Black History Month: We can overcome and we must resist! - Lily's Blackboard

Black History Month: We can overcome and we must resist! - Lily's Blackboard:

Black History Month: We can overcome and we must resist!

 “Dr. King, President Lincoln, and other shapers of our American story proudly watch over our National Mall. … They spoke and marched and toiled and bled shoulder-to-shoulder with ordinary people who burned with the same hope for a brighter day.  That legacy is shared; that spirit is American. … So let us honor those who came before by striving toward their example, and let us follow in their footsteps toward the better future that is ours to claim.” ­–2013 National African American History Month  Presidential Proclamation by Barack Obama 

At a moment when our nation’s values are being challenged, when our president scapegoats immigrants and anyone he deems as “other,” and when our American spirit is being put to the test, Black History Month and President Obama’s words from four years ago remind us: We can endure, we can overcome and we must resist.

It’s important to recount the stories of the many African Americans who made sacrifices and endangered their lives and families to push an often-unwilling nation forward. And while February is the month for officially doing so, we can and should remember their struggles, triumphs and achievements all year long.  

Here are some resources to help you bring Black History Month to life in your schools and communities.  

NEA Black History Month Lessons and Resources: A selection of lesson plans that cover a variety of subjects, adaptable to fit all grade levels.

Teaching about the Selma to Montgomery Marches: March 2017 marks the 52nd anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery Marches, and these lesson and resources help students learn about the sacrifices and achievements of the many people involved.

Read Across America in February: This NEA site features a selection of books perfect for exploring Black History Month through thought-provoking and entertaining books for students of all ages. The featured book for this month is Freedom in Congo Square, which describes the lives of slaves who worked sunup to sundown, but gathered in New Orleans’ Congo Square to share music on Sunday afternoons.

Smithsonian Education: Educators can find on this site links to the Smithsonian Institution’s vast educational resources for Black History Month, including those at the brand new National Museum of African American History and Culture.

History Channel.com: This site features a brief history of Black History Month (or National African American History Month), short video clips about such historical figures as Harriet Tubman, Carter G. Woodson, Jackie Robinson and many others, as well as clips on the Harlem Renaissance, African Americans in the military and much more. It also includes snippets of speeches by and interviews with a variety of leaders, such as the late Barbara Jordan, the Texas Congresswoman who in 1976 became the first black woman to be a keynote speaker at a Democratic National Convention, Ralph Ellison, author of the classic book Invisible Man, and Muhammad Ali, interviewed about sports and politics.

PBS.org: On this site, the Public Broadcasting Service has pulled together resources and lesson plans covering topics ranging from civil rights anniversaries to discussions about race in the present day.

ScienceNetLinks: This K-12 science education site sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Science Black History Month: We can overcome and we must resist! - Lily's Blackboard:

Detroit Free Press Editorial Board: U.S. Senate must reject DeVos appointment

U.S. Senate must reject DeVos appointment:

U.S. Senate must reject DeVos appointment

Make no mistake: A vote to confirm Betsy DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education is a vote to end public education in this country as we know it.

This isn't conspiracy theory, or ideologically driven slander. Look at DeVos' own words and actions, over her long career advocating against traditional public schools; her funding of an ideologically driven pro-charter lobby; her willingness to spend whatever it takes to ensure her policy preferences become law.

DeVos is unqualified in every respect to serve as head of this critical department, and the U.S. Senate must vote Tuesday to reject her nomination.

West Michigan billionaire DeVos hasn't worked in public education, public administration, or even in mainstream education reform. She's demonstrated a refusal to value outcomes over ideology. But she's contributed millions to the Republican Party and Republican candidates, to the pro-school-choice lobby she essentially founded, and to like-minded candidates whose careers she has financed.

All at the expense of public school students, mostly black, mostly in Detroit -- children a world away from the Grand Rapids area where the DeVos family makes its home.

But nor has she spent her considerable wealth and influence advocating for better schools outside of Detroit; report after report shows Michigan schools are falling dangerously behind, that serious investment and course correction are required to stop this slow slide to the bottom.

