vox--2020-07-10--The debate over reopening America’s K-12 schools, explained

This spring , Kwesi Ablordeppey worked nights taking care of veterans at Holyoke Soldiers ’ Home in Massachusetts , where at least 76 patients have died of Covid-19 .
During the day , though , he has been the resident IT consultant at his home in Springfield — his two teenage daughters often needing his help troubleshooting problems with their Zoom lessons .
Like most students around the country , the 10th-graders shifted to online learning earlier this year when their school closed to help slow the spread of the coronavirus .
This left Ablordeppey , a single dad , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ managing his kids ’ education — something many American parents have struggled with in the pandemic .
“ It ’ s not something that I ’ m comfortable with , ” he said , but “ we have to adapt to the situation.
” Adapting to any situation is easier when there ’ s an end in sight .
But pulling sleepless nights , trying to work with kids on your lap , and sometimes even moving across the country to be with family members who can provide child care are not permanent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ across the American South and West , and many families enter their fifth month without reliable child care in sight , the question is growing louder and louder : What ’ s going to happen in the fall ?
It ’ s a question with high stakes for all involved — children , parents , teachers , and staff — a total of tens of millions of people across the country .
While some have called on the federal government for help , President Trump instead waded into the fray this week with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ schools must open in the fall without any clear solutions .
He also threatened to withdraw federal funding from schools that don ’ t open their buildings .
But Trump ’ s blanket statements belie the complexity of the problem .
On the one hand , it is clear that the transition to online school has led to serious setbacks in learning in the spring , especially for students who are already at a disadvantage in the school system .
For example , researchers found that after the shift online , student math @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in low-income zip codes , but not at all in schools in high-income areas , according to the New York Times .
And while some parents , many of them higher-earning professionals , have been able to supervise their children ’ s online learning while working from home , many lower-paid service workers don ’ t have the option to work remotely .
They could soon be forced to choose between caring for their kids and getting a paycheck — if they haven ’ t been already .
“ Closing public schools on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ low-wage workers , ” Michelle Holder , an economics professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice , told Vox .
But at the same time , reopening schools runs the risk of exposing not just students but also teachers and staff to a highly dangerous virus .
Parents , including Ablordeppey , are wary .
His daughters ’ district has not yet announced final plans for the fall , but his children ’ s safety from Covid-19 will come first in any decision he makes , especially given his experience caring for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it with my naked eye , ” he said .
“ When I ’ m looking at anything , I ’ m looking at that perspective.
” Many teachers are also worried about going back into the classroom without a clear plan to keep everyone safe .
“ Every teacher I know desperately wants to go back to work , ” Sarah Mulhern Gross , a high school English teacher in New Jersey , told Vox .
“ We want to be with our students , just not with possible long-term effects or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our heads.
” Despite a lack of federal direction , there are solutions : Experts have proposed a number of ways to help kids learn and parents work while mitigating the risks — from outdoor classrooms to a corps of workers who can care for children in small groups while they complete online lessons .
But that will take the political will of federal and state leaders to actually confront the problem .
“ The government has the capacity to do this stuff , ” Lisa Levenstein , director of the women ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ program at UNC Greensboro , told Vox .
“ We ’ re just choosing not to.
” As the coronavirus spread around the country in March and April , schools closed in all 50 states , and most stayed closed through the end of the academic year .
The closures were meant to help slow transmission of the virus , which had already sickened parents , teachers , staff , and students nationwide , though it is unclear how many infections occurred in schools .
With school buildings closed , most districts switched @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that posed its own challenges .
Experts worried , for example , about how the 17 percent of children who lack a computer at home would complete remote schoolwork , and about how homeless students — who number more than 114,000 in New York City alone — would find a place to study .
And many feared that the shift to online learning would exacerbate existing racial and economic inequalities in education .
Those concerns , it turns out , were warranted .
One analysis of online-learning data from this spring found that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ seven months behind academically , while the average Latinx student lost nine months and the average Black student lost 10 , according to the New York Times .
“ If we don ’ t figure out how to do this right , in the long term , what we ’ re going to be grappling with is even greater inequities ” Students who are homeless or housing-insecure experienced especially great difficulties with remote learning , Raysa Rodriguez , associate executive director for policy and advocacy at the Citizens ’ Committee for Children , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , told Vox .
New York and other cities did provide iPads and other devices to students who didn ’ t have computers at home , but even then , space was an issue .
“ You ’ re dealing with two or three students literally , without exaggeration , in a small room , four walls , ” Rodriguez said .
“ Remote learning looks very challenging , to say the least.
” For all these reasons , some experts are calling for a return to in-person instruction in the fall if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Pediatrics , for example , stated in June that it “ strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.
” The group noted the risks not just to students ’ learning but to their overall health if in-person school can not resume .
“ Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation , making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child @ @ @ @ @ @ @ substance use , depression , and suicidal ideation , ” the AAP statement read .
“ This , in turn , places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and , in some cases , mortality.
” Indeed , teachers and other school staff are often the ones to spot the signs that a child is being abused at home , experts say .
And when kids don ’ t go to school , those signs could be missed entirely .
In North Texas , for example , reports of child abuse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pandemic began .
It ’ s not an indicator there ’ s less abuse , “ it ’ s an indicator of child abuse not being recognized by adults out there , ” Lynn Davis , president of the Dallas Children ’ s Advocacy Center , told NBC .
School psychologists are worried , too , that students ’ mental health could suffer with the shift to remote schooling , especially given the added stress of the pandemic .
In one April survey by the Education Week Research Center , less than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were able to meet their students ’ mental health needs to the same degree as they had before the coronavirus crisis .
While many parents remain concerned about the public health risks of returning to school amid a pandemic , without some solution to the already-evident problems of remote learning , a fall semester online could set students back further .
And those who are already marginalized within the education system and society as a whole , including students of color and low-income students , are likely to suffer the most .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how to do this right , in the long term , what we ’ re going to be grappling with is even greater inequities , ” Rodriguez said , “ even a wider gap between those who are doing well and those who are struggling every day.
” Parents are buckling under the demands of online school Meanwhile , the shift to remote learning has placed enormous strain on parents , who have been expected to take over as part-time educators , assisting their children from home .
Online learning often requires more @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not less , as Jennifer Darling-Aduana , a soon-to-be assistant professor at Georgia State University who studies equity in digital learning , told Vox in the spring .
Young children may need constant attention from parents to keep them on task during online lessons and to help them complete assignments that could once have been done in class .
And while older students may be able to complete more work on their own , they still may need help navigating new learning technology — as well as paying attention and actually getting work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to go to .
For students with special needs , meanwhile , parents often must figure out how to replace the additional support , such as one-on-one aides , that schools ordinarily supply .
And a lot of that support has come from mothers , 80 percent of whom said they were shouldering the majority of homeschooling responsibilities in an April poll by Morning Consult for the New York Times .
Parents are already cutting their hours or dropping out of the labor force entirely due to child care problems — according to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ June 22 , 13 percent of US parents had done so .
And there ’ s evidence that mothers have been cutting back more , with 28 percent of mothers in the Morning Consult survey saying that they were working less than usual , compared with 19 percent of fathers .
Meanwhile , one California mom , Drisana Rios , is suing her employer after she says she was fired because her kids made noise during work calls ; experts say more cases like these are likely to follow .
These issues of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ function of the public school system that was often unacknowledged before the pandemic : For many families , school offers more than education — it ’ s “ a place where parents can trust that their children will be safe , ” Holder said .
That ’ s crucial for working parents , especially those who can ’ t afford private child care like nannies or babysitters .
Those with the ability to work from home , especially in two-parent households , have sometimes been able to cobble together schedules that allow them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often putting in hours of work late at night or early in the morning .
But parents who work outside the home have been left with few options , especially if they ’ re raising kids on their own .
