DL Open Thread: Sunday, November 24, 2024

She can only carry out that mandate if confirmed by the Senate. We’ll see if any R Senate ‘institutionalists’ remain.  Easy prediction: Susan Collins will fold.

Trump Transition Team Funded By Secret Money.  While Trump refuses to sign transition agreement:

President-elect Donald J. Trump is keeping secret the names of the donors who are funding his transition effort, a break from tradition that could make it impossible to see what interest groups, businesses or wealthy people are helping launch his second term.

Mr. Trump has so far declined to sign an agreement with the Biden administration that imposes strict limits on that fund-raising in exchange for up to $7.2 million in federal funds earmarked for the transition. By dodging the agreement, Mr. Trump can raise unlimited amounts of money from unknown donors to pay for the staff, travel and office space involved in preparing to take over the government.

Mr. Trump is the first president-elect to sidestep the restrictions, provoking alarm among ethics experts.

I know, I know.  I’ve been trying to avoid this shit.  Of course he’s gonna shatter all ethical norms.  Time to get back to items that are surprising…

Mississippi Segregation Academies Alive And Well(-Funded):

Despite the passage of decades, most segregation academies across Mississippi remain vastly white — far more so than the counties where they operate, federal private school surveys show. Mississippi is the state with the highest percentage of Black residents.

At 15 of the 20 academies benefiting from the tax credit program, student bodies were at least 85% white as of the last federal private school survey, for the 2021-22 school year. And among the 20, enrollments at five were more than 60 percentage points whiter than their communities. Another 11 were at least 30 percentage points whiter.

The Punishment Fit The Crime:

What action did Donna Schwartz want to see taken against the former University of Delaware student who went on an “antisemitic tirade” in May, he asked.

She’d damaged flags at a campus Holocaust memorial and spewed hate. Jail time was on the table, the prosecutor said.

Schwartz, who has served as director of the Jewish campus organization since 2014, believed the young woman’s life had already been “totally destroyed.”

She’d been expelled from school and banned from campus. Her name was plastered all over the internet. The vitriol she received, and has continued to face, was just as bad as what she hurled on the afternoon of May 8.

And, the 23-year-old was having a mental breakdown at the time, according to school and medical records provided to prosecutors. Schwartz told Delaware Online/The News Journal it was also evident in a video taken of the incident. (Delaware Online/The News Journal is not naming the woman given the mental health issues she faced and the resolution of her case.)

After some discussion, Schwartz and the prosecutor agreed to a punishment that Schwartz acknowledged would make some people “very angry.” The young woman would plead guilty and receive probation before judgment.

“To me it was, ‘Is doing jail time the appropriate answer for this and would that actually make any difference?’” Schwartz said. “I feel that she’s young, she has an opportunity to learn and to understand what she did and why it was so hurtful and so, so wrong.”

“If we could be part of that,” she continued, “I felt like that was the right answer.”

I agree.

What do you want to talk about?