Louisiana: Attacks on Librarians Intensify and Inspire Fear and Courage

By dianeravitch
June 23, 2024 //
4

Governor Ron DeSantis unleashed a rightwing barrage against school libraries and public libraries, and even he has backed off (a bit) as a small number of angry censors, led by groups like Moms for Liberty, have barraged librarians with demands for censorship. These “Moms” don’t want “Liberty”; they want to impose their views on others.

Sarah Ravits of the Gambit in Louisiana describes the intense attacks on libraries and librarians, by groups whose purpose is to restrict access to books they don’t like.

She writes:

Amanda Jones never thought of herself as a controversial person.

A beloved librarian in a small, tight-knit South Louisiana community, she’d earned numerous awards for her commitment to education over the years, including the coveted National School Librarian of the Year honor in 2021.

“I had a rock-solid relationship with my community, and I was in good standing,” she says. “I grew up here, and I devote so much time to my school, community and children.”

But her life took a sudden, bizarre turn in 2022 when she spoke at a public library board meeting.

During a heated discussion about whether a local library should restrict access to certain books for teenagers, Jones echoed what many educators have been saying for years.

Challenges to books are often “done with the best of intentions,” but frequently target the Black and LGBTQ communities, she said. Removing or relocating those books could be “extremely harmful to our most vulnerable — our children. Just because you don’t want to read it or see it does not give you the right to deny [it to] others.”

Jones certainly wasn’t the lone, dissenting voice that evening — she says at least 30 other people in attendance expressed similar sentiments.

But the next day she found herself being viciously targeted in a smear campaign by the ultra-conservative nonprofit Citizens for a New Louisiana, and the Facebook account Bayou State of Mind.

“They made memes about me and posted my picture and where I work,” Jones told Gambit. “They said that I advocate for teaching anal sex and that I want to give 6-year-olds pornography and erotica.”

As false and ridiculous as the claims were, they took off like wildfire across the internet and spilled over into everyday life as Jones, her family and her colleagues were bombarded with threatening messages and phone calls, including from people who said they were going to kill her.

Jones, terrified and suffering from severe mental distress, eventually took a medical leave of absence…

Right-wing activists have led efforts nationwide to attack books while targeting libraries and their workers. That, in turn, has led Republicans enthralled to these radical interests to push legislation forwarding their agenda in states across the country.

The war against libraries has been felt especially hard in Louisiana, where multiple parishes have become engulfed in legal and political battles centered around book censorship…

While some of the most egregious bills failed to even make it out of legislative committees, these efforts have nonetheless had a chilling effect on library workers.

One librarian in the New Orleans area, who spoke to Gambit under condition of anonymity, says they are “disillusioned and annoyed,” by the implication that librarians distribute obscene materials.

“I’m not a criminal,” the librarian says. “My job is to provide people with good information….”

Adding to librarians’ frustrations is the fact that book challengers often take passages wildly out of context, and it takes already-strained library board members and workers months to fully audit books after they’ve been challenged.

In St. Tammany Parish, for example, more than 150 books were challenged last year, according to the Louisiana Illuminator.

Going after so many books at once was a clear tactic to overwhelm librarians, who are required to produce reports on each book called into question. For every complaint, the library’s policy was to pull the book from circulation and refer it to a committee for review. Eventually, the number of challenged books was so high the library created a policy that it will not pull books from shelves while they are under review.

Many of the complaints came from just a handful of activists who don’t even have library cards or kids who use the library. In fact, in many states these complaints aren’t even coming from people who live in the state, let alone the local community…

Some of those involved passing legislation to bring criminal charges to librarians, which passed in fellow red states like Arkansas, West Virginia and Missouri.

The Arkansas law, for example, states school and public librarians can be sentenced up to six years in prison for distributing “obscene” or “harmful” material to students under 18.

That law, however, is currently blocked by a federal judge…

Then there are the ongoing attempts by the Legislature to discredit the American Library Association, considered to be the top professional library association, by blasting it as being too “woke” and “Marxist.”

One particularly shocking bill, authored by Livingston Parish Republican Rep. Kellee Dickerson, sought to imprison public librarians with hard labor and slap them with huge fines if they dared to get reimbursed for attending ALA conferences.

“If you’re going to put librarians in jail for even trying to associate with (their) profession’s national organization, that kinda gives away the game,” says one of the librarians Gambit spoke with…

Some of the more problematic bills, like throwing librarians in jail for attending the ALA conferences with public funds, died immediately in committee….

Then there are everyday citizens who have joined the fight to stand up for librarians and books.

Lisa Rustemeyer, a semi-retired mother of grown children in St. Tammany Parish, has become an activist in recent months.

Rustemeyer previously never thought she’d see public libraries being targeted, and said she felt a “gut instinct” to stand up when she saw they were under fire.

Lately she has found herself writing letters, making phone calls, attending public meetings and urging legislators to reconsider their bills.

Rustemeyer says she has always turned to libraries during “tough times,” while looking for answers, or simply for entertainment. “It’s where you meet other people and see your neighbors,” she says. “Libraries represent democracy and free speech.”

The way she sees it, dismantling and undermining public trust in libraries is a step toward dismantling and undermining trust in democracy itself.

“This doesn’t really come from a logical place,” she says. “(Lawmakers) are not scared of guns, but they’re scared of books? There’s no logic in it, which makes it infuriating. There’s no evidence that any kid has ever been harmed by a book. And here we are at the bottom of literacy, we’re at the bottom in (education) for as long as I can remember. We should not take award-winning books out of the hands of children. That is insane….”

Amanda Jones, meanwhile, has decided to double down on her advocacy work.

