Amy Beth Bennett/South Florida Sun Sentinel

Dear Commons Community,

When police went to arrest Tony Patterson outside his Tampa home in August, he couldn’t believe the reason.

“What is wrong with this state, man?” Patterson protested as he was being escorted to a police car in handcuffs. “Voter fraud? Y’all said anybody with a felony could vote, man.”

Body-worn camera footage recorded by local police captured the confusion and outrage of Hillsborough County residents who found themselves in handcuffs for casting a ballot following investigations by Gov. Ron DeSantis’ new Office of Election Crimes and Security.

The Aug. 18 arrests — conducted hours before DeSantis called a news conference to tout his crackdown on alleged voter fraud — were carried out by state police officers accompanied by local law enforcement.

The never-before-seen footage, obtained by the Herald/Times through public records requests, offers a personal glimpse of the effects of DeSantis’ efforts to root out perceived voter fraud.

“They’re going to pay the price,” DeSantis said during the news conference announcing the arrests.

Of the 19 people arrested, 12 were registered as Democrats and at least 13 are Black, the Herald/Times found.

Romona Oliver, 55, was about to leave for work when police walked up her driveway at 6:52 a.m. and told her they had a warrant for her arrest.

“Oh my God,” she said.

An officer told her she was being arrested for fraud, a third-degree felony, for voting illegally in 2020.

“Voter fraud?” she said. “I voted, but I ain’t commit no fraud.”

Oliver and 19 others are facing up to five years in prison after being accused by DeSantis and state police of both registering, and voting, illegally.  As reported  by the Miami Herald.

They are accused of violating a state law that doesn’t allow people convicted of murder or felony sex offenses to automatically be able to vote after they complete their sentence. A 2018 state constitutional amendment that restored the right to vote to many felons excluded this group.

But, as the videos further support, the amendment and subsequent actions by state lawmakers caused mass confusion about who was eligible, and the state’s voter registration forms offer no clarity. They only require a potential voter to swear, under penalty of perjury, that they’re not a felon, or if they are, that their rights have been restored. The forms do not clarify that those with murder convictions don’t get automatic restoration of their rights.

Oliver, who served 18 years in prison on a second-degree murder charge, registered to vote at the Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles on Feb. 14, 2020. Six months later, she updated her address and completed another registration form.

After brief eligibility checks by the Department of State — which reports to DeSantis and is responsible for cleaning the rolls of ineligible voters — she was given a voter ID card both times.

Oliver wasn’t removed from the rolls until March 30 this year, more than two years later.

The recordings by Tampa police and Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies reveal officers who were patient, understanding — almost apologetic.

A handcuffed Nathan Hart, 49, found a sympathetic ear when he explained how he ended up registering and voting illegally, according to the sheriff’s office recording.

As he stood handcuffed, he told officers that he signed up to vote at the encouragement of somebody at “the driver’s license place.” Records show it was in March 2020.

“I said, ‘I’m a convicted felon, I’m pretty sure I can’t,’ ” Hart, a registered sex offender, told officers. “He goes, ‘Well, are you still on probation?’ ”

Hart’s probation had ended a month earlier, Hart recalled. The person told him to sign up anyway.

“He said, ‘Well, just fill out this form, and if they let you vote, then you can,’ ” Hart said. “ ‘If they don’t, then you can’t.’ ”

“Then there’s your defense,” one of the officers replied. “You know what I’m saying? That sounds like a loophole to me.”

“Well, we can hope,” Hart said.

The officer was correct in one way: State law says that a voter has to “willfully” commit the crime — a hurdle that has forced some prosecutors not to charge ineligible voters.

In Lake County this year, for example, prosecutors declined to bring charges against six convicted sex offenders who voted in 2020.

“In all of the instances where sex offenders voted, each appear to have been encouraged to vote by various mailings and misinformation,” prosecutor Jonathan Olson wrote. “Each were given voter registration cards which would lead one to believe they could legally vote in the election. The evidence fails to show willful actions on a part of these individuals.”

