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Paul Offit: Trump Threatens to Defund Schools That Mandate Vaccines for Kids

By dianeravitch
August 8, 2024 //
35

Trump has said repeatedly that he will defund schools that mandate vaccines. Every state requires vaccinations before enrolling students. I may be mistaken but I think every state requires children to be vaccinated for a long list of diseases. So, he is threatening to defund every public school in the nation.

Dr. Paul Offit, a specialist in infectious diseases, explains what a dangerous idea this is. Vaccines work. Vaccines save lives. Trump is pandering to the anti-vaccine people. They are wrong and so is he. Children will die if Trump gets elected and follows through on this vile promise.

Dr. Offit writes:

At a campaign rally on June 22, 2024, former president Donald Trump told a crowd of cheering fans, “I will not give one penny to any school that has a vaccine mandate.” Given that every public school in the United States has vaccine mandates, this would mean eliminating all federal funding for public schools. Will Trump’s statement pressure schools to eliminate mandates? More to the point, why are school vaccine mandates important?

The best way to understand school vaccine mandates is through the lens of measles virus, the most contagious vaccine-preventable disease. Measles vaccine first became available in 1963. At that time, every year in the United States, 3-4 million people would be infected with measles, 48,000 would be hospitalized, and 500 would die. Deaths were primarily caused by pneumonia, severe dehydration, and encephalitis (inflammation of the brain). By the late 1960s, measles vaccination led to a 95 percent drop in the incidence of the disease. By the early 1970s, however, immunization rates had become stagnant. Measles cases increased. In 1971, about 150,000 cases were reported. Although the number of states requiring vaccines for school entry increased from 25 in 1968 to 40 in 1974, health officials hadn’t enforced them.

By 1981, all 50 states had school immunization requirements. By 2000, because school mandates were enforced, measles was eliminated from the United States. However, 45 of 50 states now allow philosophical or religious exemptions to vaccination. Because a critical percentage of parents have now chosen these exemptions, measles is coming back.  At the end of December 2022, schools and daycare centers in Columbus, Ohio, reported 85 cases of measles; 32 children were hospitalized; all were unvaccinated. During the past four years, 338 cases of measles have been reported. This year, 188 cases of measles were reported in the United States, triple the number of cases seen in 2023. If Donald Trump were to pressure schools to eliminate mandates, hundreds of cases of measles will become thousands of cases. The case-fatality rate for measles is about 1 in 1,000. If return to a time when measles infects thousands of people, children will once again die from a disease that is entirely preventable.

The notion that Donald Trump would withhold federal funding for schools is highly unlikely. But there is another way that Trump could weaken vaccine rates—eliminate the Vaccines for Children Program (VFC), which launched in 1994 and provides vaccines for all children who are uninsured or underinsured. The program is estimated to prevent about 30 million hospitalizations a year. Were the Trump Administration to eliminate the VFC, we could expect to retreat to a time, not that long ago, where every year polio paralyzed as many as 30,000 children and killed 1,500, rubella (German measles) caused 20,000 cases of birth defects, diphtheria was the most common killer of teenagers, and bacteria like Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) caused 25,000 cases of meningitis and bloodstream infections.

Although Donald Trump may have found an applause line at his campaign rallies, if his disdain for vaccine mandates translates into public policy, children who needlessly suffer preventable illnesses won’t be applauding.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Funding, Health, Science, Stupid, Trump

Florida: Climate Change Kills Off Last of a Rare Species of Tree

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2024 //
15

The state of Florida—Ron DeSantis and his dumdum legislature—has decided that climate change doesn’t exist, but climate change doesn’t care. The Miami Herald reported that the last of a rare species in the Florida Keys has died—because of rising seas. The children of Florida won’t understand any of this because the State Department of Education will not buy textbooks that explain climate change. They think—I suppose—that if you don’t learn about it, it will go away.

Key Largo has a new, disturbing and first-of-its-kind graveyard. There are no headstones, no burial markers, no names, no bodies. 

It’s the last place an incredibly rare species of tree called the Key Largo tree cactus was seen alive, back in 2023. The killer? All the clues point to climate change. 

At least, that’s what a newly published paper suggests. Scientists have been watching this particular stand of cacti — known for their height (up to 20 feet) and brown hairlike puffball they grow around their flowers — since the 1990s.

At the time, researchers determined that a two-acre patch in John Pennekamp State Park was the only population in the U.S. of Pilosocereus millspaughii, an offshoot from the larger Caribbean population of the cactus. But as of last year, the very last of the bunch is gone. And researchers believe sea level rise was the main culprit — rising tides and groundwater turning the soil too salty for the plant to survive. It appears this local extinction (also known as extirpation) could be the first climate-driven demise of a species in the United States.

“As far as we know, from any published research we can find, this is the first case we can find,” same James Lange, lead botanist with Fairchild Tropical Botanical Gardens and co-author of the study, which was published Tuesday in the Journal of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas. “It was tragic to see as we monitored this over the years,” he said. “It was a big, old beautiful plant, one of the things that makes the Keys unique. And we’ve lost it.”

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/environment/climate-change/article289915489.html#storylink=cpy

Categories DeSantis, Environment, Florida, Stupid

Florida: Textbook Authors Told to Delete References to Climate Change

By dianeravitch
July 11, 2024 //
21

Leslie Postal of the Orlando Sentinel reports that Florida’s Department of Education has warned textbook authors to delete references to climate change, although some apparently are getting through. This is especially egregious since Florida is one of the states most threatened by climate change.

She writes:

Textbook authors were told last month that some references to “climate change” must be removed from science books before they could be accepted for use in Florida’s public schools, according to two of those authors.

A high school biology book also had to add citations to back up statements that “human activity” caused climate change and cut a “political statement” urging governments to take action to stop climate change, said Ken Miller, the co-author of that textbook and a professor emeritus of biology at Brown University.

Both Miller and a second author who asked not to be identified told the Orlando Sentinel they learned of the state-directed changes from their publishers, who received phone calls in June from state officials.

Miller, also president of the board of the National Center for Science Education, said the phrase “climate change” was not removed from his high school biology text, which he assumed happened because climate change is mentioned in Florida’s academic standards for biology courses. [Note: The state standards for science were adopted in 2008, before DeSantis was elected Governor.]

But according to his publisher, a 90-page section on climate change was removed from its high school chemistry textbook and the phrase was removed from middle school science books, he said.

The other author said he was told Florida wanted publishers to remove “extraneous information” not listed in state standards. “They asked to take out phrases such as climate change,” he added.

The actions seemed to echo Florida’s previous rejection of math and social studies textbooks that state officials claimed include passages of “indoctrination” and “ideological rhetoric.” And they fall in line with the views of many GOP leaders, who question both the existence of climate change and the contributions of human activities to the problem, despite a broad scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is transforming the earth’s environment.

In May, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that stripped the phrase “climate change” from much of Florida law, reversing 16 years of state policy and, critics said, undermining Florida’s support of renewable and clean energy…

But there are no textbooks for high school environmental science classes on the approved list, though three companies submitted bids to supply books for that class, according to documents on the department’s website. Course material for that subject typically includes significant discussion of climate change.

“How do you write an environmental science book to appease people who are opposed to climate change?” asked a school district science supervisor, who is involved in science textbook adoption for her district. She asked not to be identified for fear of job repercussions.

She and other educators, the textbook authors and science advocates said the state’s actions will rob students of a deeper understanding of global warming even as it impacts their state and communities through longer and hotter heat waves, more ferocious storms and sea level rise.

Florida had already earned a D — and was among the five lowest-ranked states in the country — in a 2020 study that graded the states on how their public school science standards addressed climate change, said Glenn Branch, deputy director of the center for science education, which was a partner in the study.

Is there a grade lower than F? F-?

Categories Censorship, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida, Science, Stupid

Florida: School Board Bans Book about Banning Books!

By dianeravitch
June 27, 2024 //
9

At what point does Florida go from the absurd to the ridiculous? Or has that point already been passed? A school board in Florida voted to ban a book called Ban This Book.

I wish someone would explain to school board members, to Moms Restricting Liberty, and to Governor Ron DeSantis that whenever a book is banned, that book gets national notoriety and a big sales bump. Authors are thinking, “Please ban my book,” it needs publicity, and yahoos oblige.

Scott Maxwell, columnist for the Orlando Sentinel, writes:

The headline that made its way around the world last week looked like a joke:

“Florida school board bans book about book bans”

The story couldn’t have been more meta. Or more Florida. I half-hoped it was satire, but having covered Florida’s increasingly ridiculous education priorities in recent years, knew it wasn’t.

The Tallahassee Democrat explained that the Indian River County School Board voted 3-to-2 to ban a book called “Ban This Book.”

The book is a lighthearted yet poignant tale about a 9-year-old girl named Amy Anne Ollinger who, upon learning that her school is trying to censor books, decides to fight back by cultivating her own secret library in her school locker. It’s part comedy and part thought-provoker. Some of the book focuses on how Amy Anne doesn’t always go about things the right way.

A promotional blurb for the book says: “Ban This Book is a love letter to the written word and its power to give kids a voice.” Publishers Weekly said it celebrates “kids’ power to effect change.”

To that end, I have a new proposal for Florida’s book-banners: Before pushing to censor any book, you have to first actually read it and then prove you understood it. In this case, “Ban This Book” was written for 8-to-12-year-olds. So you might need to put on your thinking cap.

The story in Indian River got even more ridiculous when it revealed that virtually all the censorship stemmed from one person — a Moms for (so-called) Liberty member who objected to books by everyone from Toni Morrison to Kurt Vonnegut.

“She also got ‘Anne Frank’s Diary: The Graphic Adaptation’ pulled from a high school,” the story said. “And, in response to her objection to a children’s book that showed the bare behind of a goblin, the school district drew clothes over it.”

OK, let’s stop here. If you’re a grown adult whose crowning accomplishments are to censor a book about the Holocaust, ban a book on book-banning and draw cartoon underpants on a cartoon goblin, then to paraphrase Jeff Foxworthy: You might be an idiot.

So this is my plea today to my fellow Floridians during an election year: Stop electing idiots. Specifically, stop electing them to school boards.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Extremism, Florida, Freedom to Read, Literacy, Stupid

Texas: School District Votes to Delete Textbook Chapters on Climate Change, Cultural Diversity, Vaccines

By dianeravitch
June 18, 2024 //
37

The school board of the Cypress-Fairbanks district (Cy-Fair) in Texas voted to delete chapters they didn’t like from textbooks in science. Science teachers in the district were taken aback.

Cy-Fair is located in the Houston suburbs and is one of the largest districts in the state.

Elizabeth Sander of The Houston Chronicle wrote:

The former science coordinator at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD was “appalled” as she watched the conservative stronghold on the school board vote to remove 13 chapters from science, health and education textbooks last month, scrapping in just minutes countless hours of work done by both state and local textbook review committees.

“Chapters are not independent entities. They’re put in an order purposefully, and they build off of prior knowledge, and they reference information in prior areas,” said Debra Hill, who has 40 years of experience in science education. “It’s like saying, ‘I’m going to take off the chapter on adding and subtracting, and we’ll just skip ahead to multiplication.’”

The material that was deleted will be covered by state tests.

One Cy Falls High School teacher, who served on the review committee for the earth systems course materials, has filed a grievance with the board that will be discussed at Thursday’s board workshop, according to information shared on social media by Trustee Julie Hinaman, the lone opposing vote on removing the chapters. Critics question whether students will get all the information the state intends — and will test for — in a last-minute effort to replace the materials. 

The earth science textbook had three entire chapters removed, titled, “Earth Systems and Cycles,” “Mineral and Energy Resources” and “Climate and Climate Change.”

Other content removed from the textbooks included chapters on cultural diversity, vaccines, COVID-19 and climate change. Courses impacted include education, health science, biology and environmental science.

Cy-Fair ISD’s Chief Academic Officer Linda Macias assured board members when they made the vote in May that it would be possible for their curriculum staff to make these changes, even as the staff has been slashed in budget cuts for the 2024-2025 school year. 

But Hill isn’t so sure it will actually be possible for Cy-Fair teachers to teach the required Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills next year, she said. 

Creating a new curriculum is hard enough, and the district must also provide students with materials that pertain to every single science TEK, she said. Cy-Fair’s curriculum staff and other educators may be responsible for creating their own textbook pages to replace the ones that were deleted, a process that could take countless hours outside of instruction that could drive teachers from the profession altogether, she said.

Plus, Hill hasn’t seen any clarity on who would approve the new instructional materials. The board could theoretically reject new chapters created by the district if it included too much of the type of climate change material that the deleted textbook chapters covered, Hill worried.

“If you want to drive teachers out of education, this is what you should do to them,” she said. “I am just very afraid that students are not going to get access to accurate, TEKS-aligned content.”

Last month, the school board voted to eliminate discussions of vaccines and other topics, while cutting the budget and eliminating 600 positions.

More than a dozen chapters including content on vaccines, cultural diversity, climate change, depopulation and other topics deemed controversial by conservative Cypress-Fairbanks ISD trustees will be removed from textbooks in the state’s third largest school system for the 2024-2025 school year.

Trustees voted 6-1 late Monday to omit the material, after an hourslong discussion about a $138 million budget deficit that is forcing the district to eliminate 600 positions, including 42 curriculum coaches, dozens of librarians and 278 teaching positions.

What were the school board members thinking? Did they think if you don’t teach about climate change, it doesn’t exist?

Who will remove the chapters? Will the publisher? Will teachers cut them out of the textbooks? Will they paste the pages together?

A big thank-you to Trustee Julie Hinaman, who believes in education, not censorship or indoctrination.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Environment, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read, History, Ignorance, Stupid, Texas

Why the British Don’t Like Trump: His Character, Not His Politics

By dianeravitch
May 18, 2024 //
27

Writing in the London Daily, Nate White explains why the British don’t like Donald Trump. It’s not his politics; the Brits have elected conservative politicians repeatedly. It’s him they don’t like: his character, personality, and essence.

White writes:

A few things spring to mind. Trump lacks certain qualities which the British traditionally esteem. For instance, he has no class, no charm, no coolness, no credibility, no compassion, no wit, no warmth, no wisdom, no subtlety, no sensitivity, no self-awareness, no humility, no honour and no grace – all qualities, funnily enough, with which his predecessor Mr. Obama was generously blessed. So for us, the stark contrast does rather throw Trump’s limitations into embarrassingly sharp relief. 

Plus, we like a laugh. And while Trump may be laughable, he has never once said anything wry, witty or even faintly amusing – not once, ever. I don’t say that rhetorically, I mean it quite literally: not once, not ever. And that fact is particularly disturbing to the British sensibility – for us, to lack humour is almost inhuman. But with Trump, it’s a fact. He doesn’t even seem to understand what a joke is – his idea of a joke is a crass comment, an illiterate insult, a casual act of cruelty. 

Trump is a troll. And like all trolls, he is never funny and he never laughs; he only crows or jeers. And scarily, he doesn’t just talk in crude, witless insults – he actually thinks in them. His mind is a simple bot-like algorithm of petty prejudices and knee-jerk nastiness. 

There is never any under-layer of irony, complexity, nuance or depth. It’s all surface. Some Americans might see this as refreshingly upfront. Well, we don’t. We see it as having no inner world, no soul. And in Britain we traditionally side with David, not Goliath. All our heroes are plucky underdogs: Robin Hood, Dick Whittington, Oliver Twist. Trump is neither plucky, nor an underdog. He is the exact opposite of that. He’s not even a spoiled rich-boy, or a greedy fat-cat. He’s more a fat white slug. A Jabba the Hutt of privilege.

And worse, he is that most unforgivable of all things to the British: a bully. That is, except when he is among bullies; then he suddenly transforms into a snivelling sidekick instead. There are unspoken rules to this stuff – the Queensberry rules of basic decency – and he breaks them all. He punches downwards – which a gentleman should, would, could never do – and every blow he aims is below the belt. He particularly likes to kick the vulnerable or voiceless – and he kicks them when they are down.

So the fact that a significant minority – perhaps a third – of Americans look at what he does, listen to what he says, and then think ‘Yeah, he seems like my kind of guy’ is a matter of some confusion and no little distress to British people, given that:

• Americans are supposed to be nicer than us, and mostly are.

• You don’t need a particularly keen eye for detail to spot a few flaws in the man. 

This last point is what especially confuses and dismays British people, and many other people too; his faults seem pretty bloody hard to miss. After all, it’s impossible to read a single tweet, or hear him speak a sentence or two, without staring deep into the abyss. He turns being artless into an art form; he is a Picasso of pettiness; a Shakespeare of shit. His faults are fractal: even his flaws have flaws, and so on ad infinitum. God knows there have always been stupid people in the world, and plenty of nasty people too. But rarely has stupidity been so nasty, or nastiness so stupid. He makes Nixon look trustworthy and George W look smart. In fact, if Frankenstein decided to make a monster assembled entirely from human flaws – he would make a Trump.

And a remorseful Doctor Frankenstein would clutch out big clumpfuls of hair and scream in anguish: ‘My God… what… have… I… created?’ If being a twat was a TV show, Trump would be the boxed set.

Categories Character, Cruelty, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Stupid, Trump

Jim Hightower: George Orwell Would Understand the Texas GOP: Mean and Crazy

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2024 //
6

Jim Hightower is an old-fashioned Texas liberal. He tries to understand what’s happened to his state in his blog. The GOP is just plain mean and crazy.

He writes:

If you think the GOP’s Congress of Clowns represents the fringiest, freakiest, pack of politicos that MAGA-world can hurl at us – you haven’t been to Texas.

It’s widely known, of course, that Ted Cruz, Greg Abbott, and most other top Republican officials here are obsequious Trump acolytes. Thus, Texas is infamously racing against Florida to be declared the stupidest, meanest, most-repressive state government in America, constantly making demonic attacks on women’s freedom, immigrants, voting rights, public schools, poor people, and so on. But I’m confident Texas will win this race to the bottom for one big reason: GOP crazy runs extraordinarily deep here.

We have a county-level layer of ultra-MAGA cultists constantly pressing the state’s far-right officials to march all the way to the farthest edge of extremism – then leap into absurdity. Therefore, the party officially supports abolishment of labor unions, elimination of the minimum wage, privatization of social security, legalization of machine guns, and… well, you get the drift. Now, though, local mad-dog Trumpistas are pushing their party straight into the abyss of autocracy by declaring war on H-E-B.

What’s that? H-E-B is a Texas chain of supermarkets beloved in communities throughout the state. “Beloved,” because the stores fully embrace the rich diversity of all people in our state, has affordable prices, values employees, and supports community needs.

Nonetheless, county Republican zealots screech that H-E-B violates their party ideology by accepting food stamps, opposing privatization of schools, and (horrors!) sponsoring some LBGTQ pride events. So, they’re demanding official condemnation of the grocery chain for – GET THIS – “advocating for policies contrary to the Republican Party of Texas platform.”

Yes, violating the party platform is to be criminalized. It’s the reincarnation of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: Be MAGA… or else.

Categories BATS, Bigotry, Billionaires, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom to Read, Guns, Ignorance, Insane, Privatization, Racism, Republicans, Stupid, Texas

North Carolina: Top GOP Candidates Are Extremists

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2024 //
6

North Carolina has a serious problem. Its GOP has controlled the state since 2010, despite having a Democratic Governor for 8 years, who was made powerless by the legislature (General Assembly).

The GOP that swept the state in 2010 was Tea Party. But the top three GOP candidates in 2024—for governor, for attorney general, for state superintendent—are radical extremists. Not just MAGA, but QAnon batshit crazy.

Chris Seward of the Raleigh News & Observer wrote:

The woman who would take charge of K-12 education in this state has addressed her noxious trail of online posts — including calls to, you know, kill people — by not addressing them.

Ask the Republican nominee for state superintendent of public instruction, Michele Morrow, whether and, if so, why she would write such things and she seems irked that it should matter.

For instance, when confronted by a CNN reporter following a recent Wake County GOP event, Morrow deflected repeated questions about social media posts such as the one suggesting the execution of Barack Obama by firing squad on pay-per-view TV.

“Have a good night,” she said….

Meanwhile, Morrow is fueling her campaign with rhetoric that accused the state’s public schools of teaching “political and sexual and racially explicit stuff that’s poisoning our children’s minds and keeping them from getting a good education.”

Uh, maybe it’s only us, but calls to shoot people with whom you disagree seems a lot more harmful to our young children than teaching them that slavery was a bad thing.

Then again, CNN did ambush Morrow with a microphone and a camera.

Maybe in a friendlier environment, say, on the March 25 podcast of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, she finally could explain herself and put this issue to rest once and for all?

She did, however, describe her Democratic opponent, former Guilford County Schools Superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green, as “the farthest left, extreme candidate they (Democrats) have ever thought about putting out for superintendent.”

She warned gravely: “Our state will be unrecognizable” if Green is elected.

Surely, the state GOP establishment has issues with Morrow’s over-the-edge pronouncements and provocations?

House Speaker Tim Moore, soon to take a seat in Congress in a gerrymandered district, addressed Morrow’s controversies with what probably will become a boilerplate response.

“I certainly wouldn’t have made those comments,” Moore said Wednesday.

Moore added that he plans to “support all the Republican nominees for office, and voters have to make up their own mind on what you think is a good choice for that office.”

Describing himself as a “good loyal, fellow Republican,” Moore said, “I’m going to vote for the Republican nominees for office.”

Translation: Yes, it’s a bad thing to endorse killing people. But if a Republican does it, Moore will support him or her for the good of the team.

That’s obviously the case as well with the state’s most powerful Republican, Senate leader Phil Berger. Berger earlier endorsed the GOP nominee for governor, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, who has posted or spoken out loud a veritable smorgasbord of offensive references to Jews, Muslims, Black people and the LGBTQ community.

“I just think he’s got a good head on his shoulders,” Berger said in November.

In fact, Robinson and Morrow have attracted so much attention that another GOP candidate vying for statewide office, Dan Bishop, has gone relatively unnoticed in his bid for attorney general.

Bishop, a sitting member of Congress, voted against certifying Joe Biden’s victories in Arizona and Pennsylvania. Bishop also opposed the debt-ceiling and budget deals former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy made with Democrats.

Before that, as a member of the General Assembly, Bishop sponsored HB 2, the “bathroom bill” that required transgender people to use public bathrooms matching the gender on their birth certificates. The bill, which also banned local anti-discrimination ordinances, cost the state’s economy an estimated $525 million in revenue from canceled business projects and sports and entertainments events before lawmakers partially repealed it.

Now he could become the head of the state’s Department of Justice.

What all of this means is that the norms have shifted in the Republican Party.

With the likes of Robinson, Bishop and Morrow on the Nov. 5 ballot, the GOP nominee for state superintendent may be right about at least one thing: Our state could be “unrecognizable” … not if they lose, but if they win.

We’ve got 99 problems in North Carolina, and Michele Morrow is only one of them.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Ignorance, Insane, North Carolina, Stupid

Dana Milbank: Trump Forgot But We Should Not

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2024 //
16

Dana Milbank, columnist for The Washington Post, wrote that Trump is counting on voters to forget how chaotic it was when he was President. Even now, we are daily inundated with the chaos that, as Nikki Haley said, always follows in Trump’s wake.

Milbank reminds us of the character of the man who would be President again or dictator for a day:

The Very Stable Genius is glitching again.
This week, he announced that he is not — repeat, NOT — planning to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He apparently forgot that he had vowed over and over again to do exactly that, saying as recently as a few months ago that Republicans “should never give up” on efforts to “terminate” Obamacare.

“I’m not running to terminate the ACA, AS CROOKED JOE BUDEN DISINFORMATES AND MISINFORMATES ALL THE TIME,” the Republican nominee wrote this week on his Truth Social platform. Rather, he said, he wants to make Obamacare better for “OUR GREST AMERICAN CITIZENS.”

Joe Buden disinformates and misinformates? For a guy trying to make an issue of his opponent’s mental acuity, this was not, shall we say, a grest look.

The previous day, Trump held a news conference where he nailed some equally puzzling planks onto his platform.

“We’ll bring crime back to law and order,” he announced.

Also: “We just had Super Tuesday, and we had a Tuesday after a Tuesday already.”

And, most peculiar of all: “You can’t have an election in the middle of a political season.”

If he can’t recall that elections frequently do overlap with political seasons, then he surely can’t be expected to remember what was happening at this point in 2020. “ARE YOU BETTER OFF THAN YOU WERE FOUR YEARS AGO?” he asked last week. The poor fellow must have forgotten all about the economic collapse and his administration’s catastrophic bungling of the pandemic.

Or maybe he didn’t forget. Maybe he’s just hoping the rest of us will forget. In a sense, Trump’s prospects for 2024 rely on Americans experiencing mass memory loss: Will we forget just how crazy things were when he was in the White House? And will we forget about the even crazier things he has said he would do if he gets back there?

This week, the Supreme Court heard arguments from antiabortion forces who want to ban mifepristone, the pill used in about 60 percent of abortions. But just as the justices were taking up the case, Trump’s own proposal to ban the abortion pill vanished.

The Heritage Foundation-run Project 2025, to which Trump has unofficially outsourced policymaking for a second term, said that a “glitch” had caused its policies — including those embracing a mifepristone ban — to disappear from its website. The Biden campaign said it was “calling BS on Trump and his allies’ shameless attempt to hide their agenda,” and the missing documents returned — including the language calling abortion pills “the single greatest threat to unborn children” and vowing to withdraw regulatory approval for the drugs.

About seven in 10 Americans believe the abortion pill should be legal. So it’s easy to see why Trump might wish to erase his plan to ban the pill — just as he would like to erase his calls for the repeal of Obamacare, which has the support of 6 in 10 Americans.

The extremism isn’t just at Project 2025, stocked with former Trump advisers. The House Republican Study Committee, which counts 80 percent of House Republicans as members, put out a budget last week that would rescind approval of mifepristone, dismantle the “failed Obamacare experiment” and embrace a nationwide abortion ban from the moment of conception.

Trump and some vulnerable congressional Republicans might wish that Americans will forget such things by November. But it’s all there in black and white.

Trump is a man of greatness. So says Trump. “It is my great honor to be at Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach tonight, AWARDS NIGHT, to receive the CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY & THE SENIOR CLUB CHAMPIONSHIP TROPHY,” he proclaimed over the weekend. “I WON BOTH!

So much winning. “Congratulations, Donald,” President Biden tweeted. “Quite the accomplishment.”

Trump won a more significant victory on Monday, when an appellate panel reduced the bond he needs to post as he appeals a fraud verdict against him to $175 million from $454 million. Trump didn’t have enough cash to secure the larger bond. But at a news conference he assured reporters that he was still really, really rich: “I have a lot of money … I don’t need to borrow money. I have a lot of money. … I have a lot of cash. … I have a lot of cash and a great company. … I have very low debt. … I built a phenomenal company that’s very low leverage, unbelievably low leverage with a lot of cash, a lot of everything else.”

Give that man another trophy.

Trump seemed particularly hurt that the judge in the fraud case valued Mar-a-Lago at $18 million, he said, when “half of the living room is worth more than that. So it’s worth anywhere from 50 to 100 times that amount.”

Give that man $1.8 billion for Mar-a-Lago, and another trophy.

Actually, Trump’s supporters have already given him about $5 billion this week — at least on paper — for doing nothing at all. His Truth Social went public, and even though it had a loss of $49 million in the first nine months of 2023 on revenue of just $3.4 million, it was valued at more than $8 billion. That’s because Trump’s fans, wanting a piece of the action, bid up the price. The stock in the company will almost certainly collapse. The only question is whether Trump can unload his shares before then (he’s supposed to keep them for six months) and leave his supporters once again holding the bag.

Trump uses Truth Social to post doctored articles about him that omit negative details, and now he’s making up stuff about Truth Social. He said he didn’t list the company on the New York Stock Exchange because it would be “treated too badly in New York” by Democratic officeholders. So he instead listed the company on Nasdaq, which is based in … New York. Trump said the “top person” at the NYSE “is mortified. … He said, ‘I’m losing business.’ ” As CNN pointed out, neither the president nor the chair of the exchange is a “he.”

Trump must not have a lot of faith that he’ll make off with his billions before the Truth Social bubble bursts, because he’s actively seeking other ways to grift. This week he started hawking bibles.

“Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again,” Trump posted. “As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless the USA Bible.” He directed his supporters to a website selling the Good Book for $59.99 a copy.

The website boasts: “Yes, this is the only Bible endorsed by President Trump!” Read on and you find out that the bible mongers are using Trump’s name and likeness “under paid license from CIC Ventures LLC,” a company owned by Trump.
Trump is getting kickbacks for selling the gospel — marketing God the same way he sold Trump-branded “Never Surrender High-Tops” sneakers last month for $399 a pair and, before that, digital trading cards showing Trump as a superhero.

“All Americans need a Bible in their home, and I have many. It’s my favorite book,” Trump said in the video promoting his new bible hustle.
Trump has an arms-length relationship with the Bible, which he brandished outside a church near Lafayette Square after protesters were dispersed with tear gas; he once referred to a passage from Second Corinthians as “Two Corinthians” and, at another point, couldn’t come up with a favorite Bible verse.

But the man does have a God complex. His campaign has promoted a video at rallies announcing that “God Gave us Trump.” He has called himself “the chosen one” and has shared a post calling him “the second greatest” after Jesus.

This week, Trump shared another post with a verse from Psalms, topped by a message likening Trump’s suffering in the fraud case to the Crucifixion: “It’s ironic that Christ walked through His greatest persecution the very week they are trying to steal your property from you,” the message said, along with Trump’s reply: “Beautiful, thank you!”

A crucial difference, however, is that Jesus was not facing a trial over hush money paid to a porn actress. The judge in that case, Juan Merchan, said the trial will begin on April 15. Trump responded to this news by attacking the judge because his daughter works for a Democratic consulting firm. The judge slapped a gag order on Trump blocking him from harassing jurors and people who work for the judge or for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and their families. Trump responded with another attack on the judge and his daughter (who weren’t included in the gag order). Merchan is “suffering from an acute case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Trump said of the judge, postulating that “maybe the Judge is such a hater because his daughter makes money by working to ‘Get Trump.’”

