اینترنت

برچسب: law

  • The Atlantic: Trump Declares War on the Rule of Law

    The Atlantic: Trump Declares War on the Rule of Law


    During Biden’s term in office, Republicans continually complained that Biden was “weaponizing” the Justice Department because it prosecuted Trump for inciting the insurrection of January 6, 2021, and for taking classified documents to his Mar-A-Lago estate.

    Days ago, the Trump administration announced that it had reached a settlement with the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a police officer as she attempted to be first to break into the House of Representatives’ chamber, where members of Congress were fleeing. The family is suing for $30 million. The police officer who shot her was defending the lives of our elected representatives, both Democrats and Republicans. It’s hard to imagine any other administration, whatever the party in power, paying off the family of a woman leading a mob into the House chambers to stop the electoral vote count.

    Now that Trump is president again, he has turned the Departnent of Justice into his personal law office and assigned it the mission of prosecuting anyone whoever dared to cross Trump.

    Trump is gleefully using his powers to weaponize the Department of Justice and to punish his political enemies. Not a peep from the Republicans, who unjustly accused Biden of doing what Trump is literally doing.

    Trump has issued executive orders targeting law firms who had the nerve to represent Democrats or other Trump critics. His orders barred lawyers from those firms from federal buildings and directed the heads of all federal agencies to terminate contracts with the firms he designated. Several major law firms, fearful of being blocked from any federal cases, immediately capitulated. Trump exacted a price for releasing them from his attack: they had to agree to perform pro bono work on behalf of causes chosen by Trump. He currently has close a billion dollars of legal time pledged to him by those law firms that feared his wrath.

    Individuals targeted by Trump must either find a lawyer who will represent them pro bono or face personal bankruptcy, that is, if they can find a lawyer willing to take on the Trump administration.

    A few law firms have resisted Trump’s tyranny, and one of them–Perkins Coie–won a permanent injunction to block the enforcement of Trump’s ban. Perkins Coie represented Hillary Clinton in 2016, as well as George Soros. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said that Trump’s attacks on specific law firms, based on the clients they represented, were unprecedented and unconstitutional.

    Judge Howell cited the example of John Adams, who represented the British soldiers accused of killing five colonists in the Boston Massacre of 1770. In two separate trials, Adams prevailed. He believed that everyone deserved a good lawyer and that they had been provoked into firing. Adams was a patriot and a man who defended the law. He was not stigmatized for defending the British soldiers.

    An issue that Judge Howell raised but set aside for another time was whether Trump’s orders, which single out specific groups or individuals for punishment without trial are bills of attainder, which the Constitution forbids. They surely look like it, and this issue will come up again in the future.

    As law professor James Huffman wrote in The Wall Street journal about Trump’s targeting of law firms:

    A presidential bill of attainder places the powers of all three governmental branches in the hands of one man. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 47: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

    Paul Rosenzweig, who worked in the George W. Bush administration, wrote in The Atlantic about Trump’s destruction of the rule of law, which he has twisted into an instrument of retribution for his personal grudges.

    He writes:

    When Thomas Paine asked what made America different from England, he had a ready answer: “In America, the law is king.” America has not always upheld that ideal, but, taking the long view, it has made great progress toward that principle. In recent decades, the Department of Justice has become an institutional embodiment of these aspirations—the locus in the federal government for professional, apolitical enforcement of the law, which is in itself a rejection of the kingly prerogative. That is why Donald Trump’s debasement of the DOJ is far more than the mere degradation of a governmental agency; it is an assault on the rule of law.

    His attack on the institution is threefold: He is using the mechanisms of justice to go after political opponents; he is using those same mechanisms to reward allies; and he is eliminating internal opposition within the department. Each incident making up this pattern is appalling; together, they amount to the decimation of a crucial institution.

    Investigations should be based on facts and the law, not politics. Yet Trump has made punishing political opposition the hallmark of his investigative efforts. The DOJ’s independence from political influence, long a symbol of its probity (remember how scandalous it was that Bill Clinton had a brief meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch?), is now nonexistent.

    This development should frighten all citizens, no matter what their political persuasion. As Attorney General Robert Jackson warned in 1940, the ability of a prosecutor to pick “some person whom he dislikes and desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, [is where] the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies.” Choosing targets in this way flies in the face of the DOJ’s rules and traditions—to say nothing of the actual, grave harm it can inflict on people.

    Far from eschewing the possibility of abuse, Trump and his allies at the Department of Justice positively revel in it. The most egregious example was Trump’s recent issuance of an executive order directing the government to investigate the activities of two of his own employees in the first administration, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, who later came to be political opponents of his. (Both men are friends and colleagues of mine.)

    Their offense of perceived disloyalty is perhaps the gravest sin in Trump world, and as a result, they will now be individually targeted for investigation. The personal impact on each of them is no doubt immediate and severe. Krebs, who is a well-respected cybersecurity leader, has quit his job at SentinelOne and plans to focus on his defense. If Trump’s DOJ pursues this investigation to the limit, the two men could face imprisonment.