Such parents are disproportionately likely to be women of color .
Over half of Black children live in single-parent homes , compared with about 20 percent of white children , Holder said .
Meanwhile , single mothers are among the poorest demographic in the US , with more than a third living in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Latina women are overrepresented in many essential and front-line jobs that require in-person work .
All of this means that the impact of school closures falls particularly hard on Black and Latina moms , who are less likely to have the work flexibility , disposable income , or help from a partner that can make pandemic child care possible , if not easy .
“ The problem really looks very bad for women of color who are mothers , ” Holder said .
As months drag on with no child care solutions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people are going to be faced with really impossible choices , ” Levenstein said , like “ do I leave my kids without supervision because I need to go to work and be able to buy them food ?
” or “ do I decide I can ’ t go back to work ?
” Ablordeppey , the Massachusetts nursing assistant , hears stories of such choices from fellow essential workers in his union , SEIU Local 888 , where he is chapter president .
“ Some people are still at home , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kids and their job , ” he said .
“ They ask you as an essential worker to report to work , no matter what , but they have to also know that you are a parent , ” Ablordeppey said .
In-person education during a pandemic comes with real risks And yet no matter how much students , family , and the economy may struggle under an online-only education model , there are clear public health risks to reopening schools .
Coronavirus cases are rising across the country and surging disturbingly in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and Florida .
And schools , at least as they ’ re traditionally structured , bring together hundreds of people every day , often for prolonged indoor contact with lots of talking — exactly the kind of activity that experts say is likely to spread the virus .
There is some evidence that K-12 schools may not be as dangerous for coronavirus spread as some other settings , such as restaurants and bars , because of the age of the students .
While children can become severely ill from the coronavirus , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have mild cases , and some data suggests they may be less likely to become infected or transmit the virus .
For example , child care centers that have remained open to care for children of essential workers have reported relatively few cases of the virus , as Dr. Sean O ’ Leary , a pediatric infectious disease specialist who helped write the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines , noted in an interview with the New York Times .
However , O ’ Leary and others acknowledge that if schools reopen , there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And teachers and staff , who as adults are more likely to become seriously ill than students , have voiced concerns .
Gross , who teaches 9th- and 12th-grade English in New Jersey , created a shared document listing educators ’ questions after the state announced that schools would have to offer at least some form of in-person learning in the fall .
So far , more than 600 people have submitted questions , she told Vox , ranging from whether a teacher would lose sick days for self-quarantining after a Covid-19 exposure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bills if a teacher did contract the disease at school .
In general , teachers “ all know we work in an occupation where we ’ re constantly exposed to illness , ” Gross said , “ but for the most part that ’ s predictable and we know what the flu is like.
” Covid-19 is something new , and the uncertainty of going back into a classroom during a pandemic gives a lot of teachers pause .
“ I think a lot of teachers are leaning toward distance learning as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said .
Union leaders have also voiced concerns about district reopening plans , with Merrie Najimy , president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association , calling Gov .
Charlie Baker ’ s recent proposal for the state ’ s schools insufficient because it doesn ’ t place a limit on class size or require 6 feet of distance between desks .
“ We did not rush in opening the state economy , ” Najimy said in an interview with WCVB TV Channel 5 on Sunday .
“ We can not rush into opening schools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to return to school by August or September.
” Meanwhile , Randi Weingarten , president of the American Federation of Teachers , blasted Trump ’ s threats to schools that don ’ t reopen in a Thursday interview with Today .
“ If too many of our members believe Donald Trump ’ s hyperbole instead of somebody like Andrew Cuomo ’ s caution about their health and safety , we ’ re going to have a whole lot of people retire early , quit , take a leave , ” she said .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ face exposure if students come back to school buildings .
As economist Emily Oster points out at Slate , it ’ s also staff like janitorial and cafeteria workers — groups of workers who have already faced disproportionate risks in health care settings , as they sometimes lack access to PPE .
Some have argued that working in education should be considered essential work during the pandemic , alongside jobs in health care and grocery stores .
“ I am an essential worker , ” said Holder , who teaches college students , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responsibilities and expectations.
” But essential workers in other sectors of the economy haven ’ t always been given the protections they ’ ve asked for , and many — including grocery store workers , nurses , and transit workers — have fallen ill and died .
And due to looming state and local budget cuts , as well as crumbling school infrastructure , teachers are worried they won ’ t be protected either .
“ So many teachers purchase a lot of their own supplies ” as it is , Gross said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a building with kids and staff providing a lot of their own PPE is scary.
” ( Some districts have already said they will provide masks for students and staff , though the price tag will be high . )
Meanwhile , many school buildings are old , with aging HVAC systems that may not meet the ventilation standards experts increasingly believe are necessary to mitigate the risk of Covid-19 .
“ I think if teachers are essential , ” Gross said , “ we would agree if our schools receive the funding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ solutions that would help — if policymakers listen In an effort to balance parents ’ desire for in-person instruction — and pressure from elected officials , including Trump — with the risks of crowded classrooms , many districts are proposing hybrid models of instruction .
Under these models , class sizes would be smaller , allowing for some physical distancing .
But students would only be physically present in school some of the time ; the rest of the time , they would be learning remotely .
New York City Mayor Bill de @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hybrid model on Wednesday under which students would be physically in school two or three days a week .
The Miami-Dade County Public School District announced on Monday that parents could choose between online-only and in-person instruction for the fall , but warned that schools might only be able to offer in-person classes part time , depending on enrollment .
While these models would allow students to get some of the benefits of classroom instruction , some of the inequities of online learning , including digital access issues , would likely remain unless @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not clear whether many districts will offer options for child care for parents who need to work during the hours when their children are doing instruction at home .
De Blasio said on Wednesday that help for parents was “ something we ’ re going to be building as we go along.
” Beyond hybrid models , experts have proposed broader solutions to help parents and students , some complex and some simple .
For many , getting kids back to school starts with controlling the virus , and actually prioritizing education in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wrote in a series of viral tweets , the key question is not how to safely reopen schools amid high viral transmission , but how to keep community transmission low enough that schools are safe .
That might mean keeping other venues , like bars or restaurants , closed in order to maintain a low level of the virus in the community , as Vox ’ s German Lopez has reported .
“ Activity in some other sectors of the economy will need to be reduced to preserve the education , feeding , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — and the ability of parents to do their work , ” Jenkins and fellow epidemiologist William Hanage wrote in a Washington Post op-ed .
“ Schools should be prioritized.
” Beyond keeping the virus under control , some have called for changes within schools .
Outdoor classes , for example , would likely reduce transmission risk in places where weather permits .
For teachers who do go back to the classroom , hazard pay would at least help compensate them for the risk they face .
“ The case can be made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where the risk of exposure is much greater , and thus like any other risky job , such as coal mining , you take risk into account in terms of the compensation , ” Holder said .
“ If an essential or front-line worker gets sick , they need resources to rely on if they do have to withdraw from the labor force.
” “ To think about going into a building with kids and staff providing a lot of their own PPE is scary ” And while hybrid models could keep students @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , parents will need solutions for the hours when their kids are home .
One possibility , for some , is paid leave .
Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act , parents are already entitled to up to 12 weeks of leave at partial pay if a child ’ s school or day care center is closed due to the virus .
However , as with other paid leave provisions in recent legislation , many employers , including those with over 500 employees , are exempt from the requirement , Pronita Gupta @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the Center for Law and Social Policy ( CLASP ) , told Vox .
And employees have to negotiate leave with their employers , which could make it difficult for them to get the time they ’ re entitled to , especially if hybrid schooling in the fall necessitates a complex child care schedule .
The paid leave requirement expires on December 31 , but CLASP advocates for it to be extended , as well as expanded to cover workers not currently included , Gupta said .
Still , paid leave under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a long-term solution for the issues around child care , ” she said .
