Learning
Jo Freeman: There’s Plenty To Do at the RNC – If You Have the Right Credentials
by Jo Freeman
Every national nominating convention has plenty of auxiliary events, some authorized, some not. Getting space can be a challenge; getting the word out even more so. But they do it nonetheless. Press were given a RNC 2024 Master Event Calendar, which was updated a few days later. Events began on Sunday and ended on Thursday. The actual convention sessions were just one item on the list. The calendar said if an event was Open or Closed to press, and also whom to contact to register. I’m going to describe some of the events, including a couple I went to, and a couple I was turned away from.
Since my focus is on women, I obviously wanted to go to those events – if I could.
The National Federation of Republican Women is the largest grassroots Republican women's organization in the country with hundreds of clubs. Founded in 1938, its members made the phone calls and knocked on the doors that elected Republican candidates for decades. It’s Tuesday luncheon featured Arkansas Governor Sarah Sanders. The Master Calendar said it was SOLD OUT and they wouldn’t let me in. I was able to get into their lounge at the Fiserv Forum Wednesday evening, where I was repeatedly asked if I was a member, and if not, would I join. “I’m press,” I said. “I can’t join anything partisan.” I then said: “What brings you here?” On hearing that, finding anyone willing to chat with me was like pulling teeth.
Moms for Liberty met in a concert hall that afternoon. I had pre-registered, and I got in. From high in a balcony seat I listened to several people talk about the evils of transgenderism. It’s webpage says WE BELIEVE Power Belongs to the People. Sound Familiar? With a focus is on parental rights, it wants to “STOP WOKE indoctrination.”
Tuesday I went to “The New Mavericks” reception co-hosted by the Black Republican Mayors Association and the Georgia Republican Party. They honored Sen. Tim Scott, four Congressmen and two Georgia delegates – all male. There was only one mayor on stage, from Aurora, IL. The chair of the Georgia Republican Party was the one white man on the stage. At that event, women served; they didn’t speak. The RNC reported that 55 delegates to the 2024 convention are Black, up from 18 in 2016.
I missed the Independent Women’s Forum toast to “Women Who Make Our Country Great” because I went to Convention Fest: The Official Delegate Experience, which was held in the streets outside the Fiserve Forum and Baird Hall as well as some space inside Baird. To get to that one you not only needed a credential of some sort, but a USSS pass (which I have).
Concerned Women for America parked its pink bus across from the Baird Center the week before the RNC. No one was home. When Convention Fest opened on Tuesday afternoon, they set up a pink tent, from which its leaders preached to whomever passed by. It calls itself “the nation’s largest public policy women’s organization” but its focus is evangelical Christian. The slogan on the side of its pink bus captures this emphasis: “She Prays, She Votes.” A prayer precedes each sermon.
GAO Reports - Disaster Recovery: School Districts in Socially Vulnerable Communities Faced Heightened Challenges After Recent Natural Disasters
Most school districts that received key federal disaster recovery grants following 2017-2019 presidentially-declared major disasters had elevated proportions of students from certain socially vulnerable groups, according to GAO's analysis of federal data. Research shows that socially vulnerable groups — including children who are low income, minorities, English learners, or living with disabilities — are particularly susceptible to the adverse effects of disasters. School districts serving high proportions of children in these groups may need more recovery assistance compared to districts with less vulnerable student populations. The Federal Emergency Management Agency's (FEMA) Public Assistance program and the Department of Education's Immediate Aid to Restart School Operations (Restart) program may provide such assistance. GAO found that 57 percent of school districts receiving these key grants for 2017-2019 disasters served a higher than average proportion of students in two or more of these socially vulnerable groups, compared to 38 percent of all school districts nationwide. more »
Jerome Powell's Testimony at His Nomination Hearing for a Second Term as Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; A Link to The Beige Book
"Congress provided by far the fastest and largest response to any postwar economic downturn. At the Federal Reserve, we used the full range of policy tools at our disposal. We moved quickly to restore vital flows of credit to households, communities, and businesses and to stabilize the financial system.
These collective policy actions, the development and availability of vaccines, and American resilience worked in concert, first to cushion the pandemic's economic blows and then to spark a historically strong recovery. Today the economy is expanding at its fastest pace in many years, and the labor market is strong." more »
Rose Madeline Mula Writes: I’ve Got A Secret – NOT!
"I always contended that if not revealing my age would actually make me younger, I would be as tight-lipped as the enigmatic Mona Lisa; but since nothing can actually erase the years, why not just accept and admit them?... Above all, almost all my friends would submit to waterboarding before revealing their age, blissfully unaware that these days that statistic is available to anyone who makes a simple Google query or two. They don’t realize that the mere fact that they don’t know that identifies them as ancient and that exactly how ancient is no longer a secret. They believe they can guard that number to the bitter end — and beyond. No exaggeration. One woman I knew made her son vow not to put her date of birth on her headstone when she died." more »
A Tisket, A Tusket: A New Study and Fossil Dental Exams Reveal How Tusks First Evolved
“Dicynodont tusks can tell us a lot about mammalian tusk evolution in general,” says Ken Angielczyk. “For instance, this study shows that reduced rates of tooth replacement and a flexible ligament attaching the tooth to the jaw are needed for true tusks to evolve. It all ladders up to giving us a better understanding of the tusks we see in mammals today.” “Tusks have evolved a number of times, which makes you wonder how — and why? We now have good data on the anatomical changes that needed to happen for dicynodonts to evolve tusks. For other groups, like warthogs or walruses, the jury is still out,” says Christian Sidor, a curator at the University of Washington Burke Museum and one of the paper’s authors.
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