The Full Belmonte, 2/1/2022
Former President Donald Trump speaking at a rally in Texas on Saturday.
“Advisers to former President Donald Trump drafted two versions of executive orders to seize voting machines in the aftermath of the 2020 election, multiple sources tell CNN. The orders tasked the Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security to seize machines in states that Trump lost as part of a broader effort to undermine the presidential election results. It is unclear who drafted the executive orders, and neither was issued. At least one of the orders has been handed over by the National Archives to the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection. The committee is also reviewing some Trump White House documents that had to be taped back together because they had been ripped up, the agency said. Separately, former Vice President Mike Pence’s chief of staff quietly testified before the committee last week in response to a subpoena, a significant sign that Pence's team is cooperating with the probe.” Read more at CNN
“Six weeks after Election Day, with his hold on power slipping, President Donald J. Trump directed his lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, to make a remarkable call. Mr. Trump wanted him to ask the Department of Homeland Security if it could legally take control of voting machines in key swing states, three people familiar with the matter said.
Mr. Giuliani did so, calling the department’s acting deputy secretary, who said he lacked the authority to audit or impound the machines.
Mr. Trump pressed Mr. Giuliani to make that inquiry after rejecting a separate effort by his outside advisers to have the Pentagon take control of the machines. And the outreach to the Department of Homeland Security came not long after Mr. Trump, in an Oval Office meeting with Attorney General William P. Barr, raised the possibility of whether the Justice Department could seize the machines, a previously undisclosed suggestion that Mr. Barr immediately shot down.
The new accounts show that Mr. Trump was more directly involved than previously known in exploring proposals to use his national security agencies to seize voting machines as he grasped unsuccessfully for evidence of fraud that would help him reverse his defeat in the 2020 election, according to people familiar with the episodes.” Read more at New York Times
“Moderna's Covid-19 vaccine has received full approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for use in people ages 18 and older. The vaccine, named Spikevax, is the second coronavirus vaccine to receive full approval from the FDA behind Pfizer’s Comirnaty vaccine. There's no difference between the newly approved vaccine and the vaccine previously available through emergency use authorization. Meanwhile, some nations -- including Denmark and the United Kingdom -- are lifting Covid-19 restrictions and mask requirements. This has spurred public health experts to question whether some cities and counties in the US are ready to ease their guidance on mask-wearing and social distancing as well.” Read more at CNN
“Coronavirus vaccines for children younger than 5 could be available far sooner than expected — perhaps by the end of February — under a plan that would lead to the potential authorization of a two-shot regimen in the coming weeks, people briefed on the situation said Monday.
Pfizer and its partner, BioNTech, the manufacturers of the vaccine, are expected to submit to the Food and Drug Administration as early as Tuesday a request for emergency use authorization for the vaccine for children six months to 5 years old. Older children already can receive the shot.
The FDA urged the companies to submit the application so that regulators could begin reviewing the two-shot data, according to the knowledgeable individuals, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.” Read more at Washington Post
Edwin Norse died from Covid-19 complications last year. His daughter, Angela Randall, keeps photographs of him.
PHOTO: JEREMY M. LANGE FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
“Close to a million more people in the U.S. have died since early 2020 than would have otherwise been expected. The majority of the 987,456 fatalities in federal estimates were linked to Covid-19, while others can be blamed on derivative causes, like healthcare disruptions and a jump in drug overdoses.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will meet with Senate Judiciary Committee leaders on Tuesday to discuss the upcoming U.S. Supreme Court vacancy and the president’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the high court. Aides said Biden’s list of potential candidates is longer than three.
The White House also pushed back Monday on the idea that the president would be open to ‘gaming the system’ by choosing a nominee solely based on her likelihood of garnering bipartisan support.
Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and ranking minority member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, will meet with Biden at the White House to go over potential nominees to replace Justice Stephen Breyer, who announced his retirement last week. Biden himself served as head of the Judiciary Committee when he was a senator and presided over the confirmations of six high court picks, including Breyer.” Read more at AP News
“A federal judge rejected a plea agreement that would have averted a hate crimes trial for one of Ahmaud Arbery's killers. U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood ruled against the agreement made with Travis McMichael after hearing an emotional plea from Arbery's family.” Read more at USA Today
“Ginni Thomas’s name stood out among the signatories of a December letter from conservative leaders, which blasted the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection as ‘overtly partisan political persecution.’