DeVos has called traditional public schools a "dead end," a government "monopoly." Husband Dick DeVos said the couple bemoans the role public schools have played at the heart of American communities -- replacing, they believe, the church as the central institution of American life. She has advanced or lobbied for programs that draw taxpayer dollars from those schools, always to those schools' great detriment, to fund unregulated charter schools or to provide public-money vouchers for private education.

There's nothing inherently destructive about charter schools. Properly managed charters can be a viable alternative for parents with few options. But that's not the kind of charter school DeVos has championed -- and nor can an education secretary's educational advocacy be so one-sided. In Michigan, charter schools can be run by for-profit operators. Charter schools can siphon public money for decades, taking taxpayer dollars without making good on the promise of better results.

►Related: Betsy DeVos and the twilight of public education
►Related: DeVos family showers GOP with contributions after DPS vote

DeVos' defenders are quick to claim Detroit, where charter schools have proliferated at a record pace, as a victory for her pro-school-choice ideology. They're wrong. A Michigan State Reform Office plan to close failing schools may be stymied, in Detroit, by a dearth of high-quality educational options citywide. Look no further than a map of Detroit schools ranked by academic outcomes -- the same neighborhoods served by failing traditional public schools are also home to failing charters. The problem is not insufficient choice. It's an obstinate refusal on the part of DeVos and her lobby of ideologically driven reformers to acknowledge that school choice is meaningless if all choices are bad.

MAP: Possible Detroit school closures by Detroit Free Press on Scribd

Last summer, DeVos and members of her family spent more than $1.45 million over seven weeks to reward Republican lawmakers for stripping an education commission -- a body that would coordinate school openings and closings in Detroit, ensuring that quality schools aren't geographically clustered, and ride herd on quality for all publicly funded schools, ensuring Detroit's kids aren't forced to choose between bad and worse -- from Detroit school reform legislation. It was a naked display of influence. But that's something that's long since ceased to trouble DeVos.

►Related: This map shows how few choices parents have if Detroit schools close
►Related: Michigan names 38 schools that could close over academics

“My family is the biggest contributor of soft money to the Republican National Committee,” DeVos wrote in 1997, in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call. “I have decided to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence. Now I simply concede the point. They are right. We do expect something in return. We expect to foster a conservative governing philosophy consisting of limited government and respect for traditional American virtues. We expect a return on our investment."

Michigan Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Gary Peters, both Democrats, have said they won't vote for DeVos.

For members of the Senate to vote against DeVos' confirmation as U.S. Secretary of Education would be an act of courage -- billionaire DeVos may be the only cabinet nominee in recent history with both a penchant for buying legislative seats and the means to fund an ballot-box challenge to her elected foes.

But that's just another in the long list of reasons why DeVos is wrong for the job. Traditional conflict of interest restrictions don't apply; DeVos is unlikely to profit from high office, but her ability to hand-pick a sympathetic legislative branch is unprecedented.

In short: This is a really bad idea.

We hope the U.S. Senate will see that.U.S. Senate must reject DeVos appointment:

Schools Matter: Betsy DeVos, Serial Plagiarizer

Schools Matter: Betsy DeVos, Serial Plagiarizer:
Betsy DeVos, Serial Plagiarizer

In one instance she lifted from ALEC, which is entirely fitting, since ALEC will now be writing Rules and Regs at ED.  

Below is a clip from Dr. Roxani Marachi's blog:

. . . .Senator Murray asks,

“If you claim to support accountability and transparency, why do the model voucher policies from the American Federation for Children that you chaired fail to require students in private schools receiving vouchers to take the same assessments and report the same data as those in public schools?”

DeVos answers:

“The model voucher policies include strong accountability provisions. I’ve included the language below for your review:
(C) Academic Accountability Standards. There must be sufficient information about the academic impact Parental Choice Scholarships have on participating students in order to allow parents and taxpayers to measure the achievements of the program, and therefore:
(1) participating schools shall:(a) annually administer either the state achievement tests or nationally norm-referenced tests that measure learning gains in math and language arts, and provide for value-added assessment, to all participating students in grades that require testing under the state’s accountability testing laws for public schools;(b) provide the parents of each student with a copy of the results of the tests on an annual basis, beginning with the first year of testing;(c) provide the test results to the state or an organization chosen by the state on an annual basis, beginning with the first year of testing;(d) report student information that would allow the state to aggregate data by grade 

Schools Matter: Betsy DeVos, Serial Plagiarizer:

Failed common core SBAC/SAT tests punish students by Wendy Lecker - Wait What?

