More than ever, civic learning is needed to ensure each and every person across this country has the necessary tools to engage as members of our self-governing society. However, schools are also a growing part of the culture wars. According to a 2022 National Education Association Survey, nearly half of schools reported challenges teaching about race and racism and practices related to LGBTQ students in the classroom. As we've discussed before on the show, book bans, funding cuts, and teacher shortages are also making teaching anything — let alone civics — more difficult. At this critical juncture, Civic Learning Week unites students, educators, policymakers, and private sector leaders to energize the movement for civic education across the nation.
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Project 2025 would have 'catastrophic' impact on hurricane warnings
Oct 30, 2024
Raj Ghanekar is a student at Northwestern University and a reporter for the school’s Medill News Service.
Residents in the southeastern United States are still recovering from devastating damage brought on by back-to-back hurricanes. As federal, state and local officials continue working to deliver aid, experts say the country would be less prepared for future hurricanes if proposals included the conservative plan known as Project 2025 were to be put in place.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration houses the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center, which are vital to predicting these cyclones. But the 920-page proposal published by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, argues NOAA “should be dismantled” and includes steps to undermine its authority and position leading the country’s planning for severe weather events, such as providing official emergency warnings.
“It would be potentially catastrophic if you had more than one authority agency … giving you opposite instructions on what to do or opposite warnings," said Kerry Emanuel, professor emeritus of atmospheric science at MIT.
Former President Donald Trump has denied any connection to the plan and his team is preparing a blacklist of people to keep out of a potential second Trump term, including some with ties to Project 2025, according to Politico. But at least 140 people who worked in the first Trump administration have contributed to it, according to a CNN review. Project 2025 Associate Director Spencer Chretien pitched it as a comprehensive overhaul of the executive branch in a 2023 commentary, “laying the groundwork for a White House more friendly to the right.”
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In its current state, NOAA plays a critical role in collecting massive amounts of data, conducting its own forecasting models and making all of that information available to the public for free. It also possesses exclusive authority to issue official extreme weather warnings.
Emanuel said keeping that power with NOAA is necessary for ensuring emergency management before the storm is less rambunctious. Uniformity in warnings keeps people safe by ensuring the public does not get contradictory information.
But Project 2025 argues that NOAA’s bureaucracy is far too hefty and the government must “break up NOAA.” The document points to NOAA and its sub-organizations getting over half of the Department of Commerce budget.
“These form a colossal operation that has become one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry,” the document says. “This industry’s mission emphasis on prediction and management seems designed around the fatal conceit of planning for the unplannable.”
On the other hand, experts say NOAA’s budget and multifaceted organization are a huge aid to its work to develop accurate weather predictions, especially in the case of hurricanes. NOAA has several branches including the National Ocean Service and NOAA’s research wing that integrate all their research to produce more accurate hurricane and climate modeling.
According to its fiscal 2024 proposed budget, NOAA spends money on satellites, weather centers and more, all for the purpose of ensuring it has a well-rounded data collection method. This allows the federal government to predict storm paths up to five days out, according to NOAA’s website.
Project 2025’s pledge to separate and disconnect those branches and their functions would hinder the National Weather Service and the National Hurricane Center from doing their own jobs well, according to Rachel Cleetus, policy director for the climate and energy program at the Union of Concerned Scientists.
“The weather that we see on any one day, it's not just a result of factors that day,” Cleetus said. “You have these long-term trends, multi-decadal factors, climate factors, all of these factors that come together to express in the form of any particular day's weather.”
Project 2025 advocates for the NWS to “fully commercialize its forecasting operations,” which experts say could put a price on NOAA’s service to the general public.
A Project 2025 spokesperson said the proposal “does not call for the elimination of NOAA or the NWS,” adding that the use of “commercial products to provide a better result for taxpayers at a lower cost is nothing new.”
But doing so would take away a critical public good, according to Jeff Masters, a former meteorologist and current staff writer for Yale Climate Connections who started a private company of his own in 1995. He said that when a bill entered Congress in 2005 to restrict the NWS forecasting from being publicly shared, he declined to support it.
“That would have benefitted my company because now, [we] make more profit because we don't have that competition,” he said. “But we quickly saw that that was a societal loss, and we did the right thing by opposing it.”
Masters said charging for forecast information would disproportionately harm low-income populations as well, with localities or state governments with less money forced to spend money on cheaper, lower-quality options, and in turn, potentially not getting necessary weather information to save lives when a storm is on the way.
Cleetus has a similar view. She warns that commercialization could particularly harm those who cannot afford to pay for them.
“When you have data that people depend on for emergency purposes … and if that data is put behind a paywall, it will just become less accessible to people who need it, and that can have life threatening consequences,” Cleetus said.
The section on NOAA was part of the chapter dedicated to the Department of Commerce. It was authored by Thomas Gilman, who served as chief financial officer and assistant secretary for administration of the Commerce Department during part of Trump’s term. Gilman currently serves as a director of the American Center for Law and Justice, a conservative legal organization.
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Halloween, fear and democracy: Finding empathy amid the scary season
Oct 30, 2024
Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund. Becvar is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and executive director of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Halloween, a holiday celebrated around the globe, traces its roots back to the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain. The event marked the end of the Celtic year and symbolized a time when the boundaries between the living and the dead blurred, allowing spirits to roam among the living.
While Halloween is often associated with fear, darkness and death, it also represents an opportunity to confront our fears in a communal way. We dress up, share stories of ghosts and let ourselves feel scared for fun. Ironically, this holiday centered on facing fears falls less than a week before the elections, a time when many are most politically afraid. This Election Day, a majority of Americans are feeling fear about the outcome of the presidential election, which falls five days after Halloween, with some fearing what happens if Kamala Harris gets elected and some fearing what might happen if Donald Trump wins.
As the candidates sprint to the finish line, they are both playing on this fear.
As Arash Javanbakht, an associate professor of psychiatry at Wayne State University, noted in The Fulcrum in August,
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“Instead of excitement about the upcoming election, many of my patients and friends – regardless of political affiliation – report they’re terrified at the thought of the ‘other side’ winning. Democrats tell me they fear Donald Trump will end our democracy; Republicans are afraid Kamala Harris will turn the United States into a socialist society without family values.”
The fears may differ, but the undercurrent of anxiety is remarkably similar.
However, Halloween offers a timely reminder of how we might handle this political dread. It is an opportunity to reframe our fears through costumes, parties and community activities; and to transform those fears into something more constructive. What if, this Halloween, we took a similar approach to our political anxieties? Imagine if, instead of succumbing to anger, dread or even hatred arising from our political disagreements, we transformed that negative energy into empathy and curiosity.
The image of children trick-or-treating is so common that it almost seems transactional, but underneath the joy of receiving a treat from a stranger is a simple act of communities coming together to share in the simple pleasure of giving and receiving, no matter who is under the costume. This exchange, unburdened by judgment or assumptions, is a small but powerful example of how different members of a community can come together to share in a common idea, if only temporarily.
What if we, too, allowed ourselves to adopt this open-hearted spirit, especially when it comes to politics? Rather than seeing those with opposing viewpoints as enemies, what if we approached them with the same curiosity and openness that children bring to each new house on Halloween night? After all, just as no one knows what candy lies behind a neighbor’s door until they knock, we cannot fully understand another person’s perspective until we are willing to engage with it.
Elvis Presley’s song “Walk a Mile in My Shoes” captures this spirit perfectly. Before he sang those famous words in Las Vegas in 1970, he introduced the song with a message:
“There was a guy who said you never stood in that man's shoes or saw things through his eyes or stood and watched with helpless hands while the heart inside you dies. So help your brother along the way, no matter where he starts for the same God that made you, made him too, these men with broken hearts. I'd like to sing a song along the same lines.”
On this Halloween, as we navigate haunted houses and neighborhood streets, we might also take a moment to consider the fears that haunt our political landscape. What if we tried, even briefly, to imagine life from the perspective of those who see the world differently? Could we find a way to turn our collective anxieties into opportunities for connection, rather than letting them deepen our divisions?
