Florida ranked No. 1 for 'education freedom' — by right-wing group that wants to privatize it all

Kathryn Joyce, Salon
September 10, 2022

Ron DeSantis on Facebook.


A new education report released Friday by the Heritage Foundation, an influential right-wing think tank, ranks Florida as the best state in the country for "education freedom," with Arizona a close second, and Washington, D.C., New York and most of the Northeast falling to the bottom.

That claim, along with the fact that the list's top 20 states are mostly deep "red" and its bottom 10 are almost all dark "blue," might come as a surprise to education watchers who are familiar with more traditional assessments of education performance. But in the Heritage Foundation's inaugural "Education Freedom Report Card," the think tank is grading according to a different metric entirely: not things like average student funding, teacher salary or classroom size, but how easily state legislatures enable students to leave public schools; how lightly private schools and homeschooling are regulated; how active and welcome conservative parent-advocacy groups are; and how frequently or loudly those groups claim that schools are indoctrinating students.

Florida's Department of Education was quick to celebrate its No. 1 Heritage ranking, but digging into the four main categories the report assessed — "school choice," "regulatory freedom," "transparency" and "return on investment" — illuminates both what that ranking means and, perhaps more important, what conservatives' long-term goals for public education are.

In the category of education choice, Heritage's primary focus is on education savings accounts (ESAs), a form of school voucher that allows parents to opt out of public schools and use a set amount of state funding (sometimes delivered via debit card) on almost any educational expenses they see fit. ESAs can be used towards charter schools, private schools, parochial schools and low-cost (and typically low-quality) "voucher schools," as well as online schools, homeschooling expenses, unregulated "microschools" (where a group of parents pool resources to hire a private teacher) or tutoring. The report's methodology also notes that the percentage of children in a state who attend these alternatives to public schools figures into its rankings, implying that families who choose traditional public schools are not considered examples of educational "freedom." The "choice" category also awards points based on how non-public schools are regulated, docking states that require accreditation or the same level of testing mandated for public schools.

In terms of "regulatory freedom," Heritage weighs whether states enforce "overburdensome regulations … in the name of 'accountability.'" The chief concern here appears to be teacher certification credentials, since states that encourage "alternative" credentialing or that employ more teachers without teaching degrees are ranked higher than those where more educators have traditional qualifications. This section also penalizes states where a high percentage of school districts employ chief diversity officers, since, the report claims, such positions primarily exist to "provide political support and organization to one side of the debate over the contentious issues of race and opportunity."

In the third category, "transparency," the report rewards states that have "strong anti-critical race theory" laws, high rates of engagement by groups like Parents Defending Education — which has ties to the Koch network — and laws requiring school districts to provide exhaustive public access to any student curricula or educational materials. States where Parents Defending Education have reported more "indoctrination incidents" — which usually means conflicts regarding teaching about racism or LGBTQ issues — are ranked lower.

Lastly, in terms of spending, the report compares per-pupil spending not just to learning outcomes but also to matters like the future tax burden created by teacher pensions, which Heritage sees as a reflection of concentrated "teacher union power" and "deficient political leaders."

The report also included a section containing model legislation written by the Goldwater Institute, the libertarian law firm Institute for Justice and the Heritage Foundation itself, covering more "anti-CRT" proposals, more requirements for schools to publicize their training materials for students and staff and more or bigger ESA voucher programs. In its own model bill, "Protecting K-12 Students from Discrimination," Heritage proposes that schools teach an "aspirational and inspirational take on America's history, debunking the misguided argument that present-day problems of black Americans are caused by the injustices of past failures" and holding that no teachers or students can be compelled "to discuss public policy issues of the day without his or her consent."

What's especially noteworthy about this report — which Heritage says it will release on an annual basis — is how closely most of its ranking criteria track with the right's broader education agenda. Over the last few months, almost all the issues addressed in this report have been highlighted as key action items for conservative education reformers, from the promotion of ESAs, as a preferred pathway to universal school vouchers, to alternative teacher credentialing to the expansion of the anti-CRT movement, which now encompasses anything related to "diversity, equity and inclusion."

In late June, Arizona passed a sweeping expansion of its own ESA policies, instantly creating the most wide-reaching school privatization plan in the country and sparking immediate calls for other Republican-led states to follow suit. (Although Florida ranked first overall in Heritage's report, the authors note with evident enthusiasm that Arizona's new ESA law will "certainly give Florida a run for its money next year.")

Likewise, the report's emphasis on alternative teacher credentialing underscores a major new focus of conservative activism. In February, the right-wing bill mill American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, declared "alternative credentialing" to be one of 2022's "essential policy ideas." Two months later, anti-CRT activist Christopher Rufo called on state lawmakers to rescind requirements that teachers hold education degrees, saying that university education programs serve only to indoctrinate teachers in left-wing ideology. In early July, Arizona passed a law decreeing that public school teachers don't even need college degrees in order to begin teaching. And in August, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis did the same, arguing that teacher certification requirements were "too rigid" and announcing that military veterans who were halfway to a college degree could now be hired to teach in public schools.

Individually and together, these education "reform" proposals tie back to larger calls to privatize education — which is sometimes acknowledged out loud, as when Rufo declared this April that increased controversy around public schools would help create the environment for "universal school choice." The Heritage report is part of a similar long game, declaring in its opening paragraphs that "America has never been closer than it is today to realizing Milton Friedman's vision for universal education choice."

Framing the report by invoking the libertarian economist Friedman — who, over the course of his controversial career, proposed eliminating Social Security, the Food and Drug Administration, the licensing of doctors and more — is a telling choice. In a foundational 1955 essay, as Heritage notes, Friedman famously argued that "government-administered schooling" was incompatible with a freedom-loving society, and that public funding of education should be severed from public administration of it — which would end public education as the country had known it for generations.

Milton Friedman claimed that school vouchers would solve all the "critical problems" faced by schools. In fact, says Carol Corbett Burris, they haven't "delivered on any of his promises ... [and] all evidence shows they have made segregation worse."

As Duke University historian Nancy MacLean writes, Friedman's call for "education freedom" came at the same moment that Virginia segregationists were pioneering the use of school vouchers to enable their "regionwide strategy of 'massive resistance'" to integration. Critics have long pointed out that, in that same 1955 essay, Friedman acknowledged that school vouchers might be used to uphold segregation, creating a system of "exclusively white schools, exclusively colored schools, and mixed schools" that parents could choose between. Friedman's defenders, including at EdChoice, the school privatization advocacy organization he founded in the late 1990s, counter that this quote must be considered within the larger context of Friedman's professed belief that free-market educational competition would eventually mean that "the mixed schools will grow at the expense of the non mixed, and a gradual transition will take place." (Assuming that integration advocates managed to successfully "persuade others of their views.")

"Friedman may have been an accomplished number-cruncher, but when it came to social issues, he was a crackpot," said Carol Corbett Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education. He claimed that "vouchers 'would solve all of the critical problems' faced by schools," from discipline, to busing to segregation, Burris continued. "He presented no evidence, just claims based on his disdain for any government regulation."

This theory has been tested, Burris said, and proven false. "The jury is in. School choice in the form of charters and vouchers has not delivered on any of his promises; in fact, all evidence shows they have made segregation worse."

By 1980, Friedman was declaring that vouchers were merely a useful waypoint on the road to true education freedom, which would include revoking compulsory education laws. In 2006, shortly before his death, Friedman told an ALEC audience that it would be "ideal" to "abolish the public school system and eliminate all the taxes that pay for it."

For Heritage to use Friedman as its ideological lodestar, public education advocates observe, makes clear what the report values most in the state education systems it's ranking.

"The fact that the Heritage Foundation ranks Arizona second in the country, when our schools are funded nearly last in the nation, only underscores the depraved lens with which they view the world," said Beth Lewis, director of the advocacy group Save Our Schools Arizona, which is currently leading a citizen ballot referendum against the state's new universal ESA law. "Heritage boasting about realizing Milton Friedman's dream reveals the agenda — to abolish public schools and put every child on a voucher in segregated schools."

"This is a report that celebrates states not funding their students," agreed Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, the state's largest union. Noting that Florida in fact ranks 45th in the nation in average per-student funding, Spar continued, "In their report, it seems like the states that fund their students at a higher level have a worse ranking than those who invest less in their children."

This amounts, Spar continued, to "the Heritage Foundation celebrating the rankings of how well you underfund public schools, how well you dismantle public schools. I don't think we should celebrate the fact that we're shortchanging kids."

"With this report," added Burris, "the Heritage Foundation puts its values front and forward — that schooling should be a free-for-all marketplace where states spend the least possible on educating the future generation of Americans, with no regulations to preserve quality." It's no accident, Burris added, that Heritage's top two states, Florida and Arizona, were ranked as the worst on the Network for Public Education's own report card this year.

"These two states now have such a critical teacher shortage, due to their anti-public school agenda, that you do not even need a college degree to teach," said Burris. "Parents who are looking for the best states in which to educate their children should take this report card and turn it on its head."

DeSantis ban on ‘woke’ investments could hurt state pension fund, experts say
2022/09/01

Ron DeSantis announces the Florida SunPass Savings program at the Florida Turnpike Headquarters on Aug. 25, 2022, in Orlando, Florida. - Willie J. Allen Jr./Orlando Sentinel/TNS

TALLAHASSEE, Florida — After banning CRT in the classroom and board room, Gov. Ron DeSantis has a new target in his culture war against “wokeness” with another acronym most folks have never heard of — ESG.

DeSantis says he views investment policies that take “Environmental, Social and Governance” issues into consideration as an existential threat to Florida’s people and economy, just as he sees Critical Race Theory undermining the state’s social and cultural values.

“This is a movement to harness economic power to move an agenda that doesn’t have enough appeal to win at the ballot box,” DeSantis said on Aug. 23 after voting to ban investments in what he and others call “woke” investments. “Those policies are dead on arrival in the state of Florida.”

He and the other two members of the State Board of Administration Board of Trustees – Attorney General Ashley Moody and Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis – passed a resolution ordering the state to prioritize “the highest return on investment for beneficiaries, without consideration for non-pecuniary beliefs or political factors” when considering future investments in the state employee pension fund.

ESG is an investment strategy used to calculate the risk of long-term investments. For instance, fund managers could consider whether climate change will affect a business’ profits in the future. Governance factors examine conflict of interest policies, executive compensation and other safeguards to protect against corporate scandals. Social factors take into account whether employees are paid equitably.

The move against it comes as Florida’s pension fund dropped from a high of almost $200 billion a year ago to $179 billion in June as the stock market fell, according to a monthly SBA report to the trustees.

Financial analysts said it could affect millions of retired state employees because ESG issues do impact investment returns.

“It is pension money that runs the most significant financial risk if they don’t take ESG into account,” Sasja Beslik, chief investment officer at NextGen ESG, told Bloomberg News. “ESG — when done for real — is first and foremost a risk-management tool. Politicians run for four years, maybe eight. But pension money is very long-term.”

Deborah Jepson, who retired from teaching debate and journalism at Oviedo High in 2016, doesn’t understand why a policy change is needed.

“The fund has been well managed up until now. The last thing I want is for my pension to be politicized,” Jepson said. “Can the fund cover the pensions that are in there now and the ones that are coming up?”

The proposed changes seem arbitrary, she said. Current SBA investment policy for the state pension plan only requires its investment managers to ensure returns on investment cover the timely payment of promised benefits to current and future participants.

Jepson also likened the ESG ban to the governor and Legislature banning critical race theory in schools. “It doesn’t exist. He invented a problem, talked about it with the media, then passed laws,” she said. “It’s an imaginary problem.”

It also goes against what most employees want, according to a Harris poll conducted last year for investment manager Nuveen, which found two-thirds of the respondents want their companies offering retirement plans that include ESG principles.

DeSantis claimed that many ESG funds don’t perform as well as traditional ones.

But a recent Bloomberg News report cited a Morningstar Inc. study that said over the past five years U.S. sustainability funds with a capitalization of $10 billion or more that focused on growth averaged an annual return of 14% while conventional non-ESG funds grew 11% a year.

DeSantis’ resolution directs the State Board of Administrationto update the board’s investment policy based on financial factors that affect the rate of return — not social, political or ideological issues. DeSantis said he envisions Florida and other red states uniting and voting as one to act as a “counterweight” to ESG policies.

Critics said it’s a distraction from more pressing issues and political theater in DeSantis’ efforts to drum up his base for his reelection in November and with an eye on a possible run for president in 2024.

“It’s another culture war issue,” Adam Hattersley, a Democrat running for chief financial officer. “They are distracting from the disaster of property insurance in Florida that is costing everyone money. That’s the problem they should be focusing on.”

Critics said the battle against CRT, which argues that racism is systemic in American society, was another manufactured problem. CRT isn’t a part ofFlorida’s K-12 public school curriculum and is mostly taught in graduate and law schools.

But the resolution itself doesn’t explain how the rule would be applied, or how funds would be analyzed to determine whether they are in compliance.

Nor does it specify whether something like climate change has a legitimate impact on the bottom line. It also doesn’t offer any instructions on whether to divest from existing investments that follow ESG principles or how it would differ from existing investment policy.

“The governor’s assertion is common sense,” Bryan Griffin, the governor’s press secretary, said in an email. “If investment decisions are being made using any factors other than the fiduciary and pecuniary interest of the beneficiary, then the best financial decisions aren’t being made.”

The rule will apply to all future investment decisions, he added, after the rule is approved and the SBA completes a review of governance policies and files its report to the Board of Trustees, no later than Dec. 15, 2023.

A lot hinges on how this policy directive is ultimately carried out, said Josh Lichtenstein, a partner at the law firm Ropes & Gray who has been tracking the ESG issue.

ESG factors can be used to help determine whether a company is a sound long-term investment, he said.

For instance, some studies have shown more diverse corporate boards are less prone to scandals, corruption and bribery, all of which can hurt a company’s stock price.

Climate change and sea-level rise could make beachfront property worth less in the future. The state has approved a $1.5 billion program to protect coastal communities against flooding.

And the Legislature and governor also approved a $100 million program for homeowners to harden their homes against the ever-growing threat of hurricanes.

“The chilling effect is exactly what the concern is,” Lichtenstein said. “The worry is you end up with fiduciaries who are afraid to consider the full range of what they believe is prudent to consider.”

Jonathan Webber, political and legislative director for Florida Conservation Voters environmental group, said it was inappropriate to exclude a huge sector of the business community from the investment fund because they embrace ESG.

“It ties the hands of financial investors when they’re trying to do what’s right for their constituents,” Webber said. “The governor talks about freedom but prevents the freedom of corporations to do what their employees and consumers want.”

It also doesn’t square with the state’s own environmental policies or desires of Floridians, Webber added. “Everyone knows we all share a role in protecting that. It really doesn’t make sense.”

© Orlando Sentinel

The decaying politics of white boomer men

John Stoehr
September 09, 2022

Donald Trump holds a press conference at Trump Turnberry. (Shutterstock.com)

On Monday, David Brooks, the Times columnist, wrote about No Labels, a third party. He could have been talking about himself, though. He could have been talking about the cycles of political time in which the old political order gives way to a new, fresh one.