DeSantis’ voter fraud arrests are being carried out by the Office of Statewide Prosecution, which is restricted by law to prosecuting crimes, including voting, involving two or more judicial circuits. Those crimes are usually “complex, often large scale, organized criminal activity,” according to its website. The statewide prosecutor is Nicholas Cox, who was reappointed by Attorney General Ashley Moody in 2019.

Oliver’s lawyer, Tampa attorney Mark Rankin, said he thinks DeSantis’ election security force chose these 20 in particular because the public would not have sympathy for people who were convicted of murder or sexual offenses. During a news conference announcing the arrests, DeSantis noted their criminal records.

“That’s not an accident,” Rankin said. “That’s a political strategy.”

Public defenders representing Hart and Patterson declined to comment.

Patterson, a registered sex offender, wondered why he was being singled out when officers showed up at his home, the recording shows.

“This happened years ago,” he told officers. “Why now? Why me?”

Even the Tampa police officer driving Patterson to the jail seemed surprised by the charges against him. En route, the officer received a phone call and appeared to briefly discuss Patterson’s case.

“I’ve never seen these charges before in my entire life,” the officer said.

Handcuffed in the back seat, Patterson, 40, stewed. He said his brother encouraged him to register to vote.

“I always listen to everybody else. Vote for this. Vote for — come on, man,” Patterson grumbled. “I thought felons were able to vote. That’s why I signed a petition form, that’s what I remember.

“Why would you let me vote if I wasn’t able to vote?”

“I’m not sure, buddy,” the officer replied. “I don’t know.”

What a horrible way to treat people!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Democratic U.S. Rep. Val Demings of Florida went on the attack last night in her first debate against Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, accusing him of being a serial liar, while Rubio criticized her for supporting President Joe Biden’s economic agenda (see highlights below).

Rubio, a two-term senator, and Demings, a three-term congresswoman and former Orlando police chief, faced questions at the West Palm Beach debate on topics including inflation, abortion, voting rights, gun violence, immigration and foreign policy.

Florida has increasingly shifted rightward in recent election cycles, giving Rubio the advantage as Republicans now lead Democrats with voter registration in the state. But Demings clearly saw the debate as an opportunity to take Rubio on forcefully as she tries to become the state’s first Black senator.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Rubio skirted a question on whether he would support a federal abortion ban with no exceptions and instead called Demings’ position extreme because she would not say what limits on abortion she would support.

“Every bill I have ever sponsored on abortion and every bill I’ve ever voted for has exceptions,” Rubio said.

“What we know is that the senator supports no exceptions,” Demings responded. “He can make his mouth say anything today. He is good at that, by the way. What day is it and what is Marco Rubio saying?”

Following the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, Rubio has expressed his personal opposition to abortion in all cases while saying he’d back abortion-restricting statutes that include exceptions. Demings supports abortion access at least until fetal viability, saying the government should not be the one to determine that.

On gun control, Demings accused Rubio of not doing enough to change laws to prevent shootings, including mass killings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in 2016 and at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland in 2018.

“How long will you watch people being gunned down in first grade, fourth grade, high school, college, church, synagogue, grocery store, movie theater, a mall and a nightclub and do nothing?” Demings said.

But Rubio defended his opposition to gun restrictions, saying some proposals would not have stopped many of the mass shootings and Americans have a Second Amendment right to protect themselves.

“Everything she is for would have done nothing to stop any of those shootings,” Rubio said. “Every one of these shooters would have passed the background check that she keeps insisting on. No one here is in favor of mass shootings and violence.”

To address inflation, Rubio said the U.S. needs to stop spending so much money, citing some pandemic relief funds, and to boost domestic oil production. He chastised the Biden administration for its decision to release more oil from the U.S. strategic reserve to help bring down prices at the pump.

“Oil reserves do not exist to win midterms,” Rubio said.

Demings said the pandemic relief money was necessary to help hurting families and businesses.

“Of course the senator who has never run anything at all but his mouth would know nothing about helping people and being there for people when they are in trouble,” Demings said.

Rubio also attacked Demings for not passing legislation in Washington, saying all she had done was get post offices named after people. Demings angrily rejected his characterization, noting the buildings were named after police officers who died in the line of duty.

“It’s embarrassing that you think that honoring a person who was a hero by naming a federal building after them is nothing,” she said.

Demings repeatedly accused Rubio of distorting her record and positions on issues.

“I am really disappointed in you, Marco Rubio, because I think there was a time when you did not lie in order to win,” she said.

Rubio maintained that Demings was simply there to support Biden’s and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s agenda, while calling himself the most effective senator.

“In the two terms I’ve been there, no U.S. senator has gotten more done than I have,” he said. “The only thing she does is vote 100% with Pelosi.”

Asked whether he would accept the results of the 2022 election, Rubio said, “Sure, because I’m going to win.”

Later, he clarified that “no matter what the outcome is, I’ll support it, because Florida has good laws. They’re not some crazy laws like they have in Pennsylvania and these other places.”

Good debate!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Ellen Schrecker, retired professor from Yeshiva university and author of The Lost Promise: American Universities in the 1960s,  has a guest essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled, “The 50-Year War on Higher Education.”  Her message is that to understand today’s political battles in academia, you need to know how they began going back to the 1960s and 1970s. 

Here are two excerpts from her essay:

“We’re under siege in Florida,” said Paul Ortiz, president of the faculty union at the University of Florida. He was responding to the recent firing of the head of the university’s honors program for no apparent reason — unless, as some people speculated, he was fired for overseeing the construction of a new honors dorm that will have gender-neutral bathrooms.

The mysterious firing was only the latest in a series of attacks on higher education in the Sunshine State pushed by its ambitious governor, Ron DeSantis. Besides the highly touted “Don’t Say Gay” law, Florida’s educators must now navigate around measures that ban teaching critical race theory and other “divisive” concepts. They also face threats to eliminate tenure and allow students to film their classes so that they can report on their professors’ political biases.

While Florida is the epicenter of the current political assault on higher education, it is not alone. Over the past two years, legislators in dozens of states introduced nearly 200 measures aimed at limiting how students are taught about racism, sexism, and other forms of oppression in U.S. history. Although primarily directed at K-12 education, colleges are experiencing the chilling effects. McCarthyism persecuted individual professors because of their politics; today’s gag rules threaten to destroy what’s left of academic freedom in public higher education, which has already been weakened by years of economic austerity and political harassment.

To understand what’s happening, you need to see how the backlash against higher education began. You need to trace its roots in the 1960s, its evolution through the culture wars of the 1980s and ‘90s, and into the current populist fray. Then you need to do something about it. Professors, administrators, students, and concerned citizens can no longer stand on the sidelines, shaking our heads and deploring the potentially devastating consequences. The simple truth is this: For decades, outside forces have — both consciously and unintentionally — undermined the integrity and quality of public higher education in America. And time and time again, a divided academic community has failed to combat them effectively. We can and must do better. Seeds of resistance are sprouting. Together, we must nurture their growth. There is no time to lose…

… Higher education might have bounced back from its troubles once the economy did in the 1980s. But a powerful coterie of wealthy businessmen and free-market ideologues sought to delegitimize the university as part of a broader campaign to shrink the state.

That plan was laid out in a widely circulated memorandum, written by future Supreme Court Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. in the summer of 1971, that called on leading businessmen to reshape America’s political culture. Believing that radical students posed an existential threat to the free-enterprise system, Powell urged corporate officials to pay particular attention to higher education. To oust the left from the main institutions of American life, the business community would have to throw vast resources into taking over the media, the legal system, and, of course, the university.

By the time Powell produced his memo, the campaign he espoused was already underway. As works like Nancy MacLean’s 2017 exposé, Democracy in Chains, reveal, a handful of conservative foundations and wealthy individuals were constructing a network of activists and intellectuals to disseminate an anti-statist ideology, while delegitimizing the liberalism that had dominated U.S. political culture since the New Deal. Hundreds of millions of dollars poured into think tanks and publications designed to supply policy makers and the media with expertise that had previously been supplied by mainstream academics.

The conservative foundations also created a shadow academy. They endowed professorships, supported free-market economics departments, and developed programs that pushed the virtues of free enterprise at dozens of universities. Brand-name colleges got their share, but so too did lower-tier regional institutions like Middle Tennessee State University and Virginia’s George Mason University. Funders sought out promising conservative students, subsidizing their publications and political organizations and sponsoring their future careers. By the 1980s, these efforts had created a chorus of seemingly respectable voices delivering a devastating critique of the traditional university.”

