Dear Commons Community,

Two close associates of Pope Francis have accused American Catholic ultraconservatives of making an alliance of “hate” with evangelical Christians to back President Trump, further alienating a group already out of the Vatican’s good graces.

The authors, Antonio Spadaro and  Marcelo Figueroa, writing in a La Civiltà Cattolica, singled out Stephen K.Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, as a “supporter of an apocalyptic geopolitics” that has stymied action against climate change and exploited fears of migrants and Muslims with calls for “walls and purifying deportations.”  The article states:

“Religion has had a more incisive role in electoral processes and government decisions over recent decades, especially in some US governments. It offers a moral role for identifying what is good and what is bad.

At times this mingling of politics, morals and religion has taken on a Manichaean language that divides reality between absolute Good and absolute Evil. In fact, after President George W. Bush spoke in his day about challenging the “axis of evil” and stated it was the USA’s duty to “free the world from evil” following the events of September 11, 2001.  Today President Trump steers the fight against a wider, generic collective entity of the “bad” or even the “very bad.” Sometimes the tones used by his supporters in some campaigns take on meanings that we could define as “epic.”

One review of the article commented:

“The article goes on to warn that conservative American Catholics have strayed dangerously into the deepening political polarization in the United States. The writers even declare that the worldview of American evangelical and hard-line Catholics, which is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible, is “not too far apart’’ from jihadists.

Since the 2013 election of Pope Francis, conservatives have worried that he has given short shrift to the social issues that have animated them, among them abortion and same-sex marriage. They have sat through his warnings to steer clear of politics. They have watched warily as Francis has installed pastors in his image while sidelining conservative leaders.

It is no secret that Francis, the first Latin American pope, who has often criticized capitalism, has a complicated view of his old neighbors to the north.

Not long after Francis’ election, Vatican ambassadors briefed the pontiff about various situations around the world and suggested that he be especially careful when appointing bishops and cardinals in the United States.

“I know that already,” the pope interrupted, according to a high-ranking Vatican official familiar with the details of the conversation, who asked that his name not be used while discussing internal Vatican deliberations. “That’s where the opposition is coming from.”

The Vatican declined to comment about the conversation.

Fans of the article said it made clear that the conservatives who ran the American church for decades were out of step with the new Catholic mainstream under Francis.

Massimo Faggioli, a professor of historical theology at Villanova University and a contributor to liberal Catholic journals, said the Civiltà Cattolica article would “be remembered in church history as one of the most important to understand the Vatican of Francis and the United States and American Catholicism.”

American Catholicism, he argued, echoing the article’s thesis, “has become different than mainstream European Catholicism and mainstream Latin American Catholicism,” and has fallen “into the hands of the religious right.”

This article should have a lot of meaning for American Catholics.  While it is directed at ultraconservatives, Catholic leaders including New York’s Cardinal Dolan, should take heed for the right of center stances they have supported.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

President Trump earlier today signed the bill passed by the Congress that imposed sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea.  According to Reuters and other media, he did so reluctantly. The fact is that he had little choice given that the bill passed the House of Representatives and the Senate almost unanimously and both bodies would have easily overridden his veto.  Here is an excerpt from the Reuters article:

“U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law new sanctions against Russia on Wednesday but he slammed the legislation as infringing on his powers to shape foreign policy, saying he could make “far better deals” with governments than Congress.

After signing a bill that Congress had approved overwhelmingly last week and which runs counter to his desire to improve relations with Moscow, the Republican president laid out a lengthy list of concerns.

His criticism of the sanctions, which also affect Iran and North Korea, raised the question of how much Trump is prepared to enforce the measures and to pursue action against Russia.

“While I favor tough measures to punish and deter aggressive and destabilizing behavior by Iran, North Korea, and Russia, this legislation is significantly flawed,” Trump said in a formal signing statement.

His hands were tied after the Republican-controlled Congress approved the legislation by such a large margin on Thursday that it would have thwarted any effort by him to veto the bill.

Congress passed the measure to punish the Russian government over interference in the 2016 presidential election, annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and other perceived violations of international norms.

The legislation has already provoked countermeasures by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has ordered big cuts to the number of staff at the U.S. diplomatic mission to Russia.

The House of Representatives’ top Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, expressed concern about Trump’s signing statement, saying it “raises serious questions about whether his administration intends to follow the law, or whether he will continue to enable and reward Vladimir Putin’s aggression.”

In the statement, Trump complained about what he said were “clearly unconstitutional provisions” in the legislation relating to presidential powers in setting foreign policy.

The new measure, the first major foreign policy legislation approved by Congress since Trump took office in January, includes a provision allowing the legislature to stop any effort by the president to ease existing sanctions on Russia.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said he was not at all concerned with the statement, noting that since Trump had signed the measure, it was now law.

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter to me what the signing statement says,” Corker told reporters. “It’s a good piece of legislation.”

Trump has long said he would like improved ties with Russia. But any such efforts by his administration have been hamstrung by findings by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia interfered to help the Republican against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. U.S. congressional committees and a special counsel are investigating. Moscow denies any meddling and Trump denies any collusion by his campaign.

In a second, more informal statement on the legislation, issued by the White House, Trump said, “Despite its problems, I am signing this bill for the sake of national unity.

“It represents the will of the American people to see Russia take steps to improve relations with the United States,” he added. But he said the law was “seriously flawed – particularly because it encroaches on the executive branch’s authority to negotiate.”

Trump said he was elected partly because of his successes in business, adding, “As President, I can make far better deals with foreign countries than Congress.”

The administration has been sending mixed signals about Russia. Vice President Mike Pence, on a tour of Baltic countries, has been hammering a hawkish line on Russia. On Tuesday, there was a striking contrast between his stance and comments by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

“The action by the Congress to put these sanctions in place and the way they did, neither the president nor I were very happy about that,” Tillerson said on Tuesday.

The legislation will affect a range of Russian industries and might further hurt the Russian economy, already weakened by 2014 sanctions imposed after Russia annexed Crime from Ukraine.

It also cracks down on Iran and North Korea for activities that include their missile development programs and human rights abuses, including seeking to punish foreign banks that do business with North Korea.

The new sanctions are inevitably harming bilateral relations but will not change Russian policy, Russia’s United Nations Ambassador Vassily Nebenzia said on Wednesday.

“Some U.S. officials were saying that this is a bill that might encourage Russia to cooperate with the United States; to me that’s a strange sort of encouragement,” he told reporters. “Those who invented this bill, if they were thinking they might change our policy, they were wrong.”

This is a positive step for the country if for no other reason than it shows that the Congress can work independently of the President and force him to their will on some matters.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to an article in today’s New York Times.  The article is based on an internal document that seeks current lawyers interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”  According to the article:

“The document  suggests that the project will be run out of the division’s front office, where the Trump administration’s political appointees work, rather than its Educational Opportunities Section, which is run by career civil servants and normally handles work involving schools and universities.

The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, “intentional race-based discrimination,” cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minority students to university campuses.

Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores.

The project is another sign that the civil rights division is taking on a conservative tilt under President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It follows other changes in Justice Department policy on voting rights, gay rights and police reforms.

Roger Clegg, a former top official in the civil rights division during the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration who is now the president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, called the project a “welcome” and “long overdue” development as the United States becomes increasingly multiracial.

“The civil rights laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans are as well,” he said.

But Kristen Clarke, the president of the liberal Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, criticized the affirmative action project as “misaligned with the division’s longstanding priorities.” She noted that the civil rights division was “created and launched to deal with the unique problem of discrimination faced by our nation’s most oppressed minority groups,” performing work that often no one else has the resources or expertise to do.

“This is deeply disturbing,” she said. “It would be a dog whistle that could invite a lot of chaos and unnecessarily create hysteria among colleges and universities who may fear that the government may come down on them for their efforts to maintain diversity on their campuses.”

The Justice Department declined to provide more details about its plans or to make the acting head of the civil rights division, John Gore, available for an interview.

“The Department of Justice does not discuss personnel matters, so we’ll decline comment,” said Devin O’Malley, a department spokesman.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the educational benefits that flow from having a diverse student body can justify using race as one factor among many in a “holistic” evaluation, while rejecting blunt racial quotas or race-based point systems. But what that permits in actual practice by universities — public ones as well as private ones that receive federal funding — is often murky.”

There can be serious ramifications for college affirmative action policies across the country if the Justice Department moves forward on this initiative.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

It is August 1^st and as we near the beginning of a new school year, staffing our nation’s schools becomes a major priority for many districts. However, there is a teacher shortage crisis brewing in a number of states including California, New York, and Oklahoma.  To address its “massive” shortage, Colorado is holding town hall meetings around the state to gather suggestions.  Here is an excerpt from a July 30^th Denver Post article:

“Colorado can do a lot of things, big and small, to end a massive K-12 teacher shortage, including respecting and helping people working in the state’s classrooms, officials learned at a town hall meeting Friday.

About 50 local teachers, administrators, school board members and residents echoed that notion during a meeting Friday on the Colorado State University campus, organized by state education officials to gather ideas that districts can use to tackle the shortfall of teachers.

Certainly, salaries are a problem. First-year teachers in some rural districts earn about $25,000 a year.

“When you are making that much, and facing college debt anywhere from $100,000 to $250,000, you are going to think twice about going into teaching,” said Robert Mitchell, director of educator preparation for the Colorado Department of Higher Education.

Another factor that contributes to the shortage is the perception that teachers are not professionals, at least on the same level as doctors or lawyers, said Rob Eberle, an 18-year classroom veteran with the Thompson School District in Loveland.

“Outside of this room, we are not seen as professionals,” said Eberle, who called on state education officials to hammer home the message that teachers are not just employees.

“It’s important that teachers are heard and that we have a place at the table,” Eberle said. “We need a consistent voice saying to everyone that we are professionals. Unfortunately, there is a segment of the population that spends a great deal of time bashing public education.”

“They don’t bash doctors or lawyers, but we are being targeted, ” Eberle said.

As many as 3,000 more teachers are needed to lead classrooms across the state, with rural districts being hit especially hard, Mitchell said.

Not only are college graduates shying away from teaching, but nearly 30 percent of the state’s teachers are retirement age, data show.

“One school district in the northeast corner of the state had zero applicants for an elementary teacher position,” Mitchell said. “What we have been doing in the past (to recruit and retain teachers) is not sustainable.”

…Colorado is leaking teachers to other states that offer better salaries and benefits, participants at one town hall meeting said…teachers in northern Colorado are moving across the state line to Wyoming to automatically get a pay raise of at least $10,000 a year.

Others said teachers need more support from administrators, some of whom have not been in the classroom for years.”

This issue is only going to get worse before it gets better especially as the large baby boomer teacher population retires from the profession.

Tony