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HOUSTON Gena Coston summed up the experience of being a teacher over the last four years with two words: very stressful.

Texas teachers have reported feeling burned out, underresourced and underappreciated in the last few years as theyve dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic, classroom changes spearheaded by Republican officials and unsuccessful calls for more state funding toward raises.

For those gathered at the American Federation of Teachers national convention in Houston on Thursday, Vice President Kamala Harris message of appreciation was a welcome change.

It is you who have taken on the most noble of work, which is to concern yourself with the well-being of the children of America, Harris said.

Harris remarks came on the last day of AFTs national convention, three days after the labor group of more than 1.7 million members became the first union to endorse her presidential run.

I'm excited because I know that she cares, said Coston, who teaches eighth grade English Language Arts in the Aldine Independent School District.

Harris message was on par with what some educators said they hoped to hear from her in recent days a message of solidarity. They acknowledged that while the president cannot control everything that happens in schools, their influence and support while shaping the national agenda is meaningful, particularly at this time in Texas.

In the last few years, teachers had to adapt to online learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. Enrollment declined. People left the profession. Officials, districts and parents fought over mask mandates. New state laws limited how they could teach about race, gender and sexual orientation and expanded the influence of Christianity. School boards banned books. A school mass shooting happened. The state ousted the democratically elected school board and superintendent of its largest district. Gov. Greg Abbott used his power to push for a program that would allow families to use tax dollars to pay for their childrens private education. And through it all, their calls for raises were largely unheeded.

One teacher at the convention, Tiffany Spurlock, who teaches second grade math and science in Cy Fair ISD, said she is concerned about school districts budget woes, accentuated by inflation and the Texas Legislatures failure to approve significant funding increases amid the fight for vouchers last year.

Spurlock also worries about her colleagues in Houston ISD, which is currently under state oversight. She and her three children previously attended school in the district, and she said current students, parents and teachers are being held to an unfair standard.

Spurlock said Harris has the perfect chance to advocate for a system that serves all families.

We have to make sure we're doing things thats best for kids, Spurlock said. Not just processes wise, not just systematically, but also morally.

Harris, who arrived in Houston a day earlier to receive a briefing on Hurricane Beryl recovery efforts, said Thursday she would fight for the rights of children and educators to have adequate resources to thrive in and out of the classroom.

She said she would also push back against a conservative-backed plan for a second Donald Trump presidency known as Project 2025, which calls for the elimination of the U.S. Department of Education, phasing out billions of dollars in assistance to schools serving low-income families and rolling back protections for students on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.

Project 2025 is a plan to return America to a dark past, Harris said. But we are not going back. No, we will move forward.

Prior to Harris arrival, some advocacy organizations criticized her for being out of touch with Texas values.

The people of Texas made it clear that it wants parents in charge of their children's education not government, said Genevieve Collins, state director of Americans for Prosperity-Texas.

Coston saw Harris visit as an opportunity for the vice president to hear teachers out. She said Texas teachers are quitting their jobs because the pay and school funding are inadequate. She worries about the rise in teachers without formal training. She is also concerned about student and teacher safety, particularly as it relates to gun violence.

We gotta feed our teachers and get them motivated, Coston said. So in turn, they'll get the kids motivated.

Going into Harris speech, Costons expectation was for the vice president to show awareness of whats going on in schools. She said she was encouraged by what she heard.

Now we just gotta see it happen, Coston said.

Big news: director and screenwriter Richard Linklater; NPR President and CEO Katherine Maher; U.S. Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-California; and Luci Baines Johnson will take the stage at The Texas Tribune Festival, Sept. 57 in downtown Austin. Buy tickets today!

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Texas teachers stand behind Kamala Harris after years of feeling targeted, neglected by Republicans - The Texas Tribune

Since Donald Trump chose Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate, its been widely noted that Vance once described Trump as reprehensible and cultural heroin. However, the day after Vance won his own Senate race in 2022, he reportedly made it known that he would support Trump for president in 2024.

Given this dramatic change, what does Vances selection mean for the Republican Party and conservatism, the political philosophy that the GOP once claimed to embrace?

I am a political scientist whose research and political analysis focuses on the relationship between Trump, the Republican Party and conservatism. Everyday citizens define conservatism in different ways, but at its root it is a philosophy that supports smaller and less-centralized government because consolidated power could be used to silence political competition and deny citizens their liberties.

Since 2015, Trump has tightened his grip on the Republican Party, moving it further away from its professed conservative ideology. The choice of Vance as Trumps running mate and the competition that preceded it are the latest steps in this process.

Vance came from a small pool of contenders that included other noteworthy politicians who likewise once vehemently opposed Trump. By examining their trajectories, we can see how the Republican Party has abandoned conservative values to serve a single man.

Elise Stefanik ran for Congress in 2014 from a district in upstate New York as a mainstream Republican who admired Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. Ryan was a traditional conservative who had run for vice president alongside former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2012. Romney endorsed Stefanik for Congress, saying that she was a person of integrity. Every campaign is different, but values dont change.

But Stefaniks values did change. When forced to share the ballot with Trump in 2016, she couldnt even spit his name out, according to Republican consultant Tim Miller. But early in Trumps presidency, she became a vocal ally, eventually replacing Rep. Liz Cheney as chair of the House Republican Conference in 2021.

House Republicans ousted Cheney from that position after she criticized Trumps refusal to support the 2020 election results and his actions during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Cheney justified her opposition to Trump by highlighting her respect for the rule of law and support for limited government even when those positions meant opposing her own party leader. These are foundational conservative principles, centered in aversion to consolidated government power.

This switch was a significant moment in the partys ideological transformation. Stefaniks rising star subsequently landed her in the mix for vice president, which she called An honor. A humbling honor.

Florida Sen. Marco Rubio challenged Trump for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. During that race, Rubio issued a news release calling Trump a serious threat to the future of our party and our country, and blamed him for ushering in a climate of violence.

Statements like these made sense coming from a serious conservative whose worldview was defined by his familys Cuban heritage and who opposed communism, tyranny and excessive government power.

Eventually, though, Rubio became a Trump ally. He voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial in 2021, which centered on charges that Trump had incited an insurrection. In line with Trumps wishes, Rubio opposed establishing an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 events.

In early 2024, Rubio was asked in an ABC interview if he really wanted to be vice president even though Trump had defended calls by Jan. 6 insurrectionists to hang former Vice President Mike Pence for certifying the 2020 election results.

When Donald Trump was president of the United States, this country was safer, it was more prosperous, Rubio responded. I think this country and the world was a better place.

This refusal to acknowledge and challenge Trumps apparent support of lawlessness by his followers was an abdication of fundamental conservative values.

South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott has touted his conservative values and principles throughout his political life. It was logical for him to endorse Rubio as Trump gained momentum in the 2016 Republican primaries.

In 2017, Scott insisted that Trumps failure to condemn white nationalists after violent clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, compromised his moral authority. Not long after, however, Scott met with Trump about his comments and was convinced that Trump had obviously reflected on what he said.

When Trump refused to flatly condemn white supremacists a few years later in a 2020 presidential debate, Scott suggested that Trump misspoke and should correct the comments, but added, If he doesnt correct it, I guess he didnt misspeak. After dropping out of the Republican primaries in 2024, Scott endorsed Trump as someone who could unite the country.

These converted Trump allies still hold modern conservative stances on issues such as abortion and health care. But in seeking to become Trumps running mate, they tacitly endorsed an executives attempt to overturn a democratic election and subvert the liberties of U.S. citizens. Such a shift violates the spirit of conservatism.

These politicians have also moved away from conservative principles in areas including U.S. foreign policy and immigration. But the fundamental shift that is most profound is in their attitudes toward abuse of government power.

What should we make of Trump choosing Vance, who once privately compared Trump to Hitler but now says that he would not have readily certified the 2020 election if he had been in Pences shoes?

Many considerations affect the choice of a running mate. But Vance doesnt represent a swing state. He probably wont appeal to MAGA-skeptical independent voters who have yet to make up their minds about who to vote for.

Instead, people close to Trump call the 39-year-old Vance the new heir to Trumps MAGA movement. Vance is more than a proteg, though; he embodies Trumps influence on the Republican Partys evolving relationship with government power and insists his political conversion is genuine.

If there was any speculation that Republicans would revert to some form of traditional conservatism after Trump leaves politics, the prospect of a JD Vance presidency makes clear that the answer is no.

More here:
JD Vances selection as Trumps running mate marks the end of Republican conservatism - The Conversation Indonesia

Abbotts vendetta comes as other GOP figures are also going after fellow Republicans for perceived crimes against the party, notably Attorney General Ken Paxtons targeting of incumbents for voting to impeach him. House Speaker Dade Phelan is among those under siege as he fights to defend his own hold on power in the runoffs next Tuesday.

In prior years, state legislature races in Texas typically cost about $250,000. But spending in some of these primaries has been upwards of $1 million, thanks to the involvement of pro-voucher interests attacking Republicans.

