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The Roundup Top Ten for November 20, 2020

Trump’s Big Election Lie Pushes America Toward Autocracy

by Timothy Snyder

"A claim that an election was illegitimate is a claim to remaining in power. A coup is under way, and the number of participants is not shrinking but growing. Few leading Republicans have acknowledged that the race is over."

Trump Continuing to Fight on Could Cost American Lives, Jobs and More

by Eric Rauchway

Herbert Hoover's refusal to support FDR's policy agenda during his lame duck period delayed economic recovery at the cost of jobs, homes and lives. 

Patsy Takemoto Mink Blazed The Trail For Kamala Harris – Not Susan B. Anthony

by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu

Patsy Takemoto Mink, elected in 1972 as the first woman of color in Congress, deserves recognition as a pioneering advocate for gender equity and the rights of Americans Caribbean and Pacific territories, and for preparing a path for Kamala Harris's election as Vice President. 

The GOP Test

by Sean Wilentz

If Mitch McConnell, Kevin McCarthy, and their respective caucuses persist, they will have tainted their party far beyond what Trump already has.

What the Greatest Generation had that the Covid Generation Lacks

by Nicole Hemmer

"The crisis, it turns out, is not the selfishness of this generation of Americans. It's the selfishness of the administration and its allies in Congress."

Effi Eitam Leading Yad Vashem Disgraces the Memory of the 6 Million

by Derek Penslar and Susannah Heschel

"The politicization and radicalization of the institution will rob it of its legitimacy. Yad Vashem cannot fulfill its responsibilities with Effi Eitam at its helm."

Trump’s Presidential Library Will Be A Shrine To His Ego

by Paul Musgrave

If former presidents aren't interested in hosting official presidential papers at a library center, there is little oversight of how they tell the president's story. Any future Trump presidential center will likely not function as a library at all, but as a propaganda organ for Trumpism. 

Against Returning to Normal

by David Walsh

Liberal pleas to return to a "normal" defined by bipartisan consensus ignore the long legacy of ideological conflict and the pursuit of division as a political strategy by the conservative movement. 

American Democracy Was Never Supposed to Work

by Richard Kreitner

"Merely ousting Trump is not enough without addressing more fundamental weaknesses in our political system, especially an outdated Constitution that continues to serve a minority of wealthy and white citizens and to curb any movements that might threaten their wealth and power."

Ruby Bridges’ School now Reflects another Battle Engulfing Public Education

by Connie L. Schaffer, Martha Graham Viator and Meg White

The New Orleans school integrated by Ruby Bridges is now operated by a private charter school company, part of a trend that three education scholars say jeopardizes the survival of the entire system of public education in the United States.