Speaking at a private fundraising event, Donald Trump said that he would put a quick end to campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza. When Trump was president, he moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem, which previous presidents refused to do and took other actions that endeared him to Prime Minister Netanyahu, like canceling the multinational Iran nuclear deal, which Israel opposed. Netanyahu called Trump “the best friend Israel has ever had in the White House.”
Former president Donald Trump promised to crush pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses, telling a roomful of donors — a group that he joked included “98 percent of my Jewish friends” — that he would expel student demonstrators from the United States, according to participants in the roundtable event with him in New York.
“One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave,” Trump said on May 14, according to donors at the event.
When one of the donors complained that many of the students and professors protesting on campuses could one day hold positions of power in the United States, Trump called the demonstrators part of a “radical revolution” that he vowed to defeat. He praised the New York Police Department for clearing the campus at Columbia University and said other cities needed to follow suit, saying “it has to be stopped now.”
Politico reporters Liz Crampton and Andrew Atterbury report on Governor Greg Abbott’s determination to purge the Republican Party in Texas of any elected official who opposes vouchers. He managed to defeat some rural Republicans who put the needs of their communities over the demands of the governors. He has driven the state party to the extremist right by targeting moderate Republicans. He is fighting for a voucher program that will cost the state $2 billion a year by 2028 and serve mainly students already in private schools. In effect, the state would transfer billions to the mostly white, affluent kids in private schools while underfunding the public schools that enroll five million children, mostly black and brown.
Today are the runoffs that will determine whether Abbott has enough votes to pass a voucher bill. If he wins, he can deliver a plum to his wealthy and upper-middle-class supporters who send their kids to private schools.
Crampton and Atterbury write:
When nearly two dozen Republican state lawmakers defied Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to oppose a centerpiece of his agenda — the creation of a school voucher program — they knew they’d face political payback.
But Abbott’s vengeance has been ferocious, even by Texas standards.
He helped knock off seven incumbents in the Republican primary in March and is targeting a handful more contests at the end of the month by handpicking conservative challengers and collecting millions of dollars from donors in Texas and beyond. Another two anti-voucher incumbents lost even though they weren’t specifically blacklisted by Abbott.
The enormous amount of money pouring into Texas Republican primaries from national pro-school-choice groups sets a new precedent as national interests become increasingly intertwined in state legislatures. Abbott’s targeting of former allies has escalated a Republican civil war that is defining Texas politics today, all in pursuit of enacting a voucher law that stands to remake K-12 education in the nation’s second biggest state.
“It’s just so unusual for an incumbent governor to campaign against members of his own party,” John Colyandro, a Texas lobbyist and former top aide to Abbott, said in an interview. “He was the pivot around which everything turned here.”
Gov. Greg Abbott’s targeting of former allies has escalated a Republican civil war that is defining Texas politics today. | Ricardo B. Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman via AP
Backed by deep-pocketed conservative figures like former Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Republican megadonor Jeff Yass, the school-choice movement has leveraged Republican majorities in state legislatures across the country to pass laws that provide families with lump sums to spend on private school tuition. The efforts, according to supporters, are meant to bolster parental rights by giving families the financial freedom to choose a different option for schooling their children.
Anti-voucher Republicans “thought they had a stronghold,” said Hillary Hickland, a candidate who was backed by Abbott and won her race in March. “They had this elitist air, that they know better for a community than the taxpayers, or the parents. And they were wrong.”
[Of course, it’s the height of irony to refer to the supporters of public schools as “elitists.” Abbott could not have knocked off his critics without the millions sent by out-of-state billionaires DeVos and Yass and in-state billionaires Dunn and Wilks.]
Ten states passed or expanded school-choice laws in 2023 alone. There are now 18 states that have education savings accounts, which allow parents to spend state funding on a variety of choices including private schools. Students are flocking to these programs, yet data shows that the majority of scholarships or vouchers are going to wealthier families already enrolled in private schools — not students leaving their traditional public schools.
