Archives for category: Republicans
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The GOP Won the House Thanks to Gerrymandering

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2025 //
5

Michael Waldman of the Brennan Center for Justice demonstrates that Republicans won control of the House thanks to gerrymandering. Legislatures in red states drew districts that were designed to favor members of their party.

In other words, they rigged the elections.

Democrats have also gerrymandered districts to win seats, but never as methodically or as systematically as Republicans.

He wrote:

Many things propelled Donald Trump’s election victory. Inflation. A worldwide anti-incumbent backlash. Anger at institutions. A swing to the right among working-class voters of all racial backgrounds. And more. Analysts are still chewing on all the data (and Democrats are chewing on each other).

As we sift through the results and look forward, Republican control of the House of Representatives will matter greatly. That control is very, very narrow. And it turns out to rest on a shaky foundation of gerrymandering and manipulated maps, all encouraged by the Supreme Court.

The last time a new president took office without a “trifecta” of House and Senate control was 35 years ago. But this will be the slimmest House majority on record. With yesterday’s announcement by Indiana Rep. Victoria Spartz that she will not participate in the Republican caucus, control may effectively come down to one vote.

And according to my colleague Michael Li in a new analysis, Republicans won a net 16-seat advantage due to manipulated maps drawn for party advantage. (Democrats garnered an edge in 7 seats through gerrymandering, but the GOP gained a total of 23 seats that way — hence, 16 seats.)

How did this skew happen? Simply, Republican legislators control the drawing of many more districts than Democrats do. In some states, nonpartisan commissions or state courts have actually produced fairer maps. But in most places, politicians are free to press for partisan advantage.

North Carolina is split relatively evenly between Republican and Democratic voters. This year, Trump won the state even as Democrat Josh Stein swept into the governor’s mansion. However, the heavily gerrymandered legislature drew congressional maps that produced 10 seats for Republicans and only 4 for Democrats. The state high court had blocked the gerrymander, a move upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Moore v. Harper. But then a judicial election shifted partisan control of the North Carolina court, which abruptly blessed the gerrymander it had previously banned. That judicial reversal alone gave the GOP an extra 3 seats in Washington — enough to control the House.

Today Republicans are strutting, but that swagger may not last long. Speaker Mike Johnson will have to manage a fractious majority that could be defeated by one or two defections. Individual members will be empowered to extort policy concessions, no matter how extreme.

In fact, what may matter even more than the gerrymandered seats is the collapse of electoral competition. Only 27 districts nationwide saw margins of less than 5 percent. Lawmakers will look more nervously at the prospect of primary challenges than at the risk of alienating the broad mass of persuadable voters.

It did not have to be this way. In 2013, the Supreme Court gutted the Voting Rights Act, which had prevented the most egregious gerrymanders along racial lines. Then in 2019, John Roberts led the justices to rule that federal courts could not police partisan gerrymandering at all.

Congress has the power to act, and in 2022 it tried — coming within two Senate votes of passing the Freedom to Vote Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which together would have barred gerrymandering for congressional seats nationwide. Both parties would have been forced to compete on a level field. (This legislation would also have undone other damage wrought by rulings such as Citizens United, which legalized the campaign system that saw Elon Musk spend a quarter of a billion dollars to help elect Trump.)

All this is a reminder that the rules of American politics, often arcane, often hidden, bear tremendous weight. It should caution us from drawing too many conclusions about any recent victor’s supposed “mandate.”

Voters are mad as hell about a government they feel does not deliver for them. Rigged rules are a big part of why Washington too frequently does not work. Partisans must do more than battle for inches of advantage. To truly reconnect the seats of power to a sullen electorate, real reform and real competition must be part of the answer.

Categories Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fraud, Republicans

Adam Kinzinger: Trump’s Lies About January 6 Are Unacceptable

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2025 //
9

Adam Kinzinger had a promising career in the Republican Party. A decorated veteran, he served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was elected to Congress from Illinois in 2010 and left Congress in 2023. He was one of ten Republucans who voted to impeach Trump for his role in the insurrection. He was one of two Republican members of Congress who served on the January 6 Commission, along with Liz Cheney. Both of their political careers are over unless the GOP breaks free of Trumpism.

