Holocaust teaching bill, Long Island Oath Keepers and Patriots, NYC's 'ranked-choice' adventure

Daily Point

Holocaust teaching bill controversy

At any other time and place, an effort to study how well the state’s school districts are teaching the Holocaust might not be controversial.

But right now, it is.

On Monday, the State Assembly’s education committee spent about 40 minutes discussing the bill authorizing the study, sponsored by Assemb. Nily Rozic.

The meeting was held over Zoom. An Assembly spokesman said it was not officially recorded. But The Point obtained a full recording of the lengthy discussion, and the resulting vote. A majority 18 of the committee’s 31 members voted against the committee chairman’s recommendation that the bill not move forward.

The chairman, Assemb. Michael Benedetto, had recommended at the conversation’s outset that the bill be "held." Benedetto (D-Bronx) argued that the bill was unnecessary because state education law requires that the Holocaust be taught, and so it was "understood that this was being done." The chair also called the bill an "unfunded mandate," noting that the state education department would have to put time and money into it.

According to several Assembly members who participated in the meeting, the Zoom hands began rising as Benedetto continued to talk.

One by one, members began to object to Benedetto’s request for a hold and in favor of the bill, with several members of Long Island’s delegation among them.

"I am in support of this bill and I am very surprised that anyone would even think to hold this bill," said Assemb. David McDonough (R-Merrick). "The Holocaust was one of the worst events of human history and for us to deny making sure that every student hears the story of this in history … Voting to hold this would be just another slight step to anti-Semitism."

Assembly members Doug Smith (R-Holbrook), Melissa Miller (R-Atlantic Beach) and Phil Ramos (D-Bay Shore) also spoke out against the hold during the meeting.

"In light of the recent anti-Semitic sentiment that’s been out there and the attacks on people of Jewish faith," Smith, who’s the committee’s ranking Republican, told The Point Tuesday, "I think it’s important that we ensure that our schools are teaching about the Holocaust and what can happen when hatred is allowed to grow."

Ramos told The Point he supports the bill because "we can change society by starting early and creating awareness of these issues."

Still other members, however, voted in favor of the hold, with some saying the bill should be expanded to include a look at other issues, such as slavery. But some Assembly members told The Point they wondered whether the ongoing battles between Israel and Gaza, and anti-Israel sentiment expressed by some elected officials, were also an issue in the desire to hold the bill back.

State Sen. Anna Kaplan (D-Great Neck), who is sponsoring a Senate version of the bill, said it was "inexcusable" to "play politics" with a bill like this.

"Considering the fact that this bill has existed with vast and diverse support from lawmakers of all backgrounds and ideologies for months and was passed unanimously by the Senate in a prior session, I can’t help but question the motivations of lawmakers who have suddenly raised brand new concerns that didn’t come up during prior discussions and revisions, seemingly in an effort to kill this critically important bill in the eleventh hour of the waning legislative session," she said.

Rozic (D-Queens), who isn’t on the education committee and wasn’t present during the meeting, said she had been asked to pull the bill before it even got to the committee, and that she refused to do so. An Israeli whose mother taught at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Israel, Rozic said that for her, the bill is "personal."

In the end, the bill was referred to the ways and means committee. Oddly, as of Tuesday, there was no record on the bill’s history of the education committee’s meeting, or that a vote had taken place. Instead, it said, "Referral changed to Ways and Means."

— Randi F. Marshall @RandiMarshall

Talking Point

Long Island Oath Keepers and Patriots

The event description has an eye-popping "Main Topic": "Tactical deployment of Precision / Battle Rifles with Tommy Jack."

That’s what was supposed to be on the menu for Wednesday evening at the Huntington Moose Lodge in Greenlawn, according to a screenshot of a Telegram post from the Huntington Northport Patriots shared with The Point.

"We are invited to attend the Long Island Oathkeepers meeting," the post says, a likely reference to the regional branch of the Oath Keepers group that the Southern Poverty Law Center calls "one of the largest radical antigovernment groups in the U.S. today."

"We had a good little group attend last time, the LI oathkeepers always have good patriot related topics," a Patriots group member wrote. "Last time we sat together at the front left table, I recommend that again to enjoy each other’s company."

The Point called the Huntington Moose Lodge in Greenlawn and was told that there was no Wednesday Oath Keeper meeting at the lodge. Members are allowed to have meetings at the lodge informally, but "there’s never been a formal, oh yeah we’re hosting Oath Keepers" event, says Mike Kulsziski, past junior governor of the lodge. "There's nothing going on at the lodge tomorrow night," he said.

So what to make of the Telegram post? Neither the publicly identifiable group administrators for this Patriots group page nor the Oath Keepers returned The Point’s requests for comment on and information about a potential event supposedly featuring the tactics of battle rifles. But by Tuesday evening, after The Point’s inquiries, the Huntington Northport Patriots’ Telegram post about the event had apparently disappeared.

The group’s Telegram posts include one calling themselves a "friendly group," according to screenshots shared with The Point by a member, and the topics include typical conservative social media issues like the need to tell people to take off their masks: "our poor conditioned citizens need us." Another screenshotted post says Suffolk County GOP chair Jesse Garcia is "a part of this group," and Garcia told The Point he believes he is indeed a member, one of various social media groups he checks in on to "keep abreast of trends."

The tactical weaponry post surfaced this week on the page of the local Facebook group Huntington Voices, eliciting outraged comments.

The Oath Keepers, made up of former military, police, and first responders, have a long history of conspiracy theories and aggressively arming themselves.

Patriot-style community groups allied with conservative causes, however, have grown in prominence on Long Island in the Trump era, culminating in some members affiliated with the likes of the Setauket Patriots and Long Island Loud Majority hopping on buses and heading to D.C. for the Jan. 6 rally that became a riot.

— Mark Chiusano @mjchiusano

Pencil Point

The real estate market

For more cartoons, visit www.newsday.com/nationalcartoons

Final Point

NYC’s ‘ranked-choice’ adventure spawns questions

With only four weeks left to primary day, the state Board of Elections on Tuesday certified the software for tabulating the first-ever "ranked-choice" ballots in the New York City mayoral race.

The old city system required figuring out, confirming, and announcing who got the most votes. A runoff between first and second place finishers would be held if nobody got 40% percent. Even with glitches, that was a logistical cinch compared to what looms this year when every voter gets to choose up to five favorites in a stated order of preference.

While the technology and its specific uses are now approved, important questions remain about the June 22 vote in the five boroughs and what will follow.

Democratic board member Douglas Kellner noted that a resolution approving the "ranked-choice universal tabulator," or RCUV, made by the ES & S company for city use, also calls on local officials to address a potential "security gap" in the process.

That is, the city is urged to adopt special procedures to ensure that ballots are fed into the RCUV correctly from the scanners in which the votes are recorded. The newly approved device sorts out and adds up which candidates get how many first-preference votes, second-preference votes, and so on.

Exactly when results will be announced and in what form remains hazy.

Which candidates got the most "first choice" votes are assumed to be available on election night. But then the voters’ runner-up choices must be blended into the totals, determining a winner. How quickly the full results will be revealed isn’t yet certain.

Think of this as a runoff and a primary all in one. During a budget hearing on Friday, City Councilman Keith Powers, a Manhattan Democrat, said he was concerned that unnecessary confusion could follow if only partial information is disclosed at first.

And as always, affidavit and absentee ballots will then need to be counted and calculated before certification.

One Republican operative, skeptical of this whole adventure, said in light of the questions ahead: "It’s a lucky thing that the primary was moved up from September to June," leaving an additional three months to determine November’s municipal election nominees.

"With a month to go, you’d think we’d know how all this will work," added a veteran Democratic operative.

— Dan Janison @Danjanison

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