Giuliani’s Misleading Attack on de Blasio and Crime

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani misleadingly contrasted his mayoral record on crime with a recent spike in murders under Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, citing the uptick as evidence that Democratic mayors are “a danger to their people.”

Major crimes are down under de Blasio, and while there has been a surge in murders so far this year, the annual number of murders under de Blasio has been about half as high as it was in Giuliani’s best year.

“Please remember that all the lawlessness is happening in Democrat cities run by Democrats sometimes for 40, 50 and 100 years,” Giuliani, a personal attorney for President Donald Trump, said in comments to reporters from the White House driveway on July 1. “There hasn’t been a Republican mayor there in forever, except for New York, and it was me, and I brought crime down 65%, and Bloomberg got it up to 75%. And right now, murder is up 58% under the ‘regressive’ Democrat mayor, who’s typical of Democrat mayors all over the country. They are a disaster. They’re a danger to their people.”

Giuliani is mixing two different statistics — comparing his statistics on overall “crime” with the number of murders under de Blasio’s watch. And his claim is misleading by both measures.

Crime

Giuliani’s figures on the drop in crime during his time as mayor from 1994 through 2001 are close to accurate. According to data from the New York City Police Department, major felony offenses declined by 62.3% from 1993, the year before he took office, to 2001, Giuliani’s last year in office (dropping from 430,460 to 162,064). Major crimes include the seven major felony offenses — murder/manslaughter, rape, robbery, felony assault, burglary, grand larceny and grand larceny of a motor vehicle.

Major crimes continued to decline under Giuliani’s successor, Mike Bloomberg, who won the office as a Republican. (He switched his affiliation to independent in 2007, and then re-registered as a Democrat prior to announcing his bid for president last year.)

Giuliani said “Bloomberg got it up to 75%.” Indeed, measuring again from the year before Giuliani took office, 1993, there was a 74.1% decline in major crimes to 111,335 by 2013, Bloomberg’s final year in office.

Put another way, major crimes dropped 62.3% under Giuliani and then dropped 31.3% under Bloomberg.

Not mentioned by Giuliani, however, is that major crimes continued to decline under de Blasio. The number of those seven major felonies declined to 95,593 by 2019, a 13.9% drop from the number the year before he took office. By Giuliani’s logic — measuring from the year before Giuliani took office — de Blasio “got it up to” 77.8%.

Murder

Giuliani’s claim that “murder is up 58%” under de Blasio appears to cherry-pick and inflate a recent spike.

Let’s start by looking at the longer-term trend and annual totals.

There were 335 murders (murders and non-negligent homicides) in New York City in 2013, the year before de Blasio took office, according to police data. During de Blasio’s first six years in office, the number has fluctuated, but has only once edged higher than the number he inherited. In most years, it has been lower.

In 2019, the city recorded 319 murders (up from 295 in 2018). But that’s still 4.8% fewer than the number of murders before he took office. It’s also half as many as the 649 in Giuliani’s last year in office in 2001.

“Murder started falling very quickly in the years before Giuliani took office, continued to fall sharply while he was in office, and then continued falling after he left office. His time in office did not change the trend at all,” said Patrick Sharkey, a professor of sociology and public affairs at Princeton University who created a website that tracks data on murder for large cities.

“When de Blasio took office and ended the use of stop, question, and frisk, lots of people predicted crime would rise — including Bloomberg and former Commissioner Ray Kelly,” Sharkey told us via email. “Instead, violence in NYC has fallen to the lowest levels on record under de Blasio. Based on the previous year, New York City is the safest big city in the country, and is safer than it’s been in decades.”

We wrote about some of those trends in May 2019 when Trump and his son Eric wrongly claimed that crime had risen in the city under de Blasio’s leadership.

A Change in 2020

There has been, however, an upswing in gun violence and murder in 2020.

According to police department data, there have been 166 murders in New York City in 2020 through June 21. That’s nearly 24% higher than the 134 murders over the same period last year. Over a 28-day period ending June 21, there were 34 murders, roughly 48% higher than the 23 over the same 28-day period last year.

According to the New York Times, the number of shootings in the first three weeks of June surged to 125, more than double the number over the same three-week period last year. The spike comes amid rising tensions from protests and riots after George Floyd’s death while in police custody in Minneapolis on May 25. It is a trend the Times said has been happening in other large cities around the country.

“I have been studying this for a long time. I have never seen that much of an increase ever,” Christopher Herrmann, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice who once analyzed crime statistics for the New York City Police Department, told the New York Times.

But it is still a small sample size.

“So far this year, murders and shootings are up,” Sharkey told us. “It’s usually not wise to extrapolate based on short periods of time, because it often fluctuates. That said, the trends so far this year suggest that the level of violence will be higher this year than last year.”

Andrew Karmen, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, cautioned us via email that the spike may only be temporary.

And, he said, it is going up this year during a pandemic, high unemployment “and a new wave of political activism.”

“What is Giuliani implying? That mayors and police chiefs should adopt the hard-line law and order policies that he claims worked so well in the 1990s?” Karmen said. “But these policies were discontinued in NYC, and yet crime continued to fall for several years, until the end of 2019.”

In a press conference on June 22, de Blasio talked about the need to “address a troubling trend we’ve seen in terms of shootings over the last weeks,” which he attributed in part to a typical upswing in the summer as well as complications caused by the coronavirus. De Blasio said the police department would be flooding hundreds of police officers into areas experiencing violence, and that there would be an increase in car and foot patrols.