He wrote:

For four years, a massive machine of deception has worked tirelessly to transform the greatest political tragedy of our time — the bloody January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol — into what Donald Trump now calls a “day of love.” As the machine’s chief operator, Trump is determined to make the truth the ultimate casualty of that tragedy. It is up to us to defend it.

No crime in history has been documented more thoroughly than the January 6 attack. More than 1,000 cameras captured the day’s events, and much of that footage was used to charge over 1,600 people with crimes related to the riot. Around 1,000 have been convicted.

As a member of the House committee that investigated the attack, I reviewed the key footage repeatedly and listened closely to the officers who fought against the mob. More importantly, the world watched the tragedy unfold in real time as news networks broadcast the events minute by minute. Since then, we have all seen the images of Trump supporters clad in helmets and tactical gear waging medieval combat against police officers. We’ve witnessed the assaults with our own eyes.

The truth of January 6 is so well established that even people who weren’t there have felt the moral injury of seeing their fellow citizens surge violently into the Capitol. Like September 11, January 6 was a national trauma. The key difference, however, is that this attack was incited by the sitting President of the United States and carried out by our own citizens.

Although the story is familiar, it must be repeated every time January 6 is mentioned. That day was the culmination of Trump’s months-long campaign of lies designed to convince the world that the 2020 election he lost had been rigged. He and his allies spread rumor after rumor, filed and lost lawsuit after lawsuit. Still, conspiracy theories flooded the media and the internet, stoking the anger of Trump’s most fervent supporters.

No evidence of widespread corruption was ever found. Nevertheless, Trump and his followers continued to push these lies in countless ways. Then, as Congress prepared to certify the election results, he summoned his supporters to Washington, D.C., and all but ordered the attack to disrupt the certification process. More than 140 officers were injured. Five people died.

In the immediate aftermath, only a handful of political extremists denied what had occurred. Even Trump, the King of Lies, initially called it a “heinous attack” and a “calamity,” warning that lawbreakers “will pay.” However, in the weeks that followed, false claims of leftist agitators began to spread. Fringe lawmakers described members of the mob as mere tourists who had been granted access to the Capitol. By March, Trump echoed the notion that rioters had been “ushered” into the building. By 2022, he began to express sympathy for those charged with crimes, and with his encouragement, his followers began portraying these attackers as martyrs.

Trump, the most brilliant and malicious propagandist in American history, relentlessly repeated the lie that January 6 wasn’t an attack but a “simple protest” gone wrong — not a violent attempt to disrupt the democratic process. Each statement advanced the falsehood in small, calculated increments. This is how reality is corrupted. Today, a majority of Republicans claim the people who stormed the Capitol were engaged in “legitimate civil discourse,” while one-third of Americans question whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election fairly.

In the tragic context of Trump’s potential return to power, we should expect him to fulfill his promise to pardon most, if not all, of those convicted for their actions on January 6. He will justify these pardons with even more lies, which millions will accept as truth.

Yet a greater number of us still believe in the facts captured on video, documented in the January 6 Committee’s report, and upheld in the courts. As rational citizens, we are obligated to speak out when lies are spread. We must continue to do so until the day Trump’s propaganda is obliterated and the truth prevails — as it will, in time.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Lies, Republicans, Trump

Jeff Tiedrich: The Origins of the “Immigrant-Did-It” Story

By dianeravitch
January 2, 2025 //
11

Blogger Jeff Tiedrich traces the origins of the phony story about the terrorist who ruthlessly mowed down revelers in New Orleans.

The tale told on FOX News was that the truck used by the terrorist crossed the Mexican border only two days earlier. This was immediately accepted by the MAGAverse because it confirms what they already believed: immigrants are murderers, rapists, and now….heartless terrorists.

Jeff’s post has a screen shot of the original story before it was retracted.

We now know that the perpetrator was born in Beaumont, Texas, went to Georgia State, and lived in Houston.

Open the link and see how quickly this lie spread and continued to spread long after FOX retracted its first report.

Why so much hatred of immigrants?

Donald Trump is married to an immigrant from Slovenia.

JD Vance is married to the daughter of immigrants from India.

Elon Musk is an immigrant from South Africa.

Vivek Ramaswamy’s parents were immigrants from India. His father still holds an Indian passport.