    The cases of Krebs and Taylor do not stand in isolation. Recently, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey (Trump’s former personal attorney Alina Habba) launched an investigation into the state of New Jersey for its alleged “obstruction” of Trump’s deportation agenda. In other words, because New Jersey won’t let its own employees be drafted as servants of Trump’s policy, the state becomes a pariah in Trump’s mind, one that must be coerced into obedience.

    Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced that the U.S. government is suing Maine because of the state’s refusal to ban transgender athletes from playing on girls’ high-school sports teams. Not content with threatening Maine, Bondi has also announced an investigation of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office because of its alleged opposition to the Second Amendment and its “lengthy” process for approval of gun permits. And she recently announced that she would target leakers of classified information by going after journalists, rescinding a policy that protected journalists from being subpoenaed to assist government-leak investigations.

    But the most aggressive abuser of the criminal-justice system has to be the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin. Martin has asked the FBI to investigate several of President Joe Biden’s EPA grantees for alleged fraud—a claim so weak that one of Martin’s senior subordinates resigned rather than have to advance it in court. He has also begun to investigate, or threatened investigations of, Georgetown University, Senator Charles Schumer, and Representatives Eugene Vindman and Robert Garcia, among others. More recently, in mid-April, Martin sent a series of inquiry letters to at least three medical and scientific journals, asking them how they ensured “competing viewpoints,” with the evident intention of suggesting that the failure to include certain minority opinions was, in some way, content discrimination.

    A less-well-known example of Martin’s excess is his use of threats of criminal prosecution to empower DOGE. When DOGE was first denied entry into the U.S. Institute of Peace, one of the lawyers for USIP got a call from the head of the U.S. attorney’s criminal division, threatening criminal investigation if they didn’t allow DOGE into the building. Magnifying that power of criminal law, Martin sent D.C. police officers to the agency, telling the police that there was “an ongoing incident at the United States Institute of Peace” and that there was “at least one person who was refusing to leave the property at the direction of the acting USIP president, who was lawfully in charge of the facility,” according to the journalist Steve Chapman.

    A final example of DOJ overreach is, perhaps, the most chilling of all. In a recently issued presidential memorandum, Trump directed the attorney general to “investigate and take appropriate action concerning allegations regarding the use of online fundraising platforms to make ‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions and to make foreign contributions to U.S. political candidates and committees, all of which break the law.” Were the investigation neutral in nature, this might be understandable. But it isn’t.

    In fact, there are two major fundraising platforms in use—WinRed (the Republican platform) and ActBlue (the Democratic one). Even though WinRed has been the subject of seven times as many FTC complaints as ActBlue, the Trump memorandum involves only the latter. By targeting his opponents’ fundraising, Trump is overtly marshaling the powers of federal law enforcement in his effort to shut down political opposition.

    In essence, Trump is using the department to try to ensure future Republican electoral victories. One can hardly imagine a more horrifying variation on Lavrentiy Beria’s infamous boast: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”

    There is more to the article. I encourage you to read it in full.



    Source link

  • Let’s ensure ‘Recess for All’ law really does apply to all

    Let’s ensure ‘Recess for All’ law really does apply to all


    Recess at Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland.

    Credit: Alison Yin / EdSource

    When one of our sons (then a third grader) lost recess privileges for a week last school year, he came home cranky and irritable. As he put it, “Recess is the only time I can actually really play with my friends without so many rules.” Research in education, psychology, physiology, and brain science consistently points to recess as a vital part of the school day. There’s a reason most kids claim recess is their favorite subject in school.

    As students across California return to their classrooms, they will step back into healthier learning environments thanks to the landmark Senate Bill 291, known as Recess for All, which requires elementary schools — for the first time in the state’s history — to provide students with at least 30 minutes of daily recess, while also prohibiting withholding recess as punishment.

    The law is a response to the growing concerns about inactivity and the mental health crisis among our youth — challenges exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. As public-school parents and professors who study recess and school health, we applaud the effort to not only increase students’ opportunities for school-based play but also to help address the traumas and social isolation our children faced during the pandemic.

    Now we must ensure that schools implement these changes so all children have the access to recess they need and deserve.

    Unfortunately, many still see recess as simply fun and games. This view — a vestige of the No Child Left Behind era, which ramped up school testing and created disincentives for developmental activities like recess, arts, music, and civics — had led some localities to reduce or eliminate regular breaks for children. This was a major issue post-pandemic when concerns about learning loss were pitted against the healing power of play in school. Research supports the importance of taking recess breaks from traditional academic subjects like math and reading; stepping away from classroom learning to move and play can help improve students’ test scores.

    Why is recess so essential for California’s more than 3 million public school students? The play, teamwork, socialization, leadership and self-regulation that happen at recess are critical for child and youth development. Recess is the only unstructured time in the school day when students can acquire and practice these skills. Young children learn a tremendous amount through organized and imaginative play — how to create and follow rules, be inclusive, make good decisions and collaborate.

    The physical activity that occurs at recess is important for many reasons, including helping students to get their wiggles out. But brain science tells us there is more to it than just wiggles. Physical activity and social connection at recess help students regulate their behaviors and emotions. Supporting these executive functions improves students’ abilities to concentrate and learn throughout the school day. 

    Providing students with daily recess can help students deal with trauma. With the distress and isolation they experienced through remote learning, coupled with the escalating mental health concerns, we need low-cost solutions to reach as many students as possible. Research shows that people under stress act reactively, and they behave poorly as a result. Recess allows students time to practice their executive functioning skills, which can help them cope better with stress and reduce anxiety. 

    Importantly, Recess for All is an anti-racist and equitable policy. It has the potential to close the gap in access to recess that exists in California and across the country.

    Students of color and those in low-income areas routinely have less recess time than students in wealthier and whiter areas. Additionally, children of color are disproportionately more likely to be disciplined in school. By abolishing the practice of withholding recess, schools can create restorative practices that support appropriate behavior, rather than punishing students by forcing them to sit out and miss essential growth time. 

    Recess for All is vitally important for California’s youth. As California public school parents, we plan to speak directly to our principals, PTAs and school boards to show our educators how much we value school-based opportunities for play and socialization. We encourage other parents to do the same. Schools respond to the issues most important to parents and their communities. Talk to your school administrators about their plans for ensuring kids get the newly mandated 30 minutes of recess a day. Our children, and our communities, will be healthier for it.

    •••

    Rebecca A. London, Ph.D., is professor of sociology and faculty director of Campus + Community at the University of California Santa Cruz. She is author of the book “Rethinking Recess: Creating Safe and Inclusive Playtime for All Children in School” (Harvard Education Press, 2019).

    Hannah R. Thompson, Ph.D., MPH, is assistant research professor at the University of California Berkeley School of Public Health. She works with school districts to study the impact of improved school-based physical activity and nutrition opportunities on student health.

    The opinions in this commentary are those of the authors. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us





    Source link

  • Chief Justice Roberts Blames “Lack of Civics Education” for Breakdown in Respect for Law

    Chief Justice Roberts Blames “Lack of Civics Education” for Breakdown in Respect for Law


    If this weren’t so pathetic, it would be funny.

    Chief Justice John Roberts spoke at the Georgetown University Law School about the loss of respect for the rule of law.

    Did he point his finger at the President who encouraged an insurrection on January 6, 2021?

    No.

    Did he blame the loser of the 2020 election who spent four years claiming that the election was rigged and that he didn’t lose?

    No.

    Did he blame the political party that spent four years asserting not only that the election of 2020 was rigged but that the rightful winner was “crooked” and every member of his family was part of a “crime family”?

    No.

    Did he blame the President who has openly ignored federal court orders?

    No.

    Did he blame the President who proposes to abolish due process of law even though it is written into the Constitution?

    No.

    Did he blame the President who said publicly that he didn’t know whether he is required to support the Constitution?

    No.

    Chief Justice Roberts is right to be concerned about the shrinkage of civics education, but he is wrong to ignore the reason for that shrinkage: No Child Left Behind made test scores the central goal of education, which diminished everything in the curriculum other than reading and math.

    Because so many young people have not received civics education, they are likely to be misled by a charlatan whose actions model contempt for the rule of law and the Constitutuon.

    And, worse, it was the Roberts Court that proclaimed that the President while carrying out his duties has absolute immunity and is above the law.

    The Supreme Court, in short, overturned the deep-seated principle taught in civics classes that “no man is above the law.”

    Mr. Chief Justice, if you want to know who encouraged disrespect for the rule of law, look in the mirror.



    Source link

  • New York: Orthodox Jewish Schools Hope to Evade the Law and Collect Public Money

    New York: Orthodox Jewish Schools Hope to Evade the Law and Collect Public Money


    New York State law requires private and religious schools to offer an education that is substantially equivalent to what is offered at secular public schools. Some Orthodox Jewish schools refuse to comply. Repeated inspections have found that the recalcitrant Yeshivas do not teach English and do not teach math and science in English.

    Dr. Betty Rosa, an experienced educator and New York State Commissioner of Education, has insisted that Yeshivas comply with the law. She fears that their students are graduating from high school without the language skills required for higher education and the workplace.

    The Hasidim are a tight-knit group that often votes as a bloc to enhance their political power. They vote for whoever promises to support their interests. Both parties compete for their endorsement.

    Eliza Shapiro and Benjamin Oreskes reported the story in the New York Times:

    New York lawmakers are considering a measure that would dramatically weaken their oversight over religious schools, potentially a major victory for the state’s Hasidic Jewish community.

    The proposal, which could become part of a state budget deal, has raised profound concern among education experts, including the state education commissioner, Betty Rosa, who said in an interview that such changes amount to a “travesty” for children who attend religious schools that do not offer a basic secular education.

    “We would be truly compromising the future of these young people,” by weakening the law, Ms. Rosa said. “As the architect of education in this system, how could I possibly support that decision,” she added.

    Gov. Kathy Hochul on Monday announced a $254 billion budget agreement but acknowledged many of the particulars are still being hashed out.

    Behind the scenes, a major sticking point appears to be whether the governor and the Legislature will agree to the changes on private school oversight, according to several people with direct knowledge of the negotiations, which may include a delay in any potential consequences for private schools that receive enormous sums of taxpayer dollars but sometimes flout state education law by not offering basic education in English or math.

    The state is also considering lowering the standards that a school would have to meet in order to demonstrate that it is following the law.

    Though the potential changes in state education law would technically apply to all private schools, they are chiefly relevant to Hasidic schools, which largely conduct religious lessons in Yiddish and Hebrew in their all-boys schools, known as yeshivas.

    The potential deal is the result of years of lobbying by Hasidic leaders and their political representatives…

    The Hasidic community has long seen government oversight of their schools as an existential threat, and it has emerged as their top political issue in recent years.

    It has taken on fresh urgency in recent months, as the state education department, led by Ms. Rosa, has moved for the first time to enforce the law, after years of deliberation and delay….

    There is little dispute, even among Hasidic leaders, that many yeshivas across the lower Hudson Valley and parts of Brooklyn are failing to provide an adequate secular education. Some religious leaders have boasted about their refusal to comply with the law and have barred families from having English books in their homes.

    Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, which has been closely aligned with the Hasidic community, found in 2023 that 18 Brooklyn yeshivas were not complying with state law, a finding that was backed up by state education officials.

    A 2022 New York Times investigation found that scores of all-boys yeshivas collected about $1 billion in government funding over a four-year period but failed to provide a basic education, and that teachers in some of the schools used corporal punishment.

    It is clear why Hasidic leaders, who are deeply skeptical of any government oversight, would want to weaken and delay consequences for the schools they help run.

    It is less obvious why elected officials would concede to those demands during this particular budget season. There is widespread speculation in Albany that Ms. Hochul, facing what may be a tough re-election fight next year, is hoping to curry favor from Hasidic officials, who could improve her chances with an endorsement….

    Hasidic voters are increasingly conservative and tend to favor Republicans in general election contests.…

    New York’s state education law related to private schools, which is known as the substantial equivalency law, has been on the books for more than a century.

    It was an obscure, uncontroversial rule up until a few years ago, when graduates of Hasidic yeshivas who said they were denied a basic education filed a complaint with the state, claiming that their education left them unprepared to navigate the secular world and find decent jobs.

     



    Source link

  • New law moves toward better translation of special ed documents, but families want more

    New law moves toward better translation of special ed documents, but families want more


    A special education class at Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland.

    Alison Yin / EdSource

    California schools will soon have a template for special education programs translated into 10 languages in addition to English.

    Advocates and parents of children with disabilities who speak languages other than English say it is a tiny step forward, but there is still work to be done to fix long waits and faulty translations experienced by many families statewide.

    “Ultimately, if parents can’t receive translated documents, they can’t meaningfully engage in their child’s education,” said Joanna French, senior director of research and policy strategies at Innovate Public Schools, an organization that works with parents to advocate for high-quality education. “They can’t provide informed consent. They can’t ask questions or push back on the services that are being proposed.”

    A bill introduced last year by state Sen. Anthony Portantino, D-Burbank, would have required school districts, charter schools and county offices of education to translate individualized education program (IEP) documents within 30 days. But the bill stalled in the Senate Appropriations Committee, where lawmakers decide whether the state has enough money to pay for legislation. This spring, the bill was revived, and Portantino revised it to require the California Department of Education (CDE) to create guidelines suggesting, rather than mandating, timelines for translation and how to identify quality translators and interpreters. But that version, too, was eventually scrapped. 

    The version of the bill that finally did pass the Legislature and was signed by the governor requires a template for IEPs to be translated into the 10 languages most commonly spoken in California other than English. The translated template must be made available online by Jan. 1, 2027. The template, which can be found in this document, includes categories of services, but also has blank space for language adapted to each student.

    “Obviously, whenever you get a partial victory, you take it and you celebrate,” said Portantino. “This is an incremental improvement. Having the template is a good thing. But obviously, these are individualized plans, so my hope is that someone takes up the mantle to get individual plans translated in a more timely manner.”

    Aurora Flores said she has had to wait sometimes six or seven months for special education documents to be translated into Spanish. Her 10-year-old son has Down syndrome and autism and attends school in the Long Beach Unified School District.

    “It’s really sad for us Spanish-speaking parents because the points that you want to clarify, you can’t understand. They just summarize really fast, with an interpreter, but sometimes it’s not a certified person,” said Flores in Spanish.

    Individualized education programs are required for students with disabilities who qualify for special education, and are updated each year or when needs change. Before schools can implement these programs, parents must agree.

    The person most affected by long waits for translations is her son, Flores said, because it takes longer for her to sign off on new services that he needs.

    “When you least expect it, you realize the next IEP meeting is coming up, and you have just received the documents from the last one,” Flores said.

    A spokesperson for Long Beach Unified, Elvia Cano, wrote in an email that the district “is dedicated to ensuring that all families, regardless of their primary language, have timely access to critical educational information, including Individualized Education Programs (IEPs).”

    However, she said getting high-quality translations of special education documents can be challenging.

    “Translating IEPs requires specialized linguistic and technical expertise. Translators must be fluent in the target language and possess a strong understanding of educational terminology. Finding professionals with these qualifications can be challenging, especially for less commonly spoken languages. Additionally, the complexity of IEPs and the volume of translation requests may extend the timeframe for completion,” Cano wrote.

    Portantino said that some felt the previous version of the bill requiring the California Department of Education to create guidelines for translation “was too onerous, too much pressure.” 

    “I think the education community didn’t want to be forced to do things. I think there were districts who felt they don’t have the personnel, and I think CDE felt the overall structure was not in place,” Portantino said. 

    Holly Minear, executive director of student services at the Ventura County Office of Education, said she thinks most school districts and county offices understand the importance of giving families a written translation of IEP documents in a timely manner, but it is sometimes a challenge, especially when the translation is for a language that is not common.

    “I think a lot of districts use internal translators, and if you have someone out sick or on leave, or if districts work with contract agencies, sometimes the timeline is more than 30 days,” Minear said. 

    Minear said the Ventura County Office of Education has two Spanish-English translators on staff, but they use outside agencies for other languages like Farsi and Mixteco, an indigenous language from southern Mexico. She said she thinks the template will help districts and translators do a better job.

    “Although our IEPs differ … I think we use a lot of the same terms, a lot of the same language,” she said. “I’m really looking forward to having it on the template, because if there’s ever a word or phrase you need, it’s there for you, and it’s free.”

    Sara Gomez, who has a 4-year-old with autism who attends preschool in Santa Clara County, said she thinks the law is a good step forward.

    “I think the law is positive, in that it gives a sense of alarm that translations need to be done urgently,” Gomez said. “But we still don’t have a required timeline.”

    Gomez said she has had to wait three or four months for her son’s individualized education program to be translated into Spanish. Gomez, who is from Venezuela, speaks English, but her husband speaks only Spanish.

    She said she has heard of other parents waiting up to a year for translations, leaving them unable to make informed decisions about their children’s education.

    “Even four months for a young child make a big difference,” Gomez said in Spanish. “When they are the youngest is when they need the most help.” 

    Advocates and families said they will keep pushing the state for guidelines about how to access qualified translators and a time limit for translations. 

    “We understand that districts experience challenges in finding qualified translators, especially for less common languages, and turning around documents quickly,” said French, from Innovate Public Schools.

    However, she said, different districts have very different timelines for translations.

    “We don’t believe it should be that inconsistent, if a parent lives in one district versus another,” French said. “There should be equity across the state about what a parent should expect in terms of translated documents.”

    Allegra Cira Fischer, senior policy attorney for the nonprofit organization Disability Rights California, agreed. She said she was dismayed to see that the 30-day timeframe was removed from the bill.

    “Parents tell us that sometimes their student will have a better teacher or a better case manager and they’ll get things in a more timely manner. But parents shouldn’t have to rely on an especially committed teacher or case manager,” Fischer said. “This is a situation that is really untenable and ultimately is harmful to children with disabilities.”





    Source link

  • Joyce Vance: Stand Up and Speak Out for the Rule of Law!

    Joyce Vance: Stand Up and Speak Out for the Rule of Law!


    Joyce Vance was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. She writes a smart blog called Civil Discourse, in which she writes about court cases and the law, in language accessible to non-lawyers. In this post, she explains how massive protests can change the course of history.

    She writes:

    This coming Tuesday marks Donald Trump’s 100th day in office, a tenure that has led to a steady decline in the economy. If we use that measure, which many voters said led them to vote for Trump, these first 100 days have been a failure. Even as Trump has successfully seized power from Congress and some organizations have bent the knee to his every request, lawyers are winning in court, and some law firms, businesses, universities, and individuals are standing up to the president who would rather be a king. Trump may not have lost the first 100 days, but he hasn’t exactly won them either. Our democracy has been weakened, but it can still be saved.

    Thursday is May Day, May 1st. There will be renewed protest marches across the country, many of them focused on Americans’ increasing awareness that the fundamentals of democracy, which we’ve taken for granted for so long, are in danger. It’s not just due process concerns, although that is an enormous part of it, as the deportations continue. Last week we learned that included some involved American citizen children and children with cancer, with Secretary Rubio offering a sorry rejoinder on Meet the Press this morning, blaming the mothers who took young children back to their countries of origin with them, rather than being forced to abandon them. There are plenty of reasons to march.

    This will not be the first time Americans have engaged in mass protests on May Day. In 1971, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Washington, D.C., to protest the Vietnam War. They began on May 3 and continued for two more days. By the time the protest ended, more than 12,000 protestors had been arrested. The protesters’ goal was to cause a traffic jam that would keep government employees from getting to work; their slogan was “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”

    Mass protests that are large and sustained have an impact on even an entrenched presidency. They did with Nixon. The White House Historical Association’s official version of events concludes that “the enormity of the protest pushed Nixon to accelerate the nation’s exit from Vietnam.” 

    Even though it’s a different era, protests are bound to get to the thin-skinned president whose staffers, during his first term in office, had to prepare folders of positive stories about Trump for him to review twice each day. Imagine having thousands of people protesting within earshot of the White House. It must be even more galling because these protests are nonviolent and aim to support democracy through a legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights. They make a powerful statement, in contrast to a president who has abandoned the rule of law. 

    In 1970, two-thirds of Americans had come to believe U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was a mistake. We are not quite there yet when it comes to people’s view of the Trump administration. The most recent NBC News Stay Tuned Poll shows only 45% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing. But, when asked about how strongly they hold their beliefs about the president, “the vehemence of the opposition outweighs the intensity of support from the president’s MAGA base.” Twenty-three percent of Americans said they were “furious” about what Trump is doing.

    Thursday is also Law Day, an annual celebration of the rule of law. Although it has been in effect since 1958, it doesn’t usually receive much attention. This year, lawyers across the country have big plans for the day—make sure you look to see what’s going on in your area. President Dwight Eisenhower established Law Day as a day of national dedication to the principles of government under law. State Bar Associations hold essay competitions for school children, and there are state and national dinners most years. In 2025, Law Day takes on special significance as Americans’ concerns about due process come to the forefront. How fitting that the May Day protests sync with the Law Day commemoration. 

    I’ve been doing a lot of research and writing about the origins of Law Day for my book (Giving Up Is Unforgivable, due out October 21), so I’ll leave that for another time, but I want to make sure everyone knows about Law Day. This year, many lawyers across the country will retake their oath to show their support for the rule of law. There is no reason the rest of the country can’t participate too!

    The president issues a proclamation every year for Law Day. Trump did during his first term in office, too. In 2019, the proclamation began, “On Law Day, we renew our commitment to the rule of law and our Constitution. The rule of law requires that no one be above the obligations of the law or beneath its protections, and it stands as a bulwark against the arbitrary use of government power.” Unfortunately, he never lived up to those sentiments. On Thursday, we can look for the proclamation and point out the inconsistencies between what we expect from our presidents and how this one is behaving. The hypocrisy is always full force, and we shouldn’t shy away from pointing it out.

    Due process is the sleeper issue of the second Trump presidency. No one really expected democracy issues, let alone concepts like the rule of law and due process to animate a country’s protests. But it’s increasingly clear that Americans are smart, and when we are well-informed, we have no difficulty assessing what matters and what is true. We see more and more of that as Americans carry signs that say “No Kings” and “Due Process” at local rallies. All of us can be advocates for democracy, not just the lawyers among us.

    Here at Civil Discourse, we all understand the importance of this. We need to make sure the rest of the country does too. Until the Trump administration is over, it has to be Law Day every day. 

    In 2024, the Law Day theme was “Voices of Democracy,” recognizing that the people are the rulers in a democracy. Americans express their views without fear of retribution because of the First Amendment and vote in elections to select their leaders. It’s up to us to make sure it stays that way.

    This week will bring more briefings in the Abrego-Garcia case and others. There will be outrages, like the fact that Trump has a website hawking merchandise, literally selling the presidency. It’s not just the $50 price tag on the hat; there’s also the slogan, “Trump 2028,” a reference to Trump’s not-so-subtle hints that he’d like to serve a Constitution-busting third term in office. It’s not a joke. It never is with him.

    So, make sure you take some time this week to celebrate Law Day. Invite people over. Go for a walk with friends or neighbors and share your views. Talk with your kids. Democracy is not automatic; it’s a participatory sport we must all play in together, one with critically important outcomes. Democracy is important. Let’s make sure we play for keeps.

    We’re in this together,

    Joyce



    Source link

  • Author of federal mental health law has advice for California

    Author of federal mental health law has advice for California


    Seventh-graders work together on homework in their school library.

    Credit: Allison Shelley / EDUimages

    Mental health has been at the center of former U.S. Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy’s personal journey to recovery from addiction as well as his public career as a policymaker, author and advocate. 

    In 2008, while representing Rhode Island in the U.S. House of Representatives, Kennedy was the lead author of the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act, a federal law that requires health insurance companies to provide equal coverage for mental health and addiction care and general physical health care, such as diabetes or cancer treatment.

    Forner U.S. Rep, Patrick J. Kennedy, D-R.I.

    Kennedy, who has long been vocal about pursuing treatment for his substance use and bipolar disorder, remains an advocate for greater access to mental health care.  Earlier this year, he published his book “Profiles in Mental Health Courage” — a reference to his late uncle and former President John F. Kennedy’s classic “Profiles in Courage” — detailing how people from diverse backgrounds across the country have taken on mental illness and addiction. In October, he was a keynote speaker at the annual student wellness conference Wellness Together in Anaheim, where he spoke about his advocacy as founder of the mental health policy nonprofit The Kennedy Forum.

    “As we turn the corner on stigma related to suicide and overdose, we need to finally focus a lot more on solutions early on in a person’s life,” Kennedy said in an interview with EdSource. Not only are young people less likely to seek help due to stigma, but are also less likely to be properly insured, incurring high out-of-pocket costs for treatment when they need it.

    For Kennedy, the key to addressing the youth mental health and addiction crisis is increasing and sustaining funding for care on the local, state and federal levels. He emphasized that schools desperately need the bulk of that funding, given that early intervention significantly reduces a child’s chance of developing a serious mental illness in adulthood.

    California has, in recent years, invested heavily in expanding mental health support for children and adolescents. The state’s next challenge, Kennedy said, is sustaining these crucial services. 

    In 2019, the state embarked on a $4.7 billion Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative, focused mainly on recruiting and training new mental health providers across the state’s school system. To help sustain these programs, the state Department of Health Care Services plans to make new public school-based mental health services billable to both Medi-Cal and commercial health insurance, making California’s multi-payer fee schedule one of the largest school reimbursement programs in the country. 

    EdSource interviewed Kennedy about expanding mental health care for students and families. His remarks have been edited for length and clarity. 

    How do we address the enduring impact of stigma on our health and education systems?

    We need greater literacy (regarding mental health) across the board. Many don’t know these mental illnesses as brain illnesses, and they don’t understand that they’re treatable. If we knew we could treat them successfully, which we can, especially if we go in early, how can we think about them differently? We don’t let cancer get to stage four to treat it. We screen it, screen it, screen it. It’s embedded in my medical chart. My doctor asks me 15 ways about my risk for stroke and cancer. We need to do that with mental health. 

    We could address so much of this if we just incorporated better mental health services within our community. So many families have their mental health symptoms exacerbated by lack of stable housing, no supportive employment and a lack of community to help. They become isolated, which is the worst thing for those struggling with their mental health.

    Why does the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act matter for young people today?

    It used to be the case where, if you had a mental illness, you had to pay higher co-pays, premiums and deductibles to get mental health treatment than you would to get diabetes treatment or asthma treatment. Unlike for physical illnesses, insurance companies would cap the total of dollars you could spend as a patient on mental health. The Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act established that insurance companies could not discriminate and treat the brain any differently than any other organ of the body. 

    Ultimately, we can’t treat everyone based upon bake sales. We have to change the metrics of what constitutes value in our mental health system. We have to get this embedded in regular insurance. 

    How can California ensure that new school-based coverage for mental health care is effective in the long term?

    We have to figure out how to reorient the insurance process so that there’s a way of capturing the return on investment from an earlier investment. The state is the one that has the most to say about overall state coverage for mental health early on, in order to reduce future obligations on the state’s part, which means picking up the pieces of a broken population that hasn’t properly been supported by coverage through early intervention services. 

    We need to get organized as voters. There’s not a family out there that doesn’t have these issues affecting a member of their family, who hasn’t lost a loved one to suicide or overdose. There’s a huge need for mental health treatment because we keep waiting till people are in a crisis. Why not make this a public health issue and really embed resources in elementary and secondary schools so students can take care of themselves? 

    What role should the federal government play in addressing youth mental health?

    We need to have Federally Qualified Health Centers in every public school in America. They could open satellites in each of the schools that can help treat kids where they are. A lot of kids, particularly from minority communities, are not going to get mental health care after school. You could bring tele-mental health into a school nurse’s office, so it’s not just where you get an aspirin, but a real clinic in the school where you could be meeting kids’ health needs writ large. You’d also need ongoing intensive care to connect them to the community health center outside. 

    We already fund Federally Qualified Health Centers. It’s supported on a bipartisan basis. It covers the uninsured as well as the insured. These centers and Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers cover a lot of rural areas and health deserts, and they can provide general counseling and support services. They have a board of directors, who are all people in the community who know the resources in the community and can pull together a more wraparound, holistic approach. 

    So many kids come to school from homes where there’s violence, addiction or mental illness. We need to reach the whole family. In many states where Republicans don’t have good benefits for their people, the centers provide a valuable safety valve for their constituents to get health care. We just need to take that model to scale in schools. The easiest thing is to run all of these through existing bureaucracies, so you’re not trying to create a new system from whole cloth.

    How can students help address mental health? 

    I would say to young people that there are two major ways they can really help the system. One, they can learn about how to prevent mental health challenges themselves through learning about their own brain and learning coping skills and problem-solving skills. We can focus on a lot more upstream, or proactive, mechanisms early in a student’s life, when they can start to build different coping skills and learn how to manage their emotions. 

    And second, if they’re interested in going into the mental health space, they can create a much better track to get into the mental health field. We just don’t have enough hands on deck to really meet the enormity of the need for those who desperately need treatment. Not only do we need to build that infrastructure and access, but also build a workforce pipeline for those trying to go into the field in greater numbers. 

    It’s got everything to do with young people. These are illnesses where 50% of them occur before the age of 14, and 75% occur before the age of 25. They’re illnesses of the young; they can take you hostage and take out whole parts of your life, when, ordinarily, you’d be in the most productive period in your life as a young person.





    Source link

  • The Arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan Undermines the Rule of Law

    The Arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan Undermines the Rule of Law


    Trump’s FBI and ICE agents arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Duggan in her courtroom and led her away in handcuffs because she sent a defendant out a back door. Trump officials said the judge was helping the defendant evade arrest, and they demonstrated that “no one is above the law” ( except Donald Trump). Critics said that Trump’s Department of Justice made a mockery of the law by arresting a judge.

    See the comments of this Wisconsin Appeals Court judge who told CNN the Trump administration was sending a message to judges everywhere to bend to the will of the Trump administration. He was “appalled” that Judge Dugan was publicly humiliated, and that the director of the FBI Kash Patel posted a tweet of her being led away.

    Judge Dugan told the agents that they should return with the correct warrant. One agent rode in the same elevator with the man sought by the Feds, but made no attempt to arrest him.