While the groups who targeted her expected Jones to be a shrinking violet, she says her commitment to literacy and free speech has only grown stronger.

“I was a hot mess for about a year, and then I decided to make lemonade out of lemons,” she says. “Screw them … No one wants to be famous for being defamed and called a groomer.”

Because she was already well-known in the library world, she says she has decided to share her story far and wide.

“I decided I wanted to tell my story, speak out and try to help other people know, they can also speak out,” she says.

What helps motivate her, she says, is that moment most librarians can probably relate to: when a book resonates with a new reader.

Jones calls it a “home run” moment.

“When you put a book in a kid’s hand, and it becomes their ‘home run’ book — it’s when you hook them into reading,” she explains. “And you know that because they read that book, they’re going to read one or two more, and then become a lifelong reader.”

She has seen it happen over and over throughout her career.

She says, “Every student deserves to see themselves reflected in the characters on our shelves.”

Categories Censorship, Extremism, Freedom to Read, Librarians, Libraries, Literacy

Louisiana Requires “10 Commandments” in Every Public School Classroom

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2024 //
67

Louisiana became the first state to enact a law requiring that the “Ten Commandments” be displayed in every public school classroom. Others have proposed such laws, but they didn’t pass. Governor Jeff Landry, who is Catholic, signed the law in a Catholic school, which is somewhat strange since the law applies only to public schools.

The New York Times reports that the bill is part of a larger agenda to turn the U.S. into an explicitly Christian nation. Despite the fact that the Founders wrote extensively against religion controlling the state and said in the Constitution that there could be no religious test for office-holders, the religious right continues to shove their religion—and only their religion—on everyone else

The crowd at Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School in Lafayette, La., applauded Gov. Jeff Landry as he signed bill after bill this week on public education in the state, making it clear he believed God was guiding his hand.

One new law requires that transgender students be addressed by the pronouns for the gender on their birth certificates (“God gives us our mark,” he said). Another allows public schools to employ chaplains (“a great step for expanding faith in public schools”).

Then he signed into law a mandate that the Ten Commandments be hung in every public classroom, demonstrating a new willingness for Louisiana to go where other states have not. Last month, Louisiana also became the first state to classify abortion pills as dangerous controlled substances.

“We don’t quit,” Mr. Landry, a Republican, said at the signing ceremony.

Taken together, the measures have signaled the ambition of the governor and the Republican-led Legislature to be at the forefront of a growing national movement to create and interpret laws according to a particular conservative Christian worldview. And Mr. Landry, a Catholic who has been vocal about his faith’s influence in shaping his politics, wants to lead the charge.

It’s ironic to see a Catholic leading the charge, because for many years, the U.S. was strongly anti-Catholic. Governor Landry’s new evangelical allies would not have welcomed him into the country or their tent. Anti-Catholic sentiment was so powerful in the 19th century that most states wrote into their state constitution that no public money could be sent, directly or indirectly, to any religious institution. Thomas Jefferson wrote eloquently about the “separation of church and state.”

“Separation” benefitted both the church and the state, by keeping churches free of government regulation, and by keeping the government free of sectarian meddling. Under our Constitution, everyone is free to practice their religion or no religion, and the state cannot (should not) be used to enforce religious doctrine.

But the goals of the new religious dominionists is to make America “a Christian nation” and to impose their beliefs through law on everyone else, whether they are Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist, atheist, Deist, Unitarian Universalist, Satanists, or any of the hundreds of other religions or sects in this country.

The Ten Commandments is purely symbolic. It’s one step in the plan to outlaw abortion, ban in-vitro fertilization, ban contraception, ban same-sex marriage, criminalize homosexuality, and restore the primacy of the father in families. It is the leading edge in a rightwing putsch to control the government and all of us.

Will posting this religious document solve any problems? Will it reduce crime or promiscuity or adultery? Donald Trump is a philanderer who has broken that commandment.

The Ten Commandments say nothing about abortion or gay rights or the rights of racial minorities or voting rights.

The Ten Commandments are a wish list . We should all strive to be better people. Hanging the Commandments on the wall doesn’t change anyone’s behavior. If they did, they should be hung in every prison cell. Let’s see how that works.

Categories Extremism, Hypocrisy, Louisiana, Religion, Separation of church and state

Dana Milbank: Trump Plays the Fascist Card

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2024 //
14

Dana Milbank calls out Trump for repeatedly sending fascist signals to his base. When Congress holds hearings on anti-Semitism, they should call Trump to testify.

Dana Milbank writes about Trump in The Washington Post:

As you’ve probably heard, Donald Trump has once again raised a führer.

The former president’s Truth Social account posted a video posing the question “What happens after Donald Trump wins?” and providing a possible answer: In the background was the phrase “unified Reich.”

This follows Trump’s echoing Adolf Hitler in campaign speeches, saying that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” and calling his opponents “vermin.”

And that, in turn, followed Trump’s dining at Mar-a-Lago with high-profile antisemite Ye (Kanye West) and white supremacist leader Nick Fuentes, who likened incinerating Jews to baking cookies.

Under the three-Reichs-and-you’re-out rule, Trump should be on the bench. Yet he keeps swinging — and this week provided a sobering measure of how numb we have become to his undeniably fascist rhetoric.

Almost exactly eight years ago, Trump attacked Gonzalo Curiel, then the district judge in the Trump University fraud case, saying that his “Mexican heritage” posed “an inherent conflict of interest.” In the uproar that followed, even Republican leaders were appalled, and then-House Speaker Paul Ryan said Trump’s statement was “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

This week, Trump did almost the same thing when he left court on Tuesday after his defense rested in the Stormy Daniels hush money case. “The judge hates Donald Trump,” he said. “Just take a look. Take a look at him. Take a look at where he comes from.” New York Supreme Court Justice Juan Merchan emigrated from Colombia as a child. But this time there was little outcry from the inured populace, and if Republican leaders had any complaints about Trump’s textbook racism (or on his third Reich moment of this campaign) I must have missed them.