One month later, her husband, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, took part in a case crucial to the same committee’s work: former president Donald Trump’s request to block the committee from getting White House records that were ordered released by President Biden and two lower courts.
Thomas was the only justice to say he would grant Trump’s request.
That vote has reignited fury among Clarence Thomas’s critics, who say it illustrates a gaping hole in the court’s rules: Justices essentially decide for themselves whether they have a conflict of interest, and Thomas has rarely made such a choice in his three decades on the court.
‘I absolutely do believe that Clarence Thomas should have recused from the Jan. 6 case,’ said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a nonpartisan advocacy group, who called the Supreme Court ‘the most powerful, least accountable, institution in Washington.’
While the Supreme Court is supposed to operate under regulations guiding all federal judges, including a requirement that a justice ‘shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned,’ there’s no procedure to enforce that rule. Each justice can decide whether to recuse, and there is no way to appeal a Supreme Court member’s failure to do so.
Unlike in lower courts, there is no other judge that can step in, and thus a recusal by one justice would mean considering the case with only eight justices, increasing the chance it could not be resolved.
Thomas, 73, has recused himself 32 times in the last 28 years, mostly on petitions never granted by the court, according to research by Roth’s group. (He recused himself more often in his first two years on the court, due partly to conflicts involving his previous employment.) He has recused himself in a family matter, sitting out a case involving a college that his son attended. But Thomas has never bowed out of a case due to alleged conflicts with his wife’s activism, according to Roth.
Ginni Thomas has long been one of the nation’s most outspoken conservatives. During her husband’s time on the Supreme Court, she has run organizations designed to activate right-wing networks, worked for Republicans in Congress, harshly criticized Democrats who she said were trying to make the country ‘ungovernable,’ and handed out awards to those who agree with her agenda. Ginni Thomas also worked closely with the Trump administration and met with the president, and has come under fire over messages praising Jan. 6 crowds before the attack on the Capitol. In a number of instances, her activism has overlapped with cases that have been decided by Clarence Thomas.
Thomas’s vote in the Jan. 6 case is such a striking conflict of interest, critics say, that some hope it sparks further support for long-sputtering efforts to toughen rules governing the justices — an effort bolstered by a White House commission last month that noted the inherent problem with court’s recusals.” Read more at Washington Post
“Biden administration officials are kicking off a crackdown on power plant pollution, aiming to shift the nation’s electricity supply to cleaner energy in the face of congressional resistance and a Supreme Court that could limit the federal government’s ability to tighten public health standards.
On Monday, the Environmental Protection Agency affirmed its authority to curb mercury from smokestacks, reversing a 2020 Trump administration policy. The move signals a broader effort by the administration to cut greenhouse gases and other pollutants from U.S. power plants, which rank as the nation’s second-biggest contributor to global warming.
President Biden has pledged to make the U.S. electricity sector carbon-neutral by 2035, but his deputies may have to rely on their existing federal authority now that Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) has blocked the president’s plan to provide utilities with incentives to transition faster to clean energy. And in late February, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case brought by West Virginia that may undercut the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants in the future.” Read more at Washington Post
“Sony Interactive Entertainment is buying videogame developer Bungie for $3.6 billion. The studio is best known for creating the “Halo” and “Destiny” franchises. On Jan. 18, Sony competitor Microsoft announced it was acquiring videogame company Activision Blizzard in an all-cash deal valued at about $75 billion.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Ilya Shapiro, a constitutional law expert and prominent libertarian, speaking at the Cato Institute in September.Credit...C-Span
“Georgetown University’s law school placed a newly hired administrator on leave on Monday after he said on Twitter that President Biden would nominate not ‘the objectively best pick’ but a ‘lesser Black woman’ to be the next Supreme Court justice.
The decision came one day before the scholar, Ilya Shapiro, a prominent libertarian, had been scheduled to assume his role as a senior lecturer and the executive director of the Georgetown Center for the Constitution, which is part of the law school.
Mr. Shapiro, a constitutional law expert at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, drew a sharp rebuke from students, faculty members and alumni with his comments about the search process for the next justice. The posts have since been deleted.
In a tweet posted on Jan. 26, Mr. Shapiro suggested that Mr. Biden should nominate Sri Srinivasan, the Indian-born chief judge on the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, to succeed Justice Stephen G. Breyer on the Supreme Court.