What will we do, he asked, if the major parties nominate, in 2024, a redhat fascist on the one hand or a Bernie-Bro progressive on the other? No Labels provides an escape from both extremes, Brooks said. Unfortunately, it’s a pixie-dust alternative to stone-cold reality.

Brooks understands better than most that third parties never win. Yet he clings so tightly to an imaginary “moderate middle” that he can’t accept, apparently, that the Democratic Party represents the full spectrum of legitimate politics. The actual moderate middle is somewhere between Joe Manchin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

For a “conservative” pundit who’s been watching politics for around three decades (nearly 20 years at the Times), this new political reality must be intolerable – so intolerable that hyping a third party as if it were a serious alternative does not sound deranged. That it is deranged tells us more about Brooks than it does No Labels.

It tells us that Brooks is outside the center.

The politics of white boomer men

The best way to understand Brooks, age 61, is not as an individual, unique though he is, but as an avatar of a political consensus that emerged from the mid-1960s – when the civil rights movement triumphed and the federal government conceded that the claims of the Declaration of Independence applied equally and universally.

Another good way to understand Brooks: as the personification of a white-power reaction to the rise of nonwhite, female power. By 1980, that reaction had lifted a D-list actor and Goldwaterite to the Oval Office. With a white conservative Christian finally in charge, no one talked anymore about women’s liberty or Black rights. As a result, Tom Brokaw told us, America could feel good about itself again.

Brooks embodies his generation’s politics.

The politics of white boomer men.

I risk looking like I care about Brooks. I don’t. I find him useful, though. He can help us see clearly that the old political order, which centered white boomer men like him, is falling beneath a new one, like a tectonic plate grinding overtop another, creating a landscape so new that no one remembers what the old one looked like.

For this reason, we shouldn’t see his inanity as maddening. To the contrary, we should see it as exciting. The greater the inanity, the greater the irrelevance of white boomer politics. The more he struggles to comprehend – the more he refuses to accept new realities – the more the current political order is losing its grip.

Huzzah!

“The boomers … ruined everything”

I am not in any way overstating things when I say that white boomer politics has constituted America’s political order for the last 50 years.

Since 1976, majorities of white boomers have voted for the GOP presidential candidate. They endorsed endless culture wars as well as real forever wars. They endorsed rapacious market capitalism. They endorsed starving government of, by and for the people. White boomers were and still are the richest cohort in US history. Yet their lifetimes have seen their country decay and fade in every conceivable way, whether it’s education, infrastructure, climate or equality.

In an interview with a promising young office seeker, CNN anchor Jake Tapper said: “I don't blame Generation Z. Let me give you a secret. It's all the fault of the boomers. They ruined everything."

TV = Trump

Since Tapper’s comment last month, his employer has dramatically pivoted from a neutral source of news to a network similar to Fox. That shift reflects, I think, something old turning into something new. And it points to an essential element of white boomer politics.

Television.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that its power is weakening at the same time that the Republicans’ half-century dominance is too.

According to a former senior executive, writing on Twitter, CNN “printed money,” in the 1990s. “Cash. Hand over fist. Then MSNBC and Fox News came along. The race was on. MSNBC went velvet rope. Fox News went diner. CNN got caught in no man’s land.”

It profited from the Iraq War, but between 2008 and 2016, he said, CNN lost 60 percent of its 50-plus audience. “We didn’t … take a look at what was happening. The viewership started to splinter to MSNBC because some folks wanted a left bent. But a lot went to Fox News.” Indeed, Fox executives double-, then triple-downed on the olds, thus increasing their viewership by 70 percent over the same period.

Then came Donald Trump. Profits returned, but they were illusory, the former executive said. The over-65 set had fled to Fox. By the time CNN+ came along, its failure was foretold. The former executive said: “What 65-year-old is going to download and subscribe to a news streaming service with a basketball star, Rex Chapman.”

People under 50 cut the cord.

They stopped watching cable news.

Only boomers do.

I need not remind you there would not have been a President Trump without television power. White boomers watch TV. Most voted for Trump, twice. But as the television’s influence on the electorate decays and fades, so will the influence of white boomer politics.

It’s just a matter of time.

Never happened before

Is that time now?

Given that things that used to be true are no longer true, and that things that never happened before are happening, yeah, maybe.

Consider the conventional wisdom about midterms. They never go the president’s way. Joe Biden is supposed to lose the House.

But Amy Walters, of the Cook Political Report, said: “Poll after poll shows Democrats winning among voters who rate Joe Biden ‘somewhat unfavorably.’ That’s not happened before. In five midterms for which Pew Research had data, ‘somewhat disapprovers’ have never been this supportive of his party in the upcoming election.”

No one knows why this is happening, but it surely links up with the criminal former president who packed a renegade Supreme Court.

For now, let’s ask: what does something that’s never happened before tell us about our moment? Maybe that the political fundamentals in which things used to happen – like the president losing the Congress – have changed so profoundly that something that’s never happened before can really happen, like the president holding the Congress.

It’s no wonder David Brooks is confused.

John Stoehr is a fellow at the Yale Journalism Initiative; a contributing writer for the Washington Monthly; a contributing editor for Religion Dispatches; and senior editor at Alternet. Follow him @johnastoehr.

MSNBC host flips the script on royal coverage to document British colonial brutality

Tom Boggioni
September 10, 2022

Coronation of George V in India, (Via1911 | Wikimedia Commons)

Following up on a contentious interview with a British historian over his country's dark history of colonialism, MSNBC host Ali Velshi took time out from coverage of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II to elaborate on his earlier accusations.

Noting that he was getting blowback on social media over the inappropriateness of his mentioning the touchy topic so soon after the queen's death, Velshi suggested Britain's history of brutal suppression should not be glossed over.

"How about we talk a little bit more about colonialism," he began. "The first Elizabethan era ended when Queen Elizabeth the First died in 1603. Her 45 year reign was, quote, 'a golden age,' though I guess that depends on your perspective which marked England's emergence as an ambitious and ruthless global power."

"Elizabeth the First heavily encouraged privateering, granting charters or trading and exploration rights to private companies which paved the ways for an intercontinental empire," he continued.

He then added, "Centuries later, the second Elizabethan era has just ended with the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The two reigns invite easy comparison and they are tethered by their unique position in the timeline of British colonialism; the beginning and the beginning of the end. In the 1920's, the British empire was at its zenith, ruling and controlling the natural resources and economic output of around a quarter of the world's entire population -- about 413 million people at the time."

"Nightfall for the empire was on the horizon by the time Elizabeth became queen," he continued. "It was ushered in by the colonized, not by the colonizer. In 1947, a few months after Queen Elizabeth II's 21st birthday, but five years before she became the monarch, Britain would lose one of its most crucial imperial possessions, India, and the newly partitioned Pakistan. For more than a century, Britain had exploited local rulers workers, and resources in India; flooding the British economy with cotton and cash."

"India not only paved the way for Britain's massive global rise, but funded the continued progress of the industrial revolution," he elaborated. "Remnants of colonialism in India continue in the conflict between India and Pakistan, and India's continued colonization of Kashmir. I don't need to make a metaphor here: the 105 carat diamond which sits in one of the three royal consort crowns is a spoil of war from India."

"The death between 20,000 and 100,000 people in the Mau Mau Uprising in my birthplace of Kenya in 1950s. The opium wars in China. Lesser known atrocities like civilian torture in Cypress. The continued mess which is Israel and Palestine today," he ticked off. "All of it is the legacy of British colonialism. Queen Elizabeth was widely respected and admired. But if you're having mixed feelings about the mourning of the queen and the institution that she represented for so many decades, that's valid, and you're not alone."

You can watch below 
MSNBC 09 10 2022 

 

Historian blows up on MSNBC's Velshi for bringing up British colonialism

Tom Boggioni
September 10, 2022

Ali Velshi, Andrew Roberts (MSNBC screenshot)

MNSNBC's coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II took a turn on Saturday morning when a British historian took exception with host Ali Velshi after he mentioning the brutal colonialism conducted under the crown -- and the two ended up in a shouting match.

In his intro, the MSNBC host explained the late queen, "Represented an institution that had a long, ugly history of brutal colonialism, violence, theft, and slavery. For many centuries the British robbed other nations of their wealth and power and exploited their people. Even as Queen Elizabeth's reign largely marks the beginning of the post-colonial era, the horrors that her long line of ancestors inflicted upon many generations of people across the globe continues to be the source of pain. That is now a legacy that her eldest son, King Charles II inherits."

That immediately set off his guest, historian Andrew Roberts, and the interview went off the rails with Roberts asking the MSNBC host where he was born and Velshi sarcastically closing by thanking Roberts for coming on the show to "whitewash" British history.

Roberts came right out of the gates chastizing Velshi.

Asked by the host if the royal institution needs to change, Roberts shot back, "I think that is wildly overstated frankly. When you look at all the opinion polls we are about 80 to 85% in favor of having a constitutional monarchy. Whoever is saying that on the throne, so I think this is extremely overdone."

"Frankly, I am afraid to say, as your introduction was -- it pains people throughout history -- why was she chosen by every single commonwealth country, many of which are former countries, as the head of the commonwealth?" he asked.

"Andrew, hold on a second. Are you really denying what I just said about racial colonialism? Are you really doing that, Andrew?" Velshi replied as Roberts continued to protest. "Andrew, Andrew, this is not a propaganda show. Andrew, I need you to stop. I need you to stop for a second. Are you really taking issue with the horrors of colonialism, Andrew?"

"I am certainly taking issue with your remarks about slavery," Roberts parried. "We abolished it 32 years before you did. We did not kill 600,000 people in a Civil War over it."

"So, you think that is fine," the MSNBC host challenged. "There are people all over the world were born in colonial countries, because, when I was born the British Empire still existed and, that is okay for everybody?"

After the host pointed out he was born in Kenya, Roberts raised his voice and claimed, "Why on earth do you want to concentrate on the only -- the negative things of an institution from 100 years ago now?" as the interview descended into the two talking over each other.

Watch below 

MSNBC 09 10 2022 10 01 28

UN says it is «concerned» about Defense taking control of Mexico’s National Guard

Daniel Stewart - Yesterday 

The United Nations Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada al Nashif, expressed her concern on Friday over the decision of the Mexican Congress to cede control of the National Guard to the Ministry of National Defense, that is, to integrate it into the army.


Archive - Mexican National Guard Agents - 

SECRETARÍA DE SEGURIDAD DE MÉXICO© Provided by News 360

According to Al Nashif, the Mexican Constitution states that this body is of a civilian nature. However, the Senate has approved a legislative reform whereby the operational, budgetary and administrative control of the National Guard passes into the hands of military officials.

"The reforms effectively leave Mexico without a civilian police force at the federal level, further consolidating the already prominent role of the Armed Forces in public security in Mexico," he denounced.

"Human Rights mechanisms have clearly stated that the Armed Forces should only intervene in public security on a temporary basis, in exceptional circumstances, as a last resort, and always under the effective supervision of independent civilian bodies," said Al Nashif.

The High Commissioner pointed out that the militarization of the security forces "has been steadily increasing" since 2006, but this has not translated into a drop in crime. Instead, she denounced, there has been an increase in reports of "serious human rights violations" by the security forces.

She also called on the Mexican authorities to strengthen civilian oversight in the security sector and expressed concern about the reform of the Constitution that is being proposed to allow the use of the Armed Forces for public security until 2028.

Mexico's President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has celebrated the approval of this law this Friday. "It is the most important thing", he assured, and highlighted the fact that the control will be in the hands of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena).

'Morbius' was a box-office dud but now it's topping Netflix's charts, as the streamer's deal with Sony continues to pay off

tclark@insider.com (Travis Clark) - Yesterday 

Jared Leto as Michael Morbius in "Morbius." Courtesy of Sony Pictures© Courtesy of Sony Pictures

Sony's "Morbius" is the No. 1 movie on Netflix right now, after landing on the service on Wednesday.
Starting this year, Sony movies stream on Netflix after their theatrical and home-entertainment runs.
The deal is already proving to be one of Netflix's best bets.

"Morbius," Sony's Marvel movie starring Jared Leto as a vampiric antihero, disappointed in theaters after it debuted in April with $163 million globally, including just $74 million in the US.

Five months later, it's the No. 1 movie on Netflix in the US.

The movie landed on the streamer Wednesday, and has been the top movie on the service since (Netflix measures its daily top 10 lists by hours viewed the previous 24 hours).

"Morbius" is part of a five-year deal with Netflix reached in 2021 that kicked in this year, in which Netflix landed domestic streaming rights to Sony's movies after their theatrical and home-entertainment runs.

Sony, which doesn't have its own streaming platform, owns the film rights to Spider-Man and hundreds of related Marvel characters — meaning Netflix will be the first streaming home for any future Marvel movies Sony releases to theaters. The streamer also is licensing select older movies from Sony's library, such as its past Spider-Man movies.

As part of the agreement, Netflix has a first-look option for movies Sony is making directly for streaming or planning to license for streaming.

Related video: Morbius arrives on Netflix
Duration 1:17  View on Watch

The deal is already proving to be one of Netflix's best bets.


VIDEO 

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ dominates the box office despite releasing last year

Mark Wahlberg and Tom Holland in "Uncharted." 

Clay Enos/Columbia Pictures

"Uncharted," Sony's video-game adaptation that hit theaters in March and later landed on Netflix, topped Nielsen's latest movie streaming chart, which measured the week of August 8-14.

During that week, "Uncharted" was the most-watched movie across the platforms Nielsen measures — including Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, and Hulu — with 1.18 billion minutes viewed in the US.

It was the No. 2 most-watched title overall, second to Netflix's series "The Sandman."

Sony movies have dominated consumer engagement on Netflix. According to Julia Alexander, director of strategy at the data firm Parrot Analytics, half of the top 10 most in-demand movies on Netflix in the US over the last 90 days were licensed from or produced by Sony (Parrot Analytics' audience demand reflects the interest in a given movie or series based on viewership, online engagement, and more).

Those movies included:
"Spider-Man 2" (No 1)
"Uncharted" (No. 2)
"Spider-Man 3" (No. 5)
"The Amazing Spider-Man" (No. 8)
"The Mitchells vs. the Machines" (No. 9)

The chart below illustrates the top 10 most in-demand movies on Netflix over the last 90 days:

Parrot Analytics© Parrot Analytics
Read the original article on Business Insider

Tucker Carlson's childish bullying backfires spectacularly and it's music to our ears

Queerty - Yesterday 

A country music singer has spun an insult from patron saint of furrowed brows Tucker Carlson into gold, all for the benefit of transgender charities.

The Fox News host targeted Grammy Award-winning singer Maren Morris after she spoke up for trans youth on Twitter.

Morris was responding to Brittany Aldean, wife of country singer Jason Aldean, who shared a makeup-transformation video with the caption: “I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase. I love this girly life.”

Aldean later took to Instagram to falsely claim kids were being forced to undergo “genital mutilation.”

Related: Tucker Carlson suggests giving monkeypox this new, gay-related name

Medical guidelines do not recommend gender confirmation surgery for minors.