Schrecker is correct in her analysis.  Higher education is currently under siege from the right but the seeds started decades ago. In my opinion,  the Powell Memorandum was most instrumental in lying the groundwork for the “siege.”

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Last night’s scheduled Game 5 of the AL Division Series between the Cleveland Guardians and New York Yankees at Yankee Stadium was postponed due to rain.

Major League Baseball made the announcement just after 9:30 p.m. (ET) last night, adding that the decisive Game 5 now will be played Tuesday at 4:07 p.m. at Yankee Stadium.

Monday’s game was scheduled to begin at 7:07 p.m., but MLB initially announced at about 6:20 p.m. that the start was being delayed due to a forecast of rain. The league then called it off for good over two hours later.

Tony

U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss in Turbulent Times!

Dear Commons Community,

Liz Truss is seeing her prime minister election triumph of six weeks ago turn into a sea of political turbulence.

Since her election in early September, the prime minister’s libertarian economic policies have triggered a financial crisis, emergency central bank intervention, multiple U-turns and the firing of her Treasury chief.

Now Truss faces a mutiny inside the governing Conservative Party that leaves her leadership hanging by a thread.  As reported by the Associated Press.

Conservative lawmaker Robert Halfon fumed yesterday that the last few weeks had brought “one horror story after another.” 

“The government has looked like libertarian jihadists and treated the whole country as kind of laboratory mice on which to carry out ultra, ultra free-market experiments,” he told Sky News.

It’s not as if the party wasn’t warned. During the summertime contest to lead the Conservatives, Truss called herself a disruptor who would challenge economic “orthodoxy.” She promised she would cut taxes and slash red tape, and would spur Britain’s sluggish economy to grow.

Her rival, former Treasury chief Rishi Sunak, argued that immediate tax cuts would be reckless amid the economic shockwaves from the coronavirus pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

The 172,000 Conservative Party members -– who are largely older and affluent ― preferred Truss’ boosterish vision. She won 57% of members’ votes to become leader of the governing party on Sept. 5. The next day, she was appointed prime minister by Queen Elizabeth II in one of the monarch’s final acts before her death on Sept. 8.

Truss’ first days in office were overshadowed by a period of national mourning for the queen. Then on Sept. 23, Treasury chief Kwasi Kwarteng announced the economic plan he and Truss had drawn up. It included 45 billion pounds ($50 billion) in tax cuts -– including an income tax reduction for the highest earners — without an accompanying assessment of how the government would pay for them.

Truss was doing what she and allies said she would. Libertarian think-tank chief Mark Littlewood predicted during the summer there would be “fireworks” as the new prime minister pushed for economic reform at “absolutely breakneck speed.”

Still, the scale of the announcement took financial markets, and political experts, by surprise.

“Many of us, wrongly, expected her to pivot after she won the leadership contest in the way many presidents do after winning the primaries,” said Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London. “But she didn’t do that. She actually meant what she said.”

The pound plunged to a record low against the U.S. dollar and the cost of government borrowing soared. The Bank of England was forced to step in to buy government bonds and prevent the financial crisis from spreading to the wider economy. The central bank also warned that interest rates will have to rise even faster than expected to curb inflation that is running at around 10%, leaving millions of homeowners facing big increases in mortgage payments.

Jill Rutter, a senior fellow at the Institute for Government think tank, said Truss and Kwarteng made a series of “unforced errors” with their economic package.

“They shouldn’t have made their contempt for economic institutions quite so clear,” she said. “I think they could have listened to advice. And I think one of the things that they got very wrong was to announce one part of the package, the tax cuts … without the spending side of the equation.”

As the negative reaction grew, Truss began to abandon bits of the package in a bid to reassure her party and the markets. The tax cut for top earners was ditched in the middle of the Conservative Party’s annual conference in early October as the party rebelled.

It wasn’t enough. On Friday, Truss fired Kwarteng and replaced her longtime friend and ally with Jeremy Hunt, who served as health secretary and foreign secretary in the Conservative governments of David Cameron and Theresa May.

At a brief, downbeat news conference, the prime minister acknowledged that “parts of our mini budget went further and faster than markets were expecting.” She reversed a planned cut in corporation tax, another pillar of her economic plan, to “reassure the markets of our fiscal discipline.”

Truss is still prime minister in name, but power in government has shifted to Hunt, who has signaled he plans to rip up much of her remaining economic plan when he makes a medium-term budget statement on Oct. 31. He has said tax increases and public spending cuts will be needed to restore the government’s fiscal credibility.

Still, Hunt insisted Sunday: “The prime minister’s in charge.”

“She’s listened. She’s changed. She’s been willing to do that most difficult thing in politics, which is to change tack,” Hunt told the BBC.

The Conservative Party still commands a large majority in Parliament, and -– in theory -– has two years until a national election must be held. Polls suggest an election would be a wipeout for the Tories, with the Labour Party winning a big majority.

Conservative lawmakers are agonizing about whether to try to replace their leader for a second time this year. In July, the party forced out Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who led them to victory in 2019, when serial ethics scandals ensnared his administration.

Now many of them have buyer’s remorse about his replacement. Under party rules, Truss is safe from a leadership challenge for a year, but some Conservative legislators believe she can be forced to resign if the party can agree on a successor. Defeated rival Sunak, House of Commons leader Penny Mordaunt and popular Defense Secretary Ben Wallace are among the names being mentioned as potential replacements. Johnson, who remains a lawmaker, still has supporters, too.

Junior Treasury minister Andrew Griffith argued Sunday that Truss should be given a chance to try to restore order.

“This is a time when we need stability,” he told Sky News. “People at home are just tearing their hair out at the level of uncertainty. What they want to see is a competent government getting on with (the) job.”

Tony

Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL responds to Trump

Dear Commons Community,

Former President Donald Trump criticized the U.S. Jewish community yesterday for, as he put it, being insufficiently supportive of Israel.

“U.S. Jews have to get their act together and appreciate what they have in Israel — before it is too late!” Trump declared on his social media website, Truth Social. As reported by Yahoo News and other media.

Trump touted his support for Israel in office while saying American Jews don’t fully appreciate his accomplishments for the country. “No President has done more for Israel than I have,” he asserted. “Somewhat surprisingly, however, our wonderful Evangelicals are far more appreciative of this than the people of the Jewish faith, especially those living in the U.S.”

Antisemites have argued for centuries that Jews can have “dual loyalty” with their religious faith; in the modern era, that pillar of antisemitism has shifted to claiming that Jews have an allegiance to Israel.

It’s a canard that Trump has previously promoted.

In 2019, then-President Trump drew widespread criticism when he said American Jews who support Democrats were showing “great disloyalty” to Israel. “If you want to vote Democrat, you are being very disloyal to Jewish people and very disloyal to Israel,” he also said at the White House.

“It’s unclear who @POTUS is claiming Jews would be ‘disloyal’ to,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said on Twitter at the time, “but charges of disloyalty have long been used to attack Jews.” He added: “It’s long overdue to stop using Jews as a political football.”

Trump also faced accusations of antisemitism in 2020, when he referred to Israel as “your country” while speaking to American Jewish leaders. He referred to Israel’s prime minister as “your prime minister” at a 2019 event with American Jews.

Jonathan A. Greenblatt, the CEO of the ADL (Anti-Defamation League) and its National Director, responded to Trump on Twitter (see above).

Tony

Nationally, test scores have fallen in math even more than in reading. At Benjamin Franklin Elementary, children have defied the trend. Credit…Christopher Capozziello for The New York Times

Dear Commons Community,

Mathematics has been the hardest hit subject in terms of student outcomes since the COVID Pandemic started in 2020. Benjamin Franklin Elementary in Meriden, Connecticut has implemented a new teaching strategy that allows teachers to spend more time on the subject.  It appear to be paying off.  Here is an excerpt from a New York Times article describing its  approach.

“It’s just after lunchtime, and Dori Montano’s fifth-grade math class is running on a firm schedule.

In one corner of the classroom, Ms. Montano huddles with a small group of students, working through a lesson about place value: Is 23.4 or 2.34 the bigger number? Nearby, other students collaborate to solve a “math mystery.” All the while, Ms. Montano watches the time.

At 1:32 p.m., she presses a buzzer, sending students shuffling: “Ladies and gentleman, switch please!”

This is what pandemic recovery looks like at Benjamin Franklin Elementary in Meriden, Conn., where students are showing promising progress in math, a subject that was hit hard during the shift to remote learning, even more so than reading.

The school’s math progress may not look like much: a small improvement amounting to a single decimal point increase from spring 2019 to the spring of this year, according to state test results.

But by pandemic standards, it was something of a minor miracle, holding steady when test scores nationally have fallen, particularly among low-income, Black and Hispanic students, the children that Franklin serves. About three in four students at the school qualify for free or reduced lunch, and a majority are Hispanic, Black or multiracial.

The groundwork was laid before the pandemic, when Franklin overhauled how math was taught.

It added as much as 30 minutes of math instruction a day. Students in second grade and above now have more than an hour, and fourth and fifth graders have a full 90 minutes, longer than is typical for many schools. Students no longer have lessons dominated by a teacher writing problems on a white board in front of the class. Instead, they spend more time wrestling with problems in small groups. And, for the first time, children who are behind receive math tutoring during the school day.

Any one of the changes may seem small. But pulling them off required an almost herculean effort and cultural shifts at every level. District officials needed to shake up teaching methods and the school day to maximize instruction time; principals needed to enforce the changes and teachers had to accept having less autonomy.

“In the old way, it was, Open your textbook and sit there and be bored,” said Dan Crispino, the director of school leadership who oversaw changes at Franklin and other elementary schools in Meriden, a former manufacturing town with about 8,500 students in its public schools.

By his own admission, the changes did not always make Mr. Crispino popular.

“They had a wanted sign — dead or alive — for me all over the district,” he joked, though a certain truth remained. After all, he was telling teachers how to do their jobs, sometimes down to the minute.

The results are still early, but Franklin offers a glimpse of just how much it may take to help students catch up amid the pandemic — and how far there is to go.

When federal officials release national test results for fourth and eighth graders on Oct. 24, educators expect to see stark declines from 2019. Even before Covid, American students trailed global competitors in math, and too many children performed below grade level, with alarming gaps in outcomes that often left low-income students and students of color behind.

Today, at Franklin, about 45 percent of students are proficient in math, in line with state averages. Yet an hour south in New Canaan, a wealthier, whiter district with a median household income of about $190,000, elementary students have almost double the math proficiency rate, at about 85 percent. Like other states, Connecticut has significant disparities in school funding that mean Meriden’s spending per student is among the lowest in the state.

“The bottom line is that school districts across the country have their work cut out for them,” said Daniel A. Domenech, executive director of the School Superintendents Association. “We have such a significant achievement gap in performance in this country between the haves and the have-nots, and that gap was made even greater by the pandemic.”

Mr. Crispino, a former principal, was hired to oversee all elementary schools after helping turn around one district school that had been at risk of being taken over by the state because of poor performance. The school was eventually awarded a prestigious national award, and Mr. Crispino was asked to take the lessons learned districtwide.

Then the pandemic struck.

Meriden reopened faster than many places, by fall 2020, a decision that surely helped buffer against more serious academic losses. Still, many families opted to stay home, including at Franklin, where some students remained remote for many months.

To make up for lost learning, schools across the country have sought to add instruction, though often outside the school day, during afternoon tutoring or summer school. Such programs can be helpful but depend on student attendance.

Meriden continued to bet on the school day itself.

District officials had repurposed a half-hour meant for extra help on various subjects — either from teachers or through work sheets — and put that time into math.

Up and down the hallways at Franklin, math is now taught the same way: a short lesson, followed by group work. For 15 or 20 minutes, the teacher meets with some students, while others work in their own groups. Students who need extra help go with tutors, some of whom were paid for with federal pandemic relief funds.”

Sounds like an effective strategy!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On Friday for the first time, borrowers were able to apply for up to $20,000 in student loan cancellation that President Biden had promised in August.