‘Objectively best pick for Biden is Sri Srinivasan, who is solid prog & v smart,’ Mr. Shapiro wrote. ‘Even has identity politics benefit of being first Asian (Indian) American. But alas doesn’t fit into latest intersectionality hierarchy so we’ll get lesser black woman. Thank heaven for small favors?’
Some had called for the law school, which is among the most prestigious in the nation and sits within a mile of the Supreme Court, to rescind its decision to hire Mr. Shapiro.
Mr. Shapiro had been weighing in on Mr. Biden’s pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the Supreme Court to replace Justice Breyer, who last week announced his plans to retire.
In an email to the law school, whose formal name is the Georgetown University Law Center, its dean said on Monday that the university would investigate whether Mr. Shapiro had violated any of the school’s policies on professional conduct, nondiscrimination and anti-harassment.” Read more at New York Times
“NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Times said on Monday that it has bought Wordle, the free online word game that has exploded in popularity and, for some, become a daily obsession.
It listed the purchase price as being in the ‘low-seven figures,’ but did not disclose specifics.
The Times, which has popular word games like Spelling Bee and its crossword puzzle, said “at the time it moves to The New York Times, Wordle will be free to play for new and existing players, and no changes will be made to its gameplay.”
Wordle was created by Josh Wardle, a Brooklyn software engineer. He originally made it for his partner, but released it to the public in October. On Nov. 1, only 90 people had played it. Within two months, that number had grown to 300,000 after people began sharing their scores on social media.
Now, the simple puzzle that lets players guess a five-letter word in six tries with no hints, has millions of daily players, The Times said. It’s also become a viral online phenomenon, spurring copycats like ‘Airportle,’ where you guess airport abbreviations, and ‘Queertle,’ with words for the queer community.” Read more at AP News
“An estimated 550,000 educators quit between January and November last year, federal data showed. Some ex-teachers are going to work for private-sector companies in fields like sales, software, healthcare and training, where their ability to absorb and transmit information quickly, manage stress and multitask is scoring many of them much larger salaries than they earned in the classroom.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
“Arizona Republicans Propose Giving Themselves Power To Reject Election Results
After a similar attempt failed last year, ARIZONA Republicans have proposed a change to state law that would allow the legislature to reject election results.
According to the draft bill text, ‘The legislature shall call itself into session to review the ballot tabulating process for the regular primary and general elections and on review shall accept or reject the election results.’
If the legislature rejects the election results, according to the draft legislation, ‘any qualified elector may file an action in the superior court to request that a new election be held.’
The proposal may not get very far: Republicans only have one vote to spare in both the House and Senate, and some Republicans are likely to oppose such a drastic change.
But the fact that the bill has the support it does is notable: 16 Republicans, led by state House Rep. John Fillmore, have signed on as co-sponsors, not an insignificant number at all.” Read more at Talking Points Memo
“After weathering weeks of political scandals, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered another blow Monday after a scathing investigation blasted his government for its ‘failures of leadership’ and culture of ‘excessive’ drinking.
In the long-anticipated report—which was redacted under police orders—author Sue Gray, a senior civil servant, said Downing Street’s decision to hold lockdown parties was ‘hard to justify.’
‘Some of the events should not have been allowed to take place,’ she wrote. ‘Other events should not have been allowed to develop as they did.’
With the release of the report, Johnson is now in an increasingly precarious position. After Gray’s findings were published, British authorities confirmed they were investigating eight days when alleged illegal gatherings took place and had secured more than 300 photos and 500 pages of documents.
On Monday, Johnson also came under fire from many members of Parliament as they interrogated him about the gatherings. Former Prime Minister Theresa May led the charge with a blistering statement: ‘Either my right honorable friend had not read the rules or didn’t understand what they meant, and others around him, or they didn’t think the rules applied to Number 10,’ she said. ‘Which was it?’
This is ‘a moment of maximum danger for him,’ Matthias Matthijs, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told Foreign Policy. ‘The next few weeks are kind of key.’
In the coming weeks, Johnson will be bracing for the public response to two key findings: First, the results of the Metropolitan Police’s official investigation, and second, Gray’s full report, which he agreed to publish after the police inquiry, under significant political pressure.