    The New York Daily News editorial board said:

    The FBI arrest of a Milwaukee local judge on felony counts related to immigration enforcement is an unwarranted and dangerous escalation by the Trump administration.

    For the FBI to arrest someone at their workplace, they usually have to have been charged with something especially dire. For Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, this offense was allegedly refusing to hand defendant Eduardo Flores Ruiz, who had just had a hearing before the judge, over to an ICE task force that showed up in her courtroom. Dugan was charged with two federal felonies and taken into custody, which FBI Director Kash Patel gloated about on social media.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi, for whom advancing the MAGA movement’s political agenda supersedes ensuring the equal and fair administration of justice, went on TV to say: “no one is above the law.” Aside from the dissonance of serving under a president who was only able to evade extremely serious federal charges by being elected to the White House, Bondi either doesn’t realize or doesn’t care that Dugan was in fact attempting to ensure the integrity of the legal process.

    Flores may have been guilty of his misdemeanor charges, or he may not. The point of the proceedings before Dugan was to establish that and, if appropriate, what his punishment should be. Because of ICE’s detention, that won’t happen, which is bad for Flores, bad for any alleged victims — who won’t see justice — and bad for the larger community as immigrants and their families begin to see the courthouse as a dangerous place to be.

    Having ICE at the courthouse means immigrants won’t report crimes, assist law enforcement, or show up for their own court hearings, which makes everyone less safe, not to mention completely undercuts the baseline American ideal of due process, not something that Bondi and her cadre seem to hold in very high esteem.

    It’s ironic that Dugan was charged with “obstructing a proceeding” when the only people obstructing an official proceeding here were the task force that showed up to take Flores into custody. This task force, per the government’s own criminal complaint, consisted of just one ICE agent plus one Customs and Border Protection agent, two FBI agents and two DEA agents.

    We wonder if six federal agents, four of whom are not in immigration-focused agencies, could have found a better use of their time than detaining a single person at a courthouse. Now, more federal resources will be wasted on this fiasco as the government tries to move forward with a prosecution of a sitting judge whose alleged crime was simply letting a defendant walk through a different hallway.

    Patel, Bondi and Trump are overplaying their hand, especially as the president’s immigration policy approval keeps dropping amid public outrage over authoritarian assaults on due process and separation of powers. Going to war with the judiciary is not going to end well, especially given the volume of federal judges, including Trump-appointed and conservative judges and the Supreme Court’s own conservative majority, that are questioning the administration’s power grab.

    Federal judges aren’t likely to look favorably on this flagrant assertion of power in arresting a popular county-level counterpart just for not letting her courtroom become an ICE staging ground.



    Source link

  • New law could boost Social Security checks for thousands of retired California teachers

    New law could boost Social Security checks for thousands of retired California teachers


    Kindergarten students at George Washington Elementary in Lodi listen to teacher Kristen McDaniel read “Your Teachers Pet Creature” on the first day of school on July 30, 2024.

    Credit: Diana Lambert / EdSource

    The Social Security Fairness Act, signed by President Joe Biden on Sunday, will increase retirement benefits for many educators and other public sector workers, including nearly 290,000 in California.

    The act repeals both the Windfall Elimination Provision and Government Pension Offset laws, which reduced Social Security benefits for workers who are entitled to public pensions, such as firefighters, police officers and teachers, according to the Social Security Department.

    The change in the laws does not mean that California teachers, who do not pay into Social Security, will all get benefits. Instead, teachers who paid into Social Security while working in non-teaching jobs will be eligible for their full Social Security benefits, as will those eligible for spousal and survivor benefits.

    Teachers who had previous careers, or who worked second jobs or summer jobs, benefit from the repeal of the Windfall Elimination Provision, said Staci Maiers, spokesperson for the National Education Association.

    California is one of 15 states that does not enroll its teachers in Social Security. Instead, teachers receive pensions from the California Teachers’ Retirement System, or CalSTRS. 

    “This is about fairness. These unjust Social Security penalties have robbed public service workers of their hard-earned benefits for far too long,” said Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association in a media release. “They have hurt educators and their families — and damaged the education profession, making it harder to attract and retain educators. And that means students are impacted, too.” 

    At a press conference Sunday, President Joe Biden said the Social Security Fairness Act would mean an increase on average of $360 a month for workers that have been impacted by the laws. There will also be a lump sum retroactive payment to make up for the benefits that workers should have received in 2024, Biden said. No date has been announced for those payments.

    “The bill I’m signing today is about a simple proposition,” Biden said. “Americans who have worked hard all their lives to earn an honest living should be able to retire with economic security and dignity.”

    “It’s a game-changer for a lot of educators,” said Kathy Wylie, a retired teacher who lives in Mendocino. Wylie, who is a few years away from drawing Social Security, worked for a technology company for 15 years before embarking on a 17-year career in education.

    She expects that the bump in retirement funds could encourage some veteran teachers to retire early.

    Biden signed the legislation following decades of advocacy from the National Education Association, the International Association of Fire Fighters and the California Retired Teachers Association. The bipartisan bill was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Nov. 12 and the U.S. Senate on Dec. 21.

    The amendments to the Social Security Act apply to monthly benefits after December 2023. The Social Security Department is evaluating how to implement the new law, according to its website.





    Source link