New York Post, Tuesday, December 1, 2020nypost.comTrump’s Conspiracies
Could Hurt GOP Badly
POSTOPINION
L
AST week, Justice Wayne Ozzi
of the state Supreme Court
delivered a clear message to
the New York City Depart-
ment of Education: When it
comes to health and safety, and
not least COVID-19 testing servi-
ces from the city, New York state
law insists that children in public
and nonpublic schools be treated
equally — period.
It’s peculiar that the Catholic
schools of the Archdiocese of
New York would need to go to
court to vindicate this basic legal
principle, especially in the middle
of a public-health emergency. It’s
more peculiar still that the city
decided to appeal almost as soon
as Justice Ozzi dismissed all of the
DOE’s arguments and ruled in
favor of nonpublic schools.
That means that despite our
clear legal victory, the DOE got to
temporarily suspend Ozzi’s order
to “immediately provide... all
New York City nonpublic schools
with COVID-19 testing resources
and services in the same manner
and to the same extent as [city au-
thorities] have been providing
those health and welfare services
to public schools.”
Do Mayor de Blasio and his
schools chancellor, Richard Car-
ranza, really believe that children
in nonpublic schools deserve infe-
rior measures to protect their
health? Apparently.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time the
city has gone out of its way to
treat nonpublic school kids as sec-
ond class. The federal CARES Act
granted emergency relief to help
all schools with COVID-related
costs, including personal protec-tive equipment, cleaning supplies,
remote-learning technology and
even salaries. Yet the city went to
court to prohibit our religious and
independent schools from receiv-
ing their proportionate share. As a
result, our schools will see very
little of that emergency relief, the
bulk of which will go to govern-
ment schools.
Catholic educators in the arch-
diocese worked diligently from
March through August to develop
a comprehensive plan to reopen
our schools for in-person learn-
ing. Our brave, committed admin-
istrators and teachers are giving
these students just what they
need during this pandemic: thecontinuation of in-person instruc-
tion in a safe environment.
I wouldn’t want to believe that
some in city government would
see our success as a threat and are
thus doing whatever they can to
thwart us. But it’s hard to avoid
that impression after what the
DOE has put us through.
Catholic schools have rigor-
ously obeyed the health and safety
guidelines put forth by city and
state. We would never do any-
thing to jeopardize the health of
our kids.
Back in March, when the seri-
ousness of the coronavirus became
apparent, we closed our schools
even before the city decided to
close public schools. If there were
any indication that our kids would
be put in harm’s way, we wouldn’tneed to wait for someone to order
us to shutter; we’d do so of our
own accord — immediately.
But our schools are committed
to staying open. The positivity
rate in our schools falls well
below the 3 percent threshold: It’s
actually a minuscule 0.0046 per-
cent. We’ve demonstrated that we
can operate safely, and we will
continue to do so.
The mayor has been on the
news lately, saying (rightly) that
the key to reopening schools is
testing and more testing. That’s
great to hear. Why, then, are he
and Carranza so dead-set against
following state law, now backed
by a court order, requiring public
and nonpublic kids to receive the
same testing resources?
Our court case and Judge Ozzi’s
order dealt with schools in “yel-
low” zones. Now that the virus is
spreading, and more parts of the
city are entering orange and
potentially red zones, will we see
additional draconian steps taken
by the DOE that will put more of
our kids at risk?
Hizzoner famously ran for office
decrying the “two New Yorks.” He
pledged to treat all New Yorkers
equally. Well, he is the mayor of all
schoolchildren in Gotham, as well,
and he should tell Carranza to stop
treating public and nonpublic
school children differently.
COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate
among children in our community
based on the schools they attend.
The DOE shouldn’t discriminate,
either.
Michael Deegan is the superin-
tendent of schools for the Archdio-
cese of New York.Blas’ Tale of Two Schools
Michael DeeganP
RESIDENT Trump and his supporters have reason to be sore about
how they’ve been treated. But their anger about the hypocrisy of
their opponents and hard feelings about the way Joe Biden won
shouldn’t encourage them to give up.
That’s the danger of promoting the belief that the 2020 election was
“fixed”: It could mean letting Democrats win the two all-important
Georgia Senate runoff races, giving the left undivided control.
There were plenty of irregularities, and legitimate concerns about mail-in
ballots are worthy of investigation. But the conspiracy theories being
floated about software flipping millions of votes from Trump to Biden could
be the best thing that ever happened to the Democrats: Republicans con-
cluding their votes don’t matter.
A lot of Republicans sound like
sore losers now. But you could have
said the same thing about Demo-
crats after Trump won in 2016.
Democrats not only refused to ac-
cept the legitimacy of Trump’s 2016
win, they spent the four years that
followed trying to discredit the
results by falsely claiming it was
the product of Russian interven-
tion. They relentlessly promoted a
“collusion” theory that turned out
to be utter bunk.
The media didn’t even bother to
pretend to be fair or objective in
their coverage of the administra-
tion — or in their willingness to
protect Biden from scrutiny at
every step. And liberal social-me-
dia oligarchs censored those, like
reporters for this paper, who inves-
tigated Dem scandals.
All this means the 2020 election
wasn’t an entirely fair fight. Still,the novel-coronavirus pandemic
and general Trump fatigue clearly
cost the president the election.
Pretending that he really “won”
isn’t going to help anyone, least of
all the GOP.
Many of the president’s follow-
ers are drawing dark lessons from
his accusations. If you think — as
Trump keeps telling us — that
elections are rigged, why bother
voting?
That’s the conclusion some on
the right are coming to about the
Georgia Senate runoffs. Some
Trump voters intend to boycott
the runoffs. They’re accusing the
two GOP candidates — Sens.
Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue
— of being insufficiently zealous
in supporting efforts to overturn
the election results.
This is in spite of the fact that
they were pressured into calling
for the resignation of Georgia’s
Trump-supporting Republican
secretary of state, who oversaw
the voting and who is wrongly ac-
cused of being complicit in Biden
allegedly stealing the state.
That’s one of the problems with
conspiracies. Anyone who doesn’t
accept all of the theory’s assump-
tions is regarded as part of the
conspiracy. If some GOP voters
now think this way, the blamebelongs to Trump, because he has
taught his followers to believe
that the only way he could lose
would be by massive fraud.
The consequences of this crazi-
ness are potentially enormous. If
Loeffler and Perdue are defeated,
Democrats will win control of the
Senate. Then there will be noth-
ing to stop them from ending the
filibuster, allowing Biden to pack
the Supreme Court, passing a dan-
gerously radical Green New Deal
— and granting statehood to the
District of Columbia and maybe
even Puerto Rico, thus creating
potentially four more Democraticsenators.
Perhaps some people think
Trump losing is the end of the
world. But for the rest of us — who
will have to live in an America
made unrecognizable by legisla-
tion backed by the likes of Rep. Al-
exandria Ocasio-Cortez and her
socialist Squad — there is some-
thing still worth a fight.
Given that the two Democrats
running in Georgia are left-wing-
ers, it would be a scandal if they
skate to victory because Republi-
cans don’t turn out.
The president has said he will
campaign for Loeffler and Perdue,
but he has to do more than just
show up in Georgia. He may spend
the rest of his life claiming he was
cheated, but he has to make it clear
to his fans that their votes do mat-
ter — something that was made
obvious by the many down-ballot
victories scored by the GOP.
Whether or not Trump is seri-
ous about running again in 2024,
he owes it to the people who
voted for him — and the country
— to do everything in his power
to end the conspiracy mongering
and stop a Democratic takeover of
the Senate.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in
chief of JNS.org.
Twitter: @JonathanS_TobinJonathan S.
tobin‘
If voters believe the game is rigged,
why should they bother playing?
’