or the helicopter.

Glenn Kessler, the Fact-Checker for The Washington Post, wrote that Trump ridiculed the diversity policy that his administration put in place:

Reading from a 2024 Fox News report — which he incorrectly identified as being two weeks old — Trump listed conditions that he suggested disqualify people from being air traffic controllers: “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”

“Can you imagine?” he asked. “Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress.” He suggested that it was wrong for anyone with those conditions to qualify “for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country, pouring into a little spot, a little dot on the map, a little runway.”

But here’s the rub: During Trump’s first term, the FAA began a program to hire air traffic controllers with the conditions that Trump decried.

The facts

In the news conference, Trump said Obama weakened standards and “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best, to extraordinary. … Then they changed it back — that was Biden.”

Trump’s claim was repeated in an executive order Trump signed Thursday that ordered a review of aviation safety: “During my first term, my Administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence.”
That’s false. In his first term, Trump left the standards unchanged.

For air traffic controllers, the Obama administration in 2013 instituted a new hiring system that introduced a biographical questionnaire to attract minorities, underrepresented in the controller corps. The program was criticized, such as in a Fox News report in 2015, as making it harder for more skilled applicants to get hired as controllers.

But Trump, in his first term, left the policy in place, leading to a class-action lawsuit filed in 2019 by Mountain States Legal Foundation. The case was due to go to trial this year.

Moreover, the FAA under Trump in 2019 launched a program to hire controllers using the very criteria he decried at his news conference.
“FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,” the agency announced on April 11, 2019. The pilot program, the announcement said, would “identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce.”

The link under “targeted disabilities” is now dead, but the Wayback Machine retains links from June 2017 and January 2021 that show the page was unchanged during Trump’s tenure. The list included:

• Hearing (total deafness in both ears)
• Vision (Blind)
• Missing Extremities
• Partial Paralysis
• Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy
• Severe intellectual disability
• Psychiatric disability
• Dwarfism

The June 2019 webpage for the Aviation Development Program (ADP) — also now removed but still visible on the Wayback Machine — said the program “provides an opportunity for Persons with Targeted Disabilities (PWTD) to gain aviation knowledge and experience as an air traffic control student trainee.” Participants would get up to one year of experience in an Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC), with a possibility of getting a temporary appointment at the FAA Academy.
In August 2021, the FAA announced that one of the first three ADP candidates graduated from the FAA Academy and became an official air traffic control trainee. “Twelve candidates are in the pipeline for the ADP, pending completion of the clearance process,” the agency said. “Candidates must first pass the Air Traffic Skills Assessment (ATSA), followed by the security and medical clearance process.”

The announcement said the program was conceived when an air traffic manager met a quadriplegic student who had assumed he would never qualify to be a controller because of his condition. The FAA stressed that participants must meet the same qualifications as any other air traffic controller student.

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

The Pinocchio Test

Trump claimed that he had changed Obama’s criteria for hiring air traffic controllers with greater diversity — when in fact he left it unchanged. Moreover, he decried the fact that FAA hired controllers with a range of disabilities that he listed at the news conference. But that program was launched during his first term.

Four Pinocchios [The biggest possible lie.]

Trump likes to say that “merit” is the only possible reason to hire someone. The person hired should be the best qualified for the job.

Is conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the best qualified person to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services? No.

Is Pete Hegseth, with his record as a drunk, a sexual predator, and failed management experience, the best qualified person to be Secretary of Defense? No.

Is Tulsi Gabbard–apologist for Putin and Assad, member of a weird cult–the best qualified person to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies? No.

Is Kash Patel, sycophant, FBI-hater, and election denier, the best qualified person to lead the FBI, especially after Trump’s sweeping purge of all agents who investigated him? No.

Other Trump choices are equally unqualified. The only one I consider qualified are Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. I was going to add Scott Bradenton, the new Secretary of the Teasury, but then I learned on Saturday that he gave Elon Musk permission to bring his team into the inner sanctum of the Department to copy the personal information of millions of Americans. As in the ransacking of Twitter, Musk’s team brought sofa beds so they could work long hours duplicating data that was supposed to be closely guarded.

