2022-2023 – Semester 1

L1 Legal English
The United States

“Give me your tired, your poor,

your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Emma Lazarus – “The New Colossus” – 1883
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Course Description .......................................................................................... ii

Continuous Assessment and Exam .................................................................................................................................................. ii
Building Your Skills ........................................................................................................................................................................... ii
1. Methodology ............................................................................................... iii
A. Oral presentations ...................................................................................................................................................................... iii
B. Essay writing ................................................................................................................................................................................ v
2. Reading the news ........................................................................................ v
3. Language Tips ........................................................................................... vii
How to express one’s opinion ....................................................................................................................................................... vii
Use varied vocabulary.................................................................................................................................................................... vii
Useful Phrases and Sentences ....................................................................................................................................................... vii
Mistakes You Should Not Make Anymore .................................................................................................................................... viii
4. A brief guide to punctuation in English .................................................... viii
5. Plagiarism .................................................................................................. ix
UNIT 1 — THE MEDIA ...................................................................................... 1
LINK WORDS .................................................................................................................................................................................... 6
UNIT 2 – POLITICAL PARTIES ......................................................................... 8
The articles: a, an, the, ∅ ............................................................................................................................................................... 13
UNIT 3 – THE 3 BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT ............................................... 15
PRESENT TENSES ............................................................................................................................................................................ 20
UNIT 4 — RELIGION ...................................................................................... 22
Present Perfect & Preterite ........................................................................................................................................................... 28
UNIT 5 – IMMIGRATION ................................................................................ 30
Conditionals ................................................................................................................................................................................... 36
UNIT 6 – MANIFEST DESTINY AND FOREIGN POLICY ................................... 38
Quantifiers ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 45
UNIT 7 – CIVIL RIGHTS ................................................................................. 49
The Passive Voice ........................................................................................................................................................................... 59
UNIT 8 — GUNS ............................................................................................. 61
INFINITIVE WITH TO, -ING GERUND, BASE VERB........................................................................................................................... 71
UNIT 9 – THE DEATH PENALTY ...................................................................... 73
ASKING QUESTIONS, REPORTED SPEECH ...................................................................................................................................... 83
Map of the Contiguous United States ............................................................ 87
Debating ........................................................................................................ 88
Example of Debating ......................................................................................................................................................... 89
Useful phrases for debating........................................................................................................................................................... 90
DEBATE PREPARATION SHEET ....................................................................................................................................................... 92
Phonemic Chart ............................................................................................. 93

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 Course Description

This course is based on weekly classes. Each class lasts 90 minutes.

At the end of this semester, you should be able to:

- make a 3-to-5-minute oral presentation with only a few notes and using a PowerPoint.
- understand newspaper articles, videos, and radio reports on current political, social, economic and legal issues.
- write a formal and well-structured essay of 250 words (+/- 10%)
- write comprehensive answers to questions on a text.

The materials provided herein can be used in several ways to develop and strengthen these skills. They will help
you gradually improve your use of English and further your knowledge of political and legal vocabulary. In L2 and
L3, the course content will become more and more specialized. During this semester, the focus is on the United
Kingdom.

For Grammar, you may refer to L’Anglais de A à Z, Michael Swan et Françoise Houdart, Hatier, 2011 or English
Grammar in Use, Raymond Murphy, Cambridge University Press. You can also use your own grammar book.
There will be grammar exercises on the exam; you therefore need to make sure you understand the grammar points
covered in the booklet.

Please bring your booklet with you to class.

Continuous Assessment and Exam

You will get a grade for the whole year, out of 10 points. It is the average of the two independent grades
(also out of 10 points) you will obtain at the end of each semester.

Semester grade (10 pts):

- in-class exam (lasting 1h30, toward/at the end of the semester) = out of 5 pts
- continuous assessment (oral presentation, in-class participation, homework, etc.) = out of 5 pts

The exam includes three types of exercises:

- grammar exercises
- answering 3 questions on a newspaper article
- writing a short discussion/opinion essay.

Attendance is mandatory for every class. Punctuality is also required. You may not be admitted to class if you
are late. All absences must be justified; more than 2 unjustified absences will affect your continuous assessment
grade. It goes without saying that cell phones must be turned off.

Building Your Skills

Learning a language can be fun but it also requires substantial work on a regular basis. This does not happen
only/just in the classroom. Students who progress the most are those who seek every occasion to use English inside
or outside the classroom. In addition to your weekly tutorial, you should try and have as much contact as possible
with the English language.
• Read books, newspapers and magazines in English.
• Watch movies and series and listen to the radio or podcasts in English.
• Try to understand what you are watching/reading/listening to.
• Converse with native speakers of English.
In short, the more practice you get, the stronger your skills will become. It will become easier and more natural for
you to speak English. You will also feel comfortable speaking English. Your teachers can recommend appropriate
material for your level – do not hesitate to ask them.

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 1. Methodology
A. Oral presentations
1. POWERPOINT PRESENTATIONS

Why is it an important skill to master?

- PPT is a tool that should complement the oral presentation. It is not content.
- The aim here is for you to develop the skills to design an effective PPT to aid your oral presentations, as there is a
very high chance that you will be asked to present with a PPT in future interviews/jobs.
- You should be able to identify and design useful content for the PPT so you can present successfully.
- Used well, PPT can improve the clarity of presentations and help to illustrate a message and engage the audience.

Common mistakes in PPT presentations:

1. Too much text, even when using bullet points; when an audience is given text, they will try and read it. If they
are reading then they will not be listening, but they also will not be able to fully concentrate on reading; they will
be distracted by the presenter talking.
2. Poorly designed slides; if the PPT slides use badly contrasted colors and are poorly formatted and inconsistent,
then they will serve no purpose other than to distract the audience from the presentation.
3. Staring at the screen; PPT slides should be used to supplement a presentation, not serve as a prompt. One of the
most annoying and unprofessional habits when giving a presentation using PPT is staring at the screen, reading
content directly to the audience.
4. Standing in front of the screen; this blocks the audience from seeing the PPT content, makes the audience feel
uneasy, and turns the presenter a strange shade of blue from the projector/computer light!
5. Being overly/unnecessarily creative; creativity is a good thing, but making text boxes swirl and dance just because
PPT has the function to do that is not creative. It just distracts the audience.
6. Panicking when something does not work; ideally the presenter should always arrive early to check that the
technology works, but this is not always possible. Technology often fails, and panicking does not help anyone. Always
have a back-up plan.