The United States Department of Education (USDOE), which directly holds $1.6 trillion in federal student loan debt owed by 45 million borrowers, said it had begun “beta testing the student debt relief website.” The USDOE said it hoped the test would help it find any problems before the site publicly opened. That is expected to happen shortly.  As reported by The New York Times.

“Borrowers will not need to reapply if they submit their application during the beta test, but no applications will be processed until the site officially launches later this month,” a department spokeswoman said.

Some immediately pounced on the suddenly active site.

“Application for student debt relief is now live!!” Representative Ilhan Omar, a Democrat of Minnesota, tweeted.

On Twitter, some people reported successfully submitting applications. Others were met with the news that their application was in a queue with the message: “We’re accepting applications to help us refine our processes ahead of the official form launch. If you submit an application, it will be processed, and you won’t need to resubmit.”

Mr. Biden’s plan to eliminate up to $20,000 per borrower in federal student loan debt — an executive action estimated to cost $400 billion or more — has been challenged in court, intensifying the pressure on the administration to discharge debt quickly. A federal judge in Missouri heard oral arguments this week on a lawsuit from a group of Republican state attorneys general seeking an injunction to prevent the debt cancellation from being implemented.

The USDOE said in court filings that October 23 would be the soonest it anticipated canceling student debt.

A start!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Wall Street Journal scorched Donald Trump in a flaming editorial yesterday for his “dereliction of duty” for failing to take expedient action to quell the violence that threatened the U.S. government on Jan. 6 last year.

The House Jan. 6 committee clearly demonstrated in its hearing Thursday the “facts surrounding Mr. Trump’s recklessness” after the presidential election, and his “dereliction of duty on Jan. 6,” noted the newspaper’s editorial board.

An angry Trump continued to spur on and rile up his supporters with furious, but spurious, complaints about a rigged election — even though the “Justice Department and Mr. Trump’s own campaign repeatedly told him that his fraud claims were without basis. Whether it was willful blindness or an intentional strategy, he kept repeating them,” the Journal noted.

Trump continued to publicly insist he had won the election, even though he admitted to at least one witness that he had “lost to this effing guy,” Joe Biden.

Yet Trump nevertheless continued to pressure then-Vice President Mike Pence to toss out the Electoral College count, “while calling for a Jan. 6 rally that he tweeted ‘will be wild!’” the editorial recounted.

As the violence at the Capitol unfurled on a television screen in the White House and police officers were savagely beaten by his supporters, Trump took no action for hours.

Though the committee voted unanimously Thursday to subpoena Trump to testify, he’s unlikely to cooperate, the Journal noted. “But the evidence of his bad behavior is now so convincing that political accountability hardly requires it,” the newspaper declared.

Despite the blast at Trump, all is hardly forgiven when it comes to right-wing publisher Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal and its former staunch support of the man it now attacks. Early this month MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace raked the newspaper for its long-time defense of Trump following another attack on him.

The Journal was “seven years too late to the parade,” Wallace complained. The paper did “more laundering and legitimizing of Donald Trump’s presidency than perhaps any other outlet,” added Wallace, who was the White House communications director for former President George W. Bush.

“They’re as culpable as any news organization in this country for his presidency and his ongoing viability as a political figure,” she said.

Better late than never!

Tony

A conceptual rendering of the SPARC Kips Bay campus. Courtesy: New York City Economic Development Corporation

Dear Commons Community,

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Governor Kathy Hochul yesterday unveiled plans for the Science Park and Research Campus (SPARC) Kips Bay, a $1.6 billion job and education innovation hub that will be the first-of-its-kind in the state. Driven by an historic investment from the city and state, SPARC Kips Bay will help New York City become a global leader in creating and attracting accessible jobs in life sciences, health care, and public health by creating a pipeline from local public schools to careers in these growing and essential fields.

Through a partnership with The City University of New York (CUNY), SPARC Kips Bay will generate approximately $25 billion in economic impact to the city over the next 30 years; create 10,000 jobs, including 2,000 permanent jobs; and transform Hunter College’s Brookdale Campus on East 25th Street and First Avenue into new, state-of-the-art teaching and commercial facilities. This project will transform an entire city block — with over 1.5 million square feet of academic, public health, and life sciences space, more than doubling the life sciences footprint in Kips Bay — and rebuild a new accessible pedestrian bridge on East 25th street connecting to the East River and Manhattan Waterfront Greenway.

This public-private partnership delivers on commitments from Mayor Adams’ “Rebuild, Renew, Reinvent: A Blueprint for New York City’s Economic Recovery” and his first State of the City address delivered in April. It also follows a series of actions taken in the first months of the Adams administration to invest in and plan the future of the city and the region’s life sciences industry — the country’s leading region for life sciences jobs and funding — particularly in Kips Bay, where the life science ecosystem has seen over $2 billion in investment in the last 15 years.

“This new Science Park and Research Campus in Kips Bay will be not only a hub for the life sciences industry and an anchor for the neighborhood, but also a bridge to the future for our city’s young people,” said Mayor Adams. “SPARC Kips Bay will transform an entire city block into a state-of-the-art destination for the life sciences industry and be a place where workforce development, economic opportunity, and public health come together seamlessly — attracting businesses and uplifting New Yorkers to bring our city back stronger than ever with $25 billion in new economic activity for our city over the next three decades. Thank you to all our partners for the vision and teamwork to ‘Get Stuff Done.’”

“Thanks to this agreement with the city, SPARC Kips Bay will give New York’s life sciences sector a major boost, creating thousands of high-paying jobs, investing in education, and making New York the place where miracles are made,” Governor Hochul said. “My administration remains laser-focused on saving lives and making New York the home of the transformative fields of the future, and with this project, we will achieve both of these goals at the same time.”

Below is an excerpt of an announcement from CUNY Chancellor Félix V. Matos Rodríguez commenting on SPARC.

Tony

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OFFICE OF THE CHANCELLOR

Dear CUNY Community,

Yesterday I proudly joined Governor Hochul and Mayor Adams to announce plans to transform Hunter College’s Brookdale Campus into a 1.5-million-square-foot, state-of-the-art public health and education hub to be known as Science Park and Research Campus (SPARC) Kips Bay. This life sciences hub will house Hunter’s School of Nursing and Hunter research labs, the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health & Public Policy and Borough of Manhattan Community College health programs. It will also include a new Department of Education high school, creating a talent pipeline from high school to college to nursing school to career.

As the COVID-19 pandemic illustrated, New York City relies on a steady crop of well-trained nurses and health professionals to meet the needs of our complex city. Each year, CUNY enrolls about 40,000 students in health and human services programs, and this facility will prepare them to work in New York’s growing life sciences and public health sectors as well as create much-needed jobs in these fields to help our economy. This expansion will also bolster our strong partnerships with leading health care industry employers including NYC Health + Hospitals, Mount Sinai Health System, One Brooklyn Health, Northwell Health, Maimonides Medical Center and SBH Health System.

This project will not only benefit CUNY. SPARC Kips Bay will create thousands of good jobs for all New Yorkers and generate an estimated $25 billion in economic impact for the city over the next 30 years. The plan features:

• An H+H/Bellevue ambulatory care center that will offer screenings, same-day procedures, diagnostics and preventive care;
• An H+H simulation training center that will allow CUNY students and others to simulate patient scenarios, utilizing mock operating rooms and labor and delivery rooms;
• A new Office of Chief Medical Examiner (OCME) Forensic Pathology Center.
• Commercial space, public space and an ADA-accessible pedestrian bridge over the FDR drive, integrating the campus into the Kips Bay community.

The planning phase of SPARC Kips Bay will soon get underway in collaboration with all the partners on the project. In the future, we will be providing additional information regarding a timetable for the start of the demolition, construction and any necessary relocations. We expect the dorms in the Brookdale campus to remain open until 2024 but more information will be made available later.

Most importantly, this historic announcement is another sign that CUNY lifts New York. I look forward to continuing to work with our partners in New York’s City and State governments to fortify and strengthen our economy as we help it to move forward in ways that fuel equitable growth and long-term prosperity.

Sincerely,

Félix V. Matos Rodríguez, Ph.D.
Chancellor