Vilifying migrants is a standard fascist trope. So is the constant claiming of victim status. Trump falsely alleged in a fundraising email this week that his opponent conspired to kill him. “Joe Biden was locked & loaded ready to take me out & put my family in danger” during the FBI’s 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago for missing classified documents, Trump wrote. He separately claimed that Biden’s Justice Department “AUTHORIZED THE FBI TO USE DEADLY (LETHAL) FORCE.” In reality, the FBI took extra precautions to avoid a confrontation by conducting the search when Trump was away and alerted the Secret Service. Agents were operating under the same standard rules of engagement they used when searching Biden’s home: Lethal force can be used only if in “imminent danger of death or serious physical injury.”

Also this week, Trump, asked by Pittsburgh’s KDKA-TV whether he favored restricting Americans’ access to birth control, responded: “We’re looking at that, and I’m going to have a policy on that very shortly.” After the televised interview was broadcast, Trump said the notion that he would advocate restrictions on contraception was “a Democrat fabricated lie.”

That maneuver — floating an outrageous policy and then pretending he had done no such thing — is another tool that Trump routinely uses. After Trump’s Truth Social account shared the video with the slightly-blurred “unified Reich” message during a lunch break in Trump’s trial in New York, his spokeswoman claimed the video had been “created by a random account online and reposted by a staffer who clearly did not see the word, while the president was in court.” The campaign removed the post.

Sound familiar? During the 2016 campaign, Trump tweeted an image that had been used by white supremacists of a Star of David atop a pile of cash. The campaign removed the offending post and Trump said it had been posted by a staffer. He later told a crowd that his aides “shouldn’t have taken it down.”

During that same campaign, Trump also tweeted an image of an American flag containing an image of what appeared to be Nazi Waffen-SS soldiers. The campaign removed this post, too, and blamed an intern.

The disavowal is part of the game, says Jason Stanley, a Yale philosophy professor who specializes in the rhetoric of fascism. “You do it and then you deny it and it’s just systematic, over and over and over again,” he told me in a phone call. “The people who want to hear it hear it, and it signals the direction you want to go in.” And for those uncomfortable with the extremism, the denial provides “a way of lying to themselves and telling themselves this is not what’s really going on.”

But it is. From Nazi Germany to Viktor Orban’s Hungary, Stanley says, people invariably thought the rhetoric of the rising authoritarian was exaggerated and just for dramatic effect. “Historically, people always, always don’t take it seriously,” he said. Perhaps they don’t realize that Trump is deploying the exact same tropes — against migrants, judges, gender nonconforming people, universities, the media, “Marxists” — now being used by autocrats in Russia, India and Hungary. “If you look at what Trump is saying … everywhere in the world the authoritarians are saying that.”

And yet we drift, placidly, into autocracy. Okay, Trump is unifying the Reich. But Biden is so old!

Trump’s fascist rhetoric is supported by an array of authoritarian polices, which he and his campaign have helpfully divulged.

Trump has said that his (false) election fraud claims justify “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” He said he wouldn’t be a dictator, “other than day one,” when he would use absolute power to seal the border and drill for oil. He has proposed that those shoplifting from stores should “fully expect to be shot.” He said he would round up as many as 20 million illegal immigrants and, perhaps, put them in mass deportation camps, taking money from the military if necessary.

He said he would appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” Biden, his family and “all others involved with the destruction of our elections, borders and our country itself.” He said he would order prosecutors to “go down and indict” his political opponents if they are “doing well and beating me” — and he would fire prosecutors who don’t follow such orders. He said he would use the National Guard, and perhaps the regular military, to crack down on protests against him.

He would strip civil service protections so he could replace federal workers with Trump loyalists, and he might take over independent agencies, including the Federal Reserve. He suggested he would change laws to attack what he perceives as “anti-White” bias.

Speaking at the National Rifle Association on Saturday, Trump asked the crowd whether he should “be considered three term or two term?” Several in the crowd shouted out: “Three!”

Earlier this spring, the American Conservative published an article titled “Trump 2028” that argued the 22nd Amendment, which limits a president to two terms, “is an arbitrary restraint on presidents who serve nonconsecutive terms.” The group is part of Project 2025, to which the Trump campaign has informally outsourced its policy planning.

Trump has hinted that he would pardon those sentenced for attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He included in his courtroom entourage this week two convicted felons, Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner he pardoned, and Chuck Zito, a former Hells Angels leader. During testimony, defense witness Robert Costello showed the same sort of contempt for the judge as Trump did outside the courtroom. He rolled his eyes, talked under his breath, called the proceedings “ridiculous” and complained with a “jeez” when he disagreed with Merchan’s ruling.

Trump has promised “retribution” against his political opponents, and outside Trump’s trial this week, his allies amplified the threat. “They fear Donald Trump and they fear what’s going to happen if he becomes president again — and, I tell you, they should fear,” said Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.).

“Yes,” agreed Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Tex.), at his side, wearing a necktie with Trump’s face printed on it.

Trump had one final thing to say before he left the courthouse this week. Just a day after his post about the “unified Reich,” he offered a message for “Jewish people that vote for Biden and the Democrats: They should have their head examined.”

