April 25, 2023

Tuesday, April 25, 2023. Annette’s News Roundup.

I think the Roundup makes people feel not so alone.

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Joe is always busy.

Today. Expect the President to announce his candidacy for 2024. Get yourself together to cheer.

One more thing. Today is also the start of the E. Jean Carroll civil rape trial against Trump.

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Kamala is always busy.

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Hillary is always busy.

Raise the Debt Limit, Republicans. Or damage America.

Hillary Clinton: Republicans Are Playing Into the Hands of Putin and Xi.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy is making a ransom demand. His hostage is the economy and America’s credibility. Mr. McCarthy has threatened that House Republicans will refuse to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling, potentially triggering a global financial crisis, unless President Biden agrees to deep cuts to education, health care, food assistance for poor children and other services.

Mr. McCarthy repeatedly invoked the threat of Chinese competition as justification. The speaker is right that this debate has significant national security implications — just not the way he says.

With Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine grinding into a second year, tensions with China continuing to rise and global threats looming, from future pandemics to climate change, the world is looking to the United States for strong, steady leadership. Congressional brinkmanship on the debt ceiling sends the opposite message to our allies and our adversaries: that America is divided, distracted and can’t be counted on.

Let’s start by dispelling a myth. The debt ceiling debate is not about authorizing new spending. It’s about Congress paying debts it has already incurred. Refusing to pay would be like skipping out on your mortgage, except with global consequences. Because of the central role of the United States — and the dollar — in the international economy, defaulting on our debts could spark a worldwide financial meltdown.

Republicans in Congress have consistently voted to raise the debt ceiling with little drama when a fellow Republican is in the White House — including three times under President Donald Trump. But during Democratic administrations, they have weaponized the debt ceiling to extort concessions, despite the danger of default.

Today the competition between democracies and autocracies has grown more intense. And by undermining America’s credibility and the pre-eminence of the dollar, the fight over the debt ceiling plays right into the hands of Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia.

America’s leadership around the world depends on our economic strength at home. Defaulting on our debts could cost the United States seven million jobs and throw our economy into a deep recession. Instead of the “arsenal of democracy” capable of outcompeting our rivals, dominating the industries of the future such as microchips and clean energy and modernizing our military, America would be hobbled.

Even setting aside this economic carnage, brinkmanship over the debt ceiling reinforces autocrats’ narrative that American democracy is in terminal decline and can’t be trusted.

Trust matters in international affairs. We frequently ask other nations to put their faith in the United States. Our military will be there to protect allies, our financial system is secure, and when we warn about compromised Chinese telecom equipment or an impending Russian invasion, we’re telling the truth. Threatening to break America’s promise to pay our debts calls all that into question.

If Congress keeps flirting with default, calls for dethroning the dollar as the world’s reserve currency will grow much louder — and not just in Beijing and Moscow. Countries all over the world will start hedging their bets.

It’s a sad irony that Mr. McCarthy and many of the same congressional Republicans seemingly intent on sabotaging America’s global leadership by refusing to pay our debts are also positioning themselves as tougher-than-thou China hawks. They talk a good game about standing up to Beijing, yet they are handing a major win to the Chinese Communist Party.

Republicans should stop holding America’s credit hostage, shoulder their responsibilities as leaders and raise the debt ceiling.

(New York Times).

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Book Banning in America. A Problem We Never Expected to Face.

Like a pandemic - not the same, but in its own way, just as dangerous.

2023 Banned Books Update: Banned in the USA.

Update on Book Bans in the 2022-2023 School Year Shows Expanded Censorship of Themes Centered on Race, History, Sexual Orientation and Gender

The 2022-23 school year has been marked to date by an escalation of book bans and censorship in classrooms and school libraries across the United States. PEN America recorded more book bans during the fall 2022 semester than in each of the prior two semesters. This school year also saw the effects of new state laws that censor ideas and materials in public schools, an extension of the book banning movement initiated in 2021 by local citizens and advocacy groups. Broad efforts to label certain books “harmful” and “explicit” are expanding the type of content suppressed in schools.

