Welcome to Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman. In northern Mexico, more than three dozen asylum seekers at an immigration detention center in the border city of Ciudad Juarez have died in a fire that broke out overnight at the facility near the Santa Fe International Bridge in El Paso, Texas. At least 39 people are dead, 29 others injured, most of them Venezuelan. Political news outlets, including La Jornada, report the fire broke out after officials with Mexico's National Migration Institute began cracking down on migrants earlier in the day. This comes just two weeks after hundreds of asylum seekers, mostly from Venezuela, were blocked by barbed wire and riot police, as they tried to cross from Juarez into El Paso, Texas to apply for relief. The deaths in Mexico come just hours after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees urged the Biden administration not to adopt a proposed anti-asylum rule that would deny claims made by refugees who lack, quote, documents sufficient for lawful admission, unquote. In a statement, the U.N. refugee agency said the regulation would restrict the fundamental human rights to seek asylum, adding, quote, UNHCR is particularly concerned that this would lead to cases of refuelment, the forced return of people to situations where their lives and safety would be at risk, which is prohibited under international law, unquote. Nashville, Tennessee is mourning after six people were killed in a shooting Monday at a private Christian elementary school. All three students shot and killed were nine years old. They were identified as Evelyn Dickhouse, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. The adults killed in the shooting were identified as Catherine Koontz, the head of the school, Cynthia Peek, a substitute teacher, and the custodian, Mike Hill. He'd worked at the school for 13 years. Police say the shooter was armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun and shot their way through a side door to enter the school before being killed by police. Officials say the shooter was a former student at the school and had written a manifesto laying out plans for the attack that included maps of the building. A Fox News report in Nashville about the shooting was interrupted live by Ashby Beasley, a gun control advocate and survivor of the July 4, 2022 mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. Aren't you guys tired of covering this? Aren't you guys tired of being here and having to cover all of these mass shootings? I'm from Highland Park, Illinois. My son and I survived a mass shooting over the summer. I am in Tennessee on a family vacation with my son, visiting my sister-in-law. I have been lobbying in D.C. since we survived a mass shooting in July. I have met with over 130 lawmakers. How is this still happening? How are our children still dying and why are we failing them? Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens. It has overtaken cars. At the White House, President Biden once again called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. Later in the broadcast, we'll go to Nashville, Tennessee, for the latest. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to delay a push to overhaul and weaken Israel's judiciary until after the Knesset's Passover recess. Netanyahu made the announcement Monday after much of Israel was shut down by a general strike in following months of mass protests. As a concession to the far right, Netanyahu agreed to establish a new national guard under the control of Itamar Ben Gavir, Israel's ultra-nationalist national security minister who is convicted of racist incitement against Palestinians and supporting a terrorist group. While the general strike was called off after Netanyahu's announcement, protests continue. On Monday night, Israeli police fired water cannons and stun grenades to disperse protesters in Tel Aviv. We'll have more on Israel and Palestine after headlines. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has said he stands ready to use nuclear weapons anytime and anywhere. North Korean state television reported the comments as a broadcast pictures of Kim inspecting nuclear warheads as part of what the North calls a program to produce more nuclear material. On Monday, North Korea test-fired two tactical ballistic missiles into waters off the coast of Japan, the North Korea's seventh missile test this month. The launches came after the U.S. Navy and South Korea completed their biggest spring time war games in years, and as the nuclear-armed USS Nimitz aircraft carrier battle group arrived at the Busan Naval Base in South Korea. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports North Korea is preparing to resume foreign diplomatic activity as Kim Jong-un gradually reopens North Korea after three years of isolation during the coronavirus pandemic. In Afghanistan, the Taliban has arrested a prominent education advocate who publicly criticized the Taliban's restrictions on girls going to school. Matula Wesa is the founder of PENPATH, a group that traveled across Afghanistan campaigning to bring education to rural areas. In his last post on social media, Wesa shared a video showing PENPATH women volunteers protesting for the right to education. He wrote, quote, "'Men, women, elderly, young everyone from every corner of the country are asking for the Islamic rights to education for their daughters.'" In France, hundreds of thousands of people have joined strikes and protests nationwide today in the latest demonstrations calling on President Emmanuel Macron to cancel a measure raising the age of retirement from 62 to 64.  The strikes came as the head of France's largest labor union, Laurent Berger, called on Macron to put the deeply unpopular pension reform on hold. If the trade unions were received by the president of the Republic, something which we have been asking for almost a month now, and we were told you cannot talk about pensions, that would make no sense at all. It would be almost anachronistic. There are millions of people who are opposed to this pension reform and who are demonstrating. If we want to avoid clashes, and I want to avoid them, what the unions are proposing now is a gesture of appeasement to find a way out. It must be seized. In Florida, a dual Haitian Chilean citizen has pleaded guilty to three charges related to the July 2021 assassination of former Haitian president Jovenel Moise. Rodolf Jar signed a plea agreement with the U.S. Attorney's Office in southern Florida Friday, admitting he provided funds to purchase weapons while allowing at least five other suspects to stage their operation at a property he owned in Haiti. California residents are bracing for yet another atmospheric river with forecasters predicting high winds and heavy rain and snow this week. This follows 11 similar storms over the winter that shattered daily rainfall records and flooded tens of thousands of acres of farmland in California's Central San Joaquin Valley. Advocates for California farm workers have described the floods as catastrophic, leaving them with fewer job opportunities and fewer spaces to live. A lawyer tease of the Center for Farm Worker Families told a local ABC affiliate, quote, all the donations from the public will not be able to resolve this situation. We need federal assistance, he said. Officials in Philadelphia are continuing to monitor water quality after as much as 12,000 gallons of acrylic latex polymer leaked from a chemical processing plant into a tributary of the Delaware River. Based on current testing, authorities say tap water will be safe to drink until at least 3.30 p.m. today. Environmental advocates have criticized how local officials have responded to the chemical spill. This is Maya Van Rossum, leader of the Delaware River Keeper Network. We think it is absolutely important that there is critical focus on ensuring that drinking water supplies are safe. But at the same time, we also want to make sure that our state and federal agencies are ensuring that the critical ecosystems of the Delaware River are also being monitored. Minnesota's largest electric utility has temporarily shut down the Monticello nuclear power plant after reporting radioactive tritium was released into the surrounding groundwater near the Mississippi River. It's the second such spill reported by Excel Energy since November. Minnesota's Pollution Control Agency reports the plant's shutdown caused a massive die-off of fish due to a change in water temperature in the Mississippi. Police in Atlanta, Georgia raided the Wielani Forest Monday in an attempt to clear protesters who've camped in the area for months as part of a campaign to block the construction of a massive police training facility known as Cop City. It would be the largest in the country. According to the Atlanta Justice Alliance, one of the first things destroyed during the raid was a memorial to Tortuguita, a forest defender who was shot dead by police in January. There are reports authorities may be planning to begin clear-cutting parts of the forest in coming days. Arizona's Democratic Governor Katie Hobbs signaled Monday she will delay the planned April 6th execution of death row prisoner Aaron Gunches, who's set to receive a lethal injection after pleading guilty to murder in 2002. Hobbs is vowed she would not sign off on any executions unless she's confident Arizona isn't violating constitutional rights when enforcing the death penalty. Meanwhile, Idaho's Republican Governor Brad Little signed a bill Friday allowing execution by firing squad. Mississippi, Utah, Oklahoma, and South Carolina have passed similar laws. And New York City's chapter of the Audubon Society has voted to change its name, joining several other local chapters of the Bird Conservation Group dissociating themselves from the so-called founding father of American birding. Earlier this month, the National Audubon Society voted to retain the name of John James Audubon, the 19th century French-American naturalist, who enslaved at least nine people in espoused racist views. That set off a revolt among leaders of local chapters of the society. In a statement, NYC Audubon's Board of Directors wrote, quote, we recognize that Audubon's views and actions towards people of color and indigenous people were harmful and offensive, and that the harm continues today, presenting a barrier to people who might otherwise become involved in or support our work, unquote. NYC Audubon says it has begun the process of finding a new, more inclusive name. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Amy Goodman in New York joined by Democracy Now! Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. Well, we're starting with international news. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to delay a push to overhaul and weaken Israel's judiciary until the next parliamentary session following unprecedented mass protests. Netanyahu made the announcement on Monday after much of Israel was shut down by a general strike. We insist on the need to bring forth the necessary amendments to the judicial system and will allow the opportunity to achieve them through a wide consensus. It is an utmost worthy cause. Therefore, out of national responsibility, out of the will to prevent the rift in the nation, I have decided to suspend the second and third readings of the law in this term of the Knesset, in order to allow the time to reach that wide consensus ahead of the legislation during the next Knesset. This way or the other, we will bring a reform that will reinstate the law's balance between the authorities while preserving, and I will add strengthening, civil rights. Netanyahu spoke Monday, one day after he fired Israel's defense minister, who had warned that the judicial overhaul represents a, quote, clear, immediate and tangible threat to the security of the state, unquote. While the general strike was called off after Netanyahu's announcement, protests have continued. On Monday night, Israeli police fired water cannons and stun grenades to disperse protesters in Tel Aviv. In a concession to the far right, Netanyahu agreed to establish a new national guard under the control of Itamar Ben Gavir, Israel's ultra-nationalist, national security minister, who was once convicted of racist incitement against Palestinians and supporting a terrorist group. We're joined now by two guests. Natasha Roth-Roland is editor and writer at Plus 972 magazine. She just completed her history doctoral dissertation, which focuses on the Jewish far right in Israel, Palestine, and the United States. She's joining us now in New York City. And from Alexandria, Virginia, we're joined by Yusuf Munir. He is a Palestinian-American analyst, senior nonresident fellow at Arab Center Washington, D.C. We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Let's begin by talking about exactly what's happening now in the streets. Yusuf Munir, these are mass protests unprecedented in the history of the state of Israel. They are protesting the overhaul and weakening of Israel's judiciary. They are not talking about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, as Palestinians continue to be killed on the West Bank. If you can talk from your perspective overhaul what's happening. Yeah, thanks for having me, Amy. You're absolutely right. The protesters in the streets are focused on what they see as a threat to them, and not really a threat to Palestinians by these legislative reforms which aim to further weaken the court system in Israel. It's important to point out that this is a process that did not start with this government, and that the court system in Israel has been weakened for some time. But with this government, a religious nationalist government, there are many Israelis who see the government's agenda as a major power grab that's attempting to reshape Israeli society in a way that will disadvantage them, them being primarily non-religious nationalist Israelis and secular Israelis. They are perceiving for the first time a threat not to the court system, but a threat to the court system that will actually weaken their rights. The rights, of course, of Palestinians have not been upheld, whether Palestinian citizens of Israel or Palestinians living under occupation, the West Bank and Gaza, and Jerusalem. They have not been upheld by these courts for a very long time. It was not until though that these communities in Israel who are protesting today recognize the direct threat to their own rights that they decided to mobilize en masse in this way. And I think this really underscores just how deep the consensus is within Israel about the apartheid system and discrimination against Palestinians. Clearly, Israeli society has always had the capacity, we're seeing it on display now, to challenge their government's policies when they understand them to be unfair. But it seems that Israeli society does not think it's treatment of Palestinians, which of course the human rights community and many others, including Israeli human rights organizations, concluded amounts to apartheid. They don't seem to see a problem with that. What we're seeing in the streets today is unprecedented as far as Israeli society goes. But the mistreatment and discrimination against Palestinians is not unprecedented at all and is baked into the foundation of the political system in Israel. And Yusuf, speaking about the foundation of the political system, you've made a point that Israel does not have a written constitution. Why and what is the significance of that in the present moment? Yeah, I mean, this is one of the core points here because you have two different branches of government. The parliament and the government that was put together through the parliamentary elections and the courts, which are essentially locked in a battle over power. And the parliament and the government is demanding that it has the authority to essentially claim greater powers over the courts, be able to override court decisions with a simple majority. These kinds of matters are usually outlined in a foundational document, in a supreme law like a constitution that limits the powers of different branches of government and makes clear rules about where power lies and in what situations. Israel doesn't have a constitution, and it doesn't have a constitution for very important reasons. In fact, when Israel was created and declared in 1948 in their Declaration of Independence, they promised that they would adopt a constitution within a few months after declaring independence in line with the expectations of the international community and the United Nations when they put forward the 1947 partition plan. And in fact, the Declaration of Independence copied language from that partition plan about the need to guarantee rights of equality for people, regardless of religion and ethnic origin and so on and so forth. At the time, Israel was interested in gaining international legitimacy. But what they found was, if they were going to adopt a constitution, they'd have to limit state power in ways that would make it much harder for them to carry out their settler colonial project in Palestine. If they had to accept equality before the law, they couldn't take land away from Palestinians and privilege Jews coming in from outside of the country to take their place. And so, they didn't end up adopting a constitution and allowed the state to have maximum flexibility to carry out the settler colonial project. And in fact, that project, which continues to this day, is one of the main reasons why Israeli politics has gone so far right that you see the kind of extremists in government today that in years prior were on the fringes of society. I wanted to go to Natasha Roth Rowland to ask about the history of Itamar Ben Gavir, someone you have studied for a while. Again, Netanyahu has agreed to establish a new national gourd under his control, Itamar Ben Gavir, Israel's national security minister. He's an ultra-nationalist politician who openly supports the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. In 2007, he was convicted of racist incitement against Palestinians and supporting a terrorist group. His radicalism dates back decades. I want to go to a few clips. In an October 1995 interview, Ben Gavir can be seen holding an ornament taken from the slain Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin's car by far-right Israeli activists during a protest against him when he was alive and the Oslo chords. People manage to get to the symbol from Rabin's car. The symbol is a symbol, and it symbolizes that just as we got this symbol, we can get to Rabin. Just weeks after that interview, a Jewish extremist assassinated Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in Tel Aviv. For years, Ben Gavir hung a picture in his home of Bruch Goldstein, the Israeli-American who killed 29 Palestinians at a mosque in Hebron in 1994. In 2011, Ben Gavir told a reporter why he chose to put Goldstein's photograph on the wall of his home. This is a doctor who saved Jews throughout his life. In October, Itamar Ben Gavir waved a gun and shouted during a confrontation in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem, where settlers have