Categories Bigotry, Extremism, Fake News, Immigration, Lies, Republicans

Jamelle Bouie: Trump Got a Rude Awakening

By dianeravitch
December 22, 2024 //
29

Over the past week, the nation was treated to the return of Trump chaos. Congress needed to pass a “continuing resolution” to fund the federal government or it would shut down at midnight last Friday. Because of the process that Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson used, the CR required a vote of two-thirds of the House. The House is almost evenly divided between the two parties, with a slight Republican majority. Mike Johnson had to get a bipartisan deal that satisfied both parties, and he did. On the day of the vote, Elon Musk unleashed a flurry of tweets ridiculing the deal, warning that he would fund primary challengers for any Republican who supported it and lying about the contents of the bill.

Several hours after Musk attacked the bill, Trump chimed in and warned Republicans to vote against it. He too said that any Republican who voted for it would be challenged by another Republican in the next election. Trump demanded that any CR raise the debt limit, so he could renew a big tax cut for the rich and corporations in the spring. The new round of tax cuts is expected to cost $1-2 trillion. The onus for raising the debt limit would be Biden’s, not his, he hoped.

Musk tweeted that the government should be shut down until Trump was inaugurated. Only 33 days, he tweeted. He didn’t care that government employees and members of the military would go without a paycheck for 33 days. Or that many would not have enough to get by. How would he–the world’s richest man–know?

Under pressure from Musk and Trump, the bipartisan deal failed. Speaker Johnson then cobbled together a new budget to please Trump and Musk. It raised the debt limit and deleted items that Democrats wanted. All but two Democrats and 38 Republicans voted against it, and it too failed.

Then Speaker Johnson tried again, forging a deal that members of both parties supported. It passed 366-34.

Here are the 34 Republicans who voted against the bill.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.)

Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.)  

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.)

Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.)

Sen.-elect and Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) 

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Eric Burlison (R-Mo.)

Rep. Michael Cloud (R-Texas)

Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.)

Rep. Eli Crane (R-Ariz.)

Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah)

Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Russ Fulcher (R-Idaho)

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas)

Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.)

Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas)

Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.)

Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.)

Rep. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas)

Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.)

Rep. Greg Lopez (R-Colo.)

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.)

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.)

Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.)

Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.)

Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.)

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.)

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.)

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.)

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas)

Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas)

Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Wis.)

Rep. Beth Van Duyne (R-Texas)

Jamelle Bouie wrote that we should all take heart. Trump does not control every Republican in the House. We will find out in February and March whether every Senate Tepublican is willing to confirm Trump’s totally unqualified choices for major roles: Tulsi Gabbard, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth.

Bouie wrote:

The recurring theme of my writing the past few weeks is that Donald Trump is not invulnerable. His win did not upend the rules of American politics or render him immune to political misfortune. Like everything we experience, his victory was contingent — a function of specific people in specific circumstances making specific choices. To change any of these variables is to change the ultimate destination.

To put this a little differently, whatever you think of the nature of his win, Donald Trump is still Donald Trump. He is overwhelmingly strong in some areas and ruinously deficient in others. He holds so much sway over his supporters that, as he famously put it nearly 10 years ago, he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose “any voters.” He’s almost incapable of managing himself or the people around him. His White House was notoriously chaotic and he remains as impulsive, dysfunctional and undisciplined as he was during his first term.

There was, in the first weeks after the election, some notion that this had changed, that we were looking at a new Trump, ready to lead a united Republican Party. But as we’ve seen over the past few days, this was premature. First, the Republican Party is far from unified, as their struggle to pass a bill to continue to fund the government showed. It took days. What’s more, Trump is not alone as a figure of influence among congressional Republicans; Elon Musk has imposed himself onto the president-elect as a consigliere of sorts and is trying to build a political empire for himself via X, the social media platform he essentially bought for this purpose.

It was from X, in fact, that Musk urged Republicans to kill the continuing resolution, throwing the House into chaos and prompting Trump to escalate the confrontation to save face, demanding a new resolution that suspended or raised the debt limit. On Thursday evening, Speaker Mike Johnson tried to pass that bill. But a number of Republicans broke ranks, and unified Democratic opposition meant it was dead on arrival.

Together, Trump and Musk have not only walked the Republican Party into an otherwise needless defeat; they also have given Democrats the jump start they apparently needed to behave like a real opposition. According to Axios, House Democrats even broke into chants of “Hell no” when confronted with proposed Republican spending cuts.

