Tuesday, November 08, 2022
Monday, November 07, 2022
A GOP Congress Could Roll Back Nationwide Freedoms
If Republicans win control of one or both congressional chambers this week, they will likely begin a project that could reshape the nation’s political and legal landscape: imposing on blue states the rollback of civil rights and liberties that has rapidly advanced through red states since 2021.
Over the past two years, the 23 states where Republicans hold unified control of the governorship and state legislature have approved the most aggressive wave of socially conservative legislation in modern times. In highly polarizing battles across the country, GOP-controlled states have passed laws imposing new restrictions on voting, banning or limiting access to abortion, retrenching LGBTQ rights, removing licensing and training requirements for concealed carry of firearms, and censoring how public-school teachers (and in some cases university professors and even private employers) can talk about race, gender, and sexual orientation.
Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate have introduced legislation to write each of these red-state initiatives into federal law. The practical effect of these proposals would be to require blue states to live under the restrictive social policies that have burned through red states since President Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.
None of the proposals to nationalize the red-state social agenda could become law any time soon. Even if Republicans were to win both congressional chambers, they would not have the votes to overcome the inevitable Biden vetoes. Nor would Republicans, even if they controlled both chambers, have any incentive to consider repealing the Senate filibuster to pass this agenda until they know they have a president who would sign the resulting bills into law—something they can’t achieve before the 2024 election.
But if Republicans triumph this week, the next two years could nonetheless become a crucial period in formulating a strategy to nationalize the red-state social-policy revolution. . . . And the 2024 Republican presidential candidates are also likely to test GOP primary voters’ appetite for writing conservative social priorities into national law. Embracing such initiatives “may prove irresistible for a lot of folks trying to capture” the party’s socially conservative wing, Patrick Brown, a fellow at the conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center, told me.
It starts with abortion. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina in September introduced a bill that would ban the procedure nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy. In the House, 167 Republicans have co-sponsored the “Life Begins at Conception Act,” which many legal analysts say would effectively ban all abortions nationwide.
In elections, Senator Rick Scott of Florida has proposed legislation that would impose for federal elections nationwide many of the voting restrictions that have rapidly diffused across red states . . .
In education, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas has proposed to federalize restrictions on how teachers can talk about race by barring any K–12 school that receives federal money from using “critical race theory” in instruction. Several Republicans (including Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri) have introduced a “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” which would mandate parental access to school curriculum and library materials nationwide—a step toward building pressure for the kind of book bans spreading through conservative states and school districts.
Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, along with several dozen co-sponsors, recently introduced a federal version of the “Don’t Say Gay” legislation that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida pushed into law. Johnson’s bill is especially sweeping in its scope. It bars discussion of “sexually-oriented material,” including sexual orientation, with children 10 and younger, not only in educational settings, but in any program funded by the federal government, including through public libraries, hospitals, and national parks. . . . . Johnson’s bill is only one of several Republican proposals to nationalize red-state actions on LGBTQ issues.
Meanwhile, Senator Steve Daines and Representative Richard Hudson of North Carolina have introduced legislation requiring every state to accept a concealed-carry gun permit issued in any state—a mechanism for overriding blue-state limits on these permits. . . . Ambler told me he expects that the NRA and congressional Republicans will eventually seek not only to preempt blue states and city limits on who can carry guns, but also to invalidate their restrictions on where they can do so, such as the New York State law, now facing legal challenge, barring guns from the subway.
[W]e’ve seen again and again in the states is that when they can, they have moved in these directions. Even when you take a look at more moderate states, when they have the power to do these things, they move these things forward.” That precedent eventually may apply not just to LGBTQ issues, but to all the red-state initiatives some Republicans want to inscribe into national law.
[T]he red states have moved to reverse that long trajectory toward a stronger national floor of rights by setting their own rules on abortion, voting, LGBTQ issues, classroom censorship, and book bans, among other issues. In that cause, they have been crucially abetted by the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority, which has struck down or weakened previously nationally guaranteed rights (including abortion and voting access).