Well, I have had my head examined, and it was found to contain the following memories of things Trump has said and done:

He told his White House chief of staff John Kelly that “Hitler did some good things” and complained that U.S. generals weren’t “totally loyal” to him the way Nazi generals were to Hitler. He spoke of the “very fine people” marching among the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville. He closed out his 2016 campaign with an ad that singled out three prominent Jews with suggestions that they manipulate a “global power structure.” He was reluctant to disavow David Duke or supporters of his who harassed and threatened Jewish journalists. He has shared innumerable messages on social media from white supremacists. He has repeatedly questioned the loyalty of American Jews.

Long ago, Vanity Fair reported that Trump’s ex-wife Ivana said he read from a book of Hitler’s speeches, which he kept in a cabinet by his bed. Trump confirmed that he had the book but denied that he read it. By coincidence or design, there has been a startling overlap in their language of late.

Trump speaks of immigrants “poisoning the blood of our country” and “coming in with disease.” Hitler said that great civilizations died “as a result of contamination of the blood,” and he called Jews “the worst kind of germ-carriers in poisoning human souls.”

Trump calls his political opponents “radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” Hitler called Jews “an inferior race that multiplies like vermin.”

Trump says that “the enemies from within are more dangerous, to me, than the enemies of the outside. Russia and China, we can handle.” Hitler spoke of “the greater inner enemy” and said that when “the internal enemy was not recognized … all efforts to resist the external enemy were bound to be in vain.”

Trump complains that “fake news is all you get, and they are indeed the enemy of the people.” Hitler complained of “the lying Marxist press” and said “the function of the so-called liberal press was to dig the grave for the German people.”

Trump claims that “we’ve never done worse than we’ve done now. … We’re so disrespected. The whole world is laughing at us.” And he warns: “If we don’t win this election, I believe we will no longer have a country.” Hitler claimed that “the Reich had fallen from a height which can hardly be imagined in these days of misery and humiliation.” He warned that “one year of Bolshevism would destroy Germany” and transform it “into chaos and a heap of ruins.”

Trump, at the end of his speeches, likes to say: “We will drive out the globalists. We will cast out the communists, Marxists, fascists. We will throw off the sick political class that hates our country.” Hitler spoke of a “world conspiracy” made up of “Jews and democrats, Bolshevists and reactionaries” and motivated by a “hatred” of Germans.

No, Trump isn’t Hitler, and the 21st century United States isn’t Weimar Germany. But Trump’s words, so obviously ripped from history’s darkest pages, lead no place good. The only thing poisoning the blood of our country is his copycat fascism.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Florida: Three Moms Fight Back against Book Bans

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2024 //
16

According to PEN International, Florida is the state that bans more books than any other state. The state denies that it bans any book, because a controversial book can be obtained from public libraries or bookstores or online. Most of the challenges to books come from a small number of people, often affiliated with the odious Moms for Liberty.

Three mothers in Florida are pushing back against the book banners. They sued the state because it provides support to those who want to ban books, but not to those who oppose the bans. The stories were written by Leslie Postal of The Orlando Sentinel.

Three Florida mothers sued the state Thursday, claiming it violated their First Amendment rights by providing help to parents who want books yanked from public schools but denying that same aid to them when they want to fight school book bans.

“It’s just not fair,” said Stephana Ferrell, an Orange County mother of two and one of the plaintiffs.

The state, she added in a statement, “should not be able to discriminate against the voices of parents they disagree with.”

Two St. Johns County parents are also plaintiffs in the lawsuit filed in federal court in Tallahassee, the latest chapter in the ongoing debate about what books should be available to Florida’s schoolchildren.

The lawsuit argues that “Florida’s leaders only welcome input from those parents advocating for removing books from schools.”

In response to a request for comment on the lawsuit, a spokesperson at the Florida Department of Education said via email, “There are no books banned in Florida. However, sexually explicit material and instruction are not suitable for classrooms.”

At issue is the controversial state law (HB 1069) adopted last year by the Republican-led Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis. It expanded the prior year’s law “parental rights in education law,” which critics dubbed “don’t say gay.”

The law “allowed parents who wanted certain books removed from schools to appeal to the state, if their local school district did not side with them. But the three parents said that when they objected to their school districts’ decisions to remove or to restrict the availability of certain books, they had no recourse.”

Orange County Public Schools, for example, last year decided to remove the book “Shut Up!” by Marilyn Reynolds from all campuses after a parent complained the book, used in a class at Timber Creek High School, was “explicit and pornographic.”

The book deals with child sexual abuse, and the School Library Journal called it a “wise novel” that “is an important addition for any collection serving teens.”

Ferrell, who helped found the Florida Freedom to Read Project to fight school book bans, tried to challenge OCPS’ decision. But both the district, and eventually state Education Commissioner Manny Diaz, denied her request, saying the “state review process” was only for parents who wanted books removed and were unhappy their district did not agree.

Those parents can appeal to the state for a special magistrate to review the school board’s decision. The special magistrate then makes a recommendation to the State Board of Education — made up of DeSantis appointees — and the board then issues a final decision.

If the state board agrees with the parent, the cost of hiring the magistrate must be paid by the school district that had its decision overturned.
The two St. Johns parents objected when their school district last week said only 11th and 12th graders could take out the novel “Slaughterhouse-Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, and several other books, including “The Freedom Writers Diary,” about a high school teacher and her students who “used writing to change themselves and the world around them,” and the memoir by Jaycee Lee Dugard, who was kidnapped at age 11 and held prisoner for 18 years, giving birth to two children by her abductor.

Those books were challenged by a woman who has filed 92 of the 114 book challenges dealt with in St. Johns County schools since 2021, according to Jax Today, and she objected to them because they included references to “sex abuse, violence and hate.”