Pete Hegseth stated the alleged credo of the Trump administration in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday:

“Color blind and merit based, the best leaders possible, whether it is flying Black Hawks, flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government, the era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department and we need the best and the brightest, whether it is in our air-traffic control, or whether it is in our generals, or whether it is throughout our government,” Hegseth said. 

Hegseth is living proof that Trump has not chosen “the best and the brightest” (nor does he know the origin of the term, which was the title of a book by David Halberstam about the “best and the brightest” whose arrogance ensnared us into the war in Vietnam).

If merit mattered to Trump, most of his cabinet would not have been chosen. If merit mattered in the election, Trump would not be president.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Hoax, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Lies, Racism, Shame, Trump

Canadian Member of Parliament Offers to Take California, Oregon, and Washington State

By dianeravitch
January 16, 2025 //
17

Trump has suggested that Canada, a huge and sovereign nation, should become the 51st state of the U.S.

Elizabeth Evans May, a member of the Green Party in the Canadian Parliament, suggested instead that California, Oregon, and Washington State should become provinces of Canada.

Ben Meiselas of the Meidas Touch blog posted this video.

Because Trump suggested that Wayne Gretzky should be elected Prime minister of Canada, She felt compelled to explain to Trump how the Canadian system differs from the American system. The people don’t elect the prime minister. The members of parliament do.

Explaining the basic facts of history and government to the undereducated Trump is a never ending task. He clearly learned nothing about such subjects in high school or college.

Categories Civics, History, Hoax, Ignorance, Stupid, Trump

Carol Burris: The End Goal of “School Choice” Is the Death of Public Schools

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2025 //
9

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, writes in The Progressive about the hidden purpose of “school choice.” It’s not to educate children better; it’s not to save money. It’s to destroy your child’s right to a free public education.

She begins:

In 2017, PBS released School Inc., a rightwing billionaire-funded documentary created by the late Andrew Coulson, a conservative author and former director of the libertarian Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom. School Inc. showcased Coulson’s theory that for-profit schooling, funded by parents without government involvement, is the best delivery model for education. In a review for the long-running Answer Sheet blog in The Washington Post, the education historian Diane Ravitch and I criticized Coulson’s romanticization of the era of American schooling before public education, during which children were homeschooled, church-schooled, or taught by private tutors—except for the poor, who, if they were lucky, were trained in charity schools.  

The “school choice movement,” which Coulson’s documentary promoted, has always been a classic bait-and-switch swindle: Charter schools were the bait for vouchers, and vouchers the lure for public acceptance of market-based schooling. While narrow debates about accountability, taxpayer costs, and the public funding of religious schools raise important concerns, the gravest threat posed by the school choice movement is its ultimate objective: putting an end to public responsibility for education. 

This goal is not a secret. The libertarian right has openly dreamed of ending public education for the past seventy years—the economist Milton Friedman advocated for school choice as early as 1955, and his acolytes have continued to do so ever since.

 And they have made extraordinary progress. During the past few years, the traditional voucher model championed by the right has morphed into the Education Savings Account (ESA). In exchange for promising not to enroll their child in public schools, parents receive funds to “shop” for services, including private school tuition, tutoring, and luxury purchases, including trips to Disney World, televisions, and waterskiing lessons. Nearly all recent state ESA programs have either no or high-income caps, and few have sensible protections. 

The libertarian right embraces this flagrant waste because it helps them achieve their ultimate objective of shifting all of the responsibility and costs to families. By approving universal ESA programs, they are creating a vested interest among middle and upper-income families in pay-as-you-go education. Frivolous spending is tolerated because it aligns with Friedman and Coulson’s objective of putting parents in charge of education without government responsibility or concern. 

The America First Policy Institute, where Trump’s Secretary of Education nominee Linda McMahonserves as board chair, states in its recent policy agenda that “the authority for educating children rests with parents.” As public responsibility for schooling shifts to parents, educational subsidies will be gradually reduced until Friedman and Coulson’s dream of a fully for-profit marketplace that competes for students is achieved.

Please open the link to finish reading this important article.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Hoax, Vouchers

Jamelle Bouie: Do Trump Voters Know What He Plans to Do to Them?