Again, and again, the movement to ban books is driven by a vocal minority demanding censorship. At the same time, a 2022 poll found that over 70% of parents oppose book banning. Yet the bans continue. Many public school districts find themselves in a bind. They face threats and political pressure, along with parental fears and anxieties surrounding the books on their school shelves. School Boards, administrators, teachers, and librarians are told in some cases to “err on the side of caution” in the books they make available. Too often, they do just that.

These efforts to chill speech are part of the ongoing nationwide “Ed Scare” — a campaign to foment anxiety and anger with the goal of suppressing free expression in public education. As book bans escalate, coupled with the proliferation of legislative efforts to restrict teaching about topics such as race, gender, American history, and LGBTQ+ identities, the freedom to read, learn, and think continues to be undermined for students.

Below, PEN America updates its tally and analysis of book bans during the first half of the 2022-2023 school year, from July to December 2022. This research builds on PEN America’s 2022 report, Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools, which covered book bans from July 2021 to June 2022.

Key Findings: 

• During the first half of the 2022-23 school year PEN America’s Index of School Book Bans lists 1,477 instances of individual books banned, affecting 874 unique titles, an increase of 28 percent compared to the prior six months, January – June 2022. That is more instances of book banning than recorded in either the first or second half of the 2021-22 school year. Over this six-month timeline, the total instances of book bans affected over 800 titles; this equates to over 100 titles removed from student access each month.

• This school year, instances of book bans are most prevalent in Texas, Florida, Missouri, Utah, and South Carolina. These bans are driven by a confluence of local actors and state-level policy. The implications of bans in these five states are far-reaching, as policies and practices are modeled and replicated across the country.

• Overwhelmingly, book banners continue to target stories by and about people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals. In this six-month period, 30% of the unique titles banned are books about race, racism, or feature characters of color. Meanwhile, 26% of unique titles banned have LGBTQ+ characters or themes.

• Due to cases where long lists of books are removed for further investigation, bans this school year are increasingly affecting a wider swath of titles, including those that portray violence and abuse (44%), discuss topics of health and wellbeing (38%), and cover death and grief (30%). This illuminates how censorship impacts a wide array of books, particularly as school districts respond to vague legislation by removing large numbers of books prior to any formal review.

• The process behind book challenges and bans is evolving. During the 2021-22 school year, parent-led groups coordinated to advance book censorship. These groups pressured  districts to remove books without following their own policies, even in some cases, removing books without reading them. That trend has continued in the 2022-23 school year, but it has also been supercharged by a new source of pressure: state legislation. School districts in many states are reacting to new laws that dictate the types of books that can even be in schools, or what kinds of policies they have to follow to add new books and review their collections. 

• Books are more frequently labeled “pornographic” or “indecent.” Dozens of books were targeted for removal in the 2021-22 school year on the basis that they contained sexual content. But since last summer, this framing has become an increasing focus of activists and politicians to justify removing books that do not remotely fit the well-established legal and colloquial definitions of “pornography.” Rhetoric about “porn in schools” has also been advanced as justification for the passage or introduction of new state laws, some of which would bar any books with sexual content and could easily sweep up a wide swath of literature and health-related content. 

• The full impact of the book ban movement is greater than can be counted, as “wholesale bans” are restricting access to untold numbers of books in classrooms and school libraries. This school year, numerous states enacted “wholesale bans” in which entire classrooms and school libraries have been suspended, closed, or emptied of books, either permanently or temporarily. This is largely because teachers and librarians in several states have been directed to catalog entire collections for public scrutiny within short timeframes, under threat of punishment from new, vague laws. These “wholesale bans,” have involved the culling of books that were previously available to students, in ways that are impossible to track or quantify.

Download the Index data

Continue reading .. next, the State of Book Bans in the USA: An Overview. Click here.

2 CBS activities on book banning. 👇 First, on Moms for Liberty. Second, on American Library Association.

Biden’s Education secretary is done sitting ‘idly’ amid schools fight.

The article below 👇is dated March 27th, and Secretary of Education Cardona promised action. There hasn’t been much before or since.

Miguel Cardona is sick of the political strife that’s consuming classrooms, and he’s ready to say so out loud.

President Joe Biden’s education secretary — a former elementary school principal from Connecticut — has sought to avoid conflict since arriving in Washington. But Cardona has been shaken by the country’s fractured education politics over curriculum, parents’ rights, LGBTQ students and race.

I was hired to improve education in the country. I’m not a politician. I’m an educator. I’m a dad, and I want to talk about raising the bar in education,” Cardona said in an interview with POLITICO last week. “But I won’t sit idly when some try to attack our schools or privatize education.”

One more thing. Write to Secretary Cardona to encourage resistance to book bans. See contact information in this image.👇

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Watch #BobbleheadRon in action.

In Japan, the lagging Florida Governor was asked why he trailed Trump in the polls. Touch to watch.👇

Yes, it’s embarrassing that this is an elected official in our country but yes, it is funny. Full effect with no sound.

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At General Assembly in Tel Aviv, the protests are inside and out.

Israeli protesters gather outside the Jewish Federations of North America conference in Tel Aviv, where they angered some in the anti-government movement by extending invitations to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and far-right Knesset member Simcha Rothman.

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled his speech to the largest annual conference of American Jewish leaders on Sunday amid threats of mass disruption. But the protests against Netanyahu’s proposed judicial overhaul at the conference in Tel Aviv went on. 

This morning, security guards hauled half a dozen people who disrupted an appearance by the Knesset architect of the judicial plan out of the convention hall and stripped them of their conference badges. Hundreds of protesters waved pro-democracy banners outside, forcing the event’s 3,000 attendees to run a gauntlet of pounding drums and screeching whistles to get in. 

Inside, you could not hear the chants, but the message got through. As she opened the event on Sunday night, Julie Platt, chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, earned her loudest applause when she nodded to the protesters from the podium, saying: “We see you, we hear you, and we are inspired by your love of Israel.” 

One more thing. Soon, Netanyahu and De Santis will meet. Hope for a mutual love fest and mutual endorsements. 😂😂

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Jen Psaki’s interview with AOC. Civil discourse.

AOC talks about where President Biden exceeded her expectations and where she feels he has to go. She tells Jen Psaki that her advice to President Biden is to focus on young people.

She adds that the GOP understands how essential Gen Z is to Democrats since they helped Biden defeat Trump & stop the Red Wave in the midterms.

Such a great interview, because the interviewer is as knowledgeable as the interviewee. Touch to watch. 👇 17 minutes.

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Fani Willis, District Attorney in Fulton County, Georgia announces her timetable for indictments.

This is big, big news. We can’t expect the Georgia indictments until the summer. 😩 But there are good reasons.

Prosecutor Sets Timetable for Charging Decisions in Trump Investigation.

In a letter on Monday, the prosecutor said she would announce any indictments from her investigation into Donald J. Trump and his allies between July 11 and Sept.1.

ATLANTA — The prosecutor leading the investigation of former President Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia said on Monday that she is aiming to announce any indictments by mid-July at the earliest, according to a letter she sent to a top local law enforcement official.

In her letter, Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., said that any charges would come during the court term that runs from July 11 to Sept. 1.

In January, Ms. Willis said that charging decisions in the investigation were “imminent.” But her timetable has been delayed, in part because a number of witnesses have sought to cooperate as the investigation has neared an end. Local law enforcement also needs time to prepare for potential security threats, a point that Ms. Willis emphasized in the letter.

Further complicating matters, Ms. Willis’s office filed a motion last week seeking the removal of a lawyer who is representing 10 Republicans who were part of a bogus slate of electors who sought to help Mr. Trump stay in power even after he lost the 2020 election in Georgia. (New York Times).

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One more last thing on the biggest story of the day. By me.

Tucker Carlson is out.

The wicked witch is dead.

My view is this may mean the 2024 Election. Sick folks like the 84 year old white man who shot 16 year old Ralph Jarl sit on the couch and turn on the TV - They won't search for Tucker on the internet.

A replacement won’t have the reach or devoted following, at least, not in time for the election.

This will prove to be analogous to what happened to the #RedMeat crowd on social media. They didn’t follow Trump on Truth Social (which is likely going bankrupt soon).

Remember Bill O’Reilly too. This happened over time.

As for Don Lemon out at CNN, well, I hear there is a job at Fox.

Comments by many.

A View Salute to Carlson. Touch to watch.👇

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See you tomorrow!

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