If there is a trophy for pretrial self-sabotage, Trump wins that one, too.

Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican Party grew yet tighter this week. The Post’s Josh Dawsey reported that those seeking employment at the Republican National Committee have been asked during job interviews whether they believe the 2020 election was stolen. (The correct answer, from the RNC’s perspective, is “Hell yes.”)

Trump daughter-in-law Lara Trump, installed as RNC co-chair this month as part of a pro-Trump purge, this week brought Scott Presler to party headquarters. “Exciting things to come!” she promised. No doubt: Presler was on the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, promotes QAnon conspiracy ideas, planned “stop the steal” events, and organized “March Against Sharia” protests in his work for an anti-Islam group.
As for the Trump effort to win over disenchanted Nikki Haley voters, Shane Goldmacher and Maggie Haberman report in the New York Times that he has opted to “bypass any sort of reconciliation” with her. Said former Trump adviser Steve Bannon: “Screw Nikki Haley — we don’t need her endorsement.”

But the MAGA takeover goes far deeper than personnel. Consider the wild conspiracy theories that came from the Trump crowd right after a massive cargo ship lost power and struck Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, collapsing it. “Is this an intentional attack or an accident?” asked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), demanding an investigation. Fox’s Maria Bartiromo invited speculation about the “potential for foul play given the wide-open border.” Others blamed racial-diversity policies.
Nothing shows the thoroughness of the MAGA takeover of the GOP as well as the House’s Republican Study Committee budget. The group is the GOP mainstream now, counting some 172 of the 218 House Republicans as members, including many from swing districts and five — Juan Ciscomani and David Schweikert (Ariz.), Mike Garcia (Calif.), Don Bacon (Neb.) and Brandon Williams (N.Y.) from districts Biden won.

Yet here the RSC is, embracing a nationwide abortion ban without exceptions; a ban on the abortion pill, an increase in the retirement age for Social Security; defunding the police (through cuts to the Community Oriented Policing Services program); ending Amtrak funding and selling it off; eliminating broadband provided by the Affordable Connectivity Program; and blocking the “red flag” provisions that keep guns from dangerous people.

This is what Republicans will do next year if Trump wins the White House and Republicans control Congress. Don’t forget it.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, For-Profit, Republicans, Stupid, Trump

Justice RBG’s Family Objects to Awards in Her Name as an Insult to Her Legacy

By dianeravitch
March 16, 2024 //
19

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg’s adult children objected to the selection of people chosen to receive an award named for her. The five honorees included four men, although Justice Ginsberg wanted the award to be bestowed on women who had made outstanding contributions.

The New York Times reported:

When Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of liberal causes whose advocacy of women’s rights catapulted her to pop culture fame, helped establish a leadership award in 2019, she said she intended to celebrate “women who exemplify human qualities of empathy and humility.”

But this year, four of the recipients are men, including Elon Musk, the tech entrepreneur who frequently lobs tirades at perceived critics; Rupert Murdoch, the business magnate whose empire gave rise to conservative media; and Michael Milken, the face of corporate greed in the 1980s who served nearly two years in prison. It has prompted family members and close colleagues of Justice Ginsburg to demand that her name be removed from the honor, commonly called the R.B.G. Award.

In a statement, her daughter, Jane C. Ginsburg, a law professor at Columbia University, said the choice of winners this year was “an affront to the memory of our mother.”

“The justice’s family wish to make clear that they do not support using their mother’s name to celebrate this year’s slate of awardees, and that the justice’s family has no affiliation with and does not endorse these awards,” Ms. Ginsburg said….

In the past, the award was called the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Woman of Leadership Award. This year, the award will be bestowed by the Dwight D. Opperman Foundation on one woman and four men. The foundation said it wanted to honor gender equality.

The recipients, who also include the businesswoman Martha Stewart and the actor Sylvester Stallone, will receive the Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg Leadership Award in April at the Library of Congress, where there is typically a ceremony and gala…

Reflecting on the awards, Justice Ginsburg’s son pointed to the timing of the announcement.

“Today would have been Mom’s 91st birthday,” said James S. Ginsburg, the founder of Cedille Records, a classical music recording company. “So it would be a perfect day to correct the record on this insult to her name and legacy.”

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Gender, Injustice, Stupid
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