The lawsuit noted that the woman who challenged the books did not have children in the public schools when the St. Johns County School Board took up her objections last week.
The St. Johns mothers, Nancy Tray and Anne Watts Tressler, objected to the school board’s decision, with Tray telling the board parents could keep their own children from reading those books, or others they disliked, “without eliminating availability for every single high school student in St. John’s County, ” the lawsuit said.

Both mothers were told there was no avenue for them to appeal the school board’s decision and realized it would be “futile” to appeal to the state, the lawsuit added.

The sponsors of HB 1069 touted the law as a way to “protect the rights of parents to have a say in their children’s education,” the lawsuit noted, but “this legislation only benefits those parents who hold the State’s favored viewpoint: agreement with removing books and other material from schools.”

The law, and the regulations adopted to implement it, provide different benefits “depending on a parent’s perspective” so “they violate the First Amendment’s ban on viewpoint discrimination, and should be invalidated,” the lawsuit said.

Here are some of the books that the state or rightwing parents consider “sexually explicit:”

Hundreds of books, including a classic by Leo Tolstoy and a storybook by beloved children’s author Maurice Sendak, have been pulled from Florida school libraries this fall as administrators continue to scrutinize collections for works they fear violate new state laws.

Seminole County Public Schools has removed more than 80 books, including the National Book Award winner “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian,” this school year, and restricted access to 50 others by requiring parental permission or making them available only to high school students, according to Katherine Crnkovich, a district spokeswoman.

In Hernando County north of Tampa, six picture books were removed recently from school libraries, including Sendak’s “In the Night Kitchen” and David Shannon’s “No, David!” They all have illustrations that show kids’ naked bottoms, or, in one case, a goblin’s bare derriere..

In Collier County in southwest Florida, more than 300 novels have been taken from shelves, packed up and put in storage. They include works by Ernest Hemingway, Stephen King, Toni Morrison, Flannery O’Connor, Ayn Rand, Leo Tolstoy and Alice Walker.

The novels “Moll Flanders” (published in 1772), “Their Eyes Were Watching God” (published in 1937), “Slaughter-House Five” (published in 1969) and “The Kite Runner” (published in 2003) all met the same fate as did Tolstoy’s “Anna Karenina” (published in 1878).

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World was banned as was Little Rock Nine by Marshall Poe about the integration of schools in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1957.

.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida

NYC Prosecutors Seek to Extend Trump Gag Order Because Of Death Threats

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2024 //
17

Anyone who stands up to Trump puts their life at risk. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has received hundreds of death threats since his prosecution began. Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies because of his rigging the election by paying off porn star Stormy Daniels to keep his sexual encounter with her out of the news before the vote in 2016. While he throws around claims that Democrats “would rig the election” in 2016 and claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” and “stolen,” it was he who rigged the election by paying Daniels for her silence.

Trump claims that his inability to attack the jurors and prosecutors violates his First Amendment rights. He is vile.

The New York Times reported today:

Prosecutors in Manhattan said on Friday that a judge should keep in place major elements of a gag order that was imposed on Donald J. Trump, citing dozens of threats that have been made against officials connected to the case.

The order, issued before Mr. Trump’s Manhattan criminal trial began in mid-April, bars him from attacking witnesses, jurors, court staff and relatives of the judge who presided over the trial, Juan M. Merchan.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have sought to have the order lifted since Mr. Trump’s conviction in late May. But in a 19-page filing on Friday, prosecutors argued that while Justice Merchan no longer needed to enforce the portion of the gag order relating to trial witnesses, he should keep in place the provisions protecting jurors, prosecutors, court staff and their families.

The New York Police Department has logged 56 “actionable threats” since the beginning of April directed against Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney who brought the case, and against his family and employees, according to an affidavit provided with the filing.

Such threats, evidently made by supporters of Mr. Trump, included a post disclosing the home address of an employee at the district attorney’s office, and bomb threats made on the first day of the trial directed at two people involved in the case.

The 56 threats that were logged, prosecutors said, did not include the hundreds of “threatening emails and phone calls” that were received by Mr. Bragg’s office in recent months, which the police are “not tracking as threat cases.”

Mr. Trump was convicted on May 30 of 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a $130,000 payoff made to the porn star Stormy Daniels. The money was meant to cover up a sexual tryst she says she had with Mr. Trump in 2006, a decade before he was elected president. (Mr. Trump, 78, has continued to deny ever having had sex with Ms. Daniels.)

If he didn’t have sex with Daniels, why did he pay her $130,000?

Categories Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Safety, Trump

North Carolina: GOP Plans to Approve Politically Connected Charter School Without Usual State Review

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2024 //
8

The Republicans in North Carolina have submitted legislation in the General Assembly to authorize a charter school with powerful political connections.

Ann Doss Helms of WFAE reported:

Buried deep in the 271-page House budget bill introduced Monday night, there’s a provision that would allow an unnamed charter school to bypass state review and open in August.

The description is very specific: The “expedited opening” would apply only to applications filed in 2024, for schools in the state’s largest statistical metropolitan area, in a fast-growing county and a school district serving fewer than 25,000 students.

Also, “the proposed charter school will be located in a fully furnished school facility purchased from a local board of education.”

That description applies to Trinitas Academy, which bought the old Mt. Mourne School in Mooresville from Iredell-Statesville Schools in 2022.

Trinitas hasn’t even begun the state review process that ensures its board is ready to educate students and responsibly handle millions of dollars of public money.