But despite all the momentum across the country, voucher bills have repeatedly failed in Texas. That’s why Abbott and pro-school-choice advocates are continuing their big money push as early voting is underway for the primary runoffs next week. Even after knocking out a number of party defectors in March, Abbott and aligned Republicans are teetering on securing enough votes to pass school-choice when the Legislature returns with a new class in January 2025.
“We’re not counting our chickens, not stopping, not laying off,” said David Carney, a consultant with Abbott’s campaign, in an interview.
Abbott’s vendetta comes as other GOP figures are also going after fellow Republicans for perceived crimes against the party, notably Attorney General Ken Paxton’s targeting of incumbents for voting to impeach him. House Speaker Dade Phelan is among those under siege as he fights to defend his own hold on power in the runoffs next Tuesday.
In prior years, state legislature races in Texas typically cost about $250,000. But spending in some of these primaries has been upwards of $1 million, thanks to the involvement of pro-voucher interests attacking Republicans.
“We are outgunned here big time,” said Rep. DeWayne Burns, a Republican lawmaker fighting to keep in his seat representing a district encompassing Cleburne, Texas, a town on the outskirts of Dallas-Fort Worth. “This is a true David v. Goliath situation and I’m the David here.”
The negative attacks on anti-voucher Republicans financed by PACs have gone beyond school-choice and targeted the incumbents for lacking conservative bona fides on issues like guns and the border — often in false or misleading mailers, texts and advertisements.
In one example, residents of Mineral Wells, Texas received mailers paid for by Libertarian PAC Make Liberty Win going after incumbent Rep. Glenn Rogers, who lost his primary in March to an Abbott-backed challenger. That mailer accused him of being “anti-gun” and warned that “if we don’t vote Rogers out, he will only drift further left.”
Rogers, a fifth-generation rancher and veterinarian who was first elected in 2021, said that he was also accused of being soft on the border, an attack line he believes Abbott chose because that issue resonates more with voters than vouchers.
“If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes truth to a low-information voter,” Rogers said. “Unfortunately we have a lot of low-information voters. That doesn’t have anything to do with their mental ability, it has to do with them keeping up. Eventually it becomes truth in their minds.”
Although Republicans boast big majorities in both chambers and control the governorship, school-choice proposals were repeatedly swatted down in 2023, even after Abbott made them a top priority and called special sessions to address the issue. The latest proposal would have given around 40,000 students access to about $10,500 in vouchers for private schooling or $1,000 toward homeschooling.
Republicans, many from rural areas, who have long been opposed to vouchers over concerns that it would jeopardize public education funding, banded with Democrats for an unlikely alliance that proved to be a thorn in Abbott’s side. Those lawmakers were spooked by an estimate that the vouchers program would cost the state more than $2 billion annually by 2028.
“I voted for my district and I have no regrets,” said San Antonio Rep. Steve Allison, who lost his primary. “What the governor did is extremely wrong. Me and the others that he came after have been with him 100 percent of the time on every issue except this one.”
Abbott has major money on his side. Among the constellation of PACs and donations from wealthy political players dumping money into Texas elections this year, there’s Pennsylvania billionaire Yass. A major school-choice supporter, Yass personally cut a check to Abbott for $6 million last year, which the governor called the largest single donation in Texas history.
Yass has also given to PACs backing pro-voucher candidates, like the School Freedom Fund, which is affiliated with the Club for Growth and has run multi-million-dollar TV blitzes.
DeVos’ PAC, the American Federation for Children Victory Fund, has pumped $4.5 million into the races — nearly half of what the PAC has promised to spend nationwide this cycle. Of the 13 anti-school-choice lawmakers zeroed in on by the PAC, 10 candidates either lost their race or were forced into an upcoming runoff.
“If you’re a candidate or lawmaker who opposes school-choice and freedom in education — you’re a target,” Tommy Schultz, CEO of AFC, said when the fundraising organization was createdin 2023. “If you’re a champion for parents — we’ll be your shield.”
Another group, the Family Empowerment Coalition PAC, launched in June 2023 with the singular goal of defending incumbents from both parties who voted for school-choice. But the organization expanded its mission a few months later to include supporting primary challengers to incumbents who voted against the measure — and has spent at least $1.4 million this election cycle, according to data from Transparency USA, a political spending database.
