It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Sunday, July 10, 2022
Undo-Tweet: Right Wingers Implode Over Elon Musk’s Termination of Twitter Deal
Nikki McCann Ramirez Fri, July 8, 2022
Elon Musk - Credit: Susan Walsh/AP
Elon Muskno longer wants Twitter, and right wing figures who saw the purchase as an opportunity to reshape the platform in their favor are devastated.
A statement filed to the Securities and Exchange commission by Musk’s attorneys declared that “Mr. Musk is terminating the Merger Agreement,” alleging that “Twitter is in material breach of multiple provisions of that Agreement, appears to have made false and misleading representations upon which Mr. Musk relied when entering into the Merger Agreement.”
It turns out buying a sports car for your midlife crisis carries far less financial penalties than backing out of a $44 billion dollar purchase agreement. The termination of the deal means Musk will likely need to pay a $1 billion penalty, that is if Twitter declines to take him to court and force the $44 billion purchase.
Following the announcement of Musk’s intent to purchase the company, the Tesla billionaire’s own Twitter account became a hub for far-right reactionaries looking to influence the potential new owner of the platform. Now that the deal is seemingly dead in the water, the reaction from those same personalities has been a public mixture of panic and lament.
Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk unpinned the viral tweet announcing his return to Twitter due to “new management” from his profile.
Writer Wesley Yang tweeted that “the purge will be brutal.”
Commentators previously enthusiastic about the deal have latched on to Musk’s dubious public reason for terminating the deal: accusing Twitter of misrepresenting the presence of bots on the platform.
Some are still holding out hope that Musk’s filing with the SEC is a strategic ploy to tank Twitter’s stance (Chairman Bret Taylor took to the platform to confirm the company is looking to force the sale via legal means) and discount the purchase price.
Gun reform: These states are the most dependent on the firearms industry
As lawmakers enact new gun reforms in the wake of recent mass shootings, one factor shaping the political debate is how reliant states are on gun culture.
WalletHub ranked all 50 states by how dependent they are on the gun industry. The study compared states on the size of their firearms industry in terms of jobs and sales, the prevalence of gun culture, and gun-related political contributions.
The most dependent state on the gun industry was Idaho, followed by Wyoming and Kentucky.
While other states like California are among the largest producers overall in the gun industry, National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) data shows that Idaho led on a per capita basis with nearly 7,000 jobs, $435 million in wages, and almost $1.6 billion in gun-related economic output in 2021.
"Rural states are more dependent on the gun industry, with no exception," WalletHub Analyst Jill Gonzales told Yahoo Finance. "In terms of gun politics, northern states like Wyoming, Nebraska, and the Dakotas have the highest gun rights contributions to congressional members and no gun control contributions."
New York, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Rhode Island were the least dependent on the gun industry, the analysis found. And although WalletHub did not factor political alignment into their analysis, Gonzales noted that "what is clear is that Blue states are least dependent overall on the gun industry."
Republican-leaning states, meanwhile, were far more likely to have a robust gun industry. In fact, the top 20 states in the study voted Republican in the 2020 election.
Gonzales stressed that while the number of mass shooting events fits into a broader trend of higher firearm-related fatalities and injuries, the relationship between the gun industry and mass shootings isn't straightforward.
"There is no direct correlation between the gun ownership rate or the number of NICS background checks and the prevalence of mass shootings,” Gonzales explained. “For example, New Jersey has the lowest gun ownership rate and one of the smallest numbers of NICS background checks but ranks in the top 20 states with the most mass shootings, while West Virginia has the third-highest gun ownership rate and one of the lowest number of mass shootings.”
People look at semi-automatic guns at the Kalashnikov booth inside of the National Rifle Association Annual Meeting at the George R. Brown Convention Center, on May 27, 2022, in Houston, Texas. (Photo by STRINGER / AFP) (Photo by STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images)
In any case, the gun industry in the United States is an anomaly compared to other nations. Overall, the U.S. has an estimated 393.3 million firearms — an average of 120.5 guns per 100 residents.
The firearms industry has also continued to grow over the past decade. According to National Shooting Sports Foundation's (NSSF) 2022 economic impact report, the industry created 375,000 U.S. jobs, $21 billion in wages, and over $70 billion in economic output since 2008.
Gun politics
Political polarization has made it difficult for gun reform laws to be passed, though President Biden signed a $13 billion gun safety bill into law on June 25 after a spate of mass shootings.
The bipartisan legislation, led by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX) and Chris Murphy (D-CT), funds expanded background checks and safety procedures, particularly for prospective gun buyers between the ages of 18 and 21. It also implements more sophisticated checks using mental health records.
The politics remain: Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, and North Dakota tied for the top spot regarding gun politics, a metric WalletHub used to evaluate the financial relationship between state elected officials and gun rights lobbyists.
According to political watchdog OpenSecrets, gun rights groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA), Gun Owners of America, and the National Association for Gun Rights spent a total of $15.8 million on lobbying in 2021 — a record amount that outspent gun control advocates by five times.
President Joe Biden signs into law S. 2938, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act gun safety bill, in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Saturday, June 25, 2022. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
In 2021, gun groups in Texas spent the most of any state, according to OpenSecrets data, with $963,000 in lobbying expenditures for gun rights. The nonprofit also found that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who opposed the recent gun safety bill, has received the most campaign contributions throughout his career.