But it does have a website describing it as a K-8 classical academy. It lists a board that includes:

  • Susan Tillis, wife of Republican U.S. Senator Thom Tillis and founder of the Susan M. Tillis Foundation. She’s described as having  “an extensive background in state and national politics.” (Her name was removed from the site Wednesday, after this story aired.)
  • Will Bowen, communications director for Republican Rep. Patrick McHenry.
  • Marcus Long of Mooresville, described as a retired chief circuit judge from Virginia.
  • Board Chair Mark Lockman, described as having been “part of the district leadership at Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and Iredell-Statesville Schools. Additionally, Mark was instrumental in building the State of North Carolina’s first data-based instructional growth model for public K-12.”

They couldn’t immediately be reached. Trinitas board member Mikail O. Clark, a Charlotte lawyer, confirmed that Trinitas plans to open in August, but said he didn’t know enough about the House Bill to discuss it. “We’ve obviously engaged counsel to assist us with this matter,” he said, and hung up before answering a question about the status of the Trinitas application…

State Charter Schools Director Ashley Baquero said Tuesday that she knew nothing about the plan to bypass the approval process.

Open the link to finish the story of cronyism.

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, North Carolina

“Democracy”: Where’s the “Conflict” in the Georgia Case Against Trump

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2024 //
39

I’m curious. Regarding the Georgia election case, where – exactly – is the Fanni Willis “conflict” that may have impaired, impinged or otherwise impacted the rights of those accused in that case?

The Associated Press reported this:

“A Fulton County grand jury in August indicted Trump and 18 others, accusing them of participating in a sprawling scheme to illegally try to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia. Four defendants have pleaded guilty after reaching deals with prosecutors, but Trump and the others have pleaded not guilty…Trump and eight other defendants had tried to get Willis and her office removed from the case, arguing that a romantic relationship she had with special prosecutor Nathan Wade created a conflict of interest. McAfee in March found that no conflict of interest existed that should force Willis off the case, but he granted a request from Trump and the other defendants to seek an appeal of his ruling from the state Court of Appeals.”

So, again, what EXACTLY is the “conflict” that infringes on the rights of the accused in the Georgia, some of whom have already – in fact pleaded guilty.

CNN reported this:

“In March, after what amounted to a mini-trial where attorneys for Trump and his co-defendants sought to prove their case against Willis and Wade, McAfee found there was not enough evidence to firmly prove Willis financially benefited from the relationship.”

So, the prosecutors were put on trial and the judge found that there wasn’t evidence to say that Willis got some kind of financial favor from Wade. But even if she HAD, where is the “conflict” that harms the right of the accused?

The Washington Post put it like this:

“McAfee ruled that Trump and the others had ‘failed to meet their burden’ of proving Willis’s romantic relationship with special prosecutor Nathan Wade and allegations that she was financially enriched by trips the two took together were enough of a ‘conflict of interest’ to disqualify her from the case..

To put it differently, the “conflict” in this case was that Willis and Wade slept together and sometimes took trips together– they were “bad” — and thus that should disqualify them from the case. But, What. About. The. Case? What about the facts of the case? What about the specific charges and the charges to which others have pled guilty?

Sydney Powell – yes, her – pled guilty to “conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties.” She also agreed to help prosecutors in other cases.

Guess who was involved in the conspiracy and the other cases?

Kenneth Chesebro, charged with seven felony counts, pled guilty to “one felony count of conspiracy to commit filing false documents. ” False documents to be used to overturn the election results. Guess on whose behalf Chesebro filed those false documents? Chesebro agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in other cases too.

Trump attorney Jenna Ellis pleased guilty in Georgia “to a charge of aiding and abetting false statements and writings, a felony. She has already written an apology letter to the citizens of Georgia, and she agreed to cooperate fully with prosecutors as the case progresses.”

So, there’s a pattern here. 

But where – exactly – is the “conflict” in the other cases? The cases of the ringleader Trump, and dirty trickster Mike Roman? The cases of Rudy Giuliani and John Eastman? Of Mark Meadows and Jeffrey Clark and the rest?

Meanwhile, the findings of fact in the Colorado court decision by Sarah Wallace that declared Trump an insurrectionist, which relied heavily on the January 6 Committee Report and included testimony by officers attacked in the January 6 riot, have gone unchallenged by any credible evidence, including that put forth by Trump or his attorneys. As noted in the decision,

“while Trump spent much time contesting potential biases of the Committee members and their staff, he spent almost no time attacking the credibility of the Committee’s findings themselves. The Hearing provided Trump with an opportunity to subject these findings to the adversarial process, and he chose not to do so, despite frequent complaints that the Committee investigation was not subject to such a process. Because Trump was unable to provide the Court with any credible evidence which would discredit the factual findings of the January 6th Report, the Court has difficulty understanding the argument that it should not consider its findings which are admissible under C.R.E. 803(8).”

The Colorado Supreme Court found that because Trump was – in fact – an insurrectionist, he could not be on the Colorado ballot because the United States Constitution explicitly prohibited it under Article 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states that

“No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.”

Seems pretty clear: “no person shall…hold any office, civil or military, under the Constitution who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States…to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same…”

The United States Supreme Court ignored the findings of fact in the Colorado trial court and overturned the Colorado Supreme Court decision to take Trump off the ballot. The Court said “We conclude that States may disqualify persons holding or attempting to hold state office. But States have no power under the Constitution to enforce Section 3 with respect to federal offices, especially the Presidency.”

According former federal appellate judge Michael Lutting and constitutional scholar Lawrence Tribe, this was “a grave disservice to both the Constitution and the nation…Our highest court dramatically and dangerously betrayed its obligation to enforce what once was the Constitution’s safety net for America’s democracy.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/03/supreme-court-trump-v-anderson-fourteenth-amendment/677755/

Three members of the Supreme Court were – in fact – appointed by a seditionist, an insurrectionist, who took lots of help from Russian intelligence agencies to win* the 2016 election, and tried to violently overturn the 2020 results. One other justice flies seditionist flags over his houses, and another has a wife who is an open seditionist.