Texas is just one state where the groups are getting involved. Make Liberty Win is also singling out anti-voucher Republicans in Tennessee and Ohio.
All that outside money comes on top of typical spending from big-name conservative donors in Texas, like Tim Dunn and Farris Wilks who each have donated at least $1.7 million to various lawmakers since July 2023, according to data from the Texas Ethics Commission compiled by Chrisopher Tackett, a campaign finance watchdog.
Abbott’s own PAC has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars this cycle to candidates seeking to unseat incumbents who opposed vouchers. He has handed out endorsements to challengers and shown up for appearances to back them on the campaign trail.
The Abbott campaign is projected to spend some $11 million during the primary races, including $4 million on the runoffs alone, Carney said. That’s a massive jump from the $500,000 he would typically spend for primaries, he said.
The governor touts school-choice as a means for parents to leave struggling campuses, often using districts in Houston and Dallas as punching bags. He recently pointed to Dallas schools having a resource guide about students identifying with a different gender and a Lewisville teacher dressing in drag as examples of why vouchers are needed — demonstrating how Republicans are leveraging the culture war to bolster support for vouchers.
“If you’re a parent in that situation, should you be trapped within a school district that’s focusing on issues like that?” Abbott said during a keynote address to the Texas Public Policy Foundation in March. “Of course not.”
By Abbott’s math, the Texas House is sitting at 74 votes in favor of school-choice considering who won their primary race and the candidates that reached a runoff. That count, though, would still put the House two votes shy of passing the landmark policy — upping the stakes for the runoffs.
“I came out with no ambiguity about where I stood or what I expected,” Abbott said. “If the governor puts something on the emergency item list, that means this is something that must pass. And if it doesn’t pass, there’s going to be challenges to deal with.”
Alexandra Berzon and Michael C. Bender report in The New York Times that Donald Trump now relies on Florida Congressman Byron Donalds for advice on education. Think of Byron Donalds as a 2024 version of Betsy DeVos, except that he’s Black, he’s a Congressman, and he’s not a billionaire. In all other respects, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between them. Byron Donalds is viewed as a future governor or even Trump’s running mate.
In early 2021, Representative Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida, and his wife, Erika, took the stage at an event hosted by the Truth & Liberty Coalition, a group that pushes to inject Christianity into public schools and other institutions and whose leader has described homosexuality as Satan’s work.
The couple was warmly welcomed as allies in the cause. Mrs. Donalds was singled out for opening a charter school in Florida. As a state legislator, Mr. Donalds had created a school voucher program that, in the words of one speaker, let children “get a biblical worldview education….”
Mr. and Mrs. Donalds were early activists in an increasingly influential network seeking to transform traditional public education — in Florida and beyond. Long before the recent battles over book bans and critical race theory, the effort cast public schools as failing laboratories for liberal ideas and pushed to funnel public education funds into charter or private schools.
Mr. Donalds backed legislation that gave outside groups a bigger say in school curriculums, years before Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida set off a national debate by making it easier for groups to remove books from school libraries and limiting teaching about sexuality and gender.
The couple has deep ties to leading forces in those debates, including Moms for Liberty, Hillsdale College and the Florida Citizens Alliance, which has pushed to remove books that it deems inappropriate from schools. Both Mr. and Mrs. Donalds have made remarks disparaging homosexuality.
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, Mr. Donalds described heterosexual relationships as “the natural order that keeps society progressing.” In a tweet in 2017, Mrs. Donalds wrote, “Homosexuality is a sin just like any other sexual sin, and all of us sinners need forgiveness & mercy for our shortcomings.”
The couple’s work has been both advocacy and income. As Mr. Donalds pushed legislation expanding access to charter schools and voucher programs, Mrs. Donalds began to build a company and a nonprofit that took advantage of that expansion.
