Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Linda Villarosa’s Under the Skin:  The Hidden Role of Racism  on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation.  Villarosa is a writer for The New York Times Magazine and has contributed to The 1619 Project.  She is also a professor of journalism here at the City University of New York.  The focus of Under the Skin is how racism is a driving force in this country for the low levels of health care available to Black Americans.  She states:  “The United States has the most advanced medical technology in the world and spends more on health care than any other country, yet the health outcomes of Black Americans are by several measures on  par with those of people living in poor countries.”  She backs up her claim with heart-wrenching case studies of individuals, most of whom succumb because they are they unable to get adequate health care. The New York Times Book Review lists Under the Skin as one of the best works of non-fiction in 2022.  I thought it was a good book and it grew on me as I got deeper into it.

Below is a review that appeared in The New York Times.

Tony

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The New York Times

The Roots of Black Pain in America

By Kaitlyn Greenidge

June 8, 2022

UNDER THE SKIN: The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation, by Linda Villarosa

In 1973, two Black girls, 14-year-old Minnie Lee Relf and her 12-year-old sister, Mary Alice, were forcibly taken from their home in Montgomery, Ala., and sterilized at a clinic funded by the federal government. Their parents — who had been displaced from rural Alabama into a cardboard shanty in the city and could not read or write — were tricked into agreeing to the procedure. Two years earlier, doctors had already begun to inject their oldest daughter, 15-year-old Katie, with the Depo-Provera contraceptive, then unapproved even for adult women, never mind teenagers.

Jessie Bly, a Black social worker who had brought the Relf family to the state’s attention the year before, recalled the horror of discovering what the state’s own doctors had done to the girls. Interviewing Bly for her remarkable third book, “Under the Skin,” Linda Villarosa writes: “Even nearly half a century later, Bly has no trouble conjuring the image of the younger Relf girls in the hospital, huddled together, looking small and scared in cotton surgical gowns.” At the sight of Bly, they began to cry. Mary Alice, who was born with a developmental disability, could only say: “I just hurt so bad. I just hurt so bad, Miss Bly, help me. Help me, Miss Bly.”

I am writing this review the week after the Supreme Court’s draft ruling to overturn Roe v. Wade was leaked. In the days since, some women and activists on social media have predicted that “‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ will become a reality,” conveniently forgetting that it already has been for generations of American women who are not white.

How this country understands birth, personhood and privacy — why its laws even presume to dictate what happens during an individual pregnancy — is deeply rooted in slavery. A couple of hundred years ago, the reproductive health of enslaved Black people literally decided the state of this country’s economy: More Black women able to bear more Black children meant that the plantation economy could prosper. But of course, the system of slavery — and the doctrine of anti-Blackness that sprang up to philosophically justify it — was predicated on inhumane physical, sexual and emotional violence. This entanglement of incentives left a cruel legacy that continues in today’s shocking racial health disparities. Through case histories like the Relfs’ story and the better-known Tuskegee experiment, as well as her independent reporting across the country, Villarosa elegantly traces the effects of this legacy on Black health: reproductive, environmental, mental and more.

Villarosa opens the book with a long personal history of her awakening to these structural inequalities. She was raised in an upwardly mobile Black family that moved from an all-Black neighborhood in Chicago to a white suburb in Colorado when she was a child. She often felt “like a fly in the buttermilk,” she writes, acutely aware of her imperative, as a representative of her race, to help other, poorer Black people. She began her career as a health journalist at the bible of Black women’s bougie ambitions, Essence magazine. The job required her to break down complex scientific and clinical reports into narratives for a general reader. That underrated skill serves Villarosa well in this book, where she repositions various narratives about race and medicine — the soaring Black maternal mortality rates; the rise of heart disease and hypertension; the oft-repeated dictum that Black people reject psychological therapy — as evidence not of Black inferiority, but of racism in the health care system.

A disciple of the gospel of racial uplift, Villarosa implicates herself as one of many well-meaning professionals who assumed that the “problem” of Black health must simply be a matter of education and class. If only poor Black people paid better attention, she once assumed, they would be healthier. In 1994, Villarosa wrote “Body & Soul: The Black Women’s Guide to Physical Health and Emotional Well-Being,” pitched as an African American “Our Bodies, Ourselves.” Angela Y. Davis and June Jordan wrote the foreword to the book. They “had been involved in the civil rights and Black Power movements and understood that structural racism and health care discrimination contributed greatly to the health problems that ‘Body & Soul’ covered,” Villarosa writes. “But as a child of the generation that benefited from earlier struggles but was too young to be involved in the movements, I stayed in my sweet spots — information, education and self-help.”

It is not until a 1991 encounter with Harold Freeman, the head of surgery at Harlem Hospital, that Villarosa begins to rethink this approach. Freeman had recently published a groundbreaking and explosive report in The New England Journal of Medicine that found that “Black men in Harlem lived fewer years than their counterparts in the impoverished country of Bangladesh.” Visiting Harvard during Villarosa’s fellowship there, Freeman admonished her: “If you really care about these issues and want to make a difference, you must not use race as a proxy for poverty or poverty as a proxy for race. … Look deeper, think differently.” Even as she took these words to heart, it would take decades for Villarosa to truly internalize them. This new approach finally came to a head in 2018, with Villarosa’s own groundbreaking reporting on the Black maternal health crisis, told through the experience of Simone Landrum, “a woman whose medical treatment led to the death of her baby and her own near death.” Published in The New York Times Magazine (where she has been a contributing writer since 2017), “Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis” made an immediate public impact, inspiring a slew of conferences, initiatives, further articles and testimonies, and culminating in a 2020 executive order by the governor at the time, Andrew Cuomo, requiring all New York hospitals to allow “support people,” i.e. doulas, in delivery rooms. The story formed the seed of this singular and expansive book on the racism of American health care.

But despite this wide influence, Villarosa felt the limits of this country’s understanding. I, along with almost every other Black woman of childbearing age I knew, read the piece and talked about it constantly. Trapped in the American narrative of individualism, I took the same ineffectual lessons from it that Villarosa had espoused at Essence: “to work within the medical system and squeeze everything you could” out of it, not to “challenge that system” but to “self-advocate for fair treatment.” I did all this during my own pregnancy, with Landrum’s story at the front of my mind. I took prenatal vitamins religiously; I followed doctor’s orders even when they suggested I should lose weight during my pregnancy; I hired a doula, and found a doctor who looked like me, and chose a hospital renowned for its low rate of cesarean sections. I still ended up in the hospital for a week before my daughter’s birth — a traumatizing time marked by painful medical interventions that I sometimes feel I am still coming to terms with. I had done everything, had “cared enough” in the face of everyone telling me Black mothers didn’t care. Instead of recognizing the external factors of my suffering, I internalized it into shame.

“Under the Skin” offers an alternative understanding of this suffering, for which there is a long history. Black pain is not, and has never been, the fault of the individual, but a result of the structural racism embedded in the practice of medicine in this country. Many doctors avoid confronting this truth. Hearing Villarosa’s account of Landrum’s harrowing delivery, a group of white Midwestern doctors only questioned why Villarosa was allowed in the delivery room at all. “That was your takeaway?” she replied. “The denial of racial bias can be so extreme that no one believes you even when you have the evidence.”

In this eminently admirable book, there are no easy answers or platitudes. Even as Villarosa meticulously outlines the myriad ways Black people have fought for their own health, from social workers to doulas to community organizers, she stays focused on the nature of a structural problem, which cannot be changed through individual choices. In 1992, Villarosa asked Audre Lorde if she agreed that racism in America was “dying out.” In response, Lorde “warned me that when something dies, it doesn’t just fade away; it fights to the death, desperately clinging to life, and goes out ugly.” If racial bias in medicine is receding, Villarosa concludes, it’s certainly “going out ugly.”

Dear Commons Community,

In one of his harshest attacks to date on Donald Trump, Senate Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said the former president’s clout has “diminished” and called him harmful to the Republican Party.

Trump has created a view of Republicans as “nasty and tended toward chaos,” McConnell said in an interview  with NBC News in his Capitol Hill office.

McConnell said he will no longer be cowed by Trump’s endorsements and vowed instead to “actively” seek “quality candidates” for 2024.

“Here’s what I think has changed: I think the former president’s political clout has diminished,” McConnell flatly stated.

Trump’s fading power is making Republicans “less inclined to accept cards that may be dealt to us,” McConnell said.

“We can do a better job with less potential interference,” McConnell said. “The former president may have other things to do.”

McConnell blamed Trump for damaging the party’s image among crucial independent and swing voters. He said the GOP underperformed in “every state” in the midterms — including the red state of Ohio, which Republicans narrowly won — and called its performance “fatal” in Arizona, New Hampshire and Georgia.

“We lost support that we needed among independents and moderate Republicans, primarily related to the view they had of us as a party — largely made by the former president — that we were sort of nasty and tended toward chaos,” McConnell said.

McConnell has it right but he has only himself and the other leaders of the GOP to blame.   They laid down and let themselves be stepped on by Trump and his followers, many of whom still hold political positions in government.

Tony

George Santos

Dear Commons Community,

New York Representative-elect George Santos has been the subject of intense scrutiny following the publication of a New York Times report that raised questions about whether he misrepresented key parts of his background and finances, and filed incomplete or inaccurate congressional disclosures.

“I have my story to tell and it will be told next week,” Mr. Santos, a Republican, said yesterday on Twitter.

Mr. Santos, 34, has refused to answer any questions from The Times about his past and finances, and has only pointed to a statement released by his lawyer that accused the Times of attempting to smear him.

In the report published on Monday, The Times found that key pillars of Mr. Santos’s résumé — including his education, ties to Wall Street firms and charitable endeavors that formed the basis of his pitch to voters — could not be substantiated. Instead, The Times found a string of debts and legal trouble, including an unresolved criminal matter in Brazil, that raise questions about the congressman’s rise to power and wealth.

Santos claimed to have graduated from Baruch College in 2010, but the school said it had no evidence of his graduation. Santos’ profile posted on the National Republican Congressional Committee’s website says he attended New York University, but the school found no record of his attendance.

A company called Devolder Organization, which Santos’ family reportedly owns and appears to be a source of his income, does not appear to have a webpage or exist on LinkedIn. His financial disclosures reviewed by the Times don’t appear to list any clients for the company.

Santos, who won November’s race for Long Island’s 3rd Congressional District defeating Democrat Robert Zimmerman, is the first openly gay GOP candidate to win a House race as a nonincumbent.

Santos, whose parents moved from Brazil to the U.S., unsuccessfully ran for the same seat in 2020.

Santos embraced former President Donald Trump’s election lies and at one point suggested his own defeat in 2020 was a result of voter fraud.

Mr. Santos has faced numerous calls to address The Times’s reporting. In his statement on Twitter, he said, “I want to assure everyone that I will address your questions and that I remain committed to deliver the results I campaigned on; Public safety, Inflation, Education & more. Happy Holidays to all!”

Mr. Santos’s brief statement on Twitter came a day after the incoming House minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, suggested that Mr. Santos appeared “to be in the witness protection program” after he spent the week avoiding the press.

“No one can find him,” Mr. Jeffries, a Democrat, said at a news conference. “He’s hiding out from legitimate questions that his constituents are asking about his education, about his so-called charity, about his work experience, about his criminal entanglement in Brazil, about every aspect, it appears, of his life.”

On Wednesday, The Forward, a Jewish publication, reported that Mr. Santos may have misled voters about his account of his Jewish ancestry, including that his maternal grandparents fled persecution around World War II.

The House Republican leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, did not answer questions about Mr. Santos on yesterday afternoon before walking onto the House floor, according to several accounts on Twitter from Washington reporters.

Mr. Santos’s lawyer, Joe Murray, told The Times that he did “not anticipate any response” to further inquiries, though he acknowledged that would be subject to change.

On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the New York attorney general, Letitia James, said that her office was “looking into some of the things that were raised” by The Times’s report.

Mr. Santos is in a deep mess of his own making!

Tony

Stefan Passantonio and Cassidy Hutchinson

Dear Commons Community,

Former Donald Trump staffer Cassidy Hutchinson told the House’s January 6 select committee that allies of the former president told her to hide her full knowledge of the White House goings-on at the time of the 2021 Capitol riot, according to newly released interview transcripts.

At the same time, Hutchinson said, people in Trump’s orbit dangled jobs in front of her ― jobs that were withdrawn as she continued cooperating with the committee.

Hutchinson, who was an aide to former chief of staff Mark Meadows, sat for sworn interviews with the Jan. 6 committee over two days in September, adding to previous testimony she’d given the panel. Beginning with questions about her legal representation, Hutchinson explained she had not initially wanted to retain an attorney from “Trump world,” as she and others repeatedly called it, but that her financial situation had limited her options.  As reported by the Huffington Post, the Associated Press and other news media.

At one point, she agreed to be represented by Stefan Passantino, a former Trump White House ethics lawyer. She told the panel the understanding was that if she listened to him, she would be “taken care of.”

“[Passantino] said, ‘Look, we want to get you in, get you out. We’re going to downplay your role. You were a secretary … everyone’s on the same page about this. … The less you remember, the better,’” Hutchinson told the committee.

She later clarified that she believed “everyone” referred to a group of attorneys helping Trump navigate his various legal entanglements, including Alex Cannon and Eric Herschmann.

Hutchinson was unemployed at the time, but Passantino discouraged her from finding a new job on her own when she said she’d sent out some applications.

“We’re gonna get you a really good job in Trump world,” Hutchinson said she was told. “You don’t need to apply other places. We’re gonna get you taken care of. We want to keep you in the family.”

Hutchinson said she received offers to work at Gettr, the right-wing social media site founded by former Trump aide Jason Miller, and Red Curve Solutions, a firm founded by Bradley Crate, who also happens to be the treasurer of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Hutchinson said both jobs seemed to have been made up for her benefit, and that the offers were rescinded as she continued to cooperate with the Jan. 6 committee.

On Monday, the committee said the Justice Department should investigate whether the bad legal advice and job offers amounted to interfering with their witness.

“The witness believed this was an effort to affect her testimony, and we are concerned that these efforts may have been a strategy to prevent the committee from finding the truth,” committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said.

Loyalty was a consistent theme throughout Hutchinson’s conversation with the panel in September. She knew that perceived disloyalty to Trump, and those in his orbit, could land her in hot water, but she struggled with the moral weight of the pressure to withhold truth.

Hutchinson said that Passantino specifically told her not to say anything about an incident in the presidential limousine on Jan. 6, 2021, that became part of her explosive public hearing testimony this summer.

“I said something to Stefan like, ‘Yeah, I had this conversation with Tony Ornato when we got back from the rally that day, and he told me the President tried to wrap his hands around Bobby’s neck and strangle him because he wouldn’t take him to the Capitol,’” Hutchinson testified, referring to Secret Service Agent Robert Engel. Ornato is a former Secret Service assistant director and former White House deputy chief of staff.

Trump had allegedly wanted to go to the Capitol with his supporters, who went on to break into the building and assault law enforcement.

“And Stefan said, ‘No, no, no, no, no,’” Hutchinson testified. She said he did not want her to bring the alleged incident to light.

Later, she emphasized that Passantino never told her explicitly to lie ― instead, he advised her to lean on the phrase “I don’t recall.”

Hutchinson said she felt trepidation around the whole situation, and that she worried about perjuring herself. She told the committee that she had said to her mother, “I’m fucked.”

“I am completely indebted to these people,” Hutchinson recalled telling her mother. “And they will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything that they don’t want me to do.”

At one point, her estranged aunt and uncle, who are QAnon supporters, discussed refinancing their home to offer her the financial independence she needed to hire her own attorney, Hutchinson told the committee. At another point, she drove to the home of her biological father ― a man with whom she had little relationship ― and “begged” him for help, knowing that he was a Trump supporter. He told her no.

In her first deposition with the committee, held in late February 2022, Hutchinson said she was “extremely nervous.”

“I almost felt like at points Trump was looking over my shoulder,” she testified in September.

She ended up dwelling on what she said ― or didn’t say ― in her first two depositions in the weeks that followed.

Hutchinson described feeling adrift at the time. She ended up ordering two copies of “The Last of the President’s Men,” a book by journalist Bob Woodward and Alexander Butterfield, an aide to former President Richard Nixon, about his role in the Watergate scandal. Hutchinson was looking for clues about what to do.

She met with a friend, Trump White House alum Alyssa Farah, and strategized. The pair decided it would be a good idea to privately communicate to the committee that Hutchinson knew more than she’d let on so far, leading to a third interview with the panel.

Eventually, in early June, Hutchinson was able to retain different attorneys. She said her “breaking point” with Passantino was being told that she should stop cooperating with the Jan. 6 committee and risk being held in contempt, which could have brought criminal charges she was not prepared to face. By the time she severed their attorney-client relationship, Hutchinson said, it had “been clear for a long time” that Passantino did not have her best interests at heart.

Passantino took a leave of absence from his firm, Michael Best & Friedrich, following the release of Hutchinson’s transcripts, according to Bloomberg Law. The attorney asserted in a statement that he had represented Hutchinson “honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me,” the outlet reported.

Ms. Hutchinson is to be commended for telling the truth. Passantoino and the rest of the Trump slime should be pilliored.

Tony

Trump and Helmsley

Dear Commons Community,

CNBC reviewed key points that were disclosed as a result of two reports issued by the Congressional committees examining among other things Donald Trump’s income tax returns between 2015 and 2020.  Here is a summary of its review

Key Points

• The amount of income, deductions and taxes paid by former President Donald Trump as disclosed in his annual federal tax returns while serving in the White House was detailed in a new report.
• The report by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation was posted online shortly after the House Ways and Means Committee voted to make public redacted versions of Trump’s full income tax returns, and those of eight related business entities for the tax years 2015 through 2020.
• A separate report released by the Ways and Means Committee revealed that the IRS had started an audit of just one of Trump’s tax returns while he was serving as president.The amount of income, deductions and taxes paid by or refunded to former President Donald Trump while serving in the White House was detailed in a new report released Tuesday night.

The first report reveals that Trump on his federal tax returns declared negative income in 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2020, and that he paid a total of $1,500 in income taxes for the years 2016 and 2017.

On their 2020 income tax returns, Trump and his wife Melania paid no federal income taxes and claimed a refund of $5.47 million, according to the report by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation.

The report was posted online shortly after the Ways and Means Committee voted to make public redacted versions of Trump’s full income tax returns, and those of eight related business entities for the tax years 2015 through 2020.

Those full returns are expected to be released in the coming days.

A second separate report released by the Ways and Means Committee revealed that the IRS had started an audit of just one of Trump’s tax returns while he was serving as president despite an internal policy mandating that sitting presidents have their returns audited annually.

The 39-page report by the Joint Committee on Taxation staff gives a breakdown of the highlights of Trump’s joint tax filings with Melania during his time in office, and the two years he first ran for president.

The report identifies different areas that the staff thought warranted further examination, such as documentation of nearly $506,000 in charitable donations claimed by the Trumps in 2019.

Highlights of the report include:

• On their 2015 federal return, Trump and his wife declared negative income of $31.7 million, with taxable income of $0. The couple paid federal income taxes of $641,931.
• The 2016 return declared negative income of $31.2 million, with zero dollars of taxable income. The Trumps paid $750 in taxes.
• The 2017 return declared negative income $12.8 million, with $0 in taxable income. The couple paid $750 in taxes.
• The 2018 return declared total income of $24.4 million, with taxable income of $22.9 million. The Trumps paid $999,466 in federal income taxes.
• In 2019, the Trumps declared $4.44 million in total income, and $2.97 million in taxable income. They paid $133,445 in taxes.
• The 2020 return shows negative income of $4.69 million, with zero dollars in taxable income. The tax paid by the Trumps was $0 and they claimed a refund of $5.47 million.

Donald and Melania are the new king and queen of mean who remind me of Leona Helmsley who  will always be remembered for one of the most arrogant statements ever uttered: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.” A touching sentiment from Helmsley widely dubbed the “Queen of Mean” but not one shared by a jury of her peers. In 1989 Helmsley received 16 years in prison for a wide variety of tax offenses resulting in several million dollars owed. And in a fitting bit of chronology, the judge ordered her prison sentence to start on April 15 — Tax Day!

Lock Donald and Melania up!

Tony

Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., right, react as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy presents lawmakers with a Ukrainian flag autographed by front-line troops in Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s contested Donetsk province, as he addresses a joint meeting of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Dec. 21, 2022. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Dear Commons Community,

Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy told cheering U.S. legislators during a defiant wartime visit to Washington, D.C. yesterday that against all odds his country still stands, “thanking every American” for helping to fund the war effort with money that is “not charity,” but an “investment” in global security and democracy.

The whirlwind stop to our nation’s capitol — his first known trip outside his country since Russia invaded in February — was aimed at reinvigorating support for his country in the U.S. and around the world at a time when there is concern that allies are growing weary of the costly war and its disruption to global food and energy supplies.

Zelenskyy called the tens of billions of dollars in U.S. military and economic assistance provided over the past year vital to Ukraine’s efforts to beat back Russia and appealed for even more in the future.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“Your money is not charity,” he sought to reassure both those in the room and those watching at home. “It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.”

Just before his arrival, the U.S. announced a new $1.8 billion military aid package, including for the first time Patriot surface-to-air missiles. And Congress planned to vote this week on a fresh spending package that includes about $45 billion in additional emergency assistance to Ukraine.

The speech to Congress came after President Joe Biden hosted Zelenskyy in the Oval Office for strategy consultations, saying the U.S. and Ukraine would maintain their “united defense” as Russia wages a “brutal assault on Ukraine’s right to exist as a nation.” Biden pledged to help bring about a “just peace.”

Zelenskyy told Biden that he had wanted to visit sooner and his visit now demonstrates that the “situation is under control, because of your support.”

The highly sensitive trip came after 10 months of a brutal war that has seen tens of thousands of casualties on both sides and devastation for Ukrainian civilians.

Zelenskyy traveled to Washington aboard a U.S. Air Force jet. The visit had been long sought by both sides, but the right conditions only came together in the last 10 days, U.S. officials said, after high-level discussions about the security both of Zelenskyy and of his people while he was outside of Ukraine. Zelenskyy spent less than 10 hours in Washington before beginning the journey back to Ukraine.

In his remarks to lawmakers, Zelenskky harked back to U.S. victories in the Battle of the Bulge, a turning point against Nazi Germany in World War II, and the Revolutionary War Battle of Saratoga, an American victory that helped draw France’s aid for U.S. independence. The Ukrainian leader predicted that next year would be a “turning point” in the conflict, “when Ukrainian courage and American resolve must guarantee the future of our common freedom — the freedom of people who stand for their values.”

Zelenskyy received thunderous applause from members of Congress and presented lawmakers with a Ukrainian flag autographed by front-line troops in Bakhmut, in Ukraine’s contested Donetsk province. The flag was displayed behind him on the rostrum by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris. Pelosi, in turn, presented Zelenskyy with an American flag that had flown over the Capitol that day, and Zelenskyy pumped it up and down as he exited the chamber.

Declaring in his speech that Ukraine “will never surrender,” Zelenskyy warned that the stakes of the conflict were greater than just the fate of his nation — that democracy worldwide is being tested.

“This battle cannot be ignored, hoping that the ocean or something else will provide protection,” he said, speaking in English for what he had billed as a “speech to Americans.”

Earlier, in a joint news conference with Biden, Zelenskyy was pressed on how Ukraine would try to bring an end to the conflict. He rejected Biden’s framing of finding a “just peace,” saying, “For me as a president, ‘just peace’ is no compromises.” He said the war would end once Ukraine’s sovereignty, freedom and territorial integrity were restored, and Russia had paid back Ukraine for all the damage inflicted by its forces.

“There can’t be any ‘just peace’ in the war that was imposed on us,” he added.

Biden, for his part, said Russia was “trying to use winter as a weapon, but Ukrainian people continue to inspire the world.” During the news conference, he said Russian President Vladimir Putin had “no intention of stopping this cruel war.”

The two leaders appeared to share a warm rapport, laughing at each other’s comments and patting each other on the back throughout the visit, though Zelenskyy made clear he will continue to press Biden and other Western leaders for ever more support.

He said that after the Patriot system was up and running, “we will send another signal to President Biden that we would like to get more Patriots.”

“We are in the war,” Zelenskyy added with a smile, as Biden chuckled at the direct request. “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

Biden told Zelenskyy that it was “important for the American people, and for the world, to hear directly from you, Mr. President, about Ukraine’s fight, and the need to continue to stand together through 2023.”

Zelenskyy had headed to Washington after making a daring and dangerous trip Tuesday to what he called the hottest spot on the 1,300-kilometer (800-mile) front line of the war, the city of Bakhmut.

Poland’s private broadcaster, TVN24, said Zelenskyy crossed into Poland early Wednesday on his way to Washington. The station showed footage of what appeared to be Zelenskyy arriving at a train station and being escorted to a motorcade of American SUVs. TVN24 said the video, partially blurred for security reasons, was shot in Przemysl, a Polish border town that has been the arrival point for many refugees fleeing the war.

Officials, citing security concerns, were cagey about Zelenskyy’s travel plans, but a U.S. official confirmed that Zelenskyy arrived on a U.S. Air Force jet that landed at Joint Base Andrews, just outside the capital, from the Polish city of Rzeszow.

Biden told Zelenskyy, who wore a combat-green sweatshirt and boots, that ”it’s an honor to be by your side.”

U.S. and Ukrainian officials have made clear they do not envision an imminent resolution to the war and are preparing for fighting to continue for some time. The latest infusion of U.S. money would be the biggest yet — and exceed Biden’s $37 billion request.

Biden repeated that while the U.S. will arm and train Ukraine, American forces will not be directly engaged in the war.

The latest U.S. military aid package includes not only a Patriot missile battery but precision guided bombs for fighter jets, U.S. officials said. It represents an expansion in the kinds of advanced weaponry intended to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses against what has been an increasing barrage of Russian missiles.

Russia’s Foreign Ministry has said the delivery of the advanced surface-to-air missile system would be considered a provocative step and that the system and any crews accompanying it would be a legitimate target for Moscow’s military.

“It’s a defensive system,” Biden said of sending the missile system. “It’s not escalatory — it’s defensive.”

The visit comes at an important moment, with the White House bracing for greater resistance when Republicans take control of the House in January and give more scrutiny to aid for Ukraine. GOP leader Kevin McCarthy of California has said his party will not write a “blank check” for Ukraine.

Zelenskky appeared well aware of political divisions in the U.S. over prolonged overseas spending, and called on the House and Senate lawmakers to ensure American leadership remains “bicameral and bipartisan.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer opened the chamber’s session on Wednesday by saying that passage of the aid package and confirmation of the new U.S. ambassador to Russia, Lynne M. Tracy, would send a strong signal that Americans stand “unequivocally” with Ukraine. Tracy was confirmed later on a 93-2 vote.

The Senate’s top Republican, Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, said “the most basic reasons for continuing to help Ukraine degrade and defeat the Russian invaders are cold, hard, practical American interests.” He said “defeating Russia’s aggression will help prevent further security crises in Europe.”

A great day for our country with political leaders affirming our commitment to Ukraine!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Democratic-controlled House Ways and Means Committee voted along party lines yesterday to publicly release a report on Donald Trump’s tax returns, which the former president has long tried to shield.

Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., said supporting materials will be released along with the report. Texas Rep. Kevin Brady, the committee’s top Republican, raised concerns about privacy as the documents could contain information such as Social Security numbers.

The report could provide a fuller look into Trump’s personal and business finances, possibly revealing how much money he paid in taxes, what income he derived from foreign operations and whether his income was as large as the reputed multibillionaire has suggested.

The report comes after a years-long battle that ultimately resulted in the Supreme Court clearing the way last month for the Treasury Department to send the returns to Congress. The committee received six years of tax returns for Trump and some of his businesses.

Democrats were under pressure to act. With just two weeks left until Republicans formally take control of the House, yesterday’s meeting was an opportunity for Democrats to disclose whatever information they have gleaned on Trump who still shapes U.S. politics despite losing reelection in 2020.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) on Sunday challenged a call from Florida’s GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis to investigate COVID-19 vaccines, arguing Republicans should not “undermine science” and medical experts.

Hutchinson told NBC’s “Meet the Press” moderator Chuck Todd that he was “for the education and the science” behind the COVID-19 vaccines and protecting Americans from the novel coronavirus.

“We shouldn’t undermine science. We shouldn’t undermine the medical community that’s very important to our public health,” he said. “We are not good as a society, it’s not the right direction, if we diminish the facts, we diminish all the best information that we have from science at the time.”

DeSantis last week called for a grand jury in Florida’s Supreme Court to probe if pharmaceutical companies criminally misled Floridians about the side effects of vaccines and the efficacy of the COVID-19 shots.

The announcement came on the same day a new study found the COVID-19 vaccines have saved more than 3 million lives since late 2020.

But the Florida governor, considered a potential 2024 presidential nominee, embraced concerns among Republicans and conservatives about the efficacy and safety of the vaccines.

DeSantis has moved even further to the right on the vaccine issue than former President Trump, who announced his 2024 White House bid last month and helped speed up the rollout of the vaccines in 2020 with a federal program called Operation Warpspeed.

Hutchinson, who is also mulling a 2024 run, on Sunday said it was “not helpful” for the Republican Party to focus on issues in the past.

“I don’t think it’s good to go back,” the Arkansas governor said. “Whether you’re going back to the 2020 election or whether you’re going back and trying to re-litigate everything that happened during the pandemic, that’s not helpful for where we are.”

Hutchinson is becoming a major voice of reason for the Republican Party.  I hope he runs for the Party’s presidential nomination.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

My colleague, Bob Ubell, had a column yesterday published in EdSurge, entitled,  “Why College Students Turned From Being Down on Remote Learning to Mostly in Favor of It.”   He provides important commentary on how after a rocky start, online learning has become the instructional modality of choice for many of them.

I agree fully with his assessment. 

Below is his column in its entirety.   

Tony

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EdSurge

Why College Students Turned From Being Down on Remote Learning to Mostly in Favor of It?

By Robert Ubell (Columnist)    

Dec 20, 2022

If you go back to the first days of the COVID crisis, when campuses across the country were shutting down, college students weren’t very happy with emergency online learning. Surveys conducted then showed deep dissatisfaction, with as many as 70 percent saying they didn’t like it.

Low grades for remote instruction persisted for months. As the nation struggled under one of the worst public health threats in centuries, emergency instruction proceeded as the only viable way to keep higher education going, even though so few students liked it.

Since then, things have taken a surprising turn. Today, 70 percent of college students give online and hybrid learning a thumbs-up.

How did that happen? What were the forces at play that turned disaffection into growing acceptance?

It’s totally understandable that students taking remote classes in those early pandemic months resisted. Remote education was not a choice, but a command. Higher education was like a country at war, with students conscripted online like soldiers fighting for their academic lives. By the second semester of the crisis, about 680,000 dropped out altogether.

Students in those early days of COVID were under severe stress, tossed about with anxiety and depression; many found it difficult to concentrate or even sleep, let alone stay in school.

Just before the COVID shutdown, about a third of college students were enrolled in at least one online course. Today, three years after the worst of the crisis, that percentage has unexpectedly jumped to half. As the pandemic waned, increasing numbers of students opted to enroll in online instruction, casting aside their early disappointment because remote learning fulfilled needs it had always provided students—convenience, speed to graduation, flexibility and lower tuition. For working adults, online is often the simplest and easiest path to earn a degree. It satisfies those eager to access courses anytime, day or night.

And some faculty teach with more effective active-learning methods in the online format.

The often mediocre delivery of digital instruction at the start of the pandemic shined a spotlight on college teaching, with students measuring their online experience against in-person instruction. Critics have long been unhappy with what goes on in those college classrooms, often with professors lecturing interminably, as if the call for active learning has not been a century-long cry by thoughtful educators.

Now, students were given the opportunity to compare. And they discovered that the often lackluster college classroom is not much better than what usually happens online. If everything is lecture, students are choosing between slumping on couches at home in front of their screens or passively nodding off in classrooms.

“The reason why so many were disappointed with emergency digital instruction was not because it was alien, but because it was so very familiar.”

Few faculty were guided on how to teach during emergency remote instruction. They were just sent off online, with presidents and provosts praying students would survive the ordeal. It turns out that the same pedagogical failure that occurred online also happens widely on campus. Few professors step into their on-campus classrooms knowing best practices in teaching face-to-face.

Perhaps students in the early days of emergency remote instruction expected something different, exciting and new. But what they found, once they logged on, was the same endless talking heads at home on video or Zoom or on campus face-to-face. Students have now grown accustomed to pretty much the same experience, and they’ve resigned themselves. Over the long haul, students came to terms with it, accepting online as they’ve always endured lectures in person. The reason why so many were disappointed with emergency digital instruction was not because it was alien, but because it was so very familiar.

Of course, not every on-campus or online course is conducted in lecture mode. Thoughtful faculty use their digital and analog classrooms to stimulate engaging academic experiences, with students and instructors participating in peer-to-peer learning and other innovative practices. Abandoning lectures, skilled professors teach remotely or in-person, treating students not as passive listeners in a theater audience, but as players up on the academic stage, collectively discovering knowledge.

Feeling Alienated

Attending remote classes in the crisis, most college students felt alienated, lonely on their screens. They lacked in-person conversation, and they wished they could return to ordinary, face-to-face conversation.

The campus, after all, is a far more socially accommodating environment, with students busy with others in clubs, sports and other interpersonal activities in the school cafeteria and dorm rooms.

The physical classroom was never designed to provide all of the student’s wishes for social interaction. Classrooms on campus commonly allow only limited one-on-one engagement, with students rarely connecting with their peers, except at moments when classes are open to discussion. In college, I remember often leaving class at the end of a term, never having said a word all semester long to classmates seated right next to me.

During the pandemic, with every other avenue of interchange shut down, remote classrooms were asked to fulfill urgent needs for student personal engagement—a capability they were never meant to deliver. Yearning for human connection during those first COVID days and weeks was painful, but online learning was never going to satisfy it.

Once normal life returned and students could rely on other ways of getting together with friends and classmates, the digital classroom could relinquish its overwhelming social burden. Students can now take classes online without expecting them to be a place not only for learning, but also for socializing.

Pivoting to Video

One fascinating recent teaching strategy may have played a decisive role in changing student perceptions—increased use of video instruction. Many remote instructors now step away partially from delivering only Zoom sessions and produce instructional videos as well—as I did when I taught at The New School.

“This is the new normal,” says educational research psychologist Nicole Barbaro at GWU Labs, an affiliate of Western Governors University. “Professors are increasingly using videos to disseminate lectures and other instructional content to their students, and students are now watching hours of recorded videos each week for their courses.”

To my surprise, video—especially as a supplement in remote instruction—turns out to be a boon to greater student learning. A new meta-analysis uncovers the striking finding that when instructional videos supplement in-class instruction, rather than when they replace in-person teaching, students gained the most—results that have clear implications for online instructors. If you are weighing whether to design your digital course with either static text or recorded videos, videos are surely the way to go, advises GMU’s Barbaro.

When I taught online at The New School, a crack team of instructional designers and photographers guided me on how to deliver professional, 7-minute videos, accompanied by graphics, text and other elements. Other videos were TV-style newscast interviews of scholars and practitioners I had invited to offer their expertise on topics covered in my course. In the 6 weeks my online course ran, my Zoom sessions consisted entirely of remote classroom discussions of the videos students watched at home and readings I had assigned. In all those weeks, I never once delivered a real-time lecture.

Over time, with months of practice as the pandemic proceeded, instructors and students learned how to use remote tools. Continuously online, enormous numbers gained proficiency with digital learning software. “The quality of a well-run synchronous, online class can now rival—and in some respects exceed—the quality of the in-person equivalent,” observes John Villasenor at the Brookings Institution.

The good news is that online learning is no longer reviled and resented, but after a rocky tryout in the pandemic, it’s now just another higher ed choice in which students and faculty, after years of digital stress, have largely adapted to it.

Hope Hicks as seen onscreen during the Jan. 6 committee’s final hearing on Dec. 19, 2022. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday the House Select Committee had its last public session during which it unanimously voted to recommend that the Justice Department seek criminal charges against Donald Trump and others for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and prevent the peaceful transition of power, culminating in the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Most of the information that the Committee presented has been heard before except for the testimony of Hope Hicks.

Hicks, who served as a top adviser to  Trump, testified to the House Select Committee that she told him she was worried he was tarnishing his legacy by promoting the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.

“We were not seeing evidence of fraud on a scale that would have impacted the outcome of the election,” Hicks said in videotaped testimony shown  during the committee’s final public hearing. “And I was becoming increasingly concerned that we were damaging his legacy.”

Hicks was asked what the president said to her in response.

“He said something along the lines of, you know, ‘Nobody will care about my legacy if I lose so that won’t matter,'” Hicks replied. “‘The only thing that matters is winning.'” Hicks is a longtime confidante of the former president. She worked for the Trump Organization and his 2016 presidential campaign before serving in multiple senior roles in the Trump White House, first as White House communications director, as director of strategic communication and as counselor to the president. She left the White House on Jan. 12, 2021, six days after the Capitol insurrection.

Her interview with the committee was conducted in late October. In introducing video footage of her testimony, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., said that Hicks was one of the witnesses who came forward after the panel’s last public hearing to “tell us about their conversations with ex-President Trump.”

Over the course of its 18-month investigation, the committee uncovered evidence that Trump was told repeatedly by his campaign advisers, government officials and others that there was no evidence to support his claims of election fraud.

But he “continued to purposely and maliciously make false claims sometimes within a day of being told that a particular claim was false and unsupported by the evidence,” Lofgren said.

“By the time the Electoral College met to cast its votes on Dec.14, 2020, a number of President Trump’s senior staff, cabinet officials and members of his family were urging him to facilitate a peaceful transition to the incoming administration,” she added. “He disregarded their advice and he continued to claim publicly that the election had been stolen from him.”

Trump acted disgracefully and deserves to pay a price!

Tony