That’s more like it.

The absurd battle over the continuing resolution should stand as a vivid reminder that Trump is in a much more precarious position than he may have appeared to be in immediately after the election. With a 41 percent favorability rating, he remains unpopular. He cannot count on a functional majority in the House. He has no plan to deliver the main thing, lower prices, that voters want. And one of his most important allies, Musk, is an agent of chaos he can’t seem to control.

There have been enough presidents that there are a few models for what a well-run administration might look like. This is not one of them.

Other bad news:

There are so many memes on Twitter about “President Musk” that Trump responded, whining that he is the President-elect, not Musk. One meme shows Musk pushing a baby carriage, with Trump in it. Another shows them mouth-kissing.

The one thing Trump can’t tolerate is being laughed at. The term #PresidentMusk was trending on Twitter.

We mostly assume that Trump will not be able to sustain his bromance with Musk because Musk is richer, smarter, and younger than Trump. But Never-Trumper George Conway said in a bulwark podcast that it won’t be easy for Trump to shed Musk. Musk owns the world’s biggest social media platform. Trump can’t afford to alienate him. He also loves Musk’s money. He may be stuck with the one guy who overshadows him and makes him an object of ridicule.

Categories Accountability, Democrats, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Musk, Elon, Politics, Republicans, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Republicans Play Politics with Jan 6 and the Budget

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2024 //
1

Heather Cox Richardson ably sums up the Republicans’ irresponsibility yesterday, as they tried to rewrite the events of January 6 and cowered at the feet of Elon Musk.

Loudermilk was himself involved in the story of that day after video turned up of him giving a tour of the Capitol on January 5 despite its being closed because of Covid. During his tour, participants took photos of things that are not usually of interest to visitors: stairwells, for example. Since then, he has been eager to turn the tables against those investigating the events of January 6.

Yesterday, Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) released an “Interim Report on the Failures and Politicization of the January 6th Select Committee.” As the title suggests, the report seeks to rewrite what happened on January 6, 2021, when rioters encouraged by former president Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol. Loudermilk chairs a subcommittee on oversight that sits within the Committee on House Administration. The larger committee—House Administration—oversees the daily operations of the House of Representatives, including the Capitol Police. Under that charge, former House speaker Kevin McCarthy permitted MAGA Republicans to investigate security failures at the Capitol on January 6.

Loudermilk turned the committee’s investigation of security failures into an attack on the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol, more commonly known as the January 6th Committee. Yesterday’s report singled out former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY), who has taken a strong stand against Trump’s fitness for office after his behavior that day, as the primary villain of the select committee. In his press release concerning the interim report, Loudermilk said that Cheney “should be investigated for potential criminal witness tampering,” and the report itself claimed that “numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney” and that the FBI should investigate that alleged criminality.

The report seeks to exonerate Trump and those who participated in the events of January 6 while demonizing those who are standing against him, rewriting the reality of what happened on January 6 with a version that portrays Trump as a persecuted victim.

Trump’s team picked up the story and turned it even darker. At 2:11 this morning, Trump’s social media account posted: “Liz Cheney could be in a lot of trouble based on the evidence obtained by the subcommittee, which states that ‘numerous federal laws were likely broken by Liz Cheney, and these violations should be investigated by the FBI.’ Thank you to Congressman Barry Loudermilk on a job well done.”

To this, conservative writer David Frum responded: “After his successful consolidation of power, the Leader prepares show trials for those who resisted his failed first [violent attempt to overthrow the government].”

Liz Cheney also responded. “January 6th showed Donald Trump for who [he] really is—a cruel and vindictive man who allowed violent attacks to continue against our Capitol and law enforcement officers while he watched television and refused for hours to instruct his supporters to stand down and leave.” She pointed out that the January 6th committee’s report was based on evidence that came primarily from Republican witnesses, “including many of the most senior officials from Trump’s own White House, campaign and Administration,” and that the Department of Justice reached the similar conclusions after its own investigation.

Loudermilk’s report “intentionally disregards the truth and the Select Committee’s tremendous weight of evidence, and instead fabricates lies and defamatory allegations in an attempt to cover up what Donald Trump did,” Cheney wrote. “Their allegations do not reflect a review of the actual evidence, and are a malicious and cowardly assault on the truth. No reputable lawyer, legislator or judge would take this seriously.”

CNN aired clips today of Republican lawmakers blaming Trump for the events of January 6.

Last night, Trump also filed a civil lawsuit against pollster J. Ann Selzer, her polling company, the Des Moines Register, and its parent company Gannett over Selzer’s November 2 poll showing Harris in the lead for the election. Calling it “brazen election interference,” the suit alleges that the poll violated the Iowa Consumer Fraud Act. Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told Brian Stelter, Katelyn Polantz, Hadas Gold, and Paula Reid of CNN: “This absurd lawsuit is a direct assault on the First Amendment. Newspapers and polling firms are not engaged in ‘deceptive practices’ just because they publish stories and poll results President-elect Donald Trump doesn’t like. Getting a poll wrong is not election interference or fraud.”

Conservative former representative Joe Walsh (R-IL) wrote: “Trump is suing a pollster and calling for an investigation of [Liz Cheney]. Don’t you dare tell me he’s not an authoritarian. And don’t you dare look the other way. Donald Trump is un-American. The resistance to him from Americans must be steadfast & fierce.”

This afternoon, Trump’s authoritarian aspirations smashed against reality.

The determination of the MAGA extremists in the House to put poison pills in appropriations measures over the past year meant that the Republicans have been unable to pass the necessary appropriations bills for 2024 (not a typo), forcing the government to operate with continuing resolutions. On September 25, Congress passed a continuing resolution that would fund the government through December 20, this Friday. Without funding, the government will begin to shut down…right before the holidays.

At the same time, a farm bill, which Congress usually passes every five years and which outlines the country’s agriculture and food policies including supplemental nutrition (formerly known as food stamps), expired in 2023 and has been continued through temporary extensions.

Last night, news broke that congressional leaders had struck a bipartisan deal to keep the government from shutting down. The proposed 1,500-page measure extended the farm bill for a year and provided about $100 billion in disaster relief as well as about $10 billion in assistance for farmers. It also raised congressional salaries and kicked the government funding deadline through March 14. It seemed like a last-minute reprieve from a holiday government shutdown.

But MAGA Republicans immediately opposed the measure. “It’s a total dumpster fire. I think it’s garbage,” said Representative Eric Burlison (R-MO). They are talking publicly about ditching Johnson and voting for someone else for House speaker.

Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk also opposed the bill. Chad Pergram of the Fox News Channel reported that House speaker Mike Johnson explained on the Fox News Channel that he is on a text chain with Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom are unelected appointees to Trump’s proposed “Department of Government Efficiency” charged with cutting the U.S. budget.

Johnson said he explained to Musk that the measure would need Democratic votes to pass, and then they could bring Trump in roaring back with the America First agenda. Apparently, Musk was unconvinced: shortly after noon, he posted, “Any member of the House or Senate who votes for this outrageous spending bill deserves to be voted out in 2 years!” Later, he added: “No bills should be passed Congress [sic] until Jan 20, when [Trump] takes office.”

This blueprint would shut down the United States government for a month, but Musk—who, again, does not answer to any constituents—seems untroubled. ″‘Shutting down’ the government (which doesn’t actually shut down critical functions btw) is infinitely better than passing a horrible bill,” he tweeted.

Pergram reported that Musk’s threats sent Republicans scrambling, and Musk tweeted: “Your elected representatives have heard you and now the terrible bill is dead. The voice of the people has triumphed! VOX POPULI VOX DEI.”

But Trump and Vice President–elect J.D. Vance seem to recognize that shutting down the government before the holidays is likely to be unpopular. They issued their own statement against the measure, calling instead for “a streamlined bill that doesn’t give Chuck Schumer and the Democrats everything they want.”

Then Trump and Vance went on to bring up something not currently on the table: the debt ceiling. The debt ceiling is a holdover from World War I, when Congress stopped trying to micromanage the Treasury and instead simply gave it a ceiling for borrowing money. In the last decades, Congress has appropriated more money than the country brings in, thus banging up against the debt ceiling. If it is not raised, the United States will default on its debt, and so Congress routinely raises the ceiling…as long as a Republican president is in office. If a Democrat is in office, Republicans fight bitterly against what they say is profligate spending.

The debt ceiling is not currently an issue, but Trump and Vance made it central to their statement, perhaps hoping people would confuse the appropriations bill with the debt ceiling. ”Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Biden’s watch. If Democrats won’t cooperate on the debt ceiling now”—again, it is the Republicans who threaten to force the country into default—“what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration. Let’s have this debate now.”

Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) explained: “Remember what this is all about: Trump wants Democrats to agree to raise the debt ceiling so he can pass his massive corporate and billionaire tax cut without a problem. Shorter version: tax cut for billionaires or the government shuts down for Christmas.”

President and Dr. Biden are in Delaware today, honoring the memory of Biden’s first wife, Neilia, and his one-year-old daughter Naomi, who were killed in a car accident 52 years ago today, but White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre issued a statement saying:

“Republicans need to stop playing politics with this bipartisan agreement or they will hurt hardworking Americans and create instability across the country. President-elect Trump and Vice President–elect Vance ordered Republicans to shut down the government and they are threatening to do just that—while undermining communities recovering from disasters, farmers and ranchers, and community health centers. Triggering a damaging government shutdown would hurt families who are gathering to meet with their loved ones and endanger the basic services Americans from veterans to Social Security recipients rely on. A deal is a deal. Republicans should keep their word.”

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo pointed out the relationship between Trump’s authoritarianism and today’s chaos on Capitol Hill. Trump elevated Musk to the center of power, Marshall observes, and now is following in his wake. Musk, Marshall writes, “is erratic, volatile, impulsive, mercurial,” and he “introduces a huge source of unpredictability and chaos into the presidency that for once Trump doesn’t control.”

Ron Filipkowski of MeidasNews captured the day’s jockeying among Trump’s budding authoritarians and warring Republican factions over whether elected officials should fund the United States government. He posted: “The owner of a car company is controlling the House of Representatives from a social media app.”

Richardson refers to Musk as “Trump’s sidekick.” It might be more accurate to refer to Trump as “Musk’s sidekick.” Musk is setting the agenda, Trump is obeying. The only other time in our history when a President ceded his authority was when Woodrow Wilson had a massive stroke and his wife filled in.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Musk, Elon, Republicans, Trump

Carol Burris: West Virginia Starves Its Public Schools

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2024 //
2

Carol Burris, executive director of the Betwork for Public Education, describes the devastating advance of privatization in West Virginia. In 2019, the teachers of West Virginia banded together and went on strike, closing down every school in the state.

Burris writes:

West Virginia is closing its public schools. Seven schools will close in the next few years due to declining enrollment. These schools will join the 53 that closed in the past five years, and there are an additional 25 that counties have proposed or approved to close.

These numbers are not small in the context of West Virginia. The National Center for Education Statistics reported only 643 public schools with enrollment in the state in 2023-2024.

West Virginia’s population and student enrollment were in decline. In 2015, there were 277,452 students in West Virginia public schools. By 2020, enrollment was down to 253,930. In 2021, however, the drop seemed to level off—the public schools lost only 1,100 students the next year.

And then school privatization began.

In 2019, the legislature passed a charter law. It was cautious. Three charter schools were allowed to open as pilot schools under the control of districts, but none opened.

And then greed kicked in. The for-profit operators wanted to open schools in the state. In 2021, the legislature expanded the number of charters to ten a year, not including online schools, which they then approved. The authority to approve them was given to a politically appointed state board.

Six charter schools were rapidly approved, five of which are open.

Three of those five are run by for-profit corporations. In 2023-2024, those three for-profit-run charters enrolled 87% of the charter school students in the state. 

Charter schools in West Virginia operate on the “money follows the child” system, depleting school district budgets. That money accounts for a whopping 99% of state per-pupil funding, even though most charter students (70%) attend low-cost, low-quality online schools run by for-profits.

To add insult to injury to the state’s public schools, the U.S. Department of Education, under Secretary Cardona, awarded $12.2 million to the state’s charter board to open new charter schools or expand existing ones in West Virginia.

Over $905,000 was given to open a “classical” academy run by the notorious for-profit ACCEL. ACCEL already operates two of the state’s five charter schools. The new school will be operated on a sweeps contract, violating 2022 CSP regulations. Three of the existing five charter schools would be given funds to expand.

I registered a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education regarding West Virginia’s violation of its own regulations. I have not received a response. 

If that were not enough, this fall, the West Virginia legislature passed a law allowing charter schools to access the state building fund—giving them their own privileged funding stream.

