The nice thing about Rufo is that he is upfront about methods of the con game. “Anti-CRT” has gotten a little tarnished, so now it’s “transparency.” If pundits or reporters are posting about a new school transparency movement, be aware that this is who they are working for.
This is what “transparency” mean in practice: another mechanism to undermine educators and put an ideologically-driven minority in charge of education
The "anti-CRT" has led to the use of state power to engage in censorship and book bans, erasing discussion of history or identities that conservatives dislike. Hoping the coverage is less credulous this time. The end goal is the same. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/making-publi…
The Heritage Foundation has been the most visible promoter to Rufo’s school takeover project and the President of Heritage is again very open about the goal.
Went looking for more context...and yeah, that's not great
Should the Attorney General treat "rowdy parents" as "potential terrorists"?
I'm sorry, but this is really bad. It pushes the idea that this was happening and on the basis of that argues that the DOJ should not be monitoring threats of school officials. mcusercontent.com/ca678077bc522b…
I wrote about how the people who encouraged the Jan 6th insurrection are succeeding with a different strategy a year on: taking control of the machinery of elections. 🧵 donmoynihan.substack.com/p/a-year-on-th…
I've been studying election administration on and off for almost two decades. The concerted attack we are seeing now on local election officials is new. 2/
Steve Bannon has pushed a "precinct strategy"--where Trumpists dedicated to the Big Lie capture the local GOP apparatus--as a means of "taking over all the elections.” (Local party officials appoint key election roles in many states). It's working. 3/ propublica.org/article/heedin…
Interesting piece: I think the most obvious answer is that the expanded CTC is relatively new, most people have not benefited from it, and people don't really see it as a distinct post-pandemic program. Those things will change if the becomes permanent. nytimes.com/2022/01/05/ups…
There is a risk among the policy wonk community that we overestimate people's knowledge of the ins-and-outs of unfamiliar programs. As a result, the way questions are framed and demand effects (where subjects are providing an answer they think the poller is seeking) matter a lot
For example, people's support for work requirements weaken if you tell them about the effects, or if you spell out the consequences. Framing matters.
New open-access from @pamela_herd, Julie Gerinza and I: we track the use of administrative burdens in the Trump era to make legal processes of immigration more onerous. 🧵@pmmg2018 @PMRA1991 academic.oup.com/ppmg/advance-a…
We use the metaphor of Kafka's bureaucracy to reflect what immigration processes morphed into under Trump: confusing, arbitrary, and illogical. This anecdote we culled from @crampell's reporting demonstrates the impossible situations immigrants found themselves in. 2/
The Trump administration adopted more than 450 executive actions. We sorted through these to focus on 78 that explicitly increased administrative burdens. After a while it becomes almost overwhelming to see the sheer scale and relentless of the changes. 3/ academic.oup.com/ppmg/advance-a…
This is an example of what @victorerikray@pamela_herd & I describe as radicalized burdens.
When you understand that Wisconsin has the highest racial prison disparities in the country the effect of imposing financial barriers for former felons to vote becomes clear.
In Wisconsin
*Black people constitute 6% of the population and 42% of the prison population
*Blacks are incarcerated 12 times the rate of whites, compared to a ratio of 5:1 for the rest of the US
*1 in 36 Black adults are in prison, highest rate in the US wpr.org/wisconsin-impr…
Gah - meant *racialized burdens* not radicalized burdens.
When you incorporate POC disproportionately (see below for WI), other barriers you impose on the status of incarceration necessarily have a racialized effect.
The new smart contrarian take is telling people to shut up about the decline of US democracy, no-one cares bro.
FWIW the US gets uniquely generous treatment from the rest of the world not just because it's powerful, but also because it's seen as a stable democracy. As that perception declines, so will a lot of other material benefits in the US.
When you want to say "make the trains run on time" but also, you hate trains