attempted to violently evict Palestinian residents from their homes. If they Palestinians throw stones, shoot them. This is Mahmood Sawoo, a Palestinian who lives in Sheikh Jarrah, describing Itamar Ben Gavir's actions in his neighborhood. His field office is within the plan to take over Jerusalem Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and the house is there. He sets up his tent here and starts pointing at houses that he wants to take. My house is under threat. My neighbor's house is also under threat. We all receive eviction orders or courts to increase in rent, also orders not to build or renovate. He used to come here and make trouble for everyone. Imagine a Knesset member pulling out his gun towards the people in the neighborhood. We have children and women here. So what do you expect from him if they assigned him as the Minister of Public Security or any ministerial position? Of course, he will be more confident and relieved. But as my neighbor said, we don't care even if he was a prime minister. We are staying in our houses here. This is our legitimate right to defend our houses and children. And it was after this that the now once again prime minister Netanyahu named Itamar Ben Gavir the Secretary of National Security. Natasha Rothroland, talk more about his significance and being put in charge of what they're now shaping to be a national guard. Some are calling it Ben Gavir's private militia. Absolutely. Thanks for having me on the show, Amy. As we saw from all these clips, Itamar Ben Gavir is somebody who sees violence as a legitimate means to political end, whether he is engaging in that violence himself or inciting it directly or indirectly. He has a long track record of aggression, provocation, showing up to the site of political tensions and encouraging further tensions, encouraging further violence. He has pulled a gun on Palestinians himself at least twice. That's what we have documentary evidence of. We don't know if he's done it more than that. He has encouraged police to shoot protesters. That was before he became National Security Minister. As you say, he was appointed by Benjamin Netanyahu. Now that he is National Security Minister, he's in charge of all of Israel's police. That's the regular police and the border police, which controls inside the occupied West Bank. So he already has an immense amount of power over police forces that regularly inflict violence on Palestinians. Now there is talk of him having this National Guard, which he's been lobbying for for some time. He's not the first person to come up with this idea. It was bandied around by the previous government as well under Prime Minister Naftali Bennett. But now, as this kind of exchange for not quitting the government in response to Netanyahu deciding to temporarily put on pause these judicial overhaul plans, Netanyahu has given Ben Gavir even more potential power. Netanyahu is responsible for a lot of the power that Ben Gavir has right now. He has helped shepherd him in from the political margins into the mainstream, giving him this unprecedented level of influence. What happened yesterday is another step in that direction. It's not clear at the moment when exactly this National Guard will be established and what form it will take, but the terminology of calling it basically Ben Gavir's private militia I think is quite accurate. And if we put that in the context of some of the civil violence that we've seen enacted by settlers against Palestinians, both in the occupied territories and inside the green line, we get a kind of frightening preview of what this National Guard might look like. As we saw in May 2021, during this period of immense violence and unrest on both sides of the green line. And as we saw in the Huwara pogrom at the end of last month, when around 400 far-right religious settlers invaded this Palestinian town in the West Bank, smashing up homes, setting homes on fire while they still had Palestinian families inside them, setting cars on fire, assaulting Palestinians. One Palestinian man was killed in another town. You saw this collusion between settlers and between Israeli security forces. There's even video footage of Israeli security forces idling by the side of the road while settlers are in the progress of attacking a Palestinian house. So, when you look at this combination of settlers and soldiers and Israeli police either colluding to assault Palestinians or Israeli security forces simply standing by, and then you take into account the fact that there's this potential new guard being set up at the behest of a figurehead of a national camp that saw what happened in Huwara and liked what they saw and said that they wanted to see more of it, it's just a terrifying prospect. And Natasha, I wanted to ask you about what is occurring within the Israeli defense forces, clearly the firing by Netanyahu of the Defense Minister over the weekend, and then the open letter of a bunch of pilots of reservists protesting these judicial reforms. What is the potential impact on the military of these actions by this extreme right-wing government? Actually, this morning, the main reservists' protest group, that is reserve military officers, signaled that they were going to suspend their protest because of Netanyahu's announcement that he's putting the judicial overhaul plans on pause. They've said that they don't believe what Netanyahu said, they don't trust that he is going to scale back these plans. That's what a lot of other protest leaders have said as well over the last 48 hours. But this was the main reason that the Defense Minister, Yoav Galant, said that he believed the overhaul should be frozen or they should take more time to negotiate what the overhaul was going to look like before pressing ahead with the legislation. For him, this was not a moral or an ethical issue, it was a security issue. He worried that the increasing number of reservists who were signalling that they weren't going to show up to their reserve duty was going to cause real security concerns for the country. He also thought that it made the country look weak before its enemies in the Middle East. So that's really what the impact was on the Israeli military establishment. It's not yet clear what Galant's future looks like. As of last night, Netanyahu had not sent the mandatory letter to Galant, giving him 48 hours' notice of his firing. As of this morning, I hadn't heard that that has been sent. Maybe it has by now. But until that is in place, Galant is essentially still in his position. So it remains to be seen what Galant's future holds and also whether the reservists do indeed go back on strike if the judicial overhaul plans press ahead in a few weeks time. And finally, Yusuf, your response and how your sensing Palestinians feel about Ben Gavir being put in charge of this new National Guard, this new National Guard unit? Yeah, well, I think in response to everything that's going on, you know, Palestinians feel very much excluded from the conversation and also don't want to be included in a conversation that ostracizes them as the Israeli debate largely has. But Palestinians, even though Israel is going through tremendous unrest right now, are not just sitting back and enjoying the show. They are, in fact, in a position of extreme vulnerability right now, as they always have been, but in a heightened way because these religious nationalists who have really carried out scores of attacks against Palestinians and villages in the West Bank and elsewhere are increasingly being empowered right now. We talk about Ben Gavir's militia. Ben Gavir's militia has long existed in the West Bank and in these settlements that are routinely carrying out violence against Palestinians often in tandem or with at least the protection of the Israeli military. We're talking now about a militia that's going to become increasingly formalized under the direction of a minister in the government, with the protection of a government that has a majority, and with access to greater weapons and resources. Make no mistake about it. These people are looking to harm and eliminate the Palestinian people and are quite transparent about that in their rhetoric. They see this space as space that only belongs to Israeli Jews and that Palestinians have no space there. That type of eliminationist and genocidal rhetoric is now going to have the backing of a government minister in ways that it didn't have before. So there's certainly greater concern now than I think ever before about the physical safety of Palestinians who are, as always, going to pay the heaviest price for what is taking place in Israel today. Well, Yusuf Muneir, we want to thank you for being with us, Palestinian American analyst, now senior non-resident fellow at Arab Center in Washington, D.C., and Natasha Roth-Roland, editor and writer at Plus 972 magazine. Next up, we go to Nashville, where a heavily armed former student attacked a private Christian school, killing six people, three of them nine-year-old kids. Stay with us. Klezmer Project Orchestra from the album Klezmer Musicians Against the Wall. This is democracynow, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Nashville, Tennessee is mourning after six people were killed in a shooting Monday at a private Christian elementary school. All three students shot and killed were nine years old. They were identified as Evelyn Dickhouse, Hallie Scruggs, and William Kinney. The adults killed in the mass shooting were identified as Catherine Coons, the head of the school, Cynthia Peek, a substitute teacher, and Mike Hill, a custodian who'd worked at the school