Failed common core SBAC/SAT tests punish students by Wendy Lecker - Wait What?:

Failed common core SBAC/SAT tests punish students by Wendy Lecker

In a weekend commentary piece in the Stamford Advocate entitled, Failed common core tests punish students, education advocate Wendy Lecker writes,

Across the country, states are re-examining their embrace of the hastily implemented common core tests. Membership in the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) has dwindled from 31 to 14 states. West Virginia is the latest state to consider dropping the test for all grades.

Last year, Connecticut convened a committee to review Connecticut’s standardized tests, the SBAC and SAT. However, the committee’s final report ignored serious validity problems and concluded Connecticut should plow ahead with these expensive and questionable standardized tests.

Connecticut’s teachers’ unions, CEA and AFT, dissented from this report, because these committee members did their homework. Their enlightening minority report is based on an examination of the evidence on the SBAC, as well as surveys of teachers, administrators, parents and students conducted across Connecticut.

The minority report highlights the evidence ignored by the Mastery Committee. It notes that experts across the country admit that computer adaptive tests such as the SBAC are “in their infancy” and their validity cannot yet be established. Compounding the validity problems is the inconsistency in computer skills among different populations in Connecticut, with poor kids at a particular disadvantage; and the inconsistency in devices used. Shockingly, the minority report emphasizes Connecticut has not proven alignment between the SBAC and our state standards. There is also no evidence that the SBAC is valid to measure student “growth.”

Administrators overwhelmingly agree that the SBAC is not user-friendly Failed common core SBAC/SAT tests punish students by Wendy Lecker - Wait What?:

Foundations aren’t helping anyone if they’re not serious about social justice - The Hechinger Report

Foundations aren’t helping anyone if they’re not serious about social justice - The Hechinger Report:

Foundations aren’t helping anyone if they’re not serious about social justice
Philanthropy needs to become more diverse and fund fight for political change

The National Interest: Once a month, this column is tackling broader questions about what the country should do about gaps in achievement and opportunity, especially for boys of color, in a partnership with The Root.

There are wealthy, white philanthropists in every city saying they want to change urban education, but few are able to save their own organizations from whiteness. That’s because few funders are serious about social justice. And taking their money erodes the seriousness of those who take it.

What makes an organization serious about social justice? Show me the board members, executive staff and the grant recipients. They better look like the public school students they allegedly serve.

This story also appeared in The Root

Funders are not the experts – communities are. Nonprofits that take money from wealthy donors who aren’t serious about taking on the values of the communities they fund are a major reason why the rich continue to hold on to more power than they deserve while urban schools stay in reform mode.

Related: School choice shouldn’t take away our neighborhood schools

“Funding practices that get in the way of infrastructure-building for social change need to be confronted,” the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP) says in its new “ten-year strategic framework.” Translation: black and brown people must resist people who give money to our causes but aren’t really down for our struggle. But let’s not be quick to label people sell-outs. The problem is less about who takes money as much as it is about who gives. The NCRP framework is meant to guide philanthropic organizations in how to Foundations aren’t helping anyone if they’re not serious about social justice - The Hechinger Report:

School board member or ... killer? Hard to tell - LA Times

School board member or ... killer? Hard to tell - LA Times:

School board member or ... killer? Hard to tell

Are you a Westsider who has recently had the strange and discomfiting feeling that your local school board representative, Steve Zimmer, just might be a cold-blooded killer? Did you start to get the feeling one day recently, soon after you reached into your mailbox?

A campaign mailer targeting the Los Angeles Board of Education president may be responsible for that disturbing association, whether you fully realize it or not. It is based directly on the advertising for the widely watched Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer.”

 Netflix promotions for the show feature a split image of a face that looks like a photograph torn in half. The left half of the face, in black and white, is that of a little boy; the right, that boy grown up, bearded and accused of murder.

