Small-town America’s never-ending struggle to maintain its values hasn’t always been good for democracy

Photo by Monica Bourgeau on Unsplash

The Conversation

November 24, 2023

For better and worse, the Maury County Courthouse in Columbia, Tennessee, has come to represent the overlooked cultural divisions between urban and small-town America.

The courthouse was the site of the lynching of a Black teenager in 1927. It also served as a rallying spot for white vigilantes who assembled there during race riots in 1946.

It is now the focus of a modern-day controversy that emerged shortly after popular country singer Jason Aldean released his music video in July 2023 for his hit single “Try That in a Small Town.”

The courthouse was used as a backdrop with an American flag in that video. Though no mention of race occurs in the song, the racial overtones are there, as the lyrics boldly smack of modern-day, big-city crime against old-fashioned, small-city values:
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk/ Carjack an old lady at a red light/ Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store/
Well, try that in a small town/ See how far ya make it down the road/ Around here, we take care of our own/ You cross that line, it won’t take long/ For you to find out.

Within days of its release, Country Music Television stopped airing the music video after critics argued that is was “pro-lynching” and could incite violence.

Aldean denied using coded racist language in his song or blowing any racial dog whistles – and Republican politicians were quick to defend him. For one, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused Democrats of being “more concerned about @Jason_Aldean’s song calling out looters and criminals than they are about stopping looters and criminals.”

But in my view as a scholar who has studied the struggles to define American identity, the controversy over hidden agendas has diverted attention from Aldean’s overt message: that cities are turning the nation into a “shit show,” as Aldean sees it, and the remedy is a revival of small-town America.


A headline in the local newspaper details the number of arrests during the Columbia race riots of 1946.
Blackpast.org


But Aldean’s effort isn’t innocent nostalgia.

It echoes a similar period in American history during the 1920s and 1930s when the grievances of small-town America had dangerous consequences for democracy.
Master-race democracy

Before the Civil War, Southern states established what historians like George M. Fredrickson called a “herrenvolk,” or master race democracy that reserved citizenship and its benefits for one racial group at the expense of all others.


But after the war, passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments extended civil and political rights to newly freed African Americans. Known as the Reconstruction amendments, the new laws were a reversal of the Southern social order and enabled Black freedmen to hold public office, while banning white officers of the old Confederacy from federal office.

The new reality sparked a resurgence of white supremacy and racial violence against Black people by Southern whites, who feared being replaced by what they considered to be an inferior race.

One of the most influential expressions of this replacement anxiety was found in the 1916 book “The Passing of the Great Race,” a pseudo-scientific work by amateur anthropologist Madison Grant warning readers that a flood of inferior races – not only from Africa and Asia, but from eastern and southern Europe – was sweeping away the Anglo-Saxon civilization.

The remedy, Grant argued, was to get rid of democracy and disempower Black people and the teeming masses of urban immigrants as well.

By the 1920s, white Southern lawmakers had fashioned a new version of master race democracy and enacted Jim Crow laws that established racial segregation across the South and disenfranchised Black voters.



A 1919 map showing the concentration of disenfranchised Black people in southern US states.
The Crisis



Vigilante violence, which surged in the 1920s, helped maintain this regime. In February 1927, Walter Lippmann, who some regard as the father of American journalism, called it “American village civilization.”

Later that year, on Nov. 13, Henry Choate, an 18-year-old Black man, was accused of assaulting Sarah Harlan, a white 16-year-old girl. Though she could not identify him, Choate was jailed, and a mob of hundreds of white people kidnapped him from his cell.

Choate was then tied to the back of a car and dragged across town, and eventually hanged in front of the Maury County Courthouse.

At least 20 other Black men were lynched in Maury County alone, and more than 230 Black people across Tennessee between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative, a nonprofit, social justice organization.
Armed resistance and racist attacks

Along with lynchings, white supremacists had another way to suppress attempts by Black citizens to exercise their full rights: large-scale attacks by white law enforcement officials on Black neighborhoods.

One such attack occurred on the night of Feb. 25, 1946, near the Maury County Courthouse.

A fight between a 19-year-old Black U.S. Navy veteran and a white radio repairman eventually led to an armed standoff between police and the 3,000 Black citizens who lived in a racially segregated section of the town known as the Mink Slide district.

When four local police tried to enter the neighborhood, Black men determined to prevent another lynching fired their weapons at the white officers, leaving all of them wounded.


Police searching Black men during the riots in Columbia, Tenn., on Feb. 27, 1946.
Fox Photos/Getty Images

It didn’t take long before local police called in several dozen state police to help subdue the unrest. Armed with machine guns, white police officers shot out the windows of shops, arrested 62 Black people and charged 12 of them with the shootings of the local police officers.

“The Mink Slide area,” the local paper reported, “was cleared out.”

To add further humiliation to residents of the thriving Black community, the commander of the state police then rode through the neighborhood the next morning in an open car broadcasting through a loudspeaker, “Let me see you smile. Come on, smile.”

The next day, hundreds of deputized white men systematically searched Black homes and businesses, breaking things, looting and confiscating 300 weapons.

The most notorious of these large-scale attacks was the Elaine Massacre of 1919 in Arkansas. As the NAACP’s Walter White reported, hundreds of Black farmers, some of them military veterans, decided to form a labor union to escape Jim Crow’s peonage system of sharecropping.

Organizing workers might fly in the city, but not in rural Arkansas.

On Sept. 30, the farmers met in a church outside Elaine to discuss strategy and had armed guards stationed outside. A sheriff’s deputy and other white men confronted the Black men standing guard. The ensuing fight escalated until white vigilantes roamed the farmland, ransacking houses, confiscating arms and killing Black men, women and children on the slightest pretext.

Arkansas Gov. Charles H. Brough called the War Department for help. About 600 federal troops were sent to the area, and once there, they used machine guns to spray the the fields and woods. When the gun smoke cleared, at least 200 Black people were dead, and the only people held to account were a dozen Black men convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
Small-town nationalism

Aldean’s song paints a picture of a renewed culture war between urban and rural versions of America.


Jason Aldean performs onstage in Wisconsin on July 22, 2023.
Joshua Applegate/Getty Images

In my view, Aldean’s song expresses a deep sense of grievance among some white Americans and a suspicion that urban America is scornful and even hostile to the rural way of life.

In a recent concert, while addressing accusations of racism, Aldean said he only wants to “restore” the nation to “what it once was before all this bullshit started happening to us.”

But his lyrics remain unnerving:
Got a gun that my granddad gave me/ They say one day they’re gonna round up.

Joseph Patrick Kelly, Professor of Literature and Director of Irish and Irish American Studies, College of Charleston

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Texas Republicans take aim at climate change -- in textbooks


Moises AVILA with Ulysse BELLIER in Washington
Fri, 24 November 2023 

The oil well in this 2015 file photo from Garden City, Texas, produces about 55-70 barrels of oil per day (SPENCER PLATT)

The scorching summer in Texas this year was the second hottest on record -- but students in the southwestern US state might have a hard time understanding why.

That's because a slew of science textbooks submitted to the state Board of Education (BOE) were rejected last week, as the Republican-dominated body moves to curtail education materials deemed too "one-sided" on climate change.

Many of the rejected books taught that "humans are negatively impacting the environment. And the scare tactics that come with that, that is my main issue," Evelyn Brooks, a Republican board member, told AFP.


She claimed, counter to scientists and the federal government, that "the science is not settled on global warming."

America's decentralized education system leaves curriculum management mostly up to individual states, with local school districts also having a degree of autonomy.

That has led to fraught battles across the country as each jurisdiction debates how to teach climate change and other politically charged issues, such as racism and sexuality.

It also leaves room for officials like Brooks in Texas, which produces 42 percent of the nation's crude oil, to push back against the "political ideology" of climate change -- a concept she considers "a blatant lie."

- Increasingly polarized -

Science textbooks from publisher Green Ninja were among those voted down by the Texas BOE.

"It was because of our inclusion of climate change," director Eugene Cordero told AFP in an email, adding that one board member took particular issue with a prompt asking students to "create a story warning friends and family about possible future weather and climate extremes."

Textbooks from eight of 22 publishers that submitted materials to the board were rejected last week, according to a count from Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE), a nonprofit which promotes the teaching of climate change.

Some were eventually accepted, after revisions to sections on climate change and evolution -- another controversial subject in the largely Christian Texas.

The rejected books are not necessarily banned from classrooms, but using approved books is typically tied to getting government funding.

As broiling summers are supercharged by climate change, some fear that students won't see the bigger picture.

"If kids don't understand what all of that means, and they're just going to continue to perpetuate the problem," said Marisa Perez-Dias, one of five Democratic members of the board.

Staci Childs, another Democratic board member, charged that some of her colleagues "felt like some of the materials negatively reflected how oil and gas impacts our society."

In a show of just how powerful the industry is in Texas -- even as the state becomes a growing hub for renewables -- two of the 10 Republican members work directly for the sector.

Though the state has long been conservative, debate seems to have gotten more polarized recently, Perez-Diaz told AFP.

Where previously a consensus "could be met across party lines before, we don't see that as much anymore."

- Getting better? -

In neighboring Oklahoma, the state's Energy Resources Board -- which is entirely funded by the oil and gas industry -- has distributed free education materials aligned with the sector's interests, often to underfunded schools.

Former governor Mike Huckabee, of neighboring Arkansas, has created a "Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change."

The monthly series of lessons, available for sale online, promises to counter an agenda on climate change "that promotes fear and panic" pushed by "teachers and the media."

Like other conservative complaints about climate change, the guides try to thread a needle -- avoiding outright climate denialism, while at the same time rejecting the leading scientific consensus.

"Everyone agrees that the Earth's climate is always changing and that industrial development has negatively impacted the environment," the curriculum reads.

"But that does not mean the planet is doomed," it says. "Some very smart people have not been able (to) predict what will happen with the earth. So we really don't know."

Earlier this year, the free-market think tank the Heartland Institute sent its own climate change-skeptical book -- which AFP factcheckers found to be misleading -- to 8,000 teachers.

Despite the setbacks in Texas, Branch, of the NCSE, says climate change education across the country "is generally improving."

"That's partly because it's starting from a very low level."

ube/nro/des

25th Arkansas poll finds economy to still be primary concern for voters

The annual project also finds that the top concerns remain unchanged from previous year: the economy as well as politics/politicians and education

Reports and Proceedings

UNIVERSITY OF ARKANSAS

 

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ARKANSAS POLL APPROVAL RATINGS OF ARKANSAS GOVERNORS 1999-2023.

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CREDIT: CHARLIE ALLISON

 NEWS RELEASE 30-OCT-2023

The 25th annual Arkansas Poll, released today, found voters were most concerned about the economy, politics/politicians and education. While the number of respondents reporting concerns about the economy declined three points from the previous year, it was still more than all other concerns combined, except for the catch-all category “Other/don’t know/refused to answer.”

Other questions addressed life in Arkansas, approval ratings for public figures, level of satisfaction with public services, current issues, willingness to seek help for mental health concerns and political party and ideology.

Answers to questions pertaining to life in Arkansas suggested that Arkansas voters were feeling modestly more optimistic than last year. The question, “Do you feel AR is headed in the right or wrong direction?” saw a 6-point increase of people answering “right.” And when asked “a year from now, will you be better, worse, or the same financially,” the number of people answering the “same” rose by nearly 10% over the previous year while the number of people answering “worse” held steady (the increase in people answering “same” came from those who were simply uncertain the previous year).

Janine Parry, director of the Arkansas Poll and professor of political science at the University of Arkansas, noted however that the portion of respondents answering “wrong direction” has increased in recent years, to 1 in 3.

“A volatile economic and political environment is likely influencing some people’s general sense of well-being, in Arkansas and elsewhere,” Parry said.

As it does every year, the poll invited approval ratings for public figures. For the first-year governor of Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the poll reported an approval rating of 48%. Although this was the lowest approval rating for an Arkansas governor in the last 20 years, it compared favorably to the approval ratings for Sen. Tom Cotton (42%), Sen. John Boozman (40%), and President Joe Biden (33%).

Still, the overwhelming majority of respondents said they were “very satisfied or satisfied” with state and local services like police protection, public libraries, parks and recreation or colleges and universities. The only two areas where ratings of “unsatisfied or very unsatisfied” approached or exceeded 50% were on the topics of K-12th grade public schools (47%) and the public welfare system (53%). These were also the two areas of highest dissatisfaction 20 years ago, showing the durability of that dissatisfaction over time.