How to put together a good presentation:

Step 1: Designing PowerPoint slides

a. Color
- Ensure that all of your slides have the same or similar background images and color schemes.
- Prepare slides that use a bold color contrast, e.g. black or deep blue text on a cream background (black and white
can be too glaring for the audience)
- Avoid using red or green for text or highlighting, as it can be difficult to read.

b. Text
- Avoid using too much text. A useful guideline is the six-by-six rule (slides should have no more than six bullet
points and each bullet point should be no more than six words long).
- Create bullet points which are clear summaries of key points.
- Do not mix up your fonts and font sizes.
- Ensure that your text is at least 24pt otherwise it may be difficult to read on screen.
- Use bold for a clear and simple form of emphasis and headings.
- Set clear hierarchies for type size to help distinguish between headings, main text and other types of text.

Step 2: Making the most of graphics and animations

- Choose an appropriate quality for scanned images.
- Make sure graphics are relevant to your text and not just decorative.
- Consider using graphics to replace text where you think an image would be easier to understand.
- Ensure that the images that you use are simple and clear enough to be easily read at a distance.
- Make sure that any animation you use serves a clear purpose (e.g., to introduce a new piece of information at an
appropriate point).
- Make sure to provide sources for all the graphs, photos, etc. you are using.

Step 3: When preparing to present, ask yourself:

- How large is the room that I am going to be presenting in? Will people be able to see my slides from the back?
- Do any of my audience have any special requirements?
- Have I rehearsed my presentation to check that all of my slides work in the way they are supposed to?
- Does my presentation fit into the time that I have been given?
- Have I checked that the necessary equipment (laptop, data projector, speakers for sound) are functioning?
- Do I have an alternative plan in case the technology fails? Do I have a PDF version of my PPT presentation?
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Step 4: Presenting with PowerPoint
- Treat each slide as a mini-presentation where you make a point to introduce the idea, give the detail and then
conclude that slide with an explanation of how the point fits in with the rest of your presentation.
- Direct your audience’s attention to the slides when they contain information that is key to getting your message
across.
- Give your audience time to read and understand material on your slides.
- Don’t just read out the text on the slides, they should be a summary or a supplement to the content of your spoken
presentation.

2. STORYTELLING (how to describe a picture)

- Pictures read from top to bottom and from left to right. Therefore, pay attention to the FRAME:
- what there is – or not – in the center, which defines the TOPIC
- the left- and right-hand sides of the picture, which help convey movement
- the upper and lower parts of the picture, which define the background and the foreground
- lighting, which follows the FOCUS of the picture
- context: when was the picture released, by whom, to what readership?

- Always ask yourself WHY the picture is as it is meant to be.

Toolbox:
a. Vocabulary
In the background/foreground To convey: to suggest
On the right/left (hand side) To mean/to be meant to
In the center/middle To raise the issue of
To conjure up: to evoke To refer to

b. Grammar
- Modals
• CAN: What can you see/guess/imagine/infer?
• MAY: refers to the before and/or after of the
picture; we may ask/think, this may result
from.
- Be + -ING: pictures come into being when there
are people to look at them using the simple present
would make the picture timeless.
- Present perfect: refers to the before of the
picture.
- Comparatives: pictures are often built on strong
oppositions
- Syntax: What we can see here/What we have here
is…, which means that…

3. DOs AND DON’Ts OF ORAL PRESENTATIONS

Do…
- Prepare your presentation thoroughly. Write your own text with the information you have gathered. Use different sources.
- Structure your work: clearly define what is in your introduction (what you are going to talk about), the body of your talk
(your topic, your ideas, facts and arguments) and your conclusion.
- Use formal language.
- Use short, simple sentences to express your ideas clearly.
- Pause from time to time and don’t speak too quickly. This allows the listener to understand your ideas.
- Speak clearly and at the right volume.
- Practice your presentation. If possible, record yourself and listen to your presentation. If you can’t record
yourself, ask a friend to listen to you.
- Make your opinion very clear. Use varied expressions to give your opinion.
- Make eye contact with your audience and vary your tone of voice.
- Familiarize yourself with your slideshow (only pictures and a few key sentences)
- For a cartoon analysis, evaluate political cartoons for their meaning, message, and persuasiveness.
- Description is a means, not an end. Determine whether you agree or disagree with the author’s message.
- Conclude your talk with a question to your classmates in order to trigger a short discussion.

Do not…
- Write out the whole presentation and learn every word by heart.
- Write out the whole presentation and read it aloud.
- Use very informal language or slang.
- Only look at your note card.
- Just copy and regurgitate a Wikipedia page.
- Speak without varying your tone of voice.

☞ Your presentation should last around 5 minutes. You are not allowed notes, only a small card for your
outline and a few names and dates.
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 B. Essay writing

You are meant to write an “opinion essay”: you may be asked an opinion question or given a
provocative/controversial statement for you to agree or disagree with in 250 words (+/- 10%)
Example: “The monarchy is finished. It was finished a while ago, but they're still making
the corpses dance.” Sue Townsend, English writer and humorist (1946 -2014).
Do you agree with Ms. Townsend’s statement? Choose a position and defend it logically.

Before and for your in-class exam

First, as you know that you will have to develop your ideas, you do have to:
- Have a good command of the vocabulary in each unit; make sure you know when and how to use it.
- Check whether you could express yourself as thoroughly and precisely as possible on the points addressed
in the facts sections, without using too simple words or without repeating yourself.
- Get yourself a little corpus of quotations, ideas, some definitions and key facts. Opposing views need not be
addressed directly in your essay but might be inferred indirectly in the choice of arguments you use to back
up your views.

Essay Structure
1. Introduction
An introduction provides a clear question your essay will answer (as rephrased by yourself if needed), sets out the
scope of the discussion and/or presents your thesis, outlines the structure of the essay, and suggests the answer
the essay will put forward in the conclusion.

Try to respect these three steps:

a. Contextualisation: Point to the relevance of the quotation or question. Define the keyterm(s) and/or
explain the nature of the area you are asked to write on.
b. The Question: show to what extend the subject is a challenging or problematic one by providing a clear
question your essay will answer.
c. Your stance/point of view: announced it, it must be clear right from the start.

2. The body of the essay

Demonstrate your viewpoint in two or three paragraphs or sections. Do not give titles to your sections.
Each paragraph must correspond to a key idea or argument. A paragraph usually begins with a topic sentence
which is an introduction to the idea developed in the paragraph.
If the question requires a personal opinion (“What do you think about”, “Give your opinion on”, “To what extent do
you agree with”, etc.), make sure to give a clear opinion. As long as it supported by relevant facts, examples,
quotations or arguments, you will be given credit for it.

IMPORTANT: plagiarism will be sanctioned. Citing is one of the effective ways to avoid plagiarism. When quoting
a source, use the quote exactly the way it appears. No one wants to be misquoted. (cf. the section on plagiarism
further below.)