And while the recent gun safety law found some consensus among politicians, the complicated issue is far from resolved in the wake of yet another mass shooting that took place in Highland Park, Illinois, over the Fourth of July weekend.
"Different states have different versions of similar laws (extreme risk protection orders — ERPO) and some have none," University of Michigan Professor Marc Zimmerman told Yahoo Finance. "What we need is to study which existing laws are effective. We also need research on how laws are implemented and how that might affect their effectiveness."
For instance, "background checks may not eliminate unlawfully gained firearms, but they may eliminate impulsive behaviors that could be detected with some time to look into the individual purchasing the firearm," said Zimmerman, who is also the co-director of the Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention (IFIP) at the University of Michigan. "So they are part of the solution, but they are not the only thing we can do to address the firearm injury epidemic."
A child holds a firearm on display at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022. REUTERS/Callaghan O'Hare
Another aspect that the bipartisan gun law aims to address is preventing those with mental health concerns from accessing firearms.
"We need to recognize that for younger individuals (those under 25), the brain is not fully developed so they may not make decisions like adults and may be more impulsive," Zimmerman said. "Mix that with fewer conflict management skills and lower-level conflicts (physical fighting) can escalate into retaliation with firearms."
Zimmerman stressed that Americans "own guns and gun ownership is not going away," highlighting that the majority of gun owners are responsible when handling personal firearms.
"Yet these deaths and injuries are preventable, and it is especially concerning when one person can cause so much death and injury from a single incident," he said. "We have to get away from the politicizing of this issue and just roll up our sleeves and do what we need to do to help prevent these incidents from happening."
PAN-AFRICAN PRIDE
Ons Jabeur is the first Arab woman to reach a Grand Slam singles final in the modern era.
Jabeur of Tunisia during the trophy ceremony after losing to Elena Rybakina of Kazakhstan in the womens singles final of The Championships Wimbledon 2022. [Photo by Robert Prange/Getty Images]
Hailing her as the "nation's pride" and "ambassador of happiness", Tunisians remained enthralled with tennis star Ons Jabeur Saturday, celebrating her presence in the prestigious Wimbledon final despite her loss.
Jabeur became the world number two player and then made history as the first African or Arab woman to reach a Grand Slam singles final in the modern era.
Although she missed out on the title at the All England Lawn Tennis Club, she said she'll learn from the experience and can't wait to play in another final.
"I just try to inspire as many generations as I can," she said. At a cafe not far from the Hammam Sousse tennis club where the 27-year-old began her career, a group of young Tunisian men had been intently watching the match, yelling in excitement at each point she won.
"She's our Tunisian national product," said Safwen Ghairi, a 21-year-old student.
Supporters of Tunisian tennis player Ons Jabeur watch her final Wimbledon match at a coffee shop in the city of Sousse, her hometown. [(Photo by BECHIR TAIEB/AFP via Getty Images)]
He and his friends had rushed through their traditional Eid al-Adha meal to get to the cafe -- one of the few open on the national holiday which began Saturday -- to watch the match.
Jabeur represents the African continent "and the region at Wimbledon", Ghairi said. "It's a real achievement."
Nation's pride
His friend Zaher Edine Dahman, 27, called Jabeur "our ambassador of happiness".
"The authorities could never match the publicity Ons Jabeur has brought for Tunisia, even if they spent millions," he said.
"We used to dream of a Tunisian player simply qualifying for Wimbledon, and today, Tunisia is at the final," he added.
Her former trainer Nabil Mlika told AFP after the match that Jabeur was "the nation's pride", wishing her luck for the US Open, which begins next month.
Cafe worker Hafedh Amrouni, 25, said that Jabeur had "honoured" the country despite her coming in runner-up.
Her success has been a rare good news story for a North African country mired in economic and political crisis, made more acute by the coronavirus pandemic and the impact of the war in Ukraine.
On Friday, the country's Sports Minister Kamel Deguiche said celebrations were planned for after Wimbledon and that he wanted to officially award Jabeur the title of "Minister of Happiness", adding: "It's the state's duty to her."
Inspired by her mum
The youngest of four, born on August 28, 1994 in Ksar Hellal, Jabeur started her career as a child on hotel tennis courts in the nearby resort town of Hammam Sousse.
She has called her mother her inspiration.
"She is a big fan of tennis and took me to a tennis club when I was only three years old," she said in a BBC column.
"My mum used to play with her friends and I used to commentate... I used to spend the whole day there in the tennis club and I loved it," she added.
Jabeur said her mother was not in the crowd to watch her play on Saturday because there "wasn't enough time" for her to apply for a visa.
Jabeur moved o the capital, Tunis, at the age of 12 to train at a highly rated state-backed sports club.
She made a splash on the global scene in 2011, winning the girls' singles at the French Open when she was 16.
She reached the world's top 50 at the Australian Open in January 2020 -- the first Arab woman to reach a Grand Slam quarter-final - and has since surged up the rankings.
Her fame has sparked an increased interest in tennis in her home country, and membership levels have skyrocketed at her home club, from 320 in 2018 to more than 700 today.