Having spurned calls to resign, Johnson’s political future will likely be determined by his fellow Conservative members of Parliament, who could trigger a vote of no confidence to oust him if at least 54 of them formally request it. If the vote takes place—and Johnson secures the support of the majority—he is safe, and lawmakers will have to wait a year before holding another vote. Eight Conservative MPs have already publicly called for him to step down.
Upcoming polls may also factor into their political calculus. As Johnson’s political star dims, his fall from grace could hurt his party’s prospects, as Owen Matthews writes in Foreign Policy. And with local elections around the corner in May, continued bad press could damage the party’s chances.
‘They’re already expected to do poorly because people are frustrated,’ said Matthijs. ‘But now if this drags on for weeks and even a month or two, then they’re going to get clobbered.’” Read more at Foreign Policy
““Security Council standoff. As the Ukraine crisis escalates, the United States and Russia clashed in a tense face-off at a U.N. Security Council session on Monday. In the meeting, which Washington initiated, both countries were on the offensive. While Russian Ambassador Vasily Nebenzya accused the West of ‘whipping up tensions’ and ‘provoking escalation,’ U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield charged Moscow with ‘attempting, without any factual basis, to paint Ukraine and Western countries as the aggressors to fabricate a pretext for attack.’ The session ended, unsurprisingly, without significant breakthroughs.” Read more at Foreign Policy
On the Afghanistan Withdrawal
(Andrew Quilty / Agence VU’)
“Late last summer, America’s longest war came to a startlingly quick end. As U.S. forces departed Afghanistan, the Taliban recaptured the country unexpectedly fast, and a desperate scene sprung up around the Kabul airport as our Afghan allies gathered in hopes of escaping the new regime.
In a new magazine feature, our staff writer George Packer recounts the messy withdrawal, and argues that the administration is responsible for ‘adding moral injury to military failure.’ His entire 20,000-word story is worth sitting with, when you can. Until then, I’ve outlined three key takeaways from his reporting.
1. The United States failed to adequately plan.
‘The end was always going to be messy,’ George writes. ‘But through its failures, the administration dramatically compressed the evacuation in both time and space.’ Failure to plan in the months following the April withdrawal announcement contributed to the chaos in August.
2. An informal network scrambled to help those left behind.
Soldiers, veterans, politicians, journalists, and nonprofit workers communicated with allies who were stranded in the country—some because of bureaucratic holdups with their visas. When hell broke loose at the airport, George explains, ‘the difference between the damned and the saved came down to three factors. The first was character—resourcefulness, doggedness, will. The second was what Afghans call wasita—connections. The third, and most important, was sheer luck.’
3. The administration undermined its own policy.
‘The end of the war was the first test of a new foreign policy based on human rights rather than military force,’ George writes. ‘The administration and its defenders failed it.’” Read more at Atlantic
Justin Trudeau speaks to supporters in September.
“Ottawa (CNN)Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has tested positive for Covid-19, he announced Monday.
‘This morning, I tested positive for COVID-19. I'm feeling fine -- and I'll continue to work remotely this week while following public health guidelines. Everyone, please get vaccinated and get boosted,’ Trudeau tweeted.
Trudeau and his family have been isolating for several days after being exposed to Covid-19. At least one of his children also has tested positive, according to the Prime Minister's office. The family has also been relocated to an undisclosed location as a precaution as rowdy protests continue in Ottawa by those opposing health restrictions.” Read more at CNN
“At least 24 people have died since Friday after heavy rain battered São Paulo, triggering floods and landslides across the Brazilian state. More than 1,500 families have also been displaced, according to a statement released by the State Civil Defense, which also said that at least eight children were among the dead. Images from the region showed parts of major roads submerged, while others showed rescue workers digging through debris in search of survivors after a landslide destroyed homes. The southern part of Brazil has been experiencing an increase in average rainfall, as well as extreme rain events since the 1960s, partly due to increases in global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.” Read more at CNN
“Myanmar protests. One year after Myanmar’s military junta seized power, civilians are planning nationwide protests to mark the anniversary of the coup. Across the country, protesters are gearing up for a ‘Silent Strike,’ in which people stay home and businesses close during the day in symbolic opposition to military rule.
These plans irked the country’s security forces, who threatened legal action and arrested dozens of civilians preparing for the strike in the days preceding the anniversary. To circumvent these threats, some businesses are embracing more creative methods of protest, including hiking up prices and refusing to sell items instead of closing down.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Vaccine gamble | Austria extended a vaccine mandate to police and judges with a new law that will criminalize holdouts. With the opposition rebelling and tens of thousands of protesters regularly thronging Vienna’s streets, the policy is a test for Chancellor Karl Nehammer, in the job for less than two months.
The U.K. is going in the other direction, planning to scrapmandatory vaccines for health-care workers.” Read more at Bloomberg
“Reviving the Iran deal? Negotiators from the United States and its European allies are ‘in a final stretch’ of restoring the Iran nuclear deal, senior Biden administration officials said on Monday. Facets of the agreement could mark a return to the 2015 deal, although officials stressed that the ultimate decisions are in Tehran’s hands. ‘Now is the time for Iran to decide whether it’s prepared to make those decisions,’ one official said.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Mexico’s migrant crisis. Compared to January 2021, the number of migrants detained in Mexico increased by 78 percent this year, according to Mexico’s National Immigration Institute. From January 1 to January 30, 2022, 16,740 migrants were detained; during the same period last year, 9,406 people were. Children under the age of 18 accounted for 14.5 percent of the detained migrants, the agency said, and 780 of them were traveling alone. The exact reasons behind the surge in migration are unclear.” Read more at Foreign Policy
“Israel’s apartheid designation. Israel has urged human rights group Amnesty International not to release a report that accuses it of the international crime of apartheid—defined as ‘an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group.’ Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid accused the group of being ‘another radical organization which echoes propaganda, without seriously checking the facts.’ Human Rights Watch and the Israeli rights group B’Tselem have already applied the apartheid label to Israel’s military occupation of Palestinian land.” Read more at Foreign Policy
Photo: Mark Schiefelbein/AP
Lantern decorations hang on trees on the Olympic Green near the Olympic Tower in Beijing today to mark Lunar New Year.
“The Lunar New Year begins February 1, ushering in the Year of the Tiger, an animal known for ‘bravery, courage, and strength.’” [Vox] Read more at USA Today / Jordan Mendoza
“The Biden administration is paying out substantial sums of money to the surviving partners of same-sex couples who were denied the right to marry. No one knows exactly how many people are eligible, though the best estimate reaches into the thousands (at a minimum), and the pot of money stretches into the millions. Unfortunately, few of these individuals know they’re entitled to these payouts, and many are elders of advanced age. So LGBTQ groups are in a race against time to identify and assist this population in vindicating their constitutional rights before it’s too late.
Lambda Legal, the organization leading this campaign, laid the groundwork in two lawsuits filed during Donald Trump’s presidency. Both challenged the Social Security Administration’s denial of survivor’s benefits to individuals affected by same-sex marriage bans, which have been unenforceable since the Supreme Court found them unconstitutional in 2015’s Obergefell v. Hodges. The first suit was filed on behalf of widows and widowers who could never marry because their same-sex partners died before same-sex marriages were legalized. The second was filed on behalf of widows and widowers who were married for less than nine months before their same-sex partner died. Typically, survivor’s benefits are only available if the marriage lasted more than nine months. But if an unconstitutional law prevented the couple from marrying until the end of one partner’s life, Lambda argued, the government had an obligation to alter this rule.
In each case, a federal judge agreed that the denial of survivors’ benefits violated the Constitution. These judges ordered immediate payouts to the individual plaintiffs and certified nationwide class actions on behalf of every other LGBTQ person injured by this exclusionary policy. Predictably, the Trump administration dragged its feet in paying out benefits to the plaintiffs and appealed the class actions, attempting to quash them. (Scholars of the 2020 election will be interested to know that Jeffrey Bossert Clark led the appeal just weeks before plotting a coup at the Justice Department.)
Once President Joe Biden entered the White House, however, the Department of Justice started to sing a different tune. On Nov. 1, 2021, the DOJ settled the cases, dismissing the appeals. The timing was propitious: Four months earlier, Biden fired Andrew Saul—Trump’s terrible commissioner of the Social Security Administration—and replaced him with Kilolo Kijakazi, an LGBTQ-friendly progressive. With Biden’s officials in place, the federal government is eager to start paying out survivor’s benefits to victims of anti-gay discrimination.
How much money are we talking about? The short answer is: a lot. Survivors can start collecting benefits at 60, or 50 if they’re disabled. Survivors applying for the first time will receive monthly payments moving forward; the number varies based on the deceased partner’s earnings, and gets higher when the recipient has reached full retirement age. As of August, it averaged around $1,250 a month. If a survivor applied previously and was denied, they will be paid a lump sum upfront—providing retroactive benefits going back the date of their application—in addition to the monthly checks.
How much money are we talking about? The short answer is: a lot.
A New York Times report provided a good example of how these benefits cash out. Anthony Gonzales and Mark Johnson lived together in New Mexico for 16 years before they were finally able to marry in 2013. Gonzales applied for survivor’s benefits six years ago, facing swift rejection. Recently, thanks to the settlement between Lambda and Biden, he received a $90,000 retroactive payment, as well as an $1,800 monthly check.
Some survivors might assume they aren’t eligible because they never actually got married. But the Social Security Administration has trained its staff to gauge whether a survivor would have been married but for the unconstitutional marriage ban. Among other factors, they look at whether the couple was in a committed relationship, lived together or owned property together, supported each other financially, raised children together, or held a commitment ceremony. No single factor determines the outcome; it’s a flexible standard meant to accommodate for the restraints that anti-gay animus imposed on same-sex couples. Applicants can provide documentation, and if they’re turned down, they have an opportunity to appeal.” Read more at Slate
“A prosecutor dropped the last criminal inquiry into sexual misconduct allegations against Andrew Cuomo.” Read more at New York Times
“Major League Baseball labor negotiations are scheduled to continue Tuesday , about two weeks before spring training is set to begin. Baseball's ninth work stoppage began Dec. 2 after the expiration of a five-year labor contract, and the sides did not meet again on the central economic issues until Jan. 24, when players withdrew their proposal for more liberalized free agency. Management responded the following day by withdrawing a proposal for more limited salary arbitration. Tuesday's negotiations will be the first on the central issues since then. The two sides don't agree on many economic proposals, leaving very little time to end the lockout without disrupting the scheduled start of spring training workouts on Feb. 16.” Read more at USA Today
‘The Complete Maus,’ which includes the first and second installments of Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel, sat at the top of Amazon’s bestseller list Monday.
PHOTO:MARO SIRANOSIAN/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
“‘Maus,’ a graphic novel about the Holocaust published decades ago, reached the top of Amazon.com Inc.’s bestsellers list after a Tennessee school board’s decision to remove the book spurred criticism nationwide.
‘The Complete Maus,’ which includes the first and second installments of Art Spiegelman’s Pulitzer-Prize winning graphic novel, sat at the top of Amazon’s bestseller list Monday morning. It later moved to the No. 2 spot. Separate copies of the installments, published in 1986 and 1991, respectively, were also among the top 10 bestselling books on the retail giant’s website.
Attention to the graphic novel was renewed this month when the McMinn County Board of Education in Athens, Tenn., voted unanimously to remove ‘Maus’ from its eighth-grade curriculum. The 10-member board cited ‘vulgar’ words that appeared in the book as well as subjects they deemed inappropriate for eighth-graders.
The school board’s Jan. 10 decision sparked widespread criticism. In an interview with CNBC last week, Mr. Spiegelman said he was baffled by the move, calling it ‘Orwellian.’
Mr. Spiegelman said Monday he was moved by the response by readers. He said he would use the income to donate to voter-registration drives to help prevent efforts to ban books in schools.” Read more at Wall Street Journal
Sixteen Black children, accompanied by four mothers, carry anti-segregation signs in Hillsboro, Ohio, in 1956. Photo: Bettmann Collection/Getty Images
“Schools and universities are marking Black History Month starting today — the first time it will be celebrated under some states' new restrictions on diversity education.
Why it matters: The constraints — under the guise of banning the teaching of critical race theory — limit what some state-supported institutions can discuss about the nation's racial past, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.
What's happening: Educators embracing Black history have received death threats.
Since last year, 14 states have imposed such restrictions through legislation, executive actions or commission votes, an Education Week analysis found.
35 states have introduced bills or taken other steps to restrict teaching critical race theory — a concept that focuses on the legacy of systemic racism — or limit how teachers can discuss racism and sexism.
Elementary school teachers, administrators and college professors have faced fines, physical threats and fear of firing.
Zoom out: New teaching on race has been criticized by the right and even some on the left. David Bromwich, an English professor at Yale, wrote in The Nation: ‘The new methods are marked by a certain severity, a pressure to cleanse or catechize.” Read more at Axios
