For a nation whose governance is scattered across fifty states—what de Tocqueville called our “assemblage of confederated republics”—America has a strange way of acting as if the only political culture that matters is the one in its capital city. There has been a lurch to the right in Republican-controlled statehouses across the country that has had dire results for ordinary citizens but…
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Have you ever been grilled by little kids asking the question, “Why?” Why is the sky blue? Why does Heather have two moms? Why are you going to work? Why do you need money? Before you know it they have you questioning basic social values you never even thought about. That’s why right-wing Americans attack public education from kindergarten through college. They don’t want children turning into adults who have learned how to ask the question “Why?”
Conservatives have viewed America’s higher education institutions with suspicion for years. Remember Spiro Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativity?” But distrust of public education has now become part of the Republican party’s DNA. According to a Pew public opinion poll, for instance, fifty-nine percent of all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country. It’s no surprise, then, to see Florida’s Yale and Harvard educated Governor, Ron DeSantis, beef up his expected run for the presidency by attacking public education across the board.
DeSantis began by banning books and dictating curricula in K-12. Now he’s feeding red meat to his Republican colleagues by declaring war on Florida’s “woke” colleges and universities. Proclaiming that they teach ideological conformity and prepare students for “leftist” activism, DeSantis promises to restore academic freedom by eliminating courses on race, gender, and sexuality, to name the most obvious. He also wants more courses on Western Civilization, i.e., on Europe and the United States. And to keep faculty in line, DeSantis wants to eliminate tenure, the backbone of academic freedom. You want to teach students how to think and raise questions, Professor? Start looking for a new job. But not here in Florida.
DeSantis is already implementing this purge by turning the New College of Florida, a public college with about 700 students and a reputation for free thinking, into a bastion of political conservatism. Without concrete evidence, DeSantis blamed the college’s low enrollment on what he dubs its “ideological” filter. Using this accusation as his justification for intervening, he packed the college’s Board with his political loyalists, fired the President and replaced her with a political ally at more than twice the salary. Following his overt political takeover of the New College, the Governor plans to implement his higher education program as described above.
In the name of ending “woke” brainwashing, Yale and Harvard educated DeSantis and other Republican Governors – see Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, another Harvard grad – are using their political power to squeeze out trained professional educators to impose a right- wing version of reality on a generation of students. But the attack on “woke” culture is merely a smokescreen for DeSantis, Fox News, and their ultra conservative base. They don’t want a population capable of cutting through the baloney of misinformation, “fake news,” and the dense fog of intellectual apathy. For instance, while Fox News hosts blasted lies about election fraud, they privately mocked their sources as nuts. DeSantis knows the country’s real racial history. But his aggressive assault on critical race theory and its proponents assumes that racism can be washed out of reality. The Right never clearly defines the concept, they just want people to see CRT as anti-white propaganda. The attack on CRT is just a straw horse, a shiny object, to keep people from thinking seriously about the history, nature, and direction of American society.
The post Republican Attacks on Education and Critical Thinking first appeared on Dissident Voice.
It’s scary that ivy educated governors like DeSantis and Youngkin demonize higher education. They rely on these McCarthy-like tactics because they fear the consequences of an educated public. As Thomas Jefferson observed, an educated public is essential to a functioning democracy. According to a Pew poll, about a quarter of the adult population hasn’t read a book in the past year, and, worse yet, about half the adult population reads at the sixth-grade level or below. If the likes of DeSantis and Youngkin have their way, schools from kindergarten through college will produce non-thinking automatons, cheerful robots, the passive, non-questioning citizenry essential for authoritarian governments.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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Republican Party insiders have indicated that, for the time being, the party will not seek to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), an Obama-era piece of legislation that expanded access to health care for millions of Americans. The GOP has made dozens of attempts to overturn the law since it was first passed in 2010. In the House of Representatives alone, Republicans have introduced at least 100…
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During the Super Bowl on Sunday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) criticized advertisements by a Christian organization with deep conservative ties, saying that the ads normalize fascism. As part of a $100 million media campaign, a group called He Gets Us ran two ads during the Super Bowl on Sunday. As Lever News revealed earlier this month, He Gets Us is a subsidiary of the Servant…
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Republicans on the House Budget Committee offered a preview Wednesday of the programs they’re looking to cut or overhaul as part of any agreement to lift the debt ceiling, a target list that includes food aid for low-income families, climate justice and electric vehicle funding, student debt relief, and Affordable Care Act subsidies. The proposed cuts were outlined in a press release issued by Rep.
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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) has condemned the incessant GOP heckling during President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night, saying that Republicans’ behavior is indicative of the party’s current extremism. Republicans continually shouted and jeered during Biden’s speech as he addressed issues like taxing the rich or the GOP’s plans to go after Medicare and Social…
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Republican Rep. George Santos (New York) is officially under investigation by House officials, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) confirmed on Tuesday. McCarthy told reporters that Santos is currently being probed by the House Ethics Committee. It’s unclear what the focus of the investigation is, but it could be related to his questionable campaign finance practices — which Democrats and…
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In 1956, the famed sociologist C. Wright Mills published The Power Elite, a blistering critique of concentrated political, economic and military power in the United States. The book influenced many protest movements of the 1960s and has inspired radical scholars and activists ever since. Now, in 2023, Heather Gautney is continuing Mills’s project of analyzing and mapping out elite power in the U.S.
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Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) issued strong rebukes of the GOP after the House voted along party lines on Thursday to remove Muslim Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) from her spot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a move that Democrats and progressives have decried as racist and Islamophobic. “It is an outrage that every Republican voted to remove…
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A month after the two largest pharmacy chains in the United States announced their efforts to become certified to dispense abortion pills by mail, in accordance with a new Food and Drug Administration rule, the Republican attorneys general of 20 states on Wednesday warned the companies that providing the medications by mail in their states could result in legal action against them. In a letter co…
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The fundamental right to vote has been a core value of Black politics since the colonial era — and so has the effort to suppress that vote right up to the present moment. In fact, the history of the suppression of Black voters is a first-rate horror story that as yet shows no sign of ending. While Democrats and progressives justifiably celebrated the humbling defeat of some of the most notorious…
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Taking aim yet again at higher education, Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Tuesday proposed sweeping changes to the state’s university system, including banning state funding for diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and critical race theory education, as well as forcing tenured professors to undergo reviews at any time.
Speaking during a press conference at the State College of Florida in Bradenton, DeSantis said he is asking the state Legislature to cut all funding for programs he believes are “ideological.”
Referring to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs—which aim to promote fair treatment and full participation—and critial race theory, a graduate-level framework dealing with systemic racism, DeSantis said that “we’re also going to eliminate all DEI and CRT bureaucracies in the state of Florida. No funding, and that will wither on the vine.”
\u201cThis program was going to be launched by FAMU in April. Based on the Governor’s remarks today via his unhinged press conference, he wants to CANCEL this program and ban it from receiving any public support. \n\nCanceling a program about DEI at an HBCU.\n\nLet that sink in.\u201d— Rep. Anna V. Eskamani \ud83d\udd28 (@Rep. Anna V. Eskamani \ud83d\udd28)
1675185477Apparently not satisfied with a state law requiring tenured professors at state colleges and universities to undergo reviews every five years, DeSantis also called for legislation that would subject such educators to reviews at any time, at risk of their jobs.
“Yes, we have the five-year review of all the tenured faculty, which is, which is good… and the board of trustees has to determine whether they stay or go. But you may need to do review more aggressively than just five,” he said.
“I’ve talked with folks around the country who’ve been involved in higher ed reform, and the most significant deadweight cost at universities is typically unproductive tenured faculty,” the governor added. “And so why would we want to saddle you as taxpayers with that cost if we don’t have to do that?”
United Faculty of Florida (UFF), the union representing college and university educators in the state, said it would fight DeSantis’ proposals.
“The United Faculty of Florida stand in lockstep opposition to any and all so-called ‘reforms’ that will actually destroy our state’s world-class degree programs and their ability to serve our students,” UFF President Andrew Gothard said in a statement. “We will not allow Florida’s future to be sacrificed for cheap political points.”
\u201cRon DeSantis just held an UNHINGED press event promising to DEFUND Diversity, Equity, + Inclusion programs in all public colleges/universities.\n\nHis rants against \u2018political ideology\u2019 + \u2018indoctrination\u2019 are accusations in a mirror.\n\nHe wants total political censorship + control.\u201d— Carlos Guillermo Smith (@Carlos Guillermo Smith)
1675184661Writing for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Francie Diep and Emma Pettit contended that “it’s been a dizzying month for higher ed in the Sunshine State.”
As the authors explained:
The recent avalanche of activity began in late December, when DeSantis’ office requested that state colleges and universities list their spending on programs related to diversity, equity, inclusion, and critical race theory. Florida’s Republican House Speaker, Paul Renner, later asked the same campuses to turn over a mountain of additional DEI-related information.
DeSantis’ office also requested that state universities report data on transgender students, and he appointed six new trustees to the New College of Florida’s board because, according to his press secretary, the small liberal arts institution has put “trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning.”
“What I find most troubling is that DeSantis is putting out a blueprint for other governors and state legislatures,” Kristen A. Renn—a professor at Michigan State University who researches LGBTQ+ college issues—told The Chronicle of Higher Education. “He’s doing these things in ways that anybody else can pick this up and do it.”
DeSantis—a potential 2024 presidential candidate—has also come under fire for other policies and actions including rejecting a college preparatory African-American studies course, banning unapproved books from K-12 libraries, and the Stop WOKE Act, a CRT ban that applies to schools from the primary through university levels and is meant to combat what the governor called “wokeness as a form of cultural Marxism.”
\u201cBanning books, banning DEI, and targeting trans students is all ok but having neo nazis like Nick Fuentes tabling on FSU’s campus is ok. Welcome to DeSantis’ Florida.\u201d— Alejandra Caraballo (@Alejandra Caraballo)
1674832846Mia Brett, legal historian at The Editorial Board, last week compared Republicans’ attacks on education across the country to similar moves by the leaders of Nazi Germany during the early months of their regime.
“I’m not being hyperbolic when I say this is directly out of Nazi laws passed in 1933. Though if this Republican effort is successful, you might not be able to learn things like that anymore,” she wrote, adding that the legislation banning courses on CRT and racial and gender identity are a “chilling erosion of academic freedom and a huge step toward fascist academic control in the service of right-wing narratives.”
\u201cI wrote for @johnastoehr last week about how republicans are using the Nazi playbook for fascist education control. Here\u2019s another example https://t.co/oD0X1j0EoN\u201d— Dr. Mia Brett (@Dr. Mia Brett)
1675179218“While it’s still legal to teach history, remember where such efforts have led and take them seriously,” Brett ominously warned.
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New polling on embattled Rep. George Santos, who represents the 3rd Congressional District of New York, finds that the vast majority of his constituents now want him to resign, as the Republican tells party leaders that he is temporarily stepping back from his committee assignments. According to polling by Newsday/Siena College released on Tuesday, a whopping 78 percent of Santos’s constituents…
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In one of its first moves after a contentious leadership election, the Republican National Committee (RNC) voted on Monday to pass a resolution directing Republicans nationwide to “go on offense” in order to pass the most restrictive abortion bans possible. The resolution directs Republicans in Congress and in state-level positions to pursue the “strongest” anti-abortion bills “possible,”…
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Since Donald Trump’s first presidential campaign and the GOP’s subsequent slide into utter inanity, real life has continued to so far outpace satire that The Onion is starting to seem strangely mundane. Take, for example, the House GOP’s latest lurch into bizzaro-land: Several dozen hard-right lawmakers want to replace the country’s entire progressive tax code with a sales tax of 30 percent…
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An analysis published Friday by the nonpartisan watchdog Accountable.US revealed that numerous former fossil fuel lobbyists are being hired to work for the Republican-controlled 118th Congress, including in high-level positions on the House Natural Resources Committee.
“As the Republicans majority begins the new Congress, former oil industry lobbyists will have new and growing influence as top staffers for congressmen on key committees,” the analysis states.
Accountable.US detailed the close ties between Nancy Peele—chief of staff to House Natural Resources Committee Chair Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.)—and fossil fuel interests.
“It’s no surprise that Big Oil is infiltrating the halls of Congress after spending millions to elect some of the most extreme legislators in American history.”
Peele’s history includes:
- Lobbying Congress on behalf of Taylor Energy Co. LLC, an oil company liable for causing the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, the “longest running oil spill in U.S. history”;
- Representing Hercules Offshore Inc., a gas company that caused a “massive blowout” and two-day fire in the Gulf of Mexico; and
- Lobbying on behalf of Hornbeck Offshore Services to ensure that they continued to profit off the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The publication continues:Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s [R-La.] Chief of Staff Megan Bel Miller came to Scalise’s office straight out of working as an oil and gas lobbyist… Miller lobbied Congress on behalf of National Oceans Industry Association, a group representing the offshore oil and gas industry. Bel Miller advocated for polluting industry interests on numerous conservation issues, including the Endangered Species Act, National Environmental Policy Act, and offshore leasing. Majority Whip Tom Emmer’s [R-Minn.] new Policy Director Ian Foley is an energy and mining lobbyist. In 2022, Foley lobbied Congress on behalf of the uranium mining industry and public utilities with oil and gas portfolios.
These are but a handful of the many examples of the revolving door between Big Oil and Congress highlighted in the analysis.
“It’s no surprise that Big Oil is infiltrating the halls of Congress after spending millions to elect some of the most extreme legislators in American history,” Accountable.US energy and environment director Jordan Schreiber said in a statement. “These lobbyists are not getting hired to advocate for American energy consumers—they will push an agenda that benefits the new majority’s donors no matter what it costs taxpayers.”
Underscoring the analysis’ findings, the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday passed legislation that would require the federal government to lease a portion of public lands and waters for fossil fuel extraction for each non-emergency drawdown of the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve. The bill was introduced by Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee and was the top recipient of oil and gas PAC money in the House Republican caucus during the last election cycle.
\u201cNEW: MAGA Republicans in Congress just passed a bill that would obstruct one of @POTUS\u2019 only powers to protect consumers from Big Oil\u2019s price gouging\u2014letting oil companies get rich at Americans\u2019 expense. https://t.co/pcwPGdVkIs\u201d— Accountable.US (@Accountable.US) 1674844979“American consumers pay more for energy so Big Oil can get richer under [House Speaker] Kevin McCarthy’s [R-Calif.] plan,” Schreiber said in another statement. “Big Oil CEOs have given the MAGA majority big bucks while the rest of us simply pay our taxes so it’s no surprise they come out ahead.”This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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Democratic Representatives Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Adam Schiff (California) and Eric Swalwell (California) have put House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) on blast in a new op-ed, condemning McCarthy for his “partisan political stunt” this week to block the Democrats from their committee spots. This week, McCarthy blocked the appointment of Schiff and Swalwell from their spots on the House…
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A House GOP proposal to repeal all federal income taxes — including levies on corporations and the rich — and replace them with a whopping 30% national sales tax is drawing increasingly vocal backlash from economists, tax policy experts, and Democratic lawmakers who say the plan is yet another Republican ploy to reward the wealthy at everyone else’s expense Unveiled earlier this month by Rep.
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House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) is doubling down on his backing of Republican Rep. George Santos (New York), even as other Republican officials call for Santos’s resignation and legal and political problems pile up for the freshman representative and seemingly inveterate liar. McCarthy, who has stood by Santos for weeks, even as Santos has admitted to fabricating huge swaths of his…
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Caught in between several complaints over potential financial improprieties, Republican Rep. George Santos (New York) has changed course on the $705,000 that he previously claimed to have loaned to his campaign, now saying that the money wasn’t actually entirely from personal funds. On Tuesday afternoon, Santos’s campaign filed 10 amended campaign finance reports with the Federal Election…
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Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, the chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) reiterated that the RNC won’t let the GOP nominee participate in events organized by a nonpartisan organization that has held presidential debates since 1988. “Don’t waste your time,” RNC Chair Ronna McDaniel told networks that are applying to become 2024 debate hosts. She reminded them that the RNC has…
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Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Monday took aim at the Republican Party for creating what she called a “manufactured crisis” as a potential fight over the debt ceiling looms, slamming the GOP’s threats to public spending as the party works to make it even easier for the wealthy to avoid paying taxes.
On MSNBC‘s “Morning Joe,” the Massachusetts Democrat said the Republicans are actively trying to “wreck the economy” to protect the wealthy.
“If the Republicans had not pushed just two things, the Republican tax cuts that went mostly to those at the very top and the biggest corporations and hollowing out the IRS specifically so they could not hold wealthy tax cheats accountable, wouldn’t be able to audit them—if those two things had not happened, then we wouldn’t even hit the debt ceiling at any time during the first Biden administration,” said Warren.
\u201cSen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) says hitting the debt ceiling right now is a “manufactured crisis” by Republicans. \n\nWarren says without GOP tax cuts for wealthy and GOP’s hollowing out of the IRS, “we wouldn’t even hit the debt ceiling at any time during the first Biden admin.”\u201d— The Recount (@The Recount) 1674482996The Republican Party has for years cut funding to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) when it had the power to do so, diverting efforts away from auditing the wealthiest taxpayers and costing an estimated $125 billion in corporate taxes each year, and as Warren noted, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) began the new session of Congress earlier this month with a vote by the party to rescind billions in IRS funding that Democrats passed to crack down on tax evasion.
Far-right Republicans are also now proposing a nationwide sales tax to replace income taxes and other federal taxation—a regressive plan which, according to the Tax Policy Center, would leave households on the lower 80% of the income distribution paying nearly 35% of federal retail sales taxes, up from about 15%.
The sales tax would be “on everything from rent to groceries to diapers to car repairs,” said Warren, and would “cut taxes for those at the very top.”
The Republicans have pushed these proposals as U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced last week that the U.S. government had reached its debt limit of $31.4 trillion, which was set by Congress when it last raised the borrowing ceiling in December 2021.
The Treasury Department began implementing what it called “extraordinary measures” to avoid a debt default—selling investments and suspending reinvestments in the Civil Service Retirement and Disability Fund and the Postal Service Retiree Health Benefits Fund, which will not affect retirees or federal workers.
Yellen warned that those accounting maneuvers may only be possible until June and after that, “a failure to make payments that are due, whether it’s the bondholders or to Social Security recipients or to our military, would undoubtedly cause a recession in the U.S. economy and could cause a global financial crisis.”
In addition to further shifting tax burdens from the wealthy to lower-income households, Republicans have indicated they won’t agree to raise the debt ceiling without cutting social spending on programs such as Medicare and Social Security, which they have long blamed for national deficits.
“If this were really about the national debt, then there are plenty of places we could go to stitch up loopholes, like no more of these tax havens abroad, that we could get that under control. But that is not where the Republicans want to go,” Warren said on “Morning Joe.”
Warren noted that the GOP voted to raise the debt ceiling multiple times when former Republican President Donald Trump was in office, as the party pushed tax cuts for the wealthy.
“Once we’ve got a Democrat in the White House, no, they don’t want to raise the debt ceiling,” said the senator. “They want to create as much economic chaos as they can and keep offering tax cuts to their rich buddies.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
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Republicans in the Iowa House introduced legislation this month that would impose a slew of fresh restrictions on the kinds of food people can purchase using SNAP benefits, sparking outrage among local groups who say the measure would exacerbate hunger in the GOP-dominated state. The Des Moines Area Religious Council (DMARC), an interfaith group that operates the largest food pantry network in…
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Abortion rights activists are holding mass rallies across the country on Sunday to mark what would be the 50th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Courtruling that enshrined the constitutional right to abortion until right-wing justices struck it down last year. In Louisiana, one of at least 13 states that banned most abortions since the ruling, Nancy Davis will be a leader at the march in the…
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Democratic and progressive lawmakers are criticizing the GOP for an extremist tax plan that Republicans are planning to soon put to a vote in the House that would completely overhaul the tax system to blatantly favor the rich. In what seems to be a concession to the most far right members of the Republican caucus, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) has teed up a vote on the so-called Fair…
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Analyses show that a majority of the House Republicans’ newly chosen committee chairs – people who will have a huge hand in setting the priorities for the House over the next two years – have participated in the extremely dangerous and anti-democratic GOP practice of election denial. As first pointed out by HuffPost, 11 of the 17 new committee chairs were among the 147 Republicans who voted…
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A deal struck by far right members of the GOP House caucus and Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-California) to provide him enough votes to become Speaker of the House remains largely hidden, its aspects still unknown to the general public, nearly two weeks after he was appointed to the role. The way in which the American people have not been informed of the terms of the deal is problematic…
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