Wimbledon women’s final makes tennis history
PBS NEWS NIGHT
Jul 9,2022
Wimbledon women's final was destined to be historic. Elena Rybakina on Saturday became the first ever player representing Kazakhstan to win a Grand Slam. She beat Tunisia's Ons Jabeur, the first woman from Africa to reach a Grand Slam final. Christopher Clarey, author and New York Times tennis correspondent, joins Nick Schifrin to discuss. Read the Full Transcript
Nick Schifrin:
On the English grass at Center Court, today's Wimbledon women's final was destined to be historic. Elena Rybakina became the first ever player representing Kazakhstan to win a Grand Slam. She beat Tunisia's Ons Jabeur, the first woman from Africa to reach a Grand Slam final. To discuss this I'm joined from Wimbledon by New York Times Tennis Correspondent and Author Christopher Clarey. Christopher Clarey, welcome to "PBS News Weekend." Both women's stories, of course, are interesting, first Rybakina, how did she win? And how did she end up playing for Kazakhstan?
Christopher Clarey, New York Times:
Well, Elena Rybakina is a very powerful six footer who can run like a deer to be honest with you. And she played a wonderful match today. And started a bit slowly was nervous. I mean, both women are in uncharted territory form. Not ever having gotten past the quarterfinals in the Grand Slam before in Singles. So we didn't know how they were going to react. Rybakina had trouble with their strokes early and she really found a rhythm in the second and third sets, started dominating with her big flat shots, track down a lot of gibberish signature drop shots, and finish it off. And the amazing thing was when she won, this is the biggest moment of her life. It was like she basically just won the first point of the match. Hardly any expression on her part. Hardly any emotion. But the emotion came later in the press conference when she broke down in tears. But on the court, you'd never would have known it was her first Wimbledon title.
Nick Schifrin:
And tell us about her story, she decided to play for Kazakhstan four years ago. How did that come about?
Christopher Clarey:
There been a number of Russian players over the years, when they've been lacking funding at home. We'll look to some of the other Soviet Republics where the fundings greater, looking for some athletes who can play certain sports, and then make a shift. She wasn't the first but she was, in many ways, one of the most recent ones to do it. And at the time, she wasn't considered one of the most promising Russian juniors, wasn't getting the funding that she needed. And so she decided to switch, doesn't speak Kazakh obviously, there's language, there's Kazakh and Russian, big former Republic. And, you know, she got coaching, all kinds of support. And we just talked to her a few minutes ago, and she was saying she wasn't sure she would have actually won this title if she hadn't had that backing from Kazakhstan. But the timing, of course, is awkward for the club and for people in tennis because Russians and Belarusians have been banned from Wimbledon this year, because of the invasion of Ukraine. And I don't think the angling club had in mind to having an ethnic Russian who grew up in Russia and recently lived there receiving the trophy on the center court today. That wasn't part of the operational plan.
Nick Schifrin:
Well, there's always politics when it comes to this. So tell us about that decision that Wimbledon made, the other Grand Slam tennis tournaments have not banned Russians. Why did Wimbledon?
Christopher Clarey:
Look, I think it was a combination of factors. You're right, Wimbledon is really an outlier on this issue in tennis, not so much in world sport, but definitely in tennis. And thinking I think was the British government led then by Boris Johnson was pretty adamant that there had to be some sort of either concession from the Russian players, or they were to take part, some sort of denunciation of their government and its objectives in Ukraine, or some other sort of gesture and I felt the club here that runs Wimbledon felt they had to do something, and they didn't want to make the players basically go against their country publicly could have put their families at risk. So they decided to disband Russians and Belarusians altogether, which is been a long time since that happened in tennis, since post World War II era with the Germans and the Japanese.
So it was pretty extraordinary. And there was a lot of reaction within the tennis tours, they took away the ranking points, which is unprecedented from Wimbledon, which created a lot of backlash to players who did very well here this year, for example, will not rise in the rankings. Some of them will even drop.
Nick Schifrin:
Let's talk about Ons Jabeur. The crowds seem to be behind her certainly all day, she's well liked on the tour. She's known as the Minister of Happiness. What does she represent the women's games?
Christopher Clarey:
Look, I think people were really excited and they still are about Ons Jabeur and all that she can bring to tennis and sports. There aren't that many people in the history of this game, from Arab nations, or from the African continent on the women's side who have done particularly well. Ons is an exceptional talent. And she's very charismatic, extremely likeable. Her game is magnetic, all kinds of variety and style and panache there. So I think, really, everybody was sort of primed to celebrate that and, in some ways, Elena Rybakina upset the applecart in that regard. But I think Ons, she brings is a chance to really reach a whole new audience and market, not just for women's tennis but for women's sports and people here in the game and Wimbledon are very aware of that.
Nick Schifrin:
And on the men's side, of course, we should talk about that, Novak Djokovic going for seven Wimbledon, he's facing the fiery, the unpredictable and a curious, could a win for Djokovic, do you think cement his legacy as the greatest of all-time?
Christopher Clarey:
Look, I personally don't believe in that debate. But I think there's too much that's changed over the years to compare the greats of the past long ago with the greats of today. The grandstand tournaments didn't matter as much in terms of the counting all your numbers of titles back in the days of Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall, and Bill Tilden, if you want to go way back as they do now. Not everybody played them for a long time either.