for 13 years. Police say the shooter was armed with two assault-style weapons and a handgun and shot their way through a side door to enter the school before being killed by police. Officials say the shooter was a former student at the school and had written a manifesto laying out plans for the attack that included maps of the building. A live Fox News report in Nashville about the shooting was interrupted by Ashby Beasley, a gun control advocate and survivor of the July 4th, 2022 mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois. Aren't you guys tired of covering this? Aren't you guys tired of being here and having to cover all of these mass shootings? My son and I survived a mass shooting over the summer. I am in Tennessee on a family vacation with my son, visiting my sister-in-law. I have been lobbying in DC since we survived a mass shooting in July. I have met with over 130 lawmakers. How is this still happening? How are our children still dying and why are we failing them? Gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens. It has overtaken cars. Monday's attack marked the 129th mass shooting in the United States this year alone, including 13 school shootings. At the White House, President Biden once again called on Congress to pass an assault weapons ban. For more, we go to Nashville, Tennessee, where we're joined by Holly McCall, editor-in-chief of the Tennessee Lookout. Holly, welcome to Democracy Now! Describe what's happening and what you understand at this point, the horror of the mass shooting at this private Christian school. Well, America sees a lot of mass shootings, but I think to residents in the city where they occur, it doesn't matter what's happened in other cities. And Nashville is still in many ways a small enough city that people know each other. They have some connection to the school. And so there was just shock yesterday morning when the news started to come in very quickly that there was a large police presence in the Green Hills area of Nashville. It's in a fluent area of town with several private schools. And details are still emerging. You did a very good job encapsulating what we know right now, but yes, this was a former student. Why exactly they targeted this school? We know that they went there. We haven't seen the manifesto yet. And honestly, I think people here are still just in shock. And it's not even our first mass shooting. We had one less than five years ago at a waffle house that was responsible for killing five people. And Holly, what do we know so far on how the mass shooter obtained the two assault rifles and handguns? And could you talk a little bit about the legislation that's been passed in Tennessee recently on guns? Yes. So according to the Metro National Police Department, the shooter had three weapons with them at the time of the shooting, two semi-automatic rifles. They do appear to be obtained legally. They also had a handgun. And then at their home, police later found two sort of shotguns and another weapon. But it's just not difficult at all in Tennessee to get any type of weapon over the last six or seven years. We've seen the legislature increasingly passing laws that even law enforcement officials and law enforcement organizations oppose. The Department of Safety and Homeland Security in Tennessee opposed a bill that is in the legislature right now to drop open carry to 18. It's been 21. In the House, the bill says that you can carry long guns at the age of 18. Technically, you can walk down the hall of the legislative building with a long gun. The Senate dropped that provision, but I don't know what's going to happen in the House. So that's one thing. We have lawmakers who said the Department of Homeland Security have no constitutional right to protest the bill, even though these law enforcement officers are the ones on the street dealing with this. Last year, the legislature with the governor's full support passed a permitless carry bill. You don't even need so much as a permit to get a weapon in Tennessee. You know, we've got a handgun. We've got weapons companies that are moving to Tennessee. The governor went out of his way last year to sign the law, the permitless carry law, in a Beretta factory, in a Beretta office that's moved to Tennessee. And it's just it's bizarre to me that there are so many lawmakers here who can only talk about the Second Amendment. I bet they couldn't even name what goes on in many of the other amendments, but this is the one they are focused on. Police have said the Nashville school shooter is named Audrey Hale and identified as transgender using male pronouns. Police said the motive for the attack remains unclear. Just before the attack, Hale messaged a friend saying they would die by suicide, writing, quote, one day this will make more sense. I've left behind more than enough evidence that something bad is about to happen. The person that they messaged called police immediately. Hale once attended the school, which was run by the Covenant Presbyterian Church. The New York Times reports the church is affiliated with the Theologically Conservative Presbyterian Church in America, whose 2020 report on gender and sexuality notes, quote, the sinfulness of homosexual and transgender desire, as well as conduct, unquote. So this is police chief John Drake being questioned by NBC's Lester Holt Monday night. You've also said that Hale identified as trans. Do you believe there is a connection to that? We feel that she identifies as trans, but we're still in the initial investigation into all of that and if it actually played a role into this incident. This has set social media ablaze, the far-right conservative congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene drew outrage. When she tweeted in response to the shooting, quote, how much hormones like testosterone and medications for mental illness was the transgender Nashville school shooter taking? Everyone can stop blaming guns now, Marjorie Taylor Greene said. To this, New York congressmember Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded, quote, it's absolutely disgusting and she should be looking into a mirror as to why she's defending and posing with the same weapons that are being used to kill children, teachers, and educators. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez told The Independent. We just have a minute left, Holly McCall. If you can respond to what is developing right now and the mourning of the overall community. You know, we're trying to figure out what our next steps are. I will comment on your last remark. It is absurd to imply that this person committed these shootings because they were potentially transgender. That was first reported, by the way, on social media by a right wing poster. It does seem to be that this person was, did identify as male, but law enforcement sources who have read the manifesto says that does not appear to play a role in the motive. Well, Holly McCall, we want to thank you very much for being with us, editor-in-chief of The Tennessee Lookout, speaking to us from Nashville. Next up, we continue our remembrance of the human rights advocate and attorney Randall Robinson, who died this weekend at the age of 81. Stay with us. And this is Democracy Now, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzales. We end today's show continuing our look at the life and legacy of the human rights leader, Randall Robinson. He died Friday at the age of 81 in St. Kitts, where he's lived since 2001. Randall Robinson was the founder of TransAfrica, played a key role in the launching of the Free South Africa Movement, arrested many times at the South African Embassy, and pushed successfully for the imposition of U.S. sanctions against apartheid South Africa. Randall Robinson also spoke out for years against U.S. policy in Haiti. In 2004, he helped expose the U.S. role in the coup that ousted Haitian President Jean-Bretron Aristide, who has flown against his will to the Central African Republic. Two weeks after the coup, Aristide defied the United States and flew back to the Caribbean, flying into Jamaica. Randall Robinson, accompanied Aristide, flew to the Central African Republic, along with Congressmember Maxine Waters and others, picked up President Aristide and his wife, Mildred Aristide, and flew back to the Western Hemisphere. I reported on that flight, joining them on that flight, and interviewed Randall Robinson about the U.S. role in the coup. Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, and Donald Rumsfeld should be ashamed of themselves. President Aristide is the democratically elected president, the last time by a 92 percent majority of Haiti, and he has come home to the Caribbean where he belongs. He is the president, democratically elected, of the democracy that they overthrew. America ought to be ashamed of itself, and we are proud of the role we've played in bringing him home to his region where he belongs and where we hope he will stay. Randall Robinson later wrote about the U.S. Baku in his book, an unbroken agony, Haiti from revolution to the kidnapping of a president. In 2007, I interviewed Randall Robinson again. He described the day Aristide was ousted. Later that morning, about 30 American Special Forces troops in full combat gear, and 12 or 13 white Chevy Suburbans of the American Embassy surrounded the Aristide home, took positions on the wall around the home, and you could see the red Tracer pattern crisscrossing, crosshatching in the yard of the home. And into the yard came one Chevy Suburban with one of the special forces of people fully armed who was attending Luis Moreno of the American Embassy, who walked into the house and told the president, I was here when you came back in 94, and I'm here tonight to tell you it's time for you to leave. They removed the president Moreno and the American Special Forces from his home, took them to the airport. The president, Mrs. Aristide and Franz Gabriel, took them from their home, boarded them on this large, wide-bited aircraft with no markings, no tail number, only the sort of large flag, American flag on the vertical tail assembly, and flew off, making their first refueling stop in the Eastern Caribbean and Antigua. Our guest for the hour, Randall Robinson, just up from St. Kitts, where he has been living for the last six years. He's just published a new book called An Unbroken Agony, Haiti from Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President. Let's talk history for a minute, something the U.S. press doesn't give us very much of. To understand the U.S. role today in Haiti, can you go back in time to how Haiti was founded in 1804? Well, Haiti was the largest piece of France's global empire. It was its great profit center. That slave colony with 465,000 enslaved Africans working there, many of whom had been soldiers in African armies before they were brought to Haiti. And in August of 1789, or 1791, rather, 40,000 of those slaves revolted and started a war that lasted 12 and a half years under the leadership of an ex-slave named, a military genius named Toussaint Louverture and Jean-Jacques Desolines. And this army of ex-slaves defeated armies to French armies. First, the French army before the completion of their revolution, and then another army dispatched by Napoleon under the leadership of his brother-in-law, and then the armies of England and Spain. 150,000 blacks died in that 12 and a half year war, and in January of 19 of 1804, rather, they declared Haiti the first free republic in the Americas because the United States was in a country that hails slaves. During the revolution, Thomas Jefferson said he would like to reduce Toussaint to starvation. George Washington lamented and vilified that revolution. The U.S. imposed an embargo, recognized the new French government, but did not recognize the new Haitian free government and imposed a comprehensive economic embargo on Haiti until the emancipation proclamation. In fact, France imposed reparations on Haiti in 1825, and the interest that Haiti had to pay in loans that were American and French loans to service this debt to France absorbed virtually 80% of Haiti's available budget 111 years after the completion of their revolution until 1915. It was only in 1947 that France, that Haiti was able to pay off its debt. The debt that was incurred as a result of France not having access to the enslaved people of Haiti. The Haitians had to pay France for no longer having the privilege of owning Haitian slaves. That revolution provoked the end of slavery in the Americas, and so that's why it is so important that all African people, people generally in the Americas, because Haiti funded and fought in South American revolutions, that's why Haiti is so honored in places like Venezuela, by people like Simone Bolivar. Haiti was central to all of this, and we're in Haiti's debt, but it is for that. And Bolivar came to Haiti. Haiti and was given arms and was given men, was given a printing press because the Haitians believe that anybody who was enslaved anywhere had a home and a refuge in Haiti. Anybody seeking freedom had a sympathetic ear in Haiti. But because of that, the United States and France and the other Western governments, even the Vatican, made them pay for so terribly long. It's as if the anger of it never abated. I mean, you can hear Frederick Douglass talking about it in the late 1800s, about this thing in the American crawl. The U.S. government didn't recognize Haiti for decades. The Congress, going back to Thomas Jefferson, afraid that the slave uprising would inspire U.S. slaves. Would inspire U.S. slaves to revolt against him in Virginia and George Washington and on and on and on. And so they opposed everything that was being done in Haiti to win their freedom. The U.S. government invaded Haiti in 1915 under Wilson. Woodrow Wilson invaded Haiti in 1915. And when Haitian Peralta, Chalamagne Peralta, organized the Caicos soldiers, these farmers, to fight against this American occupation, the Americans killed him, and nailed him to a cross crucifixion style and stood him up, his courts, in a public place in Haiti to demonstrate to Haitians what would be the price of any defense against the American invasion. The U.S. has played a terrible role in Haiti. So even as the U.S. and France were at loggerheads after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, because France opposed the invasion, that was 2003. In 2004, they were working together and pushing out, forcing out Aristide and bringing him to the Central African Republic. As a matter of fact, in 2003, late 2003, Aristide organized a reparations conference, and the result of which was a request to France that it repair Haiti by repaying Haiti the $21 billion in current money that Haiti had paid in reparations unjustly to France. Dominique de Vilpa responded by sending his sister. The foreign minister of France. The foreign minister of France sending his sister to Haiti to tell Aristide that it was time for him to leave. And that's how we have the Western world, France, and particularly the United States, have meddled in Haitian affairs. After the abduction of the president, Bush spoke with Shirok on the phone, congratulating each other about how smoothly the abduction of the president had been carried off by both countries. Randall, you talked about how when President Aristide was president before he was forced out, he was supposed to be getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the Inter-American Development Bank, I think it was, for health issues. The loan had been fully approved. It was for $146 million. It was for health issues, for literacy, for things associated with social programs, roads, and some infrastructure projects. The United States blocked that loan. And so, on the one hand, it starved the economy of Haiti. On the other hand, it trained the opposition. On another hand, it armed the paramilitarists. And then the last analysis, American forces invaded and abducted the president. The U.S. role, how well known is it in Haiti by Haitians? I think it's very well known in Haiti by Haitians. If it were so well known by Americans, our democracy would work better. The problem is with our democracy. It wasn't ever with theirs. The problem is what our undemocratic or the behavior of undemocratic behavior of our government means for struggling democracies across the world, that we feel that we, by divine right, can go in and overthrow governments willy-nilly when they are living under leadership of their own clear choice. It's a shameful chapter for Americans, and particularly for this administration. Human Rights Advocate and Attorney Randall Robinson speaking in 2007, he died Friday at the age of 81 in St. Kitts. To see Democracy Now's exclusive coverage of Randall Robinson and Congressmember Maxine Waters and others tripped to the Central Offering Republic to pick up the Aristides after they were ousted in a coup, go to democracynow.org, as well as all of our interviews. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.


In an ever-increasing female military population, it is important to have female leaders present at the beginning of a sailor's career. The Navy is looking for hard-charging female leaders to teach the next generation of sailors at Recruit Training Command Great Lakes. I think they need more female leadership to show the females that, hey, you know, there's more to the Navy. You come here, a lot of them just see a lot of male RDCs.  If you have an all-male division there might not be even a female there to represent the leadership that there is in the fleet. If you are up for orders and you have what it takes to inspire the next generation of sailors by being a Recruit Division Commander, talk to your Detailer for information on the process.


Louis and your testimony, you discussed the ways that FCC could use auction design to encourage greater participation of underrepresented communities in the wireless industry. So what impact can a strong U.S. spectrum policy have on hiring, retaining, training workers in the wireless industry, particularly as you look to expand and diversify our workforce? Thank you, Senator. I believe there's a number of ways that it could have an impact, both on the hiring and employee side, as well as on the ownership side. On the hiring side, setting standards for hiring or contracting with vendors can set a high bar for companies that are receiving the public airwaves to live up to those sorts of standards on the structure can impact the ownership side in promoting competition, making sure that we set up auction structures that allow for small women and minority-owned businesses to compete in the auctions through smaller license areas or bidding credits. And honestly, we may not have all the ideas, but I'm interested in finding out what other ideas can be brought forward. I celebrate that Chair Rosalind Worsel recently reinstated the Advisory Committee on Diversity and Digital Empowerment. And those are the sorts of things that we love to see at the FCC where all stakeholders can come together and come up with other tactics to promote diversity. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My time is up. Thank you, Senator. Next...


