Timothy Snyder on the January 6 Report

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2022 //
13

Timothy Snyder, a pre-eminent scholar of fascism, summarized the report of the January 6 Committee:

What did Trump know, and when did he lie about it? How did his Big Lie lead to specific actions to overturn and election and bring down the American system? What did the coup attempt of 2020-2021 look like from within the Trump administration itself?

Thanks to the excellent “Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol,” we now know the answers to these and many other questions. I provide here just the briefest of summaries of the report’s recounting of the events of November 2020-January 2021.

It is very easy, when a long report is released, to underplay its basic findings. There is a temptation to act as if something is not shocking if we have heard part of it before, as though this were a mark of political sophistication. The American tendency to normalize threats to democracy is also present in retrospect.

What is described in palpable and convincing detail in the Final Report is indeed profoundly shocking: a planned and coordinated attempt by the president of the United States and his allies to carry out regime change in the United States of America on the basis of a Big Lie.

Here is my very brief summary of the factual part of the report, in fifteen quick points. I am deliberately understating here; the evidence, in the Final Reportitself, permits much broader conclusions.

1. Trump knew that he was likely to lose the 3 November 2020 election, and planned in advance to declare victory (to tell a Big Lie) if he lost.

2. On 3 November 2020, Trump knew that he was very unlikely to have won the election of that day, and declared victory anyway. In the days following, aware that he had lost, he continued to declare victory.

3. Over and over again in November, December, and January, Trump publicized specific claims of electoral fraud shortly after being informed that they were false.

4. Aware that his advisors, campaign officials, and cabinet knew his claims of fraud to be false, Trump promoted people, such as Rudolph Giuliani, who would lie for him in public.

5. In the full knowledge that he had lost the election and that his claims of fraud were false, Trump made several deliberate efforts to overturn the election results and thus American democracy.

6. In states he had lost, Trump personally pressured state officials to fraudulently and illegally alter the electoral outcome.

7. Informed that the Department of Justice had investigated and found no evidence of fraud, Trump nevertheless sought to use its powers, via Jeffrey Clark, to intimidate state officials to change electoral outcomes.

8. Knowing that he had lost the electoral college vote, Trump oversaw an effort to create fake slates of electors. These entirely bogus documents were then sent to the vice-president (who refused them).

9. Though aware that it was the vice-president’s role only to count the electoral votes, Trump pressured the vice-president not to do so, on the theory that the vice-president could, in effect, choose the president.

10. Even the person who devised the plan regarding the vice-president, John Eastman, knew it to be illegal.

11. Knowing by January 6th that all that remained was the formality of certifying Biden’s victory, Trump encouraged supporters he knew to be armed and angry to halt this procedure and violently overthrow our form of government.

12. Trump’s call to violence was successful because enough of his supporters believed his lies and understood what he wanted them to do: prevent a peaceful transition of power.

13. At a time when the Capitol was under attack, the vice-president was in flight, and the members of the vice-president’s security detail feared for their lives, Trump urged his supporters on to further violence.

14. After the failed coup attempt, a number of Republican legislators sought presidential pardons, thereby acknowledging their fears that they had acted illegally.

15. Even had Trump believed that he had won the 2020 election, which he did not, his coup attempt would remain a coup attempt, and his crimes would remain crimes.

These are some of the simple facts, as we now know them, two years on.

Two years ago, I wrote a long essay about the January 6 insurrection, entitled “American Abyss.” It could be published right after Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol, because I had written it beforehand, as a study of the Big Lie and its consequences. Thanks to the work of some excellent reporters and editors, I could add details from the horrors of the day before the final text went to press in The New York Times Magazine.

Trump’s coup attempt itself was predictable, and I had been predicting it throughout the autumn of 2020. Indeed, since the publication of On Tyrannyin early 2017, I had been trying to make the case that something like this could happen in the United States, and in late 2020 I spent a lot of time saying that it would happen. I like to think that this helped to prepare some of us for the coup attempt when it did come.

Trump is obviously personally responsible. But the techniques he used are not unique to him, and could be perfected by others. The weaknesses he exploited are structural. Now that a coup attempt has taken place, and we know a great deal about how it happened, it is important for us to ask some of the deeper questions about why it could have happened, not least to make sure that nothing similar takes place in the future. In posts to come, I will be interpreting the report, returning to some of the themes I established these last few years, such as the Big Lie.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Lies, Trump

Heather Long: The Teacher Shortage Will Not End Until Teacher Pay Is Increased

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2022 //
40

Heather Long is a member of the Washington Post editorial board. She pinpoints the reasons for the national teacher shortage: low pay, but also pandemic stresses, and the ongoing political attacks on the teaching profession by extremists who want to prevent any teaching about racism or sexuality.

Message: pay teachers as professionals and let them teach as professionals, without censorship or interference by busybodies.

Long writes:

The U.S. economy hit a milestone this year: All 22 million jobs lost during the coronavirus pandemic were fully recovered. But that doesn’t mean workers went back to the same jobs. One of the sectors struggling the most to rebound is K-12 public education, which is still down more than 270,000 employees.


There is an educator shortage in the United States, but it is crucial to understand the details. First, this is about more than teachers. That 270,000 figure includes a lot fewer bus drivers, custodians and other support staff. Second, education isn’t simply about getting enough warm bodies into classrooms; it’s about having effective and qualified teachers and staff. The best analysis of the situation this fall, from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University, indicates a teacher shortage of nearly 2 percent, but more than 5 percent of positions are currently held by under-qualified teachers. Third, the shortage isn’t nationwide. It’s much worse in some schools and in some subjects.

In October, nearly half of public schools were still struggling to fill at least one teacher vacancy, according to a recently released Education Department survey. But schools in high-poverty neighborhoods were significantly more likely to have unfilled positions. Similarly, school districts report having an especially hard time finding special education, computer science and foreign language teachers, and bus drivers and custodial staff.

This isn’t a new phenomenon, but many signs indicate it worsened during the pandemic. Teachers experienced extreme levels of burnout from Zoom classes and safety concerns during the early days of the pandemic. Then came the culture wars that put teachers and staff under constant scrutiny over any conversations involving history, racism and sexuality. Throw in the Great Resignation, a tight labor market and rapidly rising pay in other professions, and the net result has been some teachers and staff retiring early. Others have quit and gone to work in different professions. And some recent graduates have decided not to enter education at all.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Education Reform, Extremism, History, Teacher Shortage, Teachers

Call the WOKE Police!

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2022 //
67

A reader who signs as “Wait, What” left the following comment:

Dear Florida Woke Police:

You must ban these documents and prominent figures’ quotes from our schools’ textbooks and bookshelves immediately! They are clear examples of content woke schools teaching of “systemic injustices in our society”

Abraham Lincoln
“There is no greater injustice than to wring your profits from the sweat of another man’s brow.” –

George W. Bush
“Laura and I are anguished by the brutal suffocation of George Floyd and disturbed by the injustice and fear that suffocate our country.

We have often underestimated how radical that quest really is, and how our cherished principles challenge systems of intended or assumed injustice.” –

P.L. 94-142
“more than half of the handicapped children in the United
States do not receive appropriate educational services which
would enable them to have full equality of opportunity”

National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage
They stated that the interests of women and men were generally the same, and that women were not “suffering from any injustice” that having the vote would change. They also believed that women and men had different duties in the government, as they did in the home, and that the woman suffrage movement was a “backward step in the progress of civilization.”

Attorney General Eric Holder – 2009 on The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009

It also creates a new federal criminal law which criminalizes willfully causing bodily injury (or attempting to do so with fire, firearm, or other dangerous weapon) when:

(1) the crime was committed because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin of any person or (2) the crime was committed because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person and the crime affected interstate or foreign commerce or occurred within federal special maritime and territorial jurisdiction.

Abraham Lincoln, speech on Repeal of the Missouri Compromise, 1854
This declared indifference, but as I must think, covert real zeal for the spread of slavery, I can not but hate. I hate it because of the monstrous injustice of slavery itself.*

And, the granddaddy of them all..
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice…”

*Continuation of Lincoln’s statement on Missouri Compromise – HA! TAKE THAT GOP – ah, the foreshadowing of the last phrase about “self-interest”

“…I hate it because it deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world — enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites — causes the real friends of freedom to doubt our sincerity, and especially because it forces so many really good men amongst ourselves into an open war with the very fundamental principles of civil liberty — criticizing the Declaration of Independence, and insisting that there is no right principle of action but self-interest.”

Categories Democracy, Equity, Ethics, Injustice, Racism, Special Education

What Will the GOP Do About Serial Liar George Santos?

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2022 //
48

The short answer is: Nothing. At least in Washington, D.C.

The story in New York is different.

Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether his multiple lies broke any laws. Anne Donnelly, the local prosecutor in Nassau County, where he was elected, is a Republican, and she too has opened an investigation.

The New York Times, which broke the original story, reported last night:

Federal and local prosecutors are investigating whether Representative-elect George Santos committed any crimes involving his finances and lies about his background on the campaign trail.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn have opened an investigation into Mr. Santos that is focused at least in part on his financial dealings, according to a person familiar with the matter. The investigation was said to be in its early stages.

In a separate inquiry, the Nassau County, N.Y., district attorney’s office said it was looking into the “numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-elect Santos” during his successful 2022 campaign to represent parts of Long Island and Queens.

It was unclear how far the Nassau County inquiry had progressed, but the district attorney, Anne Donnelly, said in a statement that Mr. Santos’s fabrications “are nothing short of stunning.”

Why are the Republicans in Congress silent?

Charlie Sykes, who used to be a conservative Republican, writes in The Bulwark that Kevin McCarthy needs Santos’ vote. End of story. His colleagues are saying “He’s learned his lesson,” although he remains defiant. Santos says “Everyone embellishes his resume.” But the proper word is not “embellish,” it’s “lie.” The Congressman-elect lied about his education, lied about his employment, lied about his religion, lied about his family. What part of his resume is true? No one knows.

Probably none of it except his name.

Sykes writes:

Of course, a political party with any sort of intact immune system would move quickly to send this sociopath back to ScamLand, whence he came.

But this is the GOP circa 2022, and so it faces a painful dilemma. With a narrow majority in the House, Republicans (and especially Kevin McCarthy) need his vote, of course.

But that’s not the real problem here, is it?

After years of ignoring, enabling, and rationalizing Big Lies and small ones, it will now be exceedingly difficult for the GOP to find their misplaced conscience that might morph into outrage and something like a moral standard. As Nick Catoggio writes:

Anyone willing to set aside their qualms about Trump for the sake of holding executive power logically should be willing to set aside their qualms about Santos for the sake of holding legislative power

So, not surprisingly, GOP leaders are either silent, or in a forgiving mood.

To deepen the puzzle of Santos, read this article in The Daily Beast about one of his big donors.

Categories Accountability, Character, Elections, Ethics, Fake, Hoax, Lies, New York, Republicans

Kansas: Former Legislator Who Sponsored “In God We Trust“ Bill Convicted of Fraud

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2022 //
19

During the Trump administration, Congress appropriated billions of dollars for COVID relief, mostly to help small businesses survive by paying their employees. The main relief was the Payroll Protection Program, which dispersed nearly $800 billion. The program was run through the Small Business Administration, and there was little, if any, oversight. Some businesses that didn’t need financial aid applied for money and got it.

Millions of dollars were paid out to businesses, churches, synagogues, private schools, charter schools, religious schools, and all sorts of other enterprises. Charter schools, which never lost funding, received more than a billion dollars and received six times as much COVID relief as public schools. Public schools were not allowed to apply for the PPP program. ProPublica created a site where you can see who received PPP money in any zip code.

In Kansas, a former legislator was just convicted of COVID fraud. His case was noteworthy because his calling card was his alleged deep religious faith. Just as interesting is the publication in which the story appears. It’s called Only Sky, and it is pointedly a voice for secularism in a region where Elmer Gantry could get rich every day at tent revivals. The story was written by Hemant Mehta.

Michael Capps, a former Kansas lawmaker who once sponsored a bill to put the words “In God We Trust” in every federal building, has been found guilty of committing COVID relief fraud and money laundering.

His career wasn’t supposed to end this way. In 2018, the Republican was appointed to the Kansas State House and won his own election bid later that year. Like other members of his party, he used his time in office to push Christianity on everyone. That’s why, in addition to his anti-trans and anti-abortion bills, Capps sponsored a bill to put “In God We Trust” in public buildings, including public schools….

Capps was defeated in 2020.

After losing that race, he could have just faded away. Instead, in 2021, Capps was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of COVID relief fraud and money laundering:

An indictment filed by the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Kansas says Capps bilked federal, state and local agencies for more than $450,000 in COVID-19 business recovery funds.

…

… Capps inflated his payroll and applied for loans to pay employees who don’t exist, according to the indictment.

…

The federal indictment says Capps laundered hundreds of thousands of dollars in COVID relief funding through his businesses and charity between May and August 2020.

Why did Capps do it? Maybe because the words “In God We Trust” weren’t on the walls of his office building. Or maybe because criminals are criminals and Christianity makes for a great cover story to stop people from looking over you shoulder while you’re working on a scam.

Whatever the reason, a jury has now found Michael Capps guilty on 12 felony charges (out of a possible 18):

Capps defrauded Emprise Bank, U.S. Small Business Administration and Kansas Department of Commerce out of $355,550 in COVID-19 recovery funds, the jury found. He then transferred the money through business and personal accounts, including some money that went into investment funds.

Capps remains out on bond while he awaits his sentencing hearing, which is scheduled for March 10. He could face millions of dollars in fines and decades in prison.

He should be excited. That’s plenty of time to read the Bible over and over….

Again: This was a guy who spent his time in office pretending that Jesus made you a better person. He was a liar then. He’s a liar now. He’s a perfect example of why you should never trust a politician who takes the Bible more seriously than the Constitution.

Categories Corruption, Fraud, Kansas

Rich Lowry: Republicans Are Still Intimidated by Trump

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2022 //
50

Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of conservative National Review, calls out Republicans for their reluctance to call out Trump by name. Instead, when confronted by his latest outrage, they issue statements condemning his actions without mentioning his name.

Part of his perceptive article:

The man who has spent a lifetime putting his name on everything can still keep it off the lips of people appalled by something he has said or done. It’s a GOP taboo that became so deeply ingrained during his presidency and the immediate aftermath that it will only lift slowly, if ever.

“The entire nation knows who is responsible for that day. Beyond that, I don’t have any immediate observations,” Mitch McConnell said in a statement after the Jan. 6 criminal referrals on Tuesday.

So, who exactly is responsible? Do we know anything about this person? Is there any description? Has he or she been seen since Jan. 6, 2021? In what direction did he or she flee afterward?

The Republican Jewish Coalition spoke out after the infamous dinner with Ye (better known as Kanye West): “We strongly condemn the virulent antisemitism of Kanye West and Nick Fuentes and call on all political leaders to reject their messages of hate and refuse to meet with them.”

“Political leaders”? Why not say the name of the man who dined with the two extremists?

The party leaders’ fear of naming Trump demonstrates his power. They are still afraid of him.

I recall Mel Brooks long ago explaining why he wrote The Producers, which includes a hilarious spoof of Hitler. He wanted to break Bitler’s power by making a joke of him.

Whether or not it worked, it is clear that Trump will retain his hold on Republicans until they feel free to call him out by name.

Categories Accountability, Republicans, Trump

Indiana: Will Legislature Force Districts to Fund Charter Schools with Property Taxes?

By dianeravitch
December 28, 2022 //
5

Indiana blogger Steve Hinnefeld reports on a disturbing possibility in the Hoosier state: charter schools are eyeing property taxes as a source of additional funding.

I remember when charter schools were first launched, in the late 1980s, their advocates (and I was one at the time) made three promises: one, they would get better results than public schools (they don’t); they would be more accountable than public schools (they are not); and they would cost less because they eliminate bureaucracy (they insist on the same funding as public schools).

Hinnefeld wonders whether it would be “taxation without representation” if property taxes were allocated to privately managed schools.

Unfortunately, the heavily gerrymandered legislature gives the privatizers whatever they want.

Will they draw a line now?

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Indiana

NYC: Mayor Adams Cancels Expansion of DeBlasio’s Universal Pre-K Program

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2022 //
32

The single most notable achievement of Mayor Bill DeBlaio’s eight years as Mayor of New York City was the creation of a free, universal pre-k program.

Marina Toure of Politico reports that new Mayor Eric Adams is cancelling the expansion of the program to include all three-year-olds.

The immensely popular universal prekindergarten program was the brainchild of former Mayor Bill de Blasio in 2014. Three years later, he began expanding it to 3-year-olds. The pioneering education policy remains the single biggest achievement from de Blasio’s two terms in office. It was so successful that it became a national model for other major cities like Seattle and Washington.

Six years ago, New York City hosted leaders from a dozen cities across the U.S. to share lessons learned from its free early childhood education program for over 70,000 4-year-olds.

And yet, in a wildly expensive city where monthly child care costs top $3,500, a staggering 30 percent of free pre-K and “3K” seats were unfilled as of November.

Mayor Eric Adams, who took office in January, is canceling de Blasio’s plan for universal 3K, citing mismanagement of the program that led to the empty seats and budget cuts. Enrollment declines caused by the Covid-19 pandemic combined with a lack of education and outreach led to a striking imbalance where the lowest-income neighborhoods had the greatest number of empty seats and the wealthiest ones had long wait lists.

The result means children whose families are struggling the most will be deprived of a lifeline — a chance at the kind of free, quality education that’s been shown to improve performance in high school mathematics. It could also be a deterrent to other cities looking to replicate New York’s model after President Joe Biden repeatedly failed to get funding for early childhood education in spending bills.

Adams blames DeBlasio for the program’s shortcomings.

Leonie Haimson chimed in on the New York City parents’ blog to say that the program was “horribly implemented.” (Note: CBO=Community Based Organization.)

She wrote:

De Blasio’s preK program was horribly implemented and incredibly wasteful. Under Josh Wallach, the DOE insisted on putting as many kids as possible into elementary schools, including those that were already overcrowded and had waitlists for Kindergarten, contributing to worse overcrowding for about 236,000 students.

Meanwhile CBOs that had been in the preK program for years were starved for students, putting many of them at risk of closing down. There were MANY empty seats in CBOs, who directors begged for more students, to no avail. – despite the fact that their quality is rated more highly in many respects than the preKs in elementary school and provide services till 5 or 6 PM.

The Politico article mentions this [the botched implementation] in passing: “Finally, an application process controlled by the DOE — as opposed to parents being able to enroll their children directly with community providers — has led to access issues.” The CBOs had countless meetings with Wallach where he stubbornly refused to fix these problems

DOE also spent hundreds of millions of dollars in building stand-alone preK centers that stood half empty. The spending included renovating a leased space that previously housed a Dunkin Donuts shop in the basement of a parking garage in Brooklyn, costing six million dollars to create a preK classroom with a capacity of only 18 students, at a cost of $333,000 per student.

I wrote about this in our preK report ; press release here: https://classsizematters.org/the-impact-of-prek-on-school-overcrowding-in-nyc-lack-of-planning-lack-of-space/;

Our full report here. https://3zn338.a2cdn1.secureserver.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/PreK-report-12.17.18-final-final.pdf

Here is an excerpt: “In recent testimony before the New York City Council, Lisa Caswell, a senior policy analyst with
the Day Care Council of New York, a federation of 91 non-profits which run child care programs,
addressed the fact that DOE had diverted students not only from DOE pre-K centers but also
from CBO centers to public schools. She testified that in previous years, the DOE had been
engaged in the “recruitment of children directly from our [CBO] settings to fill UPK seats,” which
added to public school pre-K enrollment while leaving seats empty in CBOs, causing these
centers loss of students.”

This is an example of the danger of mayoral control. The mayor makes decisions that promote his standing in the polls. A program run by professionals would have been better implemented.

Categories Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Reform, New York City

Cassidy Hutchinson Has a Moral Core

By dianeravitch
December 27, 2022 //
93

It gets tiresome to read about the cheats, liars, grifters, and dishonorable people who rise to wealth and power. Thus it is a relief to read about a young woman who had neither wealth nor power, but something far more powerful: a moral core. A sure sense of right and wrong. Principles. Others could boldly lie or feign ignorance when testifying under oath. She couldn’t do it. She wanted to be able to look herself in the mirror every day without grimacing.

Ruth Marcus, the deputy editor of The Washington Post, wrote about her, a woman with more wealth and power than those she served because she has a clear conscience.

After I read the column below, I read the transcript of Cassidy’s interview with the January 6 Committee. She goes through the details of how she changed from a loyal partisan of Trump world to a renegade, more concerned with telling the truth than pleasing her handlers. She was without a job for a year, and she relied on a Trump world lawyer. He advised her to say as little as possible in answer to the Committee’s questions and to answer whenever possible, “I don’t recall.” He and others in Trump’s entourage promised to get her a good job, to take care of her, as long as she protects the team. They flattered her and told her that she’s doing a good job, she’s a member of the family, and they will always have her back. So much of it sounds like something out of The Sopranos. She wants to please them, but she also wants to tell the truth. At one point, as she is doing her best to please them, she admits that she is “disgusted” with herself.

A cynic might wonder why she had so many qualms about lying for a president who lied repeatedly every day. But then you remind yourself that she’s a young kid, not long out of college, working in a dream job. Of course she wanted to please her superiors in Trump world. Of course she was afraid that they would destroy her if she defected. But somewhere inside her was a moral core that required her to tell the truth.

Marcus wrote:

Cassidy Hutchinson knew better than to put herself in debt to what she called “Trump world.” As she would later testify, “Once you are looped in, especially financially with them, there is no turning back.”

But Hutchinson, who witnessed the final days of the Trump White House from her all-access perch as an aide to Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, had been subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 select committee. The deadline for turning over documents was looming, and Hutchinson was, she said, “starting to freak out.” One lawyer she consulted said he could assist — then demanded a $150,000 retainer.

So, the young aide, out of work since Donald Trump had left office a full year earlier, initially decided to turn to Trump world for help. Which is how she came to receive a phone call from Stefan Passantino, previously a lawyer in the Trump White House counsel’s office.

“We have you taken care of,” he told Hutchinson. When she asked who would be paying the bills, Passantino demurred — this despite legal ethics rules that let attorneys accept payment from third parties but only with the “informed consent” of their client.

“If you want to know at the end, we’ll let you know, but we’re not telling people where funding is coming from right now,” Hutchinson, in her deposition, recalled him saying. “Like, you’re never going to get a bill for this, so if that’s what you’re worried about.”

If Hutchinson’s live testimony before the select committee was riveting, her deposition testimony, taken several months later and released Thursday, is a page-turner: The Godfather meets John Grisham meets “All the President’s Men.” Before, we could only imagine how frightening the situation must have been for the 20-something Trump staffer. Now, we can read of her frantic search for help, and her terror as she contemplated telling the truth.

It is a tale, at least in Hutchinson’s telling, of Trump allies dangling financial support in exchange for unyielding loyalty. “We’re gonna get you a really good job in Trump world. You don’t need to apply other places,” Passantino assured Hutchinson. “We’re gonna get you taken care of. We’re going to keep you in the family.” The goal, as he set it out, was clear: “We just want to focus on protecting the President.”

It’s a story of meek compliance enforced by fear of consequences — and menacing admonitions to remain on board. “They will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything they don’t want me to do,” Hutchinson told her mother when she offered congratulations about finally securing a lawyer.

The night before her second interview with the committee, an aide to Meadows called Hutchinson about her former boss: “Mark wants me to let you know that he knows you’re loyal and he knows you’ll do the right thing tomorrow and that you’re going to protect him and the boss. You know, he knows that we’re all on the same team and we’re all a family.”

Most vividly, it is a chilling account of questionable legal ethics practiced by Passantino who, in a plot twist worthy of a Hollywood scriptwriter, was the Trump White House’s chief ethics officer. Passantino is depicted repeatedly advising Hutchinson to fall back on an asserted failure to remember anything. “The less you remember, the better.”

Except Hutchinson did remember — and quite a lot. Such as the incident in the presidential limousine, as related to Hutchinson by deputy chief of staff Tony Ornato, in which an enraged Trump allegedly lunged at his lead Secret Service agent when he refused to take the president to the Capitol on Jan. 6.

When Hutchinson mentioned this episode to Passantino shortly before her first interview with the committee, “he’s like, ‘No, no, no, no, no. We don’t want to go there. We don’t want to talk about that.’” The committee, he said, “have no way of knowing that. … But just because he told you doesn’t mean that you need to share it with them.”

Deposition prep with Passantino seemed confined less to reviewing the facts than to instructing the witness in the art of declining to disclose them. “He was like, ‘Well, if you had just overheard conversations that happened, you don’t need to testify to that,’” Hutchinson said.

“Stefan never told me to lie,” she told the committee. “He specifically told me, ‘I don’t want you to perjure yourself, but “I don’t recall” isn’t perjury. They don’t know what you can and can’t recall.’” Hutchinson pressed him on this matter. “I said, ‘But, if I do recall something but not every little detail, Stefan, can I still say I don’t recall?’ And he had said, ‘Yes.’”

A week later, appearing before the panel, Hutchinson found herself peppered with questions about the Trump limousine incident. She kept saying she hadn’t heard anything like that — and Passantino sat silently by as his client offered testimony he knew to be false.

“I just lied,” a rattled Hutchinson told Passantino during a break. “And he said, ‘They don’t know what you know, Cassidy. They don’t know that you can recall some of these things. So you saying “I don’t recall” is an entirely acceptable response to this.’”

No, no, no. Lawyers advise their clients not to volunteer information — that’s appropriate. They instruct them to give limited answers, confined to the precise scope of the question — that’s appropriate, too.

But lawyers — at least lawyers who want to keep their law license — do not provide the kind of counsel that Hutchinson describes. There is no “overheard” or “I don’t recall” loophole if, in fact, you did hear something and you do remember it. Ominously for Passantino, the deposition transcript reveals that Hutchinson provided the same information to the Justice Department.

Passantino, who has taken a leave of absence from his law firm to “deal with the distraction of this matter,” said in a statement that he represented Hutchinson “honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me” and believed she “was being truthful and cooperative with the Committee throughout the several interview sessions in which I represented her.”

In the end, Hutchinson decided she could not accept such advice and still look at herself in the mirror. So, she dumped Passantino and decided to spill what she knew to congressional investigators.

“To be blunt, I was kind of disgusted with myself,” Hutchinson said. “I became somebody I never thought that I would become.”

To read her deposition is to wonder: What do the others in the Trump crowd see when they look in the mirror?

Categories Character, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Fraud, Justice, Scandals, Trump

Randi Led the Way in Seeking a Safe Reopening of Schools

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2022 //
84

I asked AFT President Randi Weingarten to respond to David Brooks’s claim that “the teachers’ unions” were to blame for long school closures during the pandemic, which caused grievous harm to students.

She answered with a resounding “NO” and sent me the following timeline. If I had NEA President Becky Pringle’s personal email, I would have asked her the same question. Being that it’s Christmas holidays, it will be several days before I can reach her. I will try.

Meanwhile, Randi sent this comprehensive rebuttal of Brooks’ allegations.

Since the first months of the pandemic, the American Federation of Teachers has worked with parents and communities to safely reopen schools and other institutions vital to the nation’s social and economic health.

Even before COVID-19, educators knew that remote education, relentlessly championed and invested in (https://www.edweek.org/technology/betsy-devos-backtracks-on-remote-learning-options-she-had-championed/2020/07) by then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, was only ever a supplement, not a substitute, for in-person learning. Remote learning can serve as a backstop during a public health emergency, but only if we address equity issues, including broadband accessibility, services and support. In-person learning is a prerequisite to fostering the deep social and emotional ties and close relationships with educators that are essential to kids’ development.

Throughout the pandemic, AFT members have consistently (https://www.aft.org/press-release/new-data-shows-majority-educators-willing-go-back-school-if-key-safety) expressed (https://www.aft.org/press-release/new-poll-shows-americas-teachers-want-return-classrooms-amid-growing) support (https://www.aft.org/press-release/americas-educators-are-vaccinated-and-back-person-poll) for in-person instruction with safety protocols in place. Those protocols served as the pathway, not the barrier, to returning to classrooms. The union held (https://www.aft.org/news/latest-town-hall-dives-afts-reopen-plan) numerous (https://www.aft.org/news/member-town-hall-showcases-back-school-all-campaign)town halls (https://www.aft.org/news/words-wisdom-mark-aft-back-school-town-hall) on the crucial importance of face-to-face instruction.

Since April 2020, the AFT has published four proposals for safely reopening schools and addressing the challenges of the pandemic.1 In the fall of 2021, the AFT invested $5 million in 28 states (https://www.aft.org/press-release/major-speech-randi-weingarten-reimagines-public-education-nation-emerges) to get kids back in classrooms, through billboard and radio ads encouraging reopening as well as health fairs and vaccination clinics.

At the same time, parents in major cities often elicited (https://www.chalkbeat.org/2021/2/18/22289735/parents-polls-schools-opening-remote) a strong preference (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/08/world/most-families-of-color-have-chosen-remote-learning-over-an-in-person-return-to-nyc-schools.html?referringSource=articleShare) for remote learning. Charter schools were more likely (https://www.usnews.com/news/education-news/articles/2022-03-15/how-traditional-public-private-and-charter-schools-responded-to-the-pandemic) than other public schools to shift to remote learning, and stay remote, and private schools were just 4 percentage points more likely than public schools to stay open. In October 2020, Success Academy CEO Eva Moskowitz said (https://www.chalkbeat.org/2020/10/14/21516486/city-charter-schools-take-reopening-slow-similar-roadblocks-neighboring-school-districts), “The best way for us to protect teaching and learning was to stay remote and have a level of predictability.”

After a year of failed efforts under President Donald Trump, the Biden administration invested in and successfully reopened schools, with 98 percent open in January 2022 (https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/fact-sheet-one-year-biden-harris-administration-us-department-education-has-helped-schools-safely-reopen-and-meet-students%25E2%2580%2599-needs), compared with 46 percent a year earlier. Teachers across the country advocated for the American Rescue Plan, which included $126 billion for public K-12 schools and funding specifically to address learning recovery.

Tale of the tape

On Feb. 4, 2020, as Trump downplayed COVID-19’s seriousness (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/04/20/what-trump-did-about-coronavirus-february/), the union held a press conference (https://www.afacwa.org/aft_afa_join_coronavirus_prevention) with Association of Flight Attendants President Sara Nelson and others to push for a coordinated response to the emerging pandemic.

In April 2020, the AFT launched its landmark plan (https://www.aft.org/press-release/aft-launches-landmark-plan-safely-reopen-americas-schools-and-communities)to safely reopen America’s schools and communities—months before many other groups, including the federal government. In July of that year, the AFT launched its detailed follow-up plan (https://www.aft.org/press-release/aft-launches-landmark-plan-safely-reopen-americas-schools-and-communities)to safely reopen school buildings.

On April 24, AFT President Randi Weingarten wrote an op-ed (https://thehill.com/opinion/education/494521-what-comes-next-for-public-schooling/) with former Education Secretary John King calling out the shortcomings of remote education and pushing for multi-week summer school to deal with learning loss.

In May 2020, Weingarten was appointed to (https://www.governor.ny.gov/news/amid-ongoing-covid-19-pandemic-governor-cuomo-announces-members-reimagine-education-advisory) New York state’s Reimagine Education Advisory Council, which was charged with safely reopening and reinventing schools.

In July 2020, the union joined (https://www.aft.org/press-release/pediatricians-educators-and-superintendents-urge-safe-return-school-fall) with the National Education Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and the School Superintendents Association to commit to doing everything possible to safely resume in-person schooling at the start of the 2020-21 school year.

In November 2020, the AFT launched a new blueprint (https://thehill.com/opinion/education/528004-a-blueprint-to-safely-open-schools/) to reopen schools.

In January 2021, Weingarten joined Rajiv Shah of the Rockefeller Foundation to write an op-ed saying that schools could reopen (https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/01/24/re-opening-schools-precautions-and-testing-column/6661567002/) with comprehensive testing, before the vaccine was widely available. In February 2021, Weingarten reiterated her position (https://www.wgbh.org/news/education/2021/02/05/teachers-union-president-weingarten-vaccinations-arent-precondition-for-school-reopening-but-need-to-be-priority) that vaccinations are a priority, but not a prerequisite, for in-person learning.

In February 2021, the New York Times published a profile (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/us/schools-reopening-teachers-unions.html) titled “The Union Leader Who Says She Can Get Teachers Back in School.” It reported that Weingarten was calling for schools to reopen, in person, as soon as possible.

Later that month, on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Weingarten issued a clarion call (https://www.nbcnews.com/meet-the-press/video/full-interview-teacher-union-pres-there-s-no-perfect-solution-to-reopening-schools-101356613515?cid=sm_npd_nn_tw_mtp) for in-person learning, arguing that if the NFL could resume in-person football games, schools could resume in-person classes.

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