But in terms of this era, and what it represents, that number of who has the most Grand Slam singles titles is big. And right now Rafael Nadal, who had to pull out of here with an injury as 22 Djokovic and Roger Federer have 20. And Djokovic is very, very committed to chasing that number down. He has been number one longer than any other player in this area. He has winning head to head records against Nadal and Federer. So this is a huge match for him. And he may not be able to play the U.S. Open at all because he remains unvaccinated and may not be able to get into the country as the way the rules stand right now.
Nick Schifrin:
Christopher Clarey of New York Times joining us from Wimbledon, thank you very much.
Christopher Clarey:
My pleasure.
WAIT, WHAT
White House claims abortion rights activists are not in the 'mainstream' – and Democrats are livid
Bob Brigham July 09, 2022 Outgoing White House director of communications Kate Bedingfield led President Joe Biden's messaging strategy (AFP)
The White House is pushing back against women's rights activists frustrated by the loss of abortion rights while Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
On Saturday, The Washington Post reported on the disappointment over President Joe Biden's response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe vs. Wade.
"For many Democrats, however, it was too little and too late, just one more example over the two weeks in which Biden and his team struggled to come up with a muscular plan of action on abortion rights, even though the Supreme Court ruling had been presaged two months earlier with the leak of a draft opinion," the newspaper reported.
"Biden and his team were also caught off guard by the timing of the decision and, in the immediate hours afterward, failed to channel the raw and visceral anger felt by many Americans over the decision, The Post reported. "To many increasingly frustrated Democrats, Biden’s slow-footed response on abortion was just the latest example of a failure to meet the moment on a wave of conservative rollbacks, from gun control to environmental protections to voting rights. Some aspects of the White House reaction have felt to some Democrats like a routine response, including stakeholder calls and the creation of a task force, to an existential crisis."
The White House is pushing back against complaints over Biden's response, with White House communications director Kate Bedingfield lashing out at the woman's rights activists frustrated over the administration's response.
“Joe Biden’s goal in responding to Dobbs is not to satisfy some activists who have been consistently out of step with the mainstream of the Democratic Party," Bedingfield said.
Bedingfield's comment generated controversy online as activists warned that the White House was turning a policy failure on abortion into a political failure going into the midterms by depressing enthusiasm.
Here's some of what people were saying:
\u201c"Siri, why do the Dems suck at winning elections?"\u201d
— Jonathan Ballew (@Jonathan Ballew) 1657407656
\u201cApparently Joe Biden thinks Manchin and Sinema are the mainstream of the Dem Party, and the 61% of Americans who support abortion aren\u2019t respectful enough\u201d
In late June, a conservative education coalition called the Civics Alliance released a new set of social studies standards for K-12 schools, with the intention of promoting it as a model for states nationwide. These standards, entitled "American Birthright," are framed as yet another corrective to supposedly "woke" public schools, where, according to Republicans, theoretical frameworks like critical race theory are only one part of a larger attack on the foundations of American democracy.
"Too many Americans have emerged from our schools ignorant of America's history, indifferent to liberty, filled with animus against their ancestors and their fellow Americans, and estranged from their country," reads the introduction to "American Birthright." (The "birthright" here refers to "freedom.") And the fields of history and civics, it suggests, exemplify the worst of that trend. "The warping of American social studies instruction has created a corps of activists dedicated to the overthrow of America and its freedoms, larger numbers of Americans indifferent to the steady whittling away of American liberty, and many more who are so ignorant of the past they cannot use our heritage of freedom to judge contemporary debates."
While it claims to represent an ideologically neutral, apolitical history, the document holds that most instruction that references "diversity, equity and inclusion" or "social justice" amounts to "vocational training in progressive activism" and "actively promote[s] disaffection from our country." It heralds Ronald Reagan as a "hero of liberty" alongside Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr. Its proposed lessons in contemporary U.S. history include Reagan's revitalization of the conservative movement, Bill Clinton's impeachment, "Executive amnesties for illegal aliens" and the "George Floyd Riots."
American Birthright is just one of numerous recent right-wing efforts to overhaul public K-12 curricula to align with the dictates of current conservative ideology.
Last week, the Miami Herald reported that Florida's Department of Education has begun holding three-day training sessions for public school teachers around the state to prepare them to implement the state's new Civics Literacy Excellence Initiative, Gov. Ron DeSantis' flagship effort to create a more "patriotic" civics curriculum. The new Florida standards were created in consultation with Hillsdale College, a small Christian college that has become a guiding force on the right, and the Charles Koch-founded Bill of Rights Institute.
Some Florida teachers say the state's new standards promote a "Christian fundamentalist" understanding of history, and that trainers had told them the founding fathers opposed the separation of church and state.
As the Herald reported, a number of teachers who attended the first training, in Broward County, emerged with deep concerns. Some said the new civics standards appeared to promote "a very strong Christian fundamentalist way" of analyzing U.S. history. Others recounted that trainers had claimed that America's founding fathers opposed strict separation of church and state, had compared the end of school-sponsored prayer to segregation and had downplayed the history of American slavery in misleading ways. (Slides from the training presentation noted that enslaved people in the U.S. only accounted for 4% of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, which both minimizes the number of people ultimately enslaved in America and suggests that other countries' slavery practices were worse.)
