Cardona advocated for tighter gun regulations immediately after very last year’s killings at Robb Elementary and has warned that the region hazards failing college students in Covid-19’s wake. But his recently public exasperation with school-centered partisanship will come as the Republican-controlled Household authorised sweeping “Parents Bill of Rights” laws that captures wide strokes of pandemic-period conservative instruction wars.
“When we chat about politicization, when we speak about e-book banning, when we converse about Black record curriculum staying picked aside — I think there are deliberate tries to make positive that our community colleges are not useful so that the private possibility seems superior,” the training secretary mentioned. “I really don’t doubt that’s intentional.”
Elections are also at engage in.
Almost 30,000 faculty board seats are on the ballot this calendar year throughout the region.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis — a probably 2024 Republican presidential applicant who weighed in on university board races previous calendar year — has tapped conservative vitality with a range of education concerns. He signed a person evaluate restricting how gender identities are talked over with schoolchildren, launched a feud over an Innovative Placement African American heritage system, and is primed to sign key non-public university voucher laws.
Biden’s other probable challengers also body their education and learning worries with a distinct society war bent.
Conservatives say they’re the kinds on the defensive. Numerous Republican governors and lawmakers argue their limits on classroom classes, curriculum, and LGBTQ students are intended to blunt range initiatives run amok or what they see as the misapplication of legal protections to include transgender persons.
Some Republican teams are also seeking to incorporate a longstanding press for expansive school choice applications with renewed efforts to harness extra electricity on neighborhood faculty boards.
“Many faculty board members are intertwined with biased political ideologies and are managed by special interests teams like the lecturers unions,” reported Laura Zorc, the schooling reform director at the conservative FreedomWorks firm, right after Florida lawmakers despatched their college selection invoice to DeSantis.
“The only way dad and mom can ensure that their little ones obtain a substantial high-quality education and learning is if state academic dollars, customarily earmarked for community university districts, are directed to mothers and fathers who want the quite greatest for their young children,” Zorc stated in a assertion.
Cardona’s community aggravation dovetails with a rising political counteroffensive from White Household allies.
National Training Association President Becky Pringle and American Federation of Lecturers President Randi Weingarten just lately denounced DeSantis during an Orlando rally, and Weingarten is scheduled to supply an tackle “in protection of community education” in Washington this 7 days.
The Democratic Social gathering of Illinois final week unveiled what it identified as an unprecedented hard work to endorse dozens of candidates in nonpartisan community school and library board races. It also designs to funnel almost $300,000 into an promotion and arranging campaign bordering individuals elections.
Amid all this rigidity, Cardona has wielded modern op-eds in Newsweek and the Tampa Bay Instances to accuse Republicans of “hiding powering the guise of ‘parents’ rights’” to defund community colleges and hoping to “hijack” classroom discussions.
And the secretary achieved previous 7 days with university superintendent and trainer associates, who, he said, “feel the exact way.”
“It just looks like it is a consistent assault on what I know as a dad, and what I know as an educator, is going on in our educational institutions,” Cardona stated in the job interview. “Education getting utilized to divide communities is the problem that we confront now as leaders.”
That problem, he told point out superintendents assembled in Washington final week, “is even more difficult than what we had in 2020” when Covid-19 very first shuttered educational facilities.
“Our pupils are as [emotionally] dysregulated as they at any time have been in the last twenty decades. The surgeon common reminded us that we’re in a youth mental wellbeing disaster, where 1 in three higher school women has viewed as suicide in the previous three yrs,” Cardona explained to POLITICO. “I’m worn out of folks on the lookout to get political factors by attacking vulnerable students, susceptible communities and attacking our universities.”
He added: “If we’re not standing up for our learners, who will? I sense it is time.”
WASHINGTON — Property Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, issued subpoenas Friday to the heads of the Justice Division, FBI and Office of Education and learning searching for paperwork related to nearby faculty board conferences.
The subpoenas — which Jordan observed are his 1st as chairman sent to the Biden administration — require Lawyer Basic Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray and Training Secretary Miguel Cardona to transform over all paperwork on the matter by March 1.
