Nothing like enriching yourself off of crappy legislation you helped pass 😡
This is such bullshit:
iowastartingline.com
Iowa legislator opening his own private school, to be funded by vouchers he voted for
A new private school being opened by an Iowa State representative will be dependent on taxpayer funds to operate.
iowastartingline.com
May the 4th be with you
- By Morrison71
- Off Topic
- 12 Replies
Stay out or say more? President Biden faces lose-lose proposition with college protests
- By FAUlty Gator
- Off Topic
- 13 Replies
Such leadership. Imagine not knowing what side to take as President.
WASHINGTON ― While pro-Palestinian protests have exploded at colleges across the nation, President Joe Biden has stayed largely silent about campus unrest that complicates his reelection campaign.
Biden has not addressed the protests in a speech.
Nor has he given any public remarks on the college protests at Columbia University and elsewhere in more than a week, with the White House instead issuing statements and addressing questions on the protests through spokespeople.
The approach underscores the no-win situation Biden faces. Biden has remained a steadfast defender of Israel's war against Hamas, putting him at odds with many young progressive voters in his race against former President Donald Trump.
He risks alienating himself even more with these young voters if he speaks out against the protests and applauds actions of university leaders and police to shut down student encampments. But if Biden takes a more forceful defense of the rights of protesters, he risks feeding new lines of attack to Trump and Republicans, who have tried to tie the president to the campus chaos and unlawfulness.
"The president is being kept regularly updated on what's happening," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday at a White House briefing as she was pressed repeatedly on why Americans haven't heard from Biden on the protests. "He is monitoring the situation closely."
Even as arrests of hundreds of students have produced dramatic images over the past 24 to 48 hours, Biden's most recent comments on the campus protests came April 22, when he called on Americans to speak out against the "alarming surge of antisemitism" in a written statement.
Later that day, he told reporters, "I condemn the antisemitic protests" and added: "I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians."
"No president has spoken more forcefully about combatting antisemitism than this president," Jean-Pierre said Wednesday. "Let's not forget, in 2017 he was very clear about the antisemitic vile that we saw on the streets in Charlottesville, (Virginia) − he called that out. And one of the reasons he stepped into the 2020 election is because of what he saw."
A reporter pushed back, noting that speaking out against antisemitism isn't the same as addressing protests unfolding in the present.
"The president has been very, very clear about this," Jean-Pierre reiterated. "He's taken action," she added, pointing to the administration's National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which was released last May.
Todd Belt, professor and political management program director at George Washington University, said Biden knows that voters ages 18 to 29 were an essential part of the coalition that won him the 2020 election.
"He really can't afford to lose them. And he also knows that his party is split on this issue, and if he comes out strongly on one side or the other, he's going to alienate the other side," Belt said. "He's really in a catch-22 on this."
Belt said he believes Biden will eventually have to say more about the protests. "When you have members of Congress calling for the use of the National Guard, the president has to step in and be definitive about what, if and when he would do something like that," he said.
Biden is set to deliver the keynote address May 7 at the Holocaust Memorial Ceremony at the Capitol, giving him a prime opportunity to speak on the widespread protests.
White House officials have condemned the takeover of an academic building at Columbia, other illegal acts and the use of words such as "intifada," the Arabic word for rebellion or uprising, by protesters.
"Americans have a right to peacefully protest, as long as its within the law," Jean-Pierre said. "Forcibly taking over a building is not peaceful. Students have the right to feel safe, they have the right to learn, they have the right to do this without this destruction."
Although Jean-Pierre stopped short of explicitly endorsing the police responses at colleges, she said a "a small percentage of students" should not be able to disrupt the academic experience of others.
The campus unrest comes as the Biden administration is seeking to secure a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that would allow for the release of some of the more than 130 hostages remaining in Gaza.
For months, Biden has been the target of pro-Palestinians protesters who have shadowed his events and coined the name "Genocide Joe."
As arrests were unfolding Tuesday night at Columbia, Trump called into Fox News' telecast to assess Biden's response.
"Biden is supposed to be the voice of our country. And it's certainly not much of a voice. It's a voice that nobody's heard," Trump said. "I don't think he's able to do it. I don't think he's got what it takes to do it. But he's got to. He's got to strengthen up and he's got to be heard."
WASHINGTON ― While pro-Palestinian protests have exploded at colleges across the nation, President Joe Biden has stayed largely silent about campus unrest that complicates his reelection campaign.
Biden has not addressed the protests in a speech.
Nor has he given any public remarks on the college protests at Columbia University and elsewhere in more than a week, with the White House instead issuing statements and addressing questions on the protests through spokespeople.
The approach underscores the no-win situation Biden faces. Biden has remained a steadfast defender of Israel's war against Hamas, putting him at odds with many young progressive voters in his race against former President Donald Trump.
He risks alienating himself even more with these young voters if he speaks out against the protests and applauds actions of university leaders and police to shut down student encampments. But if Biden takes a more forceful defense of the rights of protesters, he risks feeding new lines of attack to Trump and Republicans, who have tried to tie the president to the campus chaos and unlawfulness.
"The president is being kept regularly updated on what's happening," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Wednesday at a White House briefing as she was pressed repeatedly on why Americans haven't heard from Biden on the protests. "He is monitoring the situation closely."
Even as arrests of hundreds of students have produced dramatic images over the past 24 to 48 hours, Biden's most recent comments on the campus protests came April 22, when he called on Americans to speak out against the "alarming surge of antisemitism" in a written statement.
Later that day, he told reporters, "I condemn the antisemitic protests" and added: "I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians."
"No president has spoken more forcefully about combatting antisemitism than this president," Jean-Pierre said Wednesday. "Let's not forget, in 2017 he was very clear about the antisemitic vile that we saw on the streets in Charlottesville, (Virginia) − he called that out. And one of the reasons he stepped into the 2020 election is because of what he saw."
A reporter pushed back, noting that speaking out against antisemitism isn't the same as addressing protests unfolding in the present.
"The president has been very, very clear about this," Jean-Pierre reiterated. "He's taken action," she added, pointing to the administration's National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which was released last May.
Todd Belt, professor and political management program director at George Washington University, said Biden knows that voters ages 18 to 29 were an essential part of the coalition that won him the 2020 election.
"He really can't afford to lose them. And he also knows that his party is split on this issue, and if he comes out strongly on one side or the other, he's going to alienate the other side," Belt said. "He's really in a catch-22 on this."
Belt said he believes Biden will eventually have to say more about the protests. "When you have members of Congress calling for the use of the National Guard, the president has to step in and be definitive about what, if and when he would do something like that," he said.
Biden is set to deliver the keynote address May 7 at the Holocaust Memorial Ceremony at the Capitol, giving him a prime opportunity to speak on the widespread protests.
White House officials have condemned the takeover of an academic building at Columbia, other illegal acts and the use of words such as "intifada," the Arabic word for rebellion or uprising, by protesters.
"Americans have a right to peacefully protest, as long as its within the law," Jean-Pierre said. "Forcibly taking over a building is not peaceful. Students have the right to feel safe, they have the right to learn, they have the right to do this without this destruction."
Although Jean-Pierre stopped short of explicitly endorsing the police responses at colleges, she said a "a small percentage of students" should not be able to disrupt the academic experience of others.
The campus unrest comes as the Biden administration is seeking to secure a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Hamas that would allow for the release of some of the more than 130 hostages remaining in Gaza.
For months, Biden has been the target of pro-Palestinians protesters who have shadowed his events and coined the name "Genocide Joe."
As arrests were unfolding Tuesday night at Columbia, Trump called into Fox News' telecast to assess Biden's response.
"Biden is supposed to be the voice of our country. And it's certainly not much of a voice. It's a voice that nobody's heard," Trump said. "I don't think he's able to do it. I don't think he's got what it takes to do it. But he's got to. He's got to strengthen up and he's got to be heard."
Stay out or say more? President Biden faces lose-lose proposition with college protests
President Biden faces a lose-lose proposition with how he responds to Gaza protests on college campuses. So far, he's stayed largely silent.
www.usatoday.com
Justice Department warns it will sue if Iowa tries to enforce its new immigration law
- By cigaretteman
- Off Topic
- 10 Replies
The U.S. Department of Justice will sue Iowa to block a new immigration law criminalizing "illegal reentry" if it remains in effect, a top DOJ official wrote to Gov. Kim Reynolds and Attorney General Brenna Bird Thursday.
In a letter obtained by the Des Moines Register, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton wrote that the department "intends to bring a lawsuit to enforce the supremacy of federal law and to enjoin" the new immigration law passed as Senate File 2340.
"SF 2340 is preempted by federal law and violates the United States Constitution," Boynton wrote.
He gave the state a deadline of May 7 to suspend enforcement of the law before the DOJ takes action.
In a letter obtained by the Des Moines Register, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton wrote that the department "intends to bring a lawsuit to enforce the supremacy of federal law and to enjoin" the new immigration law passed as Senate File 2340.
"SF 2340 is preempted by federal law and violates the United States Constitution," Boynton wrote.
He gave the state a deadline of May 7 to suspend enforcement of the law before the DOJ takes action.
Justice Department warns it will sue if Iowa tries to enforce its new immigration law
Iowa's law allows state officers to arrest undocumented immigrants who have previously been deported or barred from entering the country.
www.press-citizen.com
The Atlantic: America’s Colleges Are Reaping What They Sowed
- By Colonoscopy
- Off Topic
- 29 Replies
America’s Colleges Are Reaping What They Sowed
Universities spent years saying that activism is not just welcome but encouraged on their campuses. Students took them at their word.
America’s Colleges Are Reaping What They Sowed
Universities spent years saying that activism is not just welcome but encouraged on their campuses. Students took them at their word.By Tyler Austin Harper
Nick wilson, a sophomore at Cornell University, came to Ithaca, New York, to refine his skills as an activist. Attracted by both Cornell’s labor-relations school and the university’s history of campus radicalism, he wrote his application essay about his involvement with a Democratic Socialists of America campaign to pass the Protecting the Right to Organize Act. When he arrived on campus, he witnessed any number of signs that Cornell shared his commitment to not just activism but also militant protest, taking note of a plaque commemorating the armed occupation of Willard Straight Hall in 1969.
Cornell positively romanticizes that event: The university library has published a “Willard Straight Hall Occupation Study Guide,” and the office of the dean of students once co-sponsored a panel on the protest. The school has repeatedly screened a documentary about the occupation, Agents of Change. The school’s official newspaper, published by the university media-relations office, ran a series of articles honoring the 40th anniversary, in 2009, and in 2019, Cornell held a yearlong celebration for the 50th, complete with a commemorative walk, a dedication ceremony, and a public conversation with some of the occupiers. “Occupation Anniversary Inspires Continued Progress,” the Cornell Chronicle headline read.
As Wilson has discovered firsthand, however, the school’s hagiographical odes to prior protests has not prevented it from cracking down on pro-Palestine protests in the present. Now that he has been suspended for the very thing he told Cornell he came there to learn how to do—radical political organizing—he is left reflecting on the school’s hypocrisies. That the theme of this school year at Cornell is “Freedom of Expression” adds a layer of grim humor to the affair.
University leaders are in a bind. “These protests are really dynamic situations that can change from minute to minute,” Stephen Solomon, who teaches First Amendment law and is the director of NYU’s First Amendment Watch—an organization devoted to free speech—told me. “But the obligation of universities is to make the distinction between speech protected by the First Amendment and speech that is not.” Some of the speech and tactics protesters are employing may not be protected under the First Amendment, while much of it plainly is. The challenge universities are confronting is not just the law but also their own rhetoric. Many universities at the center of the ongoing police crackdowns have long sought to portray themselves as bastions of activism and free thought. Cornell is one of many universities that champion their legacy of student activism when convenient, only to bring the hammer down on present-day activists when it’s not. The same colleges that appeal to students such as Wilson by promoting opportunities for engagement and activism are now suspending them. And they’re calling the cops.
The police activity we are seeing universities level against their own students does not just scuff the carefully cultivated progressive reputations of elite private universities such as Columbia, Emory University, and NYU, or the equally manicured free-speech bona fides of red-state public schools such as Indiana University and the University of Texas at Austin. It also exposes what these universities have become in the 21st century. Administrators have spent much of the recent past recruiting social-justice-minded students and faculty to their campuses under the implicit, and often explicit, promise that activism is not just welcome but encouraged. Now the leaders of those universities are shocked to find that their charges and employees believed them. And rather than try to understand their role in cultivating this morass, the Ivory Tower’s bigwigs have decided to apply their boot heels to the throats of those under their care.
Ispoke with 30 students, professors, and administrators from eight schools—a mix of public and private institutions across the United States—to get a sense of the disconnect between these institutions’ marketing of activism and their treatment of protesters. A number of people asked to remain anonymous. Some were untenured faculty or administrators concerned about repercussions from, or for, their institutions. Others were directly involved in organizing protests and were wary of being harassed. Several incoming students I spoke with were worried about being punished by their school before they even arrived. Despite a variety of ideological commitments and often conflicting views on the protests, many of those I interviewed were “shocked but not surprised”—a phrase that came up time and again—by the hypocrisy exhibited by the universities with which they were affiliated. (I reached out to Columbia, NYU, Cornell, and Emory for comment on the disconnect between their championing of past protests and their crackdowns on the current protesters. Representatives from Columbia, Cornell, and Emory pointed me to previous public statements. NYU did not respond.)
The sense that Columbia trades on the legacy of the Vietnam protests that rocked campus in 1968 was widespread among the students I spoke with. Indeed, the university honors its activist past both directly and indirectly, through library archives, an online exhibit, an official “Columbia 1968” X account, no shortage of anniversary articles in Columbia Magazine, and a current course titled simply “Columbia 1968.” The university is sometimes referred to by alumni and aspirants as the “Protest Ivy.” One incoming student told me that he applied to the school in part because of an admissions page that prominently listed community organizers and activists among its “distinguished alumni.”
Joseph Slaughter, an English professor and the executive director of Columbia’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights, talked with his class about the 1968 protests after the recent arrests at the school. He said his students felt that the university had actively marketed its history to them. “Many, many, many of them said they were sold the story of 1968 as part of coming to Columbia,” he told me. “They talked about it as what the university presents to them as the long history and tradition of student activism. They described it as part of the brand.”
This message reaches students before they take their first college class. As pro-Palestine demonstrations began to raise tensions on campus last month, administrators were keen to cast these protests as part of Columbia’s proud culture of student activism. The aforementioned high-school senior who had been impressed by Columbia’s activist alumni attended the university’s admitted-students weekend just days before the April 18 NYPD roundup. During the event, the student said, an admissions official warned attendees that they may experience “disruptions” during their visit, but boasted that these were simply part of the school’s “long and robust history of student protest.”
Remarkably, after more than 100 students were arrested on the order of Columbia President Minouche Shafik—in which she overruled a unanimous vote by the university senate’s executive committee not to bring the NYPD to campus—university administrators were still pushing this message to new students and parents. An email sent on April 19 informed incoming students that “demonstration, political activism, and deep respect for freedom of expression have long been part of the fabric of our campus.” Another email sent on April 20 again promoted Columbia’s tradition of activism, protest, and support of free speech. “This can sometimes create moments of tension,” the email read, “but the rich dialogue and debate that accompany this tradition is central to our educational experience.”