“The bottom line here is we’re not going to allow gun violence to continue to grow in this city,” de Blasio said, adding that the city’s response would include police strategies that emphasize a partnership between police and communities. “We’re not going back to the bad old days when there was so much violence in this city. Nor are we going back to the bad old days where policing was done the wrong way.”

It remains to be seen how the rest of the year shakes out. But it is misleading for Giuliani to say “murder is up 58%” under de Blasio.

The number of murders has declined 4.8% from the year before de Blasio took office to 2019, the last full year of data. The number of murders went up 8% in 2019 from 2018, and so far it is up 24% this year through June 21 compared with the same time period last year. But the number hasn’t gone up 58%, as Giuliani claimed.

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I Was the Only Black Teacher, And I Quit My First Job After Six Months

Why would a teacher submit her resignation for her first teaching job out of college in February of that school year?

The answer is racism, mistreatment, and oppression. I was the only Black teacher in my building when I was employed by Brownsburg Community School Corporation. It was one of the worst years of my career. This is why I am not surprised that Black students have shared that they, too, have been mistreated. Those students and their parents are demanding change. I am choosing to share my story in hopes that it will also help to bring forth that change.

During my senior year at Purdue University, I was sitting in one of my last education classes working on a group project when the professor asked me to come up front to speak to her. She wanted to confirm I was from Indianapolis and had planned on returning home after graduation. After my confirmation, she told me about a job posting in Brownsburg. In particular, she received information that Brownsburg was becoming more diverse, and the school district was looking for candidates of color. I applied, was asked to interview, completed the lesson plan task, was interviewed and was offered a job. 

I was married on August 5, 2006, and started my first teaching job on August 7. Little did I know the anguish and pain that school year would bring. The first blow was having my job assignment changed. I was offered my first job by Rick Doss, who was the principal of Brownsburg East Middle School at the time. Now, he is the director of secondary education in Washington Township where my sons attend school. I was informed that I was being switched to Brownsburg West Middle School (BWMS). When I asked why I was told that I was employed by the school district and not the school. 

I decided to let it go. I still had a job. Some of my friends who had also graduated from Purdue were still not employed. I decided to count my blessings instead. The principal of BWMS at that time was Julie Pappas. I found out quickly that she was not happy to have me at her school. She wasn’t the only person who mistreated me.

When I came to school before the year started to obtain my teaching supplies and my new employee gift bag from the school secretary, she mispronounced my first name. Of course, I corrected her. She mumbled, “You people always have …” and I interjected, “Excuse me?” My guess is that the rest of that sentence was “difficult names.” For the rest of the school year, she seemed genuinely annoyed by my presence anytime I asked her for anything. All I did was tell her how to say my name correctly.

In that new teacher package was a purple Brownsburg t-shirt. I was glad to receive it because there were days you could wear jeans as a teacher as long as you were also wearing school spirit wear. The first time I wore the t-shirt, Mrs. Pappas, the principal, came to my room. I thought nothing of it. I just assumed it was an observation. She left a document on my desk. It was a written reprimand for being out of dress code. She also left a post-it note to refer me to a certain page of the staff handbook so I could see the violation. On spirit day, you were only allowed to wear jeans if your school spirit shirt had a collar; you couldn’t wear a t-shirt. That’s why I was written up. She did not come to my class to observe me at all; it was only to write me up. I had not seen her the entire day, so I still don’t know how she knew what I was wearing … but I have my suspicions. I felt defeated; I’m a rule follower, and it was an honest mistake. 

I was isolated. I was seen as only an affirmative action hire who had stolen the job from some deserving White candidate. Even if I was wronged, I was still treated as if I caused the problem. For example, there was a fire drill one day. My class was in a line outside waiting for the call to return inside. A male student walked up to me and asked me a question about my nipples.

The students, who were within earshot, were shocked. I told the student to go to the end of the line and not to speak to me like that. I wrote a referral and then was interrogated. I was asked if I did anything to make the student say this. I was asked if I heard it correctly. I was asked if I was sure the student was speaking to me. After interrogating me and interviewing students, I was finally believed.

The student did get suspended but the parents were upset about the punishment. I had ruined their child’s immaculate record. Not only did I have non-supportive administrators and colleagues, but the group of parents who disliked me was also growing as well.

Those parents were vocal. I was accused of indoctrinating their children with my beliefs. One of my crimes was having students read about why some Indigenous people do not celebrate Thanksgiving, but instead, have a day of mourning. We read the “Suppressed Speech of Wamsutta (Frank B) James, Wampanoag.” Then, we compared that speech to the Thanksgiving history with which they were most familiar. Parents complained, and I was in the principal’s office—again. 

Then, the principal would show up to my class, only to pick apart every lesson I taught. I did another project where we read different versions of Cinderella from around the world. We analyzed the cultural differences and then determined what makes a story a fairytale. Then, students had to write their own fairytale and incorporate their culture or family values. The principal told me my project was a waste of time and I was not challenging my students enough. She made it clear that she didn’t think I was a good teacher.

I also had my students read “Tears of a Tiger” by Sharon Draper. And I had more complaints. This time I was accused of promoting unsafe behavior and not having the ability to pick good novels for students to read.