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2024 //
39

Jamelle Bouie writes regularly for The New York Times. I subscribed to get extra writing from him. In this one, he asks the question that has undoubtedly occurred to many people.

Bouie writes:

On Tuesday, Donald Trump became the first Republican in 20 years to win the national popular vote and the Electoral College.

The people — or at least, a bare majority of the voting people — spoke, and they said to “make America great again.”

What they bought, however, isn’t necessarily what they’ll get.

The voters who put Trump in the White House a second time expect lower prices — cheaper gas, cheaper groceries and cheaper homes.

But nothing in the former president’s policy portfolio would deliver any of the above. His tariffs would probably raise prices of consumer goods, and his deportation plans would almost certainly raise the costs of food and housing construction. Taken together, the two policies could cause a recession, putting millions of Americans — millions of his voters — out of work.

And then there is the rest of the agenda. Do Trump voters know that they voted for a Food and Drug Administration that might try to restrict birth control and effectively ban abortion? Do they know that they voted for a Justice Department that would effectively stop enforcement of civil and voting rights laws? Do they know they voted for a National Labor Relations Board that would side with employers or an Environmental Protection Agency that would turn a blind eye to pollution and environmental degradation? Do they know they voted to gut or repeal the Affordable Care Act? Do they know that they voted for cuts to Medicaid, and possible cuts Medicare and Social Security if Trump cuts taxes down to the bone?

Do they know that they voted for a Supreme Court that would side with the powerful at every opportunity against their needs and interests?

I’m going to guess that they don’t know. But they’ll find out soon enough.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Economy, Elections, Extremism, Health, Hoax, Trump

Melting Glaciers Produce Long-Lost Corpses: Climate Change Is Real

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2024 //
7

Some Republican leaders, including Trump, believe that climate change is a hoax. The Trump administration banned the use of the term by government agencies. Florida recently declared it would not adopt science textbooks that explain climate change. It’s not real.

Really? Read this story, which appeared in the Los Angeles Times.

Jack Dolan, staff writer, reports:

In late June, as a group of mountaineers descended a treacherous glacier high in the Peruvian Andes, they spotted a dark, out-of-place lump resting on the blinding white snow.

When they approached, they realized it wasn’t a rock, as they had initially assumed. 

It was a corpse. 

When they got a little closer, they could tell from the out-of-date clothes and the condition of the skin that the dead man had been there for a very long time. A miraculously well-preserved California driver’s license in the man’s pocket identified him as Bill Stampfl, a mountaineer from Chino who had been buried by an avalanche in 2002.

Avalanches begin as loose, flowing rivers of ice and snow that sweep their victims off their feet and wash them down the mountain. When the frozen debris stops, it quickly solidifies into something like a concrete tomb.
But in recent years, as the planet has warmed and ice has melted at an alarming rate, receding glaciers on the upper reaches of many of the world’s most celebrated and deadly peaks have begun surrendering the bodies of long-lost mountaineers.
It’s a blessing and a relief for grieving families who crave closure, but it creates a grim chore for public officials whose job it is to respectfully remove the remains.

Last year, on the heels of a heat wave that triggered the fastest loss of glacial ice in Swiss history, the boot of a German climber who disappeared in 1986 began poking out of a well-traveled glacier near the mountain town of Zermatt, not far from the Matterhorn.
In the Himalayas, where hundreds of adventurers have perished on the slopes of Mt. Everest since the 1920s, Nepali officials have been forced to launch risky, arduous expeditions to retrieve the recently revealed — and rapidly thawing — corpses.
“Because of global warming, the ice sheet and glaciers are fast melting and the dead bodies that remained buried all these years are now becoming exposed,” Ang Tshering Sherpa, former president of the Nepal Mountaineering Assn., told the BBC in 2019.
And now, a similarly gruesome scenario has played out on the slopes of 22,000-foot Huascaran, Peru’s highest mountain.

The warming planet is “definitely the reason we found Bill,” said Ryan Cooper, a personal trainer from Las Vegas who was among the group of climbers who discovered Stampfl’s body a few weeks ago.
When Stampfl and two climbing partners disappeared in 2002, rescuers went looking for them. They found one body, that of Steve Erskine, but Matthew Richardson and Stampfl could not be located.
“If Bill had been on top of the ice they would have found him, but he was buried back then,” Cooper said in an interview.

A lot has changed in 22 years.
Hauscaran is the highest point, and crown jewel, of the Cordillera Blanca, a region of breathtaking natural beauty that’s home to a dozen peaks higher than 20,000 feet and hundreds of alpine glaciers.
These ancient, frozen reservoirs supply irrigation and hydroelectric power to much of Peru. But, as with glaciers everywhere on the planet as temperatures have risen, those in the Cordillera Blanca have lost significant mass, as much as 27% in the last five decades, according to official estimates.

Cooper said he didn’t understand the extent and speed of the changes underway until days before his guided climb was supposed to begin. He and his brother, Wes Warne, were hanging out in the Peruvian mountain town of Huaraz, listening in as other climbers and guides compared notes.
They heard the glaciers were melting so fast that previously manageable crevasses — cracks caused by natural movement of the ice — had turned into deep, yawning chasms up to 60 feet wide that could swallow an entire team of climbers.
And they heard that many guides had begun steering their clients to more stable summits, because conditions on Huascaran had become so dicey.
Nevertheless, Cooper’s team decided to give their planned route a try.

The five days they spent on the glaciers were tense, Cooper said, an up-close look at the chaos warmer-than-expected temperatures can cause.
“You’re just hearing avalanches, you’re hearing rock fall, you’re hearing ice fall all around you,” Cooper said. “I’ve never been on a mountain that was so active.”
Eventually, the guides decided not to push for the summit, Cooper said. Instead, they led the group down an older, less traveled route that had been the standard track “back in the day,” he said, before shifting terrain prompted climbers to start taking a different approach.
That’s where they came upon Stampfl’s body, at about 17,000 feet, resting alone, undisturbed and almost completely exposed.
In other cases, when just part of a body is sticking out of the ice, excavation can be a grueling ordeal. Rescuers use shovels, axes, boiling water — anything to help coax and pry remains free.
As soon as they discovered Stampfl was American, Cooper said, he and his brother set aside their frustrations about not making the summit. They now had a much higher goal — getting Bill home.
Once they had climbed down far enough to have cellphone reception, a flurry of text messages began, and Cooper’s wife joined the search for Stampfl’s family.
Before long, Cooper found himself on the phone with Joseph Stampfl, Bill’s son.

Please open the link to finish the story.

Categories DeSantis, Environment, Florida, Hoax, Lies

Former FBI Agent: What Trump Says About Guns, Crime, and Drugs Is Wrong

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2024 //
9

Retired FBI agent Frank Figliuzzi writes on the MSNBC website about the internal dangers to America. It’s not from immigrants, who are typically more law-abiding than the native-born, but from Neo-Nazi gangs.

He writes:

The federal indictment of 68 defendants accused of being members of (or being associated) with a criminal gang driven by race-based hate followed an investigation that led to the seizure of Nazi paraphernalia, including Adolf Hitler posters, and 97 pounds of fentanyl, federal officials said Wednesday. U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada, who announced the charges, called it one of the “largest takedowns in the history of the Department of Justice against a neo-Nazi, white supremacist, violent extremist organization.”

That announcement landing in the final weeks of a presidential election prompts us to contrast the facts of our crime problem with the fiction that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, would have us believe.

The dismantlement of the group that called itself the Peckerwoods, a San Fernando Valley arm of the notorious Aryan Brotherhood white supremacy organization, came in the form of charges for allegedracketeering, firearms trafficking, drug trafficking and financial fraud. If convicted as charged, some members, who adorn themselves with tattoos of swastikas and other hate symbols, could face life behind bars. The group was so heavily armed and so violent that the FBI deployed its elite Hostage Rescue Team from Quantico, Virginia, to support the arrests. According to the U.S. attorney for the Central District of California, the Peckerwoods, a derogatory name historically used against white people, “has as its mission to plan attacks against racial, ethnic, religious minorities.”

Agents seized an arsenal of illegal guns, “bomb-making components” and dozens of kilograms of fentanyl, methamphetamine and heroin, according to law enforcement officials.