But the proliferation of these congressional-Republican proposals to write the red-state rules into federal law suggests that this reassertion of states’ rights was just a way station toward restoring common national standards of civil rights and liberties—only in a much more restrictive and conservative direction.
Like many students of the red-state social-policy eruption, Tillery believes that Republicans and social conservatives feel enormous urgency to write their cultural priorities into law before liberal-leaning Millennials and Generation Z become the electorate’s dominant force later this decade. “The future ain’t bright for them looking at young people, so they are acting in a much more muscular and authoritarian way now,” he said.
Be very afraid.
Dancing Near the Edge of a Lost Democracy
One of the most sobering statements from President Biden’s speech last week on protecting democracy was one that might well have gone unnoticed by many who heard it or read about it.
In the speech, Biden pointed out, “The remarkable thing about American democracy is this: Just enough of us, on just enough occasions, have chosen not to dismantle democracy but to preserve democracy.”
The sentence is damning. The dismantling of our democracy is just one apathetic electorate, one slate of voter suppression laws or one barrage of misinformation away.
Modern presidential elections don’t often end in landslides. In fact, no president has won by a margin of the popular vote greater than 10 percentage points since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Biden’s margin of victory over Donald Trump was only four percentage points.
These slim margins are obscured by the flaws and peculiarities of our electoral process, how small states are overrepresented and most states award electors on a winner-take-all basis.
[T]hat same [Electoral College] fluke means that the country’s last two Republican presidents were able to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote — George Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016.
This is all to say that we are always a cat’s whisker away from calamity.
And that doesn’t go only for presidential elections. The same dilemma has plagued this year’s midterms as control of Congress hangs in the balance, with the antidemocracy barbarians at the door.
It is widely believed that Republicans will retake control of the House of Representatives, the only question being by what margin. But the control of the Senate is very much in play, with some of the most hotly contested races playing out in states that often swing presidential elections, like Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Wisconsin.
In each of these states, the Republican candidates for the Senate have at one time either openly denied the results of the 2020 election or pushed false claims of fraud about that election.
Those candidates have a chance to win, but even if they don’t, the damage their election denialism has done will linger. We are witnessing a generational curse being cast.
Republicans have turned doubt about the 2020 election — and about the legitimacy of any elections they lose — into a test of faith. It is the crucible through which one must pass to be a modern Republican in good standing. You are true only if you swallow the lie.
Many elected officials and operatives are simply being opportunists, using the lie to excite voters or to benefit from the zealotry the lie has spawned. But for many Trump followers, the lie is gospel. It is being welded not only to the psyche but also to the soul.
This mass delusion will not be easy to dislodge.
But this is a problem for our democracy. The people fighting to save democracy are doing so with fact, but the people willing and working to destroy it are operating on a feeling. The former is relying on data and the latter on dogma.
The antidemocracy faithful cannot and will not be dissuaded by facts. Faith, which doesn’t require evidence, can be fed and affirmed by things that aren’t true. And that is precisely what is happening.
That faith doesn’t even allow for the notion that destroying democracy would be bad, or markedly worse than present conditions. So people may even believe that they will benefit from democracy’s demise.
This is Trump’s twisted legacy, something that will endure, no matter what happens during these midterms and whether he runs once more for president. The damage he has done and continues to do will, in the end, be far bigger than he ever was.
[T]he country is perilously close to installing officials who want to undo it and remake it, who want a partial democracy or none at all. America is one bad election away from being a memory.
Sunday, November 06, 2022
Liz Cheney Endorses Democrat Abigail Spanberger
Rep. Liz Cheney used to be one of the standard-bearers of the Republican party—she’s literally the heir to one of the most prominent Republicans in modern history. But since she broke with former president Donald Trump, she’s strayed far from the party and is now not just campaigning against pro-Trump Republicans, she’s endorsing Democrats. After endorsing Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin, Cheney says she is now endorsing Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger.
Spanberger is one of the most moderate Democrats, having criticized President Joe Biden for trying to enact too sweeping of an agenda and called for Nancy Pelosi to step down. She’s running for reelection in what was once one of the most conservative districts—it was considered a safe seat for former Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, but he lost it to right-wing challenger Dave Brat in 2014. Spanberger took the seat in 2018 but is in a close race with Republican Yesli Vega, who was endorsed by Donald Trump last week.
Vega has played down her Trump endorsement, with both candidates clearly trying to appeal to a moderate middle. Cheney told the Washington Post she was endorsing Spanberger because Vega was an election denier.
“We don’t agree on every policy, but I am absolutely certain that Abigail is dedicated to serving this country and her constituents and defending our Constitution,” Cheney said in a statement the Post.
Cheney lost the Republican primary to keep her seat representing Wyoming earlier this summer, but is still a fundraising behemoth, with millions of dollars in her PAC, which she can use to support other candidates or eventually organize another run for herself, possibly for president. Cheney has also maintained a high profile as the highest-ranking Republican on the House’s Jan. 6 Committee.
Youngkin Needs to Stop Politicizing Public Schools
On Sept. 16, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) released a “model policy” for how schools should work with transgender youths, including referring to students only using information about names and sex listed in their official record unless a parent or guardian has submitted a name-change form. School staff cannot “conceal material information” about a student, including information related to gender. The policy requires the use of bathrooms, locker rooms and other “intimate spaces” based on sex assigned at birth and states that athletic participation must be determined by sex.
The model policies have many inherent issues, beginning with a privileged assumption that all students have supportive home environments free of family abuse, neglect and generationally inflicted trauma. Policies protecting parents’ rights should take extreme care not to trample on the rights of innocent children.
Moreover, the timing of these policies follows extremely vocal criticism from the governor and his team about the state’s recent Standards of Learning assessment, results they attribute to the reduction of in-person learning during the coronavirus pandemic. So, the question should be raised: What does a revamp in policy that focuses on preferred pronouns and bathroom preferences have to do with academic achievement and addressing unfinished learning?
[T]he only way to prepare students for college, career and life is to follow the data and set our tasks and priorities accordingly.
The data does not tell us to focus on outing students to their parents, hammering kids on bathroom preferences and calling a child “she” when they prefer to be called “he.” What the data does tell us is that we need to improve student literacy. Virginia’s School Quality Profile in the 2021 to 2022 school year showed that only 73 percent of students demonstrated proficiency in reading, 65 percent in writing, 66 percent in math, 65 percent in science and 66 percent in history. Unsurprisingly, Black and Hispanic students continued to lag behind their White and Asian counterparts on these assessments. If these achievements were to be “graded,” then Virginia would have a D average.
As educators, we must use data to make informed instructional decisions for our students so that we can crawl out of this pervasive hole of mediocrity. We should be given the space and time to respond to the individual needs of our students and families, working together to do the grueling work of placing an equity lens on everything we do and dismantling the broken systems that perpetuate opportunity gaps within our schools and school systems.
Though I appreciate the governor’s fervor for parents’ involvement in their child’s education (I, too, support this), the Youngkin administration’s “listen to parents” narrative has done more harm than good. This slogan has morphed into a tool used to divide families from their public school systems instead of encouraging the much-needed support of our educators. Of course we must listen to our parents. But we must also trust the expertise of our public educators and value their knowledge and experience.
I would not tell my doctor how to perform surgery; it is time to stop telling trained educators how to navigate the very complex task of educating our children.
This model policy is a distraction. The issue of schools and what happens in them has become too focused on politics and not focused enough on kids. The data is clear and tells us that we have an academic and equity problem. The pandemic showed us that our kids are hurting and we just need to let them be who they are right now.
So, let the teachers teach, let the principals lead and give the superintendents respect and grace. Elected officials must stop distracting them. That is the only policy that will help right now.
Don't expect Youngkin to heed such sound advice. His sole concern is furthering his political ambitions and he cares nothing about the lives he is damaging. He is yet another example of the moral bankruptcy of most Republican elected officials across America.
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