“Byron and Erika have been known for years in Florida as warriors in the fight for all children to have a quality education,” said Tina Descovich, a co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a conservative education group that began in Florida but has emerged as a political power broker. “That reputation is spreading nationally.”As Mr. Trump campaigns, he has embraced the new education politics, suggesting that public schools have been overrun by “pink-haired communists” and promising to close the Department of Education if re-elected. And he has surrounded himself with like-minded supporters, such as the Donaldses….
It was Mrs. Donalds, whom he met in college, who drew him into evangelical Christianity. His full conversion came when he was 22, waiting tables at Cracker Barrel. He felt the call and “gave my life to Christ,” he said….
In 2017, Mr. Donalds was sworn in to the Florida House of Representatives, serving a Naples-area district. That same year, Mrs. Donalds started OptimaEd, a charter school management operation.
The couple’s work often intersected. Mr. Donalds was a co-sponsor for a bill that, among many other things, allowed charter schools to secure additional funding from local tax initiatives. He backed term limits for school board members, a proposal that Mrs. Donalds had long sought as a way to force turnover and potentially open up seats for charter school advocates…
In 2022, Mrs. Donalds was managing several charter schools in Florida. According to contracts, her company was paid a share — around 10 percent — of the schools’ public funding to provide human resources, marketing and other services. That year, the company collected about $4 million in public money and put around $2.6 million back into the schools, public records show, while Mrs. Donalds was paid a salary of about $180,000.
Those figures became a source of tension with the schools. Since then, three charter schools managed by OptimaEd ended their contracts with the company amid complaints that it was putting too little money back into the schools, according to public records and three people involved in the schools who asked for anonymity to discuss private negotiations.
Mrs. Donalds did not respond to a request for comment.
She has increasingly focused her business on an online academy and virtual classes that accept vouchers. In 2017, her husband led a successful effort to offer the private school tuition reimbursements to students who said they were bullied. Last year, Florida went much further, expanding its voucher programs to all students, regardless of circumstances or income, and opening a new flow of public money to private schools.
Seeding the ‘parents’ rights’ debate
Advocates described how the couple had helped lay the groundwork for pandemic-era policies that put Florida at the center of the education debate.
In 2015, Mrs. Donalds started a network of conservative school board members with women who went on to lead Moms for Liberty. (Mrs. Donalds is a Moms for Liberty adviser.)
The Donaldses were some of the first members of the Florida Citizens Alliance, according to the group’s founder, Keith Flaugh. The alliance has pushed to remove books from schools that it claims indoctrinate children with liberal ideas, including Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” and other classics from African American authors.
Jack Burgess, retired teacher, military veteran, added his own poem in the comments section. Thank you, Jack!
How War Ends
by Jack Burgess, Sp3, US Army, 894th Tank Battalion
…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Isaiah
This is how war ends:
The guns stop everywhere.
Fifty-ton tanks roll to a stop,
war ships dock,
fighters and bombers come down from the sky,
and two moments of silence follow.
The war dead honored by the first,
the 2nd silence is for reflection,
for hearing frogs, and your own breath.
This is followed by a single voice,
then a murmur. Screwdrivers and crow bars
come out, and the green tanks are
dismantled, gas siphoned for school buses.
Troop ships sail home from a hundred shores,
so that husbands and wives can kiss unvirtually,
and children see the strong eyes of their fathers,
feel their love and their arms about them.
Uniforms become keepsakes and relics.
All flags are fine and flying.
Those in congresses clear their throats
apologetically and say, “What shall we do with
the leftover money?” Children with swollen bellies,
Our reader “Democracy” offered this comment, citing a post on another blog, EmptyWheel:
This piece at emptywheel was a goodie too:
“Memorial Day has its roots in the US Civil War, and has expanded to include remembrance of all those who have served their country… Hugh Thompson, Jr., Glenn Andreotta, and Lawrence Colburn were three members of the US Army, who received the Soldiers Medal on March 6, 1998 for their actions 30 years earlier…for their actions in 1968, Thompson. Andreotta, and Colburn received the Soldier’s Medal, given to ‘any person of the Armed Forces of the United States or of a friendly foreign nation who, while serving in any capacity with the Army of the United States, including Reserve Component soldiers not serving in a duty status at the time of the heroic act, distinguished himself or herself by heroism not involving conflict with an enemy.’”
