اینترنت

برچسب: politics

  • Threats, stress and politics pushing school superintendents out the door

    Threats, stress and politics pushing school superintendents out the door


    Former Temecula Valley Unified Superintendent Jodi McClay mouths “thank you” to the supporting crowd at Temecula Valley High School on June 13, the night she was fired.

    Credit: Anjali Sharif-Paul/MediaNews Group/The Sun via Getty Images

    The number of California school superintendents leaving their jobs is climbing, despite increased salaries and benefits. Some have reached retirement age or are moving to less stressful jobs. Some are being pushed out by newly elected school board majorities. A new crop of less experienced district leaders is taking their place. 

    Superintendent turnover in California grew from 11.7% after the 2019-20 school year, to 20.9% after the 2020-21 school year. Just over 18% left after the 2021-22 school year, said Rachel S. White, an assistant professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who runs a research lab that collects data about school superintendents. 

    Turnover is particularly high this year because many superintendents who stuck it out during pandemic school closures, and the tumultuous years since, have had enough, White said.

    “This year, before the 2023 school year, I think people finally broke,” she said.

    Chris Evans, 52, decided to step down as superintendent of Natomas Unified in Sacramento at the end of last school year. He stayed on to help the new superintendent transition.

    “The job was always hard to begin with, and it’s become infinitely harder,” said Evans, who led the district for 11 years.

    “There are a number of folks in their 50s and 60s who are saying they are done,” he said.

    Pandemic made top job more difficult

    Superintendents’ jobs changed dramatically after the pandemic closed schools in March 2020. Instead of focusing on academics, strategic planning, school finances and community relations, superintendents were charged with navigating pandemic mandates and negotiating these changes with district unions. Superintendents also were tasked with ensuring there were enough computers and connectivity for students and staff to support virtual learning, all while dealing with parents who were angry their children were not in school.

    The reopening of schools did little to turn down the heat at school board meetings, which were politicized over issues such as the teaching of critical race theory and its tenets of systemic racism, and LGBTQ+ topics. School superintendents often found themselves the focus of community and parental ire — so much that some school districts paid for security for their superintendent.

    I can’t ever remember hearing of a superintendent that had gotten a death threat before. Now, I know personally four or five.

    Gregory Franklin

    Gregory Franklin, the former superintendent of Tustin Unified School District in Orange County, said he has never been threatened, but he knows other superintendents who have.

    “I can’t ever remember hearing of a superintendent that had gotten a death threat before,” said Franklin, who left Tustin Unified at the end of 2021 for another job. “Now, I know personally four or five. It’s just kind of shocking. So, I think, all of that being said, that when other possibilities present themselves, people are taking them.”

    Job turnover is a national problem

    The superintendent turnover problem is not California’s alone, according to the Superintendent Research Project. Nearly half of the country’s 500 largest school districts have changed leadership or are undergoing leadership changes since the pandemic began in March 2020. The study compared the two years before the pandemic to the first two years of the pandemic and found a 46% increase in superintendent turnover nationally.

    “What we are seeing is that the challenges are greater than ever before and the political environment is creating great instability in the institution, which is resulting in shorter tenure for superintendents,” said Dennis Smith, managing search partner for Leadership Associates, a recruitment agency that does many of the superintendent searches in California.

    Superintendents needed: many openings

    California school districts searching for superintendents include Sacramento City Unified, Eureka City Schools, Palm Springs Unified, Eastside Union, Pasadena Unified, Pajaro Valley Unified, Pacific Grove Unified, Culver City Unified, Newman-Crows Landing Unified, Solana Beach School District, Culver City Unified, Dixon Unified, Millbrae Elementary, Woodlake Unified, Hillsborough City, Merced City, Black Oak Mine Unified, North Monterey Unified and Dos Palos-Oro Loma Joint Unified. 

    The California School Boards Association projected a superintendent shortage five years ago, said Susan Heredia, CSBA past president. It began as baby boomers started to retire, she said.

    In the 15 months since Brett McFadden began work as a deputy superintendent at the Monterey County Office of Education, a quarter of the county’s 24 school districts have changed superintendents, he said.  McFadden was the Nevada Joint Union High School District superintendent until last school year.

    “If you look at the last 100 superintendents that had to leave their positions or their districts, you would be very hard-pressed to find any one of them that left because of test scores or left because of educational issues,” McFadden said. “They leave because of local politics, board relations, labor relations, a facility bond matter or a budget thing.”

    McFadden calls the Covid-19 pandemic the kindling that ignited the rise in single-issue adult-driven disputes, like those around masking and vaccinations, at school board meetings. 

