Education Is the Focus, and Picking Up Impeachment Debris

#Kevin Carey, "Invisible lines, TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"American education remains highly segregated by race and class, perpetuated in part by a patchwork of school districts --invisible lines that carve up the country, carefully separating the rich from the poor. EdBuild calculates that, annually, $23 billion more goes to districts serving at least 75% white students than those with 25% or fewer, even though the total numbers of students are about equal."

##Nelson Luna and Whitney Stephenson, TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"Nearly 66 years after the U.S.Supreme Court ruled racial segregation in public education unconstitutional, more than half the nation's students still attend largely segregated school districts."

#William C. Bell, TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"The roughly 437,000 U.S. children in foster care are more likely to drop out of high school, compared with peers who live with family, and children who age out of the system are more likely to face homelessness, unemployment and incarceration."

#Michael K. Honey, "Economic Inequality Through King's Eyes," TIME, March 2-9, 2020.
"Today, nearly 40 million Americans remain poor, and a majority of students in  many schools do not have enough to eat." "One-third of African Americans there (in Memphis) lived in poverty in 2018, the year for which the most recent data is available."

#A Southern Poverty Law Center survey found that only 8% of high school students could identify slavery as the main cause of the Civil War. The organization also produced a 2014 "report card" on state standards and resources for  teaching the civil rights movement; 30 states got a failing grade.

In 2005, Philadelphia became the first major city to require students to take a class in black history to graduate.

#More than 1.5 million U.S. public school students were homeless at some point over the past 3 years, according to data from the National Center for Homeless Education.

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Jelani Cobb, "Imbalance of Power," The New Yorker," February 3, 2020.
"At the start of the [Trump impeachment] trial, in eleven roll-call votes, the Republican majority voted down measures to request relevant documents or to hear from new witnesses regarding the Ukraine scheme." "The significance of the votes is twofold: not only did the Senate Republicans co-sign the White House's efforts to turn the impeachment into a show trial: they reduced the power of the legislative branch  to which they themselves belong."

"The GOP that has come to support Trump's inflammatory nativism is failing to consider the demographic trend, and it faces alienating rapidly growing numbers of immigrants and minority voters."

"An acquittal would set a precedent for  subsequent elections and [allow the president to] remain in power nevertheless."

#Steve Coll, "After Impeachment," The New Yorker, February 17 & 24, 2020.
In describing Sen. Mitt Romney's (R-UT) impeachment speech, Steve Coll wrote: "In eloquent remarks, he described the President's conduct as 'a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security, and our fundamental values.' He went on: 'Corrupting an election to keep oneself in office is perhaps the most abusive and destructive violation of one's oath of office that I can imagine.' 'By now, any dispassionate reading of the Mueller report, the impeachment investigation,and the accumulating record of journalism can lead to but one conclusion: we have been warned.' "

#Stephanie McCurry, "Political in Nature," The Nation, February 17, 2020.
"The nation's 17th president [Andrew Johnson] rivaled its current one in his penchant for race-baiting and his shockingly coarse expressions and views." "The Republican's determination to impeach and remove Johnson turned an irreconcilable ethical and political difference about the terms of freedom and citizenship in the reunited nation more than it did on any difference in temperament and personality."

"They (congressional Republicans) identified impeachment as the only remedy for a chief executive, who, by repeated violent speech (itemized in Article 10), sought to deny Congress their exercise of its 'rightful authorities and powers' and in the process, through behavior 'peculiarly indecent and  unbecoming in the Chief Magistrate of the United States...brought the high office of the President...into contempt, ridicule and disgrace."

"The real issue was Reconstruction and the succor Johnson had given to rebels still unwilling to create  a free and fair country for black citizens as well as whites." "But as a tool to constrain executive abuse of power,and as a way publicize dissent on matters of policy and principle, it suggests that impeachment itself is the measure of success, however remote the likelihood of conviction."

#Deb Riechmann, Colleen Long and Nancy Benac, "Payback: Trump ousts officials..." The Albuquerque Journal, February 8, 2020.
"Exacting swift punishment against those who crossed him, an emboldened President Donald Trump...ousted the government officials who have delivered damaging testimony against him during the impeachment hearings."