EDITORIAL: Views from the nation's press

Oct. 25—The New York Daily News on how Sidney Powell tells the truth:

Like most Americans, we were introduced to lawyer Sidney Powell on Nov. 19, 2020, almost two weeks after it was clear that Joe Biden had decisively beaten President Donald Trump in the 2020 election. Powell showed up at a Trump campaign press conference at RNC headquarters in Washington along with Rudy Giuliani and another lawyer, Jenna Ellis.

This was Rudy's second infamous post-election press conference. The first was at Philly's Four Seasons Total Landscaping on Nov. 7, which occurred just as the Associated Press and the TV networks all projected Biden's victory.

You remember, this press conference is where Rudy's brown hair dye dripped down both sides of his face as he and Powell and Ellis spun lies and craziness about Hugo Chavez and stolen votes. All three of them would later be indicted in the Georgia state election interference case. Powell would also become Co-Conspirator 3 in Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal election interference case filed in Washington.

On Tuesday, Powell was still on social media claiming that the 2020 presidential vote was crooked. On Wednesday, an Atlanta judge rejected her final efforts to toss out the seven state felony charges against her for election interference on two specious grounds: one that it was a federal election and should not be handled in state court and the other was her First Amendment right to free speech. Her trial was set to begin on Monday.

No way, wrote Judge Scott McAfee Wednesday afternoon, the charges stood. The next morning, Powell had a change of heart and pleaded guilty in open court before McAfee to six misdemeanors and promised to cooperate.

This is good for Powell, who will serve no prison time and is eligible under Georgia law to even have her conviction expunged at some point in the future. It's also good for prosecutor Fani Willis, who can rely on Powell to rat out the others in the case, including Trump.

And Powell has dirt on Trump. Smith described her as "an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud (Trump) privately acknowledged to others sounded 'crazy.' Nonetheless, (Trump) embraced and publicly amplified Co-Conspirator 3's disinformation."

Powell was at the Dec. 18, 2020 Oval Office meeting where there was a plot discussed to use the power of the federal government to seize voting machines in states that Trump narrowly lost, like Georgia. The cabal, which included disgraced National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, went on for hours and continued in the White House residence.

Powell has first-hand knowledge of this, as it was her plan. Hopefully, she will be cooperating with Jack Smith as well.

The conspiracy of the sitting president to stay in office by canceling the election that he lost was very real and it exploded in its final act, the Jan. 6 sacking of the Capitol. Powell was there for much of it and can offer prosecutors the insider view.

Trump assumed that all his stooges would remain blindly loyal to him and refuse to testify against him. Powell has proven him very wrong. Is she crazy, as he thought? Probably, but she still likely has the goods on his crimes to defraud the American people and democracy itself.

Trump can lead his rivals in the polls for the GOP nomination, but he can't outrun the law.

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Bloomberg Opinion on how schools need to ban cell phones:

Ask any parent about the time their kids spend on mobile devices, and you'll likely hear the same refrain: It's too much. Excessive use of smartphones and social media is linked to rising rates of teenage depression and self-harm, while also damaging students' academic performance and exacerbating achievement gaps. At this point, the question isn't whether phones should be banned from classrooms, but why more schools haven't done so already.

Evidence about the negative effects of mobile devices on learning is overwhelming. Large-scale international assessments have shown that anything beyond limited use of technology in the classroom harms academic performance. A 14-country study cited in a U.N. report this year found that merely being in proximity to smartphones disrupted learning for all ages, from preschool to college, with poorly performing students suffering the most.

Prompted by findings like these — and common sense — the British government announced this month that it will instruct schools to prohibit the use of mobile phones during the school day. Other European countries, including the Netherlands and France, have imposed similar bans. Such policies can be challenging to enforce, but in places that have followed through the gains have been striking. Bans on phones in two regions in Spain improved math test scores by the equivalent of more than half a year's learning.

A 2022 analysis of more than 100 Norwegian middle schools found that banning phones boosted students' grades and test scores and increased their likelihood of attending an advanced high school. It also yielded bigger academic improvements than far more expensive policies, such as reducing class sizes or putting more computers in schools.

Despite these clear benefits, U.S. schools seem to be moving in the wrong direction. As of 2020, 76% of public schools said that they prohibited the "non-academic" use of phones during school hours, down from more than 90% a decade earlier. By all indications, those restrictions are widely flouted. In response to a surge in smartphone use during the pandemic — fueled partly by misguided school closures — some districts appear to have abandoned even token efforts to keep devices out of kids' hands. A survey released last month found that 97% of US adolescents say they use their devices during the school day, for a median of 43 minutes — with most of that time spent on social media, YouTube and video games.

Arresting this trend is critical to helping students recover lost ground and avoid permanent blight to their careers and life prospects. European-style national bans would be unworkable in the U.S., where schools are controlled locally. But policy makers should emphasize the urgency of the issue. State legislatures should press schools to ban the use of phones for the duration of the school day, including during passing periods and recesses — and to confiscate them, if necessary. They should provide incentives to districts that demonstrate academic gains after imposing school-wide bans. They should also help schools pay for things like electronics-storage pouches and phone lockers.

Schools will no doubt get an earful from parents who oppose such bans. While acknowledging legitimate anxieties — such as how to reach a student during a crisis — they should hold firm and explain that emergency-contact protocols are more than sufficient.

It's by now incontrovertible that, however essential to modern life, smartphones have no place in the classroom. The sooner schools remove them, the better off students will be.