“Since October 2021, Judiciary Committee Republicans have sent above 1 hundred letters to Biden Administration officers requesting answers about how the Administration made use of federal counterterrorism means in opposition to American moms and dads,” Jordan’s office environment stated Friday.
Jordan, who also chairs a new subcommittee on the “Weaponization of the Federal Government,” stated whistleblowers have claimed that the FBI’s counterterrorism and felony divisions “developed a specific threat tag for faculty board-similar threats and even opened investigations into mothers and fathers simply just for talking out on behalf of their children.” Republicans outlined all those promises in a November report on the “politicization” of the DOJ and FBI.
School board conferences throughout the region have intensified and developed violent in current years, specifically considering that the Covid pandemic started. In Oct, a man was recorded on video clip indicating LGBTQ individuals “deserve death” during a faculty board conference in Arkansas where by several anti-LGBTQ policies have been passed. In January 2022, a Virginia woman was charged immediately after she appeared to threaten college board officials although they satisfied to vote on whether to carry a mask necessity.
Garland shaped a undertaking drive in Oct 2021 to handle the improved threats, declaring in a memorandum that there experienced been a “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation and threats of violence in opposition to faculty directors, board associates, instructors and team who take part in the important work of functioning our nation’s community colleges.”
The subpoena despatched to Garland requests files and communications, for instance, concerning DOJ staff members and U.S. intelligence agencies “referring or relating to alleged threats posed by concerned dad and mom at community school board meetings.” It also phone calls on him to present documents relevant to the development of the DOJ’s activity force to deal with violent threats from faculty officials and instructors.
Wray’s subpoena asks for paperwork relevant to conferences held with U.S. Attorney’s offices that pertained to the process drive, and also requests documents and communications relevant to the threat tag.
Cardona was requested to supply paperwork similar to a letter sent by the Countrywide School Board Association in September 2021 to President Joe Biden requesting assistance to keep college board conferences secure.
“As these functions of malice, violence and threats versus community college officers have elevated, the classification of these heinous actions could be the equivalent to a type of domestic terrorism and despise crimes,” the letter explained.
An FBI spokesperson responded to Jordan’s subpoenas Friday afternoon, saying in a assertion: “As Director Wray and other FBI officers have stated clearly on many instances ahead of Congress and somewhere else, the FBI has never ever been in the company of investigating speech or policing speech at college board meetings or everywhere else, and we in no way will be.”
“We are entirely committed to preserving and guarding 1st Amendment rights including the ideal to free of charge speech. Attempts to further any political narrative will not adjust all those info,” the spokesperson claimed, introducing that the FBI “is actively working to answer to congressional requests for facts – which includes voluntary production of paperwork.”
The Justice Section acknowledged receipt of the subpoena but had no further more remark.
A spokesperson for the Instruction Office claimed in a statement that the division “responded to Chairman Jordan’s letter before this 7 days,” in advance of the subpoena was issued, and that it “remains fully commited to responding to the Household Judiciary Committee’s requests in a manner steady with longstanding Govt Department coverage.”
Stacey Plaskett, a non-voting delegate to the Property of Representatives from the U.S. Virgin Islands who serves as the best Democrat on Jordan’s weaponization panel, trashed Jordan and Republicans in a assertion Friday in response to the subpoenas.
“The conspiracy theories underpinning today’s subpoenas have been debunked with points time and time once again, but Republicans do not want to be bothered by this inconvenient truth of the matter. There is no amount of money of paperwork that will fulfill the MAGA obsession with conspiracies,” she claimed. “When I am unhappy that Republicans have resorted to this type of aggressive arm-twisting and performative politics, I am self-confident that what they have requested for will once once again disprove this drained ideal-wing concept.”
Rebecca Shabad
Rebecca Shabad is a politics reporter for NBC Information centered in Washington.
Arming Ukraine ‘only path to peace’, says UK foreign secretary
Helping to arm Ukraine so it can defend itself against Russia is the swiftest path to achieving peace, British foreign secretary James Cleverly said in an article published on Sunday.
Writing in the Times of Malta ahead of a visit on Tuesday to the Mediterranean island, which assumed the presidency of the U.N. Security Council at the start of February, Cleverly wrote:
Like all authoritarian rulers, Putin responds only to strength in his opponents. He rejected Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s 10-point plan for peace last December. That is why the UK and Ukraine’s friends are doing all they can to bring Ukraine success on the battlefield. And it’s why I’m delighted that Germany and the US are joining the UK in sending tanks to the Ukrainians. Giving the Ukrainians the tools they need to finish the job is the swiftest – indeed the only – path to peace.
The war in Ukraine is expected to dominate the talks between Britain and Malta, a European Union member.
Key events
On speculation over the future of Ukraine’s defence minister Oleksii Reznikov, the Guardian’s Dan Sabbagh has tweeted this:
Ukrainian defence sources saying Oleksii Reznikov is not resigning despite swirl of speculation. Press conference due in Kyiv at 3pm
Russia is concentrating troops and military equipment to stage a decisive offensive around Bakhmut and the Luhansk region, the Institute for the Study of War think tank said, in a Feb 4 report.
ISW analysts said the sustained military effort to encircle Bakhmut has prevented Russia from assembling the troops needed to attack Zaporizhzhia from the east.
Ukrainian defence minister Oleksii Reznikov is likely to be dismissed from his ministerial post next week, Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported today citing government and military sources.
His likely replacement is understood to be Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence agency HUR, sources reportedly said.
“I have not had any conversations about my resignation from this position,” Reznikov reportedly told Ukrainska Pravda in a soon-to-be-published interview.
An unnamed source confirmed to the Kyiv Independent that Reznikov was very likely to be replaced in the very near future.
Reznikov could be appointed to a new post as justice minister, as “no one in the Presidential Office has any doubt” that Reznikov should stay in the government, according to the Ukrainska Pravda article.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov will likely be dismissed from his ministerial post next week, Ukrainian news outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported on Feb. 5, citing government and military sources.https://t.co/B1n2aFvP57
According to the report, Denys Maliuska, the current justice minister, could be appointed as an ambassador to a Ukrainian diplomatic mission in Europe.
The report hasn’t provided information on who will head Ukraine’s military intelligence agency if Budanov is appointed as defence minister.
Reznikov, 56, has served as defence minister since Nov. 4, 2021, and has played an important role in the campaigning for and securing of Western military aid.
Arming Ukraine ‘only path to peace’, says UK foreign secretary
Helping to arm Ukraine so it can defend itself against Russia is the swiftest path to achieving peace, British foreign secretary James Cleverly said in an article published on Sunday.
Writing in the Times of Malta ahead of a visit on Tuesday to the Mediterranean island, which assumed the presidency of the U.N. Security Council at the start of February, Cleverly wrote:
Like all authoritarian rulers, Putin responds only to strength in his opponents. He rejected Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s 10-point plan for peace last December. That is why the UK and Ukraine’s friends are doing all they can to bring Ukraine success on the battlefield. And it’s why I’m delighted that Germany and the US are joining the UK in sending tanks to the Ukrainians. Giving the Ukrainians the tools they need to finish the job is the swiftest – indeed the only – path to peace.
The war in Ukraine is expected to dominate the talks between Britain and Malta, a European Union member.
Russian attacks were reported in seven out of Ukraine’s 25 regions over Feb. 4, hitting Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts with artillery and missiles.
According to the regional governors and officials, at least five civilians were killed and 12 injured, the Kyiv Independent reports.
Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has revoked the citizenship of several former influential politicians.
“Today, I signed the relevant documents to take another step to protect and cleanse our state from those on the side of the aggressor,” Zelenskiy said during his nightly video address on Saturday.
He would not list the names but said they had dual Russian citizenship.
According to Ukrainian state media, the list includes several top politicians from the office of Viktor Yanukovych, who served as Ukraine’s pro-Russian president from 2010 until he was removed from office in 2014.
The list included Dmytro Tabachnyk, a former minister of education and science, Andriy Klyuyev, a former deputy prime minister and head of Yanukovych’s administration, and Vitaliy Zakharchenko, a former interior minister, the RBC-Ukraine news agency reported.
Ukraine has stripped a number of people of their Ukrainian citizenship and has sanctioned hundreds of Russian and Belarusian individuals and firms since the start of the Russian invasion a year ago.
The head of Russia’s private Wagner militia said on Sunday that fierce fighting was ongoing in the northern parts of the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut, which has been the focus of Russian forces’ attention for weeks.
Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the founder and head of the Wagner group, said Ukrainian forces were not retreating. Reuters reports.
Russian forces have been attempting to encircle and capture Bakhmut, a city in the eastern Donbas region, for weeks.
Prigozhin rejected reports in Russian media outlets that Ukrainian troops were abandoning Bakhmut. “Ukrainian forces are not retreating anywhere. They are fighting to the last,” he said in a statement published on his Telegram channel.
“Fierce battles are going on in the northern quarters for every street, every house, every stairwell,” he added.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has said repeatedly in recent days that the situation around the city is tough.
Bakhmut has become “increasingly isolated”, according to the latest assessment by the UK Ministry of Defence.
On Friday, Zelenskiy vowed that his forces will fight for Bakhmut “for as long as we can”, but the situation there is becoming increasingly dire for Ukrainian forces.
If Russian forces manage to capture the city, which has been decimated by months of artillery shelling, it would be their most important strategic advance since last summer.
A formerIsraeli prime minister who served briefly as a mediator at the start of Russia’s war with Ukraine says he drew a promise from the Russian president not to kill his Ukrainian counterpart
Associated Press agency reports:
Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett became an unlikely intermediary in the war’s first weeks, becoming one of the few Western leaders to meet President Vladimir Putin during the war in a snap trip to Moscow last March.
While Bennett’s mediation efforts appear to have done little to end the bloodshed that continues until today, his remarks, in an interview posted online late Saturday, shed light on the backroom diplomacy and urgent efforts that were underway to try to bring the conflict to a speedy conclusion in its early days.
In the five-hour interview, which touched on numerous other subjects, Bennett says he asked Putin about whether he intended to kill Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
“I asked ‘what’s up with this? Are you planning to kill Zelenskiy?’ He said ‘I won’t kill Zelenskiy.’ I then said to him ‘I have to understand that you’re giving me your word that you won’t kill Zelenskiy.’ He said ‘I’m not going to kill Zelenskiy.’”
Bennett said he then called Zelenskiy to inform him of Putin’s pledge.
“‘Listen, I came out of a meeting, he’s not going to kill you.’ He asks, ‘are you sure?’ I said ’100{515baef3fee8ea94d67a98a2b336e0215adf67d225b0e21a4f5c9b13e8fbd502} he won’t kill you.’”
Bennett said that during his mediation, Putin dropped his vow to seek Ukraine’s disarmament and Zelenskiy promised not to join NATO.
Bennet’s peacemaking efforts did not appear to take off and his time in power was short-lived, reports AP.
‘Putin did not threaten me or Germany,’ says Scholz
In the interview with Bild am Sonntag, Olaf Scholz said Vladimir Putin “has not made any threats against me or Germany” in his telephone conversations with the Russian president.
Former British prime minister Boris Johnson, speaking to the BBC for a documentary early this week, said the Russian leader had threatened him with a missile strike that would “only take a minute.” The Kremlin said Johnson was lying.
The German chancellor said the conversations he had with Putin made it clear they had very different views of the war in Ukraine, which Russia calls a “special military operation”.
“I make it very clear to Putin that Russia has sole responsibility for the war,” Scholz said.
“Russia has invaded its neighbour for no reason, in order to take parts of Ukraine or the whole country under its control.”
Because it was Germany’s view that Russia’s actions violated Europe’s peace framework, it was providing Ukraine with financial, humanitarian and military help, he said.
Germany’s chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has said Ukraine’s president agreed that weapons supplied by the west will not be used to attack Russian territory.
“There is a consensus on this point,” Scholz said in an interview with the weekly Bild am Sonntag.
Ukraine’s western allies have pledged to arm it with precision rockets and missile systems, as well as tanks, as it tries to push back Russian troops in its east.
The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, has compared the intervention of countries such as Germany with his nation’s struggle during the second world war.
But Scholz rejected the comparison.
“[Putin’s] words are part of a series of absurd historical comparisons that he uses to justify his attack on Ukraine,” he said. “But nothing justifies this war.
“Together with our allies, we are supplying battle tanks to Ukraine so that it can defend itself. We have carefully weighed each delivery of weapons, in close coordination with our allies, starting with America.”
Scholz said that such a consensus-based approach “avoids an escalation”.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz. Photograph: Christian Mang/Reuters
Ukrainian forces remained in control of the village of Bilohorivka, the Luhansk region governor, Serhiy Haidai, has said, adding that the situation there is tense, but under control.
“Information is being spread in the Russian Federation about the alleged capture of Bilohorivka and the removal of our people from there,” Haidai told the national broadcaster on Sunday.
“Our troops remain in their positions, nobody has captured Bilohorivka, nobody has entered there, there is no enemy there.”
Some Moscow-installed officials and pro-Russian military bloggers have recently claimed Russian advances in the direction of Bilohorivka, the last part of Luhansk – the northern part of the Donbas – held by Ukrainian forces.
“The situation at the front is tense, but controlled by Ukrainian forces,” Haidai said.
“The number of Russian attacks has … increased, but all of them have been repulsed by our troops, who remain in their positions.”
Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.
The embattled eastern Ukrainian town of Bakhmut has become “increasingly isolated”, according to the latest assessment by the UK Ministry of Defence.
“Over the last week, Russia has continued to make small advances in its attempt to encircle the Donbas town of Bakhmut,” the MoD tweeted on Sunday.
“The M03 and the H32 – the two main roads into the city for Ukrainian defenders – are likely now both threatened by direct fire, following the Russian advances.
“Earlier in the week, Wagner paramilitary forces highly likely seized a subordinate route which links Bakhmut to the town of Siversk.
“While multiple alternative cross-country supply routes remain available to Ukrainian forces, Bakhmut is increasingly isolated.”
Russian missile hits residential building in Kharkiv
Two Russian missiles hit the centre of Kharkiv in Ukraine’s north-east, with one of the missiles striking a residential building, Reuters reported the city’s mayor saying on Sunday.
“At this time, it’s known that there is a fire in one of the residential buildings and one injured person,” Ihor Terekhov said on the Telegram messaging platform.
The Kharkiv governor, Oleh Synehubov, said: ““A residential building in the city centre was hit. A fire broke out. So far, three victims are known: a 54-year-old woman and two men aged 51 and 55.”
He said the woman was hospitalised with shrapnel wounds.
Reuters was not able to independently verify the report.
Situation on eastern frontlines ‘very difficult now’, Zelenskiy says
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said on Saturday the situation on the frontlines in the east of the country was getting tougher and Russia was throwing more and more troops into battle.
The Kremlin has been pushing for a significant battlefield victory after months of setbacks, with Russian forces trying to close grip on the town of Bakhmut and fighting for control of a nearby major supply route for Ukrainian forces.
Russian troops are also trying to capture the coal mining city of Vuhledar, about 75 miles (120km) south-west of Bakhmut, in the eastern region of Donetsk.
“I’ve often had to say the situation at the front is tough, and is getting tougher, and it’s that time again … The invader is putting more and more of his forces into breaking down our defences,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address.
“It is very difficult now in Bakhmut, Vuhledar, Lyman and other directions,” he continued.
Ukrainian soldiers fire an anti-aircraft gun at a position near Bakhmut. Photograph: Sergey Shestak/EPA
Earlier in the day, the deputy defence minister, Hanna Malyar, wrote on Telegram that Russian efforts to break the defences in Bakhmut and Lyman had failed.
Lyman, which lies just to the north of Bakhmut, was liberated by Ukrainian forces in October.
“This week, the Russian occupation forces threw all their efforts into breaking through our defence and encircling Bakhmut, and launched a powerful offensive in the Lyman sector,” Malyar said. “But thanks to the resilience of our soldiers, they did not succeed.”
On Friday, Zelenskiy vowed that his forces will fight for Bakhmut “for as long as we can”, but the situation there is becoming increasingly dire for Ukrainian forces.
The general staff of Ukraine’s armed forces has been reporting daily numerous combat clashes in the area and Moscow military bloggers have claimed a number of unverified Russian successes along the frontline.
Opening summary
Hello and welcome back to the Guardian’s ongoing live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine.
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, has said the situation on the frontlines in the east of the country was getting tougher and Russia was throwing more and more troops into battle.
“I’ve often had to say the situation at the front is tough, and is getting tougher, and it’s that time again … The invader is putting more and more of his forces into breaking down our defences,” Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address on Saturday.
“It is very difficult now in Bakhmut, Vuhledar, Lyman and other directions,” he continued.
The Kremlin has been pushing for a significant battlefield victory after months of setbacks, with Russian forces trying to close grip on the town of Bakhmut and fighting for control of a nearby major supply route for Ukrainian forces.
More on that story soon.
In other developments:
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, said Zelenskiy has agreed that weapons supplied by the west will not be used to attack Russian territory. “There is a consensus on this point,” Scholz told Bild am Sonntag. Scholz rejected Vladimir Putin’s comparison of the intervention of the west with Russia’s struggle during the second world war as “absurd”. “We have carefully weighed each delivery of weapons, in close coordination with our allies, starting with America,” he said, adding that such a consensus-based approach “avoids an escalation”.
The Ukrainian president has revoked the citizenship of several former influential politicians, in what he said was another step to “cleanse” the country of pro-Russian influences. Zelenskiy would not list the names, but said they had dual Russian citizenship. According to Ukrainian state media, the list includes several top politicians from the office of Viktor Yanukovych, who served as Ukraine’s pro-Russian president from 2010 until he was removed from office in 2014.
Portugal has become the latest country to say it will send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, the prime minister, António Costa, said. An inventory has been done of its stocks, with Lisbon asking Germany for parts to help repair them so they can be deployed to Ukraine.
Zelenskiy spoke to UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, on Saturday. The president said he had thanked Sunak for the training of Ukrainian troops so they will be able to use British Challenger tanks.
The US attorney general, Merrick Garland, has authorised the country to begin using seized Russian money to aid Ukraine, according to US media. The money would come from assets confiscated from Russian oligarch Konstantin Malofeyev after his April indictment for alleged sanctions evasions, he added.
Ukraine has introduced emergency energy shutdowns in Odesa after a “technological accident” at a high-voltage electricity substation, which has previously been damaged by Russian attacks. Half a million people are without power and officials have warned repairs could take weeks. The government said it would appeal to Turkey for help and ordered the energy ministry’s stocks of high-power generators to be sent to the city.
Germany has collected evidence of war crimes in Ukraine, the country’s prosecutor general said in a newspaper interview published on Saturday, adding that he saw a need for a judicial process at international level. He said the amount of evidence was in the “three-digit” range.
More than 18.1m border crossings have taken place out of Ukraine since Russia’s invasion began in February 2022, according to data from the UN.
The bodies of killed British volunteers Christopher Parry and Andrew Bagshaw have been returned by Russian troops in a prisoner exchange. They were both killed in Ukraine last month. A total of 116 Ukrainian troops have come home after being captured, with 63 being sent back to Russia.
The number of Russian soldiers around the southern city of Mariupol has increased by about 10,000 to 15,000, according to an adviser to the city’s mayor. Petro Andriushchenko wrote on Telegram that it means the total amount of troops is now about 30,000. They are stationed in villages in the district.