Dr. Jason Klein, a pediatric endocrinologist and medical director of the Transgender Youth Health Program at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone, told CBS earlier this year: “It’s important to recognize that there is absolutely no surgical intervention that is being done for young individuals who are transgender or nonbinary. The only scissors that are being taken to children is to cut their hair.”

Aldean’s comments sparked immediate backlash.

Singer Cassadee Pope tweeted: “You’d think celebs with beauty brands would see the positives in including LGBTQ+ people in their messaging. But instead here we are, hearing someone compare their ‘tomboy phase’ to someone wanting to transition. Real nice.”

Aldean sells products ranging from clip-in hair extensions to t-shirts with slogans like “unapologetically conservative.”

Morris commented on Pope’s criticism, adding: “It’s so easy to, like, not be a scumbag human? Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie.”



Carlson addressed Aldean’s comments on his Fox News program, praising her “fight to protect kids” and “her work to fight child exploitation.”

“No sane society would have a problem with or even notice words like that, but in 2022, this is a time when you are led to believe that minors should be castrated by their parents,” he said.

Then he called Morris “a lunatic” and “a fake country singer.”

Related: Tucker Carlson’s documentary about “testicle tanning” is gay AF

Morris reclaimed the insult and turned it into a t-shirt reading: “Maren Morris / Lunatic Country Music Person.”

The shirts went on sale on September 2, with all proceeds going to TransLifeline and the GLAAD Transgender Media Program. 

Over $100K has been raised for the deserving organizations.

Maren Morris raised over $150,000 for transgender youth after Tucker Carlson insult

Zoe Sottile - Yesterday 

Fox’s Tucker Carlson called country star Maren Morris a “lunatic” after she defended transgender kids – so she used the insult to raise over $150,000 for organizations supporting transgender youth.

Morris partnered with GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, and Trans Lifeline to release a shirt emblazoned with the words “Lunatic Country Music Person.”

Proceeds from the shirt will go toward GLAAD’s Transgender Media Program and Trans Lifeline, which runs a hotline for transgender youth in crisis and provides micro grants and support for transgender people in need, according to a statement shared with CNN.

Carlson called Morris a “lunatic country music person” after she responded to comments referencing transgender youth made by country singer Jason Aldean’s wife, Brittany Kerr Aldean.

“I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase. I love this girly life,” wrote Aldean in the caption of a makeup video posted to Instagram.

“Im glad they didn’t too, cause you and I wouldn’t have worked out,” replied her Grammy-winning husband in a comment.


Soon, fellow country singer Cassadee Pope tweeted criticism of Brittany Kerr Aldean, writing, “You’d think celebs with beauty brands would see the positives in including LGBTQ+ people in their messaging.”

Morris jumped in to support Pope, writing, “This isn’t political. We’re calling someone out for being transphobic and thinking it’s hilarious. It isn’t.”

Aldean said her words were taken out of context and appeared to respond to the backlash with a sweatshirt of her own with the text, “Don’t tread on our kids.” Proceeds go to Operation Light Shine, which fights human trafficking and child sexual exploitation.

The exchange was an apparent reference to ongoing battles over transgender youth’s ability to access gender-affirming care. In August, Boston Children’s Hospital reported that it had received violent threats because of misinformation that it performed genital surgeries on young children. Gender-affirming care – an umbrella term for treatments that help transgender people align their physical traits with their personal gender identity – has been approved by major medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the Children’s Hospital Association.

“By publicly speaking out to support trans youth, country music superstar, Maren Morris is connecting with an audience who may be less familiar with the transgender community and the current wave of attacks on their rights,” said Anthony Allen Ramos, GLAAD’s vice president of communications and talent, in the organization’s statement.

“Not only is she using her platform and influence to help further the conversation and likely change hearts and minds, she is raising crucial funds which will go directly into GLAAD and Trans Lifeline’s work to support the trans community at a time when it’s needed more than ever.”

'Nobody knows where their village is': 

New inland sea swamps Pakistan

Agence France-Presse
September 10, 2022

Floods have affected nearly a third of Pakistan Aamir QURESHI AFP

From a hastily erected embankment protecting Mehar city, mosque minarets and the price board of a gas station poke above a vast lake that has emerged, growing to tens of kilometers wide.

Beyond this shoreline in southern Sindh, hundreds of villages and swathes of farmland are lost beneath the water -- destroyed by floods that have affected nearly a third of Pakistan.

"Nobody knows where their village is anymore, the common man can no longer recognize his own home," Ayaz Ali, whose village is submerged under nearly seven metres (23 feet) of water, told AFP.

The Sindh government says more than 100,000 people have been displaced by this new body of water, brought by record rains and the Indus River overflowing its banks.

Across the country, about 33 million people have been affected by the flooding, nearly two million homes and businesses destroyed, 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) of roads washed away and 256 bridges knocked out.

A bus conductor with a sharp memory, Ali acts as a navigator for the navy, identifying each submerged village by the pattern of electricity pylons and distinct tree lines.

Navy volunteers cruise the waters on two lifeboats delivering aid donated by locals, ferrying people in need of medical care back to the city.

With Ali's help, they search out patches of high ground where families still shelter, refusing to evacuate despite a desperate situation worsened by the scorching heat.

"Their homes and belongings are so precious to them," said one serviceman, who asked not to be named, looking out at the expanse of water.

"When I joined the navy, I could never have imagined doing this," he added.

Engine cut, the boat navigates slowly through the tops of trees, and heads duck under power lines ahead of a hamlet of crumbling houses encircled by water.

'How can we leave?'

This time, dozens of people are waiting.

Many still refuse to leave their homes, concerned their livestock -- all that they have left -- will be stolen or will die, and fearing a worse situation at the makeshift relief camps that have sprung up all over the country.

"Our life and death is linked with our village, how can we leave?" said Aseer Ali, kneedeep in water, refusing to let his wife, who is eight months pregnant, evacuate.

Some relent -– men with fever, toddlers with diarrhea, and an elderly woman silent in her anguish -- are among those helped onto the boat that carries double its capacity on a weighed-down journey back to the city.

Among them is a young mother who had only recently lost her newborn when the water rose around her home last week.

She sways dizzily from the effects of heat stroke, her two-year-old child also distressed by the burning midday sun -– both repeatedly drenched in water by a navy serviceman.

'Immense need'

A new 10-kilometer mud embankment has so far held back the flood from Mehar city, with a population of hundreds of thousands.

But the city has swelled with displaced victims who over the past three weeks have fled to makeshift camps in car parks, schools and on motorways.

"More families keep arriving at the camp. They are in a terrible condition," Muhammad Iqbal, from the Alkhidmat Foundation -- a Pakistan-based humanitarian organization that is the only welfare presence at the city's largest camp, which hosts about 400 people.


"There is an immense need for drinking water and toilet facilities," he added, but they may have to wait longer -- the government's priority is to drain the flooded areas.

Pressure has heaped on swollen dams and reservoirs, forcing engineers to make intentional breaches to save densely populated areas at the cost of worsening the situation in the countryside.

"They all have gone all out to protect the city but not the poor people of the rural areas," said Umaida Solangi, a 30-year-old perched with her children on a wooden bed at a city camp.


© 2022 AFP

Doug Mastriano prayed for Trump to ‘seize the power’ before Capitol attack

Martin Pengelly in New York - 

A week before the Capitol attack, on a video call organised by a member of a Christian nationalist group, a Pennsylvania state senator who is the Republican candidate for governor in the battleground state prayed that supporters of Donald Trump would “seize the power” on 6 January 2021.


Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP© Provided by The Guardian

Doug Mastriano attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington that day, after which supporters, told by Trump to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, stormed Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

The riot was linked to nine deaths, including suicides in the aftermath of the attack among law enforcement.

Related: ‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book says

Mastriano denies crossing police lines at the Capitol and affiliations with Christian nationalist groups. He is now one of a number of Republican candidates for state positions with sway over elections who support Trump’s lie that his 2020 defeat was the result of voter fraud.

Two months from election day, the polling website fivethirtyeight.com puts Mastriano just shy of seven points behind his Democratic opponent.

Mastriano’s 6 January prayer, first reported by Rolling Stone on Friday, was delivered during a Zoom call, titled Global Prayer for Election Integrity, organised by what the magazine called “a prominent figure in the far-right New Apostolic Restoration movement”.

As defined by Rolling Stone, “Christian nationalism is a central tenet of … NAR [which] emerge[ed] from charismatic Christianity (think: Pentecostalism) and is anchored in the belief that we are living in an age of new apostles and prophets, who receive direct revelations from the holy spirit.

“NAR adherents hold that the end times are fast approaching and their calling is to hasten the second coming of Christ by re-fashioning the modern world in a biblical manner.”

Mastriano is a US army veteran who once dressed up as a Confederate soldier. In his prayer, he listed historical events including the battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, the plane which came down in a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11, after passengers attacked their hijackers.

He said: “In 2001, while our nation was attacked by terrorists, a strong Christian man from Paramus, New Jersey, Todd Beamer, said, ‘Let’s roll.’

“God I ask you that you help us roll in these dark times, that we fear not the darkness, that we will seize our Esther and Gideon moments. That … when you say, ‘Who shall I send?’ we will say, ‘Send me and not him or her’, we will take responsibility for our republic and not waver in these days that try our souls.

“We’re surrounded by wickedness and fear and dithering and inaction. But that’s not our problem. Our problem is following your lead.”

In the weeks before the Capitol attack, Mastriano was involved in failed attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat in Pennsylvania, the announcement of which confirmed Biden’s electoral college win.

On the Zoom call, Mastriano displayed what he said were “letters that President Trump asked me this morning to send to [Senate Republican leader] Mitch McConnell and [House leader] Kevin McCarthy, outlining the fraud in Pennsylvania, and this will embolden them to stand firm and disregard what has happened in Pennsylvania until they have an investigation”.

He also said: “We think about our elected officials in Pennsylvania who’ve been weak and feckless and we’ve handed over our power to a governor” – Tom Wolf, a Democrat – “who disregards the freedoms of this republic.

“I pray that we’ll take responsibility, we’ll seize the power that we had given to us by the constitution, and as well by you providentially. I pray for the leaders and also in the federal government, God, on the sixth of January that they will rise up with boldness.”

After the Capitol riot, when Congress reconvened, McCarthy was one of 138 Republican congressmen and nine senators who voted to object to results in Pennsylvania or Arizona or both.

Mastriano touts endorsement from rabbi who promoted Qanon conspiracy, ‘reptilian’ Hitler theory

2022/09/01

Doug Mastriano, Republican nominee for governor, 

speaks to supporters inside Gatsby's Bar& Grill in Aston.

 - HEATHER KHALIFA/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

The headline looked promising for Doug Mastriano’s gubernatorial campaign, and the Republican state senator promptly shared it Thursday morning with his nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter and Facebook.

“Rabbi Endorses Mastriano as Shapiro Calls Him Antisemitic in Pennsylvania Gov. Race,” the far-rightEpoch Times proclaimed, referring to the Democratic nominee, Josh Shapiro.

Mastriano, a retired Army colonel from south central Pennsylvania, has been dogged by accusations of antisemitism this summer after he paid $5,000 to Gab, a social media site frequented by extremists and antisemites, in an effort to reach new voters. The site’s founder, Andrew Torba, has described Mastriano’s campaign as part of an “explicitly Christian” nationalist movement that should exclude followers of other faiths.

Jewish groups, both Democratic and Republican, reacted angrily to news reports about the GOP candidate’s strategy and Mastriano eventually cut ties with Torba and Gab. He said he “rejects antisemitism in any form.”

More recently, however, Mastriano has been repeating old tropes about George Soros on the campaign trail, claiming that Soros, who contributed to Shapiro in 2016 and 2020, had worked for the Nazis during World War II.

“Disgusting,” Mastriano said at a Delaware County bar and restaurant last week — although the crowd fell silent and seemed mostly confused.

On Thursday, Mastriano touted the endorsement of Rabbi Joseph Kolakowsi by sharing the article from the Epoch Times, a conservative publication affiliated with members of the controversial Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong.

In it, the ultraorthodox rabbi defended Mastriano.

“While the Democrats have the chutzpah to claim that those of us from the Party of Lincoln are somehow racist, they do not look at the racist tenants of their own party, including abortion and gun control, both of which cause undue and disproportionate harm to people of color, and are historically rooted in openly racist ideologies,” the rabbi said.

Kolakowski identified himself to the publication as the leader of a Hasidic Jewish ministry in northeast Pennsylvania.

What the Epoch Times story did not mention is hundreds of internet posts and videos in which the 38-year-old rabbi shares unfounded claims of fraud in the 2020 election, expresses sympathy for Jan. 6 insurrectionists, and speaks favorably of the Qanon movement — a conspiracy theory that holds that President Donald Trump and his allies are engaged in a secret war with pedophilic, blood-drinking satanists.

“Whether they are right or wrong about their theories, the whole point of Qanon is to fight child abuse,” Kolakowski wrote earlier this year. “Why does the left hate a group that fights child abuse?”

On YouTube, Kolakowski has espoused more outlandish ideas, including a theory that Adolf Hitler and other malevolent world leaders are part lizard.

“There’s a reason why he never took off his boots,” the rabbi says in one video of the Nazi dictator. “(It) was to hide the fact that his feet were reptilian in nature because he came from this nonhuman race, demonic race. He was a hybrid.”

Kolakowski has previously courted controversy, appearing in a 2011 viral video filmed inside his home in which Orthodox worshipers are seen passing around an AK-47 assault rifle during prayers. Later, Kolakowski rose to the defense of conservative, far-right cartoonist Ben Garrison after the Anti-Defamation League criticized some of his cartoons as antisemitic.

“There was no reference to the Torah faith or religion in Mr. Garrison’s cartoon,” Kolakowski wrote. “I believe that George Soros is an enemy to the basic fundamental ideas of America and he is a very dangerous individual.”

Kolakowski repeatedly asserts that tropes about prominent Jews endeavoring to secretly dominate global finance, politics or the media are not antisemitic because secular Jews should not be considered Jewish — or, sometimes, even fully human. The rabbi says certain Jewish mystical texts support ideas espoused by conspiracy theorists like David Icke, who holds that the world is controlled by reptilian shape-shifters.

In a phone interview Thursday, Kolakowski said he felt Mastriano was being “unfairly maligned” as antisemitic. He said he reached out to Mastriano’s campaign, and “the campaign manager asked me to write something” — the statements that later appeared in the Epoch Times.

“I heard the slander that was made against him claiming he was antisemitic and I wanted to speak up personally,” Kolakowski said. He said he stood by his online statements about QAnon, the Jan. 6 riot, and other issues.

“I certainly don’t believe it was an insurrection,” he said. “I think a lot of people share that view.”

Mastriano’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. It has generally ignored such requests from mainstream media outlets.

Mastriano rose to prominence by railing against coronavirus safety measures in 2020, and later, promoting unfounded claims of fraud in that November’s presidential election. He was present in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 and rented buses so that others could attend.

Although Mastriano now says he rejects the Qanon movement, in 2018 he repeatedly shared tweets featuring pro-Qanon hashtags. Earlier this year, he spoke at an event promoting Qanon and 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Recently, Mastriano has sought to publicly moderate some of his beliefs. He has recently spoken less about his support for a ban on abortion, which this spring he described as his “number one issue.”

Supporters like Kolakowski, meanwhile, have shown little moderation.

This year, the rabbi asserted that the capitol insurrection was caused by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordering Capitol Police to “push innocent people into that building in order to make the President’s supporters look bad.”

On Twitter, the rabbi celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which he described as “an excuse to lynch blacks in the womb.”

Prophets, 'Pizzagaters' and an Oath Keeper: A field guide to Doug Mastriano World
2022/09/02

HEATHER KHALIFA/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

It’s now September — that time of year when political candidates start changing their colors weeks ahead of the autumn leaves. None more so than Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who in his right-wing media hits — the Christian nationalist continues to shun mainstream outlets, with the help of his goon squad — has tried to pooh-pooh the notion that he’s a dangerous extremist. This despite the fact that new evidence of his extremism — his fetish for the Confederacy, for example — keeps popping up.

Rather than relying Mastriano’s words, maybe it’s time to judge the retired Army colonel by the company he keeps. Let’s take stock of the rogues’ gallery of self-styled prophets, election deniers and militia types that Mastriano chooses to associate with, and ask yourself if the founding state of American democracy has ever seen a campaign quite like this.

Here (in alphabetical order) is a brief field guide to a few of the key players in Mastriano World:

Abby Abildness: The state director of the Pennsylvania Congressional Prayer Caucus and director of the Global Apostolic Prayer Network, Abildness is a key state leader in the Christian nationalist movement that loosely affiliates under the banner of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) a group that seeks extremist Christian domination over government. She’s also a lobbyist in Harrisburg, where she’s forged ties with key 2020 election deniers like State Sen. Cris Dush and Mastriano. Mastriano also was filmed hugging Abildness at a July event built around a revisionist Christian history of William Penn and Pennsylvania’s founding.

Grant Clarkson: A past congressional intern and GOP legislative assistant in Harrisburg, Clarkson was identified by NBC News’ Ryan J. Reilly as part of the phalanx of campaign bodyguards that kept journalists away from Mastriano’s pre-primary rally in Bucks County in May. NBC also reported that Clarkson was photographed on the U.S. Capitol grounds at the height of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, when “he appeared to smile and laugh as rioters smashed media equipment on Capitol grounds.”

Jenna Ellis: The senior legal adviser to the Mastriano campaign and fierce defender of the candidate on Twitter, Ellis was a key attorney for Donald Trump as he sought to overturn President Biden’s 2020 election victory. A former traffic court lawyer and the author of a self-published book that claims that the U.S. Constitution can only be interpreted through the Bible, Ellis drafted two memos insisting that Vice President Mike Pence had the power to overturn Biden’s election victory. Her 2020 efforts are under scrutiny in several ongoing investigations, including a Georgia probe of election tampering where she has been ordered to testify.

James Emery: Another cog in Mastriano’s team of bodyguards from the May Bucks County rally, Emery is a member of the Elizabethtown Area School Board in central Pennsylvania and a licensed minister affiliated with that community’s LifeGate church, a congregation that has advocated for Christians to play a greater role in government. Investigative journalist Carter Walker of Lancaster’s LNP news organization has identified the LifeGate congregation as the nexus for several members of Mastriano’s security team.

Sean Feucht:The musical entertainment at Mastriano’s primary victory party in Chambersburg in May, the pro-Trump, anti-vaccine Christian rock star has emerged as the musical voice of the Ultra-MAGA movement in 2022. A growing political force who prayed in D.C. with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert upon learning the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, Feucht has become a multimillionaire in the post-COVID era, according to Rolling Stone, which reported on his glitzy mansions in Southern California and Montana.

Michael Flynn: Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser — who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but was pardoned by the 45th president shortly before the Jan. 6 insurrection — hails from the same military intelligence world as Mastriano and has beena critical backer of his campaign. Flynn — who has been tied to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement — is slated to return to Pennsylvania next month for his controversial “ReAwaken America” tour. Like Mastriano himself, Flynn refused to answer investigators’ questions about his involvement in the run-up to Jan. 6.

Francine and Allen Fosdick: Self-described prophets and promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, the Fosdicks were the organizers of the two-day far-right Christian event called “Patriots Arise for God and Country” in Gettysburg this April. Mastriano, whose state senatorial district includes the historic Civil War battlefield, was a speaker at the event, where the couple presented him with a “Sword of David.” That confab also featured 9/11 conspiracy theories and a video claiming the world is experiencing a “great awakening” that will expose “ritual child sacrifice” and a “global satanic blood cult.”

Julie Green: Another self-anointed prophet, Green — the head of Julie Green Ministries — has claimed she has “a special relationship” with Mastriano and has foreseen that a GOP victory in November will cleanse Pennsylvania of corruption. Mastriano has invited Green to give the opening prayer at a campaign event and shared her prophecies on social media. According to a report by the left-leaning watchdog group Media Matters, Green has said “that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ‘loves to drink the little children’s blood’; the government is conducting ‘human sacrifices’ to stay in power; and President Joe Biden is secretly dead and an ‘actor’ is playing him.”

Vishal Jetnarayan:Mastriano’s campaign manager — utterly unknown to veterans of Pennsylvania Republican politics — describes himself as (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) a prophet, active in two Chambersburg churches. He claims that he speaks directly with God and,according to a new report by WHYY’s Katie Meyer that dropped Thursday, has self-published books advising others on how they can do the same. She reported that Jetnarayan often emcees Mastriano’s events and is a booster of Green, his fellow prophet.

Sam Lazar:A 37-year-old right-wing political agitator from Lancaster County, Lazar appeared at Mastriano rallies and was photographed with the candidate even as Justice Department investigators and online sleuths honed in on Lazar’s participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection. (He’d posted about his involvement on Facebook, writing: “There’s a time for war. Our constitution allows us to abolish our [government] and install a new one in [its] place” and bragging of clashing with police while wearing face paint.) He was arrested and jailed in 2021 on charges of assaulting officers.

Mike Lindell: The notorious “My Pillow” mogul who re-invented himself during the latter portion of the Trump era as an obsessive backer of the former president’s Big Lie about rigged voting machines and 2020 election fraud, Lindell has also been a major booster of the Mastriano campaign, offering an early endorsement of the Pennsylvanian.

Scott Nagle: Nagle has been identified by LNP’s Walker, through interviews and a photograph posted to Facebook, as a member of Mastriano’s team of bodyguards. He was also, according to Walker’s report, listed as the Lancaster County leader of the radical group the Oath Keepers until January of this year. The leaders of the Oath Keepers, including its founder Stewart Rhodes, are currently facing federal sedition charges for their role in Jan. 6. Nagle has reportedly been photographed with Mastriano on several occasions.

Jeremy Oliver: WHYY’s Meyer reports that the Mastriano campaign has paid $82,500 to Oliver’s California-based Onslaught Media Group, and that Oliver — a former producer with the far-right One America News Network — has been appearing at Mastriano campaign events as a videographer. Meyer writes that Oliver has boosted the QAnon conspiracy theory on the site Gab — under fire for its links to antisemitism — and also posts frequently on Trump’s Truth Social site about theories such as Chinese hacking of U.S. voting machines.

Ivan Raiklin:A veteran Army intelligence officer, former Green Beret, and lawyer from Virginia, Raiklin emerged in late 2020 as a leader of Trump’s election-denial effort — writing the “Operation Pence Card” memo urging the then-vice president to undo Biden’s victory — and continues to lobby for Biden’s electors to be retroactively decertified. He showed up at Mastriano’s Chambersburg victory party in May, where he filmed a congratulatory video with the candidate and blurted out “20 electoral votes,” an apparent reference to decertifying the 2020 Pennsylvania result.

Toni Shuppe: The co-founder and CEO of Audit The Vote PA — a group dedicated to overturning the 2020 election results based on Trump’s Big Lie — Shuppe has emerged as a key supporter of Mastriano, filming an early endorsement video and appearing with the candidate at rallies. There has been speculation that Mastriano is considering appointing Shuppe as secretary of state to oversee Pennsylvania’s elections. According to a report this week by Media Matters, Shuppe has claimed the Pizzagate hoax “is 100% real” and praised QAnon as “a very valuable resource.”

Andrew Torba: Mastriano’s connection with the founder of the right-wing social media platform Gab erupted in controversy this summer when it was revealed his campaign had paid $5,000 to the site to boost Mastriano’s profile there. The candidate also sat down for an interview with Torba and said, “Thank God for what you’ve done.” Torba’s history of anti-Jewish remarks on Gab were made public in 2018 after the gunman who murdered 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue posted his manifesto there.

Steve Turley: A Delaware resident, Turley produced and screened the recent documentary called “Return of the American Patriot: The Rise of Pennsylvania” that cast a positive light on the Mastriano campaign as a revolution building on the Trumpist political movement. A Christian nationalist podcaster, Turley rails for the destruction of multiculturalism and insists the future of America is “evangelical, Mormon, and Amish.”

Amid campaign, Mastriano's disputed dissertation made public






 Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano speaks ahead of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. A Canadian university is making public Mastriano's 2013 doctoral thesis about World War I hero Sgt. Alvin York. The online posting includes six pages of corrections Mastriano added a year ago that in some cases don't appear to correct anything. Rival researchers have long criticized Mastriano's investigation into York as plagued by factual errors, amateurish archaeology and sloppy writing. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

ASSOCIATED PRESS
MARK SCOLFORO
Fri, September 9, 2022 

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Canadian university has quietly made public Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano's 2013 doctoral thesis about a legendary World War I hero, including six pages of recently added corrections that, in some cases, do not appear to fix anything.

Researchers who have long criticized Mastriano's investigation into U.S. Army Sgt. Alvin C. York as plagued by factual errors, amateurish archaeology and sloppy writing say the dissertation, released last month by the University of New Brunswick, echoes the problems in his 2014 book based on the same research.

Mastriano won the Republican primary in May thanks, in part, to a late endorsement by former President Donald Trump. He came to political prominence by leading protests against pandemic mitigation efforts, energetically supporting the movement to overturn Trump’s 2020 reelection defeat and appearing outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The far-right state senator, a retired Army colonel, regularly brings up his Ph.D. status in public remarks and on the campaign trail as evidence of his knowledgeability. When a photo of Mastriano wearing a Confederate uniform surfaced last month, he brandished his academic credentials as a defense of his credibility.

Mastriano’s 480-page thesis includes a retelling of York’s life story and the results of Mastriano’s own research. The version now online has Mastriano’s June 2021 corrections, appended after a complaint from another researcher prompted the university to review the work.

A University of New Brunswick history professor, Jeff Brown, provided documents to The Associated Press that recorded his own misgivings about the dissertation nearly a decade ago when he was on Mastriano's doctoral committee. He says he was “appalled” by the dissertation and “disturbed by the fact that no one on the committee was qualified to evaluate the huge part of it that was archaeological.”

Brown said he flagged glaring issues to other faculty members and administrators and was dismissed from Mastriano's committee by the lead adviser — yet the published dissertation still listed Brown on the title page, giving the impression that he endorsed the material.

Brown said in an email that Mastriano’s main adviser, now-retired history professor Marc Milner, told him “that as it turns out, I never really needed to be on the examining committee after all, so there was no need to worry about evaluating Mastriano’s dissertation (despite the fact that I had already done so).”

“This was presented to me as a favour, to relieve me of the necessity of having to decide whether to sign off on it or not,” Brown added. “I never understood how I suddenly became superfluous.”

Neither Milner nor Mastriano responded to multiple requests for comment.

The 21 revisions made last year, numbered in a list that skips from No. 9 to No. 11, include altered footnote references along with several changes that do not actually appear to correct anything but instead add descriptive text or defend aspects of the dissertation.

The most significant correction involves his longstanding claim that a photo of an American soldier leading German prisoners was misdated and mislabeled by the military photographer in 1918, and that it in fact shows York with three officers he would force to surrender two weeks after the date.

Mastriano's certainty about the American soldier's identity has evolved over the years: He wrote in 2007 that the photo “is now believed to show” York, then was “fairly sure” in 2011, described York as “clearly identified” in the 2013 dissertation and declared in the 2014 book that the photo “is confirmed to be" York. But his new explanatory footnote backtracks, saying it “seems to show Corporal York marching his prisoners into the American lines, with what is likely the German officers.”

“He didn’t ‘fix’ that — he just doubled down on his ridiculous assessment,” said University of Oklahoma history graduate student and instructor James Gregory, the complainant who triggered New Brunswick's review.

He said Mastriano’s revisions ignored more than a dozen of the problems Gregory found in the book and argued Mastriano “has no evidence other than this guy has a mustache and looks like Alvin York.” Gregory is preparing a similar list for the Canadian university with what he has identified as the dissertation’s errors.

A spokesperson for the University of New Brunswick, Heather Campbell, said Mastriano's “credentials are not impacted” as a result of the corrections and the school’s review. And retired history professor Steve Turner, another committee member, wrote in an email last week he stands by the decision to accept Mastriano’s thesis and grant him a doctorate.

“There was no reason to question the authenticity or accuracy of the sources cited in footnotes,” Turner said.

Turner said he did not recall that Brown raised concerns about the work but remembered Mastriano as “respectful and polite” during a meeting in which Turner urged him to engage more directly with critics of his research.

“I believe the truth is nonexistent in Mastriano’s vocabulary, but the word ‘detractors’ is and he applies it to anyone who is in disagreement with him,” said one of those critics, British author Michael Kelly. Kelly's 2018 book, “Hero on the Western Front,” includes a section on the controversy over Mastriano’s findings.

Mastriano claims to have pinpointed where York engaged in the gun battle with German troops for which he received the Medal of Honor. But critics like Kelly call his work shoddy and substandard, built on falsified evidence and bald assertions.

Penn State history professor Dan Letwin, asked to evaluate the dissertation’s quality, said it does not appear to meet current academic standards for doctoral-level historical research, describing it as “very lacking.”

“There’s nothing interpretive here about big historical questions,” Letwin said.

Last year, after Mastriano's book was questioned, New Brunswick officials declined to comment on the dissertation without Mastriano's permission.

But earlier this summer, the dean of New Brunswick’s school of graduate studies, Drew Rendall, came back from a yearlong sabbatical to learn Mastriano's dissertation was still under embargo. Embargoes of a few years are not uncommon in academia, particularly when there are plans to turn the work into a book, but it's unclear why the embargo on Mastriano's dissertation more than doubled the school's usual four-year limit.

Rendall said he notified Mastriano the thesis was being made public but never received a reply.

The 2014 book 's publisher, the University Press of Kentucky, is also planning corrections if it does another printing. Mastriano was sent a list of about 30 questions, some regarding minor typos and others seeking “additional sources to confirm specific information in the book,” press director Ashley Runyon said in an email.

The publisher plans to use his responses and its own review of primary sources “for future printings of the book to correct any errors,” Runyon wrote. Mastriano was informed of the proposed changes but has not responded, and the press has the final say in the revisions, Runyon added.

The book, which features the photo of a soldier leading German prisoners inside and on its dust jacket, is going to be changed to add information about the dispute in a preface, she said.