Soldier’s Medal, Hugh C. Thompson, Jr., then Warrant Officer One, United States Army:
‘For heroism above and beyond the call of duty on 16 March 1968, while saving the lives of at least 10 Vietnamese civilians during the unlawful massacre of noncombatants by American forces at My Lai, Quang Ngai Province, South Vietnam. Warrant Officer Thompson landed his helicopter in the line of fire between fleeing Vietnamese civilians and pursuing American ground troops to prevent their murder. He then personally confronted the leader of the American ground troops and was prepared to open fire on those American troops should they fire upon the civilians. Warrant Officer Thompson, at the risk of his own personal safety, went forward of the American lines and coaxed the Vietnamese civilians out of the bunker to enable their evacuation. Leaving the area after requesting and overseeing the civilians’ air evacuation, his crew spotted movement in a ditch filled with bodies south of My Lai Four. Warrant Officer Thompson again landed his helicopter and covered his crew as they retrieved a wounded child from the pile of bodies. He then flew the child to the safety of a hospital at Quang Ngai. Warrant Officer Thompson’s relayed radio reports of the massacre and subsequent report to his section leader and commander resulted in an order for the cease fire at My Lai and an end to the killing of innocent civilians. Warrant Officer Thompson’s Heroism exemplifies the highest standards of personal courage and ethical conduct, reflecting distinct credit on him, and the United States Army.’”
Today is a day to remember and honor those who gave their lives and suffered for the sake of our nation. Young men and women enlist in the military to serve their country, and we owe them our gratitude.
We honor their sacrifice but not war itself. War represents a failure of reason, a failure of negotiations. In the face of aggression, war becomes necessary to preserve life and liberty. In the face of greedy and power-hungry fascists like Hitler and Putin, democracies go to war to avoid being conquered and subdued by them.
We have fought just wars, and we have fought unjust wars. It’s usually easier to know which is which when it’s over. Hindsight is 20/20 vision.
In honoring those who fought for our country, we honor them, not war.
I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
Go to the parades, fly the flag of our nation (not the flag of insurrectionists), read the Constitution and its amendments. Do your part as a citizen to strengthen our democracy and protect our freedoms in your community, your city, your state, and our nation.
As has become an annual habit, I began watching Band of Brothers yet again this Memorial Day weekend. I’ll probably tune in again on Veterans Day. It’s not exactly because I seek it out: HBO and Amazon Prime advertise it prominently on these heavily commercialized 3-day weekends.
My feelings about these federal holidays have evolved through the years. Like many veterans who came home from Vietnam thoroughly disillusioned with “American values,” I dismissed these days off as no more worthy of my attention than the F-15 flyovers, God Bless America singalongs, and stadium events singling out veterans for applause.
As the decades ground on, fewer and fewer people standing in solemn participation with these ritual events had any military service of their own to fully understand them. As Andrew Bacevitch, a retired Army colonel and esteemed military and diplomatic historian put it after one post-9/11 Fenway Park game, they are a “masterpiece of contrived spontaneity,” which “leaves spectators feeling good about their baseball team, about their military, and not least of all about themselves—precisely as it was meant to do.”
I still abhor these cheap, Pentagon p.r. exercises, along with the flag-waving mattress sales and “start of summer” alcohol-soaked barbecues. I also respectfully decline to stand up, with thousands of other baseball fans, hand over heart, for the socially coercive playing of the religio-nationalist “God Bless America,” during the 7th inning break.
But my feelings about Memorial Day have steadily changed since the post-9/11 wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and so many soul draining counterterrorism missions gave lie to our proclaimed values. As with Vietnam, the veterans of these conflicts participated in expeditions that most quickly saw were doomed, or worse—meaningless. But they soldiered on, mostly out of their own self-respect and the respect of their battle buddies.
The butcher’s bill inevitably came due: A 2021 study showed that “four times as many active duty service members and veterans died by suicide as died in battle since 9/11.” This was a scourge that exploded in the wake of Vietnam and has never been solved, although the VA keeps trying. (You can reach its suicide hotline here.)
So I am very sorry for these veterans, as sorry as I am when I go down to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial here in Washington and touch the name of Ed Sonnichsen, an Army intelligence buddy who was assassinated in a Viet Cong setup in 1968. My surviving veteran friends still have lots of mixed feelings about serving in Vietnam.
Somewhat ironically, I’ve come to increasingly value the sacrifice of veterans by repeatedly watching Band of Brothers, which dramatizes the real life history of “Easy” Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, from their training in Georgia through their occupation of Hitler’s abandoned mountain retreat in Berchtesgaden in May 1945. Sure, the gun-battle heroics tend to dominate each episode, but the carnage and horror are very much there, too—along with their real life, retrospective confessions of some participants that they were forever haunted by their war experiences. Watching the series has helped me understand my own enduring rage at chickenhawks, the (mostly) men who cheer on war while choosing to sit it out themselves. You can find many of them on any given Sunday in the football stands.
So this Memorial Day, and on Veterans Day in November, God willing, I’ll raise a solemn glass to all the walking wounded who came before me, and of course those who gave the ultimate sacrifice—and their families. If you want to do a good deed, tell their surviving relatives you’re sorry for their loss. Reaching out by phone or, if you must, email, is a much better way to honor them than singing God Bless America.
David Pepper describes a stunning victory for democracy in Missouri for outnumbered Democrats. Remember how the Republican-controlled Ohio legislature promoted a referendum called Issue 1 to require all future referenda to get 60% of the vote to pass? They were trying to defeat a referendum on abortion by raising the bar. Voters got wise and defeated the measure. Voters then protected abortion rights with 58% of the vote. Democracy means majority rule, not tampering with the process to defeat majority rule.
Yesterday proved once again why you never stop fighting for democracy.
Anywhere. Ever!
For months, Missouri Republicans have been scheming to bring an Issue 1-style attack on direct democracy to their state, where voters have a tradition of using ballot initiatives to exercise their will—including recently expanding Medicaid and legalizing marijuana. And the GOP plan was to sneak the attack through this August, right before a November referendum on reproductive freedom.
You remember Issue 1, right? Where they tried to raise the threshold for constitutional amendments in Ohio to 60%?
Our amazing campaign to crush that monstrosity heated up about a year ago. (Yes, time flies):
Well, as I wrote in “Laboratories of Autocracy,”GOP statehouses always learn from their failures. And adjust.
And in Missouri, the GOP response was a more sneaky version of Issue 1—where they would’ve required that in addition to a simple up or down vote across the state, a majority of voters in 50% of House districts (you know, highly gerrymandered districts) would have been required for any referendum to gain approval. And that essentially would have locked in a severe form of minority rule even more onerous than a 60% threshold. One study found that as few as 20% of Missouri voters could block an effort under such rules.
Still, the GOP would’ve falsely insisted that majority rule was still protected. They even tried to add “ballot candy”—such as a ban on non-citizens voting even though they already can’t vote in Missouri—to fool voters into supporting an attack on their own rights. And this could’ve been voted on in August, months before Missouri voters would be voting on an amendment on reproductive freedom in November.
Overall, it felt like stopping this would be an uphill battle. Downright scary.
But…
…Democrats, although outnumbered in Missouri, resisted at every turn. Many more are running this year, bringing accountability to far more sitting incumbents. And current Democratic state senators held the Senate floor in a more than two-day filibuster (the longest in state history) earlier this week.
And yesterday? The Missouri GOP ran out of time.
The awful, anti-democracy bill died.
As my friend Jess Piper told me:
“The Freedom Caucus was dead set on stealing one person, one vote. They were beaten by a 50 hour filibuster by Senate Dems and by reading the room. This is the first in their defeats…we’ll also win on the abortion question in November.”
Two years after the horrendous massacre of 19 students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, the families are suing the corporations that fed the warped mind of the young man who perpetrated the murder. They hired the lawyer who successfully represented the Sandy Hook families and won a $73 million settlement for them.
SAN ANTONIO — The lawyer who won a record-setting settlement for Sandy Hook families announced two lawsuits Friday on behalf of Uvalde school shooting victims against the manufacturer of the AR-15-style weapon used in the attack, as well as the publisher of “Call of Duty” and the social media giant Meta.
The lawsuits against Daniel Defense, known for its high-end rifles; Activision, the manufacturer of first-person shooter game “Call of Duty”;” and Meta, the parent company of Facebook, may be the first of their kind to connect aggressive firearms marketing tactics on social media and gaming platforms to the actions of a mass shooter.
The complaints contend the three companies are responsible for “grooming” a generation of “socially vulnerable” young men radicalized to live out violent video game fantasies in the real world with easily accessible weapons of war.
The wrongful death suits were filed in Texas and California against Meta, Instagram’s parent company; Activision, the video game publisher; and Daniel Defense, a weapons company that manufactured the assault rifle used by the mass shooter in Uvalde. The filings came on the second anniversary of the shooting.
A press release sent on Friday by the law offices of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder PC and Guerra LLP said the lawsuits show that, over the past 15 years, the three companies have partnered in a “scheme that preys upon insecure, adolescent boys…”
The first lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, accuses Meta’s Instagram of giving gun manufacturers “an unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors, in their homes, at school, even in the middle of the night,” with only token oversight.
The complaint also alleges that Activision’s popular warfare game Call of Duty “creates a vividly realistic and addicting theater of violence in which teenage boys learn to kill with frightening skill and ease,” using real-life weapons as models for the game’s firearms.
[Salvador] Ramos played Call of Duty – which features, among other weapons, an assault-style rifle manufactured by Daniel Defense, according to the lawsuit – and visited Instagram obsessively, where Daniel Defense often advertised.
John Thompson writes about Oklahoma’s conflicting views about immigration. On one hand is strong anti-immigrant sentiment: on the other is the recognition that the state needs workers. He writes from his perspective as a teacher.
Oklahoma’s new anti-immigration law, HB 4156, “makes entering and remaining in Oklahoma a crime if a person entered the United States unlawfully.” As the Oklahoman reports, it makes:
“Impermissible occupation” as a first offense a misdemeanor punishable by a year in county jail and/or a maximum $500 fine.
Subsequent arrests will be felonies punishable by up to two years in prison and/or a maximum $1,000 fine. In both cases, offenders will be required to leave the state within 72 hours of their conviction or release from custody, whichever comes later.
The American Civil Liberties Union further explains that when state officers, who are unfamiliar with complex federal laws, take over the enforcement of those laws, racial profiling is likely for both immigrants to Oklahoma and travelers from other states.
In the wake of HB 4156, we must remember the lessons of recent history while fact-checking the propaganda that drove it. Around the turn of the century, an economist guiding the Oklahoma City MAPS for Kids process worried that because of the decline of White and Black student enrollment, it was already too late to save the Oklahoma City Public School System from financial collapse. And, as it turned out, the district survived because of immigration, which increased Hispanic enrollment from around 20% to becoming the majority of students.
Now, the OKCPS is more than 58% Hispanic, and that immigration is a part of the reason why Oklahoma City was 6th in nation’s urban population growth from 2010 to 2020. As the Oklahoma City’s Hispanic population became the fastest-growing demographic, increasing by 42% since 2010. As it grew to 21% of the city’s population, the state’s Hispanic residents grew to 490,000.
It also must be remembered that this growth occurred despite the anti-immigrant HB 1804 law of 2007 which “was considered the most far-reaching immigration law in the United States.” But it also cited far-right Republicans who opposed it. As business people found it impossible to fill their jobs, support for anti-immigrant legislation eventually declined.
Soon after the law was passed, one of my best students, an immigrant from Mexico, disappeared for several months. After returning, he said that his family was driving down a highway when they were stopped by a policeman, who said that he wouldn’t turn them over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) if they got down on their knees and begged for mercy. My student said that the rest of his family complied, but they were still deported.