I want to talk about some weird idiosyncrasies of slap lesions. Dr. P here, and we've got our pear-shaped glenoid cup in blue with a little bare area here in the center. Here's our bare area. And here are some key structures anteriorly, the superior and middle glenohumor ligament. The middle glenohumor ligament being the most variable, the superior glenohumor ligament being the smallest. And the largest and most consistent GHL is the IGHL with its anterior band, axillary band and posterior band. Now first, the quadrant, you know, a slap lesion, slap stands for superior labrum anterior to posterior. But sometimes, you get a lesion that starts here, it's not truly superior, more posterior superior, and it works its way around the back. Now, it's not so important that you know the designation right now, which is a slap 8, but just that, it's not truly a superior isolated superior labral phenomenon. It's more of a posterior rim phenomenon, yet this still gets the moniker slap 8. So there's going to be a fair amount of variability with regard to quadrant. Second, you're going to have lesions that collide with one another. For instance, you have a superior labral tear that's kind of chronic, and then you dislocate and develop a big, banker lesion here, maybe even with some bone involvement, and then this one propagates up this way, and this one propagates down that way, and eventually they collide and meet each other. And that ends up being a slap 5. So collision lesions can occur in conjunction with chronic slap lesions. The next thing I want to cover is the biceps. We talked about the importance of understanding how a slap lesion relates to the base of the biceps anchor. Clinicians want to know if it's in front, underneath, or behind. But one other highlight I want to make for you is that the biceps has a highly variable origin. So sometimes it comes off back here. Sometimes the biceps comes off over here. And sometimes it even comes off in the front, conjoint with some of these other ligaments. So that can be awfully weird and a little bit difficult to analyze if you're not used to this variability. The next thing I want to mention are cysts. Now the presence of a cyst, slam dunk automatically makes the diagnosis of a slap lesion. You don't get ganglion pseudo cysts typically around the shoulder. If you see a cyst, even if you don't see a slap lesion, the odds are it's a chronic slap lesion that is sealed over and has a ball valve phenomenon and simply scarred. Now a lot of the cysts that you're going to see are going to be posterior superior. They're going to spill over the spinal glenoid rim into the super scapula. Not you're going to see them here. But sometimes they'll behave rather weirdly. So the ones in the front, they can dissect right around or under the SGHL. I've seen them dissect into the SGHL. I've seen them dissect into the capsule and into the MGHL. And then there's the very strange upside down lesion that's not from a dislocation. It's the same as a slap 2 down here with paralabal cysts. And although I made this up, I call these the upside down slap lesion. And if I have it without a cyst, I call it a slap 11.  So that's something I made up just to help you understand and relate to this class of lesions that are more often chronic than acute, although they can occur from acute trauma. Let's move on, shall we?


We do offer free bariatric surgery seminars at Jersey Shore University Medical Center and they really provide a lot of information for anyone who might be thinking about having weight loss surgery. We really go into topics like obesity in America, how we commonly treat obesity, and the risks of obesity on one's health. And then focusing on different types of weight loss surgery, the risks and benefits of those different types of surgery and what the health benefits are after the weight loss happens after surgery. I think the seminar itself definitely helps people just get a good understanding of what the surgery entails, what the process entails, what the benefits of the surgery are. There's always time for questions after the seminar. It doesn't commit them to having an operation. If they or they themselves or they know someone who might benefit from the surgery, it's just a good place to go just really to gain more information about it as an option.


Hello, this is Carl Ackerman, host of History is Here to Help, and we are so pleased today to have Sunny Dunn and Feldt here from Punahou School, but someone who also spent a great deal of time at USC. And of course, we are show focused on the humanities, but the question is, how does one get support for the humanities and sustain it? So that Sunny is someone who can tell us all about this because he is in charge of doing this right now at Punahou School, but before that he was in charge of doing this at USC. So Sunny, I'm going to ask you to give our audience a little bit of about your history before. Sure, I'll give the abbreviated version, Carl. I spent 25 years in higher education, starting my career at Stanford University, moving to Cornell, and then most recently at USC. Before I was courted to come to Hawaii, and thankfully made the right decision and joined Punahou School. So this is my first foray into K-12 independent schools, and I've been here about three years. I had an undergraduate degree from State University of New York at Binghamton, and went to grad school at Cornell University. Well that is a distinguished resume right there, and that's a nice way to start. So this program today is all about careful stewardship. And I guess the first question that I would have for you is, what do you see as your main goals in your position now and in your position at USC? What are the things that you think about all day? And we'll get down to the nitty gritties in a bit, but what do you think about? What do you think about your professional purpose, not your personal purpose, but your professional purpose? Well I'm going to start at the 30,000 foot level, Carl. I think what my goal is, what I try to achieve on a daily basis is to advance the mission of the institution. And not for profits like universities or K-12 schools are not beholden to shareholders, but we do have a goal of advancing our mission. And we can advance the mission if we're not careful stewards of our resources. And another way to think about it is, the more resources we have, and the better we steward them, the more we could advance our mission. That's a good point to start from. Now of course, Puneville School and USC are private institutions. Where is money generated from? And then once this money is generated, where do you keep it? And of course, you may want to start with tuition, but you're the expert, not me. So they're really, for all intents and purposes, two sources of revenue. And we can quibble about some other small parts of the pie, but the two sources are revenue, which in institutions like, I'm sorry, our tuition, which institutions like Puneville make up the bulk of our revenue and advancement or donations, whether it's from individuals or foundations, which makes up a small but significant part of our revenue pie. So those are really the only two sources. And so we have to be very careful about how we approach each of those. For instance, we could probably, again, at any institution, just turn on the faucet in terms of expenditures and keep raising tuition, but you started with the concept of sustainability, and that might work for a year or two or even five, maybe even 10, but soon you'd be locking out a lot of people who wouldn't be able to access that education that we really think is an important part of making a great education, a diverse student body. So the more careful we are on the expense side, the more we can just keep this institution inclusive and accessible to everybody. You know, and what this does, just for me to make a commentary, because this is about history, is that you allow your historians at USC and your historians at Puneville to have a great deal of freedom. And the resources are there for copying material, getting film, getting videos, having the best computers available. And resources that can help if a computer breaks down to fix those computers and things like that, which is always such a treasure, something that is not affordable generally in the public sector, with public education. So my next question to you is, so when you look out at the vast resources of something like a USC or a Puneville school, and as you mentioned, vast only because the money is continually coming in, and that's not a guarantee, what's what are your concerns on a daily basis? What are you, what, you know, and maybe the concerns, there may be some concerns that keep you up at night. What are the, what are the basic issues? Well, I think I would be careful with the words, vast resources because I think the, some people interpret that as endless resources or unlimited resources or infinite resources. And by definition, you know, no resources is infinite about at Puneville. And I think similar to many other schools, the vast majority of our resources go back to the employees in our faculty and our staff are being very competitively. And so about, you know, 70% of our budget goes to that. So when you ask what am I, what do I think about? What am I concerned about? I think we have this really wonderful balance of autonomy versus, let's say, centralization. And autonomy means faculty can explore and do some really neat things that end up becoming part of UNO for the, for the long term. And I'll share two examples that, that come to mind. One is the Glass Studio that we recently celebrated our 50th anniversary of