The details of this multifaceted investigation reveal a significant component of America’s crime problem: hardened, U.S.-born criminals who traffic in the drugs, guns and violence plaguing our country. This contrasts with the fact-free fearmongering fabrications being sold to MAGA believers. It’s not that minorities don’t commit crimes; nor is that migrants never murder or rape. But Trump and Vance want voters to believe our gun, drug and violence problems are being driven by migrants when the opposite is true…

During the vice presidential debate, Vance claimed the vast majority of illegal guns used in crimes here come from Mexican cartels. The truth is quite different; it’s the U.S. that’s arming Mexican cartels. We have detailed data demonstrating the extent to which American weapons are fueling the violence in Mexico, right down to the make and model of the guns found at crime scenes across the border.

Please open the link to read more about crime statistics and Trump-Vance’s hateful and phony war against immigrants.

Categories Cruelty, Data, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Guns, Hoax, Lies, Trump

Rex Huppke: JD Vance Ate My Dog. Elon Musk Ate My Cat. Does Trump Care?

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2024 //
57

Rex Huppke is a columnist for USA Today. He wrote on Twitter about two important tech bros who are his pets. Then he quoted his own tweet as “evidence” that it was true.

He wrote in USA Today:

Given all the uproar over GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump’s baseless, utterly false and profoundly racist claims that Haitian immigrants are eating people’s pets in an Ohio town, I would like to make a public statement that is supported by an equal amount of evidence:

“Not long ago, billionaire Elon Musk ate my cat, Mr. Smushyface. Days later, Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, stole and then barbecued and ate my dog, Zoe. I remained quiet about these incidents for fear other tech bros like Musk and Vance might come for my hamster, Dennis. But after much thoughts and prayer, I have decided to honor the memories of Zoe and Mr. Smushyface by letting the world know what I claim to be the truth.”

For those fortunate enough to not yet be aware of the “immigrants are eating our pets” allegations that bubbled up from the right-wing fever swamps and got spouted by Trump during Tuesday’s presidential debate, here’s the deal: A random Facebook post, grounded in something along the authoritative lines of “I heard from a friend of a friend’s kid,” claimed a cat went missing and was (maybe) eaten by a Haitian immigrant.

It’s true that JD Vance ate my dog because I wrote it on the internet

There’s no evidence of that happening, of course. But xenophobic fearmongers saw it is a perfect way to monger some xenophobic fear. So Musk started trumpeting the ludicrous claim on X, the enormous social media platform he owns, and then Vance was babbling about it and then Trump spoke the words no presidential-debate-watcher ever imagined they’d hear, saying of Springfield, Ohio: “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”

OK.

If an actual former president who is also the Republican Party’s standard-bearer and its presidential nominee is so concerned about a fabricated story aimed at dehumanizing an entire swath of people, he damn well better be equally concerned about my story, which is true because I read it on the internet. (Granted, what I read on the internet was from my own social media post, but that’s not important.)

My brave admission that Elon ate my cat

Here’s how this real-because-I-say-it-is story of Vance and Musk being ravenous pet devourers developed.

On Monday, I bravely posted the following on X, the social media cesspool formerly known as Twitter ‒ “True story: Elon Musk ate my cat. Please share your own story of Elon Musk eating your pet.”

The response was overwhelming and revealed my pet was far from the only victim of Musk’s decidedly un-American appetite. Others came out of the we’ve-lost-our-pets-to-hungry-tech-bros closet, with posts that included:

“Elon Musk ate my precious bearded dragon Cupcake.”

“Elon Musk ate my worm farm!”

“True story: Elon Musk ate my ferret.”

“He ate my kitten. I was at a conference where he was one day, holding my kitten. He grabbed it from my hand, poured ketchup on it, and just started chomping into it. It was so scary.”

There’s as much evidence Musk ate my cat as there is immigrants ate pets

Posts on X containing false or inaccurate information are often corrected with a “community note.” No such note appeared on my post or on any of the replies, which I took as proof that it’s all 100% true. 

Buoyed by the support of other victims, I posted an additional admission Thursday: “JD Vance ate my dog, Zoe. It’s true, because I am posting it here.”

I added: “I fear there is widespread pet-eating in the tech-bro community. They’re coming to our cities and towns, we don’t know much about them, they bring radical new ideas about what they view as ‘free speech,’ and they are apparently eating our pets. This has to stop.”

Support from others who say their pets were eaten by Musk and Vance

Again, the responses revealed that Vance’s consumption of my beloved Zoe was not a one-off. 

“I caught JD Vance running away with my dog in his grocery wagon.”

“I walked into my house only to find Elon up to his shoulders in my fish tank, bobbing for them while JD chased my cat with a fork and knife! It was horrifying!”

“My Pugs, Montez and Pearl, may they rest in peace, were also consumed by Elon Musk and JD Vance. They had a Pug-B-Que. I grieve every single day for my Pug babies.”

What monsters.

I hope Donald Trump condemns his running mate’s pet-eating ways

Clearly there’s more than enough evidence here for Trump to loudly address the problem, condemn his running mate and Musk and imply there’s something scary, evil and unwelcome about wealthy tech dudes who incorrectly think they’re hilarious.

Nothing will bring back my precious Mr. Smushyface or my lovable dog Zoe. Nothing can bring back any of the wonderful pets I know were stolen and eaten by Vance and Musk because I read something somebody posted on the internet and declined to consider it might just be fabricated bull(expletive). 

Something must be done about these rabid tech bros before all our pets wind up down their seemingly bottomless gullets.

I look forward to Trump making this a central part of his campaign in the weeks ahead.

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Hoax, Media, Trump, Vance, J.D.

Jonathan V. Last: Who Will Republicans in Springfield, Ohio, Vote For?

By dianeravitch
September 20, 2024 //
8

Jonathan V. Last is the lead editor of The Bulwark, the Never Trumper blog and one of the best political blogs.

He wondered whether Republicans in Springfield will vote for Trump after the venom he and Vance have directed at their town.He quotes from a Wall Street Journal article that dashed all of the spurious claims about the Haitian immigrants in Springfield. Yet Trump and Vance continue to spew their hateful lies about Haitians. On Twitter,

Jonathan Last wrote:

1. Cats and Dogs

Springfield, Ohio, is Trump country. In 2020, Clark County—of which Springfield is the major population center—went for Trump 61 percent to 37 percent.

The mayor of Springfield, Rob Rue, is a Republican.

And today the Wall Street Journal has an extraordinary piece of reporting about the town’s interactions with the Trump campaign.

These bits include revelations that:

(1) The Trump campaign contacted the Springfield government on September 10 to ask if the cat/dog eating stories were true. The campaign was told, point blank, that they were not. That night, Donald Trump asserted them on the debate stage anyway.

(2) This entire conflagration began with neo-Nazis deciding to make Springfield a cause célèbre. Meaning that JD Vance is literally following a playbook put together for him by white supremacists:

On Aug. 10, a group wearing ski masks and carrying swastika flags and rifles marched in Springfield. The ADL identified them as Blood Tribe, which it describes as a growing neo-Nazi group claiming to have chapters across the U.S. and Canada.

On Aug. 27, during the routine public-comment portion of the Springfield City Commission meeting, a man identifying himself as a Blood Tribe member said: “I’ve come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you’re doing before it’s too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.”

(3) Vance produced the name of one person he said had experienced a kidnapped pet cat. The WSJ decided to check the story out:

A Vance spokesperson on Tuesday provided The Wall Street Journal with a police report in which a resident had claimed her pet might have been taken by Haitian neighbors. But when a reporter went to Anna Kilgore’s house Tuesday evening, she said her cat Miss Sassy, which went missing in late August, had actually returned a few days later—found safe in her own basement. 

Kilgore, wearing a Trump shirt and hat, said she apologized to her Haitian neighbors with the help of her daughter and a mobile-phone translation app.

(4) The part of Vance’s assertion that “disease” was on the rise in Springfield? Also false:

Information from the county health department, however, shows a decrease in infectious disease cases countywide, with 1,370 reported in 2023—the lowest since 2015. The tuberculosis case numbers in the county are so low (four in 2023, three in 2022, one in 2021) that any little movement can bring a big percentage jump. HIV cases did increase to 31 in 2023, from 17 in 2022 and 12 in 2021. Overall, sexually transmitted infection cases decreased to 965 in 2023, the lowest since 2015.

