Trumps Indictment: Historical and Future Implications V
Cont from previous page
Despite the fact the Republicans will hold a majority in the Senate when Trump takes office, Trump’s picks are so deeply flawed and dangerous that Trump and his team knew they would not get confirmed. So they demanded that Republicans in the Senate give up their constitutional power of advising the president on high-level appointments and consenting to his picks: the “advice and consent” requirement of the Constitution.
Trump demanded that the Senate recess in order for him to push through his choices as recess appointments. Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board came out against this scheme, calling it “anti-constitutional” and noting that it would “eliminate one of the basic checks on power that the Founders built into the American system of government.”
Now, in order to bring senators to heel, the Trump team is threatening to start its own super PAC to undermine the existing Senate Leadership Fund, whose leaders they insist are not loyal enough to Trump. A person close to Trump said that Senate Republican leaders “should reflect current leadership and the future, not the past.” “It doesn’t make sense,” one Republican operative told Politico’s Natalie Allison, Ally Mutnick, and Adam Wren. “Trump just had this massive win and now they are bringing in this Never Trumper.”
But for all the spin, the political calculation for Republican senators is not as clear as the Trump team is trying to project. At 78, Trump is not exactly the face of the party’s future. Nor did he deliver a “massive win.” He won less than 50% of the popular vote with many voters apparently unaware of his policies, and while the Republicans did retake the Senate majority, they did so with very little help—financial or otherwise—from him. Republicans will have as bad a map in the 2026 midterm elections as the Democrats had in 2024, and Trump’s voters tend to be loyal to him and no one else, generally not turning out in midterms.
It is also possible that, aside from political calculations, enough Senate Republicans take seriously their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” as well as the Senate’s role in the constitutional system of checks and balances that they will judge Trump’s antics with that in mind.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-15-2024
Despite the fact the Republicans will hold a majority in the Senate when Trump takes office, Trump’s picks are so deeply flawed and dangerous that Trump and his team knew they would not get confirmed. So they demanded that Republicans in the Senate give up their constitutional power of advising the president on high-level appointments and consenting to his picks: the “advice and consent” requirement of the Constitution.
Trump demanded that the Senate recess in order for him to push through his choices as recess appointments. Even the right-wing Wall Street Journal editorial board came out against this scheme, calling it “anti-constitutional” and noting that it would “eliminate one of the basic checks on power that the Founders built into the American system of government.”
Now, in order to bring senators to heel, the Trump team is threatening to start its own super PAC to undermine the existing Senate Leadership Fund, whose leaders they insist are not loyal enough to Trump. A person close to Trump said that Senate Republican leaders “should reflect current leadership and the future, not the past.” “It doesn’t make sense,” one Republican operative told Politico’s Natalie Allison, Ally Mutnick, and Adam Wren. “Trump just had this massive win and now they are bringing in this Never Trumper.”
But for all the spin, the political calculation for Republican senators is not as clear as the Trump team is trying to project. At 78, Trump is not exactly the face of the party’s future. Nor did he deliver a “massive win.” He won less than 50% of the popular vote with many voters apparently unaware of his policies, and while the Republicans did retake the Senate majority, they did so with very little help—financial or otherwise—from him. Republicans will have as bad a map in the 2026 midterm elections as the Democrats had in 2024, and Trump’s voters tend to be loyal to him and no one else, generally not turning out in midterms.
It is also possible that, aside from political calculations, enough Senate Republicans take seriously their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States” as well as the Senate’s role in the constitutional system of checks and balances that they will judge Trump’s antics with that in mind.
—
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-15-2024
Trying to imagine what Republicans would be saying if a Democratic president's nominee for ATTORNEY GENERAL, the top law enforcement official in the US, was trying to suppress a report that may prove his sexual misconduct with a minor.
Would a single minute go by where they wouldn't yell about it?
Would a single minute go by where they wouldn't yell about it?
Ahavati said:Trying to imagine what Republicans would be saying if a Democratic president's nominee for ATTORNEY GENERAL, the top law enforcement official in the US, was trying to suppress a report that may prove his sexual misconduct with a minor.
Would a single minute go by where they wouldn't yell about it?
They would be dramatically more vocal about it in order to lure attention away from their own misconduct, of which there is usually a lot more of.
Would a single minute go by where they wouldn't yell about it?
They would be dramatically more vocal about it in order to lure attention away from their own misconduct, of which there is usually a lot more of.
The patriarchy's latest cowardice move ( with their faces covered, of course ).
https://x.com/TheMossadIL/status/1857879852570865705
☝️
If the good people of Columbus don't want neo-nazis in their city, the good people of Columbus need to get off their arses and kick out the neo-nazis themselves. We have to JOIN TOGETHER AND GET INVOLVED! It's not enough simply to sit and type words and feel righteous. And as for informing the police and passing the responsibility onto them ... Jeez! Do me a favour.
https://socialistworker.co.uk/what-we-think/why-we-have-to-confront-the-nazis-on-the-streets/
🚩
If the good people of Columbus don't want neo-nazis in their city, the good people of Columbus need to get off their arses and kick out the neo-nazis themselves. We have to JOIN TOGETHER AND GET INVOLVED! It's not enough simply to sit and type words and feel righteous. And as for informing the police and passing the responsibility onto them ... Jeez! Do me a favour.
https://socialistworker.co.uk/what-we-think/why-we-have-to-confront-the-nazis-on-the-streets/
🚩
So, the judge presiding over Trump’s New York hush money case has explicitly stated that: “The election did not wipe the slate clean.”
Trump can still be sentenced to jail.
I'm personally expecting no jail time for this fraudster. He hasn't committed enough crimes to be criminal. But seriously, this is going to be interesting. . .
November 16, 2024
Heather Cox Richardson
Nov 16, 2024
One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states.
In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do. The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.
It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.
The Department of Education became a stand-alone department in May 1980 under Democratic president Jimmy Carter, when Congress split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two departments: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.
A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy. When the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by sending up the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, lawmakers concerned that American children were falling behind put more money and effort into educating the country’s youth, especially in math and science.
But support for federal oversight of education took a devastating hit after the Supreme Court, headed by Eisenhower appointee Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional in the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Immediately, white southern lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Other school districts took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. Then, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that declared prayer in schools unconstitutional cemented the decision of white evangelicals to leave the public schools, convinced that public schools were leading their children to perdition.
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.
After Reagan’s election, his secretary of education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a “widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used the report in his day to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”
The rise of white evangelism and its marriage to Republican politics fed the right-wing conviction that public education no longer served “family values” and that parents had been cut out of their children’s education. Christians began to educate their children at home, believing that public schools were indoctrinating their children with secular values.
When he took office in 2017, Trump rewarded those evangelicals who had supported his candidacy by putting right-wing evangelical activist Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education Department. She called for eliminating the department—until she used its funding power to try to keep schools open during the covid pandemic—and asked for massive cuts in education spending.
Rather than funding public schools, DeVos called instead for tax money to be spent on education vouchers, which distribute tax money to parents to spend for education as they see fit. This system starves the public schools and subsidizes wealthy families whose children are already in private schools. DeVos also rolled back civil rights protections for students of color and LGBTQ+ students but increased protections for students accused of sexual assault.
In 2019, the 1619 Project, published by the New York Times Magazine on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in Virginia Colony, argued that the true history of the United States began in 1619, establishing the roots of the country in the enslavement of Black Americans. That, combined with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, prompted Trump to commission the 1776 Project, which rooted the country in its original patriotic ideals and insisted that any moments in which it had fallen away from those ideals were quickly corrected. He also moved to ban diversity training in federal agencies.
When Trump lost the 2020 election, his loyalists turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children. In January 2021, Republican activists formed Moms for Liberty, which called itself a parental rights organization and began to demand the banning of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo engineered a national panic over the false idea that public school educators were teaching their students critical race theory, a theory taught as an elective in law school to explain why desegregation laws had not ended racial discrimination.
Cont below
Heather Cox Richardson
Nov 16, 2024
One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states.
In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do. The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.
It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.
The Department of Education became a stand-alone department in May 1980 under Democratic president Jimmy Carter, when Congress split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two departments: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education.
A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy. When the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by sending up the first Sputnik satellite in 1957, lawmakers concerned that American children were falling behind put more money and effort into educating the country’s youth, especially in math and science.
But support for federal oversight of education took a devastating hit after the Supreme Court, headed by Eisenhower appointee Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional in the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.
Immediately, white southern lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Other school districts took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. Then, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that declared prayer in schools unconstitutional cemented the decision of white evangelicals to leave the public schools, convinced that public schools were leading their children to perdition.
In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.
After Reagan’s election, his secretary of education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a “widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”
Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used the report in his day to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”
The rise of white evangelism and its marriage to Republican politics fed the right-wing conviction that public education no longer served “family values” and that parents had been cut out of their children’s education. Christians began to educate their children at home, believing that public schools were indoctrinating their children with secular values.
When he took office in 2017, Trump rewarded those evangelicals who had supported his candidacy by putting right-wing evangelical activist Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education Department. She called for eliminating the department—until she used its funding power to try to keep schools open during the covid pandemic—and asked for massive cuts in education spending.
Rather than funding public schools, DeVos called instead for tax money to be spent on education vouchers, which distribute tax money to parents to spend for education as they see fit. This system starves the public schools and subsidizes wealthy families whose children are already in private schools. DeVos also rolled back civil rights protections for students of color and LGBTQ+ students but increased protections for students accused of sexual assault.
In 2019, the 1619 Project, published by the New York Times Magazine on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in Virginia Colony, argued that the true history of the United States began in 1619, establishing the roots of the country in the enslavement of Black Americans. That, combined with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, prompted Trump to commission the 1776 Project, which rooted the country in its original patriotic ideals and insisted that any moments in which it had fallen away from those ideals were quickly corrected. He also moved to ban diversity training in federal agencies.
When Trump lost the 2020 election, his loyalists turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children. In January 2021, Republican activists formed Moms for Liberty, which called itself a parental rights organization and began to demand the banning of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo engineered a national panic over the false idea that public school educators were teaching their students critical race theory, a theory taught as an elective in law school to explain why desegregation laws had not ended racial discrimination.
Cont below
Cont from above
After January 2021, 44 legislatures began to consider laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or to limit how teachers could talk about racism and sexism, saying that existing curricula caused white children to feel guilty.
When the Biden administration expanded the protections enforced by the Department of Education to include LGBTQ+ students, Trump turned to focusing on the idea that transgender students were playing high-school sports despite the restrictions on that practice in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.”
During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.
But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars.
There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.
In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a colleague about public education: “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-16-2024
After January 2021, 44 legislatures began to consider laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or to limit how teachers could talk about racism and sexism, saying that existing curricula caused white children to feel guilty.
When the Biden administration expanded the protections enforced by the Department of Education to include LGBTQ+ students, Trump turned to focusing on the idea that transgender students were playing high-school sports despite the restrictions on that practice in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.”
During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.
But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars.
There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.
In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a colleague about public education: “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”
Notes: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-16-2024
I SO wanted Harris to pick Buttigeig for VP! Here he explains the impact of mis/disinformation. Having our news feed be decided by an algorithm rather than an editor.
https://x.com/krassenstein/status/1857973659727462427
https://x.com/krassenstein/status/1857973659727462427
"Make America Hot Again" my ass. This is the type of DISINFORMATION that is killing the U.S.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1857548101898351081
Firstly, it was the 1980's not 90's when ultra-processed food was introduced, under Ronald Reagan, who served from 1981 to 1989. Secondly, Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" was a comprehensive initiative dedicated to solving the problem of obesity within a generation. This included new nutrition standards for schools and allocated $4.5 billion for their implementation.
What happened when Trump was elected?
Trump Administration Rolls Back Michelle Obama's Healthy School Lunch Push
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/01/526451207/trump-administration-rolls-back-2-of-michelle-obamas-signature-initiatives
True story here: During Trump's first term in office, a conservative classmate of mine was screaming "HALLELUJAH" all over her social media page because Trump was terminating Michelle Obama's healthy lunch program. This SAME person, just this week, was screaming "HALLELUJAH" to JKF Jr's appointment as head of DHHS because "He'll clean up the food that our children are eating!"
This is the prevailing hypocrisy in the U.S., and maybe other countries, I don't know. It's come down to this: It depends on whether the idea is from democrat or republican before it's judged "awesome"! It's not judged on its own merit.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1857548101898351081
Firstly, it was the 1980's not 90's when ultra-processed food was introduced, under Ronald Reagan, who served from 1981 to 1989. Secondly, Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" was a comprehensive initiative dedicated to solving the problem of obesity within a generation. This included new nutrition standards for schools and allocated $4.5 billion for their implementation.
What happened when Trump was elected?
Trump Administration Rolls Back Michelle Obama's Healthy School Lunch Push
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/01/526451207/trump-administration-rolls-back-2-of-michelle-obamas-signature-initiatives
True story here: During Trump's first term in office, a conservative classmate of mine was screaming "HALLELUJAH" all over her social media page because Trump was terminating Michelle Obama's healthy lunch program. This SAME person, just this week, was screaming "HALLELUJAH" to JKF Jr's appointment as head of DHHS because "He'll clean up the food that our children are eating!"
This is the prevailing hypocrisy in the U.S., and maybe other countries, I don't know. It's come down to this: It depends on whether the idea is from democrat or republican before it's judged "awesome"! It's not judged on its own merit.
Ahavati said:"Make America Hot Again" my ass. This is the type of DISINFORMATION that is killing the U.S.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1857548101898351081
Firstly, it was the 1980's not 90's when ultra-processed food was introduced, under Ronald Reagan, who served from 1981 to 1989. Secondly, Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" was a comprehensive initiative dedicated to solving the problem of obesity within a generation. This included new nutrition standards for schools and allocated $4.5 billion for their implementation.
What happened when Trump was elected?
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/01/526451207/trump-administration-rolls-back-2-of-michelle-obamas-signature-initiatives
True story here: During Trump's first term in office, a conservative classmate of mine was screaming "HALLELUJAH" all over her social media page because Trump was terminating Michelle Obama's healthy lunch program. This SAME person, just this week, was screaming "HALLELUJAH" to JKF Jr's appointment as head of DHHS because "He'll clean up the food that our children are eating!"
This is the prevailing hypocrisy in the U.S., and maybe other countries, I don't know. It's come down to this: It depends on whether the idea is from democrat or republican before it's judged "awesome"! It's not judged on its own merit.
So very much like how a thread gets trolled daily for years about how EVERY Democrat is a pedo, but then nothing but silence regarding the nomination of Matt Gaetz.
https://x.com/Acyn/status/1857548101898351081
Firstly, it was the 1980's not 90's when ultra-processed food was introduced, under Ronald Reagan, who served from 1981 to 1989. Secondly, Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" was a comprehensive initiative dedicated to solving the problem of obesity within a generation. This included new nutrition standards for schools and allocated $4.5 billion for their implementation.
What happened when Trump was elected?
https://www.npr.org/2017/05/01/526451207/trump-administration-rolls-back-2-of-michelle-obamas-signature-initiatives
True story here: During Trump's first term in office, a conservative classmate of mine was screaming "HALLELUJAH" all over her social media page because Trump was terminating Michelle Obama's healthy lunch program. This SAME person, just this week, was screaming "HALLELUJAH" to JKF Jr's appointment as head of DHHS because "He'll clean up the food that our children are eating!"
This is the prevailing hypocrisy in the U.S., and maybe other countries, I don't know. It's come down to this: It depends on whether the idea is from democrat or republican before it's judged "awesome"! It's not judged on its own merit.
So very much like how a thread gets trolled daily for years about how EVERY Democrat is a pedo, but then nothing but silence regarding the nomination of Matt Gaetz.
MidnightSonneteer said:
So very much like how a thread gets trolled daily for years about how EVERY Democrat is a pedo, but then nothing but silence regarding the nomination of Matt Gaetz.
But he's a republican! That makes it okay, like their new president. Donald Trump's name where it appears on Epstein's flight list ( circled above ).
MidnightSonneteer said:
The rhetorical periodicity of slinging mud and staying silent is timed accordingly.
"Ignore it and it will go away. . .ignore it and it will go away. . ."
Yeah, tell that to all the girls that were raped and women that were molested. It's the patriarchy. Plain and simple. There's a deep-seated belief that they own women. That women were created for THEIR pleasure and not independently as a lifeform who has choices. It's that simple.
Meanwhile, on vaccines. I do hope that RFK Jr exercises caution in advising parents against immunizing their children. I worry about the re-emergence of diseases in this country.