“ We see this as very , very much a temporary relief situation.
” Others have proposed larger-scale solutions that would help parents work even if kids don ’ t go back to school full time .
For example , Elena Tuerk , a child psychologist at the University of Virginia , has proposed a corps of child care providers , potentially paid for by states or the federal government , who could supervise children when their parents are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be administered through the existing AmeriCorps program , and families could apply based on their work schedules and financial needs and be matched with trained caregivers in their communities , Tuerk told Vox .
Ideally , those caregivers “ would see this as an opportunity to serve , which it really is , ” she said .
But such a program — and indeed , all broad-based solutions to the problem of education in a pandemic — would require government investment and administration .
And so far , there ’ s been little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ families are facing this fall .
Instead , Trump , for his part , appears to be merely antagonizing school leaders , making threats about pulling funding that he may not even legally be able to fulfill .
“ I think we ’ re sort of taking for granted that parents are going to make do the way they might have in the spring , ” Tuerk said , “ but the amount of disruption that is causing to people ’ s work lives , and in particular to women ’ s work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” In addition to the economic impact , there ’ s also evidence that parents ’ mental health is suffering — in one survey conducted between late April and early May , 46 percent of people with children under 18 said their stress level is high most days , compared with 28 percent of people without young kids .
Meanwhile , 71 percent of parents said managing distance learning was a major source of stress .
Ablordeppey is intimately familiar with the anxiety of trying to raise kids during a pandemic .
“ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t even sleep , ” he said , “ then you have to go back to work.
” As the pandemic continues , parents like him who work outside the home need financial support to help them afford child care .
“ You can hire somebody to come and watch your kids , ” he said , but then , “ the little money that you ’ re making at work , you have to pay the babysitter.
” But so far , Ablordeppey has seen little leadership from politicians to address the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also believes , whether online or not , schools should provide counseling to help students deal with the mental health impact of the pandemic .
Instead , he said , “ it ’ s like everybody ’ s on their own.
” Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

This spring, Kwesi Ablordeppey worked nights taking care of veterans at Holyoke Soldiers’ Home in Massachusetts, where at least 76 patients have died of Covid-19.
During the day, though, he has been the resident IT consultant at his home in Springfield — his two teenage daughters often needing his help troubleshooting problems with their Zoom lessons. Like most students around the country, the 10th-graders shifted to online learning earlier this year when their school closed to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.
This left Ablordeppey, a single dad, with the dual burden of working and managing his kids’ education — something many American parents have struggled with in the pandemic. “It’s not something that I’m comfortable with,” he said, but “we have to adapt to the situation.”
Adapting to any situation is easier when there’s an end in sight. But pulling sleepless nights, trying to work with kids on your lap, and sometimes even moving across the country to be with family members who can provide child care are not permanent solutions. And as Covid-19 cases skyrocket across the American South and West, and many families enter their fifth month without reliable child care in sight, the question is growing louder and louder: What’s going to happen in the fall?
It’s a question with high stakes for all involved — children, parents, teachers, and staff — a total of tens of millions of people across the country. While some have called on the federal government for help, President Trump instead waded into the fray this week with his trademark all-caps bluster to insist that schools must open in the fall without any clear solutions. He also threatened to withdraw federal funding from schools that don’t open their buildings.
But Trump’s blanket statements belie the complexity of the problem. On the one hand, it is clear that the transition to online school has led to serious setbacks in learning in the spring, especially for students who are already at a disadvantage in the school system. For example, researchers found that after the shift online, student math progress declined by about half at schools in low-income zip codes, but not at all in schools in high-income areas, according to the New York Times.
And while some parents, many of them higher-earning professionals, have been able to supervise their children’s online learning while working from home, many lower-paid service workers don’t have the option to work remotely. They could soon be forced to choose between caring for their kids and getting a paycheck — if they haven’t been already. “Closing public schools on a prolonged basis poses real difficulties for low-wage workers,” Michelle Holder, an economics professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Vox.
But at the same time, reopening schools runs the risk of exposing not just students but also teachers and staff to a highly dangerous virus. Parents, including Ablordeppey, are wary. His daughters’ district has not yet announced final plans for the fall, but his children’s safety from Covid-19 will come first in any decision he makes, especially given his experience caring for patients. “I’ve seen it with my naked eye,” he said. “When I’m looking at anything, I’m looking at that perspective.”
Many teachers are also worried about going back into the classroom without a clear plan to keep everyone safe. “Every teacher I know desperately wants to go back to work,” Sarah Mulhern Gross, a high school English teacher in New Jersey, told Vox. “We want to be with our students, just not with possible long-term effects or, God forbid, fatalities hanging over our heads.”
Despite a lack of federal direction, there are solutions: Experts have proposed a number of ways to help kids learn and parents work while mitigating the risks — from outdoor classrooms to a corps of workers who can care for children in small groups while they complete online lessons. But that will take the political will of federal and state leaders to actually confront the problem.
“The government has the capacity to do this stuff,” Lisa Levenstein, director of the women’s, gender, and sexuality studies program at UNC Greensboro, told Vox. “We’re just choosing not to.”
Online-only learning is causing real problems for kids
As the coronavirus spread around the country in March and April, schools closed in all 50 states, and most stayed closed through the end of the academic year. The closures were meant to help slow transmission of the virus, which had already sickened parents, teachers, staff, and students nationwide, though it is unclear how many infections occurred in schools.
With school buildings closed, most districts switched to delivering instruction online, a process that posed its own challenges. Experts worried, for example, about how the 17 percent of children who lack a computer at home would complete remote schoolwork, and about how homeless students — who number more than 114,000 in New York City alone — would find a place to study. And many feared that the shift to online learning would exacerbate existing racial and economic inequalities in education.
Those concerns, it turns out, were warranted. One analysis of online-learning data from this spring found that the shift could put the average student seven months behind academically, while the average Latinx student lost nine months and the average Black student lost 10, according to the New York Times.
“If we don’t figure out how to do this right, in the long term, what we’re going to be grappling with is even greater inequities”
Students who are homeless or housing-insecure experienced especially great difficulties with remote learning, Raysa Rodriguez, associate executive director for policy and advocacy at the Citizens’ Committee for Children, a co-convener of the Family Homelessness Coalition, told Vox. New York and other cities did provide iPads and other devices to students who didn’t have computers at home, but even then, space was an issue. “You’re dealing with two or three students literally, without exaggeration, in a small room, four walls,” Rodriguez said. “Remote learning looks very challenging, to say the least.”
For all these reasons, some experts are calling for a return to in-person instruction in the fall if at all possible. The American Academy of Pediatrics, for example, stated in June that it “strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school.” The group noted the risks not just to students’ learning but to their overall health if in-person school cannot resume.
“Lengthy time away from school and associated interruption of supportive services often results in social isolation, making it difficult for schools to identify and address important learning deficits as well as child and adolescent physical or sexual abuse, substance use, depression, and suicidal ideation,” the AAP statement read. “This, in turn, places children and adolescents at considerable risk of morbidity and, in some cases, mortality.”
Indeed, teachers and other school staff are often the ones to spot the signs that a child is being abused at home, experts say. And when kids don’t go to school, those signs could be missed entirely. In North Texas, for example, reports of child abuse and neglect were down 43 percent after the pandemic began. It’s not an indicator there’s less abuse, “it’s an indicator of child abuse not being recognized by adults out there,” Lynn Davis, president of the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center, told NBC.
School psychologists are worried, too, that students’ mental health could suffer with the shift to remote schooling, especially given the added stress of the pandemic. In one April survey by the Education Week Research Center, less than a quarter of school leaders said they were able to meet their students’ mental health needs to the same degree as they had before the coronavirus crisis.
While many parents remain concerned about the public health risks of returning to school amid a pandemic, without some solution to the already-evident problems of remote learning, a fall semester online could set students back further. And those who are already marginalized within the education system and society as a whole, including students of color and low-income students, are likely to suffer the most.
“If we don’t figure out how to do this right, in the long term, what we’re going to be grappling with is even greater inequities,” Rodriguez said, “even a wider gap between those who are doing well and those who are struggling every day.”
Parents are buckling under the demands of online school
Meanwhile, the shift to remote learning has placed enormous strain on parents, who have been expected to take over as part-time educators, assisting their children from home. Online learning often requires more support from adults than in-person learning, not less, as Jennifer Darling-Aduana, a soon-to-be assistant professor at Georgia State University who studies equity in digital learning, told Vox in the spring.
Young children may need constant attention from parents to keep them on task during online lessons and to help them complete assignments that could once have been done in class. And while older students may be able to complete more work on their own, they still may need help navigating new learning technology — as well as paying attention and actually getting work done when there’s no classroom to go to. For students with special needs, meanwhile, parents often must figure out how to replace the additional support, such as one-on-one aides, that schools ordinarily supply.
And a lot of that support has come from mothers, 80 percent of whom said they were shouldering the majority of homeschooling responsibilities in an April poll by Morning Consult for the New York Times.
Parents are already cutting their hours or dropping out of the labor force entirely due to child care problems — according to one survey conducted between May 10 and June 22, 13 percent of US parents had done so. And there’s evidence that mothers have been cutting back more, with 28 percent of mothers in the Morning Consult survey saying that they were working less than usual, compared with 19 percent of fathers. Meanwhile, one California mom, Drisana Rios, is suing her employer after she says she was fired because her kids made noise during work calls; experts say more cases like these are likely to follow.
These issues of work and income bring to light a function of the public school system that was often unacknowledged before the pandemic: For many families, school offers more than education — it’s “a place where parents can trust that their children will be safe,” Holder said. That’s crucial for working parents, especially those who can’t afford private child care like nannies or babysitters.
Those with the ability to work from home, especially in two-parent households, have sometimes been able to cobble together schedules that allow them to care for kids while working — often putting in hours of work late at night or early in the morning. But parents who work outside the home have been left with few options, especially if they’re raising kids on their own.
Such parents are disproportionately likely to be women of color. Over half of Black children live in single-parent homes, compared with about 20 percent of white children, Holder said. Meanwhile, single mothers are among the poorest demographic in the US, with more than a third living in poverty, she added. And Black and Latina women are overrepresented in many essential and front-line jobs that require in-person work. All of this means that the impact of school closures falls particularly hard on Black and Latina moms, who are less likely to have the work flexibility, disposable income, or help from a partner that can make pandemic child care possible, if not easy. “The problem really looks very bad for women of color who are mothers,” Holder said.
As months drag on with no child care solutions in sight for many families, “people are going to be faced with really impossible choices,” Levenstein said, like “do I leave my kids without supervision because I need to go to work and be able to buy them food?” or “do I decide I can’t go back to work?”
Ablordeppey, the Massachusetts nursing assistant, hears stories of such choices from fellow essential workers in his union, SEIU Local 888, where he is chapter president. “Some people are still at home, because they’re torn between their kids and their job,” he said.
“They ask you as an essential worker to report to work, no matter what, but they have to also know that you are a parent,” Ablordeppey said.
In-person education during a pandemic comes with real risks
And yet no matter how much students, family, and the economy may struggle under an online-only education model, there are clear public health risks to reopening schools. Coronavirus cases are rising across the country and surging disturbingly in several states, including Arizona, Texas, and Florida. And schools, at least as they’re traditionally structured, bring together hundreds of people every day, often for prolonged indoor contact with lots of talking — exactly the kind of activity that experts say is likely to spread the virus.
There is some evidence that K-12 schools may not be as dangerous for coronavirus spread as some other settings, such as restaurants and bars, because of the age of the students. While children can become severely ill from the coronavirus, they are more likely than adults to have mild cases, and some data suggests they may be less likely to become infected or transmit the virus. For example, child care centers that have remained open to care for children of essential workers have reported relatively few cases of the virus, as Dr. Sean O’Leary, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who helped write the American Academy of Pediatrics guidelines, noted in an interview with the New York Times.
However, O’Leary and others acknowledge that if schools reopen, there will likely be Covid-19 cases there. And teachers and staff, who as adults are more likely to become seriously ill than students, have voiced concerns.
Related 8 ways to go out and stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic
Gross, who teaches 9th- and 12th-grade English in New Jersey, created a shared document listing educators’ questions after the state announced that schools would have to offer at least some form of in-person learning in the fall. So far, more than 600 people have submitted questions, she told Vox, ranging from whether a teacher would lose sick days for self-quarantining after a Covid-19 exposure to who would pay any ongoing medical bills if a teacher did contract the disease at school.
In general, teachers “all know we work in an occupation where we’re constantly exposed to illness,” Gross said, “but for the most part that’s predictable and we know what the flu is like.” Covid-19 is something new, and the uncertainty of going back into a classroom during a pandemic gives a lot of teachers pause.
“I think a lot of teachers are leaning toward distance learning as the safest option for now,” Gross said.
Union leaders have also voiced concerns about district reopening plans, with Merrie Najimy, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, calling Gov. Charlie Baker’s recent proposal for the state’s schools insufficient because it doesn’t place a limit on class size or require 6 feet of distance between desks. “We did not rush in opening the state economy,” Najimy said in an interview with WCVB TV Channel 5 on Sunday. “We cannot rush into opening schools just because the calendar says we have to return to school by August or September.”
Meanwhile, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, blasted Trump’s threats to schools that don’t reopen in a Thursday interview with Today. “If too many of our members believe Donald Trump’s hyperbole instead of somebody like Andrew Cuomo’s caution about their health and safety, we’re going to have a whole lot of people retire early, quit, take a leave,” she said.
It’s not just teachers who face exposure if students come back to school buildings. As economist Emily Oster points out at Slate, it’s also staff like janitorial and cafeteria workers — groups of workers who have already faced disproportionate risks in health care settings, as they sometimes lack access to PPE.
Some have argued that working in education should be considered essential work during the pandemic, alongside jobs in health care and grocery stores. “I am an essential worker,” said Holder, who teaches college students, “and along with that come certain responsibilities and expectations.”
But essential workers in other sectors of the economy haven’t always been given the protections they’ve asked for, and many — including grocery store workers, nurses, and transit workers — have fallen ill and died. And due to looming state and local budget cuts, as well as crumbling school infrastructure, teachers are worried they won’t be protected either. “So many teachers purchase a lot of their own supplies” as it is, Gross said. “To think about going into a building with kids and staff providing a lot of their own PPE is scary.” (Some districts have already said they will provide masks for students and staff, though the price tag will be high.)
Meanwhile, many school buildings are old, with aging HVAC systems that may not meet the ventilation standards experts increasingly believe are necessary to mitigate the risk of Covid-19. “I think if teachers are essential,” Gross said, “we would agree if our schools receive the funding that actually mirrors that.”
There are solutions that would help — if policymakers listen
In an effort to balance parents’ desire for in-person instruction — and pressure from elected officials, including Trump — with the risks of crowded classrooms, many districts are proposing hybrid models of instruction. Under these models, class sizes would be smaller, allowing for some physical distancing. But students would only be physically present in school some of the time; the rest of the time, they would be learning remotely.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, for example, announced a hybrid model on Wednesday under which students would be physically in school two or three days a week. The Miami-Dade County Public School District announced on Monday that parents could choose between online-only and in-person instruction for the fall, but warned that schools might only be able to offer in-person classes part time, depending on enrollment.
While these models would allow students to get some of the benefits of classroom instruction, some of the inequities of online learning, including digital access issues, would likely remain unless specifically addressed. It’s also not clear whether many districts will offer options for child care for parents who need to work during the hours when their children are doing instruction at home. De Blasio said on Wednesday that help for parents was “something we’re going to be building as we go along.”
Beyond hybrid models, experts have proposed broader solutions to help parents and students, some complex and some simple. For many, getting kids back to school starts with controlling the virus, and actually prioritizing education in reopening plans. As epidemiologist Helen Jenkins wrote in a series of viral tweets, the key question is not how to safely reopen schools amid high viral transmission, but how to keep community transmission low enough that schools are safe. That might mean keeping other venues, like bars or restaurants, closed in order to maintain a low level of the virus in the community, as Vox’s German Lopez has reported.
“Activity in some other sectors of the economy will need to be reduced to preserve the education, feeding, socialization, and safety of our children — and the ability of parents to do their work,” Jenkins and fellow epidemiologist William Hanage wrote in a Washington Post op-ed. “Schools should be prioritized.”
Beyond keeping the virus under control, some have called for changes within schools. Outdoor classes, for example, would likely reduce transmission risk in places where weather permits. For teachers who do go back to the classroom, hazard pay would at least help compensate them for the risk they face.
“The case can be made quite easily that there are some jobs where the risk of exposure is much greater, and thus like any other risky job, such as coal mining, you take risk into account in terms of the compensation,” Holder said. “If an essential or front-line worker gets sick, they need resources to rely on if they do have to withdraw from the labor force.”
“To think about going into a building with kids and staff providing a lot of their own PPE is scary”
And while hybrid models could keep students and teachers safer by reducing class size, parents will need solutions for the hours when their kids are home. One possibility, for some, is paid leave. Under the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, parents are already entitled to up to 12 weeks of leave at partial pay if a child’s school or day care center is closed due to the virus.
However, as with other paid leave provisions in recent legislation, many employers, including those with over 500 employees, are exempt from the requirement, Pronita Gupta, director of the job quality program at the Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), told Vox. And employees have to negotiate leave with their employers, which could make it difficult for them to get the time they’re entitled to, especially if hybrid schooling in the fall necessitates a complex child care schedule.
The paid leave requirement expires on December 31, but CLASP advocates for it to be extended, as well as expanded to cover workers not currently included, Gupta said. Still, paid leave under the CARES Act “is definitely not a long-term solution for the issues around child care,” she said. “We see this as very, very much a temporary relief situation.”
Others have proposed larger-scale solutions that would help parents work even if kids don’t go back to school full time. For example, Elena Tuerk, a child psychologist at the University of Virginia, has proposed a corps of child care providers, potentially paid for by states or the federal government, who could supervise children when their parents are at work.
Such an effort could be administered through the existing AmeriCorps program, and families could apply based on their work schedules and financial needs and be matched with trained caregivers in their communities, Tuerk told Vox. Ideally, those caregivers “would see this as an opportunity to serve, which it really is,” she said.
But such a program — and indeed, all broad-based solutions to the problem of education in a pandemic — would require government investment and administration. And so far, there’s been little political will to tackle the problems that families are facing this fall. Instead, Trump, for his part, appears to be merely antagonizing school leaders, making threats about pulling funding that he may not even legally be able to fulfill.
“I think we’re sort of taking for granted that parents are going to make do the way they might have in the spring,” Tuerk said, “but the amount of disruption that is causing to people’s work lives, and in particular to women’s work lives, is not okay long term.” In addition to the economic impact, there’s also evidence that parents’ mental health is suffering — in one survey conducted between late April and early May, 46 percent of people with children under 18 said their stress level is high most days, compared with 28 percent of people without young kids. Meanwhile, 71 percent of parents said managing distance learning was a major source of stress.
Ablordeppey is intimately familiar with the anxiety of trying to raise kids during a pandemic. “You come home, you can’t even sleep,” he said, “then you have to go back to work.”
As the pandemic continues, parents like him who work outside the home need financial support to help them afford child care. “You can hire somebody to come and watch your kids,” he said, but then, “the little money that you’re making at work, you have to pay the babysitter.”
But so far, Ablordeppey has seen little leadership from politicians to address the needs of families like his. He also believes, whether online or not, schools should provide counseling to help students deal with the mental health impact of the pandemic. Instead, he said, “it’s like everybody’s on their own.”


vox--2020-07-10--Masha Gessen on the frightening fragility of America’s political institutions

Masha Gessen grew up in the Soviet Union and spent two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia before being driven from the country by policies targeting LGBTQ people .
Watching Donald Trump win in 2016 , Gessen felt like they had seen this movie before .
Within 48 hours of Trump ’ s victory , their essay “ Autocracy : Rules for Survival ” had gone viral , including lessons that in hindsight read as prophetic : Believe the autocrat .
Do not be taken in by small signs of normality .
Institutions will not save you .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ new book , Surviving Autocracy , a collection of ideas they have been building over the course of the Trump presidency .
In this episode of The Ezra Klein Show , we discuss the inherent fragility of American political institutions , Donald Trump ’ s autocratic aesthetic , how the language of liberal democracy paradoxically undermines genuine liberal democracy , what lessons Gessen learned from covering the rise of Vladimir Putin , why Gessen believes the US is currently in the first stage of the three-part descent into autocracy , whether George W. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump , the counterintuitive roots of Trumpian post-truthism , and much more .
An edited excerpt from our conversation follows .
The full conversation can be heard on The Ezra Klein Show .
This is a book that is as much about language and its limits as it is about Donald Trump .
You write that “ the difficulty with absorbing the news lies in part in the words we use , which have a way of rendering the outrageous ordinary.
” Tell me about that .
I ’ ve been thinking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elected .
A lot of that thinking had to do with the sense of living in a shared reality — the ability to understand and express and communicate with others about what we ’ re living through — and how that ’ s impaired in an autocracy .
I don ’ t give Trump a whole lot of credit for political talent or anything , really , except he has an instinctive talent for language .
And there are a number of things that he does with language that I think are incredibly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reality and thereby undermining the very possibility of politics .
Something that you write about is that we have a tendency to use the language of liberal democracy to apply to things that are either no longer or never were a liberal democracy .
And that in applying the language of liberal democracy , we end up obscuring what they are or what they ’ re changing into .
Can you talk about that specific case , the way the term liberal democracy makes it hard to talk about something that is losing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This is an idea that actually is borrowed from a Hungarian political theorist , a sociologist named Balint Magyar .
He writes that in 1989 , when the Eastern Bloc collapsed , we started using the language of liberal democracy to describe what was going on there .
There were two reasons why we were doing that : One was that we just assumed that everything was going to become a liberal democracy — it was the “ end of history.
” The other was that ’ s the language of political science @ @ @ @ @ @ @ available to us .
In fact , what was happening there was not liberal democracy .
And the language got in the way of understanding that .
If you talk about free and fair elections in a place where that ’ s not even relevant , if you talk about freedom of the press in a place where that ’ s not even relevant , you are describing absences that are not even part of the same phenomenon that you ’ re trying to describe .
Or as Magyar puts it : You @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t fly .
You can say that the elephant doesn ’ t swim .
But that doesn ’ t tell you anything about the elephant .
What are terms we use in liberal democracy that you feel describe something we think we have and keep us from seeing the thing that we actually are becoming ?
I think American faith in institutions has a sort of religious quality to it .
We imbue institutions in the way we talk about them with sort of magical qualities — the qualities of self-repair and independent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ imagine them , are so perfect — they just work on their own and require nothing to make them work .
Or conversely , nothing can stop them from working .
They ’ re so perfectly designed that they ’ re independent of their context .
We don ’ t question the idea that institutions , if they function as they were designed , will always give the perfect result .
What the Trump era has revealed to me is that there is nothing automatic about our institutions .
Our parties cross our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the House and in the Senate and in the White House and in the Supreme Court .
And the institutions don ’ t work if both parties don ’ t want them to work .
So when I think about the institutional failure here , I think that it ’ s a mistake to think about them as automatic , as you were saying .
It really seems to me that the core institutional failure was on the side of the Republican Party .
Once Trump was the nominee , the party fell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slavish and disturbing way .
The Republican Party ’ s rapid accommodation to what I would call an autocratic aesthetic — and sometimes autocratic behavior — has been really scary .
It ’ s been absolutely terrifying .
I have spent most of my professional life writing about Russia , where I have constructed all sorts of theories or used other people ’ s theories about how this sort of behavior of state terror and autocratic rule is conditioned over decades — how it is entrenched in a culture .
And here we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this is entirely alien , watching an entire political party that holds a majority at that point in both houses of Congress just falling in line like they are the subjects of a tyrant who rules by terror .
That upends all of those theories .
What I write about in the book is that I think there is a difference of political audiences in autocracy and a democracy .
In a democracy , a politician ’ s audience is their voters .
They are accountable to their voters .
Their voters decide @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their jobs .
They address their voters whenever they ’ re speaking publicly , even if it ’ s ostensibly to someone else .
In an autocracy , a politician ’ s audience is always the autocrat because it is the autocrat who distributes power and often money .
It is the autocrat who decides whether the politician keeps their job or not .
And I think somehow , in a matter literally of months , an entire half of our political life changed to the audience of an autocracy .
Because it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ murder by tweet and causes any elected representative probably to lose his or her job .
To me , the scariest line in your book is this one : “ The first three years [ of Trump ’ s presidency ] have shown that an autocratic attempt in the United States has a credible chance of succeeding.
” The thing that has always been so striking to me about Trump is that he would make his own rejection so easy .
He ’ s crude .
He ’ s not strategic .
He @ @ @ @ @ @ @ never had an approval rating above 50 percent .
He betrays some of the party ’ s core principles .
He ’ s not somebody who ’ s been executing a strategic takeover of either the Republican Party or of American political institutions .
So this is the easy case .
And even in this case , we ’ ve proved unable to put strong boundaries on him .
He ’ s taken over a major political party .
To me , the true nightmare scenario here has been not really Trump — @ @ @ @ @ @ @ truly wants a level of responsibility that would come along with being a successful autocrat , even if he were capable of becoming one .
Our deep vulnerability is somebody who did want it and who was willing to be just mildly strategic .
That ’ s a great point .
I think we ’ re in the midst of what Magyar calls the “ autocratic attempt , ” that ’ s the first stage when autocracy is still reversible by electoral means .
So at least until November , we ’ re @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this process .
Then , at some point , there comes the autocratic breakthrough when you can no longer use electoral means to reverse that autocracy .
Then autocratic consolidation , where it ’ s just consolidating ever more power and money , making it ever less possible to change .
So if this attempt fails , if we vote him out of office in November and he leaves , I think that the lesson we need to draw is that democracy is always a process .
It ’ s always a negotiation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the making .
It ’ s never the thing you just build and inhabit , which I think is one of the fundamental misunderstandings of the concept of democracy that so many of us have had .
I think that ’ s the ultimate lesson to take if this autocratic attempt fails , which I hope it does .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to save lives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

Masha Gessen grew up in the Soviet Union and spent two decades covering the resurgence of totalitarianism in Russia before being driven from the country by policies targeting LGBTQ people. Watching Donald Trump win in 2016, Gessen felt like they had seen this movie before. Within 48 hours of Trump’s victory, their essay “Autocracy: Rules for Survival” had gone viral, including lessons that in hindsight read as prophetic: Believe the autocrat. Do not be taken in by small signs of normality. Institutions will not save you.
Now, Gessen is back with a new book, Surviving Autocracy, a collection of ideas they have been building over the course of the Trump presidency. In this episode of The Ezra Klein Show, we discuss the inherent fragility of American political institutions, Donald Trump’s autocratic aesthetic, how the language of liberal democracy paradoxically undermines genuine liberal democracy, what lessons Gessen learned from covering the rise of Vladimir Putin, why Gessen believes the US is currently in the first stage of the three-part descent into autocracy, whether George W. Bush was a more damaging president than Donald Trump, the counterintuitive roots of Trumpian post-truthism, and much more.
An edited excerpt from our conversation follows. The full conversation can be heard on The Ezra Klein Show.
Ezra Klein
This is a book that is as much about language and its limits as it is about Donald Trump. You write that “the difficulty with absorbing the news lies in part in the words we use, which have a way of rendering the outrageous ordinary.” Tell me about that.
Masha Gessen
I’ve been thinking about language a lot since Trump was elected. A lot of that thinking had to do with the sense of living in a shared reality — the ability to understand and express and communicate with others about what we’re living through — and how that’s impaired in an autocracy.
I don’t give Trump a whole lot of credit for political talent or anything, really, except he has an instinctive talent for language. And there are a number of things that he does with language that I think are incredibly effective in undermining the sense of shared reality and thereby undermining the very possibility of politics.
Ezra Klein
Something that you write about is that we have a tendency to use the language of liberal democracy to apply to things that are either no longer or never were a liberal democracy. And that in applying the language of liberal democracy, we end up obscuring what they are or what they’re changing into.
Can you talk about that specific case, the way the term liberal democracy makes it hard to talk about something that is losing its shape as a liberal democracy?
Masha Gessen
This is an idea that actually is borrowed from a Hungarian political theorist, a sociologist named Balint Magyar. He writes that in 1989, when the Eastern Bloc collapsed, we started using the language of liberal democracy to describe what was going on there. There were two reasons why we were doing that: One was that we just assumed that everything was going to become a liberal democracy — it was the “end of history.” The other was that’s the language of political science — that’s what’s available to us.
In fact, what was happening there was not liberal democracy. And the language got in the way of understanding that. If you talk about free and fair elections in a place where that’s not even relevant, if you talk about freedom of the press in a place where that’s not even relevant, you are describing absences that are not even part of the same phenomenon that you’re trying to describe.
Or as Magyar puts it: You can say that the elephant doesn’t fly. You can say that the elephant doesn’t swim. But that doesn’t tell you anything about the elephant.
Ezra Klein
What are terms we use in liberal democracy that you feel describe something we think we have and keep us from seeing the thing that we actually are becoming?
Masha Gessen
I think American faith in institutions has a sort of religious quality to it. We imbue institutions in the way we talk about them with sort of magical qualities — the qualities of self-repair and independent functioning. American institutions, as we imagine them, are so perfect — they just work on their own and require nothing to make them work. Or conversely, nothing can stop them from working. They’re so perfectly designed that they’re independent of their context.
We don’t question the idea that institutions, if they function as they were designed, will always give the perfect result.
Ezra Klein
What the Trump era has revealed to me is that there is nothing automatic about our institutions. Our parties cross our institutions. The Republican Party exists in the House and in the Senate and in the White House and in the Supreme Court.
And the institutions don’t work if both parties don’t want them to work. So when I think about the institutional failure here, I think that it’s a mistake to think about them as automatic, as you were saying. It really seems to me that the core institutional failure was on the side of the Republican Party. Once Trump was the nominee, the party fell in line behind him in a deeply slavish and disturbing way.
The Republican Party’s rapid accommodation to what I would call an autocratic aesthetic — and sometimes autocratic behavior — has been really scary.
Masha Gessen
It’s been absolutely terrifying. I have spent most of my professional life writing about Russia, where I have constructed all sorts of theories or used other people’s theories about how this sort of behavior of state terror and autocratic rule is conditioned over decades — how it is entrenched in a culture.
And here we are in a country to which supposedly this is entirely alien, watching an entire political party that holds a majority at that point in both houses of Congress just falling in line like they are the subjects of a tyrant who rules by terror. That upends all of those theories.
What I write about in the book is that I think there is a difference of political audiences in autocracy and a democracy. In a democracy, a politician’s audience is their voters. They are accountable to their voters. Their voters decide whether they stay in office or lose their jobs. They address their voters whenever they’re speaking publicly, even if it’s ostensibly to someone else.
In an autocracy, a politician’s audience is always the autocrat because it is the autocrat who distributes power and often money. It is the autocrat who decides whether the politician keeps their job or not. And I think somehow, in a matter literally of months, an entire half of our political life changed to the audience of an autocracy. Because it’s Donald Trump who can commit murder by tweet and causes any elected representative probably to lose his or her job.
Ezra Klein
To me, the scariest line in your book is this one: “The first three years [of Trump’s presidency] have shown that an autocratic attempt in the United States has a credible chance of succeeding.”
The thing that has always been so striking to me about Trump is that he would make his own rejection so easy. He’s crude. He’s not strategic. He alienates potential allies. He’s never had an approval rating above 50 percent. He betrays some of the party’s core principles. He’s not somebody who’s been executing a strategic takeover of either the Republican Party or of American political institutions. So this is the easy case. And even in this case, we’ve proved unable to put strong boundaries on him. He’s taken over a major political party.
To me, the true nightmare scenario here has been not really Trump — I’m not even sure he truly wants a level of responsibility that would come along with being a successful autocrat, even if he were capable of becoming one. Our deep vulnerability is somebody who did want it and who was willing to be just mildly strategic.
Masha Gessen
That’s a great point. I think we’re in the midst of what Magyar calls the “autocratic attempt,” that’s the first stage when autocracy is still reversible by electoral means. So at least until November, we’re still in the autocratic attempt stage of this process.
Then, at some point, there comes the autocratic breakthrough when you can no longer use electoral means to reverse that autocracy. Then autocratic consolidation, where it’s just consolidating ever more power and money, making it ever less possible to change.
So if this attempt fails, if we vote him out of office in November and he leaves, I think that the lesson we need to draw is that democracy is always a process. It’s always a negotiation. It’s always a thing in the making. It’s never the thing you just build and inhabit, which I think is one of the fundamental misunderstandings of the concept of democracy that so many of us have had.
I think that’s the ultimate lesson to take if this autocratic attempt fails, which I hope it does.


vox--2020-07-10--A therapist on what it’s like to work with patients during the pandemic

In some ways , Mary Firme has never felt closer to her clients .
Therapy sessions are traditionally held in grim medical buildings and private offices , but now , as many of our institutions have been offloaded to the internet , Firme gets an opportunity to see how her clients live .
She can observe the art on their walls and the books on their nightstands .
Sometimes , she meets pets or small children , who wander into the bedroom and stand in the corner of the webcam frame .
Virtual therapy isn ’ t for everyone , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ small advantages along the way .
Firme is a licensed professional counselor who lives in Austin , Texas .
When the city closed its doors on the Friday before spring break in mid-March , her office put a moratorium on in-person counseling services .
Since then , she ’ s conducted the vast majority of her work via Telehealth — a network that offers a variety of different medical services to clients over the phone or internet .
Firme isn ’ t alone ; recent surveys estimate that 42 percent of Americans are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s offices during this stay-at-home order .
Medical practitioners ( and their patients ) are converting their bedrooms , garages , and kitchens into makeshift clinics for the time being .
Luckily , Firme says nothing has been lost in translation .
She can still speak candidly with anyone who seeks her out .
Firme makes it clear that there are a few serious limitations to virtual therapy .
If someone is in an unhappy marriage or an abusive living situation , it will compromise their ability to speak openly and freely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also believes that remote treatment is probably limited for children ’ s therapy as well .
That said , Firme hopes that after the pandemic , her clients will continue to take advantage of Telehealth .
These days , she routinely goes into a session with a patient during their lunch break — a microdose of therapy before they face the rest of the day — which is just one of the many ways we ’ re reimagining mental health services during the Covid-19 era .
Firme thinks we should hold onto that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ below .
When did the pandemic start to affect your job ?
It was March 13 .
That was the day before spring break , and there was a lot of talk in the universities that spring break might be postponed .
What happens in the real world revolves around what happens in schools .
When UT called off school that Friday , that was the moment where it was clear that something real was going on .
What was it like breaking the news to your clients that you weren ’ t @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sessions for the time being ?
“ Every case is different , but 90 percent of clients are online “ Once I informed everyone that we were going to have to do virtual therapy for a while , a lot of them were completely on board with it .
People have stuck with it and haven ’ t batted an eye .
Every case is different , but 90 percent of clients are online .
It ’ s been different .
People are used to platforms like FaceTime and WhatsApp , so I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ software I use is similar to FaceTime , it just takes you into an app , ” and they ’ re like , “ Okay , great !
” Was it awkward at all at first to do sessions over the internet ?
So I ’ d done some Telehealth prior to this .
Some people travel for work , or they can ’ t make it in , and it ’ s covered by a lot of insurance companies .
It ’ s well known at this point .
But as far @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s been a learning curve .
Some of the technology is tough to guide people through .
I never thought I ’ d be a therapy tech support desk .
Another strange byproduct is that when you ’ re on camera you ’ re being very mindful to sit up .
You don ’ t want to change positions too much .
You start getting these strange aches and pains .
But a lot of it has been pretty straightforward .
I ’ m really thrilled and excited that we have the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people what they need .
Are you still going to the office ?
I go to the office .
I had three college-aged kids come home from spring break and not return to school , so I use the office so there aren ’ t any distractions and people aren ’ t coming through the doors .
I ’ m hoping that we can open up fully again sometime in the near future .
I have done some therapy from my house in a pinch when it ’ s an unexpected session with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an office , but I do have a bedroom .
It works anywhere where you have a good internet connection and a cellphone or an iPad .
I can function that way .
Have the sessions themselves been different ?
Have you been able to reach the same level of intimacy ?
For the most part , it mirrors what we ’ ve been doing in the office .
One of the unexpected joys is you get to meet other people ’ s children and pets , you get to see their home @ @ @ @ @ @ @ art and stuff .
You learn a little bit more about the clients , and I think that ’ s helpful and important .
Ironically , prior to this , the 4 pm to 7 pm therapy hours were the ones everyone wanted because they wanted to go in after the school day or workday .
But now , the middle of the day schedule , around someone ’ s break , are the new hot spots .
The level of connectivity is just as good .
The clients I had in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rapport .
Have you taken on any new clients ?
“ One of the unexpected joys is you get to meet other people ’ s children and pets ” I have a very solid continuing client base , but there ’ s been a few new folks that have come on during the pandemic .
A lot of it comes from being alone , and being with their thoughts , and wanting to come to therapy .
It ’ s been an easy transition for people with Zoom and FaceTime .
When they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to make sure that they live in Austin so we can continue in person .
I don ’ t want there to be a situation where someone is like , “ Oh great , she takes Telehealth , ” and they live in Houston .
That almost sounds advantageous to you , as a therapist , to see how your clients live .
Absolutely .
They can hold their dogs , which might make them feel safe .
It gives me a sense of what ’ s going on .
It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not otherwise have the privilege to see .
How often do you guys talk about the pandemic ?
Does that affect the sessions ?
Pretty much every session , over Telehealth , it comes up , because we ’ re doing Telehealth instead of in-person therapy .
Almost everyone is bringing it up because their lives are changing , their worlds are changing , their jobs are changing .
If there ’ s a function of society that hasn ’ t been affected by the pandemic my clients will bring it up , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ Oh right , that ’ s changed too.
” People are processing other things , but the pandemic is on people ’ s minds all the time .
It ’ s a huge anxiety for so many clients because they start thinking about their grandparents or their neighbor with diabetes .
Everyone is questioning their mortality .
It ’ s a constant reminder of what ’ s going on .
Do you give your clients advice on how to ensure that they have privacy at home when they ’ re in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suggest they go somewhere private if at all possible .
This is the caveat .
If someone is in a violent situation or an unhappy marriage , that person might not be a good fit for video therapy .
But people know to go somewhere private , and I always mention that to those who aren ’ t doing that .
But my goal isn ’ t to tell you how to handle your stuff .
I ’ m here to help people figure out things for themselves and not dictate anything .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to use virtual therapy more after the end of this pandemic ?
I would hope so .
I would hope that this continues to be an option .
There is some pushback from insurance companies .
If someone is private paying , it doesn ’ t matter .
But there ’ s some worries that Telehealth might not be equipped for certain situations .
And granted , it ’ s not for everything .
From some illnesses , you still need to go into a nurse practitioner ’ s office .
But I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ because it gives people so many options .
I have people doing therapy during lunch hours at work , which wouldn ’ t have happened before .
Sign up for The Goods newsletter .
Twice a week , we ’ ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy , why we buy it , and why it matters .
Every day at Vox , we aim to answer your most important questions and provide you , and our audience around the world , with information that has the power to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
Vox ’ s work is reaching more people than ever , but our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources — particularly during a pandemic and an economic downturn .
Your financial contribution will not constitute a donation , but it will enable our staff to continue to offer free articles , videos , and podcasts at the quality and volume that this moment requires .
Please consider making a contribution to Vox today .

In some ways, Mary Firme has never felt closer to her clients. Therapy sessions are traditionally held in grim medical buildings and private offices, but now, as many of our institutions have been offloaded to the internet, Firme gets an opportunity to see how her clients live. She can observe the art on their walls and the books on their nightstands. Sometimes, she meets pets or small children, who wander into the bedroom and stand in the corner of the webcam frame. Virtual therapy isn’t for everyone, but Firme has still found a few small advantages along the way.
Firme is a licensed professional counselor who lives in Austin, Texas. When the city closed its doors on the Friday before spring break in mid-March, her office put a moratorium on in-person counseling services. Since then, she’s conducted the vast majority of her work via Telehealth — a network that offers a variety of different medical services to clients over the phone or internet. Firme isn’t alone; recent surveys estimate that 42 percent of Americans are turning to their phones instead of doctor’s offices during this stay-at-home order. Medical practitioners (and their patients) are converting their bedrooms, garages, and kitchens into makeshift clinics for the time being. Luckily, Firme says nothing has been lost in translation. She can still speak candidly with anyone who seeks her out.
Firme makes it clear that there are a few serious limitations to virtual therapy. If someone is in an unhappy marriage or an abusive living situation, it will compromise their ability to speak openly and freely within earshot of their cohabitants. She also believes that remote treatment is probably limited for children’s therapy as well. That said, Firme hopes that after the pandemic, her clients will continue to take advantage of Telehealth. These days, she routinely goes into a session with a patient during their lunch break — a microdose of therapy before they face the rest of the day — which is just one of the many ways we’re reimagining mental health services during the Covid-19 era. Firme thinks we should hold onto that creativity moving forward. Read our conversation below.
When did the pandemic start to affect your job?
It was March 13. That was the day before spring break, and there was a lot of talk in the universities that spring break might be postponed. What happens in the real world revolves around what happens in schools. When UT called off school that Friday, that was the moment where it was clear that something real was going on.
What was it like breaking the news to your clients that you weren’t going to be able to take in-person sessions for the time being?
“Every case is different, but 90 percent of clients are online“
Once I informed everyone that we were going to have to do virtual therapy for a while, a lot of them were completely on board with it. People have stuck with it and haven’t batted an eye. Every case is different, but 90 percent of clients are online. It’s been different. People are used to platforms like FaceTime and WhatsApp, so I can say, “Hey, the software I use is similar to FaceTime, it just takes you into an app,” and they’re like, “Okay, great!”
Was it awkward at all at first to do sessions over the internet?
So I’d done some Telehealth prior to this. Some people travel for work, or they can’t make it in, and it’s covered by a lot of insurance companies. It’s well known at this point. But as far as getting used to it, there’s been a learning curve. Some of the technology is tough to guide people through. I never thought I’d be a therapy tech support desk. Another strange byproduct is that when you’re on camera you’re being very mindful to sit up. You don’t want to change positions too much. You start getting these strange aches and pains. But a lot of it has been pretty straightforward. I’m really thrilled and excited that we have the technology to do this now and get people what they need.
Are you still going to the office?
I go to the office. I had three college-aged kids come home from spring break and not return to school, so I use the office so there aren’t any distractions and people aren’t coming through the doors. I’m hoping that we can open up fully again sometime in the near future. I have done some therapy from my house in a pinch when it’s an unexpected session with someone. I don’t have an office, but I do have a bedroom. It works anywhere where you have a good internet connection and a cellphone or an iPad. I can function that way.
Have the sessions themselves been different? Have you been able to reach the same level of intimacy?
For the most part, it mirrors what we’ve been doing in the office. One of the unexpected joys is you get to meet other people’s children and pets, you get to see their home environment, and if they have fun art and stuff. You learn a little bit more about the clients, and I think that’s helpful and important. Ironically, prior to this, the 4 pm to 7 pm therapy hours were the ones everyone wanted because they wanted to go in after the school day or workday. But now, the middle of the day schedule, around someone’s break, are the new hot spots. The level of connectivity is just as good. The clients I had in the past, we still have the same rapport.
Have you taken on any new clients?
“One of the unexpected joys is you get to meet other people’s children and pets”
I have a very solid continuing client base, but there’s been a few new folks that have come on during the pandemic. A lot of it comes from being alone, and being with their thoughts, and wanting to come to therapy. It’s been an easy transition for people with Zoom and FaceTime. When they sign on with me, I want to make sure that they live in Austin so we can continue in person. I don’t want there to be a situation where someone is like, “Oh great, she takes Telehealth,” and they live in Houston.
That almost sounds advantageous to you, as a therapist, to see how your clients live.
Absolutely. They can hold their dogs, which might make them feel safe. It gives me a sense of what’s going on. It’s a nice glimpse into something we might not otherwise have the privilege to see.
How often do you guys talk about the pandemic? Does that affect the sessions?
Pretty much every session, over Telehealth, it comes up, because we’re doing Telehealth instead of in-person therapy. Almost everyone is bringing it up because their lives are changing, their worlds are changing, their jobs are changing. If there’s a function of society that hasn’t been affected by the pandemic my clients will bring it up, and I’ll be like, “Oh right, that’s changed too.” People are processing other things, but the pandemic is on people’s minds all the time. It’s a huge anxiety for so many clients because they start thinking about their grandparents or their neighbor with diabetes. Everyone is questioning their mortality. It’s a constant reminder of what’s going on.
Do you give your clients advice on how to ensure that they have privacy at home when they’re in a virtual session with you?
I always suggest they go somewhere private if at all possible. This is the caveat. If someone is in a violent situation or an unhappy marriage, that person might not be a good fit for video therapy. But people know to go somewhere private, and I always mention that to those who aren’t doing that. But my goal isn’t to tell you how to handle your stuff. I’m here to help people figure out things for themselves and not dictate anything.
Do you think your clients will continue to use virtual therapy more after the end of this pandemic?
I would hope so. I would hope that this continues to be an option. There is some pushback from insurance companies. If someone is private paying, it doesn’t matter. But there’s some worries that Telehealth might not be equipped for certain situations. And granted, it’s not for everything. From some illnesses, you still need to go into a nurse practitioner’s office. But I hope that they continue to cover it because it gives people so many options. I have people doing therapy during lunch hours at work, which wouldn’t have happened before.
Sign up for The Goods newsletter. Twice a week, we’ll send you the best Goods stories exploring what we buy, why we buy it, and why it matters.