The mailer does much the same thing with Zimmer’s face, one side black and white, clean cut; the other, in blurry color, his eye shaded and sunken.

Zimmer is running for reelection in the March 7 municipal primary against Nick Melvoin, Allison Holdorff Polhill and Gregory Martayan. The mailer is the product of political consultant John Shallman, on behalf of a political action committee that took the name “LA Students for Change.

Three of seven board seats are on the ballot in an election that could tip the balance between allies of the teachers union and allies of charter schools. 

Zimmer’s well funded opposition, including former Mayor Richard Riordan and the political arm of the California Charter Schools Assn., appear more concerned about that balance of power than with the purported transgressions listed in the mailer. 

But to win over voters, the misleading mailer, like another one on the same topic, blames Zimmer for the school system’s notorious iPads-for-all experiment, which the school School board member or ... killer? Hard to tell - LA Times:

Pence plans to use tie-breaking vote to confirm Betsy DeVos for education post | US news | The Guardian

Pence plans to use tie-breaking vote to confirm Betsy DeVos for education post | US news | The Guardian:
Pence plans to use tie-breaking vote to confirm Betsy DeVos for education post
The vice-president blamed the first-ever tie for a cabinet nominee on ‘obstruction by Democrats’ despite two Republican defections causing the situation

 Vice-president Mike Pence said on Sunday he expects that the billionaire Republican donor Betsy DeVos will be confirmed as education secretary with his tie-breaking vote.

Pence blamed the tie on DeVos in the Senate – the first-ever on a cabinet nominee – on “obstruction by the Democrats”, despite the fact that two Republican defections have caused it.

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Pence said the Trump White House was “very confident that Betsy DeVos is going to be the secretary of education”.

He added: “It would be my high honor to cast the deciding tie-breaking vote on the floor of the Senate next week.”

Two Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said they will vote against DeVos, citing concerns from parents and teachers.

DeVos has also faced fierce criticism from labor unions for her promotion of school choice and regarding the spending of public money on private schools. Democrats and teachers’ organizations accuse her of seeking to dismantle public education.

Her appearance before the Senate committee on health, education, labor and pensions last month was widely criticised, after she refused to say if she would uphold Obama administration guidelines on handling campus sexual assault and said guns might be needed in schools due to the threat of “potential grizzlies”.

Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut, where the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting left 20 children and six adults dead, asked DeVos if she would support a Trump campaign promise to end gun-free school zones. She said: “I will support what the president-elect does.”

DeVos added: “If the question is around gun violence and the results of that, Pence plans to use tie-breaking vote to confirm Betsy DeVos for education post | US news | The Guardian:

Defeat DeVos- Call Your Senator Now

Click Here to Find Your Senator

Defeat DeVos- Call Your Senator Now

Deep Concern Intensifies Over DeVos Nomination As Senate Vote Nears | janresseger

Deep Concern Intensifies Over DeVos Nomination As Senate Vote Nears | janresseger:

Deep Concern Intensifies Over DeVos Nomination As Senate Vote Nears

The Senate’s vote on the confirmation of Betsy DeVos for U.S. Secretary of Education will be tomorrow, February 7.  Two Republicans, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have declared they will join all the Democrats to vote against Ms. DeVos. The confirmation of Jeff Sessions for Attorney General has been delayed to ensure that he can vote with his Republican colleagues to get the DeVos nomination over the bar before he quits the Senate to assume his new position leading the Department of Justice. Unless another Republican changes his/her mind, it is expected that Vice President Mike Pence will break the tie vote to confirm the DeVos nomination. This would be the first time in history that a vice president has had to break a tie on a Cabinet appointment.

The NY Times‘s Gail Collins summarizes succinctly just why President Trump’s nomination of Betsy DeVos has become so controversial: “How bad do you need to be to get rejected for Donald Trump’s cabinet? We’ve got nominees who don’t really know anything about the subject they’d be overseeing. Some hatehatehate the federal programs they’d be charged with guiding. Some have messy financial issues that haven’t been resolved. But Trump’s pick for secretary of education swept the board. Trifecta!  Betsy DeVos, it’s become clear, knows very little about public schools, doesn’t like them and has minimal experience in management. Plus, she’s a billionaire whose money is in a bewildering stack of holding companies.”

Despite her ethics clearance, her conflicts of interest go way back. Not only is she invested in a chain of dubious and for-profit Neurocore brain wave therapy centers whose claim is to cure Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, but she and her husband were also invested a decade ago in the online charter giant K12 Inc, whose company-reported graduation rates have been widely questioned along with those of other schools in the cyber charter sector where students study on computers from home. Here is Benjamin Herold’s report for Education Week last Wednesday: “In her written response to questions from a key Democratic senator, Education Secretary-nominee Betsy DeVos defended full-time online charter schools using Deep Concern Intensifies Over DeVos Nomination As Senate Vote Nears | janresseger:

How Possible Democratic Presidential Contenders Have Handled Betsy DeVos - Politics K-12 - Education Week

How Possible Democratic Presidential Contenders Have Handled Betsy DeVos - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

How Possible Democratic Presidential Contenders Have Handled Betsy DeVos

If Betsy DeVos ever had any hopes of getting Democratic senators to confirm her as education secretary, they probably evaporated right after her January confirmation hearing ended. But some of the Democrats most eager to oppose DeVos seem to be among those who are being floated in the media and elsewhere as possible 2020 contenders for the presidency—including one of DeVos' recent allies.

Below, we've rounded up some reactions from Democrats (several of them in the Senate) to DeVos' nomination, in alphabetical order. We drew the names on this list from a column in the Hill newspaper. Have we left any prominent White House hopefuls out? Let us know in the comments section. One note on this list: Every Democratic senator here has voted in favor of at least one of President Donald Trump's nominees.

• Sen. Cory Booker, of New Jersey: Booker's position with respect to DeVos is the trickiest of anyone on the list. He previously served on the board of the Alliance for School Choice— DeVos' signature issue is expanding vouchers and other forms of choice. And he received enthusiastic support from the American Federation for Children, the pro-voucher organization DeVos led until recently. At a speech to the AFC just last year, Booker told the group, "We have a lot to brag about in Newark, in this cauldron of educational creativity we've created, that has been liberating the choice of our parents. As the Brookings Institution said, Newark is now the no. 4 city in the country for offering parents real school choice." (Booker is the former mayor of Newark.) The full speech is below:

However, Booker announced the day after her confirmation hearing that he would not vote for DeVos, and stressed that he had "serious issues" with her nomination before that hearing. That sent How Possible Democratic Presidential Contenders Have Handled Betsy DeVos - Politics K-12 - Education Week:

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Mike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

WEEKEND QUOTABLES

Kellyanne Conway 

"I misspoke one word." -- Chicago Tribune

Homeland Security Secretary John F. Kelly

Respectfully but firmly, the retired general told Bannon that despite his high position in the White House and close relationship with President Trump, the former Breitbart chief was not in Kelly’s chain of command. -- Washington Post

Donald Trump tells O'Reilly...

 “There are a lot of killers. We have a lot of killers. Well, you think our country is so innocent?” -- Washington Post. 

Susana Mendoza

IL Comptroller Susana Mendoza

“We are now going into a third year without that balanced budget proposal. He hasn’t done it once. He hasn’t done it twice. As a result of that, my office is responsible for having to pay $11.2 billion in bill backlogs. That’s how bad of a situation we’re in. We’ve had six downgrades to our credit since Gov. Rauner has taken office." -- Chicago Tribune

Jim Durkin, Rauner's House leader threatens AFSCME familiesMike Klonsky's SmallTalk Blog: WEEKEND QUOTABLES:

With An Upright Zeal (On Teaching With This Fire) | The Jose Vilson

With An Upright Zeal (On Teaching With This Fire) | The Jose Vilson:

With An Upright Zeal (On Teaching With This Fire)

Last week, I took a five-day social media break for the express purpose of re-centering myself, my family, and my work in ways that the Internet does not allow. That’s the public answer. The more private answer is complicated, but unsurprising to anyone who’s tried to fill multiple jars to full capacity at the same time with the same vigor. At EduCon in Philadelphia, I had no less than five people come up to me asking me for time and energy without recompense. As if I should do someone else’s work for free just because I do my own work on my own time for free. My son had a recurring and debilitating flu. I eventually caught it too. So did Luz. I had speeches and articles due. The squeakiest wheel gets the grease, but if you’re not, err, if I’m not a wheel that’s built to squeak, then I keep rolling.

Oh right. And I teach. Full time. 145 students, each and collectively with needs far greater than my capacity.

Ask me the first time how school is going and I’ll tell you that it’s fine. Ask me the second time and I’ll tell you that I could complain, but I choose not to. Ask me the third time and I’ll enumerate the ways I’m struggling to comprehend the ways our school system fails us. The number of ways we inhumanely standardize curricula, lessons, assessments, schedules, and our students. The plethora of times that well-meaning adults can get wound up and wound down by the ever-tightening crank of structures we have no control over. The disparaging comments from dissidents who play like they care about my kids, but vote against their humanity on a dark November day.

The struggle of being the face of an institution that I’m fighting against subversively and overtly. And to do so with an With An Upright Zeal (On Teaching With This Fire) | The Jose Vilson:

Tributes to the Fallen Heroes of the Bowling Green Massacre | Diane Ravitch's blog

Tributes to the Fallen Heroes of the Bowling Green Massacre | Diane Ravitch's blog:

Tributes to the Fallen Heroes of the Bowling Green Massacre

A few days ago, Kellyanne Conway noted that the media had failed to report the Bowling Green Massacre. Almost immediately, sharp observers pointed out that there was no Bowling Green Massacre. Conway said she made a mistake.

Too late. Creative people are writing and singing tributes to the heroes of Bowling Green.

Here is one, and another, and another.

Best of all is this sign, a tribute to the victims.

We will have to look for laughs wherever we can find them. Americans are creative people!Tributes to the Fallen Heroes of the Bowling Green Massacre | Diane Ravitch's blog:

An ‘alternative facts’ South Dakota bill sparks fears for science education in the Trump era - The Washington Post

An ‘alternative facts’ South Dakota bill sparks fears for science education in the Trump era - The Washington Post:

An ‘alternative facts’ South Dakota bill sparks fears for science education in the Trump era

This is the text of S.B. 55 that just passed in the South Dakota Senate, which purports “to protect the teaching of certain scientific information.”

BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF SOUTH DAKOTA:
Section 1. That chapter 13-1 be amended by adding a NEW SECTION to read:
No teacher may be prohibited from helping students understand, analyze, critique, or review in an objective scientific manner the strengths and weaknesses of scientific information presented in courses being taught which are aligned with the content standards established pursuant to § 13-3-48.

It doesn’t mention any specific scientific subject, so what does it actually mean?

The Argus Leader quoted Deb Wolf, a high school science instructional coach in the Sioux Falls School District, as saying the bill says that teachers can essentially teach what they want in science class as long as they do it in a certain way: “This is horrible, but let’s say I believe in eugenics.” S.B. 55 “says that I couldn’t be prohibited, I couldn’t be stopped from teaching that, as long as I did it in an objective scientific manner, and it doesn’t specify what that means.”

The bill is one of four that have been introduced so far in 2017 in state legislatures — the others are in Indiana, Oklahoma and Texas  — that would allow science denial in the classroom. Since 2014, at least 60 “academic freedom” bills  — which permit teachers to paint established science as controversial — have been filed in state legislatures all over the country. Louisiana passed one in 2008, and Tennessee did, too, in 2012.

Some version of the South Dakota bill has been introduced into the state’s legislature for each of the past four years, but this is the first time it passed in the house in which it originated. The Senate approved it, 23 to 12.  The state House is dominated by Republicans, so critics of the legislation are hoping they can stop it in the House Education Committee before it reaches the floor.

Glenn Branch, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education, a nonprofit that defends the teaching of evolution and climate change, agrees with Wolf’s reading of the bill and said he is concerned that President Trump’s denial/questioning of man-made climate change and Vice President Pence’s denial of the theory of evolution could encourage state legislators to push through new anti-science legislation.

“Also of concern is the influence that it might have at the level of the local school district or the An ‘alternative facts’ South Dakota bill sparks fears for science education in the Trump era - The Washington Post: