Trump to defund schools unless they reopen for on-person instruction

Let's be realistic, you wouldn't have the push back on masks - there wasn't any push back on masks until Trump politicized the issue and refused to wear one along with Pence. Had Trump given a speech about the importance of wearing a mask as a patriotic thing to do, I doubt a single governor or mayor would have pushed back. And all his supporters would have followed suit. Had he even worn a mask others would have followed suit. I don't know why that's naive to think that, to me it's just obvious.

And executive orders wouldn't be tied up in courts as one to wear masks doesn't have any binding authority, it's really up to the states to implement and the Justice Department to go after states that refuse. As it's unlikely any state wouldn't conform with a Trump directive on masks, I doubt they would go to the courts.

Finally we are talking about S Dakota - a place where people are inherently social distancing because there's just a lot of distance between people. Any spike that would occur there after reopening is going to take a lot lot longer than it would in a more crowded area. You can't compare S Dakota to NYC, or even a European country.

 

you said "everyone would conform" . . . that was what is a naive statement. you can't possibly get "everyone" to do something like that--there has never yet been a law with 100% compliance ever. so we should just agree to disagree on that one.

I agree Trump's leadership on covid has been absent. But then again, we know Trump is not a "leader" per se but rather a 'purge agent' as the Politico article @RayRay10 posted put it. Those are two different things.

here again I find that a naive statement. Look at the DACA actions.

now you are making my own argument for me.

 

Yeah by "everyone would conform" I wasn't saying literally every man woman and child in the country. I think you know I am being figurative!

An EO in May for everyone to wear a mask from Trump isn't DACA. Maybe today you'd have some groups fight it, but in May before Trump became the first anti-masker, I seriously anyone would mount a legal challenge to an action in a health crisis. It's not uncommon for Localities, States, or the Federal gov't to force people to take actions in an emergency for public safety. This has stood up in courts many times whether it is curfews, forced evacuations, and even rationing. The reason there is even resistance today is because he isn't taking it seriously making people believe that Covid is a false threat.

 

I'm going to gently disagree with this statement but only because it is (again) what I consider to be a naive over-generalization. The resistance to paternalistic laws and regulations is as old as the United States. Indeed, the entire point of libertarianism as a body of philosophical thought is to limit government's power and authority of us as citizens. I have posted the link to this book before in other threads, but if you think the "reason there is even resistance today" is because "he" (meaning Trump) "isn't taking it seriously", then you simply are failing to acknowledge the very real moral, legal, and philosophical problems with government paternalism in general:

 

So what happens if half the school gets infected. Do they shut the school down for 2 weeks? What if all of the teachers get infected or maybe just 1/3 of them, who replaces the teachers that are infected? I haven't seen any plans for these types of scenarios. This is going to be an absolute disaster on our hands. The school districts are not going to be able to protect any of the students or staff because they have no funding for the protective measures that are required. I understand that students need to be in the classroom and I 100% agree with that as I am a teacher, but how in the world can we send students and teachers back to school with rising cases in our area?

 

Look, I get that may be the case with many issues such as vaccines or health insurance, but traditionally in emergencies you don't see that kind of resistance to public emergencies. Now what may be different is the timespan this involves. Unlike a riot or monster hurricane, it's not something that passes in a few days.

And in many cases of things like a hurricane, some people refuse to comply with orders to evacuate. So that might be resistance you speak of. It's interesting that it's a phenomena here in the US and not in other places.

No one likes wearing a mask. No one is doing it because they are for a gov't run state. It's a public health emergency and wearing a stupid piece of cloth over one's face will save both lives and the economy.

This isn't about power and gov't overreach as much as the gov't to use its influence to manage a public health emergency through not just regulation but by appealing to the public and setting an example. It was a mistake to politicize this as an issue because ironically it's hurting Trump's reelection bid instead of helping him. Ultimately no one can really force you to wear a mask in the public domain. But outside of public buildings, where does that come into play? It probably isn't necessary to wear a mask walking on the sidewalk.

But many private businesses - stores and such require it anyway and cities and states have broad authority to regulation business operations - it's completely within their right to require a business to enforce a mask policy - is that any more oppressive than requiring restaurants maintain a level of cleanliness and pass health inspections?

 

Add to that what if someone else in a student or teacher's immediate family gets infected. Do they have to miss school to self quarantine? How do you hold students who had to quarantine for 2 weeks accountable for the lessons they miss?

 

I wonder if other countries will change their visa laws for Americans to escape living under a ruler who puts their health at risk, promotes racial division, and hires and fires anyone who tries to investigate him for being above the law. It's like living under a corrupt, dangerous dictator.

 

https://tea.texas.gov/sites/default/files/covid/covid19-SY-20-21-Public-Health-Guidance.pdf

 

I agree with virtually everything you say here. There's a chicken and egg problem, however, over the cause of the "politicizing" of the mask issue. I think masks started out as political and Trump tried to capitalize that by jumping on the anti-mask train (which backfired of course). You (I think) are suggesting that Trump initially fired up the steam and got the anti-mask train moving to start with.

Perhaps it was both simultaneously occurring in iterative fashion.

I think that may be the only real point upon which we disagree--and it's a fairly minor side-issue in the cosmic scheme of things.

 

If that's the only thing we disagree on, that's a lot of agreement!

Whether Trump jumped on the train or was the initiator makes small difference to me. In both cases he had the opportunity to amplify it (which he did) or defeat it (which he didn't). As a president he had power here to shape the "anti-mask movement" if you will. There's no doubt he didn't want to wear a mask, didn't want to follow the advice of health experts, and even said on numerous occasions that wearing masks was a "politically correctness" issue.

Let's hope that he sees the light and reverses course, but I don't think he can in his mind. He waffles a lot, changes his mind a great deal, but rarely does he dig into something hard to fire up his base, and then take a new position. He's even meekly come out and said now that people should wear masks, but no one hears that message. The only way to get that out now is by him wearing a mask and issues an EO - two things he'd never do on this issue because his base would feel betrayed and because of his vanity.

 

I talked with someone at Rice about their preparations -- they're expecting physical classes. I'm told they've put microbial filters in all the HVAC and they are re-purposing all the non-classroom space to be classrooms so they can have smaller, more distanced classes. Then I think about HISD. Have they retrofitted their air handling systems? Have they reconfigured their classrooms? Somehow I doubt it, they don't have the money.

Got an email from the HISD superintendent. Plan comes out July 15. But she seems to be saying that there will be a choice -- you can send your kids physically to school, or do online school (don't know if there will be any hybrid). Having the option of physical school should placate Trump I suppose. But, like preparing for physical school, what have they done to prepare for online school? Have teachers been working off the clock this summer (because I know HISD doesn't have the money to pay them for the work) to devise curricula where kids actually learn something? This coming year looking to be a disaster.

 

With the right masks (600 thread count) I think they said that social distancing can be reduced to 3 feet which would allow normal class room sizing. I think they need to explore this, just provide students with washable masks they have to wear everyday.

 

I’ve seen a few solid attempts at adjusting their plan to make it suitable to return. I’ve heard from one teacher from a school that will only have one grade level a day... 9th on Monday, 10th on Tuesday, etc. they won’t hold classes on Friday.

I’ve heard of other schools splitting their students into two groups. Group 1 will go to school one week while Group 2 does remote learning. The next week they switch.

 

I know desantis is a horrible human being who should have never been elected governor, but, lets humor his argument:

Going to Home Depot: wearing a mask, staying six feet apart, buying something. Leave. You are in there, what, an hour at most (if you like tools like I do).

Children and teachers going to school: they are there, every week day, for months. Crammed into a small room where its impossible to be six feet apart. Only the teachers are wearing masks. Kids touching things, all day. Kids touching each other. All day. Kids going home to mom, dad, and grandparents.

Yea...same thing governor...

 

I actually think you can come up with a plan to do in-person schooling this year. Just not in places like Houston, Dallas, etc...

Rocksprings, TX? Sure, go for it.

 

I'd force desantis kids to go anyway. After all, the school are perfectly safe...

 

What a joke. Essentially, what the TEA has put out is that if a school has a lot of cases then they should shut that school down. Well no **** sherlock. Of course we would shut it down, but again, if we are having to shut down the school for periods of time, we might as well move to an online curriculum instead of interrupting a students education every few days.