    Demand is so high for superintendents that McFadden is already getting calls from search firms hoping to entice him to apply for jobs.

    “You know the paint on the door isn’t even dry yet with my name on it,” he said. “These search firms are now just aggressively looking for candidates.”

    Of the 30 candidates that apply for each candidate search, maybe eight to 10 meet the district’s qualifications, Evans said. Of those, there are only maybe three or four that could potentially be hired for the job, he said. 

    The high demand is driving up salaries and benefits packages, with total compensation surpassing the $500,000 mark in some cases.

    Firings making applicants wary

    Another factor pushing superintendents out the door is board members elected with the promise of firing the incumbent. The election of school board members who are determined to make significant changes in school districts has resulted in the firing of an unprecedented number of superintendents since the pandemic began in 2020, Smith said.

    The school board meetings, broadcast live, have been watched throughout the state — especially by other superintendents. 

    McFadden remembers watching Pajaro Valley Unified school board meetings in 2021 when the board fired Superintendent Michelle Rodriguez without notice and then reinstated her days later after a public uproar. Rodriguez left to lead the Stockton Unified School District this year.

    “You’d expect this in a Spanish novella or something, but you don’t expect it in your neighboring district,” he said.

    School boards can waive state credential requirement

    School boards largely determine the qualifications required for a superintendent in their district. Although the state of California requires school district superintendents to have both a teaching credential and an administrative credential, the school board can waive the credential requirement.

    At least six California school district superintendents did not have both a teaching and administrative credential in the 2022-23 school year, according to data reported to the state. The districts that waived the requirement that year included Visalia Unified, Los Angeles Unified, Mountain View Whisman Unified, Sacramento City Unified, Kingsburg Joint Union High School District and San Marino Unified, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing.

    Since there is no mandate to report this information in CALPADS, the state data system, there could be more superintendents without both credentials, said Anita Fitzhugh, California teaching credential commission spokesperson.

    Superintendents are watching these meetings and paying more attention than ever to whether they fit well with the community of the district before they apply for a job, said White, of the University of Tennessee.

    “I think it’s just a heightened awareness right now,” White said. “Especially if I’m going to pick up and move my entire family and start a position in a new place. I don’t want to be fired in two years.”

    Temecula Valley Unified has been a hotbed of controversy since a trio of conservative trustees took control of the board a year ago. The board fired Superintendent Jodi McClay in June and banned the teaching of critical race theory, passed a parental policy requiring staff to notify parents if students are transgender and removed social studies material because it included a section on LGBTQ+ rights activist Harvey Milk. 

    Although the search for a candidate ended on Nov. 13 with the hiring of Gary Woods, a former Beverly Hills Unified superintendent, the search firm indicated to one board member that there were fewer candidates than in the past. Quite a few candidates did not meet the requirements outlined by the district in a job description and some weren’t even from the education field, board member Allison Barclay told EdSource in early November.

    “I would assume that if you’re looking for a position anywhere, any company, any school district, you’re really going to look at what the situation is you’re walking into financially, culture-wise, all of those things,” Barclay said. “And so, having a school district that is making national news is probably not appealing to as many people as might be attracted to it when it wasn’t making national news and was just simply known as an award-winning school district. So, I can’t imagine that that’s been helpful.”

    State legislators responded to the spate of firings by passing a bill creating a cooling-off period, prohibiting school boards from firing a superintendent or assistant superintendent within 30 days of new board members being seated or recalled.

    The law also prevents school boards from firing school leaders at special or emergency board meetings, which require only 24 hours’ notice, instead of at a regular meeting, which requires the public to be informed of a meeting at least 72 hours in advance. The bill was signed by the governor in October.

    “People are recognizing it’s just not healthy for an organization to go through these flip-flops where you might have a 3-2 majority that keeps a school or a superintendent, then have an election where the 3-2 flips and then the superintendent is looking for a job,” Franklin said.

    Less experienced leaders hired

    Assistant or deputy superintendents in larger districts are moving into the lead role in smaller districts, or superintendents in smaller districts are taking the opportunity to move to more lucrative jobs in larger districts. Newer, younger superintendents are becoming more common, Smith said.

    To meet their administrative needs, many districts are also grooming their own talent, said Molly Schwarzhoff of Ray and Associates, a national education search firm.

    ‘I’m seeing different, perhaps less-seasoned individuals coming into the roles,” McFadden said. “That doesn’t mean they are less talented or more talented.”

    To help new superintendents prepare for their new role, the Association of California School Administrators offers a new superintendents seminar series, a superintendents academy and a new superintendents workshop before its annual Superintendents Symposium. 