In 2022, the same year that the law to expand charter schools was enacted, the state passed a voucher law called the Hope Scholarship, heralded by Ed Choice as one of the most expansive voucher laws in the country. That law gives vouchers to fund homeschooling, private schooling, tutoring, and “enrichment” activities for students who do not attend a public or charter school.

The scholarship is worth 100% of the average per-pupil state funding. There are no income limits. Beginning in 2026, any student, including a private school student or home-schooled student who has never attended public school, can apply.

In 2023-2024, West Virginians used a voucher. In 2024-2025, the number jumped to 10,000.

Let’s do the math.

During the 2021-2022 school year, there were 252,830 students in public schools. That was the year before charters and the voucher law. In 2023-2024, that number dropped to 243,560. 

Just when West Virginia enrollment had begun to stabilize, 2,277 students were siphoned off along with funding to charter schools, and 6,000 students received vouchers. In West Virginia, privatization through charter schools and vouchers is now the primary source of public school enrollment and funding decline.

As charter schools continue to expand, thanks in part to the federal Charter School Program, and vouchers become accessible to 100% of students in the state, school closings will accelerate. 

For the right-wing Libertarians who run education policy for the Republican Party, this is not a bug; this is the main feature. 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization, Republicans, School Choice, Teachers, Vouchers, West Virginia

Elon Musk Blew Up the Bipartisan Deal to Fund the Government

By dianeravitch
December 19, 2024 //
17

Who elected Elon Musk?

Yesterday he fired off 100+ tweets demanding that Republicans reject a budget deal that House Speaker Mike Johnson negotiated to keep the government funded until March.

Musk ridiculed the deal. He called it calling it “terrible,” “horrible,” “criminal,” “outrageous,” “unconscionable,” “crazy” and “an insane crime.” Trump and Vance came out against it. The Republican members of the House scurried for cover. The deal collapsed.

Trump is back to his established practice of sowing chaos.

Politico reported that Musk tweeted lies to panic House Republicans and cause a stampede.

Musk claimed that the bill would give members of Congress a 40% raise. Untrue. Their salaries ($174,000) have not gone up since 2009. The bill would have given them an increase of 3.8% or $6,600. Musk lied.

Musk reposted a claim that the bill included $3 billion for a new stadium in DC. Another lie. It transferred title of the existing RFK stadium to the DC government. No federal cost.

Musk claimed that the deal shielded the January 6 Committee from future investigations. Another lie.

Musk retweeted a post claiming that the bill funded “bioweapons labs.” Another lie.

Musk approvingly tweeted a post saying that the government should be shut down until Trump’s inauguration in 33 days.

Read the article.

Musk demonstrated that he is reckless and dangerous. He leads Trump around by the nose.

An arrogant, ignorant billionaire leading a doddering, confused old man.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Economy, Funding, Lies, Musk, Elon, Republicans, Trump

Project 2025 Lives! Despite Trump’s Denials.

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2024 //
11

During the campaign, Democrats continually drew attention to the radical proposals of Project 2025 as the agenda for a second Trump term. Trump distanced himself from Project 2025 and pretended to know nothing about it or anyone who wrote it. Now that he is President-elect, Project 2025 is indeed Trump’s agenda.

Someone on social media asked, “If Trump disavowed Project 2025 when campaigning, isn’t I clear that he has no “mandate” to act on it?

The LA Times reports:

Russell Vought, one of the chief architects of Project 2025 — a conservative blueprint for the next presidency — is no fan of the federal government that President-elect Donald Trump will soon lead.

He believes “woke” civil servants and “so-called expert authorities” wield illegitimate power to block conservative White House directives from deep within federal agencies, and wants Trump to “bend or break” that bureaucracy to his will, he wrote in the second chapter of the Project 2025 playbook.

Vought is a vocal proponent of a plan known as Schedule F, under which Trump would fire thousands of career civil servants with extensive experience in their fields and replace them with his own political loyalists, and of Christian nationalism, which would see American governance aligned with Christian teachings. Both are core tenets of Project 2025.

Throughout his campaign, Trump adamantly disavowed Project 2025, even though its policies overlapped with his and some of its authors worked in his first administration. He castigated anyone who suggested the blueprint, which polls showed was deeply unpopular among voters, represented his aims for the presidency.

But last week, the president-elect nominated Vought to lead the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the White House budget and its policy agenda across the federal government.

Trump called Vought, who held the same role during his first term, an “aggressive cost cutter and deregulator” who “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State and end Weaponized Government.”

The nomination was one of several Trump has made since his election that have called into question his claims on the campaign trail that Project 2025 was not his playbook and held no sway over him or his plans for a second term. 

He selected Tom Homan, a Project 2025 contributor and former visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative organization behind the blueprint, as his “border czar.” Trump named Stephen Miller, an immigration hard-liner also linked to Project 2025, as his deputy chief of staff for policy. Both also served in the first Trump administration.

He also named Brendan Carr to serve on the Federal Communications Commission. Carr wrote a chapter of Project 2025 on the FCC, which regulates U.S. internet access and TV and radio networks, and has echoed Trump’s claimsthat news broadcasters have engaged in political bias against Trump.

Trump named John Ratcliffe as his pick for CIA director and Pete Hoekstra as ambassador to Canada. Both are Project 2025 contributors. It has also been reported that the Trump transition team is filling lower-level government spots using a Project 2025 database of conservative candidates.

During the campaign Trump said that he knew “nothing about” Project 2025 and that he found some of its ideas “absolutely ridiculous and abysmal.” In response to news in July that Project 2025’s director, Paul Dans, was leaving his post, Trump campaign managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles — whom the president-elect has since named his chief of staff — issued a statement saying that “reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed.”

Asked about Trump’s selection of several people with Project 2025 connections to serve in his administration, Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt responded with a statement, saying Trump “never had anything to do with Project 2025.”

“This has always been a lie pushed by the Democrats and the legacy media, but clearly the American people did not buy it because they overwhelmingly voted for President Trump to implement the promises that he made on the campaign trail,” Leavitt wrote. “All of President Trump’s cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.”

Leavitt too has ties to Project 2025, having appeared in a training video for it.

In addition to calling for much greater power in the hands of the president, Project 2025 calls for less federal intervention in certain areas — including through the elimination of the Department of Education. It calls for much stricter immigration enforcement and mass deportations — a policy priority of Trump’s as well — and rails against environmental protections, calling for the demolition of key environmental agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service.

It calls for tougher restrictions on abortion and for the federal government to collect data on women who seek an abortion, and backs a slew of measures that would strip rights from LGBTQ+ people.

For Trump’s critics, his selections make it clear that his disavowal of the conservative playbook was nothing more than a campaign ploy to pacify voters who viewed the plan as too far to the right. It’s an argument many were making before the election as well.

Open the link to continue reading.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Cruelty, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Privatization, Republicans, Trump

North Carolina: Republican Supermajority Strips Newly Elected Democrats of Power

By dianeravitch
December 11, 2024 //
27

The Republican supermajority in the state’s General Assembly is shameless. They used their numbers to pass a bill that strips the newly elected Democratic Governor, State Attorney General, and State Superintendent of Schools of many of their powers.

Outgoing Democratic Governor Roy Cooper vetoed the bill, but Republicans overturned his veto.

The Republican power grab was embedded in a bill that shortchanged the victims of Hurricane Helene.

When will voters in North Carolina wise up and start voting for Democratic legislators? The ones they have now are not working on behalf of their constituents.

They are using their power to protect their power and perks. The public be damned! Vote them out!

Categories Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, North Carolina, Republicans

Senator Grassley Shows the Door to FBI Director Wray

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2024 //
11

After Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017, he choose respected FBI veteran Christopher Wray to replace Comey. The FBI Director is appointed for a ten-year term, to insulate the Director from partisan influence.

Senator Chuck Grassley is the ranking Republican on the Senate Committee on the Budget.

In this letter, directed to Director Wray, Grassley says he is finished and it’s time to pack his bag. He explains why. The heart of the matter is that he failed to investigate Republican claims that Biden was corrupt, but approved a search of Trump’s home for classified documents.

Next up is the odious Kash Patel, nominated by Trump to be FBI Director. Patel is a MAGA ideologue who has said that if appointed, on day one, he would close the FBI Headquarters and re-open it as a “museum of the deep state.”

Let’s see what Senator Grassley says about the unqualified Patel.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Justice, Republicans, Trump
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »