Courtesy of The Campaign for Free College Tuition (Click to enlarge)

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article reviewing the plight of free tuition that was was cut from the federal reconciliation bill that has been working its way through Congress. President Biden proposal to make two years of community college tuition-free nationwide has not been received well in Congress.

But across the country, “College Promise” programs continue to grow among state and local governments as elected officials look for ways to improve college-going and work-force preparation.  As reported by The Chronicle.

“The idea of offering free tuition has grown steadily since the advent of the Tennessee Promise program in 2014, which became the model for a federal program proposed by President Barack Obama. Depending on definitions, half to two-thirds of states and scores of localities now offer some kind of program for free tuition, mostly at community and technical colleges.

Two years of free college tuition was a key campaign issue for Biden as a candidate in the 2020 presidential election and was originally included in the $3.5-trillion budget-reconciliation bill that Democrats proposed this year. But that provision, with a $109-billion price tag, was cut from the bill as moderates and progressives within the party negotiated to halve the overall cost of the legislation.

What remains in that legislation, which has yet to be finalized let alone voted on, is a $40-billion investment in higher education, including a $550 increase in the maximum Pell Grant award, a $500-million grant program to increase college completion, and $9 billion in financial-aid and research support for minority-serving institutions and tribal colleges.

The bill also includes some major policy changes, such as making federal student aid available to undocumented residents who have registered under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

Higher-education leaders have signaled their gratitude for those amounts, which have been called historic one-time increases. But there is still a sense, for many, that stripping free tuition from the bill is a lost opportunity to increase college access on a monumental scale.

“This felt like an opportunity to take some bold action, try to get to where we want to be as a nation on this,” said Laura W. Perna, vice provost for faculty at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education.

A federal free-college program would increase economic output by $170 billion a year for the next decade and income-tax revenues by $66 billion annually, one recent study concluded.

There is also an economic cost for not providing free college nationwide, according to an analysis by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. That study concluded that a federal free-college program would increase economic output by $170 billion a year for the next decade and income-tax revenues by $66 billion annually.

Morley Winograd, who leads the nonprofit Campaign for Free College Tuition, said that although free college has some bipartisan support in Congress, it was not among the key issues for progressive Democrats.

But there were also design flaws in the plan that drew critiques from across the political spectrum and may have contributed to the plan’s failure.

Kevin Carey, vice president for education policy and knowledge management at New America, a left-leaning think tank, found that the Biden plan would give far more federal money to states like California, where community-college tuition is relatively low, than to states like Vermont, where it is far more expensive.

Beth Akers, an economist and senior fellow with the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, said the complexities of designing a federal-state partnership made this kind of problem inevitable and would quite likely burden future efforts.

Akers said free-college programs belong at the state and local level where they can be tailored to meet the economic needs of the work force.

Despite Congress’s unwillingness to include free college in the budget bill, the public remains largely supportive. A Pew Research Center poll conducted in July found that 63 percent of respondents favored free tuition at all public colleges. Even among Republicans, who generally oppose the idea, a majority of those ages 18 to 49 without a college degree support free college.

Martha Kanter, chief executive of College Promise, a nonprofit group that advocates for free tuition nationally, said the next debate about a federal free-college program needs to happen during a reauthorization of the Higher Education Act, which was last updated under President Obama.

That’s unlikely, given the narrowly divided Congress. But the campaign for more promise programs will continue at the state and local level, said Kanter, who noted that many conservative-leaning states have been as willing to enact free-college programs as have many of those that lean progressive.

“The country has enough money to pay for what it values,” Kanter said.”

Here in New York, then Governor Andrew Cuomo and the NYS Legislature established the Excelsior Program in 2017 which provides free public college tuition for all families making less than $125,000 per year.  Well worth the investment!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former Vice President Mike Pence pushed back against an audience member in Iowa City Monday who suggested he should have done more to help former President Donald Trump overturn the results of the 2020 election.

During a question and answer session that followed a formal speech at the University of Iowa, the young man rose to ask Pence “who convinced him  to buck President Trump’s plan and certify the votes?”

“James Madison,” Pence said, referring to the fourth president of the United States often considered the ‘father of the Constitution.’ 

He was met with applause.  As reported by USA Today.

Many Trump supporters have turned on Pence after he presided over the Senate’s approval of the 2020 Electoral College vote. Some who attended the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol erected makeshift gallows and chanted “hang Mike Pence” as others flooded the halls of Congress in search of the vice president.

Pence told the crowd in Iowa City Monday that he continues to share concerns about voter integrity, but he stood by his decision in January. 

“I understand the disappointment in the election,” he said. “You might remember I was on the ballot. But you’ve got to be willing to do your duty. And the time may come that some of you are in that position, or one like it. And I just have a feeling based on the shining faces I’m seeing around here you’re going to be men and women who do your duty in that time as well.”

Pence thanked the crowd for “the affirmations of support tonight.”

“It means a lot to me,” he said. “It truly does.”

Pence was in Iowa City Monday to speak at an event hosted by the Young America’s Foundation, a conservative youth organization. It drew roughly 500 people — the bulk of whom appeared to be students. 

It is Pence’s second visit to Iowa since he and Trump carried the state but lost the Electoral College in the 2020 election. He last visited in July for a summit hosted by Christian conservative group The Family Leader and a fundraiser for Republican U.S. Rep. Randy Feenstra, who represents the state’s 4th Congressional District.

Pence joins a parade of other Republicans making early visits to Iowa, which is once again expected to host first-in-the-nation caucuses, kicking off the Republican presidential nominating process in 2024.

The specter of Trump hangs over the entire field of potential candidates, some of whom have said they would not run for president if Trump seeks another term. But it is especially pronounced for Pence, who has tried to claim credit for the policy successes of the Trump administration while managing the fallout of the Jan. 6 attacks. 

During his speech Monday, Pence continued to walk that line. He compared Trump favorably to Republican President Ronald Reagan, saying both men are “one of a kind.” He touted the administration’s policies on supporting the military, cutting taxes, rolling back regulations and increasing security at the nation’s southern border. 

Trump, who drew several thousand people to his October rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, remains deeply popular among Iowa Republicans. 

About a dozen students hoisting signs gathered outside the Iowa Memorial Union where Pence spoke to protest his presence on campus.

“It’s about his connections to Donald Trump, it’s about his social views, it’s about his economic views, it’s about everything,” said Kyle Kopf, a University of Iowa senior who helped organize the protest. “But we mainly don’t want hate and Pence’s hateful views on our campus.”

One person stood to protest during the event, shouting at Pence, but he was quickly escorted out and drowned out by the chants of “USA! USA! USA!”

He made the right decision on January 6th. Regardless, it will be a difficult road for Pence to a Republican nomination!

Tony

Eric Adams, the Democratic candidate, celebrating his victory in the New York City mayor’s race. James Estrin/The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

Eric Adams, a former New York City police captain whose attention-grabbing persona and keen focus on racial justice fueled a decades-long career in public life, was elected yesterday as the 110th mayor of New York and the second Black mayor in the city’s history.

Mr. Adams, who will take office on Jan. 1, faces a set of challenges as the nation’s largest city grapples with the enduring consequences of the pandemic, including a precarious and unequal economic recovery and continuing concerns about crime and the quality of city life, all shaped by stark political divisions over how New York should move forward.

His victory signals the start of a more center-left Democratic leadership that, he has promised, will reflect the needs of the working- and middle-class voters of color who delivered him the party’s nomination and were vital to his general election coalition.

Michelle Wu  speaks to supporters after winning the election to be Mayor of Boston. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

City Councilor Michelle Wu easily won the Boston mayor’s race, making her the first woman and person of color to win a mayoral election in the city and putting a progressive voice in charge of the largest city in New England.

Wu will be the city’s first Asian-American to serve as the city’s mayor. She’ll replace Kim Janey, the first woman and Black person to serve as mayor, who took over the job earlier this year after Marty Walsh resigned to become Labor Secretary in President Joe Biden’s cabinet.

Wu easily defeated fellow City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, the more moderate candidate in the contest, in the final round of voting.

While Boston has long served as an incubator of liberal politicians on the national level, its local politics has traditionally been more insular and transactional, a political paradise for back-slapping men at the heads of political machines. Wu, who was a Harvard Law student and political protege of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), is pushing to turn the city into a bastion of progressive policy.

While progressives have made key gains in the U.S. House, in state legislatures and in district attorneys’ offices around the country in recent years, they have won few races for executive positions. Wu’s tenure could serve as a policy blueprint and a political test for other left-wing candidates.

Congratulations to Mr. Adams and Ms. Wu!

Tony

Glenn Youngkin

Dear Commons Community,

Republicans claimed the governorship of Virginia for the first time in more than a decade on Wednesday, electing the businessman Glenn Youngkin and presenting their party with a formula for how to exploit President Biden’s vulnerabilities and evade the shadow of Donald J. Trump in Democratic-leaning states.

Mr. Youngkin, 54, a wealthy former private equity executive making his first run for office, elevated education and taxes while projecting a suburban-dad demeanor to demonstrate he was different from Mr. Trump without saying so outright. He defeated former Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat who, with Mr. Trump out of office, struggled to generate enthusiasm among liberals at a moment when conservatives are energized in opposition to Mr. Biden.

The Associated Press called the race for Mr. Youngkin shortly after 12:30 a.m. Wednesday morning, hours after the polls closed on Tuesday night.  As reported by the AP and The New York Times.

Addressing supporters in Northern Virginia, Mr. Youngkin said the state had reached “a defining moment.”

“Together we will change the trajectory of this commonwealth,” Mr. Youngkin said after taking the stage and clapping along to the blues-rock anthem “Spirit in the Sky.”

The election took place at a moment when voters are deeply frustrated, weary from the still-lingering coronavirus pandemic and irritated at the costs and scarcity of goods. Large majorities in polls say that the country is on the wrong track, a foreboding indicator for the party in power.

No less bracing for Democrats was a second gubernatorial election unfolding in New Jersey: the incumbent governor, Philip D. Murphy, was narrowly trailing a relatively obscure Republican challenger, Jack Ciattarelli, deep into the night. A mainstream liberal with ties to the White House, Mr. Murphy was staking his hopes for a comeback on a strong performance in several solidly Democratic areas where votes were slow to report.

But the unexpected closeness of the race underscored the overall vulnerability of the Democratic Party. Much like Mr. Youngkin in Virginia, Mr. Ciattarelli appeared to benefit from robust turnout in rural and conservative-leaning areas of the state while making inroads in denser areas such as Bergen County, the populous suburb of New York City.

Unlike Mr. Youngkin, Mr. Ciattarelli, a former state legislator, had no vast personal fortune to spend on his candidacy and national Republicans looked at his campaign as an extreme long shot. Even if Mr. Murphy prevails, it is certain to be by a minute fraction of the 16-point margins by which both he and Mr. Biden carried the state in their last campaigns

Mr. Youngkin’s surprise victory in Virginia, however, represents the starkest warning yet that Democrats are in danger. It was likely to prompt additional congressional retirements, intensify the intraparty tug of war over Mr. Biden’s agenda and fuel fears that a midterm electoral wave and Mr. Trump’s return as a candidate are all but inevitable.

“The MAGA movement is bigger and stronger than ever before,” Mr. Trump said in a statement Tuesday night.

In the first competitive statewide election of Mr. Biden’s presidency, Mr. McAuliffe worked assiduously to link Mr. Youngkin to the previous president. Inviting a parade of prominent national Democrats to campaign with him, the former governor sought to nationalize the race and effectively transform a gubernatorial contest into a referendum on Mr. Trump in a state he lost by 10 points last year.

But voters appeared far more eager to register their frustration with the Democrats in control of Washington and Richmond, the state capital, and fissures appeared in the coalition of moderate whites, people of color and young liberals that elected Mr. Biden in 2020. In cities, suburbs and exurbs that Mr. Biden had handily carried, Mr. McAuliffe’s margins shrank dramatically.

Mr. McAuliffe never fully articulated his own vision for a second term and received no favors from Mr. Biden or his party’s lawmakers. They spent much of the fall locked in contentious negotiations over Mr. Biden’s infrastructure and social welfare proposals, failing to reach a consensus that could have at least offered Mr. McAuliffe some good news to trumpet.

Democrats in Virginia have tended to win statewide elections on a message of can-do pragmatism. The stalemate in Washington cast the party in a different light.

Taking the stage in McLean before the race was called, Mr. McAuliffe thanked his family and supporters but did not concede. “This is a different state,” he said of Virginia following his governorship and that of his successor, Gov. Ralph S. Northam. “We are going to continue that fight.”

Significantly, Mr. Trump appeared unusually content to be kept at arm’s length by Mr. Youngkin, remaining mostly silent as the Republican candidate declined to invite him to the state. Mr. McAuliffe even acknowledged to reporters on Monday that “from a political perspective” it would have been better for him had the former president not been banished from Twitter so Mr. Trump could have had a platform from which to insert himself into the campaign.

For Republicans, particularly those uneasy with Mr. Trump and battered by the party’s string of losses on his watch, Mr. Youngkin’s triumph delivered a moment of exultation. Their win in Virginia demonstrated that they can reclaim some suburban voters without fully embracing or rejecting Mr. Trump.

Clad in a fleece vest and sporting a smile on the campaign trail, Mr. Youngkin happily claimed support from so-called Never Trumpers and Forever Trumpers, while otherwise voicing a center-right agenda in a state where Republicans have not won statewide since 2009.

In part because Mr. McAuliffe was so dedicated to his strategy of inserting Mr. Trump into the race, Mr. Youngkin evaded scrutiny about his own views on policy, which on issues like abortion and same-sex marriage were to the right of most Virginia voters.

The race illustrated that voters are chiefly focused on day-to-day quality of life issues related to the economy and the pandemic, and they blame Democrats for failing to fully address these matters.

The Virginia results also suggest that Mr. Trump’s exit has at least loosened the Democrats’ hold on the college-educated voters who powered their gains over the last five years.

It’s highly unlikely, however, that the former president will let other Republicans sidestep him in next year’s midterm elections the way Mr. Youngkin did. The party’s victory in Virginia may only lull Republicans into believing that Mr. Trump no longer poses a dilemma and can be indefinitely averted, the sort of thinking many party leaders have clung to for more than six years.

For now, though, it’s Democrats who will suffer the most as their moderate-versus-liberal intraparty tensions flare in Washington and beyond and officials blame one another for the defeat.

The Democrats have a year to get their act together!  Not likely!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The sooner most cancers are discovered, the better the odds they can be successfully treated.

CBS reported yesterday that the Mayo Clinic has been conducting research on a test that can detect more than 50 types of cancer.  Doctors are calling it a game-changer in the fight against cancer.  As reported  by CBS.

Dr. Julia Feygen, a member of the team at a Menlo Park, California-based company called GRAIL that’s introducing the blood test, called Galleri,  says can it catch hard-to-detect, aggressive and often deadly cancers like pancreatic, ovarian and esophageal.

“If cancers can be detected early, we can dramatically improve patient outcomes,” Feygin said.

Feygin explains that our blood contains a DNA signature. The blood test tracks the DNA a cancer cell sheds.

Two tubes of blood are drawn and sent to GRAIL’s lab for analysis.

“We can find and sequence these tiny bits of tumor-derived DNA in the blood and, based on the patterns we see, we can reveal if there is a signal for cancer present. We can predict with very high accuracy where in the body this cancer signal is coming from,” Feygin said.

The results are sent back to the health care provider in 10 business days.

An interventional study that included Mayo Clinic with 6,600 participants returned 29 signals that were followed by a cancer diagnosis.

Another study found a less than 1% false positive rate.

There are some caveats on who can get the test.

“It’s intended to be used for people at an elevated risk for cancer. This can be something as simple as age,” Feygin said.

Right now, the test is by prescription-only. Insurance doesn’t cover it. You would pay out of pocket with a current cost of $949.

“In the year 2021, this is so far beyond anything else we’ve been able to do. This is a game-changer,” said Dr. Greg Plotnikoff.

He has prescribed the test for patients and family members with risk factors, saying cancers caught early are in more treatable stages.

“If we can catch things earlier, we have a chance then to make a significant difference,” Plotnikoff said.

He also chose to screen himself, since he is over 60.

“If there was any kind of signal, I wanted to know it and be able to do something about it,” Plotnikoff said.

The American Cancer Society says 71% of cancer deaths come from types of cancer that have no recommended screening.

Feygin says they hope to change outcomes for families like hers in the future.

“It really presents an unprecedented opportunity to bend the cancer mortality curve and really save so many lives,” Feygin said.

GRAIL says Galleri “is intended to be complementary to, and not a replacement of, U.S. guideline-recommended cancer screening.”

GRAIL is still working on full FDA approval. You can ask your doctor to request the test.

Before the end of the year, Galleri will be available at Mayo Clinic locations in Rochester, Minnesota, Jacksonville, Florida, and Phoenix. It will also be available at Mayo Clinic Health System sites in southern Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Remarkable development that should save many lives.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press has an article (see below) this morning reviewing several of the key elections today.  It provides a roadmap on what might be an interesting evening of poll watching.  Here in New York City, we are voting for a new mayor in a race between Democrat Eric Adams and Republican Curtis Sliwa.  Regardless of how you feel or who you are supporting, it is important that you get out and vote today.  It is one of our precious liberties.

Tony

————————————————————————————————

The Associated Press

Governors and more: What to watch in Tuesday’s elections

By Nicholas Riccardi

November 2, 2021

It may be an odd-numbered year but Tuesday’s elections aren’t sleepy, local contests. Voters in Virginia are weighing in on a governor’s race that could rattle President Joe Biden and Democrats in Washington. In Minneapolis, a city still shaken by George Floyd’s murder will vote on whether to disband its police department and create a new public safey agency. School board races across the country have become the new battlegrounds for partisan debates over race.

What to watch as returns come in Tuesday:

WILL DEMOCRATS WAKE UP?

Virginia was an early hub of the Democratic resistance to President Donald Trump. Today, it may be the center of Democratic fatigue. Polls have shown that Republicans in Virginia have a sizable enthusiasm advantage over Democrats, jeopardizing Democrats’ chances of holding onto the governor’s office in a state Biden won by 10 percentage points last year.

Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe has been trying to fire up his voters by casting Republican newcomer Glenn Youngkin as a “Trump wannabe.” But it’s not clear the label is sticking. Youngkin has avoided being seen with Trump — or any national GOP leaders — and has kept his focus on education, spending and other state issues.

McAuliffe’s campaign notes he’s running in a tough environment for any Democrat. Biden’s approval number have slouched amid a stalemate over his economic agenda in Congress, his pullout from Afghanistan, rising inflation and the persistence of the coronavirus.

Democrats’ best bet may be that the unexpectedly tight race — along with the threats to abortion rights and continued messaging on Trump — jolts their base and pushes them to the polls. Even a narrow win for Democrats in a state they won by double digits last year will be little comfort as the party tries to hold onto its incredibly tight congressional majorities in next year’s midterms. Just a five-seat swing in the House or a single one in the Senate could flip a chamber.

HAS YOUNGKIN CRACKED THE CODE?

Youngkin, in his first bid for public office, is showing Republicans a potential way forward in the post-Trump era. He positioned himself as a nonthreatening suburban dad in a fleece vest, but steadfastly refused to denounce the former president, who remains popular among Republicans.

Youngkin has stayed on message even as McAuliffe hammered him for being a stalking horse for Trump. Rather than engaging, Youngkin has gone after McAuliffe on taxes and especially education.

It’s those education attacks that offer the most encouraging path for Republicans. Seizing on widespread discontent with schools during the pandemic and heated debates about race, Youngkin has criticized schools over hot-button conservative issues like critical race theory. He even waded into a murky sexual assault allegation and resurrected a debate about banning books. That’s enabled him to appeal both to suburban voters resentful of their local school districts and to hard-line Trump voters who see the education debate as central to their political identity.

The best sign that Youngkin’s gambit works will be how he performs in the affluent northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., once a bastion of the Republican Party but now a key part of the Democratic coalition.

If Youngkin makes inroads in northern Virginia and in the Richmond suburbs, it’s a sign he was able to successfully walk the line. Likewise, if Democrats hold the margins from their successful 2017 gubernatorial race there, it’d be a sign of continued trouble for Republicans in highly educated suburbs.

WHEN WILL WE KNOW THE WINNER?

Be wary of early returns in Virginia because they might not resemble the final results.

In 2020, Trump jumped out to a huge early lead over Biden that lasted until early Wednesday, when heavily Democratic counties in northern Virginia finished counting their mail ballots. Once the Democratic counties reported, the race flipped in Biden’s favor and he ultimately won by a comfortable margin.

The late swing in favor of Biden was especially big because most counties, including Fairfax, the state’s largest, released the results of their mail ballots at the end of the night, and Virginia’s mail ballots heavily favored Democrats.

This year, a new state law requires counties to start processing mail ballots at least seven days before Election Day so they can be counted and released on election night soon after the polls close at 7 p.m. EDT. Counties are expected to release the results of their mail ballots first, followed by early in-person votes and, finally, votes cast at local polling places on Election Day. Fairfax County officials have said they plan to follow this procedure.

If Virginia’s mail ballots continue to favor Democrats and the Election Day votes favor Republicans, the vote count could swing back and forth, depending on which type of votes are being released.

Mail ballots can arrive as late as Friday and still be counted, as long as they are postmarked by Election Day. Historically, less than 2% of Virginia’s votes are counted after Election Day.

DON’T FORGET NEW JERSEY

The tumult of the Virginia governor’s race has overshadowed the only other race for governor Tuesday. In New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy is trying to fight off a challenge from Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former state legislator.

New Jersey is something of a test case for Democrats’ theory of how they can win in 2022 and beyond. Murphy fulfilled his campaign promises and was able to implement vastly expanded government funding for widespread prekindergarten and free community college — policies that Biden is struggling to get through the Democrats’ razor-thin majorities in Congress. Murphy has embraced the left wing of the party and hosted Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders for a campaign rally last month.

While Ciattarelli has also tried to walk the line between energizing Trump voters and appealing to suburbanites, he faces a more daunting task than Youngkin. New Jersey is a more Democratic state than Virginia — Murphy won his first election by 14 percentage points in 2018. He also has the power of incumbency on his side, unlike in Virginia, the only state in the nation that doesn’t allow governors consecutive terms.

The few public polls in the race have shown Murphy with a steady lead. If he wins easily, it may be a sign of hope for Democrats that they can survive 2022 if they deliver on Biden’s plans for a massive expansion of social safety net and climate change programs. If it’s closer, that’d be another promising indication for GOP hopes in the midterms.

A NEW URBAN POLITICS

Democrats may firmly control the nation’s city halls, but that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to fight about. Tuesday features a wide array of local and mayoral races that will be the latest installments in the long-running battle between liberals and relative moderates.

The most prominent may be in Minneapolis, where voters will decide whether to disband their police department after the death of George Floyd and replace it with a “Department of Public Safety.” The city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, a Democrat, opposes the measure and is himself up for reelection against two liberals who contend he hasn’t been aggressive enough on reforming the city’s police.

In Boston, Michelle Wu, the 36-year-old daughter of Taiwanese immigrants and a protégé of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, is running against Annissa Essaibi George, the daughter of Tunisian and Polish immigrants who has received support from the city’s traditional powerbrokers. In Buffalo, New York, India Walton, a self-described Democratic socialist who won an upset victory in the Democratic primary there in June, will again have to defeat the city’s mayor, Byron Brown, who is staging a write-in campaign after losing the primary.

The races may provide a yardstick on whether the liberal wing of the Democratic Party can still dominate in the country’s bluest areas. But some mayoral races won’t fall into neat ideological categories, such as in Atlanta, where a sprawling field has become a test of whether former Mayor Kasim Reed’s ethics turmoil when he was in power should bar him for winning office again.

WILL SCHOOL BOARDS LAUNCH A CONSERVATIVE COMEBACK?

National conservative groups are pouring money into an unlikely area — local school board races — hoping to capitalize on frustration over pandemic-related closures, mask mandates and culture wars.

Big players have gotten involved, including some big GOP donors, prominent Republican officeholders and former Vice President Mike Pence, who urged attendees of an Ohio rally last weekend to vote for conservative school board candidates. Republican Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is backing an anti-masking candidate running for the board in suburban Des Moines. Dozens of other races, from suburban Denver to suburban Philadelphia, have also become heated.

School board races are small and often not representative of larger trends, but conservatives are hoping to change that Tuesday.

President Biden at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland. (Adrian Dennis/Pool via Reuters)

Dear Commons Community,

President Joe Biden apologized to the world yesterday in a speech at the United Nations Climate Change Conference for his predecessor’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Paris climate accord.

“I guess I shouldn’t apologize, but I do apologize for the fact the United States, the last administration, pulled out of the Paris accords and put us sort of behind the eight ball a little bit,” Biden said.

The world, the president asserted, had entered a “decisive decade” that will determine how extensive the damage from rising global temperatures will be.

“It’s simple,” Biden said, “Will we act? Will we do what is necessary? Will we seize the enormous opportunity before us, or will we condemn future generations to suffering?”  As reported by several news outlets.

Biden, who has made limiting global warming a central focus of his administration, noted that “climate change is already ravaging the world. It’s not hypothetical,” while alluding to the billions of dollars in damages that extreme weather events and extensive wildfires have cost the U.S. this year alone.

“In the past few months the United States has experienced all of this, and every region of the world can tell a similar story,” he said.

Biden spoke with other world leaders at a convention hall in downtown Glasgow where roughly 20,000 delegates — a mix of scientists, activists, governmental employees, heads of state and members of the media — waited in line for hours to pass through security checkpoints.

A goal of the president’s speech was to restore the U.S. as a leader on climate change. His address was a marked contrast to the near-total silence from former President Donald Trump on the subject of climate change, and he portrayed the daunting transition away from a fossil fuel economy as an opportunity for America and the world.

“We are standing at an inflection point in world history. We have the ability to invest in ourselves and build an equitable clean energy future,” Biden said.

The White House laid the groundwork for Biden’s address to have added impact with the release on yesterday of two frameworks for future American climate action: “President’s Emergency Plan for Adaptation and Resilience” (PREPARE) and “The Long-Term Strategy of the United States: Pathways to Net-Zero Greenhouse Gas Emissions by 2050.”

The only problem with the Biden administration’s approach is that other countries are aware that the U.S. has two political parties and one of them won’t necessarily pursue the Democrats’ chosen path. The Long-Term Strategy is full of charts showing emissions plummeting, but also full of aspirational sentences such as this: “Investment in clean energy generation must continue through mid-century as overall electricity generation increases to meet demand growth from other sectors.”

For any U.S. policy to continue through midcentury, it would have to survive through likely periods of Republican rule. The modest pledge of $3 billion in climate aid also depends on congressional approval, which could be affected by the 2022 midterm elections, in which the Republicans have a strong possibility of taking over at least one of the two chambers of Congress.

The Biden administration is trying to show the world that the U.S. is doing everything it can to limit climate change right now. Yesterday afternoon, Vice President Kamala Harris and Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm were scheduled to travel to New York City to roll out a $127 million investment in transitioning to clean trucks. Every little bit helps to reduce emissions, but it is another matter whether China and India will be convinced to make significant policy changes on the basis of such limited and potentially temporary programs.

Shortly before Biden spoke, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. special presidential envoy for climate John Kerry and White House national climate adviser Gina McCarthy spoke at the opening of the U.S. Center, the American pavilion in the conference hall. All three stressed that the Biden administration is working in lockstep to make good on the president’s pledge to make the U.S. carbon-neutral by 2050 and to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030.

Yet Kerry also sounded a note of caution about what the U.S. government would be able to do on its own.

“No government in the world has enough money to fuel this transition” to a clean energy economy, Kerry said while appealing to the private sector to do its part.

Outside the convention venue, Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg arrived at a protest aboard a ship owned by the environmental organization Greenpeace to make her case that that the world’s leaders had failed younger generations.

“’Betrayal.’ That’s how young people around the world are describing our governments’ failure to cut carbon emissions. And it’s no surprise,” Thunberg and other youth climate activists said in a petition meant to pressure world leaders to action.

In his words at COP26, Biden sounded sympathetic to Thunberg’s concerns. Speaking of the lack of leadership on climate change that defined the previous administration, he said, “I know it hasn’t been the case, and that’s why my administration is working overtime to show that our climate commitment is action, not words.”

Pledging to “do more to help countries around the world, especially developing countries,” transition to economies that use renewable energy, Biden said the U.S. has “an obligation to help” and vowed to quadruple climate financing in the coming years. Yet he also admitted that the world’s wealthiest nations have yet to make good on past pledges to help the poorer ones make the transition to renewables.

“Right now we’re still falling short. There’s no more time to hang back or sit on the fence or argue amongst ourselves,” Biden said.

“This is the challenge of our collective lifetimes, the existential threat to human existence as we know it,” he added. “And every day we delay, the cost of inaction increases. So let this be the moment that we answer history’s call in Glasgow.”

It takes a leader of wisdom and courage to apologize!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Tomorrow, the most closely watched election contest will be in Virginia, as Democrats desperately try to hold on to power in a state that has provided some of the party’s biggest victories in recent years.  However, the final days of the  2021 election have brought waves of anxiety and anguish for Democrats as tightening polls suggest the party could lose control of a state that has provided some of its most resounding and important victories.  

Polling averages between Democrat Terry McAuliffe, who was governor from 2014 to 2018, and Republican Glenn Youngkin, a career private equity executive, show either a deadlocked race. or Youngkin with a slight lead. A Washington Post poll found the race virtually deadlocked and statistically unchanged from a month ago.  As reported by the Huffington Post and other news media.

Youngkin and the state Republican party have launched a full-scale culture war in an attempt to sway independent voters. He’s run ads stoking fears about critical race theory in schools, including one where a woman obliquely complains about the teaching of a classic Toni Morrison novel. They’ve also lied about a sexual assault in a Virginia school in order to stoke anti-trans panic. They’ve adopted ― or at least winked and nodded toward ― some of former President Donald Trump’s most dangerous lies about the 2020 election, and even spread their own.

If the polls are correct (and they may not be), the strategy might just work.

Both parties are focused on the national implications of Tuesday’s result. Virginia’s gubernatorial contest is the first major swing state election since Joe Biden won the presidency last year ― a fact Youngkin was slow to acknowledge during the Republican primary ― and massive test of whether Democrats can replicate their success in once-red suburban areas with Trump out of the White House, if not out of the picture entirely. A Republican win, meanwhile, will boost the GOP’s hopes of big victories in key House, Senate and gubernatorial races in next year’s midterm contests.

Whether Virginia is actually a bellwether is unclear ― the results there in 2009 and 2017 presaged big gains for the victorious party in the ensuing midterm elections, but the governor’s race in 2013 did nothing of the sort. Regardless, the lessons each party takes away from the race are likely to reverberate across the country in 2022, and a GOP victory would force Democrats to reckon with a terrifying reality: that Trumpism can win even in a place Trump himself could not.

More immediately, the outcome will have serious and direct consequences for the state of Virginia.

Over the last eight years, Gov. Ralph Northam (D) and McAuliffe before him have approved major legislation to expand voting rights, abolish the death penalty, strengthen gun laws and roll back restrictions on abortion. Democrats’ seizure of the state legislative majority in 2019 handed the party total control of Virginia for the first time in a quarter century, a result that not only paved the way for a similar Democratic takeover of Congress and the White House a year later, but seemingly broke the Republican Party in an important Southern swing state.

Now, just two years later, Republicans are eying a resurgence that could see them oust Democrats from the governor’s mansion and win back the majority in the House of Delegates, the sort of victory that could either blunt McAuliffe’s agenda, should he win, or significantly boost Youngkin’s hopes of enacting his own regressive plans.

Republicans must flip six seats to regain majority control in the House of Delegates, the lower chamber of Virginia’s legislature in which all 100 seats are up this year. (The state Senate, where Democrats hold a 21-19 majority, won’t hold elections until 2023.) And while generic polls have shown Democrats holding a slim lead in legislative contests, anxieties about the top of the ticket ― and a national focus on the governor’s race ― have generated familiar concerns that Democrats may be overlooking the importance of holding the majority.

“The narrow margin in Virginia is yet another reminder that if the people who care about protecting democracy in this country overlook state legislatures, we will lose,” said Simone Leiro, a spokesperson for the States Project, a progressive group that focuses on state legislature elections.

Nationally, Democrats have long faced allegations that they under-prioritize state legislatures, a claim fueled by their loss of nearly 1,000 legislative seats during Barack Obama’s presidency. (Obama himself came to Richmond to campaign for McAuliffe and the Democratic ticket last week, in an effort to drive up enthusiasm and turn Virginians out during the early voting period.)

Holding the majority was always going to test Democrats’ nascent strength in Virginia, maybe even more so than the gubernatorial race. In 2019, they flipped several districts that had long favored Republicans, and had voted for Trump just three years prior. The GOP has keyed in on many of those races in hopes of a rebound, but Democrats remain quietly confident they will emerge from the Nov. 2 with their majority intact, even if they ultimately lose a seat or two.

“This election is about so many things, but the most important thing it’s about is, ‘Can we have a small-d democracy and can everyday people participate?’ That is what is at stake.”

Much like McAuliffe, Democrats down the ballot have argued to voters that they’ve delivered on their promises. And they have painted state legislative races as vital to enacting the most ambitious parts of McAuliffe’s agenda, including paid family leave, a $15 minimum wage and investments into public education.

Some of that confidence is rooted in the GOP’s list of challengers, which includes numerous candidates who have questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election, downplayed the COVID-19 pandemic, and called for laws that would essentially outlaw abortion, a position at odds with Virginia voters writ large. Democrats prospered in the suburbs of northern Virginia, the Richmond area and along the southeastern coast in 2019, and they argue that the Republican candidates are too extreme to woo those voters now.

“The candidates the Republicans are running in the House of Delegate races are not the kind of individuals that are going to win those voters back,” said Christina Polizzi, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the party’s state legislative campaign arm. “They are, by and large, in the same vein as Donald Trump. That is reflective of where the base of the party is, but it’s not reflective of where swing voters in Virginia are.”

That radicalism has also heightened the stakes, and the nerviness, of the fight for the legislature. On the stump, Democrats have warned that Republican control could lead to Georgia-style voting rights restrictions, a Florida-style approach to the pandemic, Texas-style abortion laws, and the passage of the sort of anti-LGBTQ and anti-trans statutes that have swept through GOP-dominated legislatures — which have served as an incubator for the extremism that fueled Trump’s rise and the GOP’s hard rightward turn — this year.

“They want to dismantle all the progress that we made on voting rights and all the progress we made making Virginia more open and more welcoming,” Del. Eileen Filler-Corn, the Democratic speaker of the House of Delegates, said at a Richmond campaign rally in October. “They will try to strip away everything we have done to protect women’s health care and to reduce gun violence and to make our commonwealth better for workers and businesses. What they really want is the legislature and the governor who defers to Donald Trump, but we won’t let that happen.”

A GOP victory, Democrats argue, could even put the country’s democracy at risk.

“This election is about so many things, but the most important thing it’s about is, ‘Can we have a small-d democracy and can everyday people participate?’” U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said at the rally. “That is what is at stake.”

Since taking control of the Virginia House of Delegates in 2019, Democrats have expanded voting rights, abortion access, and LGBTQ protections, and acted as aggressively as any other state legislature in advancing the party’s major priorities.

Both Republicans and Democrats say they have emphasized legislative races, even as the major statewide contests garner the most attention. Five of this year’s contests rank among the top 10 most expensive House of Delegates races in Virginia history.

Youngkin’s PAC has contributed $533,250 to GOP legislative candidates, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. The Republican State Leadership Committee, a PAC focused on state legislatures, said in August that it planned to spend $1 million in concert with the Republican Party of Virginia in an effort to target 12 key House of Delegates races.

The Democratic Party of Virginia, meanwhile, said in September that McAuliffe’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee had allocated $11 million to a coordinated campaign that includes legislative races.

A Democratic spokesperson did not clarify how much of that budget is specifically devoted to legislative campaigns, but more than half of the party’s organizers and volunteers are working in targeted House of Delegates districts, according to a September memo. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee and its affiliated groups have spent more than $3 million in Virginia this year.

Losing Virginia would be devastating for Democrats, especially after a crucial cycle in which the party failed to flip a single GOP legislative body ahead of this year’s round of redistricting. Of the eight chambers Democrats did turn during the Trump years, none was a bigger deal than Virginia’s, which gave the party a foothold in the South and seemingly cemented the state’s transition to solid blue. A Republican return to power would strip Democrats of control of a legislature that has perhaps done more to aggressively advance the party’s major priorities than any other over the last two years.

Virginia Democrats successfully expanded Medicaid in 2018, after a cycle in which they drastically shrunk the GOP’s majority. That has allowed more than 500,000 Virginians to access health care through Medicaid, according to state figures.

Since regaining majority control of both chambers, Democrats have expanded abortion access and insurance coverage of abortion procedures and contraception. They have approved criminal justice reforms, enacted new protections for LGBTQ Virginians, made investments into teacher salaries and pre-kindergarten programs, passed new gun control laws, and created programs to transition Virginia off of fossil fuels entirely by 2050.

This year, they abolished the death penalty and passed one of the nation’s most expansive voting rights laws.

Steve Bennett, a Democratic voter from the Richmond suburbs, said that he was excited to vote to help the party protect those gains, particularly on voting, abortion, gun laws and health care. But he also worried that Democrats are struggling to find the energy necessary to turn out in big numbers against a Republican ticket led by Youngkin, a first-time candidate who has essentially run two separate campaigns.

In TV ads and appearances, Youngkin has pitched himself as a Bush-era Republican everyman focused on sizable tax cuts, salary hikes for teachers and police officers, and funding for 20 new charter schools. But at campaign events, he has tossed red meat to the Trump base, entertaining voters’ election conspiracies, campaigning with state lawmakers who’ve argued the 2020 election was stolen and that the Virginia governor’s race could be, touting his proposed “Election Integrity Task Force” and support for restrictive voter ID laws, and hinting that he’ll push for harsher anti-abortion policies as governor than he does on the trail, where he knows such positions could cost him votes.

“I’m hoping the enthusiasm will pick up on the Democrats’ side,” Bennett, 68, said. “Youngkin pretends to be a country club Republican, but he’s pretty radical.”

GOP gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin has pitched himself as a moderate outsider focused on tax cuts and charter schools — while also weaponizing “critical race theory” and nodding to election conspiracies in an effort to mobilize conservative voters.

The state legislative majority will likely come down to a handful of key races that were decided by close margins two years ago. In Virginia Beach, Del. Alex Askew (D) won by 800 votes in 2019. Del. Roslyn Tyler (D), who has represented her southern Virginia district since 2006, won by 500. And Del. Nancy Guy (D), whose district includes parts of Norfolk and Virginia Beach, defeated a GOP incumbent by just 27 votes in 2019.

Republicans also spot pickup opportunities in districts that had larger Democratic margins: Del. Wendy Gooditis (D) won her contest by roughly 5 percentage points, but Youngkin and the GOP have poured resources into her area of northern Virginia, where they have pushed some of their most aggressive rhetoric about the supposed threat of “critical race theory,” which isn’t actually taught in Virginia public schools, and tried to play into some parents’ anger over in-person schooling closures during the pandemic.

The GOP has also taken aim at Dels. Chris Hurst in Blacksburg, Joshua Cole in northern Virginia, Rodney Willett in suburban Richmond, and Kelly Convirs-Fowler in Virginia Beach, all areas of the state where Republicans once thrived before losing ground under Trump.

Democrats, meanwhile, have eyed their own pickup opportunities, particularly in two suburban Richmond districts, that could blunt the effect of any GOP victories. There are also competitive races for open seats, including in Democratic lieutenant governor candidate Haya Ayala’s northern Virginia district, that could help determine majority control.

The GOP has focused its campaigns on tying Virginia Democrats to the national party, and ran ads early in the cycle linking them to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.). After initial attempts to tie Democrats to activist calls to “defund the police” seemingly failed to motivate voters, Republicans shifted their focus to education, blasting Democrats for school closures, accusing them of waging a “war on parents” and leaning into the broader conservative fight to ban schools from teaching about racism ― or, in GOP parlance, “objectionable content” and “racially divisive curriculum” in schools.

Perhaps even more so than Youngkin, who took months to acknowledge Biden’s victory and has repeatedly refused to denounce conservative conspiracy theories about voter fraud from the stump, the GOP’s candidates in key legislative races highlight the party’s increasingly anti-democratic stance on elections.

Mike Cherry, a Republican running for an open seat that Democrats have targeted, defended three GOP delegates who were stripped of their committee assignments after they petitioned former Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the results of Virginia’s results in the 2020 election.

Karen Greenhalgh, the Republican challenging Askew, suggested at a campaign event that the GOP didn’t do enough to ensure “election integrity” in 2020, and that as a result, “we don’t really know what happened” during the contest. She has launched an “Election Integrity Program” as part of her campaign, adopting the euphemism Republicans nationwide have used to nod toward Trump’s election conspiracies and roll back voting rights.

Tim Anderson, who is running against Guy, and Tim Cox, who is challenging Democrat Briana Sewell for Ayala’s old seat, have both adopted the “election integrity” mantle to call for more aggressive voter ID laws and other voting restrictions.

Anderson, Cox, Cherry and Nick Clemente (the GOP candidate challenging Gooditis), also all lent support to a new audit of voting machines “to ensure that no illegal manipulation of votes occurred in the 2020 election” in a candidate survey. Virginia’s state elections board has already conducted an audit of the machines, and confirmed the result of the race.

Several GOP candidates, including Cox, have also said on candidate surveys that they favor “bills prohibiting abortion from the moment of conception.”

Democrats say strong early vote totals have bolstered their chances of winning the governor’s race and major statewide contests, and of holding the legislature: As of Friday, Virginians had cast more than 1 million early and absentee ballots, five times more than in 2017. Virginia voters do not register as members of a party, but models suggest that Democratic voters have cast 54% of those ballots.

But they are still trying to motivate Democratic voters, whom polls have shown are less enthused about the election than their Republican counterparts.

“We’re in the battle for the future in the soul of this commonwealth,” Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney (D) told voters at a rally last week. “And we need your help.”

We will see tomorrow!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

School districts across the county and especially those in cities with large diverse populations, are grappling more and more with gifted and talented programs that also are perceived to be racist and elitist.  In many cases, these programs privilege white students and enroll very small percentages of black and Latino students.  The Associated Press reviewed this issue in an opinion article as follows.

Communities across the United States are reconsidering their approach to gifted and talented programs in schools as vocal parents blame such elite programs for worsening racial segregation and inequities in the country’s education system.

A plan announced by New York City’s mayor to phase out elementary school gifted and talented programs in the country’s largest school district — if it proceeds — would be among the most significant developments yet in a push that extends from Boston to Seattle and that has stoked passions and pain over race, inequality and access to a decent education.

From the start, gifted and talented school programs drew worries they would produce an educational caste system in U.S. public schools. Many of the exclusive programs trace their origins to efforts to stanch “white flight” from public schools, particularly in diversifying urban areas, by providing high-caliber educational programs that could compete with private or parochial schools.

Increasingly, parents and school boards are grappling with difficult questions over equity, as they discuss how to accommodate the educational aspirations of advanced learners while nurturing other students so they can equally thrive. It’s a quandary that is driving the debate over whether to expand gifted and talented programs or abolish them altogether.

“I get the burn-it-down and tear-it-down mentality, but what do we replace it with?” asked Marcia Gentry, a professor of education and the director of the Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute at Purdue University.

Gentry coauthored a study two years ago that used federal data to catalogue the stark racial disparities in gifted and talented programs.

It noted that U.S. schools identified 3.3 million students as gifted and talented but that an additional 3.6 million should have been similarly designated. The additional students missing from those rolls, her study said, were disproportionately Black, Latino and Indigenous students.

Nationwide, 8.1% of white and 12.7% of Asian American children in public schools are considered gifted, compared with 4.5% of Hispanic and 3.5% of Black students, according to an Associated Press analysis of the most recent federal data.

Gifted and talented programs aim to provide outlets for students who feel intellectually constrained by the instruction offered to their peers. Critics of the push to eliminate them say it punishes high achievers and cuts off a prized opportunity for advancement, particularly for low-income families without access to private enrichment programs. 

In Seattle, a schools superintendent who left her job in May sought to do away with the district’s Highly Capable Cohort program, as the district’s gifted and talented program is called, blaming it for causing de facto segregation. In its own recent analysis, Seattle public schools found only 0.9% of Black children had been identified as gifted, compared with 12.6% of its white students. 

The school board has approved changes that will do away with eligibility testing and make all grade schoolers automatically eligible for consideration for advanced instruction. In addition to grades, the selection committee will consider testimonials from teachers, family and community members.

The changes don’t go far enough for critics like Rita Green, the education chair of the Seattle Chapter of the NAACP. She has called for more work to build environments that nurture the intellectual development of all the district’s 50,000 schoolchildren.

“We want the program just abolished. Period. The Highly Capable Cohort program is fundamentally flawed, and it’s inherently racist,” Green said.

Debates over the criteria for admission to advanced courses and elite schools predate the latest national discussion about racial inequities, but have intensified since the killing of George Floyd. 

In Boston, the school committee voted this summer to expand eligibility to its exclusive exam schools and guarantee spots to high-achieving students from poor and disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Latino students account for roughly 42% of Boston’s 53,000 public school students — about twice the number as whites — but are vastly underrepresented in advanced courses. By the district’s account, fewer than 20% of the fourth graders invited to participate in advanced work classes were Latino, while 43% of those invited were white.

Many children are overlooked because of language and cultural barriers, said Iván Espinoza-Madrigal, the executive director of Boston’s Lawyers for Civil Rights. Subconscious bias among teachers who nominate students for the program also play a role, he said.

Elsewhere, the renowned Lowell High School in San Francisco in February scrapped admissions exams in favor of a lottery system. In Fairfax County, Virginia, parents recently lost a legal bid to undo their school district’s decision to do away with testing for admissions to a campus catering to high achievers in science and technology.

Most gifted and talented programs have relied on tests to determine eligibility, with some families spending thousands of dollars on tutoring and expensive specialized programs to boost scores and increase their children’s chances of getting a coveted spot. 

Controversy over admissions into advanced education programs has simmered in other cities, including Los Angeles and Chicago. But nowhere has the debate been as intense as in New York, where Mayor Bill de Blasio said last month that he would begin to dismantle the program in elementary schools, calling it “exclusive and exclusionary.” 

Some parents, including Rose Zhu, have called on the city to expand the program, not do away with it. She joined dozens of other parents outside the city’s Department of Education building this month to protest de Blasio’s proposal, bringing along her 21-month-old daughter, who Zhu hopes will follow two older siblings into the city’s gifted and talented program. 

“I live in Queens, and our traditional schools in our districts aren’t really good,” she said. “So the G and T program is the best school I can put them in.”

De Blasio’s likely successor, fellow Democrat Eric Adams, has said he does not support eliminating the program, which would put him at odds with some of his Black constituents. Adams himself is African American.

One such constituent, Zakiyah Ansari, the New York City director for the Alliance for Quality Education, wants Adams to follow through with de Blasio’s pledge. 

“We believe every child is a gifted child, every child is a talented child,” Ansari said. “We have to have people as angry about taking away one program that impacts a few people and be more upset about the Black and brown kids who haven’t had access to excellent education.”

But Gentry, the director of the Gifted Education Research and Resource Institute, agreed that it was time for “a revolution to fix the problem that’s been long standing in terms of equity” in access to gifted and talented instruction.

She urged parents and school administrators to do the hard work of finding a compromise.

“I worry that the easy solution is to stop doing it,” she said. “I know the inequities exist. But the thing is, there’s a huge distinction between overhauling or eliminating.”

Here in New York City, this issue will be a first major test for the new mayor, most likely Eric Adams.

Tony