اینترنت

برچسب: Trumps

  • Maine Governor Mills Stands Up to Trump’s Bullying; He Backs Down

    Maine Governor Mills Stands Up to Trump’s Bullying; He Backs Down


    Last February, Trump met with the nation’s governors. He gave them a lecture about his agenda. When it came to his determination to ban transgender athletes, he called out Governor Janet Mills of Maine. He warned her that had “better comply” with his executive order. They exchanged words. She was unbowed. She said to Trump: “See you in court.”

    Trump told the Agriculture Department to hold back $3 million in food from Maine schools.

    Maine sued to get the money that was due.

    They settled. Maine got its $3 million. Governor Mills changed nothing.

    The New York Times reported:

    The state’s attorney general, Aaron M. Frey, said his office had withdrawn a lawsuit it filed in objection to the funding freeze, which had held up around $3 million, he estimated, and was initiated by the Agriculture Department last month. The federal dollars, Mr. Frey said in an interview, pay for food preparation in schools and child care centers, and also assist in feeding disabled adults in congregate settings…

    “The food doesn’t just buy itself, deliver itself, cook itself,” Mr. Frey said Friday, adding that the Trump administration had tried to “bully” Maine. “The message here is if you don’t follow the law and you try to target Maine without relying on any shred of law to support it, we’re going to have to take you to court.”

    The White House deferred comment to the Agriculture Department. 

    Ms. Mills said in a statement that the Trump administration had made an “unlawful attempt to freeze critical funding.” But the agreement, she said, will preserve healthy meals for about 170,000 schoolchildren across Maine.

    That’s the thing about bullies. If you stand up to them, they back off. They get their power by intimidation. At bottom, they are cowards. Take Trump. He dodged the draft. Five times. Don’t be afraid of him.



    Source link

  • What Trump’s victory means for education in California

    What Trump’s victory means for education in California


    Republican Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, stand on stage at an Election Night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center on Nov. 6, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida.

    Credit: AP Photo/Evan Vucci

    This story was updated to include comments from Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Teachers Association President David Goldberg.

    The re-election of Donald Trump is certain to bring a period of conflict, tension and litigation between the White House and California’s political and education leaders whose policies and values the president castigates. It also could potentially have major implications for California schools.

    Trump, whose position on education has focused more on cultural ideology than on policies to improve education, has threatened to cut school funding to states, such as California, with policies that protect transgender students and promote diversity, equity and inclusion in their schools. He also has pledged to deport undocumented immigrants en masse, a move that would impact millions of California families and their children.

    “California will seek to work with the incoming president – but let there be no mistake, we intend to stand with states across our nation to defend our Constitution and uphold the rule of law,” said Gov. Gavin Newsom in a statement Wednesday afternoon. “Federalism is the cornerstone of our democracy. It’s the United STATES of America.”

    Newsom, who has been a high-profile adversary to Trump, foreshadowed the coming tensions between the president-elect and the nation’s largest and, by some measures, bluest state in a statement on X, or Twitter, on Oct. 18.

    “Donald Trump just said he will take away $7.9 BILLION in school funding from California’s kids if we don’t do whatever he wants. This man is unhinged and unfit to be President,” wrote Newsom.

     The $7.9 billion represents the total annual federal K-12 funding for California,  about 7% of the total California spending on education in 2024-25, according to state Department of Finance figures. 

    California officials preparing

    Attorney General Rob Bonta has said that his team has been preparing for possible litigation to stop many of President Trump’s expected policies, including attacking rights and protections for transgender children and youth, mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and ending protections for immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

    California has sued the federal government more than 100 times over Trump’s past rules and regulatory rollbacks, according to CalMatters.

    Bruce Fuller, professor of education and public policy at UC Berkeley, worries that Trump’s tax cuts to the rich will be paid for by budget cuts in public education. 

    “The president-elect’s commitment to cutting taxes for affluent Americans means there will be no new funding for public schools,” Fuller said. “Watch out for efforts to expand vouchers and tax credits for well-off parents who opt for private schools.”

    Trump proposals often contradict policy

    Michael Kirst, former president of the State Board of Education and chief education advisor to former Governor Jerry Brown, said there is a contradiction between what Trump proposes and federal education policy.

     “He says he wants to turn control back to locals, but his campaign platform and statements indicate a deep interest in getting involved in local decision-making: having parents elect principals, cutting back teacher tenure and instituting merit pay,” Kirst said. “He wants to examine the curriculum of schools for ‘woke’ ideology.”

    The Every Student Succeeds Act, the primary law governing federal education policy, limits federal involvement in education, Kirst said. ESSA bans federal intervention in setting curriculum and federal involvement with teacher evaluations, which will affect Trump’s plan to offer merit pay. 

    “Some of his aides talk about slashing K-12 spending, but who knows what will happen?” Kirst said. Congress could transfer some funding for schools to create incentives for school choice, but that would require changes in school law, he said.

    Student debt relief at risk

    A second Trump administration could have far-reaching consequences for Americans with student debt, said Mike Pierce, the executive director of the Student Borrower Protection Center, in a statement. 

    “President-elect Trump’s dark vision for millions of American families with student debt is as extreme as it is unpopular—dismantling the U.S. Department of Education, undoing hard-fought protections for student loan borrowers, driving millions into the open arms of predatory for-profit schools and private lenders, and leaving millions drowning in student debt,” Pierce said. “The threat posed by these plans is real and will imperil the financial stability of millions of working families.”

    Deportation promise causing fear

    The Trump proclamation that has evoked the most fear for Californians is his pledge to deport undocumented immigrants en masse. An estimated 1 million California children – about 1 in 10 – have an undocumented immigrant parent. About 165,000 California students are recent immigrants themselves.  In 2016, after Trump’s first election, attendance at schools dropped.

    In a call with reporters last week, Newsom said that Trump’s promise to deport undocumented immigrants would be devastating to California’s economy, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

    “No state has more to lose or more to gain in this election in November,” he said.

    Speaker of the Assembly Robert Rivas told reporters the state would be ready to forcefully protect its immigrant population, which could face major upheaval under Trump’s proposed mass deportation program, according to Politico.

     “We’ll do everything we can to ensure that people feel protected, and they feel welcomed,” he said, though he did not discuss specifics.

    Manuel Rustin, an American History teacher at John Muir High School, an early college magnet program in Pasadena Unified, said his students have expressed concern and angst over what a second Trump presidency might be like, considering the intense anti-immigrant sentiment of his campaign and his promise of mass deportations. 

    “I expect students today will be very quiet, melancholy, confused, and worried like I witnessed them back in 2016,” Rustin said. “My plan: Similar to 2016, I plan to hold space for students to safely express their thoughts, reactions, and questions.”

    Scott Moore, head of Kidango, a nonprofit that runs many Bay Area child care centers, fears that many of the families he works with will be terrified today.

    “What is sad is that today, children will come to Kidango, and some of them will be crying and scared that their parents or a close relative will be taken away from them,” Moore said. “This is what happened in 2016.”

    Teachers in the crosshairs

    A Trump presidency also could have a big impact on how educators teach and on whether they choose to stay in the profession. Trump has claimed teachers have been indoctrinating children with anti-American ideologies. His solution: create a new credentialing agency to certify teachers “who embrace patriotic values and understand that their job is not to indoctrinate children, but to educate them.” 

    He also wants to abolish teacher tenure and to give preference in federal funding to states and school districts that support his efforts to do so. 

    “He will go after teacher associations backing Democrats, with a vengeance,” Fuller predicts.

    California Teachers Association President David Goldberg said that, as a union of 310,000 educators, CTA has the strength to fight for the state’s students, schools and communities.

    “We are prepared to stand up against any attacks on our students, public education, workers’ rights, and our broader communities that may come,” Goldberg said. “We’re committed to fight for the future we all deserve.”





    Source link

  • Catherine Rampell: Why Does Trump’s Regime Have Your Data and How Will They Use It?

    Catherine Rampell: Why Does Trump’s Regime Have Your Data and How Will They Use It?


    Catherine Rampell is an opinion writer for The Washington Post who writes often about economics. She focuses here on the expansion of data collection by the Trump administration, even as it ceases to collect anonymous data about health trends. What worries me is the invasion of privacy by the DOGE team, who scooped up personally identifiable data from the IRS and Social Security about everyone, including you and me. Why did they want it? What will they do to it?

    She writes:

    It’s rarely comforting to appear on a government “list,” even (or perhaps especially) when compiled in the name of public safety.

    It was alarming in the 1940s, when the U.S. government collected the names of Japanese Americans for internment. Likewise in the 1950s, when the House Un-American Activities Committee catalogued communists. And it’s just as troubling now, as the Trump administration assembles registries of Jewish academics and Americans with developmental disabilities.

    Yes, these are real things that happened this past week, the latest examples of the White House’s abuse of confidential data.

    Last week, faculty and staff at Barnard College received unsolicited texts asking them whether they were Jewish. Employees were stunned by the messages, which many initially dismissed as spam.

    Turns out the messages came from the Trump administration. Barnard, which is affiliated with Columbia University, had agreed to share faculty members’ private contact info to aid in President Donald Trump’s pseudo-crusade against antisemitism.

    Ah, yes, a far-right president asking Jews to register as Jewish, in the name of protecting the Jews, after he has repeatedly accused Jews of being “disloyal.” What could go wrong?

    The same day, National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya announced a “disease registry” of people with autism, to be compiled from confidential private and government health records, apparently without its subjects’ awareness or consent. This is part of Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s vendetta against vaccines, which he has said cause autism despite abundant research concluding otherwise.

    This, too, is disturbing given authoritarian governments’ history of compiling lists of citizens branded mentally or physically deficient. If that historical analogue seems excessive, note that Bhattacharya’s announcement came just a week after Kennedy delivered inflammatory remarks lamenting that kids with autism will never lead productive lives. They “will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job,” he said, adding they’ll never play baseball or go on a date, either.

    This all happened during Autism Acceptance Month, established to counter exactly these kinds of stigmatizing stereotypes. Kennedy’s comments and the subsequent “registry” set off a wave of fear in the autism advocacy community and earned condemnation from scientists.

    Obviously, advocates want more research and support for those with autism. They have been asking for more help at least since 1965 (when what is now called the Autism Society of America was founded in my grandparents’ living room). But few in this community trust political appointees hostile to scientific research — or a president who has publicly mocked people with disabilities — to use an autism “registry” responsibly.

    (An unnamed HHS official later walked back Bhattacharya’s comments, saying the department was not creating a “registry,” per se, just a “real-world data platform” that “will link existing datasets to support research into causes of autism and insights into improved treatment strategies.” Okay.)

    These are hardly the administration’s only abuses of federal data. It has been deleting reams of statistical records, including demographic data on transgender Americans. It has also been exploiting other private administrative records for political purposes.

    For example, the Internal Revenue Service — in an effort to persuade people to pay their taxes — spent decades assuring people that their records are confidential, regardless of immigration status. The agency is in fact legally prohibited from sharing tax records, even with other government agencies, except under very limited circumstances specified by Congress. Lawmakers set these limits in response to Richard M. Nixon’s abuse of private tax data to target personal enemies.

    Trump torched these precedents and promises. After a series of top IRS officials resigned, the agency has now agreed to turn over confidential records to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement locate and deport some 7 million undocumented immigrants.

    The move, which also has troubling historical echoes, is being challenged in court. But, in the meantime, tax collections will likely fall. Undocumented immigrant workers had been paying an estimated $66 billion in federal taxes annually, but they now have even more reason to stay off the books.

    This and other DOGE infiltrations of confidential records are likely to discourage public cooperation on other sensitive government data collection efforts. Think research on mental health issues or public safety assessments on domestic violence.