    The 2023 Voice of the Superintendent Survey, conducted by education consulting firm EAB, recommends that school boards find ways to help superintendents feel successful in their role and allow them time to connect with students and collaborate with peers to staunch turnover. Superintendents surveyed for the report overwhelmingly said they need help navigating challenging conversations with the community. 

    Superintendents report directly to the school board, something first-time superintendents have never done before, said James Finkelstein, professor emeritus of public policy at George Mason University in Virginia. The new superintendent now has multiple bosses, often with divergent interests. They also have to deal directly with parents and external interest groups.

    “No amount of academic training or a certificate can prepare someone for this trial by fire,” Finkelstein said. “The bottom line is that there is no substitute for experience. But the catch-22 is that the only way to get the experience is by doing the job. Every school district would like an experienced superintendent who has demonstrated success in their previous position.  But finding those individuals is increasingly difficult, especially given the dramatic turnover since Covid.”





    Source link

  • Politics, threats, agendas have permeated search for Fresno Unified superintendent, many say

    Politics, threats, agendas have permeated search for Fresno Unified superintendent, many say


    Fresno Unified School District board member Keshia Thomas speaks during a 2022 news conference.

    Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr

    Among accusations of racism, intimidation and political play, ensuing from a March 20 decision by the Fresno Unified School District board to interview internal candidates first in the process to hire a superintendent, some district employees have faced harassment and threats, with some members of the Hmong community also citing attacks against them. 

    Sources, including district spokesperson Nikki Henry, told EdSource that board members and Deputy Superintendent Misty Her — a candidate for the open position and the presumptive interim superintendent — have been threatened. Her, specifically, has faced racial harassment, Henry said. 

    “It’s not fair to staff, and it’s not fair to the process,” school board member Keshia Thomas said.  

    During last week’s board meeting, Kao Xiong, CEO of the Hmong Business Incubator Center, a community-based organization serving the underrepresented Hmong community, said his group has been monitoring racial tensions related to the superintendent search.

    Community member John Thao spoke about the “painful” and “hurtful” words someone told him in the wake of the superintendent’s search: “‘Your kind will never be superintendent.’”

    On Jan. 22, when Superintendent Bob Nelson announced his plans to leave Fresno Unified, the district announced that if a permanent superintendent isn’t named by his final days, Her would be named interim superintendent. 

    Plans to name Her as interim superintendent put her at the center of the search as a favored candidate even though she’s not the only internal applicant. Her became the highest-ranking Hmong K-12 professional in 2021 when she was hired as deputy superintendent. 

    Stacy Williams, a community member who spoke at last week’s meeting, accused the board of favoring Her as the next superintendent for their own political gain. 

    “I know some of you have something to gain by using the Hmong community as your political pawn for when you want to run for something,” Williams said. A similar sentiment had been expressed in an opinion piece on news site GV Wire, which accused some board members of “pandering to the Hmong community for votes” in their November re-election bids.

    Process is compromised

    After the March 20 closed meeting of the school board, during which the board decided to interview internal candidates before deciding on how to proceed with the hiring process, details of the 4-3 decision and how each board member voted were leaked to the media, instigating community anger that propelled the board to reverse course in a 5-2 vote last Wednesday and postpone the scheduled internal interviews. 

    Beyond the threats, the search for the top leader of the state’s third-largest school system is engulfed in community angst about an alleged lack of  transparency as well as accusations that the process has been tainted by politics. 

    Simply put, some say the search process has become “compromised.” But the reason for that conclusion varies, depending on whom you ask.

    Trustee Thomas said the process is compromised because board members and staff are afraid but helpless to protect themselves and their families from threats and harassment, incited by the turmoil that the leaked information has caused. 

    “I don’t know what the next steps are going to be because everybody is uncertain, scared and wants to protect their families and protect employees from the nonsense,” Thomas told EdSource before the board voted to cancel the interviews of in-house candidates. “So now, we may have to pivot and try to figure out: how do we stop the unnecessary nonsense?” 

    Manuel Bonilla, president of the Fresno Teachers Association, on the other hand, said the process was compromised from the moment the board decided to prioritize district employees rather than conducting an “extensive search to find the best candidate … creating the appearance that politics matter more than students.” 

    Fifteen community members who spoke at last Wednesday’s board meeting agreed that politics has permeated the process one way or another. 

    “Is this politics as usual?” asked Terri Kimber-Edwards, who attended Fresno Unified schools, is a parent to former students, and was a teacher and school and district administrator. “Is there some agenda? Are there backroom deals?” 

    Accusations of a personal or political agenda

    A recently launched political action committee, Moving the Central Valley Forward, sent mailers to Fresno residents, asking them to run for a seat in the Roosevelt and Hoover High areas, represented by Elizabeth Jonasson Rosas and Claudia Cazares, who are up for re-election in November. Both trustees’ names were leaked as part of the board majority that voted to start the superintendent search with internal candidates. 

    Jonasson Rosas did not confirm or deny her part in the March 20 decision because it happened in a closed-door session, and Cazares could not be reached for comment. Both have since voted to cancel the internal candidate interviews. In fact, Cazares led the charge to change the scope of the search at last Wednesday’s meeting. 

    Board member Andy Levine, who represents the Fresno High area, is also up for re-election but was not included in the mailer, although the area is listed on the political action committee’s website. Last week, Levine stated on Facebook and told EdSource that he supported opening the search to both internal and external candidates from the start. 

    Board members are not the only ones being accused of having a political agenda in the superintendent search.  

    Thomas, who says she stands by her decision to interview internal candidates first, questioned the teachers union’s involvement in the April 2 news conference called by board President Susan Wittrup to challenge the board’s decision. 

    At that news conference, community leaders, including members of the teachers union, urged Fresno Unified board members to conduct the search the “right way,” with a scope that includes at least statewide candidates, and in an open and transparent way, led by and with community involvement.

    Thomas said the labor union’s top leaders want to apply for the superintendency, which they couldn’t have done under the board’s original plan to interview internal candidates first. 

    District leaders, principals, teachers and other staff would be considered internal candidates who could apply. 

    Union presidents are district employees and could have applied; however, other union leaders and representatives would not have been able to unless the search was expanded to include external candidates. 

    Fresno Teachers Association leaders Louis Jamerson, pictured in the center, and Manuel Bonilla sign a tentative labor agreement between the teachers union and Fresno Unified School District last October.
    Credit: Fresno Unified / Flickr

    The teachers union’s executive director, Louis Jamerson, said he’ll apply to be Fresno Unified’s superintendent if the process is opened to external candidates, but added that questions about the union’s involvement in the search process are “ridiculous.” 

    The union’s executive board endorses Jamerson’s plan to become superintendent and Bonilla, FTA president, as deputy superintendent. 

    “We have some support from our executive board and from our teachers to pursue this,” Jamerson said, referring to his public announcement in February to 200 educators who gave him a standing ovation.

    “But that assumes that that’s possible. I don’t know, ultimately, how the board is going to decide on this process,” Jamerson said. “There could be another hurdle that prevents me from being able to apply. But if there are no hurdles, in terms of the ability for me to apply to become the superintendent, I will apply.” 

    FTA involvement isn’t unique to this search

    The teachers union has been involved in the superintendent search process dating back to 2005, when Mike Hanson was hired, and 2017, when Nelson was selected.

    Jamerson said that ensuring that the right superintendent is selected isn’t the only action the union takes to improve the education of students in Fresno Unified, where most students are still not meeting state standards. 

    “In my almost 10-year tenure at FTA, we have been involved in trying to do our best, from where we are, to try to … move this rock up a hill in terms of our students: our student safety, our student academic outcomes, our students’ ability to learn, read, do math — all of that,” Jamerson said about work the union engages in.  

    In  April 2022, the teachers union proposed classroom-centered ideas for academic and social-emotional student support. Contract negotiations — as well as a strike threat — in 2023 led to multimillion dollar investments in students’ social-emotional support.  

    What does this mean moving forward? 

    Trustee Jonasson Rosas said the situation is causing uneasiness at the district’s many schools, where students are now preparing for testing and other end-of-year obligations, such as college applications. Students who spoke during the April 3 meeting confirmed their worry. 

    “It’s unsettling for our school sites,” Jonasson Rosas said, “and I’m concerned about the effects that our schools are having because of this.” 

    Edison High senior Yunah Vang was one of seven students who stood at the podium during last Wednesday’s meeting, though not all spoke. 

    ”Instead of preparing for my graduation or getting ready for my prom, my classmates and I are here addressing issues that we are supposed to trust adults with,” Vang said. 

    But regardless of how the search unfolds, the next superintendent must address the district’s struggles with student performance, including children’s ability to read and teens’ college readiness. 

    Based on the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP tests, most Fresno Unified students failed to meet the state’s standards in 2023: 66.8% failed to meet English language arts standards, and 76.7% failed to meet math standards. 

    For third grade — the school year believed to be pivotal in determining reading proficiency and predicting future success — less than 1 in 3 third-graders are at grade level, a GO Public Schools 2023 student outcome report on Fresno Unified showed. 

    Of high school seniors in Fresno Unified, according to the report, under 20% are ready for college courses in English while less than 5% are ready for college math courses. College readiness is defined by a student exceeding standards on the 11th grade standardized tests.

    It’s still unclear how the superintendent selection process will proceed. It’s possible that the board will update the community about the next phase of the process at its meeting on April 10. 

    Many are wondering whether qualified candidates will risk applying and being part of a process that has questionable community support or to work under a fractured school board. EdSource found that less experienced superintendents are becoming common across the state as there is a rise in superintendents leaving the job; many who are leaving cite threats, stress and politics. 

    “Interested candidates are going to be looking at the process thus far,” said Henry, the district’s spokesperson. “They’re going to be looking at how the board operates, how district leadership operates, how our schools operate. They’re going to take a deep dive and decide if this is the right fit for them, so I think it’s yet to be seen if this has a positive or negative impact on a wider search.”





    Source link

  • Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s Politics of Distraction

    Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s Politics of Distraction


    Heather Cox Richardson uses her well-honed skills as a historian to weave together disparate events and demonstrate the media strategy of the Trump administration. It could be summarized by the succinct phrase: “Dazzle them with BS.”

    She writes:

    MAGA world is performing over-the-top outrage over a photo former Federal Bureau of Investigation director James Comey posted on Instagram, where he has been teasing a new novel. The image shows shells on a beach arranged in a popular slogan for opposing President Donald J. Trump: “86”—slang for tossing something away—followed by “47”, a reference to Trump’s presidency.

    Using “eighty-six” as either a noun or a verb appears to have started in the restaurant industry in the 1930s to indicate that something was out of stock. It is a common term, used by MAGA itself to refer to getting rid of somebody…until now.

    MAGA voices are insisting that this image was Comey’s threat to assassinate the president. Trump got into the game, telling Brett Baier of the Fox News Channel: “that meant assassination. And it says it loud and clear…. [H]e’s calling for the assassination of the president…that’s gonna be up to Pam and all of the great people…. He’s a dirty cop.” Trump’s reference to Attorney General Pam Bondi and law enforcement paid off: yesterday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said that the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service are investigating Comey. He showed up voluntarily at the FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., today for an interview.

    In the past day, Trump’s social media account has also attacked wildly popular musical icons Bruce Springsteen and, somewhat out of the blue, Taylor Swift. Dutifully, media outlets have taken up a lot of oxygen reporting on “shellgate” and Trump’s posts about Springsteen and Swift, pushing other stories out of the news.

    In his newsletter today, retired entrepreneur Bill Southworth tallied the times Trump has grabbed headlines to distract people from larger stories, starting the tally with how Trump’s posts about Peanut the Squirrel the day before the election swept like a brushfire across the right-wing media ecosystem and then into the mainstream. In early 2025, Southworth notes, as the media began to dig into the dramatic restructuring of the federal government, Trump posted outrageously about Gaza, and that story took over. When cuts to PEPFAR (the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and the U.S. Agency for International Development threatened lives across Africa, Trump turned the conversation to white South Africans he lied were fleeing “anti-white genocide.”

    Southworth calls this “narrative warfare,” and while it is true that Republican leaders have seeded a particular false narrative for decades now, this technique is also known as “political technology” or “virtual politics.” This system, pioneered in Russia under Russian president Vladimir Putin, is designed to get people to vote an authoritarian into office by creating a fake world of outrage. For those who do not buy the lies, there is another tool: flooding the zone so that people stop being able to figure out what is real and tune out.

    The administration has clearly adopted this plan. As Drew Harwell and Sarah Ellison of the Washington Post noted in early March, the administration set out to portray Trump as a king in order “to sell the country on [Trump’s] expansionist approach to presidential power.”

    The team set out not just to confront critics, but to drown them out with a constant barrage of sound bites, interviews with loyalists, memes slamming Democrats, and attack lines.

    “We’re here. We’re in your face,” said Kaelan Dorr, a deputy assistant to the president who runs the digital team. “It’s irreverent. It’s unapologetic.” The White House brought right-wing influencers into the press pool, including at least one who before the election was exposed as being on the Russian payroll. Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung, who before he began to work for Trump was a spokesperson for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, said their goal was “FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE.”

    Dominating means controlling the narrative. That starts with perceptions of the president himself. Trump’s appearances have been deeply concerning as he cannot follow a coherent thread, frequently falls asleep, repeatedly veers into nonsense, and says he doesn’t know about the operations of his government. Yesterday, after journalist S.V. Date noted that the administration has posted online only about 20% of Trump’s words, Cheung told Date “You must be truly f*cking stupid if you think we’re not transparent.”

    The White House also pushed back dramatically against a story that appeared in Business InsiderMonday, comparing Donald Trump Jr. to former president Joe Biden’s son Hunter. The White House suggested it would take legal action against Business Insider’s German parent company.

    Controlling the narrative also appears to mean manipulating the media, as Russians prescribed. Last month, Jeremy Kohler and Andy Kroll of ProPublica reported that Trump loyalist and political operative Ed Martin, now in charge of the “Weaponization Working Group,” in the Department of Justice, secretly seeded stories attacking a judge in a legal case that was not going his way. Martin has appeared more than 150 times on the Russia Today television channel and on Russian state radio, media outlets the State Department said were “critical elements in Russia’s disinformation and propaganda ecosystem,” where he claimed the Democrats were weaponizing the court system. Now he is vowing to investigate Democrats and anyone who criticizes the administration.

    As Trump’s popularity falls, Trump’s political operators have spent in the “high seven figures,” Alex Isenstadt of Axios says, to run ads in more than 20 targeted congressional districts to push lawmakers to get behind Trump’s economic program. “Tell Congress this is a good deal for America,” the ad says. “Support President Trump’s agenda to get our economy back on track.”

    In their advertising efforts, Musk’s mining of U.S. government records is deeply concerning, for the treasure trove of information he appears to have mined would enable political operatives to target political ads with laser precision in an even tighter operation than the Cambridge Analytica program of 2016.

    The stories the administration appears to be trying to cover up show a nation hobbled since January 20, 2025, as MAGA slashes the modern government that works for ordinary Americans and abandons democracy in order to put the power of the United States government into the hands of the extremely wealthy.

    Trump vowed that high tariffs on goods from other countries would launch a new golden era in the United States, enabling the U.S. to extend his 2017 tax cuts on the wealthy and corporations, some of which expire at the end of this year. But his high tariffs, especially those on goods from China, dramatically contracted the economy and raised the chances of a recession.

    His constant monkeying with tariff rates has created deep uncertainty in the economy, as well as raising concerns that at least some of his pronouncements are designed to manipulate the market. Today, Walmart announced it would have no choice but to raise prices, and the Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index dropped to its second lowest reading on record.

    Trump insisted earlier that other countries would come begging to negotiate, but now appears to have given up on the idea. “It’s not possible to meet the number of people that want to see us,” he said, announcing today that he will simply set new rates himself. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump argued that other countries would pay high tariff duties, helping the U.S. Treasury to address its high deficits at the same time the wealthy got further tax cuts.

    Over the course of this week, Republicans tried to push through Congress a measure that they have dubbed “One, Big, Beautiful Bill,” a reference to Trump’s term for it. The measure extended Trump’s tax cuts at a cost to the nation of about $4.6 trillion over ten years and raised the debt ceiling by $4 trillion. At the same time, it cut Medicaid, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and a slew of other programs.

    The Republicans failed to advance that bill out of the House Budget Committee Friday afternoon. Far-right Republicans complained not that it cut too much from programs Americans rely on, but that it cut too little. Citing the dysfunction in Washington, D.C. and the uncertain outlook for the American economy, Moody’s downgraded the credit rating of the country today from AAA to AA1.

    Since Trump took office, the “Department of Government Efficiency” also claimed to be slashing “waste, fraud, and abuse” from government programs, although actual financial savings have yet to materialize. Instead, the cuts are to programs that help ordinary Americans and move money upward to the wealthy. News broke today that cuts of 31% to the enforcement wing of the Internal Revenue Service will cost money: tax evasion among the top 10% of earners costs about $700 billion a year.

    The cuts were driven at least in part by the ideological extremism of Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget. Vought was a key author of Project 2025, which calls for decimating the federal government.

    Vought talked about traumatizing federal workers, and has done so, but the cuts have also traumatized Americans who depend on the programs that DOGE tried to cut. Cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) meant about $2 billion less in contracts for American farmers, while close to $100 million worth of food that could feed 3.5 million people rots in government warehouses.

    Cuts to the Federal Aviation Administration have left airports without adequate numbers of air traffic controllers. After two 90-second blackouts at Newark Liberty International Airport when air traffic controllers lost control with airplanes, yesterday the air traffic controllers at Denver International Airport lost contact with planes for 2 minutes.

    Cuts to a program that funds the healthcare of first responders and survivors of the September 11 World Trade Center terror attacks are leaving thousands of patients unclear whether their cancer treatments, for example, will be covered. Yesterday, acting administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) David Richardson told staff that FEMA is not prepared for hurricane season, which starts on June 1, and will work to return responsibility for the response to emergencies to the states. A document prepared for Richardson and obtained by Luke Barr of ABC News said: “As FEMA transforms to a smaller footprint, the intent for this hurricane season is not well understood, thus FEMA is not ready.”

    Yesterday, news broke that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has been in talks with the producers of the reality show Duck Dynasty for a new reality show in which immigrants compete against each other in cultural contests to win the chance to move their U.S. citizenship applications ahead faster. It is made-for-TV, just like so many of the performances this administration uses to distract Americans from the unpopular policies that are stripping the government of benefits for ordinary Americans and moving wealth upward.

    Such a show might appeal to confirmed MAGA. But it is a profound perversion of the American dream.



    Source link

  • Q&A: How one Cal State professor plans to teach politics during ‘the most important election since 1860’

    Q&A: How one Cal State professor plans to teach politics during ‘the most important election since 1860’


    Credit: Smith Collection/Gado/Sipa via AP

    David McCuan is no stranger to strong disagreements in his political science classes.

    “Everything is framed as a life or death struggle and decision, in a very serious way,” said McCuan, a professor at Sonoma State University. “So what I do tell students at the beginning of the class is, ‘We’re going to work hard. We’re going to disagree. And everything is going to be OK, because politics is a game for adults.’”

    McCuan should know. Over the past two decades, he’s guided easily 400 budding politicos through an election-year course that teaches them not only how to unearth the money and power structures behind state ballot measures but also asks them to register voters, educate fellow citizens on the election and, quite frequently, work with a student from the opposite end of the political spectrum.

    Sonoma State political science professor David McCuan
    Sonoma State political science professor David McCuan
    Credit: Courtesy of David McCuan

    This fall’s course comes ahead of what McCuan’s syllabus calls “the most important election since 1860” — the election that preceded the Civil War.

    In the 2024 election, roughly 8 million youth nationwide will age into the electorate in a divisive election year that has highlighted deep fissures on issues like immigration and the war in Gaza. 

    It’s also a moment of generational transition. Sonoma students returned to the Rohnert Park campus the same week as the Democratic National Convention, where Vice President Kamala Harris’ brisk rise to the top of the ticket signaled the passing of power to a younger group of Democratic Party politicians. 

    All of that means fall 2024 could be a volatile time to teach politics, a reason why McCuan wants students to work with peers with whom they don’t see eye to eye. Students entering his classroom even fill out a questionnaire to gauge their political views, information McCuan uses to pair students with their ideological foil on class projects.  

    “I try to take two opposite individuals and put them together to work on a team to understand what’s going on,” he said, “because I’ve found over the years that actually lends itself to a lot of help for each other.”

    The idea behind the class dates to the late 1990s, when as a young academic, McCuan began to contemplate the disconnect between the political science literature — where whether political campaigns even matter is an ongoing subject of debate — and the world of politics as it’s practiced on the ground. 

    McCuan’s students work with the League of Women Voters to research state ballot measures. The league compiles arguments in favor and against each measure, while students piece together the story of who is funding the ballot issue, how much money they’re spending, which consultants they’ve hired and how those strategies could swing the campaign.

    The course also has a service learning component. Students lead a public forum in which they present their ballot measure research to the rest of the campus and receive training on how to register voters. Many interactions with the government can feel punitive, McCuan said, like serving on a jury or paying taxes, so the hope is that more positive experiences of democracy will inspire students to stay civically engaged for the rest of their lives. 

    “We know that voting is a habit, so if you get people civically minded and engaged to register people to vote or to analyze what’s on the ballot, it has an educative effect,” McCuan said. “The idea is to create something that’s positive about what it means to be civically minded.”

    Sonoma State also does not shy away from political science programming that can provoke strong emotions, McCuan said. The university has hosted a lecture series on the Holocaust and genocide, he noted, and McCuan himself teaches a course that examines terrorism and political violence.

    McCuan said high-profile events have galvanized youth interest in politics in recent years. The 2016 election of Donald Trump, the 2018 mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs decision holding that abortion is not a constitutional right each emerged as lightning rods for youth political engagement. 

    Efforts to harness students’ political energy on McCuan’s campus have paid off in the past: 88.3% of registered voters at Sonoma State cast a ballot in 2020, besting the 66% average turnout rate across more than 1,000 colleges and universities in a national study of college voters that year. 

    It’s not just young people at Sonoma State who are eager to cast a ballot. CIRCLE, the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, found that turnout for voters age 18 to 29 rose from 39% in 2016 to 50% in 2020.

    Will younger voters turn out this year? More than half of voters 18 to 34 told pollsters they were “extremely likely to vote.”

    What those numbers don’t show is the long-standing voting gap between college goers and people without a bachelor’s degree. In 2020, 75% of 18- to 29-year-olds with a college degree voted compared to just 39% with a high school education, a CIRCLE analysis of census data found.  

    McCuan recently discussed why he thinks universities should invest more in civics education and how he prepares students to discuss difficult issues in the classroom.

    The following Q&A was edited, condensed and re-ordered for length and clarity.

    What should K-12 schools be doing to teach students about civics and politics?

    We’re integrating civics rather than holding it separate. We’re trying to integrate things across the curriculum because we have so many things that we want people to learn or that we demand that they know. And I think that’s losing depth of understanding in the guise of trying to provide breadth of coverage.

    (In political science), we pay very close attention to the relationship between economic, social and political variables, (also known as) ESP. They (students) might be able to name off ESP components of American history and American politics. It’s the what they’re really good at. It’s the why that is always the struggle.

    They might be able to note certain things on the history timeline, but how those were moments of change or inflection points — or why they matter, or how they’re consequential — that’s the part that’s often still the same as it was before. All the stuff they’re covering from K through 12 is ticking off boxes that aren’t necessarily providing greater understanding.

    Is there anything that would better prepare students before they reach your classroom?

    Invest in civics. I struggle, because I was a department chair for a long time and, as you know, in higher education, it’s faced a lot of pressure and a lot of financial pressure.

    I have a great passion about learning. I’m a first generation college student. I’m the son of a cop. I’m not supposed to even be here. The neighborhood I grew up in is the ‘hood, man, and if I can do it, others can do it. It takes a great deal of courage to call things out, and I don’t see that with a lot of higher education leaders, so I need an investment in civics that’s greater.–

    And as we’re cutting budgets and we’re cutting requirements, we’re taking things out– like how to write and how to think — because we’re trying to cram other things in there, or graduate people faster, or push things through. 

    Do you ever have to step in as a conciliator between students in your classroom?

    I haven’t generally had to weigh in on severe disagreements. I think your question, though, is appropriate for this fall, where everyone’s made up their mind about how they’re going to vote, except for 5% of people. So I’m going to have people in this class who are on far sides of the political spectrum trying to work together. Can that be combustible? Yeah, sure, maybe.

    I just feel like a professor who hadn’t been teaching this course for as long as you have would run in the opposite direction from starting now.

    I want a lively, engaged classroom, man!

    And also, remember, while we’re looking at the election, paying attention to candidates, we’re also concentrating a lot on non-candidate on ballot measures. Now, those are our proxy for blue and red, for left and right, sure — but we are concentrating on ballot measures, non-candidate elections, so it does remove some of that heavy partisanship.

    Do you hear this sentiment among colleagues, a reluctance to talk about political views with students?

    What I do hear from colleagues, especially younger colleagues or newer colleagues, is a frustration with trying to delve into issues that are hard. They often avoid those because they’re worried that they won’t have a chair or an administration that will back them up if things get heated. 

    Sometimes I have newer, younger colleagues who try to steer around issues if it makes students uncomfortable or will lead to aggression in the classroom. I’m not afraid of that.

    What makes you not afraid of that?

    I trust that we can get to a place of respect, if not understanding. I want a classroom that’s lively, engaged. I think the best thing in a student in my class is intellectual curiosity. That’s what I want. I’m not interested in the politics — and what I mean by that is, I’m not interested that they feel strongly this way or that way. I need them to be intellectually curious, because I can work with that. We can work together on that. And intellectual curiosity is something we see less and less of, so it’s harder.

    You don’t strike me as somebody who’s disillusioned with political processes — or are you?

    I think to be in this profession, to do this job, you have to have an optimistic view of the human condition. Because you don’t do it for the pay. You don’t do it for the benefits. You do it because you have a passion and a mission that the next generation can do it better. 

    When you see that ‘aha’ moment with students, it’s not because they’re mimicking your view. It’s not that at all, and I don’t do this in the classroom. It’s that they are understanding and making connections that I never saw. Or that they are finding and understanding in depth and making those connections that are analytical, not political. And that’s really helpful, because that’s a skill. 

    Is there some way that the students you’re teaching have changed since you started this course in 2003?

    They use social media tools to get an idea of what’s going on. So in other words, as the digital space has grown in campaigns, they’re in that space. 

    I don’t know what the hell a “Swiftie” is. I didn’t know the BeyHive is Beyoncé, and I would have spelled it like a beehive. But they know, so they’re operating in the space where the BeyHive and the Swifties are operating. 

    They’re understanding that space, and therefore, they are understanding the colors that are used by Kamala and her team, that lime green color. They know what that means, right?

    Their understanding of social media, their clarity about what messages are being communicated, would fly over the head of most pointy-headed academics. So I need them.





    Source link