David C. Banks

Dear Commons Community,

David C. Banks, the chancellor of New York City’s public school system, announced late on Tuesday that he would resign from his post at the end of December.

The announcement came just weeks after federal agents seized Mr. Banks’s phone as part of a bribery investigation involving his brothers and fiancée — and it promised to roil not just the nation’s largest school system but also a mayoral administration already reeling from at least four separate federal corruption inquiries.

The schools chancellor’s resignation is the fourth in less than two weeks among top officials in Mayor Eric Adams’s administration, following the resignations of the police commissioner and the city’s top lawyer and a statement from the health commissioner saying he would leave office at the end of the year.

Of those officials, Mr. Banks is by far the closest to the mayor, who recently said that he has known the chancellor; his younger brother, Philip B. Banks III, the deputy mayor for public safety; and the rest of the Banks family for decades and would continue to have a relationship with them.  As reported by The New York Times.

And the announcement of the chancellor’s departure caught his subordinates off guard. It landed just three weeks into the new school year, and occurred as his Education Department was still scrambling to address students’ flagging academic performance and behavioral and mental health concerns that were lingering aftereffects of the pandemic.

Melissa Aviles-Ramos, one of the chancellor’s top deputies, is expected to be named the next chancellor as soon as Wednesday, according to three people with knowledge of the appointment. It is not immediately clear whether Ms. Aviles-Ramos, who previously served as Mr. Banks’s chief of staff, would serve on an interim or permanent basis.

The resignation announcement was an abrupt turnaround for a man who has said since at least the mid-1990s that the schools chancellorship was the job he wanted more than any other.

But outside the Education Department, his past several weeks have been filled with turmoil.

On. Sept. 4, the day before classes were to begin for New York City’s 900,000 public-school students, the chancellor’s phone was seized around dawn by federal agents conducting a bribery and corruption investigation that is focused at least in part on a consulting firm run by Mr. Banks’s youngest brother, Terence Banks.

David Banks’s fiancée, Sheena Wright, the first deputy mayor, also had her phone seized when federal agents appeared at their door. And his brother Philip also had his phone taken by federal agents.

That investigation was separate from the other three inquiries swirling around the Adams administration, which include an investigation into whether Mr. Adams and his campaign conspired with the Turkish government to receive illegal foreign donations.

Neither Mr. Banks nor anyone else has been accused of wrongdoing in the investigations, and it was not clear whether prosecutors would file charges at all.

At a recent news conference, he maintained that he had done nothing wrong.

“I have always lived my life with integrity,” Mr. Banks said. “Every day.”

We wish him luck!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Former Trump White House communications director Alyssa Farah Griffin yesterday explained why Donald Trump — in light of what she described as his “creepy” promise to be a “protector” of women if he wins back the White House — may come to regret not picking a woman as his running mate.  As reported by The Huffington Post and CNN.

The former president, who a jury in May found liable for the sexual abuse of writer E. Jean Carroll in the 1990s, at a rally yesterday said of women: “I want to be your protector as president, I have to be your protector. I hope you don’t make too much of it. I hope the fake news doesn’t go, ‘Oh, he wants to be their protector.’ Well, I am. As president, I have to be your protector.”

“I started laughing and thinking it was creepy,” Griffin told CNN’s Anderson Cooper of her immediate response.

But then “thinking more about it,” Griffin said, she felt it was “very infantilizing.”

“Talking about women as though we’re weak, we’re meek, we need a protector, we need a defender and we just sit around thinking about abortions all day, it just underscores a fundamental lack of understanding for why a demographic that represents half of the country is one that he is struggling so profoundly with,” she explained.

Griffin predicted of Trump: “If he loses this election [he] is going to look back and think that one of the worst decisions he made was not having a female on the ticket who actually knows how to speak to living, breathing, normal women about issues that matter to them.”

Instead, Trump chose Ohio Sen. JD Vance — who has drawn ire with his “childless cat ladies” comments, among many others.

“Yes, reproductive rights do matter, access to IVF, to the whole suite of care that women care about, whether it be abortion or so on,” said Griffin. “But economics and national security are also women’s issues, and just the way he is talking about them is not the way to sway voters in the middle.”

Watch Griffin’s commentary below.

Tony

"It underscores a fundamental lack of understanding for why a demographic that represents half of the country is one that he is struggling so profoundly with": @AlyssaFarah @DavidAxelrod @JamalSimmons @Mowers discuss Trump casting himself as a "protector" of women. pic.twitter.com/OHOQUOi64Y

— Anderson Cooper 360° (@AC360) September 25, 2024

Juan Williams and Kellanne Conway.  Courtesy of Fox News.