    But that might be a feature, not a bug, for this administration. Chilling federal survey participation and degrading data quality were arguably deliberate objectives in Trump’s first term, when he tried to cram a question about citizenship into the 2020 Census. The question was expected to depress response rates and help Republicans game the congressional redistricting process.

    Courts ultimately blocked Trump’s plans. That’s what it will take to stop ongoing White House abuses, too: not scrapping critical government records, but championing the rule of law.

    Ultimately, the government must be able to collect and integrate high-quality data — to administer social programs efficiently, help the economy function and understand the reality we live in so voters can hold public officials accountable. None of this is possible if Americans fear ending up on some vindictive commissar’s “list.”



    Source link

  • LAUSD unanimously affirms support for immigrant and LGBTQ+ students leading up to Trump’s inauguration 

    LAUSD unanimously affirms support for immigrant and LGBTQ+ students leading up to Trump’s inauguration 


    Credit: Julie Leopo/EdSource

    Este artículo está disponible en Español. Léelo en español.

    As anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ+ policies and rhetoric spread across the nation in the wake of Donald Trump’s re-election for presendent, the Los Angeles Unified School District board affirmed its commitment to members of these communities by unanimously passing four resolutions on Tuesday.

    “The district will continue to do everything in its power to protect and defend the kids in our care,” one of the resolutions reads. “Doing so is the responsibility of all LAUSD employees.” 

    Here’s an overview of LAUSD’s efforts from Tuesday’s regular board meeting and what to expect in the two months leading up to Trump’s inauguration. 

    LAUSD as a sanctuary district 

    After Trump vowed to declare a national emergency and bring in the U.S. military to facilitate mass deportations, the district passed a resolution reaffirming that it will remain a sanctuary and safe zone for families. 

    “We survived the pandemic because we stood together,” said Mónica García, who authored the original sanctuary resolution in the 2016-17 academic year and previously served as the president of LAUSD’s board. “… It is so important that, as we may see policies that we do not support … that we stand together in response to the times.”

    Tuesday’s action comes about eight years after the original sanctuary resolution passed; it also requires district Superintendent Alberto Carvalho to present a plan to the board within 60 days, in time for implementation by Jan. 20, when Trump returns to the White House. 

    The resolution says Carvalho’s plan should involve training LAUSD educators, administrators and staff on responding to federal agencies and anybody else who seeks information or attempts to enter a campus. 

    Meanwhile, the resolution insists that LAUSD will “aggressively oppose” any laws forcing school districts to work with federal agencies and personnel involved with immigration enforcement. 

    “The good news is that we have seen it before, and we are in a position to act,” García said at Tuesday’s meeting. “The challenge … [is] there are families who are separated and who are traumatized because of the fear of what is to come. And we will continue to ask them to come to school and give us their very best.” 

    She added, “Whether it is two years or it is four years, it is every day that we exercise love and the power of this institution on behalf of children and families.”  

    A safe place for LGBTQ+ and immigrant communities 

    The second resolution would require LAUSD to add gender identity and expression to the list of groups covered by its “To Enforce the Respectful Treatment of All Persons” policy and require the district to update district policy bulletins as needed.  

    It also calls on the district to support legislation backing immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities — and to provide educational and mental health resources. 

    A response to Project 2025 

    A third resolution passed Tuesday promises that LAUSD will remain “inclusive, safe, and welcoming” for all communities in the face of any “immediate, incalculable, and irreparable harm” to public schools caused by Project 2025, a set of detailed policy proposals authored long before the election by hundreds of high-profile conservatives in the hope that Trump would push them if elected.

    It states that LAUSD will defend all students’ right to a public education and protect them from potential harm. 

    Carvalho will have to report back to the board within 60 days — and present an overview of the potential impacts of Project 2025 as well as a district response, the resolution states.  

    “This resolution is a bold and necessary shield against the looming threats to public education — a public good that we must protect fiercely and defend,” board member Rocío Rivas said Tuesday. 

    A new political education course 

    The fourth resolution emphasizes the importance of turning LAUSD students into critical thinkers capable of discerning facts from falsehoods and ready to participate in the American political system.

    “We’re not talking about [being] a Democrat or a Republican,” said board President Jackie Goldberg, who authored all four resolutions, during her last full board meeting Tuesday. “It’s about understanding the actual way the government works — as opposed to what the Constitution says. And there’s a big difference.”

    The resolution asks Carvalho to look into creating a high-level political education course and report back to the board in 160 days. 

    His considerations, according to the resolution, would include whether the course would serve as a requirement, areas that the curriculum would cover, the types of professional development that would be needed and the ideal grade levels to teach it. 

    The resolution also asks Carvalho to consider any other curricular changes in the grade levels leading up to the course to make sure students are prepared. 

    Anely Cortez Lopez, student board member, said at Tuesday’s meeting, “The understanding of the political landscape of the United States is vital in our schools as we continue as the change-makers of tomorrow.”





    Source link

  • Daniel Dale of CNN: Trump’s 100 Lies in 100 Days

    Daniel Dale of CNN: Trump’s 100 Lies in 100 Days


    Daniel Dale is CNN’s fact-checker. To mark Trump’s first 100 days in office, Dale collected 100 Trump lies.

    Here are a couple of examples:

    73. Falsely claimed the US ranks dead last, 40th out of 40 countries, in international education rankings. The White House couldn’t identify any education rankings where the US ranked 40th out of 40 countries; FactCheck.org and PolitiFact have noted that even among the wealthy, developed countries of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, the US ranks well above average in reading and science and below average but still far from last in math.

    74. Falsely claimed that while Democratic governors closed schools during the Covid-19 pandemic, some governors “kept them open 100% of the time,” adding, “South Carolina did. Tennessee did.” The Republican governor of South Carolina ordered school closures in 2020, while the Republican governor of Tennessee recommended school closures that year (and the state’s school districts complied).