It appears to me that the “conflicts” some people, mostly Republicans, are worried about are the absolutely entirely wrong conflicts.

Categories Accountability, Atlanta, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Georgia, Justice, Trump

Steve Ruis: Why Did the Supreme Court Take the Abortion Pill Case?

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2024 //
23

Steve Ruis raises an interesting question: Why did four justices of the U.S. Supreme Court agree to take the abortion pill case, then rule unanimously that the litigants had no standing to sue? Wouldn’t the four who wanted to hear the case know that in advance? Why did they waste everyone’s time?

Steve has a suspicion that the six justices who voted to strike down Roe v. Wade were sending instructions for the next legal challenge to the pill: try again but avoid these pitfalls. Find a plaintiff with standing.

Just as he predicted, the plaintiffs are lining up to challenge the pill again. They are taking their cases to the same far-right judge in Amarillo, Texas, who previously said the Federal Drug Administration should never have approved the pill.

US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk will have to decide later this summer if three conservative states that want to continue the fight against the drug can do so in his court. The decision is one of several in coming weeks that will determine whether – and if so, how quickly – the case against mifepristone makes it back to the Supreme Court.

Before Trump appointed him, the judge was an attorney for a Christian advocacy group. He is known for his anti-abortion views.

Three conservative states—Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas—want to block access to the pill, and they plan to file their case in Amarillo, knowing that it will be heard by a friendly judge.

An immediate question for Kacsmaryk is whether the states can continue to do so in his court. Generally, parties must be able to justify filing lawsuits in a specific federal court. The doctors and anti-abortion groups who sued over mifepristone incorporated a group called the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine in Amarillo  months before their lawsuit.

The groups’ move to bring the case in Amarillo, a far-flung court division in Texas’ panhandle, was among the most controversial aspects of the lawsuit. Kacsmaryk is virtually guaranteed to hear every case that is filed there, and his courthouse has become a favorite option for conservative litigants and states seeking to halt the Biden administration’s agenda.

Steve Ruis was prescient. A few days after he posted his warning, Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin, a lawyer, dug down into the decision about the abortion pill.

She wrote:

Just as they did when the Supreme Court managed to reject the utterly outlandish independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper, too many credulous court watchers rushed forward last week to praise the high court for its “reasonableness” in rejecting a half-baked claim to restrict access to mifepristone, the medical abortion drug. It gets no brownie points for knocking down on technical standing grounds one of the more outlandish opinions from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit and antiabortion activist District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk.

Despite headlines that the court was saving or preserving mifepristone, it did nothing of the sort. Worse, Americans have plenty of reason to fear what the most radical and aggressive Supreme Court since Dred Scott is up to.

The majority found that the respondent, Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, lacked standing because the group’s members were already spared from any obligation to perform medical abortions by federal conscience clause protections, had only the most speculative injuries, and had to do more than prove it devoted resources to the issue to qualify for “associational” standing. (Plaintiffs cannot “spend” their way into standing, the majority held.)

As a preliminary matter, Justice Clarence Thomas (under fire for yet more unreported lavish gifts from right-wing billionaire Harlan Crow) filed a concurrence that was downright scary. He argued that no organization or association should ever be allowed to assert organizational standing. Here, he went after a nearly 50-year-old precedent.

As Reuters explained, “Thomas essentially attacked a long-recognized legal doctrine relied upon by associations ranging from the nation’s biggest business lobby — the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — to environmental groups and gun rights advocacy organizations to challenge government policies by suing on behalf of their members.” By depriving the most able plaintiffs from challenging statutes, Thomas would give the federal government and states license to run roughshod over individual rights without necessarily changing the substantive law.

Following his attack on Brown v. Board of Education in the South Carolina redistricting case and his assault on Griswold v. Connecticut in the Dobbs case, Thomas once more reveals just how radical the Supreme Court, with the addition of more radical justices, might become in the future.

What was hyperbole is now a road map straight from the concurrences of one of the most radical justices. In the upcoming election, Democrats would do well to focus on the extremism of the Supreme Court as they explain how even more extreme the court would become with more MAGA appointees.

One could simply substitute Thomas for Robert Bork, the radical nominee whose appointment was scuttled in 1987, in Sen. Edward M. Kennedy’s famous denunciation:


[Clarence Thomas’s] America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.

What was hyperbole is now a road map straight from the concurrences of one of the most radical justices. In the upcoming election, Democrats would do well to focus on the extremism of the Supreme Court as they explain how even more extreme the court would become with more MAGA appointees.

Drilling down on the majority opinion, one finds that the court says nothing that would restrict states from banning all abortions, medical or otherwise. As Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern remind us, “It remains unlawful to prescribe in states that criminalize abortion; it has even been deemed a ‘controlled substance’ in Louisiana.” Moreover, Thomas and other radicals’ pet theory for banning all abortions — expansion and contortion of the Comstock Act to prevent use of the mail to send abortion devices or literature — “will roar back with a vengeance,” the authors note, if Trump prevails and the Supreme Court, freed from worries about a national backlash, decides to take the issue on squarely.

Furthermore, while this particular plaintiff was denied standing, another party, such as a state or individual doctor, might easily establish standing to take another crack at outlawing mifepristone. Jenner & Block, a litigation firm, explains on its blog:

First and foremost, this decision does not spell the end of the mifepristone litigation. While this case was pending at the Supreme Court, three states — Missouri, Idaho, and Kansas — successfully intervened at the district court. Now that the case has been remanded, these three states will continue their challenge to the FDA’s regulation of mifepristone, and based on their complaint, they intend to make many of the same arguments as the Alliance. Specifically, the three states have challenged the FDA’s decisions to expand access to mifepristone from 2016 onward, including the ability to have mifepristone dispensed via telehealth services and distributed by retail pharmacies. Given the district court’s willingness to enjoin the FDA’s approval entirely and the Supreme Court’s failure to reach the merits, it is likely that the states will prevail on at least some of their claims. This would mean another year or more of appeals to the Fifth Circuit and the Supreme Court, with continuing uncertainty surrounding the regulation of mifepristone in the interim.

Mifepristone, therefore, has not been “saved” in any sense. If anything, it’s on life support, pending an election that would give the court a green light to go wild and/or offer felon and former president Donald Trump the chance to add to the ranks of the most extreme justices.

Categories Gender, Health, Hypocrisy, Science

Thom Hartmann: The 50-Year Trump MAGA Reich?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2024 //
26

Thom Hartmann says that Trump fans are dreaming of a 50-year MAGA reich:

Horrified critics blast Fox’s Ingraham for suggesting a 50-year MAGA reich is possible. If Trump wins, this will be referred to as the age of Trump,” Laura Ingraham told her Fox viewers, dreaming of a repeat of the kind of consequential presidency that stamps political eras. “He dominates the policy debate in ways that no one has done since Reagan. And if he picks a strong VP… this coalition could be in power for 50 years.” Ingraham — who I also once debated, at a Heritage Foundation event — could be right. If Trump becomes president this fall, he and his Project 2025 allies will transform America in ways that go far beyond FDR’s New Deal or Reagan’s war on working people. The Christian Taliban that has surrounded him will take over public school instruction and birth control policy, racist militias and skinheads will be running elections and immigration policy, the media will be finally and fully seized by rightwing oligarchs like in Russia and Hungary, unions and equality movements will be functionally outlawed, and Trump’s “enemies” (including reporters and commentators like yours truly) will end up in prison. Each of those things are already promised explicitly by Trump himself or part of the Project 2025 program for the next Republican presidency.

Categories Elections, Fascism, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Which Candidate is “Fit” to be President?

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2024 //
35

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Rubin responded to a biased article in the Wall Street Journal that derided Biden’s fitness for the Presidency. Its primary sources: House Speaker Mike Johnson and former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, both Trump lackeys.

Rubin wrote:

A president’s gait, verbal tics and minor recall errors have virtually nothing to do with the job of being president. The White House occupant is not a “Jeopardy!” contestant, a stand-up comic, a talk-show host or guest; the president is the head of the executive branch and commander in chief.

The job of being president is executive management, something with which political reporters (as opposed to business reporters) have virtually no expertise. We should be asking whether a candidate can absorb necessary details, make good personnel decisions, reach sound conclusions, evaluate risk and consider the consequences of actions. Can the president separate personal interests from the interests of the nation, of allies or even the planet? That is what the president does, day after day.

And we do not need to be armchair psychiatrists to evaluate that sort of presidential fitness. As I have written, Trump’s closest colleagues tell us that he is willfully ignorant, cannot grasp basic concepts, cannot absorb written material. As for his hiring decisions, by his own admission, he has hired a slew of dumb or incompetent people. He gloms on to ridiculous quack theories, and he channels the ideas and rhetoric of America’s enemies and of historical villains.

Trump cannot keep national secrets — or understand they are not “his.” He is incapable of grasping the values and ethos of military service. Because he is so susceptible to flattery and so thin-skinned, he cannot tell friend from foe. And as his former national security adviser John Bolton put it, “Trump really cares only about retribution for himself, and it will consume much of a second term.”

Part and parcel of good decision-making is impulse control. If one cannot refrain from lashing out in anger at allies, spilling secrets to U.S. enemies, or launching personal attacks and threats against fellow Americans (in defiance of court orders, no less), one cannot be entrusted with the immense responsibilities of the presidency. (There might also be something seriously wrong with you, but that is beside the point.)

Moreover, we know how Trump’s decision-making turned out. He downplayed the coronavirus, and hundreds of thousands of Americans died unnecessarily. He concocted the “big lie” about the 2020 election and, unable to admit losing, incited a riot at the U.S. Capitol. He didn’t want to reveal embarrassing sexual impropriety, so he broke the law in New York — 34 times.

You don’t need to make a specific medical diagnosis to see that the essential aspects of the presidency — judgment, reading comprehension, discretion, unselfish decision-making, appreciation for military sacrifice — are utterly beyond Trump.

At the most basic level, Biden, while three years older, can discern friend from foe, reveres the military, understands the value of alliances, generally hires capable advisers, puts together complex legislative deals and exhibits inexhaustible empathy for others’ suffering. He complies with the legal process (e.g., sitting down with special counsel Robert K. Hur), follows Supreme Court decisions (and then explores alternatives, as he did on student debt) and engages in successful international diplomacy. He talks in depth about policy.

It’s reasonable to conclude that, with age, Biden has gained immense experience, formed relationships and absorbed data that helps guide his current decision-making. Should we care that he walks more stiffly than he did 10 years ago? (FDR served 12 years in a wheelchair.)

In sum, the measure of a president — regardless of that officeholder’s level of spryness or eloquence — is the capacity to perform a singularly important job: making good decisions on behalf of others in keeping with our laws and national values. No reasonable person would conclude, based on all available evidence, that Trump can do so; no fair person would conclude that Biden’s age impedes him from doing so.

This article contains numerous links, none of which transferred to my blog. Please open the link to Rubin to see her extensive documentation.

Categories Bias, Biden, Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Trump
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »