Dear Commons Community,

Joe Biden said yesterday (see video above) that he will ask Americans to commit to 100 days of wearing masks as one of his first acts as president, in order to stop the spread of the coronavirus which is raging out of control in parts of our country.

The move marks a notable shift from President Donald Trump, whose own skepticism of mask-wearing has contributed to a politicization of the issue. That’s made many people reticent to embrace a practice that public health experts say is one of the easiest ways to manage the pandemic, which has killed more than 275,000 Americans.   As reported by the Associated Press.

“The president-elect has frequently emphasized mask-wearing as a “patriotic duty” and during the campaign floated the idea of instituting a nationwide mask mandate, which he later acknowledged would be beyond the ability of the president to enforce.

Speaking with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Biden said he would make the request of Americans on Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.

“On the first day I’m inaugurated, I’m going to ask the public for 100 days to mask. Just 100 days to mask — not forever, just 100 days. And I think we’ll see a significant reduction” in the virus, Biden said.

The president-elect reiterated his call for lawmakers on Capitol Hill to pass a coronavirus aid bill and expressed support for a $900 billion compromise bill that a bipartisan group of lawmakers introduced this week.

“That would be a good start. It’s not enough,” he said, adding, “I’m going to need to ask for more help.”

Biden has said his transition team is working on its own coronavirus relief package, and his aides have signaled they plan for that to be their first legislative push.

The president-elect also said he asked Dr. Anthony Fauci to stay on in his administration, “in the exact same role he’s had for the past several presidents,” as the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, the nation’s top infectious-disease expert.

He said he’s asked Fauci to be a “chief medical adviser” as well as part of his COVID-19 advisory team.

Regarding a coronavirus vaccine, Biden offered begrudging credit for the work Trump’s administration has done in expediting the development of a vaccine but said that planning the distribution properly will be “critically important.”

“It’s a really difficult but doable project, but it has to be well planned, ” he said.

Part of the challenge the Biden administration will face in distributing the vaccine will be instilling public confidence in it. Biden said he’d be “happy” to get inoculated in public to assuage any concerns about its efficacy and safety. Three former presidents — Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton — have said they’d also get vaccinated publicly to show that it’s safe.

“People have lost faith in the ability of the vaccine to work,” Biden said, adding that “it matters what a president and the vice president do.”

In the same interview, Biden also weighed in on reports that Trump is considering pardons of himself and his allies.

“It concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks at us as a nation of laws and justice,” Biden said.

Biden committed that his Justice Department will “operate independently” and that whoever he chooses to lead the department will have the “independent capacity to decide who gets investigated.”

“You’re not going to see in our administration that kind of approach to pardons, nor are you going to see in our administration the approach to making policy by tweets,” he said.

In addition to considering preemptive pardons, Trump has spent much of his time post-election trying to raise questions about an election he lost by millions of votes while his lawyers pursue baseless lawsuits alleging voter fraud in multiple states.

Republicans on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, have largely given the president cover, with many defending the lawsuits and few publicly congratulating Biden on his win.

But Biden said yesterday that he’s received private calls of congratulations from “more than several sitting Republican senators” and that he has confidence in his ability to cut bipartisan deals with Republicans despite the rancor that’s characterized the last four years on Capitol Hill.

Trump aides have expressed skepticism that the president, who continues to falsely claim victory and spread baseless claims of fraud, would attend Biden’s inauguration. Biden said Thursday night that he believes it’s “important” that Trump attend, largely to demonstrate the nation’s commitment to peaceful transfer of power between political rivals.”

Our country desperately needs a president who can lead during this pandemic crisis.  Biden is the one!

Tony

Mary Trump

Dear Commons Community,

Mary Trump was interviewed last night by CNN’s Chris Cuomo,  during which she said she doesn’t think her uncle, Donald Trump, will run for president again — despite his teasing this week of a 2024 campaign.

Ms. Trump, the author and clinical psychologist — who released the tell-all memoir Too Much and Never Enough about her uncle in July ― doesn’t expect him to step away from politics altogether either.

Instead, she thinks the outgoing president will “take the position of spoiler because he lost so decisively” to President-elect Joe Biden and “because he cannot bear the thought of losing.”

“He’s going to put considerable energy, as least as long as he’s able to, into delegitimizing Biden’s win and his administration,” she warned during the interview. 

It would be “terrible” for the United States, she told Mr. Cuomo.

“At that point, we need to look at the Republicans in power and lay the blame at their feet at that point because they would be in a position to stop this insanity and thus far they seem not to be willing to do that because they know they need Donald’s base,” said Trump.

“The ReTrumplicans,” Cuomo responded.

Good name for what was once a proud group of politicians!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Katina Rogers, a colleague here at the CUNY Graduate Center, has an opinion piece in The Chronicle of Higher Education this morning,  recommending ten useful steps to reform graduate education in the humanities.  Below is the entire article, it says it all!

Tony

10 Steps to Reform Graduate Education in the Humanities

Desperate times call for big changes. Here’s what professors and administrators should do to fix a broken graduate system.

By Katina L. Rogers

December 2, 2020

Covid-19 and its effects on higher education make this a particularly difficult moment for doctoral students in the humanities, where the job market has gone from bad to worse. Certainly they need faculty help as they look for career pathways in academe, as well as outside of it. But individual support is not enough. This is also a moment of reckoning for graduate programs — a moment when change is both possible and desperately needed.

My book, Putting the Humanities Ph.D. to Work: Thriving in and Beyond the Classroom, published in August by Duke University Press, is aimed at helping doctoral students explore their options. Here is my wish list of 10 major reforms that could improve the career outlook of the Ph.D.s whom universities produce. In some of the following suggestions, I also offer specific advice to graduate students.

The pandemic is showing that publicly relevant research and teaching are key to our humanity. Whether you are a student, a faculty member, or an administrator, these suggestions offer ideas to help move toward more sustaining, creative, joyful practices in graduate education and beyond.

Make space in graduate training for career exploration. Graduate school can be all-encompassing. Despite that reality (or, perhaps, because of it), it is also deeply valuable for graduate students to stay connected to skills, interests, and activities that are not necessarily part of traditional academic work.

• Graduate students: Think about the things that energize you, that you’re willing to make time for, that help you feel grounded — those can be useful indicators of what may one day become a fulfilling career path. Making space for priorities outside the university can bring greater perspective to your scholarly work.

Faculty members and administrators, you can make space for this kind of career reflection by encouraging students to lead balanced lives. One way to do that is by asking questions — from the earliest stages of graduate school — making clear that it is a good and normal thing to have commitments outside of the department. Ask open-ended questions and help students to see possible connections between their emerging scholarly interests and the things that motivate them in other ways.

For instance, you can ask about how a student’s research topic might be of use to a particular community group, or whether a student is involved in a relevant nonprofit agency. While talking about personal information can be delicate, sharing a bit about your own outside commitments can also be valuable. It can help students imagine their own futures if they know that the professors they admire have lives outside the university as well.

Expand the notion of what constitutes meaningful scholarship, and how to evaluate it. Peer-reviewed journal articles and scholarly monographs are not the only way to share research — far from it. Graduate students and faculty members have many opportunities to push the boundaries of meaningfully sharing research (though the career risk in doing so varies widely).

• Graduate students: It’s important to find faculty advisers who will support you if your dissertation falls outside your department’s usual parameters, and to be ready to point to examples of similar projects. Be flexible with your approach; systems and requirements do not change overnight, and some measure of compromise might help you to avoid getting stuck.

Professors in a position to do so should help pave the way for junior scholars to work creatively. Lobby for the acceptance of nontraditional dissertations that allow students to assemble and present their research in a way that makes sense for their goals, and for the nature of their particular project. Train other faculty members in how to evaluate innovative work by drawing on tools developed by scholarly societies like the Modern Language Association. Support tenure cases for scholars who take risks, engage with different audiences, and connect with varied communities.

Finding way to formally value public-oriented work and reintegrate that work into scholarly conversations is essential — both to reward scholars’ work and to signal that creative applications of research are meaningful.

Build partnerships outside the university. Which organizations and industries are important to the region where your institution is located? Find ways to connect with them, formally or informally.

Think about public-oriented project ideas that align with your own or your students’ research interests and would also benefit a local organization. Rather than simply making that organization an object of study, invite its staff members to join you as collaborators and co-creators. From single projects, work toward longer partnerships that are mutually beneficial. Over time, these connections could evolve to offer internships, resource networks, and new ways of understanding the public impact of scholarly work.

Find small ways to incorporate professional development from the earliest days of the graduate-school trajectory. For many graduate students, professional development (skill-building workshops, job-search support, networking opportunities) often comes too late, when expectations for a career trajectory are already set and anxieties are high. A better approach is to bring the topic into advising, departmental events, and classrooms from Day 1.

For instance, rather than evaluate students exclusively on their individual scholarly writing, develop collaborative project assignments that allow students to work together in a variety of roles and to communicate research findings to an array of audiences. Advisers might talk about their own work experiences and plans, and help their doctoral students reframe the skills and interests of graduate school for different career contexts.

• Graduate students: If you are not getting the professional-development support you need, ask for it — both individually and collectively with your peers.

Seek outside resources. Sometimes the best resources may take a bit of digging to find, so students and faculty members alike should apply their research skills in looking for support. Faculty advisers should be more intentional about getting to know their institution’s career center, especially if it includes counselors who focus on graduate students. Explore online resources and tool kits from professional organizations. Investigate early, so that you have ideas and resources at hand when you or your students need them.

• Graduate students: Listen in on Twitter and in other informal online spaces. If you think you may need (or want) to develop a specific skill — like web design or a programming language — consider waiting to do a workshop or online tutorials until you have a project under way, so that you have something concrete to work on as you learn. If possible, attend workshops and conferences in an area outside your usual field, to build skills and develop a network. Sometimes different departments share different resources, so you might also consider organizing an interdisciplinary professional-development meet-up with other graduate students at your institution to share suggestions or frustrations.

Tune your program’s curriculum to make the most of required courses. If your graduate program has required introductory or research methods courses, take a close look at the skills, values, and paradigms that it introduces to new students. Consider reshaping such courses to offer students opportunities to think about their programs of study translate to other professions besides the professoriate. How might core research methods be applied in other contexts outside of academe, for instance?

Without sacrificing rigor or content, embedding the course in a broader context that reaches beyond the discipline and even beyond academe can lead to deeper connections. The course can be more powerful if it adds a public-facing or collaborative project component, as students will begin to learn the power of working together toward a common goal that has a clear potential impact.

Recognize the importance of good models. Universities value innovative work, but they also stand on precedent and tradition. To support scholarship that appears risky or unusual, students and administrators alike need to be able to point to others who have done similar work or pursued a similar path. Each graduate student who is hired into a high-level position or a job with a great potential trajectory is one more person who can be a voice for the importance of higher education.

But for that to be true, those career pathways must be visible and celebrated.

To establish strong models within a department, reach out to alumni and feature their achievements and career paths on the department website. Invite speakers who represent a wider range of expertise and possible futures to help students gain ideas and build their networks. Build collaborations with like-minded programs at other institutions. Staying connected with and highlighting the work of former students is one of the simplest and least resource-intensive things that a graduate program can do.

Work toward reform in multiple areas at once. A thoughtful and comprehensive approach to reforming graduate education and equipping students for a wider range of professional paths requires consideration of questions related to the changing landscape of higher education. Issues such as academic-labor practices, public investment in higher education, changes and opportunities in scholarly communication and digital pedagogy, and broad social-justice issues such as racism and gender bias all affect the training that graduate students receive and the career paths they pursue.

Professors in every graduate program should strive to maintain awareness of the broad landscape of higher education and how issues in one area affect all other elements. All of these areas matter, but our energies are finite. So choose one thing that you care about — where you feel you can make a difference — and start there. It is almost certainly connected to the broader aim of creating a healthy and sustainable educational system that is both rigorous and inclusive.

Work against racism, sexism, and other forms of bias. White scholars, especially, must learn to notice and work against systemic racism and sexism in their institutions and in academe. Graduate students are under intense stress, which can damage their physical and mental health, not to mention their academic performance. This is even truer for students whose identities are historically underrepresented in the academy — women and nonbinary people of all races and ethnicities, people of color of all genders, first-generation college students, and LGBTQ+ people, among others. Advisers can be a first line of support, helping students to thrive, reach their goals, and pursue career pathways of their choosing.

Critically examining problematic tendencies within a graduate program is an important initial step to develop a more fully inclusive institution that welcomes diverse backgrounds, varied perspectives, and new forms of knowledge. Systemic racism and widespread bias make it more difficult for people from marginalized groups to thrive, so faculty members, students, and the public are generally learning from those in dominant cultural positions. To educate students in the fullest sense of the term, universities must become places where people from all backgrounds can question, challenge, explore, and articulate new views without fear of retribution.

Be a voice for change in your department, on your campus — up to whatever is the biggest platform you can obtain. Higher education needs your support, so join others in working toward meaningful reform. Try putting your research and writing skills to use in new ways that allow you to go beyond your subfield to articulate the value of your work — and that of your colleagues — in a broader context.

What has your education enabled you to do, and what difference does your research make in the world? Write op-eds that connect to current events or local issues. Go to conferences and give presentations not only on your research, but also on structural issues that you care about. Use opportunities for speaking and writing to lift up the work of those around you. If you have a union, get involved so that you can get a sense of how your goals and concerns fit in with those of the wider campus. Speak up about departmental policies that may be problematic.

However you choose to get involved, and even if change is hard to see, know that your voice matters every step of the way. The time for change is now. Let’s get started.

Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer

Dear Commons Community,

As the coronavirus rages throughout the country, claiming more victims, a stimulus package proposal sits on Mitch McConnell’s desk.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said they would back a $908 billion bipartisan proposal introduced by a group of lawmakers as a way to restart negotiations. As reported by Yahoo News.

“In the spirit of compromise, we believe the bipartisan framework introduced by Senators yesterday should be used as the basis for immediate bipartisan, bicameral negotiations,” they said in a letter yesterday. “Of course, we and others will offer improvements, but the need to act is immediate and we believe that with good-faith negotiations we could come to an agreement.”

Their support comes as the two parties began exchanging offers again after talks stalled before the election. Pelosi and Schumer sent Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) a new stimulus offer with an undisclosed price on Monday evening, with Schumer calling it “a private proposal to help us move the ball forward.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., conduct a news conference to discuss the House passed Heroes Act and coronavirus relief legislation in the Capitol Visitor Center on Thursday, November 12, 2020. (Photo By Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

The $908 billion bipartisan proposal the Democratic leaders support has a significantly lower price tag than the $2.2 trillion version of the HEROES Act they were pushing throughout the most recent phase of negotiations.

The compromise proposal includes $160 billion for state and local governments, $180 billion for additional unemployment benefits, $288 billion for a second round of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) for small businesses, short-term liability, among other provisions.

The proposal doesn’t include a second round of stimulus checks, a provision supported by the White House and Democrats in the previous phase of the stimulus negotiations.

Only $348 billion in the bipartisan proposal would be new funding; the other $560 billion would be repurposed from the CARES Act.

McConnell unveiled his own $333 billion stimulus proposal yestyerday, similar to the two previous bills he introduced in September and October, both of which were rejected in the Senate. Schumer said that McConnell’s most recent proposal “will be even more insufficient than the previous two attempts.”

When asked about the compromise proposal, McConnell said that “we just don’t have time to waste time.”

“The place to start is, are we actually making a law or are we just making a point,” he said. “The way you make a law for sure is you’ve got a presidential signature.”

McConnell said his proposal is a way to quickly pass relief in the lame-duck session and that it’s a package that will likely be supported by the president. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin confirmed on Wednesday that President Trump would sign McConnell’s most recent proposal.

The bipartisan proposal is supported by four Republican and five Democratic senators, which are not enough Republicans to put pressure on the party to reach an agreement or enough additional votes for a bill to pass in the Senate, according to Mark Harkins, a former congressional staffer and senior fellow at Georgetown’s Government Affairs Institute.

“That bipartisan coalition is only nine people,” he told Yahoo Money. “If you had a partisan deal on one side or the other, and those people came with you, you’re still looking at 53 to 56 votes. That’s still not 60.”

I doubt that anything will happen with a stimulus package until after Joe Biden assumes the presidency in January.  In the meantime, a delayed stimulus package will cause more damage to American households and the broader economy.

Tony

Gabriel Sterling

Dear Commons Community,

Gabriel Sterling, a Republican elections official in Georgia,  lashed out angrily at the rhetoric surrounding the election and the threats of violence that have resulted, specifically calling on President Donald Trump to rein in his supporters.

Gabriel Sterling oversaw the implementation of the state’s new voting system. During a routine news conference at the state Capitol to provide an update on the recount of the presidential race requested by Trump, he admonished the president and Georgia’s two U.S. senators, who are both locked in tight runoff races against Democrats and have called on GOP Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to resign over claims that he mishandled the election.

“Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language. Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions,” Sterling said, visibly angry. “This has to stop. We need you to step up, and if you’re going to take a position of leadership, show some.”

People have been driving in caravans past Raffensperger’s home, have come onto his property and have sent sexualized threats to his wife’s cellphone, said Sterling. Raffensperger and Sterling both have police stationed outside their homes, and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation has said it’s investigating possible threats against officials to determine their credibility.

Sterling said his anger boiled over when he learned that a contractor with Dominion Voting Systems helping with the recount effort in suburban Gwinnett County received death threats after someone shot video of him transferring a report to a county computer and falsely said the young man was manipulating election data.

“There’s a noose out there with his name on it. That’s not right,” Sterling said, adding that the contractor didn’t seek the spotlight by taking a high-profile position like Sterling or run for office like Raffensperger. “This kid took a job. He just took a job.”

Trump last week called Raffensperger an “enemy of the people,” Sterling noted, adding, “That helped open the floodgates to this kind of crap.”

Sterling urged the president to step up and tell his supporters not to commit acts of violence. “Someone’s going to get hurt. Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed,” Sterling said.

The campaigns for Republican U.S. Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler both issued statements Tuesday evening condemning violence but also criticizing election officials, according to news outlets.

“Like many officials, as someone who has been the subject of threats, of course Senator Loeffler condemns violence of any kind. How ridiculous to even suggest otherwise,” Loeffler campaign spokesman Stephen Lawson said. “We also condemn inaction and lack of accountability in our election system process — and won’t apologize for calling it out.”

Thank you, Mr. Sterling for showing some courage.  Too bad that most of your Republican colleagues, especially those in the U.S, Senate, have been cowards in not standing up to the bullying that Trump has used during his entire time in the White House.

Tony

Attorney General William Barr

Dear Commons Community,

Attorney General William Barr said yesterday the Justice Department has not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.

His comments come despite President Donald Trump’s repeated claims that the election was stolen, and his refusal to concede his loss to President-Elect Joe Biden.

In an interview with The Associated Press, Barr said U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but they’ve uncovered no evidence that would change the outcome of the election.

“To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election,” Barr told the AP.

The comments are especially direct coming from Barr, who has been one of the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion that mail-in voter fraud could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail.

Last month, Barr issued a directive to U.S. attorneys across the country allowing them to pursue any “substantial allegations” of voting irregularities, if they existed, before the 2020 presidential election was certified, despite no evidence at that time of widespread fraud. That memorandum gave prosecutors the ability to go around longstanding Justice Department policy that normally would prohibit such overt actions before the election was certified. Soon after it was issued, the department’s top elections crime official announced he would step aside from that position because of the memo.

The Trump campaign team led by Rudy Giuliani has been alleging a widespread conspiracy by Democrats to dump millions of illegal votes into the system with no evidence. They have filed multiple lawsuits in battleground states alleging that partisan poll watchers didn’t have a clear enough view at polling sites in some locations and therefore something illegal must have happened. The claims have been repeatedly dismissed including by Republican judges who have ruled the suits lacked evidence. Local Republicans in some battleground states have followed Trump in making similar unsupported claims.

Trump has railed against the election in tweets and in interviews though his own administration has said the 2020 election was the most secure ever. Trump recently allowed his administration to begin the transition over to Biden, but has still refused to admit he lost.

The issues Trump’s campaign and its allies have pointed to are typical in every election: Problems with signatures, secrecy envelopes and postal marks on mail-in ballots, as well as the potential for a small number of ballots miscast or lost.

But they’ve also requested federal probes into the claims. Attorney Sidney Powell has spun fictional tales of election systems flipping votes, German servers storing U.S. voting information and election software created in Venezuela “at the direction of Hugo Chavez,” – the late Venezuelan president who died in 2013. Powell has since been removed from the legal team after an interview she gave where she threatened to “blow up” Georgia with a “biblical” court filing.

Barr didn’t name Powell specifically but said: “There’s been one assertion that would be systemic fraud and that would be the claim that machines were programmed essentially to skew the election results. And the DHS and DOJ have looked into that, and so far, we haven’t seen anything to substantiate that,” Barr said.

He said people were confusing the use of the federal criminal justice system with allegations that should be made in civil lawsuits. He said such a remedy for those complaints would be a top-down audit conducted by state or local officials, not the U.S. Justice Department.

“There’s a growing tendency to use the criminal justice system as sort of a default fix-all, and people don’t like something they want the Department of Justice to come in and ‘investigate,’” Barr said.

He said first of all there must be a basis to believe there is a crime to investigate.

“Most claims of fraud are very particularized to a particular set of circumstances or actors or conduct. They are not systemic allegations and. And those have been run down; they are being run down,” Barr said. “Some have been broad and potentially cover a few thousand votes. They have been followed up on.”

Barr might be trying to clean up his legacy a bit considering all the subservience he has shown Trump in the past. The President does not take honesty among his top appointees lightly.  Ask the former head of Homeland Security, Chris Krebs!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Jack Schneider and Jennifer C. Berkshire have a New York Times‘ op-ed today looking back at Betsy Devos contributions during the past four years that she has served as U.S. Secretary of Education under Donald Trump.  Their basic conclusion is that measured solely by policy accomplishments, DeVos was a flop.  However, they also indicate that given her failed assaults on public education that a new secretary of education under Joe Biden might be able to initiate major new policies.  Optimistically, Schneider and Berkshire conclude that “Betsy DeVos has actually given the next secretary of education an opportunity — to recommit to public education as a public good, and a cornerstone of our democracy.”

We shall see.  Below is an excerpt from the op-ed.

Tony

————————————————————————————————

Trump’s Longest-Serving Cabinet Official May Start a Revolution

By Jack Schneider and Jennifer C. Berkshire

Dec. 1, 2020

Early on, her efforts to move a federal voucher program through a Republican-controlled Congress more concerned with taxes and deregulation repeatedly fell short. This year, she was forced to abandon a directive ordering states to redirect coronavirus funds to private schools after three federal judges ruled against her.

And significant pieces of Obama-era civil rights guidance that she rescinded — moves meant to protect transgender students, for instance, or address racially disproportionate school discipline — will be immediately restored by the incoming Biden administration.

Though Ms. DeVos has been mostly stymied, both by Trumpism’s policy indifference and progressive opposition, her legacy will still be far-reaching and long-lasting. This is not a result of what she made, but of what she broke: a bipartisan federal consensus around testing and charters that extended from the George H.W. Bush administration through the end of the Obama era.

For progressives, this shift hasn’t necessarily been bad news. In response to Ms. DeVos’s polarizing influence, moderate Democrats including President-elect Joe Biden recommitted to teachers unions and adopted more skeptical positions on school choice that were out of the question just a few years ago. Mr. Biden has pledged to exclude for-profit charter schools from federal funding, and he has proposed making larger investments in public education by using Title I statutes to double federal support for schools serving low-income students.

Yet Ms. DeVos has also elevated the education policy agenda of the far right, giving voice and legitimacy to a campaign to fundamentally dismantle public education. That campaign, pursued for the past few decades only in deep-red states, and often perceived as belonging to the libertarian fringe, has become the de facto agenda of the Republican Party.

So, while it is true that the Biden administration will swiftly reverse President Trump’s executive orders and administrative guidance from the Department of Education, Mr. Biden’s education secretary will still have to contend with extreme ideas that have suddenly entered the mainstream.

More than three decades ago, conventional Republicans and centrist Democrats signed on to an unwritten treaty. Conservatives agreed to mute their push for private school vouchers, their preference for religious schools and their desire to slash spending on public school systems. In return, Democrats effectively gave up the push for school integration and embraced policies that reined in teachers unions.

Together, led by federal policy elites, Republicans and Democrats espoused the logic of markets in the public sphere, expanding school choice through publicly funded charter schools. Competition, both sides agreed, would strengthen schools. And the introduction of charters, this contingent believed, would empower parents as consumers by even further untethering school enrollment from family residence.

The bipartisan consensus also elevated the role of student tests in evaluating schools. The first President Bush ushered in curricular standards in 1989 when he gathered the nation’s governors, including Bill Clinton of Arkansas, for a meeting in Charlottesville, Va. In a decade, George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind legislation mandated accountability testing nationwide, tied to the standards that his father and Mr. Clinton had promoted.

The law was then modified under the Obama administration; still, the core logic of test-based accountability as a solution to closing the achievement gap was preserved. Arne Duncan, Mr. Obama’s education secretary, who was cool to teachers unions and spoke the language of markets, even threatened to withhold federal funds from California in 2013 if it didn’t test all its students.

Ms. DeVos, a critic of what she calls “the overreach of the federal government in education,” displayed no interest in this neoliberal compromise. Instead, she spent much of her time crusading for religious schools.

Curiously, the only time during her tenure that she prominently supported standardized testing was during the pandemic — a move seemingly intended to make public schools, which would obviously struggle to manage the task, look bad. And she surprised many last spring by backing a budget proposal with significant cuts in federal funding for public charters. To careful observers, this all made perfect sense, as Ms. DeVos’s chief aim has always been to move families out of the public system and to defund it.

Although Congress never took up her radical measures, such as a $5 billion annual tax credit for private school tuition, Ms. DeVos and her allies have made tremendous inroads at the state level. In Arizona and Florida funding for school choice programs has ballooned, with Florida taxpayers now spending more than $1 billion annually to send students to private schools.

And this past summer, the Supreme Court in Espinoza v. Montana declared that states could not bar religious schools from participating in state programs that provide scholarships to students attending private schools, clearing the way for further private expansion.

The blowback against the Republican Party’s rightward shift on education, however, is creating an opportunity for Democrats to move in new directions. In 2018, voters in purple states like Arizona, Michigan and Texas, and in red states like Kentucky, punished Republican candidates perceived as hostile to public education. And this fall, Arizona voters approved a measure to raise taxes on wealthy residents in order to increase funding for public schools and teachers — a move antithetical to the school privatization agenda that arguably helped turn the state blue.

To capitalize on voter dissatisfaction with education policies in the coming years, Democrats can no longer lean on maligning Ms. DeVos. As Republicans continue to work to defund and privatize school systems, both Democratic governors and the incoming Biden administration can draw a sharp policy distinction, boldly defending public education in a way that resonates with voters.

And while Mr. Biden’s expansive (and expensive) education plans will confront the harsh reality of partisan division in Congress, he is guaranteed a powerful megaphone — one that he’ll share, not just with the next secretary of education, but with a former high-school teacher and current community-college professor, Jill Biden.

Through her attention-attracting assault on the public education system, Betsy DeVos has actually given the next secretary of education an opportunity — to recommit to public education as a public good, and a cornerstone of our democracy.

Georgia Senate Candidates – Kelly Loeffler, Raphael Warnock, David Perdue and Jon Ossoff

Dear Commons Community,

Donald Trump’s attacks on Georgia’s Republican state officials and the state’s election system, is causing concern among the GOP leadership.  As reported by various media.

Some establishment Republicans are sounding alarms that President Donald Trump’s conspiratorial denials of his own defeat could threaten the party’s ability to win a Senate majority.

The concerns come ahead of Trump’s planned Saturday visit to Georgia to campaign alongside Sens. David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who face strong Democratic challengers in Jan. 5 runoffs that will determine which party controls the Senate at the outset of Biden’s presidency.

Republicans acknowledge Trump as the GOP’s biggest turnout driver, including in Georgia, where Biden won by fewer than 13,000 votes out of about 5 million cast. That means every bit of enthusiasm from one of Trump’s signature rallies could matter. But some Republicans worry Trump will use the platform to amplify his baseless allegations of widespread voter fraud — arguments roundly rejected in state and federal courts across the country. That could make it harder for Perdue and Loeffler to keep a clear focus on the stakes in January and could even discourage Republicans from voting.

“The president has basically taken hostage this race,” said Brendan Buck, once a top adviser to former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Especially fraught are Trump’s continued attacks on Georgia’s Republican state officials and the state’s election system, potentially taking away from his public praise of Loeffler and Perdue.

“Trump’s comments are damaging the Republican brand,” argued Republican donor Dan Eberhart, who added that the president is “acting in bad sportsmanship and bad faith” instead of emphasizing Republicans’ need to maintain Senate control.

The GOP needs one more seat for a majority. Democrats need Jon Ossoff to defeat Perdue and Raphael Warnock to defeat Loeffler to force a 50-50 Senate, positioning Vice President-elect Kamala Harris as the tie-breaking majority vote.

Trump on Monday blasted Gov. Brian Kemp as “hapless” for not intervening to “overrule” Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s certification of Biden’s win. A day earlier, Trump told Fox News he was “ashamed” he’d endorsed Kemp in his 2018 GOP primary for governor. Kemp’s office noted in response that state law gives Kemp no authority to overturn election results, despite Trump’s contention that Kemp could “easily” invoke “emergency powers.” Meanwhile, Raffensperger, a Trump supporter like Kemp, has accused the president of throwing him “under the bus” for doing his job.

Perdue and Loeffler have attempted to stay above the fray.

They’ve long aligned themselves with Trump and even echoed some of his general criticisms of the fall elections, jointly demanding Raffensperger’s resignation. But the crux of their runoff argument — that Republicans must prevent Democrats from controlling Capitol Hill and the White House — is itself a tacit admission that Biden, not Trump, will be inaugurated Jan. 20. And at one recent campaign stop, Perdue heard from vocal Trump supporters who demanded that he do more to help Trump somehow claim Georgia’s 16 electoral votes.

Republicans see three potential negative outcomes to Trump fanning the flames.

Some GOP voters could be dissuaded from voting again if they accept Trump’s claims that the system is hopelessly corrupted. Among Republicans more loyal to Trump than to the party, some could skip the runoff altogether out of anger at a party establishment the president continues to assail. Lastly, at the other end of the GOP spectrum are the moderate Republicans who already crossed over to help Biden win Georgia and could be further alienated if the runoff becomes another referendum on Trump.

Josh Holmes, a top adviser to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said Republicans “haven’t seen any evidence of lack of enthusiasm in the Senate races.”

But none of those potential bad effects would have to be sweeping to tilt the runoffs if they end up as close as the presidential contest in Georgia.

“We’ll see how it plays out. It changes day by day and week by week. But so far, so good,” Holmes said.

In Georgia, any Republican concerns are more circumspect.

Brian Robinson, a former adviser to Kemp’s Republican predecessor as governor, said Trump should “drive a strong, forward-looking message” about what’s at stake for a Republican base that “is fervently devoted to him.”

“The best thing he can do for the party,” Robinson said, “is to talk about the importance of having a Republican Senate majority to project his policy legacy and to make sure the Democrats can’t reverse a lot of what he has put in place that Republicans support.”

Asked what Trump should avoid, Robinson circled back to what he believes the president should say.

Former U.S. Rep. Jack Kingston, a Trump ally, downplayed the potential for GOP splintering, framing an “inner-family squabble” as a sideshow to the “incredible” consequences that define the runoffs.

“Followers of Trump will follow Trump, but they’re not blind to the huge stakes. And neither is he,” Kingston said. “He knows to keep his legacy. He’s got to get these people reelected.” Trump, Kingston argued, is “keeping the base interested,” a necessary component of any successful runoff campaign since second rounds of elections often see a drop-off in voter participation.

Robinson added that Democrats face their own challenge in replicating record turnout for Biden.

“What’s the best motivator? Fear,” he said. Before November, Democrats dreaded a second Trump term more than Republicans feared Trump losing, Robinson reasoned. “Republicans have reason to be scared now,” he said, because of the prospect that Democrats could control both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue.

“That could make a difference in turnout” beyond anything Trump says, Robinson concluded.

 The runoff election in Georgia is going to be huge!

Tony

Sean Hannity

Dear Commons Community,

President Donald Trump “needs to pardon his whole family and himself” as he walks “out the door” of the White House, Fox News host Sean Hannity said on his radio show Monday.

“I assume that the power of the pardon is absolute and that he should be able to pardon anybody that he wants to,” Hannity declared as he interviewed nutjob lawyer Sidney Powell.

Powell was bounced from Trump’s election legal team earlier this month after spouting bizarre conspiracy theories claiming that Venezuela, Cuba, “antifa,” George Soros, the Clinton Foundation and the deceased Hugo Chávez, among others, were responsible for shifting November’s presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Hannity did not specify what criminal charges Trump or his family could face.

He insisted Trump needs to pardon himself and his family to protect him from unspecified “witch hunts.”

Powell told Hannity that she didn’t know the details of Trump’s “authority to pardon himself.” But she insisted it wouldn’t be unnecessary because “the president is going to get another four years in office” — despite losing to President-elect Biden.

Generally, someone granted a pardon has been convicted of a federal crime and has shown remorse or made reparations. Pardons typically are granted after an application is presented five years after a conviction or release from prison and is approved by the Department of Justice’s pardon attorney.

A president has never pardoned himself. In 1974, former President Richard Nixon was pardoned after his resignation by his successor, Gerald Ford.

Trump last week pardoned his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who was represented by Powell, after Flynn had pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI about secret calls with Kremlin officials as Trump was coming into office.

Flynn was granted a “full and unconditional pardon” from “any and all possible offenses” arising out of the investigation into possible Kremlin collusion by former special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump pardoned Flynn after the Department of Justice failed to get his case thrown out in court.

Surely Hannity’s suggestion raises questions as to what Trump and his family have to fear.  A lot!

Tony

Scott Atlas

Dear Commons Community,

Dr. Scott Atlas, a science adviser to President Donald Trump who was skeptical of measures to control the coronavirus outbreak, is resigning from his Whitehouse position.

Atlas,  a Stanford University neuroradiologist, who had no formal experience in public health or infectious diseases, resigned at the end of his temporary government assignment.  As reported by the Associated Press.

“Atlas joined the White House this summer, where he clashed with top government scientists, including Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx, as he resisted stronger efforts to contain the COVID-19 pandemic that has killed more than 267,000 Americans.

Atlas has broken with government experts and the overwhelming consensus of the scientific community to criticize efforts to encourage face covering to slow the spread of the virus. Just weeks ago, on Twitter he responded to Michigan’s latest virus restrictions by encouraging people to “rise up” against the state’s policies.

His views also prompted Stanford to issue a statement distancing itself from the faculty member, saying Atlas “has expressed views that are inconsistent with the university’s approach in response to the pandemic.”

“We support using masks, social distancing, and conducting surveillance and diagnostic testing,” the university said Nov. 16. “We also believe in the importance of strictly following the guidance of local and state health authorities.”

Atlas defended his role in his resignation letter, saying, “I cannot think of a time where safeguarding science and the scientific debate is more urgent.”

Atlas was hired as a “special government employee,” which limited his service to government to 130 days in a calendar year — a deadline he reached this week.”

Goodbye and good riddance!  He advised Trump on what the President wanted to hear to the detriment of the American people, especially those who contracted and died of coronavirus.

Tony