    I would love to see Daniel Dale of CNN or Glen Kessler of The Washington Post fact-check Trump’s historical references.

    A few days ago, I heard Trump say that the greatest period of American growth was 1890-1913. That era came to be known as the Age of the Robber Barons, when the gaps between the very rich and the very poor were huge.

    What disaster happened in 1913? Congress introduced the income tax. Trump believes that the federal government paid its expenses solely by charging tariffs on imported goods.

    In Trump’s view, the government should once again rely on tariffs.

    What he doesn’t acknowledge is that the federal government provided few services in 1913: no Social Security, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no subsidized housing, management of public lands, no environmental protection, no air traffic control. On and on.

    The rich lived in grandeur. The poor lived in squalor.

    That’s what Trump considers our best era.

    Historical ignorance is dangerous.



    Source link

  • Trump’s Insane War on Science

    Trump’s Insane War on Science


    Since Trump invited Elon Musk and his DOGE team to cut the federal budget, the federal government has been subject to a bloodbath of firings, layoffs, and closed agencies. Some of the most shocking budget cuts have focused on scientific research. Reckless cuts have been imposed on the National Science Foundation and on every part of the Department of Health and Human Services, where the Secretary–conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr.–is crushing genuine research and prioritizing his obsession with vaccines as the cause of autism, which has been debunked.

    Trump has blocked the payment of millions of dollars to universities that fund basic science research. He is using those blocks to force universities to stop DEI programs.

    We can understand why Kennedy wants to destroy science: it has an annoying tendency to undercut his pet conspiracy theories. No matter what science says, he will continue to warn the public that vaccines are dangerous, that fluoridating water is dangerous, and anything that contradicts his ideology is fake, regardless of how many scientists disagree. WHO you gonna believe? The addled RFK Jr. or the world’s top scientists? Or Ghostbusters?

    But we do not know why Trump put the nation’s public health agencies into the hands of a man who does not respect science.

    Why does Trump want more children to die of measles? Why does he allow Elon Musk to shut down agencies like USAID that have saved millions of lives? Why he is cancelling grants to universities for basic scientific research? Why does he want to stop the work of scientists who are seeking cures for cancer, tuberculosis, AIDS, and other lethal diseases? I don’t know.

    Frankly, the cuts are coming so fast that I can’t keep track of them all. I hope soon to find a comprehensive summary of the destruction of federally-funded scientific research.

    In the meanwhile, this is the best overview I have seen.

    Alan Burdick of the New York Times wrote this story about Trump’s rampage against scientific research:

    Late yesterday, Sethuraman Panchanathan, whom President Trump hired to run the National Science Foundation five years ago, quit. He didn’t say why, but it was clear enough: Last weekend, Trump cut more than 400 active research awards from the N.S.F., and he is pressing Congress to halve the agency’s $9 billion budget.

    The Trump administration has targeted the American scientific enterprise, an engine of research and innovation that has thrummed for decades. It has slashed or frozen budgets at the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and NASA. It has fired or defunded thousands of researchers.

    The chaos is confusing: Isn’t science a force for good? Hasn’t it contained disease? Won’t it help us in the competition with China? Doesn’t it attract the kind of immigrants the president says he wants? In this edition of the newsletter, we break out our macroscope to make sense of the turmoil.

    American research thrives under a patronage system that funnels congressionally approved dollars to universities, national labs and institutes. This knowledge factory employs tens of thousands of researchers, draws talent from around the world and generates scientific breakthroughs and Nobel Prizes.

    It’s a slow-moving system, because science moves slowly. Discoveries are often indirect and iterative, involving collaboration among researchers who need years of subsidized education to become expert. Startups and corporations, which need quick returns on their investment, typically can’t wait as long or risk as much money.

    Science is capital. By some measures, every dollar spent on research returns at least $5 to the economy.

    President Trump is less patient. He has defunded university studies on AIDS, pediatric cancer and solar physics. (Two prominent researchers are compiling lists of lost N.I.H. grants and N.S.F. awards.) The administration has also laid off thousands of federal scientists, including meteorologists at the National Weather Service; pandemic-preparedness experts at the C.D.C.; black-lung researchers at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. A next-generation space observatory, already built with $3.5 billion over a decade, awaits a launch that now may never happen.

    Administration officials offer various reasons for the crackdown: cost-cutting, government efficiency, “defending women from gender ideology extremism.” Many grants were eliminated because they contain words, including climate, diversity, disability, trans or women. Some drew the administration’s ire because the applications included D.E.I. statements required by the previous administration.

    It doesn’t take a telescope to see where this leads. American leaders have historically seen science as an investment in the future. Will this administration foreclose it? One-third of America’s Nobel Prize winners have been foreign-born, but an immigration crackdown has swept up scientists like Kseniia Petrova, a Russian who studied aging at Harvard and now sits in a Louisiana detention center. Australian academics have stopped attending conferences in the U.S. for fear of being detained, The Guardian has reported.

    Now some American scientists are looking for the exits. France, Canada and other countries are courting our researchers. In a recent poll by the journal Nature, more than 1,200 American scientists said they were considering working abroad. The journal’s job-search platform saw 32 percent more applications for positions overseas between January and March 2025 than during the same period a year earlier.

    These are mechanical threats to science — who gets money, what they work on. But there is a more existential worry. The Trump administration is trying to change what counts as science.

    One effort aims at what science should show — and at achieving results agreeable to the administration. The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., wants to reopen research into a long-debunked link between vaccines and autism. He doesn’t want to study vaccine hesitancy. The National Science Foundation says it will no longer fund “research with the goal of combating ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation’ that could be used to infringe on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens.” A Justice Department official has accused prominent medical journals of political bias for not airing “competing viewpoints.”

    Another gambit is to suppress or avoid politically off-message results, even if the message isn’t yet clear. The government has expunged public data sets on air quality, earthquake intensity and seabed geology. Why cut the budget by erasing records? Perhaps the data would point toward efforts (pollution reduction? seabed mining limits?) that officials might one day need to undertake. We pursue knowledge in order to act: to prevent things, to improve things. But action is expensive, at a moment when the Trump administration wants the government to do as little as possible. Perhaps it’s best to not even know.

    One sure way to shut down knowledge is to question who can gather it. The administration is painting scientists with the same liberal brush it has applied to academics more broadly — what Project 2025 describes as “the ‘enlightened,’ highly educated managerial elite.” The N.I.H. is controlled by “a small group of highly paid and unaccountable insiders,” the Project 2025 authors write. The regulatory work of the Environmental Protection Agency “should embrace so-called citizen science” and be left “for the public to identify scientific flaws and research misconduct.”

    In science, as in a democracy, there’s plenty of room for skepticism and debate. That’s what makes it work. But at some point, calls for “further research” become disingenuous efforts to obscure inconvenient facts. It’s an old playbook, exploited in the 1960s by the tobacco industry and more recently by fossil-fuel companies.

    Now it’s being weaponized by the government against science generally. Facts are elite, facts are fungible, facts are false. And once nothing is true, anything can be true.



    Source link

  • Fareed Zakaria: Trump’s War on Science Is Bad for America

    Fareed Zakaria: Trump’s War on Science Is Bad for America


    TRUMP’S ATTACK on science has the backing of fundamentalist evangelical Christians, and especially virulent The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR). In fact, however, anti-science is anti-Christian, and the traditional Christian denominations which represent the large majority of Christians have even accepted as dogma that the human body and all other forms of life have evolved in a Drawinian manner. The media ignores this acceptance because the media likes to portray conflict. Take a look at the following: SAINT AUGUSTINE SAYS THAT ANTI-SCIENCE IS ANTI-CHRISTIAN —

    Christians today should heed the warning that St. Augustine gave to his fellow Christians: “It is a disgraceful and a dangerous thing for an unbeliever to hear a Christian talking nonsense about scientific topics. Many non-Christians are well-versed in scientific knowledge, so they can detect the ignorance in such a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The danger to Christianity is obvious: The failure to conform to demonstrated scientific knowledge opens the Christian, and Christianity as a whole, to ridicule. If non-Christians find a Christian mistaken on a scientific subject that they know well and hear such a Christian maintaining his foolish opinions, how are they going to believe our teachings in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven?”

    In short, St. Augustine was pointing out that God gave humans intellects and that Christians shouldn’t let anti-science political ideology make Christianity look foolish to the vast majority of people and cause them to turn their back on Christianity, which is one of the main reasons why fewer Americans profess any religion.

    Traditional Christian Churches To Which Nearly All Christians Belong Have Accepted the Science of Evolution — here are some of the official Christian church positions on their acceptance of evolution:

    The CATHOLIC CHURCH: Half of all Christians in the world are Catholic, and in the 1950 Papal Encyclical “Humani Generis,” Pope Pius XII declared that the human body came “from pre-existent and living matter” that evolved through a sequence of stages before God instilled a spiritual soul into the human body. Catholics accept that Genesis is not literal and are only bound by faith to believe that the natural evolution of the human body was a God-guided process, and that the spiritual human soul that inhabits the physical human body didn’t evolve, but is created by God.

    The EPISCOPAL CHURCH declared in its 67th General Assembly:

    “Whereas, the state legislatures of several states have recently passed so-called ‘balanced treatment’ laws requiring the teaching of ‘Creation Science’ whenever evolutionary models are taught; and

    Whereas, in many other states political pressures are developing for such “balanced treatment” laws; and

    “Whereas, the dogma of ‘Creationism’ and ‘Creation Science’ as understood in the above contexts has been discredited by scientific and theologic studies and rejected in the statements of many church leaders; and

    “Whereas, ‘Creationism’ and ‘Creation Science’ is not limited to just the origin of life, but intends to monitor public school courses, such as biology, life science, anthropology, sociology, and often also English, physics, chemistry, world history, philosophy, and social studies; therefore be it

    “Resolved: that the 67th General Convention affirm the glorious ability of God to create in any manner, whether men understand it or not, and in this affirmation reject the limited insight and rigid dogmatism of the ‘Creationist’ movement, and be it further

    “Resolved: by 67th General Convention of the Episcopal Church, 1982, that the Presiding Bishop appoint a Committee to organize Episcopalians and to cooperate with all Episcopalians to encourage actively urge their state legislators not to be persuaded by arguments and pressures of the ‘Creationists’ into legislating any form of ‘balanced treatment’ laws or any law requiring the teaching of ‘Creation Science’.”

    The LUTHERAN WORLD FEDERATION declared in its Encyclopedia of the Lutheran Church, Vol. I, 1965, that: “An assessment of the prevailing situation makes it clear that evolution’s assumptions are as much around us as the air we breathe and no more escapable. At the same time theology’s affirmations are being made as responsibly as ever. In this sense both science and religion are here to stay, and the demands of either are great enough to keep most (if not all) from daring to profess competence in both. To preserve their own integrity both science and religion need to remain in a healthful tension of respect toward one another and to engage in a searching debate which no more permits theologians to pose as scientists than it permits scientists to pose as theologians.”

    The UNITED METHODIST CHURCH declared at its 1984 Annual Conference that:

    “Whereas, ‘Scientific’ creationism seeks to prove that natural history conforms absolutely to the Genesis account of origins; and,

    “Whereas, adherence to immutable theories is fundamentally antithetical to the nature of science; and,

    “Whereas, ‘Scientific’ creationism seeks covertly to promote a particular religious dogma; and,

    “Whereas, the promulgation of religious dogma in public schools is contrary to the First Amendment to the United States Constitution; therefore,

    “Be it resolved that The Iowa Annual Conference opposes efforts to introduce ‘scientific’ creationism into the science curriculum of the public schools.”

    The UNITED PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH in the USA declared at its 1982 General Assembly that:

    “Whereas, the dispute is not really over biology or faith, but is essentially about Biblical interpretation, particularly over two irreconcilable viewpoints regarding the characteristics of Biblical literature and the nature of Biblical authority:

    “Therefore, the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. General Assembly: Affirms that, despite efforts to establish ‘creationism’ or creation science’ as a valid science, it is teaching based upon a particular religious dogma; and,

    “Calls upon Presbyterians, and upon legislators and school board members, to resist all efforts to establish any requirements upon teachers and schools to teach ‘creationism’ or ‘creation science’.”

    The above Christian churches represent the overwhelming majority of Christians.

    Like



    Source link

  • Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s “Peace Plan” for Ukraine Is Putin’s Plan

    Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s “Peace Plan” for Ukraine Is Putin’s Plan


    Trump has long demonstrated his admiration for Putin. No one can say exactly why Trump admires Russia’s ruthless dictator. But Trump insists that Ukraine is responsible for Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. His lame efforts to broker an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine have robustly echoed Putin’s demands.

    Heather Cox Richardson analyzes how Trump has changed American policy towards the Russian war on Ukraine. Trump’s “peace plan” gives Russia everything Putin wants:

    She writes:

    After previously suggesting that the U.S. would not involve European representatives in negotiations to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff met in Paris last week for talks with Ukrainian and European officials. The U.S. presented what it called “the outlines of a durable and lasting peace,” even as Russia continued to attack Ukrainian civilian areas.

    A senior European official told Illia Novikov, Aamer Madhani, and Jill Lawless of the Associated Press that the Americans presented their plan as “just ideas” that could be changed. But Barak Ravid of Axios reported on Friday that Trump was frustrated that the negotiations weren’t productive and said he wanted a quick solution.

    Talks were scheduled to resume today, in London, but yesterday Rubio pulled out of them. The U.S. plan is now “a final offer,” Ravid reported, and if the Ukrainians don’t accept it, the U.S. will “walk away.”

    On a bipartisan basis, since 2014 the United States has supported Ukraine’s fight to push back Russia’s invasions. But Trump and his administration have rejected this position in favor of supporting Russia. This shift has been clear in the negotiations for a solution: Trump required repeated concessions from Ukraine even as Russia continued bombing Ukraine. Axios’s Ravid saw the proposed “final offer,” and it fits this pattern.

    The plan would recognize Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea and its occupation of almost all of Luhansk oblast and the portions of Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts Russia has occupied. This would essentially freeze the boundary of Ukraine at the battlefront.

    Ukraine would promise not to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the post–World War II defensive alliance that first stood against the aggression of the Soviet Union and now stands against the aggression of Russia.

    Sanctions imposed against Russia after its 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine would be lifted, and the United States, in particular its energy and industrial sectors, will cooperate with Russia.

    In essence, this gives Russian president Vladimir Putin everything he wanted.

    What the Ukrainians get out of this deal is significantly weaker. They get “a robust security guarantee,” but Ravid notes the document is vague and does not say the U.S. will participate. We have been here before. After the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, Ukraine had the third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. In exchange for Ukraine’s giving up those weapons, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia agreed to secure Ukraine’s borders. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, they agreed they would not use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine.

    Russia violated that agreement with its 2014 and 2022 invasions, making it unlikely that Ukraine will trust any new promises of security.

    Under the new plan, Ukraine would also get back a small part of Kharkiv oblast Russia has occupied. It would be able to use the Dnieper River. And it would get help and funds for rebuilding, although as Ravid notes, the document doesn’t say where the money will come from.

    There is something else in the plan. The largest nuclear power plant in Europe is Ukrainian: the Zaporizhzhia plant. It will be considered Ukrainian territory, but the United States will operate it and supply the electricity it produces to both Ukraine and Russia, although the agreement apparently doesn’t say anything about how payments would work. The plan also refers to a deal between the U.S. and Ukraine for minerals, with Ukraine essentially repaying the U.S. for its past support.

    Ravid notes that the U.S. drafted the plan after envoy Steve Witkoff met for more than four hours last week with Putin. But the plan has deeper roots.

    This U.S.-backed plan echoes almost entirely the plan Russian operatives presented to Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort in exchange for helping Trump win the White House. Russia had invaded Ukraine in 2014 and was looking for a way to grab the land it wanted without continuing to fight.

    Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election explained that Manafort in summer 2016 “discussed a plan to resolve the ongoing political problems in Ukraine by creating an autonomous republic in its more industrialized eastern region of Donbas, and having [Russian-backed Viktor] Yanukovych, the Ukrainian President ousted in 2014, elected to head that republic.”

    The Mueller Report continued: “That plan, Manafort later acknowledged, constituted a ‘backdoor’ means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine.” The region that Putin wanted was the country’s industrial heartland. He was offering a “peace” plan that carved off much of Ukraine and made it subservient to him. This was the dead opposite of U.S. policy for a free and united Ukraine, and there was no chance that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who was running for the presidency against Trump, would stand for it. But if Trump were elected, the equation changed.

    According to the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, Manafort’s partner and Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik wrote: “[a]ll that is required to start the process is a very minor ‘wink’ (or slight push) from D[onald] T[rump] saying ‘he wants peace in Ukraine and Donbass back in Ukraine’ and a decision to be a ‘special representative’ and manage this process.” Following that, Kilimnik suggested that Manafort ‘could start the process and within 10 days visit Russia ([Yanukovych] guarantees your reception at the very top level, cutting through all the bullsh*t and getting down to business), Ukraine, and key EU capitals.’ The email also suggested that once then–Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko understood this ‘message’ from the United States, the process ‘will go very fast and DT could have peace in Ukraine basically within a few months after inauguration.’”

    According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the men continued to work on what they called the “Mariupol Plan” at least until 2018.

    After Russia invaded Ukraine again in 2022, Jim Rutenberg published a terrific and thorough review of this history in the New York Times Magazine. Once his troops were in Ukraine, Putin claimed he had annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, two of which were specifically named in the Mariupol Plan, and instituted martial law in them, claiming that the people there had voted to join Russia.

    On June 14, 2024, as he was wrongly imprisoning American journalist Evan Gershkovich, Putin made a “peace proposal” to Ukraine that sounded much like the Mariupol Plan. He offered a ceasefire if Ukraine would give up Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, including far more territory than Putin’s troops occupy, and abandon plans to join NATO. “If Kyiv and the Western capitals refuse it, as before,” Putin said, “then in the end, that’s their…political and moral responsibility for the continuation of bloodshed.”

    On June 27, 2024, in a debate during which he insisted that he and he alone could get Gershkovich released, and then talked about Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Trump seemed to indicate he knew about the Mariupol Plan: “Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my—this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream.”

    Now that plan is back on the table as official U.S. policy.

    Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country will not recognize the Russian occupation of Crimea. In this determination, he speaks for the global rules-based order the U.S. helped to create after World War II. Recognition of the right of a country to invade another and seize its territory undermines a key article of the United Nations, which says that members won’t threaten or attack any country’s “territorial integrity or political independence.” French president Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders are standing behind those principles, saying today in a statement from Macron’s office that they reject Russian territorial gains under the U.S. plan. “Ukraine’s territorial integrity and European aspirations are very strong requirements for Europeans,” the statement said.

    But Trump himself seems eager to rewrite the world order. In addition to his own threats against Greenland, Canada, and Panama, in a post today on his social media site he echoed Putin’s 2024 statement blaming Ukraine for Russia’s bloody war because it would not agree to Putin’s terms. Today, Trump said Zelensky’s refusal to recognize the Russian occupation of Crimea was “inflammatory,” and he pressured Zelensky to accept the deal.

    Curiously, he felt obliged to write that “I have nothing to do with Russia…”.

    —



    Source link

  • How a new LAUSD board member hopes to inspire change following Trump’s inauguration 

    How a new LAUSD board member hopes to inspire change following Trump’s inauguration 


    LAUSD school board member Karla Griego reading with students.

    Credit: Courtesy of Karla Griego

    A lot has changed in the life of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s new board member, representing District 5. 

    In the past few months, Karla Griego was elected to LAUSD’s school board, was sworn in and now is having to find her stride as a new presidential administration takes charge on Monday. 

    While many of her priorities remain unchanged — including providing more support for community schools, investing in special education and charter school accountability — Griego said she’s rethinking some of her priorities because of another four years of President Donald Trump. 

    Despite the potential hurdles ahead, Griego, an educator of more than 19 years and backed by the district’s teacher’s union, emphasized that she is grateful to work with LAUSD’s community as part of a larger movement.  

    “Change doesn’t happen with individuals, change happens with movements,” Griego, the first Latina to serve her board district in more than 30 years, said in an interview with EdSource. 

    “And if that’s what we want in our schools — we want schools to be student centered and holistic educational experiences and schools that are healthy, green, racially just, affirming, community schools — then it’s a movement that’s going to make that happen.” 

    Here’s what she said she hopes to accomplish in her tenure on the board. 

    This interview has been edited for length and clarity.  

    What are the most critical issues that you most want to address during your term on the Los Angeles Unified board?  

    The immigration issue is very big here in L.A. because there’s a lot of anxiety among our families, our communities, our students, and so that is definitely one thing that was not on my campaign platform, but it has now risen as a priority. And with that, I’m hoping that we could lead in having “Know Your Rights” sessions for families and parents and students, and provide social-emotional support. It was the student board member who highlighted the need for social-emotional support for students who will be dealing with a lot if their families are in fear of deportation. We saw in 2017 how children were affected by that. I am hoping that we can, as a district, lead in spearheading some of these workshops and support systems for our students and their families. 

    And then, of course, the budget is always very important. Every year, we need to make decisions. I want to make sure that I involve stakeholders, and I want to host meetings throughout my district to hear from families and parents and teachers, classified staff, administrators about what their priorities are. I want to hear from the community. I made that commitment when I was running, and so one of the first tasks is going to be to host listening sessions throughout the district. 

    And of course to expand community schools to allow them to grow and thrive as they’re meant to, and to make sure that we keep our promise to our Black students by maintaining the Black Student Achievement Plan. 

    And, just overall, that as we are making decisions, I bring that voice to the table of seeing the decisions that we make through the lens of supporting our students and supporting our students holistically— so let that be the driving force for all of our decision-making.

    You’ve already discussed supporting families who fear deportation. But beyond immigration, how has the outcome of the November election impacted your priorities, if at all?  

    I’m a special education teacher, and with the federal government threatening to disband the Department of Education, special education could be dispersed to another department, and so it won’t have as high a priority. I definitely want to make sure that we continue to center one of our most vulnerable (groups of) students in spite of all the hits that we get (and make) decisions about what’s best for them to be able to access the curriculum and schooling and to be in a safe environment that is equitable and meets their needs. 

    Special education is an area of concern for me in terms of the new presidency, but it just means that we need to work harder, and we need to bring together special ed parents, special ed students and teachers and administrators to organize and push back on any cuts to what’s already a very small budget. And even though they’re threatening to cut even more, we continue to ask for more. 

    There are so many stakeholders who sometimes have conflicting views on critical issues, ranging from policing to charter schools. How do you plan to balance all of that feedback and decide what to act on? 

    When I was a community school coordinator, I learned to do different types of assessments and surveys, but also to have focus groups and to determine to come to a consensus as to what the priorities will be. And so that’s what I’m hoping to do. 

    Few parents say we want police and, likewise, we don’t want police. The first thing that comes out generally, in my experience with talking to families throughout the campaign and even now, is we want safe schools. And so, what are you going to do to create safe schools? And that’s what they want to hear from the district. I’ve always told stakeholders that I know that there is funding in community-based safety programs. I know that there is funding for restorative practices and de-escalation techniques, and so I want to make sure that we spend that money to support our staff and support our students and to implement Safe Passages in our neighborhoods, especially those where families feel that their kids are not safe going to and from school. I want to make sure that we use that funding for those things as they were meant to be used. 

    In terms of charters, it’s accountability. That’s huge with charter schools — making sure that they are held accountable in the same way that public schools are held accountable. If they say that they accept special ed students and English language learners, then I want to see that is the case, that that is happening, that children, that families are welcomed, and families are engaged. 

    How do you plan to engage student voices?  

    The student voice is super important, and the way that I want to make sure that I engage them is by meeting with different student organizations that already exist in LAUSD. And, in particular, we have a lot of groups of students who are affinity groups: the LGBTQ, trans groups, Latino groups or Black student unions. 

    I also want to make sure that when I visit school sites, that I also engage with students at the school sites and, at these listening sessions that I’m hoping to have, there’s going to be a concerted effort to make sure that students also attend and (that I) get ideas from them. 

    What message would you like to send to LAUSD’s student body?

    Our students go through so much. All students experience so much stress either just by the mere fact that they are in the developmental stage that they’re in, or social factors. And so, what I want to tell them is to try to find joy in the things that you like and enjoy yourself as much (as you can), because you deserve it. And, yeah, it’s hard. I have an 18-year-old daughter, so I try to stress that to her, to just try to find joy. 

    There’s so much stress on our students about performance. Even if we don’t tell them, they feel it. They feel the stress of testing, performing graduation, doing better. It’s just the messages that we send to our kids sometimes are always about doing better, and how does that make us feel? That we’re never enough, that we’re just not quite there. And, I don’t want our students to feel that way. They are where they are, and they are strong and resilient. 

    And also, to lean on the support system that they may have: a sibling, cousin, a friend, an educator, a parent. Whatever that support system may be, lean on that because when you’re in community, you also feel a lot stronger.





    Source link

  • Randi Weingarten: Trump’s War on Knowledge

    Randi Weingarten: Trump’s War on Knowledge


    Randi Weingarten is president of the American Federation of Teachers. She is my friend.

    Randi wrote:

    President Donald Trump has declared war on America’s colleges and universities, demanding they bow to his demands on what they can teach and whom they can admit or hire. Trump’s illegal and autocratic actions are tantamount to a war on knowledge intended to force schools to bend the knee to his ideology and chill free speech and academic pursuit.

    Weingarten announcing a lawsuit to stop the federal funding cuts at Columbia University.
    Weingarten announcing a lawsuit to stop the federal funding cuts at Columbia University. CREDIT: AFT

    Trump says much of his attack on higher education is in response to antisemitism on campuses. Without a doubt, there was antisemitism before the heinous actions by Hamas on Oct. 7 and the ensuing war, and it has grown since. We need to address antisemitism on campus and ensure Jewish students, and all students, feel safe. But Trump is weaponizing antisemitism investigations to attack disfavored speech and stoke culture wars, distrust and division, and to undermine higher education as a bulwark of democracy and an engine of our economy. It’s wrong, antidemocratic and unconstitutional. The administration is using Jews as an excuse to disappear students who are here legally, with immigration officials arresting and attempting to deport students who have committed no crimes—without due process, a linchpin of American democracy.

    This may help Trump’s aim to divide Americans, but it won’t make campuses safer for Jewish students or answer the real issues around antisemitism. That’s one reason that a coalition of Jewish organizations released a statement saying that Trump’s actions make Jewish students and the Jewish community less safe.

    Trump has launched investigations into dozens of colleges and universities and stripped billions in research grants from schools. The administration has issued demands ranging from direct government oversight of academic programs—or in the case of Columbia University, oversight of the whole institution—to dictating disciplinary policies and controlling hiring decisions. It is targeting students for exercising their First Amendment rights, and revoking visas for faculty and staff. The administration’s intent is to remake America’s higher education system in its image through blunt force.

    The freedom to pursue knowledge, the freedom of expression and the freedom of speech are fundamental American rights that are foundational to a functioning democracy. America’s public schools, colleges and universities cultivate the exploration of knowledge and free expression and empower students to become engaged citizens. One of their hallmarks is that they are a marketplace of ideas where free and open discussion and disagreement is encouraged. That is enabled by ensuring our education institutions are independent from government control or coercion. When a government asserts control over what can be taught, thought or said, democracy itself is at risk.

    The free pursuit of knowledge empowers Americans.

    Stripping research and innovation funding to force compliance will hurt America’s competitiveness and help our adversaries outpace us in technological and other advancements. America’s university research and innovation centers have long been the envy of the world. The federal government, through federal agencies and grants, is a fundamental powerhouse and supporter of health, scientific, technology and other research. The U.S. is the world leader in this research—research that the private sector cannot and will not do on its own and that leads to discoveries, innovations, cures and advances that benefit the common good and move our society forward. Colleges and universities are also anchors of their local communities, supporting local jobs and small businesses, providing community gathering spaces, and growing industries tied to university research and innovation. 

    This war on knowledge and expression must be opposed in the courts, on the streets, and by our colleges and universities.

    As the largest union of higher education staff and faculty, the AFT joined our affiliate, the American Association of University Professors, to sue the Trump administration on behalf of our members for unlawfully cutting millions in federal funding for public health research at Columbia.

    Last week, Harvard University boldly rejected Trump’s unlawful and unprecedented demands for government control over it. Harvard’s president wrote that “no government … should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”

    Americans have also taken to the streets to oppose this war on knowledge and freedoms. The attacks on higher education were a major focus of the April 5 Hands Off actions that mobilized tens of thousands of Americans across the country to reject Trump’s chaotic and cruel agenda.

    The free pursuit and availability of knowledge empowers Americans, strengthens our economy and democracy, and is foundational for opportunity. That’s why we all must take a stand against this war on knowledge.



    Source link