Read the whole thing.

Springfield’s Republican mayor said this to the Journal:

“We have told those at the national level that they are speaking these things that are untrue,” added Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, a registered Republican. But he said claims have been “repeated and doubled down on.” 

Here’s my question: How is Rue going to vote in November? 

And the same question goes for Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.

These guys are on the ground. They see what’s happening. They know the truth. And they understand that Trump’s and Vance’s lies—which are approaching the status of blood libel—are hurting their constituents. Not in some theoretical, possible-future-case way. But in a real way. Right now. Today.

Are they going to vote for Trump and Vance? I feel like someone should probably ask them. 

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I think we know what Anna Kilgore’s answer will be. The WSJ shows a picture of this nice cat lady. In her Trump shirt. And her Trump hat. In front of her Trump flag. It seems not to bother her at all that the Trump campaign used her to lie about the people she felt the need to apologize to.

How does that work? What’s the psychology?

No, really. Give me your most charitable explanation. Because what gets me here is that Ms. Kilgore felt bad enough about have accused her neighbors of stealing her cat that she apologized to them. So she knows the difference between right and wrong. 

Talk about this in the comments, please. And be kind. This is an exercise in understanding, not condemnation.

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2. Immigrants: They Get the Job Done

I keep pointing you to Radley Balko because he’s wonderful and you should subscribe to his newsletter. He has a piece up about what immigration has done to Springfield.

First there’s the Haitian immigrant supply part of the story:

The sole claim Trump and Vance have made about Springfield that’s actually true is that since 2021, about 12,000-15,000 Haitian immigrants have moved to the city. But no one — not the Biden administration, not George Soros, and not Kamala Harris — “sent” them there. . . .

After the devastating Haiti earthquake of 2010, the Obama administration allowed displaced people from that country to come to the U.S. under Temporary Protected Status (TPS), a policy created during the George H.W. Bush administration for refugees from countries in crisis. Thousands of Haitians took advantage of the opportunity.

Donald Trump revoked that status in 2019, infamously calling Haiti one of those “shithole countries” from which the U.S. should never accept immigrants. Trump would later add that all Haitian immigrants “probably have AIDS,” and lament that the U.S. doesn’t get more immigrants from better countries like Norway.

Trump’s TPS revocation threatened the immigration status of tens of thousands of Haitians who came after the earthquake, many of whom by then had children who were U.S. citizens. The Biden administration then reinstated TPS protection in 2021. This is why Trump and Vance blame Biden and Harris for Springfield.

Then there’s the Springfield demand side:

[L]ike much of the Rust Belt, the manufacturing plants began to close in the 1980s and 1990s, and Springfield atrophied. The ornate Victorian homes that lined the city’s main streets fell into disrepair as those with means moved away. The city has lost about 25 percent of its population since 1970.

So in the mid-2010s, city officials embarked on a campaign to lure new businesses to the area, citing Springfield’s low cost of living and ideal geographical position for shipping and manufacturing. The plan worked. Factories started opening up. Other businesses followed.

But there was a problem: The population that remained in Springfield and surrounding Clark County was aging. There weren’t enough workers to fill the available jobs. So the companies looked to immigrants. This happened to be right about the time Haitians were coming to the U.S. under TPS. Word quickly spread in the Haitian immigrant community that there was a town in Ohio with a low cost of living and lots of well-paying jobs. So that’s where they went.

The companies did not turn to undocumented immigrants to pay “slave wages,” as some immigration opponents have claimed. They were documented immigrants with taxpayer ID numbers paid at a market rate (as noted below, wages have increased in Springfield since the Haitians arrived).

Haitians with TPS can live where they like. A large number settled in Springfield because that’s where they found jobs. . . .

This is a recurring pattern with immigration in the U.S. Immigrants settle in geographic clusters, close to other immigrants from the same country. This allows them to establish networks, find housing, and open and patronize restaurants and businesses that offer the comforts of home. This is why Patterson, New Jersey, has a “Little Lima.” In the mid-20th century, Peruvian immigrants settled in the city after taking jobs in area textile mills. It’s why Nashville has the country’s largest Kurdish community, and Minneapolis to large Somali and Hmong populations. Terre Heute, Indiana once had a thriving Syrian population; Lowell, Massachusetts has the country’s second largest Cambodian population. Rochester; New York has a large Turkish community; and Russian immigrants settled in places like Brighton Beach, Brooklyn.

This is how immigration works.

When you put supply and demand together, good things can happen:

Income has gone up. In 2020, the median annual household income in the city was $39,344. Two years later — and the last year for which the U.S. Census has data — it was at $45,113.

Immigration opponents also claim that immigrants depress wages. But again contra Vance, that hasn’t happened in Springfield. The mean hourly wage jumped 18 percent between 2020 and 2023, from $21.33 to $25.16. That’s well above the 13 percent that wages increased nationally over the same period. . . .

Haitians have grown Springfield’s tax base. Because of TPS, they have Social Security or taxpayer ID numbers, so they pay all the same taxes any other resident pays. Those who have made enough money to buy a home now pay property taxes. Those who don’t own a home pay rent, which their landlords then use to pay property taxes. . . .

In a recent interview with CNBC, Vance said, “If the path to prosperity was flooding your nation with low-wage immigrants then Springfield, Ohio, would be the most prosperous country — the most prosperous city in the world. America would be the most prosperous country in the world, because Kamala Harris has flooded the country with 25 million illegal aliens.”

As with much of what Vance has said since his abrupt MAGA conversion, almost nothing in that quote is correct. There are nowhere near 25 million undocumented people in the U.S. in total. Kamala Harris doesn’t set the Biden administration’s immigration policy. And all the data suggest immigrants have made Springfield more prosperous, not less.

Read the whole thing.

3. One More Springfield

Kevin Williamson went to Springfield and wrote a fantastic piece.

Poor people have been coming to Ohio in search of jobs in its factories and warehouses for centuries: From the original New Englanders who settled in the Northwest Territory to the Scots-Irish to the Irish and Germans in the 19thcentury to the Haitians today, that story has been repeated over and over. At the turn of the 20th century, a majority of Cincinnati’s population consisted of those who either were foreign-born or were the children of foreign-born parents, mostly German. Naghten Street in Columbus, on the other hand, became “Irish Broadway” in the middle of the 19th century. The J.D. Vances of that era didn’t much care for the whiskey-drinking, potato-eating papists invading their cities, but they made good use of the canals and railroads built by those illiterate exotics from distant lands. 

The guy who wrote Hillbilly Elegy understood all that. This asshole who is running for vice president, on the other hand . . .

I fuel up and have the big 6.7L diesel spooled out and growling happily as I speed by the exit for Possum Hollow Road—honest to God, that’s the name of the place; you can’t make up details like that—way out here in the Blue Ridge Mountains where it is 40-odd degrees early in the morning in the last days of summer. The Appalachian Highlands are gorgeous this time of year, with all sunshine and sapphire skies and cool breezes, good green hills and splendid rivers, and pretty good asphalt that is, barring the occasional construction backup, wide open for RPMs. If you like to drive, it doesn’t get much better in the eastern half of these United States. There’s a lot of that gross, weird old leg-tattoo America out there, too, of course, including a guy with a leg tattoo of the Monster Energy logo, along with the inescapable herpetic rash of Dollar General stores and the strip-joint billboards sprinkled like pox along the highways and backroads from the fine vistas of southwestern Virginia to the alpine rivers of West Virginia to the literal amber waves of grain in Ohio’s cornfields.

It makes you wonder why they ever left—the Vances and the rest of those Appalachian folk who followed Steve Earle’s “Hillbilly Highway” up to Detroit or down to Houston or wherever else the Scots-Irish diaspora ended up. And then you remember why: need and desperation. There weren’t a lot of Dairy Queens or Walmarts out here, and even if there had been, there were no jobs to earn money to spend in them. It was a world—and a life—of subsistence agriculture and hustling, with very little in the way of rule of law or decent public administration, where the biggest business was organized crime and where politics vacillated between demagoguery and banditry, beautiful in some parts, hideous in others, and poisonously backward—you know: Haiti, but with white people.

Read the whole thing.

Categories Elections, Hoax, Immigration, Lies, Ohio, Racism, Trump, Vance, J.D.
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