Dear Commons Community,

Fox News’ political analyst Juan Williams on Yesterday called out former Trump White House counselor Kellyanne Conway — to her face, live on the air — for her spin on what was purportedly Donald Trump’s speech on what he plans to do with the economy.

Conway claimed the former president “got very granular” with his lengthy address in Georgia and argued it was “a challenge” to Democratic nominee Kamala Harris to “stop talking in generics and be more granular.”

Williams, though, wasn’t having it.

“You know, Kellyanne said he got granular. I’m still waiting for the grain here, the granular pieces, because, to me, this was a speech in which he’s trying to set out a new policy, I guess […] but all I heard from him was attacks on Harris, ‘Comrade Kamala.’ For an hour and a half, ‘Kamala is a communist.’”

Conway, who during Trump’s presidency displayed her penchant for “alternative facts,” pushed back, saying: “Come on, Juan. You have the text in front of you. Don’t say that.”

Williams was undeterred.

“This was pretty much just an ad hominem personal attack,” he said. “It made for like a rally-like atmosphere. It was a brash promise he’s making to make everything better, he says, ‘It’ll be so easy.’ But the reality is, even as he attacks Harris, he ignores the fact the U.S. economy right now is growing even after COVID. It’s the best on the globe. Manufacturing fell to its lowest under Trump.”

Williams said he didn’t hear any new policies from Trump, and that it was just the same old schtick from the ex-POTUS.

Conway told Williams, “I just can’t sit here and abide these lies.”

To which Williams fired back, “It’s not a lie. It’s the absolute truth.”

Watch the exchange below courtesy of Fox News and Raw Story.

Well worth viewing!

Tony

Donald Trump and Recip Taqyyip  Erdogan. Photo by Peter Nicholls via Getty Image.

Dear Commons Community,

I am currently reading Nexus:  A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI by Yuval Harari that examines the flow and importance of information throughout human existence.  Similar to Harari’s best-seller, Sapiens, this is a long, sweeping treatment of its subject matter. 

In Chapter Five, Harari discusses the control of information in government and analyzes democracies versus dictatorships. He observes that dictators become adept at using elections to gain power and then impose tyrannical positions.  He mentions Adolf Hitler, who was popularly elected and subsequently became a ruthless Fuhrer. Also mentioned is President of Turkey  Recip Taqyyip  Erdogan,  who Harari quotes as saying:

“Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”

Donald Trump has referred to Erdogan as someone he admires.  Trump has also said that if elected president, he will be a dictator for one day. 

Make no mistake, Trump and Erdogan are the same birds of a feather!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

School districts in California will have to create new rules restricting student smartphone use under a new law Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom signed yesterday.

The legislation makes California the latest state to try to curb student phone access in an effort to minimize distractions in the classroom and address the mental health impacts of social media on children. Florida, Louisiana, Indiana and several other states have passed laws aimed at restricting student phone use at school.  As reported by The Associated Press.

“This new law will help students focus on academics, social development, and the world in front of them, not their screens, when they’re in school,” Newsom said in a statement.

But some critics of phone restriction policies say the burden should not fall on teachers to enforce them. Others worry the rules will make it harder for students to seek help if there is an emergency or argue that decisions on phone bans should be left up to individual districts or schools.

“We support those districts that have already acted independently to implement restrictions because, after a review of the needs of their stakeholders, they determined that made the most sense for their communities with regards to safety, school culture and academic achievement,” said Troy Flint, a spokesperson for the California School Boards Association. “We simply oppose the mandate.”

The law requires districts to pass rules by July 1, 2026, to limit or ban students from using smartphones on campus or while students are under the supervision of school staff. Districts will have to update their policies every five years after that.

The move comes after Newsom signed a law in 2019 authorizing school districts to restrict student phone access. In June, he announced plans to take on the issue again after the U.S. surgeon general called on Congress to require warning labels on social media platforms and their effects on young people.

The governor then sent letters to districts last month, urging them to limit student device use on campus. That came on a day that the board for the second-largest school district in the country, Los Angeles Unified, voted to ban student phone use during the school day beginning in January.

Assemblymember Josh Hoover, a Republican representing Folsom, introduced the bill with a bipartisan group of lawmakers who are also parents.

Phones are restricted where Hoover’s children — ages 15, 12 and 10 — attend school. Many of the students don’t always like the policy, which is in part a reflection of how addictive phones can be, he said.

“Anytime you’re talking about interrupting that addiction, it’s certainly going to be hard for students sometimes,” Hoover said. “But I think overall they understand why it’s important, why it helps them focus better on their classes and why it actually helps them have better social interaction with their peers face to face when they’re at school.”

Some parents have raised concerns that school cellphone bans could cut them off from their children if there is an emergency. Those fears were highlighted after a shooting at a Georgia high school left four dead and nine injured this month.

The 2019 law authorizing districts to restrict student phone access makes exceptions for emergencies, and the new law doesn’t change that. Some proponents of school phone restrictions say it’s better to have phones off in an active shooter situation, so that they don’t ring and reveal a student’s location.

Teachers have reported seeing students more engaged since the Santa Barbara Unified School District began fully implementing a ban on student phone use in class during the 2023-24 school year, Assistant Superintendent ShaKenya Edison said.

Nick Melvoin, a Los Angeles Unified board member who introduced the district’s resolution, said passing the policies at the district or state level can help prevent students from feeling like they’re missing out on what’s going on on social media.

Before student cellphone use was banned during the school day at Sutter Middle School in Folsom, students had been seen recording fights, filming TikTok challenges and spending lunchtime looking at online content, Principal Tarik McFall said. The rule has “totally changed the culture” of the school so that students spend more time talking to one another, he said.

“To have them put away, to have them power off and that be a practice, it has been a great thing,” McFall said.

Teachers have become more reliant in recent years on technology as a learning tool for students, particularly since the COVID-19 pandemic, said Mara Harvey, a social studies teacher at Discovery High School in the Natomas Unified School District.

The district, which is in Sacramento, provides students in the first through 12th grades with a Chromebook, where they can access online textbooks and Google Classroom, a platform where teachers share class materials. But if a student forgets their Chromebook at home, their smartphone becomes “the next viable choice for them to access the curriculum,” Harvey said.

Many other states will follow California in imposing restrictions on cellphone use in schools.

Tony

Liz Cheney

Dear Commons Community,

Dear Commons Community,

The autumn equinox is upon us, and with it, a shift to shorter days, longer nights and the astronomical start of fall in the Northern Hemisphere.  Autumn officially starts today at 8:43 am (EDT).

Equinoxes occur when Earth reaches a point in its orbit where the sun shines directly on the Equator. This happens twice a year, in March and in September, and is a result of Earth’s spinning on an axis that is tilted 23.5 degrees from the plane of its orbit. During an equinox, places around the globe experience nearly equal periods of day and night.

Happy Fall!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

According to the Pew Research Center, Americans owe about $1.6 trillion in student loans as of June 2024 – 42% more than what they owed a decade earlier. The increase has come as greater shares of young U.S. adults go to college and as the cost of higher education increases.

The basis for its conclusion is the  Center’s analysis of data from several sources, including the Federal Reserve Board’s 2023 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking.  Here is a short summary.

One-in-four U.S. adults under 40 have student loan debt. This share drops to 14% among those ages 40 to 49 and to just 4% among those 50 and older.

Of course, not all Americans attend or graduate from college, so student loan debt is more common among the subset of people who have done so. Among adults under 40 who have at least a four-year college degree, for example, 36% have outstanding student loan debt.

Age differences reflect, in part, the fact that older adults have had more time to repay their loans. Still, other research has found that young adults are also more likely now than in the past to take out loans to pay for their education. In the 2018-2019 academic year, 28% of undergraduate students took out federal student loans. That’s up from 23% in 2001-2002, according to data from College Board – a nonprofit organization perhaps best known for its standardized admissions tests (like the SAT) that also documents trends in higher education.

The amount of student loan debt that Americans owe varies widely by their education level. Overall, the median borrower with outstanding student debt owed between $20,000 and $24,999 in 2023.

• Among borrowers who attended some college but don’t have a bachelor’s degree, the median owed was between $10,000 and $14,999 in 2023.
• The typical bachelor’s degree holder who borrowed owed between $20,000 and $24,999.
• Among borrowers with a postgraduate degree the median owed was between $40,000 and $49,999.

Looking at the same data another way, a quarter of borrowers without a bachelor’s degree owed at least $25,000 in 2023. About half of borrowers with a bachelor’s degree (49%) and an even higher share of those with a postgraduate education (71%) owed at least that much.

Adults with a postgraduate degree are especially likely to have a large amount of student loan debt. About a quarter of these advanced degree holders who borrowed (26%) owed $100,000 or more in 2023, compared with 9% of all borrowers. Overall, only 1% of all U.S. adults owed at least $100,000.

My colleague Patsy Moskal at the University of Central Florida alerted me to this study by the Pew Research Center.

Tony

Abortion Rights on Ballot in Ohio in November.  ABC News

Dear Commons Community,

Just two years ago, leading anti-abortion activists were euphoric as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, thus ending the nationwide right to abortion.

Now, with a presidential election fast approaching, their movement is disunited. Within their own ranks, there is second-guessing and finger-pointing, plus trepidation that Election Day might provide new proof that their cause is broadly unpopular.  As reported by The Associated Press.

A key reason for the wariness is the anti-abortion movement’s recent losing streak on abortion-related ballot measures in seven states, including conservative Kansas and Kentucky. Nine more states will consider constitutional amendments enshrining abortion rights in the Nov. 5 election — Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada and South Dakota. In several of them, abortion opponents tried various unsuccessful strategies for blocking the measures.

“Pro-life people don’t wear rose-colored glasses; we know we have a huge task ahead of us,” Carol Tobias, president of National Right to Life, told the AP. “Because of the massive amounts of money being dumped into the ballot measures from those allied with the abortion industry and the Democratic Party, it’s an uphill battle.”

“We will continue to educate, to make people aware of the catastrophic result if these measures pass,” she added. “I have not seen flagging energy or any loss of determination among pro-life people.”

Texas is among the Republican-governed states that have enacted near-total abortion bans. Yet nationally, Texas Right to Life president John Seago said, the anti-abortion movement “is in a critical chapter right now.”

“Following a historic legal victory, we have realized that while we had enjoyed massive legislative and legal victories in the last decade, public opinion had not followed the same trajectory,” he added.

Troy Newman, who heads the anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, recently published an online opinion piece assailing the movement he’s been a part of for 25 years.

“The tide has turned, and the pro-life message is now considered a political liability that could prevent President Trump’s victorious return to the White House,” Newman wrote.

“After evaluating the terrible mistakes of the pro-life movement over the last several years, I can only conclude that it is our fault,” Newman wrote. “We have had over 50 years to change the culture’s position on abortion only to have failed miserably.”

In an interview with the AP, Newman blamed those in his own ranks for the predicament — saying some anti-abortion leaders should have been more adamant in their positions. “We lose the minute we stop focusing on the babies,” he said.

Kristan Hawkins, leader of Students for Life of America, suggested via email that Newman’s views were ill-suited to the post-Roe era. She said the students in her organization were embracing the challenges of a state-by-state playing field.

But she acknowledged the magnitude of the challenges.

“I actually believe the biggest threat is ourselves — our mindsets — which will lead to decreased recruitment, training, and mobilization of our grassroots army of love,” she wrote recently in the conservative outlet Townhall.

“Look at the struggles we face this fall with several late-term abortion ballot referendums,” she added. “Most will likely be a political loss for our movement because, in most states, a politically sophisticated, organized, and well-funded state-wide movement is not present.”

Hawkins also acknowledged the anger among some anti-abortion activists over the inconsistent rhetoric on abortion coming from the Republican presidential ticket of former President Donald Trump and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance.

“I’m not here to make apologies for the Campaign and their political miscalculations, which are dividing us and could very well lead to their defeat,” wrote Hawkins.

Trump nominated the Supreme Court members who were crucial to overturning Roe and called it “a beautiful thing to watch” as various states took different directions. He has been evasive on whether he would veto a federal abortion ban if Congress approved one; his “leave it to the states” approach conveys acceptance of the current patchwork map in which abortion is widely available in at least half the states.

Eligible to vote in Florida, Trump has criticized as too restrictive a new state law banning abortion after the first six weeks of pregnancy. But he said he would vote against the ballot measure that would make abortion legal until fetal viability.

Trump’s support for a state-by-state solution was a factor in the decision of Charles Camosy, an anti-abortion Catholic academic, to declare he now feels politically estranged.

“The Republican Party has rejected our point of view. Democrats are running a candidate ( Kamala Harris ) who has made abortion rights a centerpiece of her campaign,” Camosy, a medical humanities professor at Creighton University School of Medicine, wrote recently in The Atlantic.

“Pro-lifers — those who believe that protecting vulnerable and unborn life should be a primary policy priority — now do not fit in either major political party.”

In an interview, Camosy said abortion-rights supporters were better prepared for the post-Roe era than their adversaries

“They were well-funded, they developed key relationships with the media,” Camosy said, while some Republican-controlled legislatures – in his view — went too far with stringent abortion bans.

“I see this moment as an opportunity,” Camosy wrote in The Atlantic. “Pro-life 3.0 must welcome people from multiple political and policy perspectives, working for both prenatal justice and social support for women and families.”

Some other anti-abortion activists have forcefully renounced Trump, including leaders of End Abortion Ohio.

“We call on God-fearing American voters to withhold their votes from Trump until he evidences genuine repentance for his pro-abortion stance,” said the group’s executive director, Nicholas Kallis.

Republicans and other Trump supporters should know by now that he has no commitments went it comes to policy. 

Tony