Also last week, the Texas Tribune reported that a group of advisers to the state's education board — which is adapting its own social studies standards after Texas' legislature banned teaching about racism or slavery in ways that make students "feel discomfort" — had proposed that second-grade teachers call slavery "involuntary relocation." (After a board member objected, the board voted to "revisit" that language.)
Currently, a number of conservative activists and media figures are campaigning against the Civics Secures Democracy Act, a bipartisan bill recently reintroduced in the U.S. Senate that would provide funding for civics education research and programming. In multiplearticles calling on conservatives to oppose the bill, the Civics Alliance charged that the bill would "transform civics education, injecting identity politics into K-12 classrooms around the country" and divide "Americans into mutually hostile factions." The National Review called the bill a trap that would open "the door to the nationalization of CRT." And last week, DeSantis charged that the bill was an attempt to "buy off states with $6 billion if they sacrifice American History for Critical Race Theory and Biden's other political whims of the day."
But even in this climate, "American Birthright" seeks to distinguish itself through the scope of its ambitions. The document is not a curriculum but rather a model set of social studies standards, of the sort that state-level education departments adopt in order to guide and regulate individual school districts as they craft their own curricula.
That's by design. Civics Alliance describes its mission as "preserving and improving America's civics education and preventing the subordination of civics education to political recruitment tools," namely by writing model bills and social studies standards that lawmakers and activists can use to influence the curricula schools and school districts create.
As the document explains, "We chose this form because state standards are the single most influential documents in America's education administrations." Not only do such standards have significant impact on public school curricula, they also affect those of AP courses, charter schools, private schools, homeschooling and textbooks used across the country. "American Birthright's" authors charge that "far too many" state education departments "are set on imposing state social studies standards that combine...the worst of misguided pedagogical theory with the worst of anti-American animus." So Civics Alliance is effectively bypassing them, taking their pitch directly to state governors, lawmakers and school boards, as well as grassroots activists who can pressure politicians to deploy the new standards.
* * *
The Civics Alliance was created in 2021 as an offshoot of another entity, the National Association of Scholars, a conservative nonprofit aimed at reforming higher education which features right-wing leaders like Ginni Thomas (the suddenly-famous spouse of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas) on its board. NAS launched Civics Alliance after Joe Biden closed down the 1776 Commission — Donald Trump's answer to the "1619 Project" — on his first day in office. In fact, the Civics Alliance seems to have consciously taken up the 1776 Commission's professed mission. In "American Birthright," the authors insist they aren't seeking to create a uniform national curriculum, but cite the 1776 Curriculum — published in 2021 by Hillsdale College, from which two leading members of Trump's commission were drawn — as aligned with their vision, along with the curricula of Great Hearts Academies, a "classical education" network, and the Black conservative group 1776 Unites.
Too many education officials, the authors claim, "combine the worst of misguided pedagogical theory with the worst of anti-American animus."
NAS and its leaders have involved themselves in numerous contemporary education controversies. In 2018, Civics Alliance executive director David Randall took aim at Massachusetts education authorities after they revised the state's social science standards. In a report with the Pioneer Institute, "No Longer a City on a Hill," Randall charged that the new standards were "an exercise in progressive educational propaganda and vocational training for how to be a political activist" (a charge echoed nearly verbatim in "American Birthright"). As evidence, Randall wrote that the standards had subordinated the "Founding era" to the civil rights movement, used "politically correct vocabulary" such as "Native American" rather than "Indian," noted that the Industrial Revolution had resulted in wealth inequality, and failed to recommend texts from right-wing icons like Phyllis Schlafly (on women's rights) or Justice Antonin Scalia (on gun control).
This April, NAS released a brief warning conservatives that "social emotional learning" — at its most basic, a term for teaching students to regulate their emotions and play well with classmates — had been reoriented "toward teaching a radical political agenda and promoting student activism," particularly around race. The Civics Alliance announced a corresponding initiative to build a network of state affiliates "dedicated to removing" SEL "action civics" from their states. DeSantis' administration subsequently cited the use of SEL concepts as justification for rejecting nearly half of the math textbooks submitted to it for consideration by Florida schools.
This February, when NAS released a study ranking 15 different K-12 civics curricula, both the 1776 Curriculum and 1776 Unites received high scores, as did Florida's new civics standards; NAS gave the "1619 Project," predictably, an "F." In a podcast interview last week marking the release of the standards, Randall said that he saw "American Birthright" as the sort of work Trump's 1776 Commission might have created, had it continued. Indeed, a number of the same figures were involved in both.
The list of groups and individuals involved in the creation of "American Birthright" reads like a who's-who of U.S. right-wing policy advocacy, including think tanks like the Claremont Institute, the Family Research Council and the creationist Discovery Institute, and influential state groups such as Arizona's Goldwater Institute and Massachusetts' Pioneer Institute. The document gives prominent credit to Florida's Department of Education, and its 2021 revised civics standards, and lists a department official among its expert consultants.
Other coauthors, consultants and board members have played prominent roles in education stories Salon has tracked in recent months. There is Mari Barke, a California education board member and staffer at the right-wing California Policy Center, whose husband runs one of Hillsdale College's charter schools. There is Richard Lowery, a University of Texas-Austin professor who helped propose a right-wing institute on the UT campus that Texas Republicans see as an antidote to CRT. There is anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo, architect of the right's education agenda for the last two years, as well as people like Parental Rights Foundation president William Estrada, Moms for Liberty cofounder Tiffany Justice, right-wing direct mail pioneer Richard Viguerie and multiple staffers associated with Hillsdale College and Schlafly's Eagle Forum.
More importantly, there are more than 20 state lawmakers and elected officials credited with helping create the standards, including, most prominently, North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson. Also listed is Arizona state Rep. Shawnna Bolick, wife of Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, who, as Salon reported last week, has been a leading figure in school privatization efforts.
* * *
"American Birthright" has yet to receive much attention from the mainstream press, but among conservative think tanks and media, it's been heralded as the way forward, often by figures involved in its creation. City Journal, the publication of the Manhattan Institute, cheered the standards as a "Return to Lincoln." Wisconsin's MacIver Institute asserted that American Birthright "doesn't train students to protest" but rather "to be students of history." The Federalist Society declared, "Here's what your child's school should be teaching about American history and government." David Randall himself wrote that the standards were necessary because, "If education reformers don't act now, Woke social studies standards will teach a slanderous caricature of our history that prepares students to work to replace our republic with an illiberal regime."
Some of the claims made to bolster American Birthright have been misleading, as when the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions — another member of the coalition behind the document — suggested that Kentucky's current standards mean students don't learn about figures like Ben Franklin or Abraham Lincoln.
"Woke social studies standards," warns David Randall, "teach a slanderous caricature of our history" that could lead to replacing "our republic with an illiberal regime."
That's far from accurate, said Sarah Shear, a professor of social studies and multicultural education at the University of Washington-Bothell and coauthor of two nationalstudies assessing state K-12 standards on U.S. history, civics and government. Most state standards are streamlined by necessity, says Shear, and the absence of individual figures from general standards doesn't mean they aren't taught.
"I read every state's standards, cover to cover," said Shear. "And I'm just perplexed at the notion that the state standards are in any way radically left."
What some have done, Shear continued, is open standards to more accurate and complex representations of history. "How does that threaten us as a nation, to know more and think more deeply about history, whether it's Washington, Lincoln, the Constitution or the American Revolution?" she asked. "When we peel back the layers and reveal a much more detailed story of how the United States became a country, it's not a story that includes everyone having freedom and democracy from the word go. That's just not what happened here."
"I often hear from people that telling the truth threatens the pretty story of the country we live in," she continued. "But not telling the truth has harmed everyone, because it has not provided the capacity by which we could address the problems we still have."
Christopher Martell, a social studies education professor at the University of Massachusetts-Boston who wrote a Twitter thread about "American Birthright" last week, says another problem with the model standards is how they provide fixed answers to questions that social studies classrooms are meant to debate, such as the role of the free market or how to balance questions of religious freedom.
Martell said he was particularly concerned about "a clear undertone" in American Birthright suggesting "that the U.S. is a Christian nation founded on Christian values and beliefs," exemplified by passages calling for curricula to emphasize "the role of faith in sustaining and extending liberty" and describing America's founding principles as "rooted in Christian thought."
Likewise, Martell pointed to the standards' ubiquitous emphasis on Western civilization, evident in the document's statement that "America's ideas of freedom" come from "the long history of Western civilization" but also in the way both U.S. and European history, which are covered in depth, are contrasted with "world history."
While "American Birthright" presents Western civilization as a rich intellectual legacy that includes the creation of science and democracy, the non-European world is largely covered as the study of "migrations, clashes, massacres [and] conquests" undertaken by "small-scale tribes, nomadic societies, and villages that preceded civilization, whose warlike nature must be understood in order to comprehend the character and the magnitude of the civilizing process."
"To me, that is like trying to embed white supremacy in the standards without saying, 'This is the white supremacy curriculum,'" said Martell. "It sends a message that Western society is civilization, and the rest of the world is not."
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Much of "American Birthright" reflects recent education fights. For example, the document calls on the federal government to "withdraw from regulating or funding any aspect of K-12 education," to pass legislation prohibiting "discriminatory pedagogies and action civics" (read: CRT and SEL), to require that high school studies classes teach "Western civilization" and that all academic standards be approved by state governors and legislatures, and to reform teaching licensure so as to "end the gatekeeping power of the education schools and departments."
That last point in particular has featured in several recent attacks on public education. In an April speech at Hillsdale College, Christopher Rufo called for state lawmakers to rescind requirements that teachers must hold education degrees and forecast a future when teachers with masters degrees will be shunned by hiring committees, who would correctly see such credentials as signs of radical left-wing politics. Just last week, journalist Phil Williams at Tennessee's NewsChannel 5 reported on secret recordings of Hillsdale president Larry Arnn disparaging public school teachers as having been "trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges in the country," during a private event with Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, who is rolling out Hillsdale programs across the state.
Similar to last week's controversy around Florida's civics training, which many participants felt minimized U.S. slavery, "American Birthright" instructs curriculum makers to teach that many more enslaved Africans were transported to Latin America or the Caribbean than the U.S. and suggests comparing U.S. slavery to "different forced-labor regimes, including Muslim slavery, Eastern Europe's Second Serfdom, African slavery [and] American Indian slavery." The standards also suggest that 19th-century European imperialism should be taught as a boon to colonized people, accounting for "Improved life expectancy and growing populations among colonized peoples" as well as the "Abolitions of slavery."
Neither Martell nor Shear see realistic prospects that "American Birthright" will find a broad reception, either at the national level or among individual teachers. Both worried, however, that the standards could find a path to influence through conservative state lawmakers, as Civics Alliance itself clearly hopes.
"I imagine a bunch of conservative politicians handing this to state education agencies and saying, 'We need to use this document to write our framework,'" said Martell. "Then teachers will have to address the framework when they are observed by their principals or when they talk about lesson planning with their departments."
Some states, such as Illinois, make standards decisions at the local level, said Shear, meaning conservative activists might also lobby to get something like "American Birthright" introduced locally.
"It always comes down to who gets to control the narrative of whose experiences and whose voices matter," said Shear. "When I see standards like Florida's, or this 'Birthright' curriculum, it's very much seeking a return to the narrative that privileges a particular identity and does not tell the entirety of the truth of what the United States has been in the past, is right now, or should be in the future. And that's very worrisome to me."
"There's a long game with what they're doing here. There was a long game to overturn Roe v. Wade, and I think they're doing that with education as well," said Martell. "Twenty or 30 years ago, I couldn't have imagined a neoconservative, Christian-influenced civics workshop for teachers being pushed by the state." Now, he said, in Florida and beyond, that's here.
THE GREAT GAME
The Cold War on a chessboard 50 years ago Agence France-Presse July 09, 2022 Bobby Fischer (l) and Boris Spassky in 1972 (AFP)
Fifty years ago, the Cold War was transposed to a chessboard as Bobby Fischer of the United States took on defending world champion Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in a thrilling East-West clash dubbed the "match of the century".
Some 50 million TV viewers tuned into the two-month-long tussle in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, where chess's enfant terrible Fischer set out to wrest the championship from the Soviet Union, which had dominated the game for decades. AFP reported daily from the competition. This account is based on its reporting.
Polar opposites
On one side of the table is Fischer, an eccentric, fiercely competitive 29-year-old former boy wonder, who was holding his own among America's greats by the age of 12 and has already won eight US chess championships.
Born in Chicago, Fischer grew up in the New York suburb of Brooklyn where his older sister taught him chess at the age of six.
He became the world's youngest ever chess grand master at the age of 15 and dropped out of school to focus on the game.
AFP's correspondent in Reykjavik says "he has few friends and doesn't care to make any" and that his motto is: "It's not enough to defeat an adversary, you have to crush them."
He goes into the competition having won 101 out of his previous 120 games.
In the other seat is 35-year-old Boris Spassky, a trained journalist and married father of two children who has been world champion for three years.
Born in Leningrad (now Saint Petersburg) in 1937 he was sent to an orphanage in Siberia during the Nazi German siege of the city during World War II.
A pure product of the Soviet chess machine, he began playing at five and became world champion at 19.
A likeable, modest character, he is the antithesis of the cantankerous Fischer.
Temper tantrums
Fischer is the first US-born player to have a stab at the title (since 1946, the two finalists have always been Soviet).
Neutral countries vie to host the match, which is eventually awarded to Iceland.
Fischer makes a series of demands before agreeing to participate. The venue, a sports hall, must be sound-proofed, fitted with a new carpet and the room temperature kept to 22.5 degrees Celsius.
But on the eve of the competition, he has still not shown up and Spassky is growing impatient.
Henry Kissinger, who is US national security advisor at the time under President Richard Nixon, calls Fischer and convinces him to take part.
AFP reports that the US champion "appears tired" when he lands in Reykjavik on July 4. He ducks out of the opening ceremony. An outraged Spassky demands an apology.
The competition finally gets underway on July 11, nine days late. 'Scandal of the century'
Spassky arrives 20 minutes early to the opening game to "vigorous applause" from the 2,500 spectators in the packed hall. Fischer dashes in at the last minute, "pushes past the photographers, rushes towards Spassky, shakes his hand" and sits down. The game is finally on.
The two proceed cautiously and at the 28th move, the game looks headed for a draw. But Fischer then makes two bad moves and resigns on the 56th move.
Stung by his loss, he demands that all cameras be removed from the hall. When the request is denied, he refuses to show up to the second game, forfeiting it.
"The spectators are disappointed and exasperated," AFP reports.
Icelandic daily Timinn declares that the match of the century has turned into the "scandal of the century".
As the third game looms Fischer is nowhere to be found. Kissinger again picks up the phone. "Please, continue the game," Fischer later quotes him as pleading.
The hall is packed when the competition resumes on July 16, but the stage is empty. Spassky has accepted Fischer's demand that they play in a small back room normally used for ping pong (with a camera in the ceiling broadcasting the events to the main hall outside).
Some commentators see Spassky's concession as a bad omen for the Russian, who goes on to lose the game.
The fourth is a draw and Spassky resigns the fifth.
The two are now neck-and-neck.
Games for the history books
The 6th game is one of the toughest of the competition. Spassky throws in the towel at the 41st move.
"I'm proud of this game, it was one of my best," Fischer tells AFP, adding: "When Spassky joined the crowd in applauding my victory I thought 'what a gentleman'."
Spassky also resigns the 13th game, a chess masterclass, according to AFP's correspondent, who reported that, after congratulating his opponent, Spassky "sits back down in contemplation for six minutes, his gaze lost in the chessboard".
Fischer is looking increasingly assured of victory. "He will be champion," his sister Joan tells AFP after the seventh game.
The Russian asks that the 14th game be postponed and the next seven are all draws.
Game 21, which goes to Fischer, turns out to be the last. The next day Spassky resigns the game, making Fischer, who is still asleep, the 11th world chess champion, with a final score of 12.5-8.5.
From hero to zero
With the chessboard seen as a metaphor for great power politics, Fischer's win is feted in the United States as a symbolic victory of capitalism over communism.
Nixon invites Fischer to the White House.
A broken Spassky returns to an icy reception in the Soviet Union, where he is banned from taking part in chess competitions and placed under surveillance by the KGB, the secret police.
In 1976, he marries a Frenchwoman and moves to Paris, but the self-professed Russian nationalist later returns to Moscow.
Fischer never plays another chess competition. In 1975, he refuses to defend his title against the Soviet Union's Anatoly Karpov and therefore loses it. A conspiracy theorist with a visceral hatred of "world Jewry" he disappears for years at a time, re-emerging in 1992 for a rematch against Spassky in Yugoslavia, despite the war-torn country being under US sanctions.
In 2004 he renounces his US citizenship and later moves to Iceland where he dies on January 17, 2008 at the age of 64 -- the number of squares on a chessboard.
ABOLISH CBP
Four U.S. border agency employees could face discipline over treatment of Haitian migrants: report
Four employees from U.S Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have been referred for disciplinary review over their treatment of Haitian migrants who they sought to push back across the Rio Grande using horses last September, officials said on Friday as the agency released a more than 500-page report on the widely filmed and photographed incident.
CBP Commissioner Chris Magnus in a press conference stressed the disciplinary process related to the Sept. 19 incident was ongoing, and he did not identify the employees.
Reuters witnesses at the time saw mounted officers wearing cowboy hats blocking the paths of migrants, and one officer unfurling horse reins resembling a lariat, which he swung near a man's face as he carried a bag of food across the Rio Grande river to a makeshift encampment in the United States. The images triggered a strong nationwide backlash and calls for an investigation.
Magnus added the report said no migrants were struck with the reins that agents were filmed swinging in their direction. But the report outlined the agents' inappropriate behavior toward Haitians, including yelling profanity and insults related to a migrant's national origin, and using unnecessary force against migrants attempting to reenter the United States with food.
The investigation found one agent on horseback grabbed a man and spun him around in a widely photographed incident, which took place near a sprawling riverside encampment in Del Rio, Texas that had formed after the rapid arrival of thousands of Haitian migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.
According to the report, one agent "acted in an unsafe manner by pursuing the individual he had yelled at along the river's edge forcing his horse to narrowly maneuver around a small child."
The incident originated, the report found, when Texas' Department of Public Security (DPS) officials also on the scene asked for assistance from Border Patrol. A lack of clear command lead the agents to inappropriately follow DPS instructions to prevent migrants from crossing the river back into the United States.
Migrants were frequently crossing into Mexico to bring back food and supplies that were scarce in the makeshift encampment.
Advocates and migrants suing the government over their treatment during the incident said the Haitian man depicted in the widely seen photos described the mounted officer grabbing his neck and only releasing him when the horse was about to trample him.
He called the experience humiliating in a court filing.
Joan Agoh, a spokesperson for the Justice Action Center, one of the groups involved in the lawsuit called on Magnus to ensure "fair and just treatment" of all migrants, adding the CBP agents "must be accountable for the abuse against Haitian migrants in September."
"We are already taking steps to ensure a situation like what occurred in Del Rio doesn't happen again," Magnus said during the news conference.
MANY EXPELLED
Of the roughly 15,000 Haitians who arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border in September, about 8,000 were rapidly expelled in the weeks that followed under a COVID-era order known as Title 42.
The findings come as U.S. President Joe Biden, a Democrat, has grappled both operationally and politically with a record-number of attempted crossings at the southwest border with Mexico. Republicans have criticized Biden for trying to reverse some of the hardline immigration policies of his Republican predecessor former President Donald Trump, while some members of Biden's own party said he is not doing enough to protect vulnerable migrants.
U.S. Border Patrol apprehended nearly 223,000 migrants at the southwest border in May, the highest monthly total on record. Haitians made up about 7,700 of that figure, with several thousand more attempting to cross at ports of entry without valid permission.
On Thursday, Texas' Republican Governor Greg Abbott said he had authorized the Texas National Guard and state authorities to "apprehend" migrants and transport them to the border with Mexico. It is the latest in a string of immigration crackdown measures in that state, which earlier included busing migrants out of state to destinations like Washington D.C.
Magnus said that CBP had "a shared interest" with Texas "in maintaining a safe orderly humane immigration process" at the border but said that problems arise when any state "takes unilateral actions."
CBP recently said it would investigate whether anyone from the agency sold unofficial commemorative coins that depict a widely publicized photograph of the incident where a patrol officer on horseback lunges towards a Haitian migrant with a cord.
Magnus said in an earlier statement that the "hateful images" on the "deeply offensive" coins angered him and distracted from the essential work of the Border Patrol.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Mica Rosenberg in New York; Editing by Aurora Ellis)Read More