Elvis’s song might provide the soundtrack for this effort, reminding us that while fear and division can be powerful, so too can understanding and compassion. This Halloween, let’s try on a new costume — one that sees beyond fear and strives for a deeper understanding of our neighbors. It might just be the treat that our democracy needs.
- YouTubewww.youtube.com
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This election night, the media can better explain how results work
Oct 30, 2024
Johnson is the executive director of the Election Reformers Network. Penniman is the founder and CEO of Issue One and author of “Nation on the Take: How Big Money Corrupts Our Democracy and What We Can Do About It.”
Watching election night on cable or network news is a great national tradition. Memorable moments arise as the networks announce their projections in key states. Anchors and commentators demonstrate extraordinary understanding of the unique politics of hundreds of cities and counties across the country. As the results of the most consequential election on the planet unfold, there’s a powerful sense of shared witness.
But our polarized politics has revealed a serious flaw in election night coverage. As disinformation abounds, it is increasingly important for voters to know how the actual, legally certain election results are determined. And right now, voters are not seeing enough of that information on their screens on election night.
Projections by CNN, Fox and other outlets serve an important function. They give voters a statistically based prediction of who the actual winner will likely be once states complete their careful processes in the weeks after Election Day. But these projections have no official status, and news anchors typically don’t do enough to make that clear. News programs also need to include segments that explain how the actual results are verified and certified.
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Four years after November 2020, we still have a dangerous level of disagreement and uncertainty across America about the critical fact of who won that presidential election. By far the main reason for this uncertainty is the unwillingness of Donald Trump to accept his defeat, a defeat confirmed by multiple audits and recounts and by the outcome of more than 60 court challenges across the swing states.
But we should acknowledge that uncertainty arises in part because America has a very complicated presidential election system that can be hard for citizens to really understand. Different rules in every state create differences in how Americans vote and how and when vote counts are verified and certified. Court cases play a critical role in the legal certainty of results but are hard for voters to learn about and understand. And the election happens in two phases — the vote of the people and then the vote of the electors the people have selected — and that combination creates confusion.
There is a risk that network projections on election night can add more uncertainty. Something called a “projection” inherently implies uncertainty, since it could possibly be reversed. And projections suggest subjectivity, since different news outlets reach different conclusions about whether a state is ready or still too close to call.
We cannot let who won the presidency be a subjective question, a matter of opinion — it must be understood as a matter of fact and law. For that to happen, we need to help Americans see and understand the legal processes that do in fact render a certain answer to the big question of who won.
These are the reasons we have cosigned, with a broad, bipartisan array of organizations, an open letter to election reporters and election news anchors. The letter is an initiative of the Election Reformers Network developed with bipartisan support from The Carter Center, the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation Issue One and other organizations.
The letter asks that news organization use some version of the following phrasing every time a state result is projected:
- "This is just a projection. The actual results will be final when every vote is counted, officials verify and certify the outcome, and any challenges are resolved in court.”
The letter also urges reporters to reassure voters that accuracy matters more than speed, by using a phrase such as:
- “Counting the votes takes time, and election results are not final until officials verify and certify the results. We expect [STATE] to certify its official results by [DATE]."
Lastly, the letter encourages election night programs to include brief segments that explain the upcoming post-election verification and certification phases in the key swing states. Such segments could also provide brief explanations of the reason behind the timing of release of results so that delays do not cause creating concerns. Pennsylvania law, for example, does not allow election officials to pre-process absentee ballots before Election Day, as other states do, and for this reason results may be delayed there and networks likely will not be able to project a winner in Pennsylvania on election night.
There is of course a serious risk that the 2024 election could result in the same division in public opinion that plagued 2020, with one side refusing to accept the legally validated outcome. But even if that happens, how reporters and news networks talk about the real results process could have a significant impact on reducing susceptibility to ungrounded claims.
Americans learn a lot about our country on election night, as anchors zoom in on the political details of pivotal swing counties across the states. This year it’s time for Americans to also learn a lot about America’s election process on election night.
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Immigration isn't a border issue – it's caused by U.S. interventions
Oct 30, 2024
Yates-Doerr is an associate professor anthropology at Oregon State University and the author of “Mal-Nutrition: Maternal Health Science and the Reproduction of Harm.” She is also a fellow with The OpEd Project.
Immigration is a hot-button topic in the presidential election, with Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump both promising to crack down hard at the border. But neither candidate is talking about a root cause of immigration: the long history of U.S. meddling, which has directly resulted in displacement. If our politicians really wanted to address immigration, they would look not at the border but at past actions of the U.S. government, which have directly produced so much of the immigration we see today.
Consider the case of Guatemala, the origin point of 11 percent of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Over the past 20 years, I have worked as an anthropologist in a region with one of Guatemala’s highest rates of exodus to the United States. Twenty years ago, it was mostly men who would migrate. Now women and children migrate regularly too. They are leaving conditions of extreme poverty and oppression for low-paid farm and factory labor. Though political discourse focuses on the “deterrence” of migrants at the border, this ignores the open secret that the U.S. economy relies on the labor force that migrants provide.
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To secure this labor force, the U.S. government has destabilized Guatemala for decades. People familiar with U.S. history will know that in the 1950s, the government helped to topple Guatemala’s democratically elected president, Jacobo Árbenz, who was implementing modest land reform. Powerful American politicians had financial ties to the United Fruit Company, which ran banana plantations throughout the country. Because Árbenz’s support of farmworkers interfered with company profit, the U.S. government worked to violently depose him.
What started as a terror campaign and coup in the 1950s became an outright strategy of Indigenous massacre by the 1980s. Military and paramilitary forces with U.S. training targeted Indigenous leaders, including mothers and midwives because they were skilled at caring for and nourishing their communities. Mercenary armies, operating a scorched earth campaign, razed and deforested communities with the goal of depopulating entire regions. The U.S. and Guatemalan governments worked together so that Guatemalans would starve.
A less familiar history is that the U.S. government's destabilization of Guatemala also took a form more covert than military violence, and that these activities continue to the present day. As the United Fruit Company was withdrawing from Guatemala in the second half of the 20th century, the U.S. Agency for International Development set up a headquarters in Guatemala’s capital. Under the pretense of encouraging development, USAID promoted monoculture farming. Many of the genetically hybridized seeds the agency distributed were ill adapted to Guatemalan climates and required industrial fertilizers and pesticides — several of which were banned as too dangerous for use in the United States. Meanwhile, cancer rates, miscarriage and neurological problems all began to spread.
In parallel to USAID’s development interventions, in the 1970 and ‘80s the U.S. government helped fund scientists to develop a synthetic protein powder, ostensibly meant to solve malnutrition. The powder was licensed to Guatemala’s largest beer corporation to mass-produce at scale and branded as a healthy alternative to traditional staples of corn, beans and squash. Guatemala has since seen decades of U.S.-backed nutrition interventions reliant on cheap, mass-produced powders. These can be found all across the country, and still Guatemala has one of the highest rates of chronic malnutrition in the world. Health workers frequently blame so-called uneducated mothers for being inept at feeding their families, pushing more packaged nutrients as the solution to their problems. If mothers object, they risk losing access to care.
But the challenges Guatemalans are experiencing are the result of cruel policies — not women’s ignorance. The forced reliance on agrochemicals has damaged soils and landscapes; the forced replacement of protein powders for traditional foods has damaged entire ways of life. Many Guatemalans who migrate today are looking for modest wages to care for family members sick with cancer, kidney failure or other diseases associated with living in a poisoned environment. Guatemalan soils used to be among the richest in the world; today crop failures are common and deforested hillsides are susceptible to deadly landslides. People are desperate. They are willing to work for pennies and they are willing to risk dying — which has been the point.
The narrative that immigrants are stealing jobs from people in the United States has the story backwards: The U.S. government has been complicit in destabilizing the livelihood and labor of Guatemalans for decades. Until this is addressed, people living in poverty and oppression will continue to migrate, no matter the obstacles put before them. If politicians were serious about addressing migration, they would stop talking about policing the border and instead work to reverse the harm that U.S. interventions have caused.
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