A character dies after a car crash; the driver had been drinking. I picked this book because it was already purchased by the school. I thought it would be a great opportunity for students to read a novel written by a Black author. Someone before me had already purchased the novel set which is what my mentor teacher had to explain when I got push back.

However, my mentor did not support me when I chose not to use “To Kill a Mockingbird” later in the school year. We did not have assigned texts, but we did have a list of recommended books. She made it clear that the high ability English class always read that novel. She said I was depriving them of a classic and important text.

My dad, who had been a union representative for some time during my childhood at his job, suggested I reach out to the union representative for help. I agreed with my dad and decided to put my union dues to use. I feared the principal was trying to fire me. The union rep agreed that I was not being treated fairly. So she gave me a copy of a chart that showed salary comparisons between Brownsburg and other school districts and recommended that I find a different job.

I had only been married for a short time. My husband’s salary was paying for all of our expenses. My salary was a non-issue. She had been vocal about the low pay in the district, so I wasn’t surprised by her telling me that I could find a better-paying teaching job. What disappointed me most was her solution to my mistreatment was for me to leave.

My first semester was hell. I couldn’t take it anymore. Not only did I want to quit BMWS, but I also wanted to leave the teaching profession altogether. In February, I submitted my resignation and informed my principal I would not be returning. After that, she stopped calling me to her office or coming to my classroom, until I started using my PTO. After that, she requested my presence in her office one last time to tell me that it would be in my best interest to not take off any more time. 

I stopped using my PTO because I did not want to find out what that meant. I did feel bad about taking time off time because it wasn’t fair to the students, but I was tired of being mistreated. I was tired of being ignored. My team members did not speak to me unless they had to. The special education teacher would not push into my classroom even though she did with my other colleagues. I ate lunch alone in my classroom. The only people I talked to on most days were the students.

All of my students were white except for four. One female student was from the Middle East, and I also had one Black girl, one Black boy and one Latino boy. All four of those students were mistreated while I was there. They were called names and asked inappropriate questions. Only two incidents happened in my class. I addressed them immediately. Both of the students’ parents thanked me for doing something. One parent told me that other teachers ignored these issues.

I know I was the first Black teacher many of my students had. During the last month of school, I started taking down stuff on my classroom walls. I wanted to walk out of that building on the last day and never look back. The students noticed. They asked if I was leaving, and I confirmed their suspicions. Then, they asked why. I told them I had purchased a house and that my drive would be longer to Brownsburg. I told them I wanted to work closer to home. Although my drive time did increase, that was not the reason I left. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I went home almost every day and went straight to bed after cooking my husband’s dinner. I was depressed and was questioning my entire career choice. Was I cut out to be a teacher? I decided I was. I thought I should at least take another job before I threw in the towel. I decided I wouldn’t work in the suburbs again, and I haven’t since. I’m open to working in the suburbs now after completing my 14th year as an educator, but I doubt if I ever would again.

When the school year was almost over, I received the email below. I removed identifying information. 

This email reminded me that I had made a difference. I forwarded that email to myself and printed out a copy to have in my next classroom. Each year since, I have collected notes I have received from parents, colleagues and students. Although that year was hard, I know I left a mark and made an impact. My presence alone might have changed the narrative my students had about Black people. 

I am sad that there are students of color who are still being mistreated—just like the few students of color I had years ago. I know Brownsburg Community Schools have hired more Black educators now, but this district can’t hire its way out of this situation. There needs to be real change.

I share my truth today to set it free and let it go. I hope sharing my experience helps Brownsburg Community Schools to realize that how I was treated and my students of color were treated was not acceptable—and how students are still being treated is not acceptable. This school district must do better. I was there 14 years ago, and it doesn’t seem like much has changed.

Photo by BullRun, Adobe Stock-licensed.

This post originally appeared on IndyK12 as “Why This Black Teacher Quit Brownsburg Community School Corporation.”

Colorado News

The Key to Obtaining Crossbreed Schooling Right-- by Frederick Hess

This fall, in many (or most) places, schools will operate in some form of hybrid model. Students will likely attend school for portions of the week or a shortened school day, meaning that remote learning will continue to be part of the picture. That is sure to summon frustrated sighs from parents, students, and educators who emerged from this spring deeply disenchanted with remote education. Despite the valid concerns and obvious challenges, too much of the discussion about distance education has featured bland assertions that schools just need to do it “better.”

Truly doing remote learning better will require much more than platitudes about additional training and better tech; it’ll require rethinking how educators go about their work. Beyond all the practical questions about access, devices, and curricula, what matters most will be what teachers and school staff actually do with their time.

After all, teachers perform scores of tasks in the course of a typical school day. They lecture. They facilitate discussions. They grade quizzes. They fill out forms. They counsel distraught kids. When I ask teachers to list what they do in a typical day, it’s no trick at all for a group to quickly generate a list of 60 or more tasks. Recent research by Matt Kraft and Manuel Monti-Nussbaum on Providence, Rhode Island shows just how many disruptions teachers really encounter—with local teachers suffering 2,000 interruptions a year, costing nearly two weeks of class time.

No one believes that all the tasks teachers perform are equally valuable—nor that all of these tasks benefit equally from hand-on-shoulder interaction. Yet, when I work with teachers, they almost invariably report that they’ve never been part of a disciplined effort to unpack what they do each day in order to focus more energy on the things that matter most.

While always significant, the importance of distinguishing high-value from low-value work grows exponentially when we introduce remote learning, where teacher interaction with students has been slashed. It’s a mistake to spend class time doing things that can be done just as well remotely. If teachers only have limited time in classrooms—or online chats—with a student, it’s vital that the time be used wisely and for things that really benefit from face-to-face intimacy.

After all, relationships are much more important for some instructional tasks than for others. For instance, assessing a child’s grasp of math operations works pretty well as an automated task. Figuring out where a kid is stuck, though, benefits immensely from direct student-teacher interaction. And, when a student is growing frustrated with a tricky idea, in-person contact can make a huge difference.

I’ll try to be a little more concrete: Consider a middle school language arts class. There are books to read. These can be read remotely. There are quizzes to give. These can be administered and graded remotely. There are essays to write, critique, and discuss. Such work can benefit enormously from one-on-one conversation, ideally in person—but with tele-sessions a workable facsimile. There are conversations to be had and reading strategies to be taught and explored; things that lend themselves to in-class discussion. Depending on pedagogy and context, this breakdown may be all wrong. That’s fine. The key is to develop a coherent vision of what gets done where and why.

As schools try to accommodate staff who are at heightened risk from COVID-19, thoughtfully design hybrid programming, and provide students with the supports they need, this kind of deliberate unpacking can help faculty succeed—and provide students with more of what they need. It may mean designating one teacher as the homework coach tasked with supporting students while they’re at home so that in-school teachers can focus on lesson planning and in-person instruction.

By the way, given concerns about student well-being and social-emotional health, note that all this applies equally to nurses and counselors. A counselor may be hugely effective at helping a student with scheduling or CTE requirements via virtual sessions; the story is different when a student is dealing with emotional trauma. Handing paperwork and routine duties off to dedicated remote staff can allow in-school staff to offer students relationship-based support.

None of this is uniquely about the response to COVID-19. This is really just about good teaching and organizing schools to serve students—something I fear gets far too little attention. Even before the pandemic, we needed to unpack and rethink what we’re asking educators to do. Now, it’s taken on an even greater import.

Frederick Hess is director of education policy studies at AEI and an executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared on Rick Hess Straight Up.

Read more from Education Next on coronavirus and Covid-19.

Colorado News

Trump’s Baseless Attacks on Times, Post Reporting on Russia Probe

President Donald Trump has attacked reporting on the Russia investigation by the New York Times and the Washington Post as “fake news,” asserting — along with his press secretary — that the news organizations should return the Pulitzer Prizes they received in 2018 for their work.

But Trump and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany have pointed to no errors in the reporting, and a rereading of the articles shows that the work is quite solid. The reporting is heavily supported by special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and by other publicly available documents and sources.

We asked the White House what exactly was wrong with the papers’ reporting. We received no specifics, and were steered instead to McEnany’s unrelated comments criticizing the Times’ reporting on intelligence indicating Russia had offered bounties to the Taliban to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Eileen Murphy, the Times’ senior vice president for communications, said the news outlet was aware of no problems with the articles and would have no comment on Trump’s and McEnany’s remarks. The Post did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump’s criticism of the reporting is part of a larger pattern: his relentless campaign to demonize the press, dismissing its work as “fake news” and seeking to weaken its credibility, as documented in an April report by the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The Times and the Post shared the 2018 Pulitzer for national reporting. Here’s what the Pulitzer board said of why the work was honored:

Pulitzer board, April 16, 2018: For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the President-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.

At the end of her briefing on June 29, McEnany criticized the Times’ article on the bounties and a number of other Times articles. She then turned her attention to the 2018 Pulitzers.

McEnany, June 29: It is inexcusable, the failed Russia reporting of the New York Times. And I think it’s time that the New York Times, and also the Washington Post, hand back their Pulitzers.

Trump assailed the Pulitzer-winning articles on June 25 during an interview with Sean Hannity at a Fox News town hall in Green Bay, Wisconsin, describing both the Times and Post as “so dishonest.”

Trump, June 25: The Pulitzer Prize is very embarrassed; it’s lost a lot of its credibility because all these writers got Pulitzer Prizes on the “Russia, Russia, Russia,” and they were all wrong.

And he demanded that the Pulitzers be returned at a meeting with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in May.

Trump, May 7: [A]ll of those journalists that received a Pulitzer Prize should be forced to give those Pulitzer Prizes back because they were all wrong. There was no — because if you saw today, more documents came out, saying there was absolutely no collusion with Russia. It came out very loud and clear.

And they wrote for years because they tried to do a number on the presidency and this president. It happened to be me. Pulitzer Prizes should all be returned. Because you know what? They were given out falsely. It was fake news. They’re all fake news. Those Pulitzer Prizes should be given back immediately.

And the Pulitzer committee, or whoever gives the prizes, they’re a disgrace, unless they take those prizes back. Because they got Pulitzer Prizes for what turned out to be false stories.

At a coronavirus task force briefing, Trump singled out Times reporter Maggie Haberman, who contributed to a number of the Russia investigation stories, for criticism.

Trump, April 18: Maggie Haberman. You know, she won a Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of Russia, but she was wrong on Russia. So was everyone else. They should all give back their Pulitzer Prizes. … So Maggie Haberman gets a Pulitzer Prize? She’s a third-rate reporter. New York Times.

Trump first demanded that the prizes be returned in a tweet on March 29, 2019 — even before the Mueller report was released. Trump based his call for action on a summary of the report by his attorney general, William Barr. Barr’s four-page synopsis, submitted to Congress, was criticized by Mueller, who said in a letter to Barr that it “did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance” of his work.

So funny that The New York Times & The Washington Post got a Pulitzer Prize for their coverage (100% NEGATIVE and FAKE!) of Collusion with Russia – And there was No Collusion! So, they were either duped or corrupt? In any event, their prizes should be taken away by the Committee!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 29, 2019

The Trump administration’s approach to the Pulitzer-winning articles reflects its stance on the Mueller report.

Since the report “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” and did not contain “a traditional prosecution decision” on obstruction of justice, Trump has taken the position that he was exonerated and that there was no obstruction of justice on his part. But that is not what the report said, as we have reported.

No Collusion, No Obstruction, Complete and Total EXONERATION. KEEP AMERICA GREAT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 24, 2019

Here is what the report said about collusion:

The Mueller report: In sum, the investigation established multiple links between Trump Campaign officials and individuals tied to the Russian government. Those links included Russia offers of assistance to the Campaign. In some instances, the Campaign was receptive to the offer, while in other instances the Campaign officials shied away. Ultimately, the investigation did not establish that the Campaign coordinated or conspired with the Russian government in its election-interference activities.

Here is what the report said about obstruction:

The Mueller report: Our investigation found multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations, including the Russian-interference and obstruction investigations. The incidents were often carried out through one-on-one meetings in which the President sought to use his official power outside of usual channels. These actions ranged from efforts to remove the Special Counsel and to reverse the effect of the Attorney General’s recusal; to the attempted use of official power to limit the scope of the investigation; to direct and indirect contacts with witnesses with the potential to influence their testimony.

As for exoneration, the report says explicitly, “Accordingly, while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.”

Mueller wrote: “[I]f we had confidence after a thorough investigation of the facts that the President clearly did not commit obstruction of justice, we would so state. Based on the facts and the applicable legal standards, we are unable to reach that judgment.”

A Review of the Pulitzer-Winning Stories

The joint Pulitzer for the Times and Post was for 20 articles, 10 from each of the papers.

Reading them several years after they were published, it is clear that they hold up well.

For example, early in 2017, the Post ran an article that began:

Washington Post, Feb. 9, 2017: National security adviser Michael Flynn privately discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States during the month before President Trump took office, contrary to public assertions by Trump officials, current and former U.S. officials said.

Flynn’s communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak were interpreted by some senior U.S. officials as an inappropriate and potentially illegal signal to the Kremlin that it could expect a reprieve from sanctions that were being imposed by the Obama administration in late December to punish Russia for its alleged interference in the 2016 election.

Transcripts released in May confirmed the story. The fact that Flynn publicly lied about his contacts with Kislyak put him at risk of being blackmailed. That’s what led to his firing and his legal problems.

On May 23, 2017, the Post reported that Trump in March of that year had asked two of the nation’s top intelligence officials, Daniel Coats, then-director of national intelligence, and Michael S. Rogers, then-director of the National Security Agency, to deny the existence of any evidence of collusion during the 2016 election. Both declined to do so.

The story was confirmed in the Mueller report.

On June 15, 2017, the Post reported that Mueller’s investigation was focusing on whether Trump tried to obstruct justice in the Russia investigation. That certainly turned out to be the case.

On May 16, 2017, the Times ran a story that began:

New York Times, May 16: President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The Mueller report said “substantial evidence corroborates Comey’s account.”

On May 20, 2017, the Times reported that Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office that firing Comey had relieved “great pressure” on him. “I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” the Times quoted Trump as saying, quoting from a memo that it said was the official account of the meeting. The Mueller report also included evidence to corroborate that account, noting that the White House did not dispute that description of the meeting.

On Sept. 7, 2017, the Times ran a piece headlined “The Fake Americans Russia Created to Influence the Election.” The article began by focusing on DCLeaks, a website that had recently gone live, posting material stolen from prominent Americans by Russian hackers. The article revealed Russian efforts on social media to hurt the chances of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

This Russian meddling was extensively chronicled in the Mueller report, which we covered in our story “Kushner Distorts Scope of Russia Interference.”

As we mentioned above, Trump singled out Times reporter Maggie Haberman for criticism. Haberman was a coauthor of two of the Times’ pieces in the Pulitzer package and a contributor to two others. All of the stories have been confirmed or substantially corroborated.

For example, Haberman was a coauthor of the article cited above about Trump telling Russian officials that removing Comey had relieved “great pressure” on him. She also was a coauthor of an article that began, “Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.”

Trump Jr. posted the emails on Twitter. They said exactly what Haberman had reported.

We encourage readers to review all of the award-winning stories on the Pulitzer website. The White House has made no specific challenges to the stories, and a review of them shows that they hold up well.

Editor’s note: Rieder is a former media columnist for USA Today and, previously, the longtime editor and senior vice president of American Journalism Review.

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Trump’s False Armed force Devices Claim

President Donald Trump has falsely claimed his administration invested “$2.5 trillion in all of the greatest equipment in the world” for the military. That’s approximately the total for defense budgets from 2017 to 2020, but the cost of purchasing new military equipment was 20% of that.