Each year the poll provides space to other researchers to provide questions. Questions this year were provided by collaborator Samantha Robinson, an associate professor and vice chair of mathematical sciences who is also director of the Data Science Initiative in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences. Robinson is examining respondents’ willingness to seek a professional if mental health concerns arose as well as their opinions about the efficacy of mental health professionals.

Robinson noted that “overall, Arkansans seem to feel that seeking help from a mental health professional is important, useful and healthy but they are less certain about whether such mental-health help seeking is effective, healing or empowering. Arkansans seem to be similar to the rest of the country in terms of these attitudes.”

This was Parry’s 25th year as director of the poll, which she founded as a junior faculty member in 1999, making it one of the oldest state-level polls in the country. Parry, who will retire from the university in 2024, estimates over that time the poll has completed more than 23,000 interviews, typically containing in excess of 60 questions. This works out to an estimated 1.4 million data points about what Arkansans think about, and want from, their public servants.

“Shepherding this project has never been dull,” Parry said in summation. “Polling during the elections of 2010, 2012, and 2014 — in the thick of Arkansas’s rapid party flip — was stressful. But by maintaining gold standard methods and full transparency we’ve produced an enviable track record.”

The poll was conducted through 801 telephone — cell and landline — interviews with randomly selected adult Arkansans between Oct. 4 and Oct. 22. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percent.

The full 2023 Arkansas Poll Summary Report, protocols and historic outcomes can be found at the Arkansas Poll web page.

A $19,000 lectern for Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders sparks call for legislative audit



LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Sarah Huckabee Sanders rose to national prominence in part during her time at the lectern as White House press secretary, but the purchase of a $19,000 lectern for the Arkansas governor is undergoing scrutiny and prompting claims that records about it have been altered.

A legislative panel next week will take up a lawmaker's request for an audit to review the purchase of the lectern, which was bought in June for $19,029.25 with a state credit card. The Arkansas Republican Party reimbursed the state last month for the wood-paneled and blue lectern, which the state received in August.

“From my experience, where we're at with this particular thing is we need to allow legislative audit go in,” Republican Sen. Jimmy Hickey, who requested the audit, said. “Everyone knows them, they do their work, they're very thorough and then they produce a detailed report that comes to the Legislature through an open committee.”

Questions about the lectern, its cost, how it was purchased and even whether it existed has dominated political talk in Arkansas in recent weeks. The state's largest newspaper, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, ran a front-page photo of the lectern last week after Sanders' office allowed the paper to view it.

Sanders, who served as press secretary for former President Donald Trump, took office in January. The governor has said she welcomes the audit, but has also dismissed the questions surrounding the lectern's purchase. Sanders' office has said the reimbursement came from money she had raised for her inauguration.

“People want to manufacture a controversy where there isn’t one," Sanders told reporters Tuesday. “But this is something the state’s been reimbursed for, and I think there are some people who are always going to be angry and always looking for something to complain about and that’s what they’re picking for right now.”

The lectern's purchase was first uncovered by Matthew Campbell, an attorney and blogger who has sued State Police for withholding records he had requested about Sanders' travel and security. Days after Campbell filed his initial suit, Sanders called a special legislative session and proposed broad exemptions to the state's open records law.

Sanders signed into law a measure restricting the public's access to her travel and security records after she and lawmakers backed off more widespread exemptions that faced backlash from media groups, transparency advocates and some conservatives.

Campbell has said the concern isn't just about a lectern, but about how Sanders' office is spending state money.

“Without an audit and without some more information, we don't know whether this is a case of they're too incompetent to be trusted with a state credit card because they don't know what things should cost, or there's actual criminality,” Campbell said Wednesday. “Neither is a good answer but it's enough of an issue that has to be answered.”

Tom Mars, an attorney who served as director of the Arkansas State Police under Sanders' father, former Gov. Mike Huckabee, has also said that he has a client with firsthand knowledge that Sanders' office interfered with Campbell's open records requests.

In a letter he sent to Hickey after the lawmaker requested the audit, Mars said the client wishes to remain anonymous and is willing to give a confidential statement to legislative auditors and allow them to review relevant documents in the client's possession. According to Mars' letter, the interference includes the governor's office altering an invoice from Beckett Events LLC, the Virginia firm listed as the seller of the lectern.

Alexa Henning, a spokeswoman for Sanders, didn't specifically respond to the allegations in Mars' letter in a statement that nonetheless dismissed them.

“This is nothing more than a manufactured controversy by left-wing activists to distract from the bold conservative reforms the governor has signed into law and is effectively implementing in Arkansas,” Henning said in a statement.

Hickey's request also asks for an audit of all matters regarding security and travel records for the governor or her office that were retroactively made confidential by the law she signed last month. The law covered travel and security records going back to June 2022.

Republican Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, who co-chairs the Legislative Joint Auditing Executive Committee, said he supports Hickey's request.

“Given the fact that this has become a matter of public concern and that the governor says she welcomes an audit and hopes that legislators complete it without delay, yes, I think we should instruct audit staff to handle this matter," Gazaway said.

Andrew Demillo, The Associated Press

'Incompetent' or criminal? Even Republicans are calling for a legislative audit over AK gov’s $19,000 lectern

Story by Elizabeth Preza • ALTERNET

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS - FEBRUARY 07: Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders waits to deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union address by President Joe Biden on February 7, 2023 in Little Rock, Arkansas.© provided by AlterNet

ARepublican state senator in Arkansas requested an audit of his own party’s governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, over the purchase of a $19,000 lectern with a state credit card, the Associated Press reports.

“From my experience, where we’re at with this particular thing is we need to allow legislative audit go in,” Republican Sen. Jimmy Hickey told the AP. “Everyone knows them, they do their work, they’re very thorough and then they produce a detailed report that comes to the Legislature through an open committee.”

The panel will convene next week to review the “purchase of the lectern,” the AP reports, which was “bought in June for $19,029.25.” In August, the Arkansas Republican Party “reimbursed the state” for the purchase, the report adds.

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According to the AP, Hickey is also asking “for an audit of all matters regarding security and travel records for the governor or her office that were retroactively made confidential by the law she signed last month.”

As ABC News reported last month, Sanders overhauled the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and “[broadened] what security details from the governor's travel and other constitutional officers' are exempt from the law.”

The changes also included “a retroactive clause to June 1, 2022, before Sanders took office” and was signed at the same time “a lawsuit pends against the state for allegedly withholding information related to her travel requested under the FOIA,” ABC News reported.

Little Rock, AR attorney Matt Campbell, who filed the FOIA lawsuit against the state, told the AP the issue is larger than a lectern — and is instead a question of whether Sanders’ office is “incompetent” or engaged in “actual criminality.”

READ MORE: Acting Speaker McHenry did not have authority to evict Pelosi: top Democrat

Related video: Request for legislative audit leads to allegations of altered documents. (40/29 TV Ft Smith-Fayetteville)

Duration 2:23  View on Watch

“Without an audit and without some more information, we don’t know whether this is a case of they’re too incompetent to be trusted with a state credit card because they don’t know what things should cost, or there’s actual criminality,” Campbell said told the AP. “Neither is a good answer but it’s enough of an issue that has to be answered.”

Former Arkansas State Police director Tom Mars — who served under Sanders’ father, former Gov. Mike Huckabee — "has also said that he has a client with firsthand knowledge that Sanders’ office interfered with Campbell’s open records requests,” the AP reports.

Per the AP:

In a letter he sent to Hickey after the lawmaker requested the audit, Mars said the client wishes to remain anonymous and is willing to give a confidential statement to legislative auditors and allow them to review relevant documents in the client’s possession. According to Mars’ letter, the interference includes the governor’s office altering an invoice from Beckett Events LLC, the Virginia firm listed as the seller of the lectern.


Hickey’s request for an audit has support from other state Republicans, including Legislative Joint Auditing Executive Committee co-chair Rep. Jimmy Gazaway.

“Given the fact that this has become a matter of public concern and that the governor says she welcomes an audit and hopes that legislators complete it without delay, yes, I think we should instruct audit staff to handle this matter,” Gazaway told the AP.

Sanders’ office maintains the blowback is “nothing more than a manufactured controversy by left-wing activists to distract from the bold conservative reforms the governor has signed into law,” as Sanders spokeswoman Alexa Henning told the AP.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Sanders insisted “people want to manufacture a controversy where there isn’t one.”

"This is something the state’s been reimbursed for, and I think there are some people who are always going to be angry and always looking for something to complain about and that’s what they’re picking for right now,” she said.

Read the full report at the Associated Press.

Related Articles:

・Arkansas’ MAGA Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders is 'stomping on the poor' instead of solving real problems: report

・Alarm sounded over Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ efforts to 'retroactively' change disclosure laws

・Anonymous whistleblower levels serious ethics violations against Sarah Huckabee Sanders

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2023/10/sarah-huckabee-sanders-office-under.html

Sarah Huckabee Sanders' office under scrutiny for spending: 'Clear and convincing evidence' of misconduct

Travis Gettys
September 30, 2023

Former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders speaking with attendees at the 2019 Student Action Summit. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)

A whistleblower has accused Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' office of misconduct.

Rogers-based attorney Tom Mars sent a letter to state Sen. Jimmy Hickey (R-Texarkana) offering testimony from the whistleblower and documents to show the governor's office improperly altered and withheld public records related to its spending, reported News from the States.

"The letter says Mars’ client 'can provide clear and convincing evidence' that Sanders’ office altered and withheld documents that Little Rock attorney and blogger Matt Campbell of the Blue Hog Report requested in recent weeks," the website reported. "Campbell has been scrutinizing and reporting Sanders’ use of the Arkansas State Police airplane for in-state travel as well as her office’s spending habits and purchase of the lectern from an out-of-state events company with a state-issued credit card."

Hickey asked the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee on Wednesday to investigate the purchase of a $19,000 lectern and the retroactive shielding of government records after Sanders signed new exemptions for the Freedom of Information Act.

The whistleblower accused the governor's communications director Alexa Henning of altering a FOIA-accessible document to change the meaning and directed state officials not to share the original with the blogger and also withheld other documents that showed Amazon purchases by Sanders' office.

Sanders' staff also removed portions of FOIA-accessible email threads and directed an attorney who oversaw FOIA responses for the state to alter the contents of a flash drive for the governor's office.

Why right-wing billionaires and the GOP want a nation of uneducated, compliant serfs | Opinion

Story by Thom Hartmann •

Sheep in a meadow in the mountains© provided by RawStory

Republican politicians and the rightwing billionaires who fund them want a nation of uneducated, compliant serfs in their workforce, not a nation of well-educated union-conscious people who are willing to strike to get better pay and benefits.

Which means Job One is to get America’s kids out of the clutches of those evil unionized teachers. Education, after all, is a liberal value. The conservative vision is “quality education for the children of the wealthy, while ending child labor laws for all the rest.”

And they’re getting their way.

Florida and Arizona are well on the way to destroying their entire systems of public education with statewide private school voucher programs available to every child.

This June, Oklahoma approved the use of public-school taxpayer funds to pay for kids’ attendance at a private Catholic charter school: it’s the first explicitly taxpayer-funded religious school in modern America and a clear violation of America’s founding principle of the separation of church and state.

Meanwhile, Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed legislation gutting that state’s prohibition on child labor. Now 14-year-olds can skip school and go straight to work at their local slaughterhouse.

Eight other Republican-controlled states have similar legislation pending.

Florida and Texas have approved animated cartoons produced by a hate radio talk-show host (with big bucks from fossil fuel billionaires) that reinvent Frederick Douglass as an opponent of the Black Lives Matter movement and downplay the role of fossil fuels in our climate emergency.

Last year, DeSantis’ Florida moved an estimated $1.3 billion in taxpayer money originally destined for public schools to pay for private school vouchers. This gutted public school budgets across the state by roughly 10 percent.

Florida is not unique in this: it’s happening in Red states all across the nation. Public education in about half of America is in a crisis and has been for some time. It’s a crisis Republicans across the country are doing everything they can to make worse.

In many ways today’s conservative war on public education dates back to the 1950s when, in 1954’s Brown v Board decision, the Supreme Court ruled that public schools must allow Black children to sit in the same classrooms with white children.

This so outraged white conservatives that public schools were shut down altogether in some states and counties, and private, all-white “academies“ were opened, many by religious figures, across the nation.

It was the beginning of a concerted, 75-year-long assault on public education that has now expanded from “whites only” schools to “rich and whites only.”

Because public education is the number-one driver of social and economic mobility, it has become the archenemy of conservatives who believe the “lower classes” should know their place and stay there.

The Republican war against public education moved from being purely about race to incorporating an ideological rationalization with the 1980 effort by billionaire David Koch to run for vice president on the Libertarian ticket.

Koch’s platform said of public schools:

“We advocate the complete separation of education and State. Government schools lead to the indoctrination of children and interfere with the free choice of individuals. Government ownership, operation, regulation, and subsidy of schools and colleges should be ended.”

Thus was set the formula that billionaires from David Koch in that era to Betsy DeVos in this day use to push for the destruction of public education. It works this way:

— Privatize public schools through charter schools and by offering vouchers to pay private school tuition.

— Withhold funding from public schools while pouring voucher cash into these new, private entities.

— Expand the nationwide propaganda campaign that public education is failing and/or is an instrument of an oppressive state.

— As public schools become starved of cash, use that crisis to destroy their teachers’ unions and ultimately to shut many of them down altogether.

— Once most primary and secondary schools have collapsed and the teachers’ unions are broken, begin to dial back money available through vouchers, so poor people must use special “cheaper” schools designed just for them.

— Over time cut back voucher funding so, just as Reaganomics has done with our colleges, low-income people have to borrow from banks to send their kids to good schools.

This is not a new model: Reagan began the process with colleges, from substandard junior colleges for low-income people to throwing average Americans who wanted to attend a good college into a $1.8 trillion debt hole.

It’s not even a unique conservative model just for education: we’re halfway through it with Medicare. George W. Bush introduced the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003, and now half of American seniors are routinely having their medical payments denied by these private plans.

Once they’ve destroyed Medicare altogether (probably within a decade) the “good deals” with things like dental and vision coverage available to people buying into the private Advantage plans will evaporate and America’s elderly will be right back where they were before Medicare was created by LBJ in 1965: on their own with private, for-profit insurance companies routinely denying healthcare.

There have been attempts to block GOP efforts to destroy public schools, but in most cases the billionaires got out ahead of them and shut them down.

In 2018, for example, in an effort to stop the GOP’s creeping privatization of public education in their state, parents in Arizona got a measure to save their schools on the ballot. Voters statewide overwhelmingly rejected an expansion of vouchers and charter schools in that state.

In response, Republicans in control of Arizona’s legislature passed the nation’s first statewide voucher program, rejecting the will of the voters and shoving privatized education down the state’s parents’ throats. DeSantis did the same in Florida last year. It’s a cruel scam but an effective one.

The strategy is simple and Republicans have been running it in Red states since the 1980s. Once public education is destroyed, over time the vouchers will be cut back to represent a smaller and smaller fraction of the cost of private education. Parents will have to cough up more and more, just like what happened with college tuition between 1980 and today.

And because most parents won’t be able to pay for private schools, they’ll send their kids to the remaining public schools that have been essentially ghettoized: starved of resources and barely limping along.

This, in turn, will further stratify and rigidify the class structure of American society, cementing the generational advantages of the morbidly rich and the generational disadvantages of the poor and working classes.

This is intentional: a core tenet of conservative ideology is the belief that society must be structured with “classes and orders.” Russell Kirk kicked it off in 1952 with his book The Conservative Mind, as I detail at length in my book on the American oligarchy.

Reflecting the neo-Calvinist belief that great wealth is a sign of their god’s blessing, wealthy conservatives have argued for centuries that society should be run by the rich and virtuous — and the rest of us should shut up and quietly do our jobs in the rich men’s stores and factories.

Republican President Dwight Eisenhower issued a direct challenge to that belief when he built thousands of brand-new schools across America and rolled out programs in elementary grades for gifted working class kids (I was in one in the 1950s).

After FDR laid the foundation for America’s first great middle class, Eisenhower’s promotion of quality primary education was rocket fuel to blast that middle class to two-thirds majority status in America by 1980 (it’s now been whittled down to 43 percent, the result of Reaganomics). He even invoked the national defense to get money for public schools: the 1958 National Defense Education Act provided billions to fund public school math and science programs.

Now, using loaded and deceptive language about “Critical Race Theory” and a “gay agenda,” conservatives have hit their groove. The GOP has picked up on the trend: multimillionaire and former Carlyle Group CEO Glen Youngkin was elected Virginia governor, polls show, mostly on the strength of his attacks on public education and unionized teachers.

They’re joined in this effort by religious fanatics who argue that public schools are teaching “the secular religion of big government.” The Washington Post yesterday ran a lengthy profile of a religious fanatic, Michael Farris, who’s spent decades trying to gut public schools:

“Now, speaking on a confidential conference call to a secretive group of Christian millionaires seeking, in the words of one member, to ‘take down the education system as we know it today,’ Farris made the same points he had made in courtrooms since the 1980s. Public schools were indoctrinating children with a secular worldview that amounted to a godless religion, he said.

“The solution: lawsuits alleging that schools’ teachings about gender identity and race are unconstitutional, leading to a Supreme Court decision that would mandate the right of parents to claim billions of tax dollars for private education or home schooling.”

So now we have the perfect storm.

The conservative white supremacists who’ve fought integrated public education since 1954 have found common cause with nationalist religious hucksters who want our children indoctrinated with their own brutal form of what they cynically call “Christianity.”

These two groups have been joined by billionaires committed to reducing social and economic mobility, along with a handful of hustlers (like the phony “university” producing rightwing cartoons for Florida and Texas schools) who want to make a buck off private education.

The good news is that most public schools in America are still largely controlled by local school boards, and anybody can generally run for those boards or simply show up for every meeting and offer their opinions.

Republicans have spent the past three years trying to exploit this, with considerable success: some school boards have even been taken over by local neofascist militia members. The Proud Boys have been particularly active in this space.

But average parents supportive of public education and progressive groups are stepping up. Red Wine & Blue, Defense of Democracy, and the Florida Freedom to Read Project, among others, are endorsing candidates, helping with the campaigns of pro-public education candidates, and training parents in how to show up and speak out at school board meetings.

They’re outspent by the massive, billionaire-funded effort to destroy our public education system, but they also represent the vast majority of American parents.

An NPR/Ipsos poll from last year found 88 percent of respondents said, “My child’s teacher(s) have done the best they could, given the circumstances around the pandemic.”

Seventy-six percent agreed with the statement, “My child’s school does a good job keeping me informed about the curriculum, including potentially controversial topics.”

Fully 80 percent of parents say they are either completely or somewhat satisfied with their child’s education in public schools.

Last year’s annual PRRI American Values Survey reported that 92 percent of Americans “favor teaching children history that includes both the good and bad aspects of our history so that they can learn from the past, versus refraining from teaching aspects of history that could make them feel uncomfortable or guilty about what their ancestors did in the past.”

America, in other words, is on the side of quality public education. And there’s a growing movement to stop and ultimately reverse the damage this billionaire-funded rightwing effort has done to our public school systems.

You can help, whether you have children in public school or not.

Show up for school board meetings and, if you have the time and inclination, run for your local school board.

Ask every candidate, from city council to the US Senate and the White House, their position on public education and vote accordingly. Write letters to the editor and speak out on social media. Make waves.

After all, our public schools are literally where America’s future is being created.

We can’t abandon them just because a bunch of well-funded bigots, militia bullies, and religious cranks are enjoying their moment in the media.

The stakes are just too high.

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WHITE SUPREMACIST PEDAGOGY

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders under fire for pulling AP African-American studies

“There will be lawsuits,” said Chris Jones, who ran against Sanders in the 2022 gubernatorial race as the Democratic nominee.

April Ryan
Thu, August 17, 2023 

Critics of Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ executive decision to end an advanced placement African-American studies course in the state could face challenges in court.

“There will be lawsuits,” said Chris Jones, who ran against Sanders in the 2022 gubernatorial race as the Democratic nominee.

LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS – FEBRUARY 07: Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders waits to deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union address by President Joe Biden on February 7, 2023 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Biden tonight vowed to not allow the U.S. to default on its debt by calling on Congress to raise the debt-ceiling and chastising Republicans seeking to leverage the standoff to force spending cuts. 

(Photo by Al Drago-Pool/Getty Images)

Jones objects to his former opponent’s order to remove AP African-American studies. The decision came several months after she signed into law the state’s “LEARNS” education bill, which prohibits indoctrination and critical race theory in Arkansas public schools.

Arkansas Department of Education Secretary Jacob Oliva said the AP African-American studies course didn’t meet “rules that have long been in place.” Last week, the department took action to end the College Board curriculum, which is a two-year national pilot program. The action in Arkansas came just days before the start of school on Monday.

The AP African-American studies course would have given college credits to high school seniors. Now, the school districts a part of the pilot program are offering the course as an elective.

Arkansas is the latest Republican-controlled state to ban or restrict aspects of Black history in the classroom. The crusade against such courses has been led by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a current Republican presidential candidate.

Since learning of the change, College Board, which created the two-year pilot program for AP African-American studies, said it worked diligently to communicate with the Arkansas Department of Education about the decision.

Steve Bumbaugh, a senior vice president at College Board, told theGrio the course in Arkansas allowed students to “fulfill a social studies requirement” for college. He said the decision could cause problems for some high school seniors needing AP credits.

“Now that’s up in the air,” explained Bumbaugh. He added, “It’s possible that there are some students sitting in classrooms in Arkansas that are concerned about graduating in the spring.”

Books are piled up in the classroom for students takeing AP African-American Studies at Overland High School on November 1, 2022 in Aurora, Colorado. The AP African-American Studies course is part of a national pilot class that about 60 schools nationwide are participating in.

 (Photo by RJ Sangosti/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images)More

Bumbaugh said as many as 25,000 students nationwide participate in the AP African-American studies program. The students who meet the threshold to take the honors course would get high school and college credit traditionally.

He told theGrio he hopes the decision by Arkansas school officials to remove African-American studies from its advanced placement program is “not a trend.”

Ironically, Bumbaugh added, “the demand for this course is off the charts” across the country. “It was in 60 high schools last year. It will be in about 750 this school year,” he explained.

Another irony is that one of the schools that participated in the AP African-American studies pilot in Arkansas is Little Rock Central High School, where the nation famously witnessed the integration of nine Black students in 1957. The racial integration of the school resulted from a federal ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education.

However, resistance to racial integration at Central High was so great that the nine students, known as the Little Rock Nine, had to be escorted by the National Guard.

Forty years later, during an event commemorating the anniversary of the historical moment in September 1997, then-President Bill Clinton ceremoniously opened the doors for the Little Rock Nine, who were then adults.

As White House press secretary during the presidency of Donald Trump, Sanders told this reporter she witnessed President Clinton’s honoring of the Little Rock Nine as a student herself at Central High School. Sanders described it as one of the most impactful moments of her life to witness as a student of the school and the daughter of then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

Now, Sanders is leading an administration restricting an interdisciplinary studies program connected to that storied history. Jones, her former gubernatorial opponent, said her decision was a “rushed” one. “What’s next?” he queried.

Jones told theGrio that he is considering another run against Sanders when her term ends.

The College Board is said to have researched and pulled together some of the best scholars in African-American studies to create the curriculum. However, in the fall, there will be a review of the program. That review was previously planned before its collapse in Arkansas.

RETURN OF BROWN BAG PORN LAWS

Judge blocks Arkansas law allowing librarians to be criminally charged over ‘harmful’ materials


 Nate Coulter, executive director of the Central Arkansas Library System (CALS), looks at a book in the main branch of the public library in downtown Little Rock, Ark., on May 23, 2023. Arkansas is temporarily blocked from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors, a federal judge ruled Saturday, July 29. (AP Photo/Katie Adkins, File)

 July 29, 2023

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — Arkansas is temporarily blocked from enforcing a law that would have allowed criminal charges against librarians and booksellers for providing “harmful” materials to minors, a federal judge ruled Saturday.

U.S. District Judge Timothy L. Brooks issued a preliminary injunction against the law, which also would have created a new process to challenge library materials and request that they be relocated to areas not accessible by kids. The measure, signed by Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders earlier this year, was set to take effect Aug. 1.

A coalition that included the Central Arkansas Library System in Little Rock had challenged the law, saying fear of prosecution under the measure could prompt libraries and booksellers to no longer carry titles that could be challenged.

The judge also rejected a motion by the defendants, which include prosecuting attorneys for the state, seeking to dismiss the case.

The ACLU of Arkansas, which represents some of the plaintiffs, applauded the court’s ruling, saying that the absence of a preliminary injunction would have jeopardized First Amendment rights.

“The question we had to ask was — do Arkansans still legally have access to reading materials? Luckily, the judicial system has once again defended our highly valued liberties,” Holly Dickson, the executive director of the ACLU in Arkansas, said in a statement.

The lawsuit comes as lawmakers in an increasing number of conservative states are pushing for measures making it easier to ban or restrict access to books. The number of attempts to ban or restrict books across the U.S. last year was the highest in the 20 years the American Library Association has been tracking such efforts.

Laws restricting access to certain materials or making it easier to challenge them have been enacted in several other states, including Iowa, Indiana and Texas.

Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin said in an email Saturday that his office would be “reviewing the judge’s opinion and will continue to vigorously defend the law.”

The executive director of Central Arkansas Library System, Nate Coulter, said the judge’s 49-page decision recognized the law as censorship, a violation of the Constitution and wrongly maligning librarians.

“As folks in southwest Arkansas say, this order is stout as horseradish!” he said in an email.

“I’m relieved that for now the dark cloud that was hanging over CALS’ librarians has lifted,” he added.

Cheryl Davis, general counsel for the Authors Guild, said the organization is “thrilled” about the decision. She said enforcing this law “is likely to limit the free speech rights of older minors, who are capable of reading and processing more complex reading materials than young children can.”

The Arkansas lawsuit names the state’s 28 local prosecutors as defendants, along with Crawford County in west Arkansas. A separate lawsuit is challenging the Crawford County library’s decision to move children’s books that included LGBTQ+ themes to a separate portion of the library.

The plaintiffs challenging Arkansas’ restrictions also include the Fayetteville and Eureka Springs Carnegie public libraries, the American Booksellers Association and the Association of American Publishers.

The Mysterious Dark Money Group Connecting Trump, Christie, and DeSantis

Story by Roger Sollenberger •

The Daily Beast

Photo Illustration by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

In the early stages of the 2024 race, no other candidate—not even Donald Trump—has pushed the bounds of campaign finance laws as much as Ron DeSantis.

But the DeSantis campaign’s finances have suffered despite those hard-charging efforts. Or, perhaps, because of the people behind them.

Immediately after DeSantis officially declared his inevitable candidacy, he was challenging fundraising laws. That’s when his state-level PAC pledged to transfer more than $80 million to a pro-DeSantis super PAC, just weeks after DeSantis officially cut ties with the old group—a move Florida lawmakers changed the rules to accommodate and which quickly drew a federal complaint.

But Florida campaign finance statements show even closer ties between these three groups than previously reported—and they go to the top of the DeSantis operation.

Even with all the PAC money, the DeSantis campaign has been marred by financial trouble. Extravagant spending and an overreliance on large-dollar donors—71 percent of his total fundraising has come from people donating more than $2,000—prompted the campaign to cut more than a third of its staff earlier this week. And one person who has taken a lot of the blame for DeSantis’ questionable financial footing is a largely unknown figure with undeniable experience in the shadowy GOP circles of dark money: Generra Peck.

But in the months leading up to DeSantis’ pro forma campaign announcement, his top advisers, including Peck, were busy raising money in the background.

Brendan Fischer, deputy director of government watchdog Documented, told The Daily Beast that Peck’s involvement with that high-dollar fundraising is “further evidence that there is little distinction” between the groups backing DeSantis, which are not allowed to coordinate with each other.

“It is another example of how DeSantis has been circumventing the federal campaign finance rules designed to prevent corruption and protect voters’ right to know,” Fischer said.

Peck, a widely respected Republican strategist who prefers to operate in the wings, is DeSantis’ 2024 campaign manager, having quietly steered him to victory in 2022. But before she took the top job, she helmed a battery of low-profile conservative advocacy groups—where the funding is largely untraceable and the spending is exceedingly difficult to unravel, often by design.

Peck’s present, however, is distinctly different from her past. A presidential operation tasked with taking down the most powerful force in the Republican Party has to reckon with far more public scrutiny than Peck has dealt with previously. And the transparency demanded of federal campaigns is entirely different from the occult financials of the comparatively obscure dark money groups and consulting firms where she cut her political teeth.

Peck’s approach, and the complications she faces today, are captured in the story of one of those groups—a dark money nonprofit that Chris Christie started to support then-President Trump, but which in hindsight looks more like an incubator for a future DeSantis presidency.

“Right Direction America” was created in late 2019 to fight back against Democratic attempts to impeach Trump.

“I was tired of sitting around and waiting for someone else to do it,” Christie said at the time, promising seven-figure ad buys to combat impeachment.

He would leave the group a year later, long after the Senate had acquitted Trump of those impeachment charges. But RDA was far from finished.

Kevin Wurm/Reuters© Provided by The Daily Beast

In retrospect, RDA had strong ties to DeSantis from the beginning. Aside from Peck and Christie, one of the key forces behind the group was veteran GOP operative Phil Cox—a trusted DeSantis adviser and top deputy for his super PAC. The group also featured Catherine Chestnut Linkul, another senior DeSantis 2022 aide and the former director of Casey DeSantis’ Office of the First Lady.

The DeSantis campaign and Peck did not respond to detailed questions for this article.

But after Trump was acquitted and Christie was gone, the group assumed what seems like its true purpose all along: a nozzle to spray anonymous cash to a broad range of conservative groups, issues, and politicians.

RDA’s filings don’t appear in IRS searches, nor in any other public database that compiles those records. The Daily Beast previously obtained the group’s 2020 filing, which shows it doled out $700,000 in grants. Those funds went to two other secretive entities, both of which, like RDA, are classified as 501(c)(4) “dark money” groups—and both of which are directly tied to Peck.

When one of those groups, “Building a Better America,” emptied its coffers in 2021—the year Peck moved to Tallahassee to take over DeSantis’ 2022 campaign—the group poured almost all of its bank account into reforming a federal environmental policy of deep interest to DeSantis: a Florida mining project. BBA didn’t similarly explain the nature of any of its $2.1 million in grants on its previous year’s tax filing.

RDA—whose board also has ties to the GOP’s biggest megadonor, Dick Uihlein—took in three donations in 2020, for a total $2.12 million, the filing shows. All three were anonymous, with the largest being $2 million.

While Christie promised to spend big money fighting Trump’s impeachment, RDA dropped only about $35,000 on ads toward that endeavor, according to the Facebook advertising database. The group returned to the political fold that August with a contribution more than twice that amount to a super PAC backing the unsuccessful congressional campaign of a Christie ally.

A few months later, Christie dropped out of RDA. The reason is unclear, and Christie declined The Daily Beast’s request for comment.

His departure, however, came weeks before the most curious event in RDA’s curious life: a $100,000 gift in early 2021 from the campaign belonging to Rep. Matt Gaetz, for a time one of DeSantis’ closest allies.

The donation was double the amount of the Gaetz campaign’s second-largest contribution ever, and $22,000 more than its combined political gifts to DeSantis.

The campaign cut the $100,000 check when the congressman was on particularly shaky ground, and the Gaetz campaign’s explanation appears to defy belief, The Daily Beast previously reported. The contribution came about half a year after the Justice Department opened its investigation into whether the Florida congressman paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl, and weeks after Trump returned to civilian life at Mar-a-Lago, denying Gaetz the blanket pardon he had reportedly sought.

But there’s unsurprisingly scant publicly available information about RDA’s activities after Christie left. The group’s website was taken down sometime after The Daily Beast reached out for comment for this article; it was archived as recently as March 21.

RDA’s publicly available financial data is almost exclusively accessible through Federal Election Filings, which show a $250,000 injection from former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee. One year later, a super PAC called “Right Direction Women”—whose branding is strikingly similar to that of RDA’s now defunct website—made a similar donation to yet another nonprofit, called “Right Direction Women Maryland.”

RDA Women’s lineup is also studded with close associates of Peck and her former consulting firm, P2 Public Affairs. The super PAC supports conservative women running for office, notably Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, who is now the central pillar supporting DeSantis’ primary efforts in that critical state.

But the force behind them all appears to be Peck. While the strategist rarely engages the media—who seem to have rarely engaged with her before she took over the 2022 DeSantis campaign—she took a major step into public life in September 2021, when DeSantis tapped her to run his upcoming re-election effort.

While Peck has long been close with both Ron and Casey DeSantis, her hiring was reportedly the work of yet another ghost from Right Direction’s past: Cox, who first took a shine to Peck while they worked together on former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell’s 2009 campaign.

Over the next decade-plus, Peck took on increasingly senior roles in the GOP national apparatus, building political bridges through the Republican Governors Association, where Cox served as a top official and which Christie chaired. (As if it’s not complicated enough, that organization also has its own “RGA Right Direction” PAC.)

However, Florida state filings don’t show 2022 DeSantis campaign payments to Peck personally or a number of known entities associated with her. They do, however, reveal $1.7 million going to Cox’s Ascent Media from the Republican Party of Florida, with that company clocking another roughly $207,000 directly from the DeSantis campaign.

Then, just two days after DeSantis won, Ascent Media was listed as one of a slate of firms forming a brand new consulting mega-conglomerate, GP3 Partners, LLC. The consortium features a number of DeSantis-world operatives, and its name—GP3—is shared by Peck’s personal firm, GP3 Strategies, LLC. Peck’s own name, however, was characteristically absent from the conglomerate’s press release, as was any mention of GP3 Strategies.

This January, DeSantis, Peck, and Cox began ramping up his predicted presidential bid in earnest. And the money began moving, too.

Early that month, Cox’s firm kicked about $562,000 back to the Florida GOP, state filings show, with the DeSantis 2022 campaign paying the company roughly $591,000 weeks later.

Notably, over the next five months Ascent Media hauled in another $151,500 from the Friends of DeSantis PAC—the group at the center of the disputed $82 million transfer. That PAC also sent $95,500 to Peck’s GP3 Strategies via a series of monthly installments beginning the last day of February.

Between March 1 and April 30, as DeSantis’ not-so-subtle shadow campaign carried him around the country and abroad, that PAC raised a staggering $3.8 million. Then, on May 5, DeSantis declared in a state filing that he would no longer fundraise through the group. That same day, the PAC, which paid GP3 Strategies its last installment the previous day, cut Ascent Media its final check. It rebranded 10 days later as “Empower Parents PAC.”

The contours of that fundraising effort are at the center of Campaign Legal Center’s federal complaint. The complaint, filed May 31, alleges that the PAC illegally coordinated with DeSantis to raise money in amounts exponentially higher than his campaign would have been able to.

Undeterred, the PAC made good on its $82 million promise the next month, announcing the unprecedented transfer to the pro-DeSantis super PAC “Never Back Down.” That group, of course, features Cox as a top official, alongside Jeff Roe, a longtime Republican campaign veteran who reportedly had his eyes set on the campaign manager slot—only to take a backseat to Peck.

Today, however, Peck’s cover has been blown. GOP insiders and megadonors have increasingly expressed frustration with the campaign’s flagging performance and runaway spending, and they’re hungry for a scalp.

According to multiple recent reports, they’ve set their sights on Peck, whose limited campaign experience has, through no fault of her own, made her vulnerable to those attacks.

When the campaign cut about a third of its workforce earlier this week—more than three dozen jobs—Peck took considerable heat.

A statement attributed to Peck said the layoffs were the result of a “top-to-bottom review,” but it’s unclear how effective the move will be. The campaign spent about $630,000 on payroll over its first six weeks, FEC records show, about 8 percent of its total expenses.

Fittingly enough, Peck’s own compensation with the campaign is its own mystery. Federal Election Commission filings show only about $10,000 going to her on the DeSantis campaign payroll over the campaign’s first six weeks. She received just the fifth-largest single payroll payment, and her total stands at about $5,000 less than the governor’s longtime communications guru, Christina Pushaw.

While it may seem like Peck is just doing the job on the cheap, she actually appears to have scored a hefty payday in the weeks before the campaign launched. Between late February and early May, Peck saw nearly $100,000 in combined regular payments from a high-rolling DeSantis state PAC, paid through her personal consulting firm, GP3 Strategies, LLC.

The Daily Beast.