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mariacallous · 2 months

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On February 8, an Oklahoma transgender teen named Nex Benedict died. While an exact cause of death has yet to be determined, we know that Nex was involved in a violent altercation with three girls in a girls’ bathroom at Owasso High School. The next day, Nex died. (According to reporting from NBC News, Nex identified as transgender and preferred he/him pronouns, but also used they/them pronouns.)

We also know from Nex’s family and friends that Nex experienced routine bullying and harassment at school because of his transgender identity—as did other LGBTQ+ youth according to a number of media accounts. What’s more, this harassment is taking place in a state where anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and rhetoric has proliferated in recent years. In 2022, Governor Kevin Stitt signed into law requirements that prevent trans youth from using the bathroom that matches their gender identity. (Nex’s mother said in a recent interview that the bullying Nex experienced intensified after the Oklahoma bathroom bill went into effect). What’s worse, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of education has vehemently attacked any efforts to make schools more inclusive for LGBTQ+ youth and is on the record stating his belief that transgender and nonbinary people do not exist.

On March 1, 2024, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) announced that it was launching an investigation into Owasso Public Schools over concerns that the district failed to adequately respond to allegations of sex-based harassment (under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex). The investigation was opened in response to a civil rights complaint filed by the Human Rights Campaign (HRC)—an LGBTQ+ advocacy group.

In this post, I’ll outline what happens once OCR opens a new investigation, what I’m hoping to see from this investigation in particular, and why I’m ultimately skeptical of this enforcement tool as a lever for bringing about meaningful change.

What does it mean that OCR opened an investigation?

OCR enforces Title IX and other federal civil rights laws in publicly funded educational institutions—including all K-12 public schools. The agency’s primary enforcement tool is investigations into potential civil rights violations. Most investigations are opened in response to civil rights complaints received by the agency.

The bar for OCR to investigate a civil rights complaint is low. And that’s by design. OCR’s civil rights complaint process is intended to be a low-cost avenue available to parents, families, and community advocates concerned about potential violations in public schools—one that does not require hiring legal representation to pursue. But that also means we should not read too much meaning into the fact that ED opened a new investigation. OCR opening an investigation does not mean federal officials suspect that a civil rights violation took place. It only means that a complaint alleging a form of discrimination enforceable (in this case, Title IX) by OCR was made in a timely manner.

What happens once an investigation is opened?

The goal of an OCR investigation is to determine whether an alleged civil rights violation took place and to decide what district reforms are appropriate based on what the investigation uncovered. In practice, the scope and scale of OCR investigations varies widely. Sometimes OCR conducts large-scale investigations that include multiple site visits and meetings with a wide variety of stakeholders. Other times, OCR interviews only a few stakeholders alongside a review of extant documents and data. When and why OCR deploys more investigatory resources are unknown, but that means it is difficult to predict exactly what shape this investigation into Owasso Public Schools will take.

It is also unclear how far-reaching this investigation will be. In some cases, OCR only investigates allegations related to the specific incident outlined in the complaint. In other words, were Nex’s civil rights violated by Owasso Public Schools? In others, OCR investigators interrogate whether the alleged incident is one part of a broader pattern of civil rights abuses taking place. In other words, are LGBTQ+ students’ civil rights routinely violated in Owasso Public Schools? These differences may seem subtle but are hugely consequential for the ultimate scope of the investigation and the scale of any proposed district reforms.

OCR’s letter notifying HRC that an investigation was being opened seems to imply the latter approach—stating that OCR will investigate “whether the District failed to appropriately respond to alleged harassment of students” [emphasis added]. This is critical if OCR aims to address the conditions that led to the harassment and bullying that Nex experienced, especially considering reports of numerous other instances of harassment of LGBTQ+ youth in Owasso Public Schools.

It is also important to underscore that OCR is one relatively small federal agency that has not been adequately staffed or funded for at least the last two decades. This has become an acute challenge over the last several years as OCR’s caseload has exploded and as Assistant Secretary Catherine Lhamon has prioritized more systemic investigations. The consequence of this reality is that investigations can take years, and still not be particularly thorough. At best, an investigation like this could take less than a year. At worst, it could be several years before it is resolved.

What should happen next?

Most OCR investigations are not instigated by an incident as tragic as this one. It is imperative that OCR investigators handle this case with care. At minimum, that should include careful engagement with Nex’s family and friends (to the extent they wish to be involved), along with other members of the school’s LGBTQ+ community.

Hearing directly from LGBTQ+ students is also critical considering Owasso Public Schools’ initial response to news of the investigation. Per an official statement, while the district intends to cooperate with federal investigators, it “believes the complaint submitted by H.R.C. is not supported by the facts and is without merit.” Initial reporting also reflects inconsistencies between what Nex’s family and friends said took place, versus the school district and the police departments’ official accounts. Moreover, Oklahoma’s state superintendent, Ryan Walters, has publicly denied that Nex’s death had anything to do with his gender identity even as the criminal investigation into Nex’s death remains ongoing.

This context underscores how important it is that OCR works to draw its own conclusions about the bullying and harassment of Nex and other LGBTQ+ students in Owasso Public Schools rather than relying on conclusions drawn by the district and police department.

What might come of this investigation?

In theory, if a school district is found in violation of civil rights law, OCR can rescind federal funding or have the case referred to the Department of Justice for further judicial action.

In practice, findings of civil rights violations are exceedingly rare. Most investigations that lead to mandated reforms are resolved through negotiations between OCR and a district. OCR’s policies favor negotiated settlements over more forceful enforcement actions at every step of the investigation process. Thus, unless a school district is blatantly and repeatedly refusing to cooperate with OCR, the likelihood of some penalty for violating civil rights law is very small.

The agency’s preference for negotiating with districts also means that the resulting resolution agreements often include reforms that seem mild, at best, and wildly insufficient, at worst. Take, for example, a recent resolution agreement OCR entered into with Rhinelander Public Schools in Wisconsin. This case, like the Owasso investigation, involved persistent harassment of a gender non-conforming student by some teachers and students and a district’s repeated failure to adequately respond. In the negotiated settlement, the district agreed to 1) assess whether compensatory instructional time was owed to the harassed student; 2) provide trainings to both staff and high school students on what constitutes sex-based harassment under Title IX and the district’s Title IX grievance process; 3) improve how it documents accusations of sex-based harassment; 4) conduct a school climate survey “to assess the prevalence of sex-based harassment and obtain suggestions for effective ways to address harassment.”

Of these actions, only one was directly aimed at improving the school environment for LGBTQ+ students–mandatory trainings for staff and high school students. Putting aside the fact that OCR’s standard Title IX reforms seem insufficient to remedy widespread harassment of LGBTQ+ students—especially in a state where the top education official’s anti-LGBTQ+ biases are on full display, a large body of evidence indicates that these types of one-off anti-discrimination or diversity trainings are often ineffective.

Thus, unless OCR officials take a radically different approach in this case (which I hope they do given the gravity of the incident), the outcomes of this investigation are–unfortunately—unlikely to bring about significant reforms in Owasso Public Schools.

What can ED do to prevent discrimination against LGBTQ+ students?

The Biden administration’s long-awaited and much delayed updated Title IX regulations are expected to be released next month. This overhaul of Title IX is notable for several reasons, including that it codifies the Department’s interpretation that Title IX protections extend to discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

The pending adoption of the new Title IX regulations is particularly important in this case because in July 2022 a federal judge in Tennessee temporarily blocked ED from enforcing its new interpretation of Title IX after 20 conservative states—including Oklahoma—filed a lawsuit to stop its enforcement. This meant that OCR’s ability to enforce this more expansive interpretation of Title IX had been severely limited until the new regulations were formally in place.

This is not to say that updated Title IX regulations alone will be sufficient, and they will undoubtedly be challenged in federal court as Republican lawmakers and attorneys general have made clear. But its delays have led to an environment where districts must choose between complying with state law or federal guidance and where the rights of LGBTQ+ students remain painfully unclear—and in lots of states, including Oklahoma, under attack.

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 1 year

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Just five months after the Robb Elementary School school shooting in Uvalde, the worst school shooting in Texas history, the pro-gun Gov. Greg Abbott won the race to keep his post by a landslide.

Critics slammed Abbott following the shooting on May 24, criticizing the Governor for blaming the shooting — which killed 19 children — on gang violence and mental-health concerns of the shooter.

Beto O'Rourke, who challenged Abbott in the race, ran on a mandate to raise the minimum age to purchase an AR-15-style rifle. Many of the families directly impacted by the shooting hoped he'd be the next Governor of Texas.

He'd previously accused Abbott of inaction following the Uvalde shooting, saying, "You are doing nothing. You are offering us nothing. You said this was not predictable. This is totally predictable when you choose not to do anything."

Indeed, in June 2021, Abbott signed a law allowing people to carry handguns without licenses.

"Texas will always be the leader in defending the Second Amendment, which is why we built a barrier around gun rights this session," he said at the time.

The families sat at a Uvalde bar and grill on election night for a results party, eagerly awaiting the election news, according to the Texas Tribune. But when news outlets announced that Abbott had won big and retained his support in Uvalde County, with more than 60% of voters backing the Republican, disappointment descended on the party, the Texas Tribune reported.

"Unfortunately, 21 people dead doesn't change people's minds," Jazmin Cazares, 17, whose 9-year-old sister, Jacklyn, was killed at the Robb Elementary school shooting, said, the outlet reported.

Veronica Mata, a kindergarten teacher, chimed in, "Everybody has the right to vote for whoever they want, we just hoped that they would see where we were coming from and see what we wanted to change."

Berlinda Arreola, a grandmother of 10-year-old Amerie Jo Garza, who was killed in the shooting, said, "The only thing that is going to change people's minds is when it happens to them."

Kimberly Garcia holds a poster of her daughter, Amerie Jo Garza, who was murdered during the mass shooting at Robb Elementary, during a March For Our Lives rally on August 27, 2022 in Austin, Texas. Brandon Bell/Getty Images

THE FIGHT GOES ON

John Lira, the Democratic candidate who lost his challenge against Rep. Tony Gonzales for a Texas congressional seat, joined the families at the watch party.

According to the Tribune, he described O'Rouke's loss and Abbott's win, as "crushing" but said, "it just means that the fight goes on."

"This community, these families, they fought their ass off for change, for a new vision, for somebody that will listen to them and be responsive to them and what happened to this community," he added.

Writing on Twitter, Kimberly Garcia, the mother of Amerie Jo Garza, said, "one thing is for sure, I will NEVER stop fighting for my children and yours."

Some more messages from Uvalde:

#us politics #news #2022 #school shootings #mass shooters #mass shootings #gun control #gun violence #gun rights #uvalde shooting #robb elementary shooting #gov. greg abbott #beto o'rourke #2022 elections #2022 midterms #business insider #twitter #tweet

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 8 months

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By: Jason L. Riley

Published: Sep 5, 2023

Yes, this is another September “back to school” column. My apologies. But someone needs to keep pointing out that our national debate over which books to allow in classrooms, or how to teach slavery to middle-schoolers, is far less consequential than the continuing inability of most youngsters to read or do math at grade level.

In Florida, where GOP governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has taken lumps for a couple sentences in a 200-page black-history curriculum, only 39% of Miami-Dade County fourth-graders are proficient in reading, according to a Miami Herald report last year on standardized test results. By eighth grade the number drops to 31%, and math scores are just as bad. Who cares if kids have access to books by Toni Morrison or Jodi Picoult if most of them can’t comprehend the contents?

These dismal outcomes have persisted nationwide for decades, and the racial achievement gap is even more disturbing. The U.S. Education Department reported last year that in 2022 the average reading score for black fourth-graders in New York on the National Assessment of Educational Progress trailed that of white fourth graders by 29 points. This “performance gap was not significantly different from that in 1998,” the report added.

The progressive left’s response to these outcomes has been to wage war on meritocracy rather than focus on improving instruction. The goal is to eliminate gifted-and-talented middle-school programs, high-school entrance exams and the use of the SAT in college admissions. One defense of racial preferences in education for black students is that recipients, including those who go into teaching, are more likely to work in low-income minority communities after graduation. That’s true, but is it what economically disadvantaged students really need, more second-rate teachers?

In his lively autobiography, “Up From the Projects,” the late economist Walter Williams related an incident from his teaching days at California State University, Los Angeles in the late 1960s. A black student approached him at the end of the course and said he needed a B to graduate. The student told Williams that he wanted to teach school in Watts, a predominantly black section of Los Angeles. Williams replied that Watts didn’t need any more mediocre educators. He added, jokingly, “If you’d said San Fernando Valley”—a predominantly white area back then—“I’d have given you the B.”

Williams was appalled that many of his academic colleagues were holding their black students to lower standards. “There was no more effective way to mislead black students and discredit whatever legitimate achievements they might make than giving them phony grades and ultimately fraudulent diplomas,” he wrote. Sadly, the downstream effects of lax standards for black students that concerned him more than 50 years ago have only gotten worse.

Medical students in all 50 states must pass a licensure exam before they can practice. The exam has three parts, and Step 1 is administered at the end of the second year of medical school. It measures your grasp of basic science topics—anatomy, biology, biochemistry, pharmacology—and is highly predictive of how you will perform in medical school going forward.

A student’s numerical score on the Step 1 exam has long been the most important tool in evaluating candidates for the most competitive medical disciplines and residency programs. Three years ago, representatives of the nation’s leading medical groups voted to scrap numerical scores and report the results of the Step 1 exam as pass/fail.

The reason is simple, according to Stanley Goldfarb, an academic physician and former associate dean of curriculum at the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school. In a recent book on how social-justice activism has affected medical training, “Take Two Aspirin and Call Me By My Pronouns,” Dr. Goldfarb explained that black students underperform on the Step 1 exam. “The solution to the fact that white students score better on the exam was to eliminate reporting scores,” he wrote, which “makes about as much sense as Major League Baseball eliminating batting averages to assure that no ethnic cohort outperforms the others.”

Dr. Goldfarb’s book has an amusing title—which comes from an op-ed he wrote for this paper in 2019—but what it describes is nothing to laugh at. Those who complain about racial disparities in medical outcomes might consider how racial double standards contribute to them. Medical schools have been pressured to relax admission standards for diversity purposes, which has led to the relaxation of grading standards and licensure requirements.

Black doctors are more likely than white doctors to practice in medically underserved areas, but low-income blacks need second-rate doctors even less than they need second-rate teachers. For whatever reason, it seems lost on progressives that addressing the racial achievement gap in K-12 education would go a long way toward addressing the one in medical school.

[ Via: https://archive.is/HXGgR ]

[ Source: National Student Group Scores and Score Gaps (Reading, Grade 4) ]

[ Source: National Student Group Scores and Score Gaps (Math, Grade 4) ]

[ Source: National Student Group Scores and Score Gaps (Reading, Grade 12) ]

[ Source: National Student Group Scores and Score Gaps (Math, Grade 12) ]

This is honestly the thing that's the most troubling. There are activists in schools masquerading as teachers who insist it's a moral imperative to teach young children complicated postmodern intersectional conspiracy theories, yet can't - or won't - actually teach those same kids to read.

"Antiracist" teachers behaving like black kids don't need to learn to read, and it's more important that they understand their place in a perverted conception of social hierarchy, is a disturbing rehabilitation of the KKK's golden years.

#Jason L. Riley #bigotry of low expectations #merit #make merit matter #meritocracy #low standards #education #reading #literacy #antiracism #antiracism as religion #neoracism #religion is a mental illness

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seymour-butz-stuff · 6 months

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Senate Republicans already have an Arizona problem they are trying to fix. Their top GOP candidate, 2022 gubernatorial loser Kari Lake, isn't polling well against the top Democratic candidate, Rep. Ruben Gallego, and independent incumbent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. In fact, one recent survey found Sinema, who is polling third in the contest, pulling more votes away from Lake than Gallego. Noble Predictive Insights’ late October polling of the hypothetical three-way contest showed Gallego at 39%, Lake at 33%, and Sinema at 29%. Notably, Gallego inspired far more party loyalty than Lake, with Sinema drawing support from nearly twice as many Republican voters (23%) as Democrats (12%). In early October, a Public Policy Polling survey commissioned by the Gallego campaign similarly showed him winning a 41% plurality of the vote to Lake's 36%, with Sinema garnering just 15% of the vote. The same poll found a head-to-head favoring Gallego at 48% over Lake at 43%. What makes the polling particularly ominous for Republicans is the fact that Lake is extremely well known by voters across the state after her high-profile but ultimately unsuccessful bid for governor last cycle. In other words, most voters have made up their mind about her.

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beardedmrbean · 8 months

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An MSNBC writer blasted New York City Mayor Eric Adams as "Black Trump" Sunday for his speech raising concerns about the migrant crisis which was spilling over into the Big Apple, calling it "bigoted thinking" inspired by the right.

"But there’s a reason Adams’ rant is being applauded by conservatives… Maybe it’s because [conservatives] feel they’ve made him… come around to their bigoted thinking," said Ja'han Jones, a writer for MSNBC's The ReidOut Blog, the "digital extension" of Joy Reid's primetime show.

In his most recent post, Jones repeatedly blasted Adams – who is a Democrat – for "parroting right-wing talking points and espousing conservative politics" on immigration.

"That has led some of his critics to label him ‘Black Trump’ And he lived up to the moniker Thursday with an anti-immigrant diatribe that sounded as if it had been ripped from the former president’s social media feed," Jones wrote.

Adams said the migrant crisis, in which thousands of illegal immigrants were pouring into NYC, "will destroy New York City."

"We're getting 10,000 migrants a month," Adams said.

The mayor predicted the crisis would worsen the deficit, forcing "every service" to be cut.

"It's going to come to your neighborhoods," he warned.

Adams placed some blame on Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's operation of busing migrants from the border to self-declared sanctuary jurisdictions. However, the federal government also relocates migrants from the border to elsewhere in the U.S.

Abbott has championed Operation Lone Star for filling the "dangerous gaps created by the Biden administration's refusal to secure the border," arguing the busing initiative helps lessen the burden on border communities overwhelmed by the mass influx of border-crossings.

On Tuesday, the Texas governor said his state government has bused more than 35,000 migrants to self-declared sanctuary cities, including more than 13,300 to New York City since August 2022.

#nunyas news

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arpov-blog-blog · 3 months

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..."PRESIDENT BIDEN’S JOB APPROVAL RATING has plummeted during his three years in office to historic lows—lower than President Obama’s was at this point before he won re-election in 2012, lower even than President Trump’s was in October 2020 before he lost.

The numbers make clear that Biden is a much weaker candidate than he was when he defeated Trump three years ago. It’s unlikely Biden’s approval will recover significantly before November. But—crucially—that doesn’t mean he will lose the election.

There are multiple theories for why Biden remains underwater, with higher disapproval than approval. Most of the electorate has concluded that Biden is too old. As some commentators have noted, in his long career, Biden has never been popular; his initial honeymoon in the presidency was a temporary deviation from the norm as the country basked in the relief of dumping Trump.

Biden’s peak approval registered at about 54 percent in the spring of 2021, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls. There was one big reason: Americans, coming out of the pandemic, had hope. The Biden administration was competently managing the vaccine rollout and most of us had had one or both shots and celebrated a return to normal life.

Biden’s polling crashed to earth that fall, after the withdrawal from Afghanistan and the battle over the bloated and ill-fated Build Back Better bill. By the end of his first year in office, 10 percent more Americans disapproved of his job performance than approved. He lost favor with a majority because he lost the support of his own voters. The centrist Biden inspires no zeal from his base the way Obama did, let alone the way a cult leader like Trump does. He has no buffer.

So the spring of 2021 was a rare time of artificially elevated national mood. It’s hard to imagine a scenario other than a major national emergency in which any president reaches 53 percent approval again. We live in an age of extreme polarization and zero-sum politics, in which entrenched partisans despise a president from the opposing party, and the default dourness Americans naturally revert to (see: current economic data vs. polling about the economy) means the in-power coalition is also likely to be disappointed. Biden polls poorly on nearly all the issues that comprise the umbrella of job approval: inflation/economy, foreign policy, immigration, crime, and his fitness/age. But we can’t know how voters prioritize them (or other issues) when making their choice. And even if Biden manages to stabilize the southern border, help end the war in Gaza, and preside over continuing economic improvements and low inflation, his job approval might not budge.

YET APPROVAL RATINGS MAY NO LONGER BE a useful benchmark in future campaigns, especially if Biden overperforms his polling in 2024 the way Democrats did in 2022 and 2023. An analysis by FiveThirtyEight found that Democrats did so by an average of 10 points in special elections throughout 2023, outperforming the partisan lean of the districts—and the polls—even where they lost.

Before the 2022 midterms, both parties predicted doom for Democrats because Biden’s approval was at 40 percent according to Gallup—lower than previous presidents who had faced massive losses in their first midterms. But Democrats outran Biden’s job approval everywhere, defending Senate seats in swing states like Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia, winning Pennsylvania’s open seat, and losing just ten House seats in what was predicted to be a wipeout.

A year later, the same thing: In 2023, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear won re-election, and Democrats took back control of the Virginia state legislature (ending Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s hope of a presidential run) and scored a major abortion ballot victory in deep-red Ohio."

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uncomplicatedbookreviews · 16 days

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All Systems Red

Author: Martha Wells

Series: Murderbot Diaries (#1)

My rating: 9/10 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Goodreads: 4.15/5

Date Read: Early 2022 and 2024

"I don't know what I want. I said that at some point, I think. But it isn't that, it's that I don't want anyone to tell me what I want or to make decisions for me." ---------------------------------

Plot Summary: On the surface, Muderbot is a SecUnit, a security android with no volition of it's own, sent to protect the humans that have bought a contract with the Company for a planetary expedition. Unbeknownst to its human client Murderbot has broken its governor module, giving it free will. Luckily for them all Murderbot wants to do is be left alone and watch trashy media shows. But when a mysterious force appears to threaten the safety of it's human charges, Murderbot must break its own rules to solve the mystery and save them all. Unfortunately, at the same time it must wrestle with the fact that it does in fact....have feelings. Yuck.

TL:DR: An incredibly fun, high energy science fiction novella. This book and the remaining in the series are the definition of comfort reads for me. The characters shine and Wells manages to create an in-depth scientific future in a short amount of time. If you're a fan of sarcastic, running internal dialogue of cynicism books with a lot of action this is definitely a book that you will want to check out.

Characters:

Murderbot - a SecUnit built for the sole purpose of protecting it's human clients. At. All. Costs. Including at times the cost of it's own life. This one however has broken from it's governor module giving it free will. It spends most of it's time hiding the fact that it's free by pretending to be a normal SecUnit while sneaking away to watch the human media show it is obsessed with and contemplating the ridiculousness of the humans it has to protect....and maybe care for a little bit.

Dr. Mensah - the leader of the Preservation Alliance and galactic entity that exists outside of the large Corporation Ring, Dr. Mensah is incredibly smart and is a trained scientist despite her current political position. She displays immense bravery in the face of danger and a strong moral compass that include human and bot life alike.

The Expedition Team - there are a ton of fantastic characters that accompany Dr. Mensah and Murderbot on this planet expedition. They're all scientists that have naive expectation of humanity thanks to the relative peace of their home system. They're all wonderful, but there's a lot of them so I won't list them here.

Thoughts and Feelings: This managed to become one of my favorite science fiction series in a single book. I fell in love with the sarcastic and cynical protagonist and the not too unbelievable future of a space community dictated almost entirely by captilistic companies that control everything. The writing style is very informal and defined almost entirely by Murderbot's internal dialogue which lends the book with a very unique tone and voice. Some people might not vibe with the method of storytelling or the constant running dialogue. I would say give this first book a try since it's a short read and if you don't enjoy it, the series as a whole is probably a pass because that is the style of all subsequent books.

Despite the prediction of the Corporate Rim's bleak existence this series manages to maintain a positive attitude as a whole as Murderbot begins to explore humanity and how it might survive the world as an individual rather than a background character. In this book in particular we get to know the positive and sometimes naive attitudes of the planetary expedition team that Murderbot is protecting. The group comes from a society outside of the Corporate Rim who have more individual freedoms and because of that represent the good that still exists in a sometimes dreary world. Good overcomes evil, but the evil still lurks around the corner.

#murderbot #murderbot diaries #all systems red #bookblr #book #book review #fiction #science fiction #martha wells

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year

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Science and trust. :: December 15, 2022 :: Robert B. Hubbell

At a moment of scientific triumph for the world, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis pinned his presidential ambitions to an anti-science platform that seeks to criminalize the action of scientists who saved tens of millions of lives in the face of a deadly pandemic. As noted briefly in yesterday’s newsletter, DeSantis has petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for the authority to convene a grand jury to investigate “any and all crimes and wrongdoing” relating to the development and distribution of mRNA vaccines in Florida.

DeSantis’s action will kill Americans. Many will view the fake investigation as validation of lies and disinformation spread by depraved politicians, media personalities, and hucksters of every ilk who seek to profit from the ignorance and anger of a populous weary of a pandemic that does not care about their weariness. By convening a grand jury to investigate the heroic men and women whose brilliant work saved millions, DeSantis is following the tired playbook of demagogues and dictators across the ages: Create enemies where none exist, vilify experts whose knowledge threatens their authority, and stigmatize all who dare to dissent by speaking the truth.

At root, DeSantis seeks to undermine trust. He seeks to undermine trust in science, trust in the decency and goodwill of scientists fighting a deadly pandemic, and trust in our fellow citizens. DeSantis seeks division and discord in place of trust because that is the only path to the White House for a small, petty man with limited ability and no conscience.

Katelyn Jetelina published a superb essay on trust and science in her Substack newsletter, Musk, Fauci, trust in science, and how to make it survive. Jetelina is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Texas. She has a Masters in Public Health and PhD in Epidemiology and Biostatistics. In other words, she is an expert of the type that threatens DeSantis, Musk, and Tucker Carlson.

She starts her essay by noting that Elon Musk’s tweet that said, “My pronouns are Prosecute / Fauci” received 1.17 million “likes,” and 177,000 retweets. She correctly notes that Musk’s tweet is a continuation of the distrust sown by anti-vaxxers who sought to profit off the deaths of gullible Americans during the pandemic. Jetelina cites a PEW research study that shows trust in science declined slightly over the course of the pandemic. Critically,

declines in trust in science were most pronounced among White adults. Americans with higher levels of education expressed more positive views of scientists than those with lower levels of education.

If we compare the responses based on political affiliation, though, the story becomes jarring: confidence in scientists among Republicans dropped significantly. In fact, 1 in 3 Republicans have no confidence at all.

But the political divide in trust in science masks a deeper issue—the lack of interpersonal trust, i.e., “how much people think they can trust another citizen who they don’t already know.” An Oxford University report demonstrates that trust between citizens is the most predictive factor for Covid deaths globally. Sadly, the US ranks low on interpersonal trust and high on Covid death rate (deaths / million). Jetelina concludes,

We cannot have one group trust public health and another not. This is not how viruses work. Infectious diseases violate the assumption of independence—what one person does directly impacts the person next to them. This is unlike cancer or diabetes, for example. Everyone has to be against a virus, or the virus thrives.

In addition to convening a criminal investigation, DeSantis is setting up an “anti-CDC” that will contest the alleged “political narratives” published by the world’s most respected infectious disease institute—the Centers for Disease Control. And DeSantis has already inflicted significant damage by appointing an unqualified “Surgeon General” who has published junk science papers that make unfounded claims about the safety of mRNA vaccines. (I discussed the junk science published by the Florida Surgeon General in an earlier newsletter here, in the article, “Rebutting Covid disinformation being spread by Florida.”

Engendering mistrust between Americans is the platform of the Republican Party. Undermining trust in science is one of the lines of attack in the broader assault on trust, but it is one of the most deadly. Worse, the media’s reporting on DeSantis’s request for a grand jury treats the story as if his actions are within the pale of “politics as usual.” It is not. DeSantis is willing to claw his way over the bodies of his victims to get to the Oval Office. That fact is damning and disqualifying. That is the story that the media is failing to report.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#science #anti-vaax #DeSantis #Corrupt GOP #anti-Science GOP #Robert B. Hubbel Newsletter #Robert B. Hubbell #Katelyn Jetelina

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nodynasty4us · 1 year

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The authors predict that, no matter who the candidates are, the Democratic candidate for president has an easier path to victory in 2024. From the item:

For better or worse (actually, definitely worse), only five states really matter for the 2024 presidential election. They are Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Georgia. All of them went for Donald Trump in 2016 but all turned blue in 2020. The other states pretty much always vote the same way and are very predictable...

Let's assume Michigan and Pennsylvania stay blue, especially since both elected a Democratic governor in 2022 by double digits...

The first thing to notice is that the Democrats are at 265 (261 if they really manage to kick New Hampshire out of first place in the primaries and the voters take revenge on them). That leaves the blue team 5 (or 9) EVs short of 270, with three swing states in play. All three have at least 9 EVs. That means that the Democrats have to win only one of them to win. The Republicans must win all three (or flip some state not really in play). All three will be truly massive battlegrounds.

#2024 #arizona #wisconsin #georgia

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mariacallous · 6 months

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This was a big week in American politics. It began with a devastating poll showing that Donald Trump was beating Joe Biden in a presidential match up in five out of six swing states. Then, on Tuesday, the voters spoke for the last time until the Iowa caucuses happen in mid-January and delivered the Democrats a very good night in multiple states that underscored the continuing power of the abortion issue. And on November 8, the five remaining challengers to former President Donald Trump met in their final debate of the year, an event that revealed the continuing struggle of Republicans opposed to renominating Trump to coalesce around an alternative to him.

What have we learned from these events?

1. Biden’s unpopularity does not mean that voters won’t vote for Democrats.

Our political system is obsessively focused on the President of the United States — his prospects, preferences, personnel, and health. During election years, there is considerable attention to his poll numbers and overall political standing. But as the special elections in 2021, the midterm elections in 2022, and now the off-year elections of 2023 have shown, President Biden’s unpopularity has failed to have the devastating effects on Democratic candidates that were widely predicted by pundits. For example, in September, analysts at FiveThirtyEight looked at 30 special elections that took place before the 2023 November elections, mostly state legislative seats. They calculated the seat’s base partisanship — their historical tendency towards one party or another — and then looked at the vote margin for Democrats running in those seats. On average, Democratic candidates in these races did about 11 points better than their historical average.

On election night 2023, Democrats won control of the Virginia legislature following a campaign in which the incumbent Governor Glenn Youngkin spent a lot of money and pulled out all the stops in an attempt to get a legislature which could help him enact a conservative agenda and catapult him into the presidential race. Instead, the opposite happened, and Democrats retained control of the Senate and gained control of the House of Delegates. We looked at the most competitive races (according to ABC News) in the Virginia Senate and House of Delegates to see what kind of a swing there was.

Because of redistricting, we can’t compare the 2023 vote precisely to the 2019 vote. But thanks to the Virginia Public Access project, we can compare how Senate and House candidates performed against the vote in their district for governor in 2021. In these 13 close Senate and House districts, the Republican Governor Youngkin won all but one in 2021, but in 2023, Republicans won seven (one remains too close to call), and Democrats won five. Democrats managed to flip a few seats — enough to retain control of the Senate and take control of the House of Delegates.

In the seven districts where Republicans won, their margin shrank compared to Youngkin’s vote in 2021. For instance, in Senate District 27, Republican Tara Durant performed 6.31 percentage points worse than Youngkin did in 2021, winning by only 2.19% of the vote compared to Youngkin’s margin of 8.5%.

A presidential star may have dimmed in Virginia, but one was born in Kentucky, where Democratic Governor Andy Beshear won re-election in a very Republican state, increasing his share of the vote from 49.2% in 2019 to 52.5% and winning several counties that had voted for Donald Trump in 2020. But Beshear will remain a lonely man. Every other statewide race in Kentucky went to Republicans. The votes for Attorney General and Agriculture Commissioner were virtually unchanged from four years before. The Republican Secretary of State saw a substantial increase in his vote but the Republican candidate for state treasurer saw a small decrease in his vote. In Mississippi, the statewide races from governor on down saw Republicans winning by almost the exact margins they won in 2019. So don’t put either state in the Democratic column for 2024.

So, why the big difference between polls showing Biden in trouble and elections where Democrats do well? The easiest answer is that there is, perhaps, no relationship between the two; down-ballot Democrats might continue to do well in off-year and midterm elections, and Biden could lose nevertheless. A second possibility is that the polls are just wrong on a systematic basis due to single-digit response rates and their difficulty in measuring voter turnout. A third possibility is that the cost of living is a very powerful motivator and that voters blame the president but not other office holders for this problem. A fourth possibility is that voters just don’t like Biden because of personal characteristics such as his age and the perception that he is not a strong leader.

One thing is clear: The Biden campaign would be ill-advised to over-interpret the significance of these recent Democratic victories for the president’s prospects in 2024.

2. Where the right to choose is in question, the abortion issue is very powerful and helps the Democrats.

In those places where Democrats did well, the explanation was pretty simple: As in previous elections, if voters perceive that a woman’s right to abortion is on the ballot in some fashion, pro-choice candidates do well. In Kentucky, where a six-week ban on abortion and a trigger law was upheld by the State’s Supreme Court, access to abortion is difficult, despite the defeat of a constitutional amendment denying any protections for abortion by a large margin in November 2022.

The abortion issue remains top of mind in Kentucky, and Beshear’s campaign for governor focused heavily on it, hammering his Republican opponent for his opposition to exceptions to an outright ban on the procedure.

In Virginia, abortion is currently legal up until the end of the second trimester. But Gov. Youngkin pushed for an abortion ban after 15 weeks that included exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. Democrats ran on this issue in almost all the competitive districts, and voters apparently rejected Youngkin’s proposal, which he termed a sensible compromise around which Republicans and the country could coalesce.

Those who persist in believing that the abortion issue doesn’t have continuing strength should look at another, even more powerful lesson from Tuesday night. The abortion referendum on the Ohio ballot, amending the state’s constitution to establish a right to “carry out one’s own reproductive decisions… including on abortion,” would preserve the right to abortion up to 23 weeks. The Ohio referendum won with 56.6% of the vote, garnering support from one in five Republicans and carrying 18 counties that Trump had won in 2020.

The Ohio referendum was the latest victory of the pro-choice movement in solidly conservative states. In Kansas, the pro-choice referendum garnered 59% of the vote; in Montana and Kentucky, 53%. In Michigan, a swing state, the pro-choice position got 56% of the vote, and in the liberal states of Vermont and California, it got 73% and 68% of the vote.

3. The Republican debate revealed both Republican divisions on abortion and the impact of President Biden’s weak standing in national polls on the Republican race.

Chris Christie argued that abortion should be left to the states while Tim Scott advocated a national ban on the procedure after 15 weeks, a stance that is likely to be more popular in the Republican primary contests than in the general election. Nikki Haley argued that such a ban has no chance of gaining enough support in the Senate and renewed her plea for a consensus-based approach to the issue, a stance that would play better in the general election than among socially conservative Iowa Republicans. For his part, Ron DeSantis ducked, contenting himself with criticizing the weakness of Republican efforts in state referendum contests.

Meanwhile, the man who wasn’t on the stage — former president Trump — has made it clear that he regards abortion as a political loser for Republicans and will do his best to deemphasize it as a national issue in 2024. If he is the Republican nominee, Democrats are unlikely to let him off the hook and will remind voters of his central role in selecting three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade.

No matter whom the Republicans select as their standard-bearer, the issue will remain important in the national debate, although probably not as central as it has been in the states since the Court ended the Roe era. The presidency is a distinctive office whose occupants are held responsible for the economy and national security, not just their stance on social issues. Reflecting this reality, the moderators of the debate led with the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, waiting to raise abortion until close to the end of the event. No doubt President Biden’s campaign will try to capitalize on the pro-Democratic tilt of this issue, but he will be judged by his performance in other areas as well. Abortion will be helpful to him in 2024, but it is not the silver bullet that will help him defeat his Republican opponent.

As the debate moderators indicated with their opening question, there is a central question that each of the candidates on stage needed to answer: Why would I be a better nominee than the man who isn’t here tonight? President Biden’s current weak standing in the polls is limiting their responses. Back in the spring, they hoped to be able to argue that while Donald Trump was a fine president, he was likely to lose to Biden in 2024 as he did in 2020. But now, with recent polls indicating that Trump leads Biden nationally and in key swing states, his Republican challengers are forced to offer more substantive answers that risk antagonizing Trump’s supporters.

Nikki Haley went the farthest down this road, criticizing him for allowing the national debt to rise by $8 billion during his presidency and for being “weak in the knees” on Ukraine and other foreign policy issues. Ron DeSantis said that Trump is “a lot different guy than he was in 2016” and held him responsible for a string of Republican losses since then. Chris Christie focused on Trump’s legal difficulties, arguing that “anybody who’s going to be spending the next year and a half of their life focusing on keeping themselves out of jail . . . cannot lead this party or this country.” It remains to be seen whether any of these arguments will gain traction with a Republican electorate that seems inclined to give Trump a pass on all of them.

Indeed, the big winner of last night’s debate may well have been the man who boycotted it. DeSantis performed better than he had in the two previous debates, and Haley — though strong — was less dominant. If DeSantis’s improved showing slows her effort to emerge in Iowa as the principal alternative to Trump, she may not gain the momentum she would need to defeat Trump in New Hampshire, an outcome that would destroy his aura of invincibility and transform the contest for the Republican presidential nomination. The political landscape has been frozen in time for some months now, with an incumbent president and a former president at the top and everyone else vying for attention.

As international events unfold, the question is: Will anyone or anything change this equation, or will we be looking at the widely anticipated rematch?

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dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

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Kansas voters turned out in droves to reject the first anti-abortion ballot measure in the post-Roe v. Wade era — and dealt a major warning sign to Republicans hoping the drastic curtailing of abortion rights nationwide won't dent their prospects in the 2022 midterm elections.

Amendment 2 was pushed by anti-abortion activists and would have eliminated the right to abortion and government funding for abortion under the Kansas Constitution. With over 900,000 votes counted as of 11:30 a.m. ET Wednesday, "no" was trouncing "yes" by 59 to 41%, a gaping 18-point margin.

The blowout defeat of the measure spells trouble for future anti-abortion ballot measures, two of which are up for a vote in November in Kentucky and Montana, and, more significantly, Republicans' hopes for muted Democratic enthusiasm and turnout for the midterms in November, which could doom many state-level elected officials who champion harsh abortion bans and restrictions.

The number of votes cast on the measure nearly matches the roughly one million votes cast in the general election in 2018, when a Democratic "blue wave" washed over the midterm elections, according to the US Elections Project. That number also surpasses the roughly 887,00 votes cast in the general election in 2014 and the 858,000 cast in 2010 — both midterm years when the political climate largely favored Republicans.

With over 900,000 voters turning out to vote on the measure — compared with 470,000 who voted in the 2018 Kansas gubernatorial primaries — the referendum demonstrated a potent motivator for abortion-rights supporters. With the 2022 election ahead, abortion access being directly on the ballot could pose a serious problem for the GOP that it hadn't had to face in a world without Roe v. Wade's protections.

A "yes" vote on the measure would have eliminated the right to abortion under the state constitution, while the "no" vote left the constitutional protections to abortion in Kansas unchanged, preserving the status quo.

Lower turnout levels typically associated with primaries, especially in midterm elections, and a political environment favoring the Republican Party were initially anticipated to favor proponents of the amendment.

But before polls even closed, Kansas' chief election official, Secretary of State Scott Schwab, predicted that turnout in the primary was on track to surpass the 36% of the electorate the office had projected and could go as high as 50%, a notably high rate for a midterm-year primary.

With over 99% of the votes reported, the "no" vote on the measure significantly outperformed President Joe Biden's vote share in several blue counties he won in the 2020 election.

Meanwhile, the "yes" vote underperformed and failed to crack 60% of the vote in several counties President Donald Trump won handily in 2020.

Americans' views on abortion can, in many cases, be murky and hard to parse, but polls indicated most opposed overturning Roe v. Wade, and the result of the Kansas referendum suggests strict abortion bans or "trigger laws" are often overwhelmingly unpopular among voters of both major political parties.

And when given the chance to shape abortion policy directly, Kansas voters displayed no appetite for enabling strict abortion bans after nearly six weeks of being faced with the real-world consequences playing out across the country.

The voters' decision upholds a 2019 ruling by the Kansas Supreme Court establishing a right to abortion under the Kansas Bill of Rights, preserving a legal guardrail against the kind of abortion restrictions that may be passed into law if a Republican wins the Governor's race in November.

It also — for now — maintains Kansas' status as a crucial access point for abortion care in the Midwest and Southwest.

#us politics #news #2022 #business insider #kansas #abortions #abortion bans #pro choice #amendment 2 #state constitution #state bill of rights #2022 midterms #2022 elections #Katie Bernard #Scott Schwab #@taniel

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somethingusefulfromflorida · 11 months

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I had confidence in the 2024 election because Democrats had a better than expected midterm (they only lost the House by a slim margin, gained a seat in the senate, and held all the improtant secretary of state and attorney general races), but going state by state it's much closer than I'm comfortable with.

Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, West Virginia, and Wyoming are solid red (127/438)

California, Colorado, Connecitcut, Delaware, DC, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington are solid blue (195/438)

Arizona is likely to flip red because Krysten Sinema is unpopular and will split the senate vote as an independent spoiler making the Democrats appear disorganized and distressed, very likely siphoning votes from the presidential candidate (138/438)

Florida is solid red no matter how you slice it. 60-40 if it's DeSantis, 55-45 if it's Trump (168/438)

Georgia could go either way, but I see Republicans flipping it back red because the state legislature will do everything in its power to disenfranchise black voters after they flipped it blue four times, once presidential, thrice senatorial (184/438)

Maine splits its electoral college votes by congressional district. I think three will go blue (198/438) and one red (185/438)

Michigan will probably go blue because Democrats made massive gains in 2022, flipping both houses of the state legislature and maintaining control over the important statewide positions (213/438)

Minnesota is the only state to vote against Ronald Reagan twice, having not gone red since 1972. Republicans made gains in the state legislature, but Democrats were able to flip it back in 2022, so I think the statewide race is solid blue for sure (223/438)

Nebraska, like Maine, splits its votes by district. Even though one district is nominally bluer than the others, I have a feeling all five Nebraska votes will go red (190/438)

Nevada could go either way. Democrats held the senate and secretary of state races but lost the governorship. I'd tentatively call it blue, but we won't know the results until a week or two after election day, so let's instead say it's undecided.

New Hampshire could go either way, but leans blue even though both houses of the legislature and the governorship went red. it's very small, so it's unlikely to play kingmaker one way or the other (227/438)

North Carolina is red. it'll be close, maybe 49-51, but close only counts in horseshoes. it has a blye governor, but the legislature is gerrymandered deep red and the regularly override his vetoes. The NC Supreme Court said its electoral maps were unconstitutional in 2022, but the legislature used them anyways, so not even the highest authority in the state could stop them from fucking over the people. It'll be red with very lower turnout (206/438)

Ohio is deep red, not even a contest. It's the worst of Florida and North Carolina, illegal maps, deep red gerrymander, total clusterfuck shitshow (223/438)

Pennsylvania will probably go blue because Democrats flipped the senate and one house of the legislature in 2022 (246/438)

Texas is red. See Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio (263/438)

Virginia is entirely up in the air. I can't make a prediction one way or the other until we see how the state legislature races go this fall. Democrats have a razor thin majority in the senate, Republicans have a razor thin majority in the house, so this November will decide who has the advantage going into 2024. They have a deep red governor, but two blue senators and a consistently blue presidential track record sine 2008. I don't know.

Wisconsin will probably go blue because Democrats managed to hold onto the secretary of state and attorney general seats in 2022, and flipped the state Supreme Court blue just a few months ago. Republicans have majorities in both houses due to gerrymandering, but statewide the Democrats have the advantage (256/438)

Oh dear. Neither party had 270 votes, and Nevada and Virginia are going to be the kingmakers.

If Dems win both, they win 275-263.

If Republicans win both, they win 282-256.

If Republicans win Virginia but not Nevada, they still win 276-262

If Democrats win Virginia but not Nevada, the electoral college is tied 269-269. It would be up to the House to pick a president in a contingent election, though there's no telling how many faithless electors would flip either way.

This is going to be a real nailbiter. No two presidential elections have ever gone the exact same way. There's no way it'll be a repeat of 2020; one or more state will flip, it's just a matter of which. If Dems can hold Arizona or Georgia, they're golden. That's really what it's gonna come down to, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Virginia. Democrats could take back the House, but Republicans will almost certainly take back the Senate, which means Game Over no matter who wins the presidency.

If Biden wins, he gets no more judges, zero, zilch, nada.

If Trump or DeSantis win, God have mercy on us all.

#2024 #2024 election #2024 presidential election #election #presidential election #usa #predictions #state by state #god help us all

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beardedmrbean · 5 months

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Belgium’s already substantial budget deficit is set to continue widening and will likely exceed 5% of GDP by 2026, the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) warns in its autumn forecast.

To reverse the trend, the country needs to save €2 billion annually – a total of €10 billion – over the next five years – NBB Governor Pierre Wunsch stressed.

Although the real interest rate on Belgium’s debt remains low, the primary deficit remains high, he noted.

Only Slovakia's budget outlook seems worse

The public debt ratio is projected to be much the same as in 2023, at 105.2% of GDP in 2024, while primary public spending heads towards stabilisation at 53% of GDP.

With this budgetary outlook, Belgium ranks second from the last in the European Union, better only than Slovakia.

Related News

'A clear challenge': Fiscal watchdog warns Belgian debt is becoming unsustainable

Belgium's budget deficit set to be second largest in Europe, claims EU

'Serious savings still required': Brussels suffers drastic budget cut

Nevertheless, Belgium’s GDP is expected to grow by 1.3% in 2024, at a quarterly pace of around 0.3%. Consumer spending is expected to sustain growth next year, backed by strong purchasing power, while public spending is also set to increase, a common occurrence during election periods.

Inflation projected to rise to 4% next year

However, foreign trade will remain sluggish, influenced by weak competitiveness.

After a fall in inflation in 2023, including a spell of deflation in Autumn, inflation is projected to climb again in 2024, nearing 4%. The end of the government’s energy support measures is the main reason cited for this rise by the National Bank.

The bank also pointed out that the indexation of wages will continue to add to labour costs in the private sector, although less so than in 2023.

Bank's projections more optimistic than government's, says Budget Minister

The hourly labour cost in Belgium, compared to neighbouring countries, increased by 4 percentage points in 2022 and 2023, mainly due to the automatic indexation system. Forecasts suggest this wage disparity will be eliminated by 2026, as wages in Germany, the Netherlands and France rise faster than in Belgium in the coming years.

Secretary of State for the Budget, Alexia Bertrand (Open VLD), expressed satisfaction with the National Bank’s predictions. She believes the federal government has taken the right political decisions, although deficit and debt levels need to be reduced.

Bertrand stressed that the bank’s economic growth outlook was more optimistic than the government’s own predictions, with the budget deficit for 2023 and 2024 lower than government estimates.

#nunyas news

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kammartinez · 11 months

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We fell under the leadership of those who would compromise with truth in the past in order to make peace in the present and guide policy in the future. —W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America

It is strange…that the friends of truth and the promoters of freedom have not risen up against the present propaganda in the schools and crushed it. This crusade is much more important than the anti-lynching movement, because there would be no lynching if it did not start in the schoolroom. —Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro

On January 20, Florida’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr., tweeted out a chart justifying the state’s decision to ban schools from teaching a newly created advanced placement course in African American Studies. The graphic singled out the curriculum’s inclusion of Black queer studies, intersectionality, Black feminist literary thought, reparations, and the Movement for Black Lives as “obvious violations of Florida law.” It also identified scholars whose work was included in an earlier iteration of the curriculum as radical propagandists bent on smuggling “critical race theory” (CRT), Marxism, and deviant sexuality into high-school classrooms.

Despite the fact that the College Board had not yet released the final curriculum to the public, Diaz and the state’s governor, Ron DeSantis, claimed it violated Senate Bill 148, better known as the “Stop Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees Act,” or the Stop W.O.K.E. Act. Sponsored by Diaz and signed in April 2022, the law prohibits teaching anything that might cause “guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” or “indoctrinate or persuade students to a particular point of view inconsistent…with state academic standards.” In other words, introducing and teaching race, gender, sexuality, and anything remotely resembling critical race theory was strictly prohibited.

When the College Board released the final curriculum eleven days later, it had changed substantially. Most of the material the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) found offensive was removed or downgraded from mandatory to optional. The revised 226-page curriculum eliminated queer studies, critical race theory, mass incarceration, and a section titled “Black Struggle in the 21st Century,” made the Black Lives Matter movement and reparations optional research projects, and added a project topic on “Black conservatism.” The names of all the offending authors—including myself—were removed.

The College Board insisted that it had not bowed to political pressure, despite a trove of email exchanges with the FDOE discussing potentially prohibited content and a final letter from the FDOE thanking the board for removing topics the state had deemed “discriminatory and historically fictional.” The fact is that the College Board stood to lose millions of dollars if Florida canceled its AP courses. Although a federal judge blocked portions of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act that restricted academic freedom in public colleges and universities, the law still applies to private businesses and K–12 education.

Rather than accept a watered-down curriculum bereft of the theories, concepts, and interdisciplinary methods central to Black Studies, students, teachers, scholars, and social justice activists fought back. On May 3 they organized a nationwide day of action calling out the College Board and defending the integrity of Black Studies. Apparently it worked. A week before the national protest, the College Board announced plans to revise the curriculum yet again. As of this writing, however, no specific changes have been announced.

The right’s vehement opposition to Black Studies is predictable. Black Studies has been under attack since its formal inception on college campuses in the late 1960s, and repression of all knowledge advancing Black freedom goes back much further. Most state laws prohibiting enslaved Africans from learning to read and write were introduced after 1829, in response first to the publication of David Walker’s Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World—an unrelenting attack on slavery and US hypocrisy for maintaining it—and then to Nat Turner’s rebellion two years later. Back then the Appeal was contraband: anyone caught with it faced imprisonment or execution. Today it is a foundational text in Black Studies.

The historian Jarvis R. Givens found that during the Jim Crow era Black school teachers often “deployed fugitive tactics” and risked losing their jobs in order to teach Black history.1 In Mississippi, organizers with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) taught contraband history in “freedom schools,” while the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO) established “freedom libraries” throughout the state stocked with donated books—many on Black history by Black authors. Between 1964 and 1965, white terrorists burned down the freedom libraries in Vicksburg, Laurel, and Indianola.2

Who’s afraid of Black Studies? White supremacists, fascists, the ruling class, and even some liberals. As well they should be. Not everything done in the name of Black Studies challenges the social order. Like any field, it has its own sharp divisions and disagreements. But unlike mainstream academic disciplines, Black Studies was born out of a struggle for freedom and a genuine quest to understand the world in order to change it, presenting political and moral philosophy with their most fundamental challenge. The objects of study have been Black life, the structures that produce premature death, the ideologies that render Black people less than human, the material consequences of those ideologies, and the foundational place of colonialism and slavery in the emergence of modernity. Black Studies grew out of, and interrogates, the long struggle to secure our future as a people and for humanity by remaking and reenvisioning the world through ideas, art, and social movements. It emerged as both an intellectual and political project, without national boundaries and borders. The late political theorist Cedric J. Robinson described it as “a critique of Western Civilization.”

A chief target of this critique has been the interpretation of history. Battles over the teaching of history are never purely intellectual contests between ignorance and enlightenment, or reducible to demands to insert marginalized people into the curriculum.3 Contrary to the common liberal complaint that schools “ignore” the history of slavery and racism, Black and Native people have long occupied a place in school history curricula. Generations of students learned that white people settled the wilderness, took rightful ownership of the land from bloodthirsty Indians who didn’t know what to do with it, and brought the gift of civilization and democracy to North America and the rest of the world. During most of the twentieth century, students were taught that Negroes were perfectly happy as slaves, until some conniving Republicans and carpetbaggers persuaded them otherwise. Leading history books by Ivy League professors repeated the myth, and in the first epic film in the US, D. W. Griffith depicted the “great and noble” Ku Klux Klan redeeming the South from rapacious, ignorant Negroes and shifty carpetbaggers, obliterating all vestiges of the Black struggle to bring genuine democracy to the South and the nation.

Black scholars and their allies consistently contested these narratives. In “The Propaganda of History,” the last chapter of his epic text Black Reconstruction in America (1935), W. E. B. Du Bois called out the ideological war on truth masquerading as objective scholarship. He believed in reason but came to see its futility in the face of white supremacy, colonial rule, and “one of the most stupendous efforts the world ever saw to discredit human beings, an effort involving universities, history, science, social life and religion.”

Du Bois wasn’t out to make a name for himself in the field of nineteenth-century US history. He was trying to understand the roots of fascism in Europe and in his native land. He saw the battle over the interpretation of history play out in the streets, statehouses, courts, and newspapers for decades—often with deadly consequences. The rise of the second Ku Klux Klan was inspired in part by a national campaign to erase the history of Reconstruction. The chief catalyst was Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation, released in 1915, the same year the renowned Black historian Carter G. Woodson founded the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History.

Respectable white supremacists such as the Ladies Memorial Associations and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, founded in 1894, waged their own soft power campaign, building monuments to the defenders of slavery in the region and around the nation’s capital. The movement to erect statues celebrating Confederate war heroes took off in the early twentieth century rather than immediately after the end of Reconstruction because it took over three decades of white terrorism, political assassination, lynching, disfranchisement, and federal complicity to destroy the last vestiges of a biracial labor movement, ensuring that white supremacy and Jim Crow could reign supreme.

What the right demonizes as CRT bears no resemblance to actual critical race theory, a four-decades-old body of work that interrogates why antidiscrimination law not only fails to remedy structural racism but further entrenches racial inequality. Racism, these theorists argue, isn’t just a matter of individual bias or prejudice but a social and political construct embedded in our legal system. Taking a page straight from the anticommunist playbook, the right has reduced CRT to an incendiary dog whistle, turning an antiracist academic project into a racist plot to teach white children to hate themselves, their country, and their “race.”4

The chief architect of this strategy is Christopher Rufo, currently a senior fellow at the archconservative Manhattan Institute, who in the wake of the mass protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd declared that the spread of critical race theory was behind the unrest. By his own admission, Rufo sought the “perfect villain” to mobilize opposition to the antiracist insurgency and had no qualms about distorting CRT to do it. Ignoring the scholarship while naming the scholars, notably Kimberlé Crenshaw and the late Derrick Bell, he presumed that these three words “strung together” would signify “hostile, academic, divisive, race-obsessed, poisonous, elitist, anti-American.” As he explained to his Twitter followers in 2021, the plan was to rebrand CRT and

eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think “critical race theory.” We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.

Rufo’s ploy soon became White House policy. He helped draft Trump’s now-rescinded Executive Order 13950, issued on September 22, 2020, which warned of a left-wing ideology threatening “to infect core institutions of our country” by promoting “race or sex stereotyping or scapegoating.” The document pitted this invented ideology against the principles of “color blindness” derived from a distorted reading of Martin Luther King, Jr. to justify eliminating workplace diversity and inclusion training in federal agencies. It helped spawn a wave of anti-CRT legislation. According to a recent study released by UCLA’s Critical Race Studies Program, from the start of 2021 to the end of 2022 federal, state, and local legislative and governing bodies introduced 563 anti-CRT measures, almost half of which have been enacted or adopted. At least 94 percent of the successful measures target K–12 education, affecting nearly half of all children in the country’s public schools.

These measures target not just CRT but liberal multiculturalism and, more pointedly, Black Studies, Ethnic Studies, Gender Studies, and any modern academic discipline that critically studies race and gender. (From here on I will refer to this scholarship collectively as “critical race and gender studies,” make specific references to Black Studies or CRT when appropriate, and use “we” occasionally when explaining what scholars in these fields do.) Most of these bills allegedly intended to protect education from politics share identical language because they derive from model legislation drafted by well-funded right-wing think tanks, including the America First Policy Institute, the Heritage Foundation, Citizens for Renewing America, Alliance for Free Citizens, and the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Stanley Kurtz, a leading critic of the African American AP course who masquerades as an investigative journalist for National Review, ironically named the model anti-CRT legislation he drafted for the Ethics and Public Policy Center “the Partisanship Out of Civics Act.”

Some of the text of that legislation was lifted from the section of Executive Order 13950 prohibiting the teaching of “divisive concepts.” These concepts include the idea that one race or sex is “inherently superior” to others; that the US “is fundamentally racist or sexist”; that a person, “by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive” or “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex”; that “meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race”; and that some people “should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex.” The assumption here is that confronting the history of American racism would provoke feelings of guilt and shame in white kids and their parents. Such legislation never considers the psychological distress Black, brown, and Indigenous students frequently endure as a result of whitewashed curricula, tracking, suspensions and expulsions on the slightest pretext, even abuses by law enforcement inside their own classrooms.

Such allegations against critical race and gender studies strain credulity. No serious scholar believes that someone is “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” solely “by virtue of his or her race or sex.” We teach the opposite: that race is neither fixed nor biological but socially constructed. Modern categories of racial classification were Enlightenment-era European creations that relied on a false science to claim that discrete “racial” groups share inherent traits or characteristics. We reject such claims as essentialist and recognize that behaviors and ideas attributed to race, gender, class, and sexuality are not inherent but ideological, and therefore dynamic and subject to change. We use evidence-based research to show that policies that further racial, class, and gender inequality need not be intentional, and that anyone can be antiracist, regardless of their race.

The belief that hierarchies of race and gender are based on “inherent” characteristics is the basis for white supremacy and patriarchy. Such ideologies have been used to justify conquest, dispossession, slavery, segregation, the exclusion of women and Black people from the franchise, wage differentials based on race and gender, welfare and housing policies, marriage and family law, even the denial of women’s right to bodily autonomy. Many conservatives backing anti-CRT legislation do subscribe to the idea that certain differences, especially regarding gender, are “inherent”—that is, fixed and immutable. CRT and Black Studies do not.

Likewise, to accuse CRT of teaching that “meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic” are racist is to turn its interpretation of US history on its head. What Black Studies and critical race theory reveal is the extent to which wealth was accrued through the labor and land of others. The foundational wealth of the country, concentrated in the hands of a few, was built on stolen land (Indigenous dispossession), stolen labor (slavery), and the exploitation of the labor of immigrants, women, and children.

Finally, critical scholars of race and gender categorically reject the claim that any individual “bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex.” The language is intended as an attack on the idea of reparations, but advocates of reparations hardly claim that all present-day white people are “responsible” for slavery. Rather, they acknowledge that enslavement, land theft, wage theft, and housing discrimination resulted in extracting wealth from some and directly accruing generational wealth to others. Slavery and Jim Crow—more precisely, racial capitalism—suppressed wages for white workers, and the threat of interracial worker and farmer unity compelled the Southern oligarchs to pass antilabor laws and crush unions. The result was the subjugation of all working-class Southerners, including whites.

The right-wing movement to remake education is not limited to K–12. Nearly a fifth of the 563 anti-CRT measures introduced and 12 percent of those enacted target colleges and universities. In Florida, DeSantis has launched a successful coup against the administration of New College, replaced a majority of the board of trustees with handpicked allies, and begun to totally overhaul the curriculum, wiping out all vestiges of diversity, equity, and inclusion. The latest attack on Florida’s state university system, Senate Bill 266, which DeSantis signed into law last month, is a flagrant attack on academic freedom and faculty governance. The Board of Governors is charged with reviewing state colleges and universities for violating the Florida Educational Equity Act, which forbids teaching “theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, or economic inequities.” The law also prohibits faculty or staff from advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion, promoting or participating in political or social activism, or granting preferential treatment “on the basis of race, color, national origin, sex, disability, or religion.” And it gives boards of trustees the power to review the tenure status of any faculty member on demand, which means that even tenured professors are subject to arbitrary dismissal.

Buried in this law and shrouded by the state’s “anti-woke” rhetoric is another agenda: transforming the state college system into an engine of market fundamentalism beholden to business interests. One of its objectives is “to promote the state’s economic development” through new research, technology, patents, grants, and contracts that “generate state businesses of global importance,” and to create “a resource rich academic environment that attracts high-technology business and venture capital to the state.” In 2020 the governor and the state legislature established and lavishly funded the Adam Smith Center for Economic Freedom at Florida International University, tasked with promoting “a better understanding of the free enterprise system and its impact on individual freedom and human prosperity around the world, with a special emphasis on the United States and Latin America and the Caribbean.” SB 266 further elevated the Adam Smith Center by giving it all the powers of an academic department, including the ability to hire tenure-track faculty and offer majors and minors.

A matter of days before issuing Executive Order 13950, Trump announced the formation of the federally funded 1776 Commission to promote “patriotic education” and portray the US in a more positive light. Advisors for the commission blamed colleges and universities for distorting history and promoting “destructive scholarship” that sows “division, distrust, and hatred among citizens…. It is the intellectual force behind so much of the violence in our cities, suppression of free speech in our universities, and defamation of our treasured national statues and symbols.”

The commission issued its first and only report less than two weeks after the insurrection at the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. It denigrates popular democracy, whitewashes the history of slavery, says nothing about Indigenous peoples or dispossession, and claims that “progressivism” and “identity politics” are at odds with American values, not unlike communism and fascism.

Perhaps its most egregious fabrication is turning Martin Luther King Jr. into a colorblind libertarian. The report recasts the civil rights movement as a struggle for individual liberty and equal opportunity that, with the death of King, lost its way when it embraced “group rights,” “preferential treatment” for minorities, and “identity politics.” This is the same King who in his book Why We Can’t Wait (1964) supported “compensatory or preferential treatment for the Negro” because “it is obvious that if a man is entered at the starting line of a race three hundred years after another man, the first would have to perform some incredible feat in order to catch up”; the same King who called on the federal government to divest from the war in Vietnam, invest in the war on poverty, recognize racism as a source of inequality, and acknowledge “the debt that they owe a people who were kept in slavery 244 years.”

The stunning distortion of King’s ideas should surprise no one, King least of all. He knew something about the politics of history. On the occasion of Du Bois’s hundredth birthday in 1968, King delivered a speech at Carnegie Hall on the significance of Black Reconstruction’s challenge to the “conscious and deliberate manipulation of history.” Du Bois, King observed, proved that “far from being the tragic era” of misrule and corruption, Reconstruction

was the only period in which democracy existed in the South. This stunning fact was the reason the history books had to lie because to tell the truth would have acknowledged the Negroes’ capacity to govern and fitness to build a finer nation in a creative relationship with poor whites.

Multiracial democracy, or what Du Bois called “abolition democracy,” represented the greatest threat to the classes that ruled the South and the nation. It still does. DeSantis, Trump, Governors Greg Abbott and Kim Reynolds, the 1776 Commission, the Center for American Freedom, the American Enterprise Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and their copious allies all claim that their war on critical race and gender studies aims to present US history in a “positive light.” Why then not teach the history of movements that tried to make sure every person enjoyed freedom and safety and fought to end slavery, Jim Crow, patriarchy, and sex discrimination? If “patriotic education” embraces the principles of freedom and democracy, why not introduce students to courageous people—like Benjamin Fletcher, Claudia Jones, C.L.R. James, Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, Johnnie Tillmon, George Jackson, Fran Beal, Barbara Smith, and others—who risked their lives to ensure freedom, democracy, and economic security for others? Why not create a curriculum centered on the abolitionist movement; on Indigenous nations as early models for US constitutional democracy; on the formerly enslaved people who crushed the slaveholding republic, tried to democratize the South, and fought the terrorism of lynching, the Klan, and the Black Legion; on the suffragists and labor organizers who expanded our democratic horizons and improved working conditions?

But in our current neofascist universe, this is “woke” history. The right masks its distrust of multiracial democracy by calling it “progressivism” and its opposition to antiracism by labeling it “identity politics.” According to this logic, antiracism has sullied America’s noble tradition. Ruby Bridges Goes to School, books for young readers on Martin Luther King Jr. and the March on Washington, Ibram X. Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist, and his children’s book, Antiracist Baby, have all been targeted for bans as subversive literature. There is no commensurate movement to ban books that promote racism, like Thomas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of Virginia (1785), which asserts frequently that Black people are innately inferior to whites—physically, intellectually, and even imaginatively; Edmund Ruffin’s defense of slavery, The Political Economy of Slavery (1857); or books and articles by Samuel Cartwright, Josiah Nott, George Fitzhugh, Louis Agassiz, Herbert Spencer, Madison Grant, Lothrop Stoddard, or Daniel G. Brinton, the eminent anthropologist who in his book Races and Peoples (1890) wrote, “That philanthropy is false, that religion is rotten, which would sanction a white woman enduring the embrace of a colored man.”

The point of these attacks is to turn antiracists into enemies and the people identified as “white” into victims. Marginalized white working people, who are victims of stagnant wages, privatized health care, big pharma, and tax policies that redistribute wealth upward, are taught instead that they live in what was once the perfect country until woke forces took over and gave their hard-earned income to the Negroes and immigrants who are now trying to take their guns. It would be a mistake to think of such rhetoric as a “culture war.” This is a political battle. It is part and parcel of the right-wing war on democracy, reproductive rights, labor, the environment, land defenders and water protectors, the rights and safety of transgender and nonbinary people, asylum seekers, the undocumented, the unhoused, the poor, and the perpetual war on Black communities.

As I write these words, the predominantly white Republican Mississippi state legislature is stripping the predominantly Black city of Jackson of political authority and revenue. Many of the same states adopting anti-CRT laws are also passing anti-trans bills and extreme abortion bans, and relaxing gun laws. The Tennessee state legislature expelled two young Black representatives, Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, for joining protesters demanding stricter gun laws after a mass shooting at a Nashville elementary school. And Texas governor Greg Abbott is planning to pardon Daniel Perry, who was convicted of killing the antiracist activist Garrett Foster during a Black Lives Matter protest in 2020.

Colin Kaepernick, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, and I put together a new anthology, Our History Has Always Been Contraband, to respond not only to these right-wing lies and attacks but also to an ill-informed mainstream discourse over the meaning, purpose, and scholarly value of Black Studies. Despite the claims of even well-meaning and sympathetic pundits, Black Studies courses are not designed to serve Black students alone but all students. The point is not to raise self-esteem or make students feel guilty, nor is Black Studies merely a diversity project. The essays and readings we gathered make clear that Black Studies sits not at the margins of social inquiry but at its very center. As we face a rising tide of fascism, we must remember how we got here: by protest, occupation, rebellion, and deep study. As long as racism, sexism, homophobia, patriarchy, class oppression, and colonial domination persist, our critical analyses will always be considered criminal.

#history #education #racism #politics #censorship

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