Then, a Black student with serious disabilities reached out, shook his hand, and borrowed words from the day’s lesson, “Welcome to Oklahoma.”
Many times I visited majority-Hispanic schools whose parking lots, due to HB 1804, were monitored by law enforcement officers who would arrest immigrants when they brought their kids to schools.
But many other times, I heard conservatives, and business leaders, express admiration for hard-working, families and push back against the law. As the Daily Oklahoman reported, “Critics contend HB 1804 is all talk and hate: a law with 24 provisions that’s neither slowed nor curbed undocumented workers from coming to the state.”
As immigration took off, I witnessed the way that “Hurt people hurt people.” Immigrant parents often told me that elementary schools were very welcoming, but problems occurred in high-challenge middle schools, as was true in my high school; it was mostly students who had endured multiple traumas who attacked immigrants. At first, I’d see shrinking convoys of Hispanic students rushing to classes with their heads down, seeking to avoid abuse by students who had Serious Emotional Disturbances (SEL).
I then witnessed inspiring leadership which transformed students’ attitudes. For example, due to false information being spread, fights between White and Black students were spreading across the entire John Marshall H.S. building and property. A Mexican-American linebacker took control, first by organizing the football team into peacemakers. The entire school then saw and admired the way he kept recruiting students of all races into calming classmates down.
I was also awed by the way that the immigrant ethic brought classroom learning to a higher level. It got to the point when I was guest-teaching middle schoolers and I teased them, “You aren’t 8th graders. I’ve never seen 8th graders like you. You must be seniors claiming to be in middle school.” The kids laughed, but we all recognized the truth expressed in such a statement.
After retiring, I came back to an alternative school for students with a felony rap (whether they earned it or not). We couldn’t be as open in discussing race and cultural backgrounds as in a regular class. So, a female student would discreetly visit me before class for in-depth discussions. One day I was saying, “The best thing I’ve seen in my adult lifetime was …” But then the class walked in and she rushed to her seat. The next day she came early and asked, “What was the best thing you’ve seen?” I replied, “This wave of Hispanic immigration!”
The student rushed to Hispanic young women and told them what I’d just said. They high-fived each other and shared my words with Black and White young ladies, who celebrated them, and then they shared them with Hispanic, Black and White guys. In one of my most wonderful experiences in the classroom, the entire classroom celebrated the accomplishments of immigrants.
Today we must also fact check the claims that drove the passage of HB 4156. A great source for truth-telling is a presentation by Edurne Pineda, the Head Consul for the Oklahoma City consulate of Mexico. She acknowledged that immigration is a complex issue, and there are negative situations that must be addressed. Controlling the border requires cooperation between American and Mexican authorities. And it is noteworthy that Mexico has around 15,000 more border agents than the U.S. And exports to Mexico support millions of American jobs.
But Ms. Pineda makes a powerful case for rejecting the false narratives behind the law, and for the positive effects of immigration, and how “Oklahoma’s future is closely intertwined” with its benefits. Only about 20% of today’s immigrants to America are from Mexico. But, she explains, almost 16% of U.S. commerce is with Mexico, as opposed to 11.3% with China. Moreover, undocumented immigrants contribute $13 billion per year for Social Security benefits that they can’t receive.
Fortunately, HB 4156 is likely to face legal challenges. Unfortunately, even though Oklahoma City’s Chief of Police Wade Gourley is seeking to minimize the harm, the law will promote racial stereotyping and deter immigrants from reporting crimes.
And the public needs to understand that immigrants are incarcerated at a rate that is 60% lower than for people born in the U.S. Moreover, over 49 years, only 9 immigrants attempted a terrorist attack; only 3, who were from Albania, crossed from the Mexican border.
Today’s question is whether Oklahomans will be influenced by facts, as well and common decency. Will we respond as we did after the 2007, and reject a law that was “all talk and hate?” Or has another two decades of propaganda permanently changed us? And will we take full advantage of the social and economic benefits that come from immigration?
Diane Ravitch's blog 