We are outgunned here big time, said Rep. DeWayne Burns, a Republican lawmaker fighting to keep in his seat representing a district encompassing Cleburne, Texas, a town on the outskirts of Dallas-Fort Worth. This is a true David v. Goliath situation and Im the David here.

The negative attacks on anti-voucher Republicans financed by PACs have gone beyond school-choice and targeted the incumbents for lacking conservative bona fides on issues like guns and the border often in false or misleading mailers, texts and advertisements.

In one example, residents of Mineral Wells, Texas received mailers paid for by Libertarian PAC Make Liberty Win going after incumbent Rep. Glenn Rogers, who lost his primary in March to an Abbott-backed challenger. That mailer accused him of being anti-gun and warned that if we dont vote Rogers out, he will only drift further left.

Rogers, a fifth-generation rancher and veterinarian who was first elected in 2021, said that he was also accused of being soft on the border, an attack line he believes Abbott chose because that issue resonates more with voters than vouchers.

If you tell a lie often enough, it becomes truth to a low-information voter, Rogers said. Unfortunately we have a lot of low-information voters. That doesnt have anything to do with their mental ability, it has to do with them keeping up. Eventually it becomes truth in their minds.

Although Republicans boast big majorities in both chambers and control the governorship, school-choice proposals were repeatedly swatted down in 2023, even after Abbott made them a top priority and called special sessions to address the issue. The latest proposal would have given around 40,000 students access to about $10,500 in vouchers for private schooling or $1,000 toward homeschooling.

Rep. Glenn Rogers, a fifth-generation rancher and veterinarian who was first elected in 2021, said that he was accused of being soft on the border, an attack line he believes Abbott chose. | Jordan Vonderhaar for The Texas Tribune

Republicans, many from rural areas, who have long been opposed to vouchers over concerns that it would jeopardize public education funding, banded with Democrats for an unlikely alliance that proved to be a thorn in Abbotts side. Those lawmakers were spooked by an estimate that the vouchers program would cost the state more than $2 billion annually by 2028.

I voted for my district and I have no regrets, said San Antonio Rep. Steve Allison, who lost his primary. What the governor did is extremely wrong. Me and the others that he came after have been with him 100 percent of the time on every issue except this one.

Abbott has major money on his side. Among the constellation of PACs and donations from wealthy political players dumping money into Texas elections this year, theres Pennsylvania billionaire Yass. A major school-choice supporter, Yass personally cut a check to Abbott for $6 million last year, which the governor called the largest single donation in Texas history.

Yass has also given to PACs backing pro-voucher candidates, like the School Freedom Fund, which is affiliated with the Club for Growth and has run multi-million-dollar TV blitzes.

DeVos PAC, the American Federation for Children Victory Fund, has pumped $4.5 million into the races nearly half of what the PAC has promised to spend nationwide this cycle. Of the 13 anti-school-choice lawmakers zeroed in on by the PAC, 10 candidates either lost their race or were forced into an upcoming runoff.

If youre a candidate or lawmaker who opposes school-choice and freedom in education youre a target, Tommy Schultz, CEO of AFC, said when the fundraising organization was created in 2023. If youre a champion for parents well be your shield.

Link:
What's breaking up the Texas Republican party? School vouchers - POLITICO

In the past few days, Donald Trump has floated the idea of remaining in office for a third term, despite the Constitutions two-term limit; sent out a social-media post touting the unified Reich that America will become when he wins; and repeatedly promoted a false new conspiracy theory that the F.B.I., when it raided Mar-a-Lago last year to recover classified documents that Trump is accused of illegally taking from the White House, had threatened to use lethal force to take him out. I nearly escaped death, he said in a fund-raising e-mail sent on Thursday morning. Bidens DOJ was authorized to shoot me! All of these outrages spurred their own news cycles of shock and disputation; Trumps claims about the Mar-a-Lago raid even prompted the normally reticent Attorney General, Merrick Garland, to respond in a statement calling them false and extremely dangerous.

In an interview released on Tuesday, Trump, who is a few weeks short of his seventy-eighth birthday, signalled that he was open to restrictions on Americans right to contraceptionan inflammatory suggestion that, a few hours later, he disavowed. I HAVE NEVER, AND WILL NEVER ADVOCATE IMPOSING RESTRICTIONS ON BIRTH CONTROL, he wrote on social media. Was Trumps gaffe the mistake of a septuagenarian who did not understand the question? Or perhaps a dog whistle to some of his far-right followers who, having won at the Supreme Court on abortion, now want the Court to strike down the 1965 ruling in Griswold v. Connecticut that first established Americans constitutional right to privacy?

Whatever the reason, its increasingly clear that Trump is having a harder and harder time articulating coherent thoughts these daysa development that is on full display in his daily rants to reporters upon entering and leaving the New York courthouse where, since April, he has been on trial on criminal charges of falsifying business records to cover up a pre-election hush-money payment to a former adult-film star. On Tuesday, Trumps defense team rested their case without calling him to the stand, despite Trump blustering for weeks that he wanted to testify on his own behalf. Here was how he explained that decision:

Yeah, because he [the judge] made rulings that make it very difficult to testify. Anything I did, anything I did in the bestthey could bring everything up then. You know what, Ive had a great past, but anything, but the other thing is, and the main reason, and I dont even mind that in fact I like talking about it because we had rigged cases. New York is out of control, and they can solve it with a good appellate.

A good appellate. Got that?

As soon as next week, the jury in the New York case may render a verdict; if Trump is found guilty, he would be the first major-party nominee in American history to carry the label of convicted felon to the polls in November.

That Republicans have made their peace with their leaders alternately reckless and incoherent big mouth is both old news and perhaps the most important news of the 2024 campaign. On Wednesday, Nikki Haley announced that she would be voting for Trump for President. Just a few months ago, Haley was the last remaining Republican holdout against Trump in the G.O.P. primaries, and, even when she bowed to the inevitable electoral math and dropped out of the race, she refused to endorse him. Her criticism of Trump on the campaign trail leaned heavily into his reckless statements, volatile behavior, and questionable psychological state. Trump, she said, was diminished, unstable, even unhinged.

Is Trump more hinged now than he was in February? Haley did not try to make that case. Instead, she reverted to what has become the Republican template for such flip-flops in this election cyclesee also: William Barr, Mitch McConnell, Chris Sununuwhich is to all but ignore Trump while insisting that Joe Biden has been such a catastrophe in the White House that it justifies voting for a man who nicknamed her Birdbrain and whose campaign once called her a wailing loser hellbent on an alternative reality. Some of the coverage insisted on pointing out that Haley, though she said she would vote for him, was still not endorsing Trumpa contortion that immediately brought to mind Bill Clintons famous response to the question of whether he had sex with an intern: it depends what the meaning of is is.

Haley made her announcement about Trump during her first public appearance since she dropped out of the race, at the Hudson Institute, the conservative think tank with which she is now affiliated. Much of the rest of her speech consisted of a hawkish critique of both Bidens and Trumps foreign policy, which she lumped together as weak and insufficiently supportive of Ukraine and Israel; she attributed this to a dangerous world view that would have America abandon our allies, appease our enemies, and focus only on the problems we have at home. (To paint Biden as just another America Firster was a new one for me, but its 2024, so nothing should surprise.) Haley placed special emphasis on the need to confront Russia, especially because Vladimir Putin himself had defined his invasion of Ukraine as the opening salvo in his war on the West.

Only a few hours later, in a sleepless 1:30 A.M. post on his social-media platform, Truth Social, Trump was bragging about his great relationship with Putin, who, he claimed, would be willing to release the imprisoned Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, an American citizen, soon after Trump wins in November. Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, will do that for me, but not for anyone else, Trump said. Haley, as far as I know, had no comment.

No comment is, in fact, one of the main Republican stratagems to relect Trump; the Partys theory of winning appears to rely on everyone except the Trump superfans tuning out, or, at least, brushing aside, the stylings of their candidate. Its baked into the cake, Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, told the Washington Post, of this weeks Trump outrages. It drives people who dont like him crazy, and people who like him dismiss it. These days, youre more likely to find Trumps words in one of Bidens campaign ads than in anything put out by his many G.O.P. cheerleaders. Trumps crazy quotes generate support for Democrats; Republicans like Haley just cringe and change the subject.

It was, of course, exactly because of this phenomenon that far too many failed to take seriously Trumps reckless incitements after he refused to accept the results of the 2020 election. Even the storming of the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob, summoned to the scene by Trump himself, could not, it seems, reverse this persistent failure. If anything, hes getting even more of a pass in this election. Little that he has said or done seems to have made any appreciable impact on an increasingly amnesiac electorate, even as the things he says or does get ever more unbelievable.

As a result, Trumps threats of revenge and retribution have become the background noise of the election yearits just more blah-blah-blah from a master of it. This, to me, is the only explanation for why there is not more discernible outrage over some remarkable findings from CREW, a good-government group in Washington, D.C., which reviewed more than thirteen thousand of Trumps Truth Social posts for a report released this week. They found that Trump had threatened to unleash the powers of the federal government on Biden twenty-five times in the past two years. Other targets against whom Trump called for vengeance included senators, judges, and members of Bidens family. IF YOU GO AFTER ME, IM COMING AFTER YOU!a blunt Trump social-media post from last year cited in the reportmight as well be the explicit slogan of his 2024 campaign. And yet Congress, even when it was under full Democratic control in the first two years of Bidens Presidency, has failed to pass measures that might insulate the Justice Department and other parts of the executive branch from efforts to politicize it during a second Trump term, such as reforming the Insurrection Act to make it harder to deploy the military on U.S. soil or passing legislation to make it more difficult for the White House to interfere in federal law-enforcement investigations. If the January 6th riot at their own Capitol was not enough to persuade lawmakers to take Trumps words literally, Im not sure anything is.

Back in February, Haley practically dripped with condescension when she complained about fellow Republican politicians who know what a disaster hes been and will continue to be but are too afraid to say so publicly. Im not afraid to say the hard truth out loud, she said. I feel no need to kiss the ring. And yet she, like all the others, did so anywayproving, once again, that, in todays Republican Party, actions speak just as loudly as even the loudest of words.

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There Is Literally Nothing Trump Can Say That Will Stop Republicans from Voting for Him - The New Yorker

The House Administration Committee advanced a pair of messaging bills Thursday along party lines that Republicans said would curb foreign interference in U.S. elections and would prevent noncitizens from voting in federal elections something federal law already forbids.

ChairmanBryan Steil argued that the legislation was necessary to restore Americans shaken faith in the validity of federal vote counts.

When Americans are more confident that our elections are secure, theyre more likely to participate, the Wisconsin Republican said. As chairman of this committee, my focus is on increasing confidence and participation in our elections.

Ranking memberJoseph D. Morelle said Americans were confident in the security of the nations elections until Republicans, led by former President Donald Trump, started making false claims about the 2020 election.

Every one of my majority colleagues understands that this narrative will aggravate the perilous infection of election denialism that is spreading in the American civic body, the New York Democrat said.

Morelle said he agreed with Steils avowed goal of increasing confidence and participation in our elections but said the bills advanced Thursday didnt accomplish either.

Introduced by GOP Rep.Chip Roy of Texas,one of the billswould require voters to prove citizenship to register, with the aim of keeping noncitizens from voting in federal elections. While that is already illegal, some jurisdictions, including Washington, D.C., allow noncitizens to vote in local elections.

Roy announced the measure, dubbed the SAVE Act, in a news conference on the Capitol steps two weeks ago alongside SpeakerMike Johnsonand other House Republicans who led efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Despite no evidence that noncitizens were voting in federal elections in any more than a handful of isolated incidents, Johnson argued it was common nonetheless. We all know, intuitively, that a lot of illegals are voting in federal elections, he said. But its not been something that is easily provable.

This bill is a solution in search of a problem, Morelle said at Thursdays markup, warning it would unintentionally disenfranchise many eligible voters, like recently married women who changed their names.

Instead, Morelle proposed an amendment in the nature of a substitute that would completely replace the text with a Democratic proposal to overhaul election administration. At the time, Morelle was the only Democrat in the room and thus was the only vote in favor of the amendment.

Introduced by Steil earlier this month,the other bill marked up Thursday would close loopholes that allow foreign nationals to get around a ban on contributing to campaigns. Steil also said it would strengthen donor privacy protections.

Morelle similarly proposed replacing the text of Steils bill with his partys own comprehensive campaign finance overhaul, to no avail.

He also proposed a separate amendment to extend Steils bill to cover foreign efforts to influence judicial nominations. While Steil voted against that amendment, which was not adopted, he expressed an interest in working with Morelle on the issue.

Thursdays Administration Committee action came amid a series of messaging moves by Republicans. On Tuesday and Wednesday, GOP Sens.Roger Marshallof Kansas andMike Leeof Utah, respectively, sought unanimous consent to discharge a bill to block D.C. from allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections and a bill similar to Roys. Democrats blocked both.

Another measure to stop noncitizens from voting in local D.C. elections passed on the House floor Thursday.

The panel had originally been slated to consider three other GOP-sponsored bills a bill that would prevent election officials from hiring noncitizens to administer elections, a bill that would prevent states that allow ballot harvesting from receiving federal election administration funds and a bill that would require state election officials to track the names and addresses of inactive voter registrants but they were pulled from the agenda just before the meeting.

Victor Feldman contributed to this report.

See original here:
Noncitizen voting bill advances as Republicans continue messaging push - Roll Call