It’s true the Defense Department budgets passed under Trump — which total $2.9 trillion, in inflation-adjusted dollars, actually — have been larger than they were in the latter years of his predecessor. In the last four years under then-President Barack Obama, the defense budgets, in inflation-adjusted dollars, totaled $2.7 trillion, but the budgets in Obama’s first four years were nearly $3.3 trillion.

Those are the budget authority figures — the amounts Congress appropriated — from the Defense Department comptroller’s budget report released this year. (Note: The fiscal 2009 defense budget was signed by then-President George W. Bush four months before Obama took office. The fiscal 2017 budget, which began on Oct. 1, 2016, when Obama was still in office, was signed by Trump.)

So, in context, the amount Trump is touting isn’t all that unusual.

On occasion, Trump has emphasized the “trillion,” as he did in a speech at West Point on June 13: “[W]e have invested over 2 trillion — trillion; that’s with a ‘T’ — dollars in the most powerful fighting force, by far, on the planet Earth.” On May 22, he falsely claimed military funding “used to be ‘million.’ And then, about 10 years ago, you started hearing ‘billion.’ And now you’re starting to hear ‘trillion,’ right?”

That’s wrong. The defense budget has been in the billions each year dating back to 1948 (as far as the Defense Department tables go). And those yearly budgets are still in the billions. As we said, Trump gets to “trillion” by adding together several years.

The president repeatedly has claimed all of the budget money was spent on equipment, such as ships, fighter jets, tanks and weapons. He made that assertion on June 25 when speaking at a shipbuilding company in Wisconsin.

“We’ve totally rebuilt the military — $2.5 trillion,” Trump said, going on to talk about a contract awarded to that shipbuilding company, Fincantieri Marinette Marine, “to build the next generation of guided missile frigates for the United States Navy.”

Trump then mentioned missiles, rockets and tanks, saying: “What we had were great people in the military, but they weren’t given the right equipment, so now they are. Two and a half trillion dollars. … We’ve invested the $2.5 trillion in all of the greatest equipment in the world, and it’s all made here, right in the USA.”

Procurement — as in buying equipment — made up 20.3% of those 2017-2020 defense budgets, or $590.7 billion. (That’s in constant — inflation-adjusted — 2021 dollars, per the Defense Department report.)

The president has made some version of this claim at least 16 times, according to the Washington Post Fact Checker’s database of Trump’s claims.

At times, he mentions the figure for the defense budgets without stipulating what specifically the money bought. “I’ve rebuilt our military. I spent two and a half trillion dollars. Nobody else did,” he told Fox News on June 11. (As we explained, Obama did indeed approve budgets totaling more than that.)

But other times, he has made the false claim about all of the funding going for equipment, or “new planes, ships, submarines, tanks, missiles, rockets — anything you can think of.”

Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told us when Trump has claimed $2-plus trillion was spent on military equipment, that’s “absolutely untrue.”

“What we spend on military equipment is a fraction of the defense budget,” Harrison said.

If we wanted to be generous, Harrison said, we could include the defense budget’s “research, development, test, and evaluation” category, which pays for the development of technology, as part of military equipment. That category plus procurement would total 33.5% of the last four defense budgets.

The largest defense budget category is operation and maintenance, which made up 40.2% of the 2017-2020 budgets, followed by military personnel, which was 22.6% of those budgets.

But when the president hasn’t been as specific, his $2.5 trillion claim could be interpreted to refer to what the U.S. spends in total on defense, and “that’s about right,” Harrison said.

“No president can claim credit or get the blame for military spending all on their own,” he added, noting that Congress passes appropriation bills that the president then signs into law. “Congress has just as much of a role in military spending.”

The budget authority figures we have cited are those amounts appropriated by Congress. To see what the federal government actually spends, we would look at outlays. But even those total about $2.7 trillion for 2017 to 2020, using the inflation-adjusted numbers. As the Defense Department explains, money that’s obligated in one year could be spent in another, or over several years.

We contacted the White House about the president’s claim but didn’t get a response.

Comparing Inflation-Adjusted Budgets

As we said, the budgets signed by Trump (including the fiscal 2017 budget), include an increase in defense spending from Obama’s second term.

The Defense Department report shows the 2017-2020 budgets are 9.3% larger than the 2013-2016 budgets. But the defense budgets signed by Trump are 10.8% lower than the 2009-2012 budgets, in inflation-adjusted dollars. (Again, the 2009 fiscal year defense budget was signed by Bush in September 2008.)

Obama’s second-term budgets were subject to spending caps under the Budget Control Act of 2011, an effort to lower federal deficits. Beginning in fiscal 2013, Congress has raised those caps every year, according to a Congressional Research Service report, and there have been much larger cap increases in the last three defense budgets signed by Trump.

In looking solely at procurement, the budgets for 2017-2020 are 24.8% larger than those in 2013-2016 but 5.8% lower than the 2009-2012 budgets, in inflation-adjusted figures.

We previously wrote about Trump’s false claims that the defense budgets he signed showed “record” levels of spending. When adjusted for inflation, the defense budgets for fiscal 2007 through 2012 were all larger than the budgets signed by Trump, according to the Defense Department figures.

 

Editor’s note: FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through our “Donate” page. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, 202 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104.

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Specs

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• CE 0194
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We Don’t Recognize America’s Independence Day Over Here in Wakanda

“Independence Day” is upon us. But Black fam’, before we get geeked to partake in such traditions as backyard barbecues and celebratory fireworks commemorating a freedom that didn’t include us—because our ancestors were still enslaved in 1776—I want y’all to remember that we’re real woke now and, as a result, we don’t acknowledge America’s independence day over here in Wakanda.

And if I catch any Black people on social media talking about “Happy Independence Day” on July 4, I’ll have to channel my inner old school Black grandmother spirit and get the proverbial “switch”—which means I’m going to shade you until you feel shame and rethink your actions.

We gotta have a switch ready for any Black person caught out here celebrating America's #independenceday2020 because if history, recent events and #JUNETEENTH2020 ain't taught y'all nothin' then…

— PeeplesVoice (@PeeplesChoice85) June 29, 2020

First of all, what did we learn from Juneteenth? We learned that it certainly wasn’t taught in schools because many of us—including myself—didn’t learn about it until we were adults. 

Happy Juneteenth Y’all!

P.S. Wasn’t taught about Juneteenth in school, but was taught Robert E. Lee was a sort of tragic hero.

— William Jackson Harper (@dubjackharper) June 19, 2018

And if you’re like me you’ll understand that even though slavery was so-called abolished in 1865 (two years after Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation), in 2020 we’re still fighting for our freedom and against oppression and racism.

#JUNETEENTH2020 Let's not forget that America wrote us a check that bounced…a field of dreams with unfulfilled promises. Over 100 years later, we're still fighting for our freedom.

— PeeplesVoice (@PeeplesChoice85) June 17, 2020

But let’s stay here for a second.

In this week’s episode of Howard’s University—a virtual lecture hall type conversation moderated by my homie, Dr. Charles Cole, with teachings from one of my mentors and favorite activists, Dr. Howard Fuller—Dr. Fuller said something to the extent of, at the time of emancipation, Black people thought freedom would come through education.

Howard's University: Reexamining the Civil Rights Movement with @ccoleiii https://t.co/P9vh7D3xOS

— Howard Fuller (@HowardLFuller) June 30, 2020

I think that’s a reasonable expectation, especially considering the fact that enslaved Africans, our ancestors, lost their lives when they were caught or thought to be trying to educate themselves. Obviously it was an empowerment tool that White people didn’t want us to have. 

Fast-forward to today and both remain true. There’s freedom in a quality and anti-racist education but it’s clearly something America still wants to deny Black people. And until we can experience that true liberation in learning and other areas, we are not completely free and should not be indulging in Independence Day festivities.

Now, if we’re on the same page so far and you value equity, equality and access to a quality education but you’re still not convinced that you shouldn’t be celebrating Independence Day, take these things into consideration.

Remember how black codes and Jim Crow allowed the continued use of discriminatory practices that prohibited Black people from intermixing with Whites, particularly in schools? These practices were ruled unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment and Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling but yet, they’ve gone underground and are still effective in perpetuating racism and oppression through segregation today.

Black people still don’t have the freedom to attend schools we want because redlining and school zoning prohibits access—trapping our kids in failing schools where the tax dollars from low-income communities can’t pay for the resources they really need. And the government comes up with every excuse as to why funding formulas and policies to promote equity can’t be reformed.  

And ok, if America is still segregationist in attitude but a proponent for freedom then we’d think it would be abolitionist and revolutionary in teaching Black people in the public school system so we can be adequately armed to fight for our independence, right? Because as Sharif El-Mekki says, “While there are many ways to fight racism, a thorough education is a must.” 

"While there are many ways to fight racism, a thorough education is a must." @selmekki #EducationalJustice #Racism #BlackLivesMatter https://t.co/izUGlN9RNe

— Education Post (@edu_post) July 1, 2020

Well if we led with that thought, many of us would have known about Juneteenth in our elementary years. So we can’t add that to the list of freedoms.

But at the very least, America would be more intentional in implementing culturally competent, diverse curricula and facilitate more conversations in schools that promoted understanding, equality and unity amongst the masses. Well clearly this isn’t happening because with years of racially charged attacks, Nahliah Webber is adamant that schools have to change the way it teaches White kids so that they won’t grow up to continue a tradition of brutalizing Black bodies. 

And if you know me, you know I’m hitting the school-to-prison pipeline. Because if America wanted freedom for Black students, it wouldn’t prioritize feeding the prisons over their minds and forcing them into involuntary servitude—which is still upheld by the 13th Amendment.

Prisoners are allowed to make bellow the minimum wage because of loophole in the 13th Amendment. https://t.co/sajgjGwZBJ

— USA TODAY Politics (@usatodayDC) July 1, 2020

As Chris Stewart said back in 2017, “They need us to stay put on their academic plantation so they can harvest us for our per pupil revenue. Black students are the new cotton.”

They need us to stay put on their academic plantation so they can harvest for our per pupil revenue. Black students are the new cotton.

— Citizen Stewart (@citizenstewart) July 25, 2017

I’d add that in imprisoning Black people for cheap labor, they just found a new way for us to pick cotton all over again.

After taking all of this in, ask yourself, “Am I really free? Is this my Independence Day?” And even if your answer is “yes” because maybe you were fortunate enough to be able to dodge some of the hardships, consider the fact that as a Black person, you can walk out of your door or be in your home and suffer the same fate as Emmet Till, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Elijah McClain and ask again—I bet your answer changes.

So instead of using your time to plan out fourth of July activities, use it to come up with ways to disrupt these systems that are holding our independence hostage. Because we ain’t completely free yet and this isn’t our independence day.

By: Tanesha Peeples
Title: We Don’t Recognize America’s Independence Day Over Here in Wakanda
Sourced From: educationpost.org/we-dont-recognize-americas-independence-day-over-here-in-wakanda/
Published Date: Thu, 02 Jul 2020 21:14:39 +0000

David Brooks, Please Don’t Give Up on Education – by Michael J. Petrilli

New York Times columnist David Brooks

David Brooks has long been a stalwart supporter of education reform, both the choice-and-charters flavor and the testing-and-accountability variety. So it was a real downer to read his recent column declaring that, when it comes to Black America, “Better education is not leading to equality.”

What he should have said is that “more education is not leading to equality,” because Brooks slipped into the tempting trap of confusing educational attainment with academic achievement.

Here’s the heart of his column:

We Americans believe in education. We tend to assume that if you help a young person get a good education and the right skills, then she’ll be able to make her way in American society. Opportunity will be bountiful. Social harmony will reign.

This formula has not worked for many African Americans.

Over generations, great gains have been made in improving Black students’ education. In 1968, just 54 percent of young Black adults had a high school diploma. Today, 92 percent do. In 1968, about 9 percent of young African American adults had completed college. Today, roughly 23 percent have.

And yet these gains have not led to the kind of progress that those of us who preach the gospel of the American dream would have predicted and that all young people are entitled to.

The median income for a White head of household with a college degree is $106,600. The median income for a comparable Black college graduate is only $82,300. As my colleagues on the editorial page noted in 2017, Black college graduates earned about 21 percent less per hour than White college graduates. Over all, Black families earn $57.30 for every $100 White families earn. These pay gaps have been widening since 1979, not shrinking.

I don’t dispute his facts, nor his depressing assertions that the wealth gaps between college-educated white and black adults are big and getting bigger. On top of that, a recent Fordham Institute study by John Winters at Iowa State found that the “college earnings premium” for African Americans is significantly smaller than for whites nationwide and in every state with a substantial black population.

So, yes, Brooks is right that “Better schooling is essential to creating a fair and equal America. But it is not nearly enough.”

But “better schooling” should not be defined by degrees earned. It’s achievement, not just attainment, that matters—what one learns, not just the diplomas on one’s wall.

That’s the essential takeaway from twenty-five years of research showing that:

1. The black-white college wage gap diminishes after controlling for differences in academic skills.
2. Black adults with moderate levels of academic achievement are more likely to go to and through college than similarly achieving whites.
3. Higher cognitive performance is associated with higher earnings for all groups, but especially for African Americans (and Hispanics).

Let’s unpack all this.

Almost a quarter-century ago, Derek Neal and William Johnson published a landmark—if controversial—paper looking at the black-white college earnings gap. Controlling for scores on a basic skills test given at the end of high schools, the scholars found, “greatly reduces the measured white-black wage gap for young adults,” which suggests “that the black-white wage gap primarily reflects a black-white skill gap that exists before young men and women enter the labor market.”

The paper was controversial because it implied that college-educated African Americans were not, in fact, facing much discrimination in the labor market. But as Kevin Lang and Michael Manove argued ten years later, that was an incorrect interpretation. What Neal’s and Johnson’s findings really pointed to was a strategy on the part of Black people to overcome employment discrimination. Because employers were less likely to hire Black applicants with minimal education, more of them sought and earned higher education credentials, including four-year degrees, than one would expect given their academic skills coming out of high school. As a result, the typical college-educated African American had lower academic skills than the typical college-educated White worker—which explains much of the earnings gap. But it doesn’t disprove employment discrimination.

I stumbled across this finding a few years ago when I noticed that the percentage of black students graduating from college was higher than the percentage prepared for college, according to National Assessment data for twelfth graders. In other words, attainment for African Americans has been outstripping achievement, at least at the “college ready” level.

Which brings us back to the big question for K–12 education: If schools improve, boosting the academic achievement of black students, does that increase their earnings as adults? If we could make more progress narrowing the achievement gap before students leave high school, especially among those going to college, could we narrow the wage gap as well?

A 2016 paper from University of Virginia scholars Dajun Lin, Randall Lutter, and Christopher J. Ruhm indicates that the answer is yes. Like the classic Neal and Johnson paper, it finds that wages are related to academic skills, as measured at the end of high school—and not just for early career workers, but over the course of a lifetime. Even more importantly, it also finds that African Americans (and Hispanics) see a greater return to cognitive skills than Whites do.

And a 2015 study by David Deming, Sarah Cohodes, Jennifer Jennings, and Christopher Jencks finds that accountability policies in Texas boosted the percentage of “at-risk” students from high-poverty, low-performing schools who passed the state’s high-stakes exam, and that more of these students went on to graduate from college and earn higher wages as adults.

None of these studies imply that education alone will end discrimination or bring about racial equality in America. Differences in academic skills explain only part of the differences in earnings. Nor do they mean that attaining college degrees is not important. The best results generally come from a combination of higher achievement and higher attainment.

Taken as a whole, however, the research literature demonstrates that looking at attainment alone—and at college earnings gaps unadjusted for academic achievement gaps—can lead to mistaken conclusions.

So to David Brooks I say: More education might not lead to greater equity, but better education almost certainly will.

Mike Petrilli is president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, and executive editor of Education Next.

This post originally appeared in Flypaper.

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