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  • The New York Times: Trump Is Swinging a Wrecking Ball at the U.S. Government and the Global Economy

    The New York Times: Trump Is Swinging a Wrecking Ball at the U.S. Government and the Global Economy


    David Sanger wrote an article in the New York Times about Trump’s “Experiment in Recklessness.” His plan is no plan at all. His approach is no more than “burn-it-down-first,” figure what to do later. His article appeared on Wednesday, before Trump announced a 90-day pause in his incomprehensible plan to tax every nation–even uninhabited islands–but exempt Russia, Belarus, North Korea, and Cuba. Even desperately impoverished Lesotho–where the average pay is $5 a day–was subject to Trump’s tariffs.

    Our government is run by a cabal of people who are either evil or stupid or both. Probably both. People will die and are dying now because of their actions. Government agencies are being ripped apart. A generation of scientists has been ousted from important jobs in the government and in universities, where their federal grants have been terminated. All federal efforts to address climate change have been cancelled.

    Where Trump goes, chaos , destruction and death go with him.

    Sanger writes:

    As the breadth of the Trump revolution has spread across Washington in recent weeks, its most defining feature is a burn-it-down-first, figure-out-the-consequences-later recklessness. The costs of that approach are now becoming clear.

    Administration officials knew the markets would dive and other nations would retaliate when President Trump announced his long-promised “reciprocal” tariffs. But when pressed, several senior officials conceded that they had spent only a few days considering how the economic earthquake might have second-order effects.

    And officials have yet to describe the strategy for managing a global system of astounding complexity after the initial shock wears off, other than endless threats and negotiations between the leader of the world’s largest economy and everyone else.

    Take the seemingly unmanaged escalation with China, the world’s second largest economy, and the only superpower capable of challenging the United States economically, technologically and militarily. By American and Chinese accounts, there was no substantive conversation between Mr. Trump and China’s top leader, Xi Jinping, or engagement among their senior aides, before the countries plunged toward a trade war.

    Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump’s hastily devised formula for figuring out country-by-country tariffs came up with a 34 percent tax on all Chinese goods, everything from car parts to iPhones to much of what is on the shelves at Walmart and on Amazon’s app.

    When Mr. Xi, predictably, matched that figure, Mr. Trump issued an ultimatum for him to reverse the decision in 24 hours — waving a red flag in front of a leader who would never want to appear to be backing down to Washington. On Wednesday, the tariff went to 104 percent, with no visible strategy for de-escalation.

    If Mr. Trump does get into a trade war with China, he shouldn’t look for much help from America’s traditional allies — Japan, South Korea or the European Union — who together with the United States account for nearly half of the world economy. All of them were equally shocked, and while each is negotiating with Mr. Trump, they seem in no mood to help him manage China.

    “Donald Trump has launched a global economic war without any allies,” the economist Josh Lipsky of the Atlantic Council wrote on Tuesday. “That is why — unlike previous economic crises in this century — there is no one coming to save the global economy if the situation starts to unravel.”

    The global trading system is only one example of the Trump administration tearing something apart, only to reveal it has no plan for how to replace it.

    State Department officials knew that eliminating the U.S. Agency for International Development, the nation’s premier aid agency, would inevitably cost lives. But when a devastating earthquake struck central Myanmar late last month and took down buildings as far away as Bangkok, officials scrambled to provide even a modicum of help — only to discover that the network of positioned aid, and the people and aircraft to distribute it, had been dismantled.

    Having dismantled a system that had responded to major calamities before, they settled on sending a survey team of three employees to examine the wreckage and make recommendations. All three were terminated from their jobs even while they stood amid the ruins in the ancient city of Mandalay, Myanmar, trying to revive an American capability that the Department of Government Efficiency — really no department at all — had crippled.

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio was unapologetic about the paltry American response when he talked to reporters on Friday: “There are a lot of other rich countries, they should also pitch in and help,” he said. “We’re going to continue to do our part, but it’s going to be balanced with all of the other interests we have as a country.”

    Similarly, there was no plan for retrieving a Maryland man who was wrongfully deported to a notoriously dangerous Salvadoran prison, a move a judge called “wholly lawless” and an issue the Supreme Court is expected to take up in the next few days. A Justice Department lawyer in the case was placed on administrative leave, apparently for conceding that the man never should have been sent to the prison.

    Mr. Trump has appeared mostly unmoved as the knock-on effects of his policies take shape. He has shrugged off the loss of $5 trillion in the value of the American markets in recent days. Aboard Air Force One on Sunday night, he said: “Sometimes you have to take medicine to fix something.”

    To finish reading the article, click here. It should be a gift article.

    Friends, we are in a whole lot of trouble. Trump is not a businessman. He played one on TV. He is a performer. He is in way over his head. He called Elon Musk a “genius.” Musk called Trump’s trade advisor Peter Navarro “a moron.” Trump allowed Musk to tear almost every federal agency apart, destroying vital programs and firing essential personnel.

    We have to push back as hard as we can. Trump and his minions have retreated on some of their stupid actions (like purging Harriet Tubman and the Jnderground Railroad of its role in helping slaves escape). Little victories like this should encourage wider protests against the chaos that Trump has unleashed. Is he doing it for Putin’s benefit? Does he suffer from dementia?

    RESIST! PROTEST! STAND UP AND BE COUNTED!



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  • Trump Goes After Two Critics, and His Attorney General Will Help His Vendetta

    Trump Goes After Two Critics, and His Attorney General Will Help His Vendetta


    Trump is following through on his frequent threats to punish anyone who crossed him in the past. He recently ordered his compliant Attorney General to investigate two men who were critical of him during his first term. Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, wrote about the tyrannical nature of this action and about Pam Bondi’s willingness to do whatever he wants.

    Honig writes at the website Cafe, a hub for legal experts:

    Donald Trump’s presidential payback tour rages on, and now it’s personal. It’s one thing to target multi-billion dollar law firms, universities, and media outlets for organizational retribution; those efforts, aimed at stifling and punishing any criticism or dissent, are reprehensible in their own right. But now Trump is going after individual private citizens, using the might of the Executive Branch to potentially throw his detractors in prison.

    In a pair of official proclamations – rendered no less unhinged by the use of official fonts and White House letterhead – Trump identifies two targets who worked in the federal government during his first tenure and dared to speak out publicly against him. First: Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from 2018 to 2020 and made headlines when he publicly contradicted Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. For this act of heretical truth-telling, Trump labels Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor” – whatever the hell that means – who poses grave “risks” to the American public. 

    And then there’s Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who publicly criticized the President in an anonymous book and various media appearances. Taylor, like Krebs, purportedly poses “risks” to the United States, is a “bad-faith actor” (though apparently not a significant one like Krebs) and “stoked dissension” with his public commentary. 

    Are you scared? Don’t you fear the “risks” posed by these two monsters?

     True to the form he has displayed when going after disfavored law firms, Trump hits below the belt. The President orders security clearances stripped not only from Krebs and Taylor but also from everyone who works with them (Krebs at a private cybersecurity firm, Taylor at the University of Pennsylvania). He’s punishing his targets – plus their employers and colleagues, First Amendment freedom of association be darned. 

    It gets worse. In a separate set of orders, Trump directed the Attorney General to open criminal investigations of Krebs and Taylor. Notably absent from the orders is any plausible notion that either might have committed a federal crime. This hardly needs to be said, but it’s not a federal crime to be a “bad-faith actor,” to “stoke dissension,” or even to be a “wise guy,” as Trump called Krebs from the Oval Office.

    The next move is Pam Bondi’s – and we know how this will go. 

    Any reasonable, ethical attorney general would follow the bedrock principle that a prosecutor must have “predication” – some kernel of fact on which to believe a crime might have been committed – to open a criminal investigation. The bar is low, but it serves the vital purpose of preventing precisely the baseless retributive inquests that Trump has now ordered up. In observance of this foundational precept, even Bill Barr – the subject of sharp criticism in my first book, Hatchet Man – generally ignored Trump’s public pleas for the arrests of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and others. Like the exhausted parent of an unruly toddler, Barr would mostly sit back and let the tantrum pass. 

    Don’t count on Bondi taking the same course of passive resistance to the President. She has already shown her true colors, and they’re whatever shade Trump pleases. For example, despite the distinct possibility of criminality by top administration officials around the Signal scandal, the AG refused even to investigate. Instead, she decreed – after zero inquiry, with zero evidence – that information about military attack plans was somehow not classified, and that nobody had acted recklessly. Case closed, no inquiry needed. 

    Bondi no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. She’s in the bag for Trump. The question now is whether she’ll cross the line that even Barr, her crooked predecessor, would not, and use the Justice Department’s staggering investigative power as an offensive weapon. 

    Even if DOJ investigates but concludes it cannot bring a criminal charge, the threat to Krebs and Taylor is real. Any criminal inquiry takes an enormous toll on its subject; subpoenas fly, friends and colleagues get pulled into the grand jury, phones get seized and searched, legal costs mount, professional reputations suffer, personal ties fray. Ask anyone who has been investigated by the Justice Department but not indicted. They’ll tell you it’s a nightmare. 

    If Bondi does somehow convince a grand jury to indict somebody for something, Trump has unwittingly handed both Krebs and Taylor a potent defense: selective prosecution, which applies where an individual has been singled out for improper purposes. Exhibit A (for the defense): Trump’s own grand proclamations, which openly confess to his personal and political motives for ordering a Justice Department inquiry. Selective prosecution defenses rarely succeed, often because prosecutors typically don’t commit their improper motives to paper. But this would be the rare case where the evidence is so plain – it’s on White House letterhead, signed by the President – that a judge could hardly overlook it.

    Trump has long made a habit of threatening his opponents with criminal prosecution through social media posts and by spontaneous outbursts from the lectern. Until now, it was mostly bluster, a public form of scream therapy for the capricious commander-in-chief. But now it’s in writing, from the president to the attorney general, who typically jumps to attention to serve whatever suits the boss, prosecutorial standards be darned. Trump’s dark fantasies are coming to life. 

    Elie Honig served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York for 8.5 years and as the Director of the Division of Criminal Justice at the Office of Attorney General for the State of New Jersey for 5.5 years. He is currently a legal Analyst for CNN and Executive Director at Rutgers Institute for Secure Communities



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  • Reading Aloud From Real Books To Build Fluency, Attention and Meaning

    Reading Aloud From Real Books To Build Fluency, Attention and Meaning


    Engaged, attentive students learning to read productively

     

    In our forthcoming book The Teach Like a Champion Guide to the Science of Reading, Colleen Driggs, Erica Woolway and I discuss the overlooked importance of shared oral reading of rich and complex literature in book form.

    This is a critical part of reading instruction for several reasons.

    1) It builds student fluency, which is critically overlooked. If students can’t read fluently, their working memory will be engaged in the task of figuring out the words and will not be available for meaning making.  Oral reading practice is critical, especially when it builds prosody, the ability to imbue text with meaning as students read it. Students learn what text sounds like from hearing models and this then influences the way they read silently.

    2) It brings the story to life in a group setting. Students connect with the book via that shared experience of reading it aloud together. THis makes reading class more meaningful and increases their motivation to read.

    3) They learn to sustain focus and attention while reading longer segments of text without break or distraction.

    4) They are exposed to books and read them cover to cover, a topic I have discussed frequently here and elsewhere.  Books are long-form complex arguments in which ideas are developed through deep reflection. A protagonist never thinks and believes at the end of the book what he or she thought and believed at the beginning. In an age when social media has normalized the “hot take”–one can understand a complex issue in a few seconds–the book is the antidote.

    With that in mind here’s a beautiful example of what the activity of reading aloud as a class can look like.

    In this video Christine Torres reads aloud from Lois Lowry’s Number the Stars with her fifth grade students.

    Notice how much fluency practice there is for students, but also how Christine combines this with her own beautiful (and carefully prepared) oral reading. Students develop a clear mental model of what the text should sound like. And it comes to life so powerfully, with students experiencing it together.  Notice also how student attention is focus and maintained via the shared experience of reading together. Students sustain their attentional focus in part because everyone around them is also doing so.

    It’s a beautiful and joyful thing and, happily, much more valuable to young readers than a 45 minute discussion of the main idea of a text excerpt students have no connection to and little background knowledge about.

     



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  • Ice cream socials, fights and vomit: Why Cal State resident assistants want to unionize

    Ice cream socials, fights and vomit: Why Cal State resident assistants want to unionize


    Lynn Chan-Nguyen and Faith Ballesteros, two resident assistants at Sacramento State, at the Public Employment Relations Board office in Sacramento. They back unionization for about 1,400 RAs at CSU campuses.

    Credit: Courtesy of the California State University Employees Union

    Takeaways:
    • The union wants to absorb 1,400 or more resident assistants, who do everything from organizing karaoke nights to navigating health crises. They want more guidance about responsibilities.
    • Cal State opposes the bid, claiming it “would have detrimental effects for students.”
    • Student RAs typically don’t get paid, but receive benefits like free or reduced-cost housing.

    To be a resident assistant (RA) in a college dorm is to be many things at once. The person who hosts university-approved events — and cleans up after nonsanctioned revelry. The person who builds community among students — and mediates between feuding roommates. The designated friend — and emergency first responder to a freshman spiraling into a mental health crisis.

    That’s why the students behind the current push to unionize an estimated 1,400 resident assistants in the 23-campus California State University system argue they deserve better workplace protections and stronger guidelines defining their positions. If their bid succeeds, RAs would add to the more than 17,000 other student workers who joined the CSU Employees Union last year.

    But CSU is opposing the move. In a letter to state labor authorities, a CSU representative said allowing RAs to join a union would “would have detrimental effects for students” and argued RAs should be considered “live-in student leaders,” not employees.

    An RA’s role can include everything from organizing karaoke nights to making sure students know how to apply for food stamps. At CSU, they help manage dorms that encompass more than 67,000 beds. RAs receive no salary but get benefits like free housing or access to a campus meal plan. 

    “Sometimes we are (students’) therapists, and we’re essentially sitting there and connecting with students, one on one, and we’re talking them through really difficult times,” said Yasamean Zaidi-Dozandeh, an RA at CSU Dominguez Hills. “Sometimes we’re their doctors. We’re sitting there calling 911 for them.”

    And it’s a position that can vary widely depending on the dorm’s size and the students it serves. An RA in one building might sleep peacefully while another is jolted awake by middle-of-the-night calls. 

    The union points out other reasons resident assistants could benefit from labor protections. Because RAs live in dorms, they risk losing their housing if dismissed unfairly, it says. Students interviewed for this story said RAs would be more willing to voice concerns to housing administrators, too, with union backing.

    A successful union drive would put Cal State students in the company of RAs who have already organized at Boston University, Wesleyan University, Grinnell College and Georgetown University, among others. Though some colleges have voluntarily recognized such bids, others have resisted. The American Council on Education similarly argued against resident assistant unions in a 2016 amicus brief in a case before the National Labor Relations Board involving RAs at George Washington University. 

    “RAs often are required to be available around the clock to attend to emergencies. If universities and colleges had to bargain about the ‘hours’ of RAs, it is entirely possible that any agreed-upon hours limits would conflict with real-life emergencies,” an attorney representing the council and other higher education organizations wrote. “Could an RA rely on a union contract’s hours limitation to refuse to assist a depressed student in the middle of the night?”

    The board ultimately gave George Washington’s resident assistants the go-ahead to form a union, though a union election planned for 2017 was later canceled.

    At CSU, the employee union wants to absorb RAs into its existing unit of student assistants, who include part-time workers at places like campus health centers and libraries. Early last month, the union filed papers arguing that resident assistants share a “community of interest” with student assistants, meaning they have similar working conditions and job duties. CSU is currently negotiating its first contract with student assistants. 

    In opposing the bid, CSU says the housing and meal credits RAs receive are effectively financial aid, not wages. It argues that converting RAs to employees will jeopardize “peer-to-peer relationships” with student residents. It warns that RAs would need to pay taxes on in-kind perks that can reach nearly $30,000 in value. And it says blending RAs into the existing student assistants unit would “overly complicate ongoing negotiations.”

    Finally, CSU argues that one of the reasons some RAs favor a union — a lack of consistency in their duties — is a better reason to reject the union’s claim that they share a community of interest with student assistants. “There are no set ‘duties’ or expectations nor set hours for RAs as a whole. In fact, the only uniform characteristic of RAs is that they live on campus alongside other students,” the letter says.

    CSU’s opposition means that RAs will likely have to wait for a few more steps to unfold before state labor officials make a decision on the petition. A union spokesperson said the union disagrees with CSU’s response and expects a hearing before state labor officials to be set.

    ‘No clear distinction in what our role is’

    Lynn Chan-Nguyen decided to work as a resident assistant for one reason: “I really could not afford to go to school without the job.”

    Chan-Nguyen, a third-year student at Sacramento State majoring in nutrition, grew up an hour’s drive south in Stockton. If not for the meal plan and housing she gets by being an RA, she probably would have stayed closer to home and taken classes at a local community college rather than enrolling at Sacramento State.

    But Chan-Nguyen has found noneconomic reasons to love being an RA, too. She enjoys hosting activities like ice cream socials, which help the upper-division, international and transfer students in the apartment-style housing where she works make new friends. 

    Still, parts of the position she could do without, like cleaning up vomit or trying to defuse physical altercations. “There’s just no clear distinction in what our role is,” she said. “And a lot of the times, when people do get hired, or when people are first starting off from the job, it is not defined what we’re going to be doing.”

    First-time resident assistants only start to grasp how emotionally taxing the role can be during a two-week training at the start of the school year, Chan-Nguyen said. 

    It’s then that RAs realize they might face a life-or-death test of their counseling skills if called on to help a resident experiencing suicidal ideations or a similar health crisis. A 2019 study found that RAs who encountered a resident engaging in self-harm experience higher levels of burnout than RAs who didn’t have those interactions.

    CSU Monterey Bay students move into campus dorms in August 2021.
    Credit: Monterey Bay/Flickr

    Resident assistant Zaidi-Dozandeh at Dominguez Hills, who supports the union drive, said her first-year on-campus housing experience prompted her to become an RA.

    The university’s housing department mishandled an escalating conflict among the students in her three-bedroom apartment, Zaidi-Dozandeh said. As an out-of-state student, however, she felt she had no choice but to return to university housing the following year. She shared her concerns with a staff member — who suggested she use that passion to become an RA. 

    Zaidi-Dozandeh, a fourth-year computer science major, enjoys connecting student-residents to resources like the school’s food pantry. But the work of an RA can also be vaguely defined, she said, creating miscommunication, inconsistencies, and, ultimately, a worse experience for students who live on campus — a problem as CSU campuses experience enrollment declines. 

    “The question really is, why are these students leaving housing,” she said, “when in some cases they really don’t have anywhere else to go?”





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