glassblowing. That's something that never would have happened if we didn't have this sense of autonomy for the faculty to create something exciting and new and different and unique that most schools don't have. Another, of course, is the Boyle program. And I'm sure you've spoken about this in another podcast. But what an exciting program. What a great way for Puneville to do outreach and have a really big impact on the island and on Hawaii. That's not something we would do if we discouraged faculty from trying new things. So autonomy on the one hand is amazing. And on the other, it's a little bit scary for me, for, for where I sit because it, it automatically means we're going to try things, some of which will succeed, some of which won't. But all of which require some infusion of resources, whether it's people's time or tuition dollars. And in the end, I think it's very beneficial to an institution like ours. But that balance again has to be, has to be a good, sustainable balance. Well, you mentioned the glassblowing and, and there's a funny story related to this. I'll be quick. You know, when the former headmaster, the former president of Puneville, Jim Scott was on the East Coast one time doing, I don't know, what kind of tour. And someone came up to him and said, oh, Puneville School, I know well. And of course, at that time, Barack Obama was president. And so Jim expected, OK, he's going to start talking, or she's going to start talking about President Obama. And the person said, oh, you have great glassblowing at that school. And so I thought that was, that was great.  And of course, I think what most of our audience don't know about Puneville School is that Puneville spends, you know, if you if you take in kind monies also into account about a million dollars on public education every year through the Pueo program.  And so let me ask you about two other things. From your perspective, because you mentioned the independence of faculty, how did that contribute to, for example, the Japanese language teachers developing a book that's now used all across the United States and donating most of the revenues from their from their book, you know, which was over a million dollars on about five or 10 years ago. So that must be more now. And the current thing, I think one of the most exciting things that's happening in Puneville School is that Asian history textbook, because Puneville teaches Asian history, one of the few schools to do so in the country, written by Robert Stratt and Dr. Robert Stratt. So how does how does specifically that relate to what you just said? How do how are teachers empowered to do sort of things like that, you know, from a fiscal perspective, from your perspective? Well, first, and if I haven't mentioned this, I've been in Puneville now just going out three years, so I can't speak firsthand. But I have, I'm quite familiar with both of the examples you shared. And it's actually really amazing for a school to provide leadership, say, to other schools in terms of the textbook, whether it's Japanese language or the Asian history course. And where we sit in the Pacific, I think where we in Hawaii are uniquely positioned to be leaders in so many things like Asian history or Japanese language in the US. So that just in and of itself is exciting. And it's the very positive side about faculty autonomy. But what's what we don't see, you know, by definition, it's hard to see the things that don't work out. But we can focus on that and say, well, these four things didn't work out. And this one thing was amazing, but we're not going to take risks anymore. But I think we have to be thoughtful and careful about the risks we take. Because at the end of the day, and this is something I talk about regularly here, it's parents, tuition, money, for the most part, that's funding all of our endeavors. And so we want to be thoughtful and careful about how we earn it and how we innovate. And at the same time, we want to have a culture where innovation is not something that's tolerated, but that's welcome. And, you know, I wanted to ask you because I know your son was a student at Punahua School last year. And I want to ask you this question. Do you ever get the time because you're kind of centrally located on the campus to sort of walk around and see the many splinters, both at both it when you were at USC and at Punahua School? I'm just I'm that that's the best part of the job. I'm so fortunate to be on a beautiful campus where I can just walk out on my office and not just observe, but take part in what's going on. And I'll share a quick anecdote. I approached the principal of the junior school, Todd Chowhoy, and asked how I might get more involved in the junior school. You know, I lecture a couple of times a year in different classes in the academy. And I thought he might invite me to teach a, you know, personal finance or money management course for very young people. And without missing a beat, he said, gee, we can use some help serving lunch in K1. And then I said, OK, I'm up for that. I'll pay. So once a month last semester, I went over to Omidyar and served lunch for K and one. And it was actually just a really sweet reminder of one of the most precious parts of our school. These kids at this age were really learning about basic skills, you know, how to ask for more, how to clean up their trees and how to compost this part and how to recycle that part. It's it's really neat. I sit on the academy side, it's served in the middle of the campus and having an excuse to do something that I never would have thought of doing is actually enriching. But even just the fauna and floric here, there's always some white turn that, you know, is nesting in a building around here, in a tree around here and to be able to walk around and just think five minutes out of the day to experience that is really a gift. That's great. Now, I'm going to ask you a question because I one of our well, first, let me say that you join Rod McPhee, who is, you know, the president before Jim Scott, when he was having a particularly tough day at Punahou, he would he told me this and he would walk up to the to, you know, K or first grade and just sit there and watch the kids.  So what a great thing, Sonny. So my question is, you know, Dr. Jim Scott, you know, before Mike Latham became president, always said that about 80 percent of is covered by tuition. And the other 20 percent is covered by, you know, advancement. And so what that means is that, you know, that every Punahou parent really is only paying 80 percent of what it costs to educate their child. Are those the figures that you would associate or are they different now? Those figures are exactly the same today. And it's true.  And, you know, for many families, it's a genuine real commitment, you have great generous financial aid, but still a commitment for many families. To me, it's more of a reminder of how we have to be careful stewards rather than, hey, education costs more than the cost price of tuition. So you should be happy. That's not the message. That's not what it's, you know, yeah, tuition doesn't cover everything. Fortunately, we have a really great advancement team and very generous donors who are alum, alums of the school and friends of the school and foundations in town that were just very grateful to have. But when I hear numbers like that, I just feel like we have to redouble our efforts to make sure we're good stewards on the expense side. We've talked about innovation. That's not really where the issues are. It's, you know, how can we at every moment be thinking this is some parent's dollars that we're spending when, you know, we want our faculty to get great professional development and they do. And when they travel, how can they be thinking as they travel? You know, how do I travel responsibly? How do I make sure that this is all sustainable? So it's true, tuition does not cover the full cost of education at Punahou and we have to be great stewards in how we spend our money. And, you know, I just had to make a personal commentary. Having been a teacher at Punahou for 28 years before I retired and I'm doing other things like this show, I felt I was treated very well. I thought my pay was extraordinarily generous. And I also felt that our retirement, you know, our ability to save for retirement was very easy. So I'm thanking you on behalf of all the vice presidents that have been at Punahou back to the 19th century. You've been very good to teachers. So thank you, Sonny. I'm thanking you as well, representative. I would just have to, before I let that go, I just have to thank the teachers here because yeah, we can say, you know, compared to, you know, the market, we feel we're doing well, but teachers' jobs are so big and so important. And, you know, the teachers I talk with, they're motivated by so much more. And it's a hard, from my perspective, I like to joke, but it's not really a joke. I lecture once or twice a year. So that's like three hours a year, let's say. And I'm exhausted. Like, OK, no more meetings the rest of the day. I just lectured an hour and a half and took some really hard questions from I could not imagine, you know, at whether it's the junior school or the academy school, just how much talent and hard work goes into that. So I really appreciate our teachers. And I think the teachers that put out from what you just described are really very interested in their subjects. And I think you're right about this. I think they get great joy out of lecturing, out of working in groups with teachers. You know, what comes to mind is that great scholar of Western history that's on your faculty, Bonnie Christensen, who is, you know, not only a great scholar, but someone who really enjoys teaching US history. And I don't think there's anyone in the country that does. Well, there may be people as good, but no one better than Bonnie Christensen in terms of teaching US history. And I just was, as an aside, just a brief anecdote. I was just at Washington Place and I was there for a celebration of the Weinberg Foundation and Newt Rostead. But a Puneau student of mine, like 95, came running up to me. You know, he's a prominent lawyer in town and said, Oh, Dr. Ackerman, I so enjoyed your history class.   But back to you, setting. So you were also a father of a student and you and your wife were parents of a student. So how did you see the school given your financial stewardship and making everything possible? How did you see the school from that perspective? Because that's a different perspective. I have to say, when we were first considering coming here, we looked at the course catalog and we're kind of blown away by it. It was a tough decision because our son was going into 10th grade at the time, which isn't a typical year to start and, you know, making new friends. But that just seeing what was available was so compelling to all of us. And to see him take courses like glass blowing. Now, he's not going to go into glass blowing as a career, but to, you know, experience that to experience he, he was searching in the catalog in his last semester for any course that his favorite science teacher was going to teach just because he had such a great experience. So from, you know, just in terms of the academics, it was really exciting. But I'll tell you that the surprise for us was where he kind of found his home. And we hear, you know, every kid finds their place and who know, whether it's in glass blowing or in science or in choir or in orchestra. And our son's not a big athlete. And I don't think he'd mind me saying that, but he ended up becoming the statistics manager for the varsity volleyball team, which had an amazing up and down season ending with the state championship. And the coach, Rick Tune became that adult that we had heard. Every kid finds an adult they trust who kind of mentors them. We've never in a million years would have thought, oh, I bet volleyball, anything in athletics was going to be the thing he found. And it changed his life. Absolutely changed his life. He felt so included. He felt the sense of belonging. The team kind of adopted him in a way as just one of the players, even though he didn't play. He was celebrated on senior night, along with the other players. He, you know, got the award for the state championships. And it was, it was life changing in terms of being part of the team. And we never would have expected that. So that was for us as parents, the Punahou surprise about, wow, you know, anything's possible here. And given the, you know, the success of the book and movie Moneyball, you know, there may be a future career for him. And that's just, that's a, what a wonderful career. You know, we worked for Billy B to the Oakley days. Isn't that great?  Because, you know, I guess in our time too, there are the people who love the statistics and the people who play the games. But wow. Yeah, I think anything's possible.  And, you know, it's always a surprise, it's especially from the parents that do it. That's a great story. Now, let me ask you, as we're, you know, kind of colluding this interview, you report to that wonderful historian who is president of Punahou School, Michael Latham.  But you report to the board of directors. And I wanted to ask you about that, about, you know, because you have, you know, wonderful people on the Punahou board like John Morgan, who is, you know, my ideal businessman and the business community awarded him. So I'm not speaking just alone. But what is that like?  But I wanted to ask you about that because that's that's who you report. Well, technically, I report to the president, Michael Latham, but I worked very closely with the board. And I think when I came here, I just saw the board is sort of a monolith. They're the board. But really, it's 16 individual personality, 16 individual skillsets, 16 individual histories. They're all really proven in what they do, whether it's running businesses, being leaders in philanthropy, being leaders on other boards. And you mentioned John, but you could really mention each of them. But John, talk about an innovator and an innovative mindset. What he's done on Kulaw Ranch is incredible. How he's transformed it. And each of the board members has something to offer.  That I think is really exciting, at least for finance nerds like myself. But each and every one, our outgoing board chair, Connie Lau, is proven business woman. I mean, you think there's nothing left to prove. And yet here she is working with us, involved, you know, at a really high level, our incoming chair. Wendy Crabb is a really different personality, but just as dedicated as just as much to offer us. And and I got to know her as part of the volleyball family. And I'm really excited about the next two years with her at the helm. And, you know, speaking of Wendy Crabb, wasn't she a volleyball player herself like a celebrated one in California or something? Am I am I am I? And I can't I can't speak to her career. But we know her her she's so involved. She has a grandson who started on the volleyball team, varsity volleyball team here in ninth grade. And another grandson on the U of H team just graduated. And she's just a wonderful support or supporter and just has so much aloha for Booneville. So yeah, and we go through the board one by one and talk about not just their proven qualities, but what good people they are. So I feel very fortunate to be being able to be mentored, even as I don't think people on the board would think they're mentoring me, but I feel that I get mentorship from pretty much each and every one of them in one way or another. That's a lovely relationship to have because having the, you know, mentee mentor or relationship is always a very good one. So, you know, I'm going to leave the last couple of minutes to you in terms of now you moved here from Los Angeles. And I'm I'm sure the culture having grown up, as you and I talked about before, having grown up in Santa Monica and Malibu. I the culture is very different in Los in the Los Angeles area then in Honolulu and you've adapted well.   Because that's a big that's a big transition to any place in the country, much less, you know, moving to a wonderful spot with tremendous history in them. And I'll start with we love it here and could stick could easily see never moving again. We really love it here, but it's hard to talk about the transition without talking about pandemic. My assistant at USC used to work for American Airlines. And we it was the. You know, the beginning of the pandemic, we're all freaked out. And I asked her, you know, she offered to contact her friend to see which flights were kind of empty because we were nervous about getting it. Our mother-in-law was living with us, my mother-in-law. And I'll never forget, we we left on June 27, 2020. And we were the only passengers in terminal four at LAX. Like the whole there are a couple of people who were working. We saw some flight crews and it was us, the four of us, you know, in this empty terminal. So coming here was kind of scary and they and we did. We had to do the quarantine for two weeks. And when we got out, went to serve code and got a car. And then we went to Nikos on Pier 38. And that was like day one out of and that was scary, too. Like, are we too close to anyone? But I have to say the big difference and it sounds trivial, but first people are very open. It was very easy to make friends here for our son, but for us, too, people are very open. And that was easy. But we had friends in LA, too. But the idea of like, do we want to go to Pasadena on a Saturday at noon to see them and spend an hour and a half on the freeway? Like there, it was just a pain to see people. Whereas here, it's so easy. So we, we see our friends frequently. We're building friendships. People come over, we go to their places, we go out together. And we had a New Year's party at our house two years in a row, one sort of a pandemic protocol where people would come in and when it got to many people, people would go out. But it's been great. It's a wonderful community. And of course, it's a complex place and there's a lot to learn. And the more I know, the more I realize I don't know. But I read about a dozen books about Hawaii, both fiction and nonfiction in my first year here. And there's just so much to learn, so much to know, of so many people to me, so much history, some of which is really hard and some of which I think is really exciting. But yeah, we were very grateful to have had a reason to come here. And before I ramble on it any further, I want to wrap it up. Well, thank you, Sonny. This has been a really wonderful interview. And I will leave you with this. The only thing I would suggest is before that VP, which identifies you when you should use the word mench to. So thank you, Sonny. This has been delightful. You know, and I think that everyone in our audience will now understand a great deal about financial stewardship and how important it is and the role that you play, that you played at USC and also at Putama School. Thank you, Sonny. Thank you. Pleasure is mine. Thank you so much for watching Think Tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please click the like and subscribe button on YouTube. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Check out our website, thinktechawaii.com. Mahalo.