3. Conclusion
Evaluate the quotation/statement, giving a clear answer to the question set in the introduction. Summarize your
thesis and open to a new point.

2. Reading the news

A) Objectives
- Make the most out of available technology and know the main news outlets in the Anglosphere.
- Understand the importance of what’s “outside” the article, and the notions of objectivity and bias.

1) Make the most out of available technology

Reading the news is no longer (only) about buying an actual newspaper. Your smartphone/tablet/computer allow you to read the
news instantaneously.
- Be careful with the sources you pick. Not all websites are created equal.
- Use commuting time. For instance, replace ten minutes of Facebook with ten minutes of news reading.

2) Know the main news outlets in the Anglosphere.

a) In the United States
Most sold newspapers in the US (as of January 2019, source:
cision.com): Some famous conservative (right-wing) American
1. USA Today newspapers:
2. The Wall Street Journal - The New York Post
3. The New York Times - The Wall Street Journal
3. The New York Post - The Chicago Tribune
4. Los Angeles Times - National Review
6. The Washington Post - The Weekly Standard

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Some famous liberal (left-wing) American newspapers: - The Washington Post
- The New York Times - The Atlantic
- The Boston Globe - The Nation

b) In the United Kingdom

Most sold newspapers in the UK (as of March 2020, source: Some famous right-wing British newspapers:
statista.com): - The Daily Telegraph
1. The Sun - Daily Mail
2. Daily Mail
3. Daily Mirror Some famous left-wing British newspapers:
4. The Guardian - The Guardian
5. Independent - The Independent
- The Daily Mirror

3) Understand the importance of what’s “outside” the article.

- Title: a good title should act as a mini summary of the article itself. You should be able to know what the article is about with the
title alone.
- Possible subtitle(s): can help you understand the different facets of the topic being addressed?
- Author: Do you know him/her? Is s/he even mentioned? Name or only initials?
- Date: important to have an idea of how much time separates the article from the facts being addressed: Is it immediate journalism?
Or does it have more historical perspective?

4) Understand the importance of the notions of objectivity and bias.

Forget about « true objectivity », whatever that’s supposed to mean. Neutrality and objectivity are supposed to be the cornerstones
of journalism. Journalists are supposed to describe the facts and let those who read them form their own opinion. However, true
and complete objectivity is like Santa Claus: many people talk about it, nobody has actually seen it. This does not necessarily
mean that journalists are not doing their job properly. True objectivity is extremely difficult to achieve, because the human mind
cannot detach itself from past experiences and ideas when it treats new information. Even when it comes to stating facts, eac h
individual is going to do it with her/his own words and her/his own way of explaining things. Two individuals trying to state the
same facts as objectively and honestly as possible would almost certainly come up with two slightly different versions of what
actually happened. Each person has her/his own vocabulary and her/his own way of using language, and these unavoidable
differences between individuals are necessarily going to have an impact on the way any article is written. The meaning a journalist
gives to one particular word might even be different from the meaning you, the reader, give that word.

B) Reading the news – understanding the headlines

Short Words
Headlines often use very short words to make an impact. These are sometimes violent words e.g., Thugs battle. A thug is a violent
person and a battle is a fight (it is a noun and a verb). This headline could also read Some thugs have been fighting, however this
does not have the same impact as the short headline above.

Omitted Words
Headlines often don't include verbs and articles, for example, More MP resignations over expenses row. If we put this into spoken
English then the sentence would read More MPs have resigned over the row about expenses. This means that Members of
Parliament have left their jobs because of the disagreements over what they should be able to claim on expenses.
Another example would be New flood alert. This means that there have been warnings that there could be more flooding.

Word Play
A key part of newspaper language is word play. Words with two different meanings in English can be used in an amusing and
entertaining way. This is called a pun. For example, Short-staffed? That's fine by Mr. Sarkozy. This headline plays with the word
short. Short-staffed means that there are not enough staff to do the job. However, this article refers to the fact that during a visit
to a factory all the staff he was introduced to were short because he is only 1.7m!
Another example would be Police found drunk in street. This headline plays with the word drunk. One meaning is that the Police
were found drunk in the street. The second meaning is that the Police found a drunk man in the street.

Noun Strings
It is also common to have a row of nouns in a headline. For example, Prime Minister’s traffic headache. This means that the Prime
Minister has had some sort of problem with traffic.
Another example would be Teenage pregnancy increase. This means that there has been an increase in teenage pregnancy.

Alliteration
Alliteration is when a sound is repeated. It is often used in poetry as well as newspapers. Newspapers use it to attract the eye and
make it more memorable.
For example, Media makes Madonna Mad. The ‘m’ is repeated 4 times.

Ambiguous
Headlines are often ambiguous making the reader look at the article. If we take the above headline the word ‘mad’ is ambiguous
because it could mean insane or it could mean very angry. Also, the word drunk is ambiguous in the word play example above.

Verb Changes
Verbs are often changed in headlines. The simple tense is used instead of the continuous or perfect tense and the infinitive is used
for the future. For example, Brown resigns. This is used instead of Brown has resigned.

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 3. Language Tips
How to express one’s opinion
• First, do not hesitate to use the pronoun “I”. Anglophones do not mind a clear standpoint, quite the opposite! You must
try to use impersonal structures and the passive so your essay does not turn into an embarrassing celebration of your ego!
• The use of the conditional tends to mitigate too strong an assertion: “I would tend to agree with…”/ You can also use the
passive for generalisations: “It is commonly acknowledged that…”
• Do Not Use the Royal “We”! “In conclusion, we think that…”
• Try not to use contractions. “The president doesn’t → does not want to…”
• Remember to use linking words (cf. list below) to:
- add information (in addition, moreover, furthermore...)
- contrast ideas (however, on the contrary, conversely, nevertheless...)
- go more into details (indeed, in fact, a case in point is...)
- draw a conclusion or deduce something (therefore, thus, to conclude...).
• Keep some time when you have finished your essay to check spelling, grammar (passive voice vs. active voice, verb
structures, negative and question structures, choice of tenses (simple present, present perfect, simple past, past perfect,
conditionals, future), pronouns, agreements etc.

Use varied vocabulary

Poor language Competent language user
Adjectives: GOOD -Beneficial, positive, salutary, appropriate
BIG -Major, substantial, essential, critical, seminal, first-rate, considerable, tremendous
-powerful, important, prominent, influential, high-powered, leading, pre-eminent, of
high standing, outstanding, well known, eminent, distinguished, principal, foremost,
noteworthy
BAD -adverse, detrimental, negative

Verbs: TO BE -To constitute, exemplify, typify…

Useful Phrases and Sentences

Linking Words
To give examples: for instance, for example, namely, a case in point is, such as, etc.
To express a goal: to, in order to, so as to, etc.
To express a cause: because of, on account of, since, this is the reason for, (this is the reason why), owing to, thanks to, due
to, etc.
To express a consequence: so that, that is why, therefore, thus, accordingly, consequently, as a consequence, as a result,
hence, etc.
To express a condition: if, so long as, in case, supposing, provided that, etc.
To add an element: in addition to, besides, furthermore, moreover, what is more, added to this, on top of that (/this), as well
as, etc.
To express a contrast or opposition: however, nevertheless, nonetheless, yet, still, conversely, in contrast to, on the contrary,
unlike, whereas (within a compound sentence), while (within a compound sentence), etc.
To express restriction: although, though, even though/if, no matter what, whatever, no matter how, unless, despite, in spite
of, etc.

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 Mistakes You Should Not Make Anymore
The following are the main mistakes made frequently by French-speaking students of English. In order not to be penalized
when making your presentation or when writing your essay, you should focus on the words and structures below. Decide not to
make these mistakes anymore!

All sentences begin with a capital letter and end with a full stop. Use capital letters systematically for
country names, adjectives of nationality, languages, the days of the week, months of the year, official
PUNCTUATION /
titles, disciplines and all proper nouns.
CAPITAL LETTERS
Ex: The Republicans and the Democrats, the Republican Party and the Democratic Party, Congress, the
British Parliament, learn Spanish, President Biden, a conservative opinion vs. the Conservative Party
a/an depending on the following pronounced vowel/consonant.
the only for a determined/specific situation, (the demography of Texas),
ARTICLES
Ø if general, for concepts/notions (multiculturalism); no article with names of most countries (except for
the U.S., the U.K.).
INVARIABLE and therefore they can NEVER be in plural: important problems, civil rights, Native tribes,
ADJECTIVES
different languages...
DETERMINER - NOUN
Use this with a singular noun; use these with the plural.
AGREEMENT
WHO / WHICH / WHO (subject) used for people (and beloved pets) / WHICH for objects and animals /The period when
WHEN it happened (and not WHERE)
more before long adjectives (more significant) / -er for short adjectives (taller);
less with uncountable nouns / fewer with countable nouns
COMPARISON comparative > / < + than BUT as … as + noun gp
Le superlatif : the most important/the fastest thing to do (la plupart des gens : Most people), Texas
is one of the largest states in the US ( NOT of).
SUBJECT / VERB NEVER forget the “s” for the third person singular in the simple present: She thinks. The president
AGREEMENT has.
In formal writing generally do NOT contract the auxiliaries, verbs or negations: He does not know, I have
CONTRACTIONS
left, she cannot breathe under water.
MODALS After a modal always use the infinitive form without “to”: You must remember this.
After most prepositions use the V-ING form: instead of/before going... TO is almost always followed by V:
PREP + VERB-ING
so as to go
Do not confuse: to become (=in order to) and for becoming (=because of). (they want to become actors
TO / FOR when they’re older / they never forgave their sister for becoming an actor) «Pour+nom»=For Paul/
«Pour+verbe»=To pass my exam.
This expression is not invariable (unlike “il y a”): There are many people. There is little food. / There exist
THERE + BE /EXIST
many languages spoken by only a few people.
There are two words in English for “depuis”: for (+ an amount of time) and since (+ a starting point)
FOR / SINCE The use of the present perfect is often required (have + past participle) rather than the simple present:
I have been waiting for two hours. I have been waiting since two o’clock.
LIKE + noun (he could speak like any famous star)/ AS + clause (please do as I say) = comparison; AS
AS / LIKE
+ noun = identity (As an impersonator)
Tom's dog /the children's toys / my parents' house / James 's hat / immigrants’ rights
POSSESSION (’S) It is used for distances and durations: a minute's silence / ten days' training / Last week’s decision
Distinguish between a Democratic value (adj + noun) and the Democrats’ values are ... (cas possessif)
Economics, an economic problem, an economical solution/ Politics, the government’s policy, a politician,
BARBARISMS,
a political problem
IMPROPER USES
America # the United States / England # Great Britain # the United Kingdom
Do not separate the verb and its complement or invert the verb and the subject. Keep the structure simple:
SENTENCE
S+V+Ct Direct speech: Why is Texas a battleground state? # Indirect speech: We may wonder why Texas
STRUCTURE
is a battleground state.

4. A brief guide to punctuation in English

There is no space between punctuation and the last letter preceding it in English, e.g. ‘Attention !’ in French would be writ ten
‘Attention!’ in English. This applies to question marks (?), commas (,), colons (:), semi-colons (;), and ellipses (…) as well. Note:
there is a space immediately following a colon and semi-colon.
Commas serve many purposes: they are used to indicate a pause when speaking, to list things, to separate multiple adjectives,
and to craft a complex sentence. A comma cannot simply be placed in the middle of two complete sentences to connect them.
Commas are also employed in numbers (e.g. '1,920' in English, but '1.920' in French - decimal points are likewise reversed) and
dates (e.g. 'July 17, 1993'). The placement of a comma can radically change the meaning of a sentence, for example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5yuL6PcgSgM.
Colons have many uses, but the most important for our purposes are: to introduce a list, to give a definition, and for emphas is.
They are often used when the second of two independent clauses explains the first. They are also used when giving the time, e.g.
’11:45’.
Semi-colons are used to combine two independent but related clauses (e.g. ‘The candidates have arrived; each has their own
talking points.’) in place of a coordinating conjunction (e.g. 'and', 'but', etc.). It can thus be said that the semi-colon lies between
a comma and a period in terms of its power. Semi-colons are also used for the sake of clarity in lists when commas serve a different
purpose than simply separating the listed items (e.g. 'I saw the President, who was seated; the Vice President, who was standing;
and several top generals.').

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Hyphens are used in compound nouns (e.g. 'Italian-American') and compound adjectives (e.g. 'hard-working'), but their usage is
declining. The placement of a hyphen can change the meaning of a sentence, e.g. ‘two-hundred-year-old houses’ refers to houses
(in general) that were built two hundred years ago; ‘two hundred-year-old houses’ refers to two different houses that were built a
century ago; ‘two hundred year-old houses’ refers to two hundred houses that were built a year ago.
Apostrophes are used in contractions to replace the omitted letters as well as in the genitive (possessive). Note that the placement
of the apostrophe can alter its meaning, e.g. 'my friend’s house' (la maison de mon ami) ≠ 'my friends’ house' (la maison de mes
amis).
For quotes, use “ ” or ‘ ’rather than the French-style « ».
A sentence entirely within parentheses should include the period within the parentheses.
For abbreviations there is a difference between American and British English. In the former, ‘doctor’ is written as ‘Dr.’, whereas in
the latter it is written as ‘Dr’. The same applies to ‘Mr.’, ‘Ms.’, etc. Either system is fine, but you should be consistent in your usage.
‘US’ and ‘U.S.’ are used interchangeably, as with ‘UK’ and ‘U.K.’.

5. Plagiarism
A definition:
1. The action or practice of plagiarizing; the wrongful appropriation or purloining, and publication as one’s own,
of the ideas or the expression of the ideas (literary, artistic, musical, mechanical, etc.) of another.
2. A purloined idea, design, passage, or work.
From the Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition, Volume XI. Clarendon Press, Oxford.

Plagiarism (adapted from the University of Sussex website, http://www.sussex.ac.uk/skillshub/?id=386)

As the aforementioned definition explains, plagiarism is the act of presenting another person’s work as if it
were your own. This can even happen accidentally if you have not referenced your work properly. If you have used
a quote or idea from a source without referencing, it could look like you are trying to pretend you came up with the
work yourself.

Self-plagiarism: plagiarism can also happen if you use your old essays when writing a new one, and do not
reference them properly. If you are using your previous work when writing an assignment, you should reference it
with the same level of care you would any other source. Otherwise, it will look like you are trying to present old
work as something new. Academic misconduct can also occur if you ask someone else to write an assignment for
you, or pay for an essay online. This is known as personation. Plagiarism is part of academic misconduct. If
suspected of academic misconduct, students will be referred to the “section disciplinaire du conseil académique”,
and the consequences can be tough. You will find more information here:
https://www.u-paris2.fr/fr/universite/linstitution/organisation/conseils-et-commissions/section-disciplinaire-
competente-legard

How to avoid committing plagiarism (adapted from the University of Sussex website,
http://www.sussex.ac.uk/skillshub/?id=386)
• Leave plenty of time! Never start your assignment at the last minute, you will end up exhausted and displeased
with your work.
• Reference your notes. When you are researching your topic, make sure you take down the full details of your
sources as you go along. If you are quoting verbatim (using a direct quote, word for word) or using diagrams,
make a note of the page numbers or the website as well.
• Use your own words. This will help you make sure you understood what you just read / learnt.
• Reference as you go. Do not forget to include the references as you go along. This will avoid last minute panic
when you realize that you lost some of the references.
• Avoid essay-writing services. Teachers are interested in what you have to say.
• Check your references. Make sure you use quotation marks when you use quotes. Make sure any long quotes
are indented (= starting further from the margin than the rest of the text) and have a citation. Double-check
your reference and your biography.

Going further You can go to the following web page to take a quiz on plagiarism and make sure you understand
what it is: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/skillshub/?id=377

ix
 UNIT 1 — THE MEDIA
I. Facts
Although the news media of the United States is not technically a part of the political system, its role and influence
are undeniable, both in informing the citizenry and serving as a watchdog. As such, it is sometimes referred to as
the fourth estate (a continuation of the notion of the three states of the ancien régime). A more recent concept is
the fifth estate, i.e., non-traditional sources of information: alternative journalism, bloggers, vloggers, and social
media. The rise of the internet, originally and optimistically seen as a way to democratize information, has led to an
increase in the proliferation of misinformation, disinformation, and fake news, most notoriously during the two
political shocks of 2016, namely the election of Donald Trump and the United Kingdom European Union membership
referendum (more commonly known as Brexit).

A brief history of media in the US:

The 20th century was a period of rapid and disruptive technological growth, often leading to new means of
transmitting and consuming information. Despite these revolutions and other advances since, older forms of media
have managed to co-exist rather than be fully eclipsed. Radio, for example, was initially seen as a threat to
newspapers. A notable use of radio was President Franklin Roosevelt’s series of “fireside chats,” in which he spoke
directly to the American people and thus without the filter of the news media. In these broadcasts he connected
with his constituents, informing them on his policies and reassuring them during the uncertain times of the Great
Depression and the Second World War, thus cementing radio as a means of personal and immediate communication.
Following the 1987 repeal of the “fairness doctrine,” radio stations were no longer required to present two sides to
every issue and thus political talk radio was born. Conservative political commentators such as Rush Limbaugh
dominated this field, drastically shifting the traditional “neutral” presentation of the news and politics and opening
the way to hyper-partisan media. On the right, mainstream media (MSM) is often a conservative byword for
biased coverage and is frequently criticized by conservatives as being too liberal (in the American sense of the
word, i.e., left-wing).

With the arrival of television, radio as a format was largely replaced in the spheres of news and entertainment,
forcing it to adopt the music format that still exists to this day. More recently, traditional radio has also been
challenged by satellite and internet radio that target specific demographics, often of a political nature. Many major
television networks started off in radio, including the “Big Three” (ABC, CBS, and NBC) that would dominate US
television for more than half a century until the appearance of viable rival networks and the spread of cable television
in the 1980s and 90s. While television remains the number one news source for most Americans today, the internet
is rapidly catching up with each succeeding generation (roughly 84% of US homes have a computer and 73% have
broadband internet whereas over 96% of homes have a television).

Since the advent of the internet, newspaper readership has steadily declined and as a result many papers have
shuttered. Ironically, Donald Trump, who frequently uses Twitter to attack what he calls the “failing” New York Times
and Washington Post, amongst other publications, has ushered in a sort of renaissance of the newspaper industry,
creating the first positive growth for the sector in years, though the scope is generally limited to the major pap ers.
Likewise, magazine readership has also sharply declined since the arrival of the internet, though, as with
newspapers, some titles have recently seen a surge in sales thanks to the particularly chaotic political climate of the
past four years. Print media, having survived the arrival of broadcast media such as radio and television, is now
in direct competition with digital media, which uses electronic devices for its diffusion and consumption. This has
led many papers and magazines to publish some or all of their content online for free, while others have instituted
paywalls of various types. For those that provide free access to their content, revenue comes from advertising.

Today’s news is constantly accessible, be it via the internet or the 24-hour news cycle, leading to an increase in
competition for resources (viewers and advertisers) and thus a push to increase the speed at which news is presented
as well as its entertainment value. This has had several effects: For example, it has led to a polarization of society
in which various media outlets attempt to speak to a target audience with very specific political ideas, creating echo
chambers and competing narratives for reality (and thus widening the gap between left and right). For example,
in an attempt to make up for what they claim is a left-wing bias media, multiple far-right 24-hour news channels
have come to prominence over the past few years, such as the admittedly “pro-Trump” Newsmax and OANN (One
America News Network), which have both come under criticism and legal troubles for promoting conspiracy theories
regarding Covid-19 and the 2020 presidential election. The drive to attract viewers, combined with the fact that
programming has 24 hours to fill, has led to lower quality content, sensationalism, and infotainment and a
general decline in journalistic standards.

Note: ‘media’ is the plural of the word ‘medium,’ but due to the common usage of the word in the singular, it can
today be treated as either a singular or a plural noun, i.e., ‘the media is’ and ‘the media are’ are both perfectly
acceptable.

Questions:
1. How has the evolution of media aided in the polarization of the US?
2. Is the 24-hour news cycle a good thing?

1
 II. Reading Comprehension

Text 1
“Average audience placement of each news outlet based on party and ideology”, Pew
Research Center, 04/07/20

Please review the graph below, and answer the following questions:

Questions:
1. Are you familiar with any of the media shown in the chart? Do you consume any of it?
2. Does the chart appear balanced?
3. What types of media dominate each side?

Text 2
“Don’t trust the news? You’re certainly not alone”
Bernard Goldberg, The Hill, July 21, 2022

This just in: There’s practically nobody left in the United States who still trusts the news media. And if that’s an
exaggeration, it’s not by much.

A new Gallup poll found that “Americans’ confidence in two facets of the news media — newspapers and television
news — has fallen to all-time low points.”

Only 16 percent of us now say we have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in newspapers, and even fewer
Americans —11 percent — have that kind of confidence in television news. Of the 16 institutions Gallup tracks, only
Congress ranks lower than TV news.

If that doesn’t bother journalists, there’s a good chance that nothing will.

2
When I left CBS News, where I was a correspondent for 28 years, I wrote a book called “Bias,” about liberal bias in
the news. It came out in 2001. Back then, journalists at least tried to hide their biases. Not anymore. On cable TV
news shows, you’d have to be in a coma not to know where the talking heads stand politically — and that’s not only
the “opinion” talking heads. The line separating straight news from opinion used to be a bright one; it’s a
lot fuzzier these days because (and here’s the dirty little secret) bias is good for business.
Back to the poll: When it comes to partisan breakdowns, more Democrats trust the media than do Republicans. No
surprise there. America’s journalists, by and large, are liberal — no one would seriously dispute that — so they tend
to slant the news in a liberal direction, which pleases Democrats more than it does Republicans. But even Democrats
have lost confidence in the news media — only 35 percent of them have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence
in newspapers, according to Gallup, and only 20 percent have confidence in television news.
Rodney Dangerfield got more respect.

But there’s something we too often leave out of the discussion of bias in the news: the bias of the news consumer.
People complain about bias but a lot of them actually want biased news, no matter what they say. What they’re
really against is the other side’s bias. People who watch Fox News typically have no problem with conservative bias,
which they don’t even see as bias — and people who watch the liberal channels such as CNN or MSNBC, or read
liberal newspapers, don’t complain about liberal bias, which they often see as reasonable, moderate, down-the-
middle news.

And there’s even research that concluded that the more partisan the news consumer, the more likely he is to believe
the news he’s getting is biased.

In a 2018 piece, the New York Times reported, “The bias consumers bring with them distorts their rating of news
content, new research shows, and those who are most distrustful of the news media tend to be the most biased
readers. … Not surprisingly, those with more extreme political views tend to provide more biased ratings of news.”
The study by Gallup and the Knight Foundation also found that people identifying with the Republican Party were
more likely to see bias in a story published in the New York Times when they knew the source of the story. But when
they didn’t know the source, they found the news less biased. “Similarly, those identifying with the Democratic Party
who read media perceived as right-leaning, like Fox News, rated it [less biased] when they did not know the source,”
the Times reported.

So, if you’re a liberal, you think just about everything on Fox News is biased; if you’re a conservative, you think just
about everything on CNN, MSNBC and in the New York Times is biased. And if that doesn’t bring you down, you’re
not paying close enough attention.

Here’s the bottom line from Gallup: “Multiple Gallup measures of Americans’ views of the news media show a growing
distrust. Last fall, Gallup found near-record low trust in the media to report the news fully, accurately and fairly, and
few Americans rated newspapers and television reporters as highly ethical in Gallup’s annual honesty and ethics of
professions poll in December. Although trust in the media in the U.S. has been scarce for many years, confidence
ratings for newspapers and TV news have never been as low as they are now. Taken together, these data suggest
that the media has a long way to go to win back the public’s confidence.”

Good luck with that. If history is any guide, journalists won’t care what the public thinks of them. There are more
guys working the overnight shift at 7-Eleven selling cigarettes and beef jerky to insomniacs who have more
introspection than a lot of journalists, who reflexively circle the wagons when they hear the word “bias.”
We all know that a democratic country such as ours needs a free press to survive. Russia may not need the kind of
journalism that garners the confidence of its people. China may not. But we do. And for the long run, it’s not only a
free press that we need to survive. We also need a fair press, news the public trusts. That’s something else, I
suspect, that a lot of elite journalists won’t take seriously.

Questions
1. What is the author’s criticism of consumers of the news?
2. What is the author’s opinion of journalists as a whole?
3. Comment on the underlined sentence.

Text 3
“Fox puts all-caps disclaimer over Trump’s speech as he claims election was ‘rigged’”,
Louise Hall, Independent, 7/12/21

Fox News was spotted running a disclaimer over Donald Trump’s speech to counter his baseless claims of voter fraud
at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) speech over the weekend. During the headlining speech on
Sunday, the former president lashed out at US voting systems and repeated his baseless claims of election fraud.

“We were doing so well until the rigged election came along,” Mr Trump said.

3
False election fraud claims persisted as a running theme across the entire conference. In response to the claims,
Fox News was seen running a disclaimer on screen. “The voting system companies have denied the various
allegations made by President Trump and his counsel regarding the 2020 election,” the graphic read. Panels at the
event included “Detecting Threats to Election Integrity: How to Collect Evidence of Fraud” and “Spare the Fraud,
Spoil the Child: The Future of American Elections.” CPAC attendees voted their biggest priorities as “voter ID and
election integrity”.
Mr Trump has continued to push false claims of voter fraud since he lost the 2020 election, the misinformation
culminating in an attempt to overturn the electoral certification on 6 January. According to CNN’s Oliver Darcy, the
disclaimer message ran for about 40 seconds on the screen while the former president was speaking.

“Fox News is so well aware that the voting fraud allegations are nonsense that they ran a disclaimer during Trump’s
speech so that they can’t get sued for spreading misinformation,” one user said in response. “When Fox News runs
a disclaimer banner, you KNOW the person talking has FLAMING pants!”, another commented. One Twitter
user observed: “Of course, nothing about all of the courts that have rejected dozens of lawsuits that claimed there
was election fraud. That would be asking too much of Fox.” Some users criticised the broadcaster for not giving a
strong enough regarding the claims. “This is not strong enough language from FOX and they know it,” a user posted.
The broadcaster has previously found itself in hot water over its broadcasts in support of the former president’s
allegations that the election was “rigged”. They were forced in December to air a series of packages debunking
baseless claims against Dominion Voting Systems and Smartmatic, both makers of voting machines. Both companies
have filed legal action against the broadcaster seeking millions in damages. Fox News moved to dismiss the lawsuits
which they call “baseless”.

“FOX News Media is proud of our 2020 election coverage, which stands in the highest tradition of American
journalism, and will vigorously defend against this baseless lawsuit in court,” they previously said in a statement.
In another statement the broadcaster called Smartmatic’s lawsuit “meritless” and argued that the First Amendment
protects their “reporting and commenting on competing allegations in a hotly contested and actively litigated
election.” Following around 50 lawsuits filed in several swing states by Mr Trump’s team the Department of Justice
said in December that they had found no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the wake of the election.

Questions:
1. Who has been sued, by whom, and why?
2. Does Fox have a moral or legal obligation to run this disclaimer?
3. Discuss the underlined sentence.

III. Listening Comprehension

Video 1
Ted Koppel Tells Bill O’Reilly He’s Ruined Journalism, 1:30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUMtNM3sDLA, Fox News, March 2016
Questions:
1. What do Bill O’Reilly and Ted Koppel represent?
2. How did Bill O’Reilly change the ‘television landscape’?
3. Should the news be entertaining?

Video 2
What Is Sinclair Broadcast Group?, 3:41
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxtkvG1JnPk, Washington Post, April 2018
Questions:
1. What are the criticisms of Sinclair?
2. What is Sinclair’s purported goal?
3. What has Sinclair branded this campaign?

Video 3
Sinclair’s Soldiers in Trump’s War on Media, 1:38
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo, Deadspin.com, April 2018
Questions:
1. What is Deadspin’s goal in creating this mashup? Is it effective?
2. Should what Sinclair is doing be illegal? Why or why not?
3. Is this a danger for American democracy?

4
IV. Cartoons

Cartoon 1
Adam Zyglis, The Buffalo News,
02/17/17

Cartoon 2
Cox and Forkum,
coxand
forkum.com,
02/15/05

Cartoon 3
Matt Wuerker,
politico.com,
12/01/16

5
V. Grammar
LINK WORDS
Put the following link words into appropriate sentences below: even though, besides, contrary to,
however, despite, instead of, nevertheless, unless, whereas, therefore.

1. The editor wants to embrace the future ______________________ the past.

2. The newspaper has been losing money, ____________________ it has managed to survive by finding new investors.

3. The whistleblower decided to reveal the information _____________ the fact that he risked going to prison.

4. Blogs are becoming increasingly popular ________________ they are mainly based on opinion rather than facts
and research.

5. ____________________________ what many conspiracy theorists believe, the US has, in fact, succeeded in
putting a man on the moon.

6. Texas still applies the death penalty __________________________ many other states have abolished it.

7. Bernie Sanders did not manage to win a majority of the vote in the primary elections, ____________________
he decided to support Hillary Clinton.

8. Donald Trump ran in the 2016 and 2020 elections, ______________________ many consider it unlikely he will
run again in 2024.

9. Trump denounced the media as “fake news,” ____________________________ their criticisms continue.

10. No candidate will be able to get elected _______________________ he or she gets the Latino vote.

VI. Key Terms

(definitions preceded by an asterisk are the most important to retain)

*24-hour news cycle: a constant stream of news in which the idea is often to report first and ask questions later.
Advertising: a form of communication used to promote or sell something.

*Bias /ˈbaɪəs/: inclination or prejudice for or against something or someone, especially in a way considered to be unfair.

Breaking news: an event that has just recently occurred and is being reported to the public for the first time.
Broadcast media: the use of radio and television to transmit information to a wide audience.
Digital media: the use of computers and the internet to transmit information to a wide audience.
Disinformation: incorrect information that is intended to mislead.
*Echo chamber: a system in which one’s beliefs are reinforced and “echoed” by likeminded individuals.
Editorial: an article in a newspaper written by an editor and giving an opinion rather than reported facts.
*Fake news: fabricated news.
*Fifth estate: referring to the growing power of new social media such as blogs on the internet to play a part in
the democratic process.
*Fourth estate: a term used to describe the power of journalism to counterbalance governmental powers and serve
democracy by exposing truth and giving a voice to the people.
*Infotainment: a portmanteau of ‘information’ and ‘entertainment,’ it is often referred to as soft news, where the
goal is to entertain as well as report.
*Leak: secret information that is revealed to the general public.

Libel /ˈlaɪbəl/: written defamation.

Lügenpresse: from the German for ‘lying press,’ a slogan used to discredit the mainstream media and often
associated with the Nazis.
*Mainstream media: traditional forms of media, sometimes used pejoratively.
Media circus: also known as a media frenzy, a pejorative term for when an event gets excessive coverage, turning
it into a spectacle.
6
Misinformation: incorrect information, whether intentional or not.
Net neutrality: the principle that internet service providers should enable equal access to all content and
applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.
Paper of record: a high circulation, high quality newspaper which is considered authoritative, e.g. The New York
Times, El País, The Sydney Morning Herald, Le Monde/Le Figaro.
Paywall: a means of restricting access to web content to subscribers.
Print media: the use of newspapers and magazines to transmit information to a wide audience.
Post truth politics: a culture in which objective facts have less influence than emotions and personal beliefs.
*Pundit: an expert in a particular field that offers their opinion.
Sensationalism: the use of shocking or exciting language and stories, often at the expense of accuracy.
Slander: spoken defamation.
Sound bite: a short audio extract of a speech or interview.
Spin doctor: someone paid to influence the media narrative on a particular subject.
*Spokesperson: someone who speaks on behalf of a person, a company, a group, etc.
*Subscription: a regular service for which you generally pay a fee in advance, e.g., a newspaper.
Talking head: a pundit or journalist who addresses the camera directly and is shown close up.

Trial by media /ˈtraɪəl/: as opposed to trial by jury, the influence of media coverage on a person’s reputation.

*Watchdog: a person or group that monitors institutions in society.

*Whistleblower: a person who exposes illegal or unethical behavior on the part of a person or organization.
Yellow journalism: the use of sensationalism, exaggeration, and sometimes outright lies in order to sell more
papers, famously associated with the lead-up to the Spanish-American War in 1898.

VII. Going further

The Wall Street Journal has created this interactive tool to compare left and right-wing Facebook posts on specific
topics that are currently trending: http://graphics.wsj.com/blue-feed-red-feed/

Films related to the media:

• Absence of Malice, 1981 (a drama about the legal limits of the media)
• All the President’s Men, 1976 (political thriller on the infamous Watergate Scandal)
• Citizen Kane, 1941 (considered by many to be the greatest film ever made, its protagonist was based on media
moguls William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer)
• Good Night and Good Luck, 2005 (a historical drama covering the battle between journalist Edward R. Murrow
and the infamous scaremonger Senator Joseph McCarthy (who gave us the term ‘McCarthyism’))
• I, Tonya, 2017 (a biopic detailing the public fall of Tonya Harding and the media circus around it)
• Network, 1976 (a satirical take on television and the origin of the famous line, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not
going to take this anymore)
• Shattered Glass, 2013 (a biopic detailing the rise and fall of unethical journalist Stephen Glass)
• Talk Radio, 1988 (a drama about the assassination of politically charged radio personality Alan Berg by neo-Nazis)
• The Paper, 1994 (a comedy-drama following a newspaper editor’s attempt to find the truth behind two murders)
• The People vs. Larry Flynt, 1996 (the story of Larry Flint, the infamous pornographer who was involved in several
high-profile legal battles over freedom of speech, eventually going to the Supreme Court)
• The Truman Show, 1998 (the story of a man who is unknowingly the star of a reality television program)
• Wag the Dog, 1997 (a comedy about the use of the media to start a war in order to distract from a presidential
scandal)

Discussion questions:

1. Is objective journalism possible? If so, who decides what is true and what is not? Furthermore, is objective
teaching possible?

2. Is information on the internet as reliable as traditional print newspapers? What are the advantages and
disadvantages of both media?

3. What is the role of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States (1791)? Should free speech be
unlimited? What are examples of limits to free speech in the US and France?

7
 UNIT 2 – POLITICAL PARTIES

I. Facts
1) What are political parties?
Political parties are groups of people that are organized based on their political beliefs and goals. In some cases,
political parties are large powerful organizations that run much of the government.

2) Two Main Parties

In the United States there are two main political parties: The Democrats and the Republicans. While voters can vote
for smaller parties, many voters are either registered as Democrats or Republicans and therefore vote along their
party’s lines. Because these two parties are so powerful, the United States government is often called a "two-party
system," or bipartism.

3) Elections in a Two-Party System

The elections in a two-party system are often held in two phases. The first phase is the primary election. In the
primary election each party elects a candidate to represent their party. The next phase is called the general election.
In the general election, the public votes between the winners of the primary election.

These elections are sort of like playoffs in sports. The primary elections are like the semifinals and the general
elections are like the finals.

4) Democrats
The Democratic Party was founded in 1828. It is generally associated with greater government spending and higher
taxes. Members of the Democratic Party are often referred to as "liberals" or "progressives." The symbol of the
Democratic Party is the donkey.

5) Republicans
The Republican Party was founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists. Republicans generally favor lower government
spending, lower taxes, and political action at the state rather than national level. Members of the Republican Party
are often referred to as "conservatives." The symbol of the Republican Party is the elephant.

6) Other Parties
There are other political parties in the United States known as third parties, but they have not been able to make a
significant impact in the government. Some of these parties include the Libertarian Party, the Green Party, and the
Constitution Party. Political parties that have had power in the past include the Whigs, the Federalists, and the
Democratic-Republicans.

7) Advantages and Disadvantages

There are good and bad things about a two-party system. Two-party systems can lead to a more stable government
and less radical politics. On the negative side, two-party systems give the voters only two choices. Voters start to
think that their vote doesn't count for much, causing them not to participate. It also makes it difficult for people
with new ideas to have an influence in the government.

8
II. Reading comprehension

Text 1
Polarisation and the threat to democracy Sheri Berman, IPS, June 1, 2022
https://www.ips-journal.eu/topics/democracy-and-society/polarisation-and-the-threat-to-democracy-5970/

The leaking of a memo indicating that the United States Supreme Court will likely rule that women do not have a
constitutional right to abortion has inflamed political divides which are deeper and more dangerous than those facing
any other wealthy democracy. As one recent study put it, the US suffers uniquely high ‘pernicious polarization’ —
the division of society into political camps whose defining feature is mutual hatred and fear. Such intense polarisation
is associated with a wide range of negative outcomes, including policy gridlock, democratic erosion, and even
violence.

Since polarisation threatens many European democracies, thinking about the American case may help those trying
to avoid similar developments domestically. To paraphrase Karl Marx, it may be that the country that is more
polarised shows to others the image of their own future.

Perhaps the most obvious cause of damaging polarisation in the US is the translation of the country’s deep economic
and social cleavages into political ones. Economically, over the past generation or so the US has been characterised
by higher income and wealth inequality, allied to lower social mobility, than any other advanced industrial
democracy. The ‘losers’ from these trends — disproportionately low-income, low-education, and non-urban whites
— have been incorporated into the Republican party, while globalised capitalism’s ‘winners’ — highly-educated and
skilled urban dwellers — increasingly vote Democratic.

Socially, cleavages over race have long been the main challenge facing American democracy. But, again, over the
past generation or so these ethnic cleavages have increasingly aligned with political ones, particularly for the
Republican party which receives about 80 per cent of its votes from white citizens. As we know from contemporary
developing countries such as Kenya, Lebanon, and Iraq, as well as many cases from Europe’s past, when ethnic and
political cleavages coincide the results are often deadly. (This trend did diminish somewhat over the past electoral
cycle, with the Republican party picking up the support of more conservative Hispanic and even some black voters.)
Yet here lies another crucial part of the polarisation puzzle. Although treatments of democratic backsliding often
focus on the dangers of unrestrained majoritarianism, the pernicious polarisation that threatens democracy in
America stems not from a tyranny of the majority but rather a tyranny of minorities. The polarising and destructive
influence unrepresentative and even extreme minorities exert on US political parties — and through these parties
on American democracy more generally — relate to important but not innate institutional features of the political
system.

Partisan gerrymandering, for example, has created a growing number of seats in Congress reliably won by one
party. Such safe seats give politicians little incentive to appeal to wavering voters, much less those outside their
party. Indeed, according to a recent report, extreme gerrymandering has contributed to a situation where 83 per
cent of seats ‘lean so Democratic or so Republican … that the only election of consequence is the primary election’.
Primaries are another key contributor to the minoritarian bias of American parties. Only a minority of voters —
neither demographically nor ideologically representative of their own party’s voters or the electorate more generally
— vote in party primaries, giving such devoted partisans a disproportionate influence over who runs for office.
Making matters worse, primaries are often won by candidates who secure only a plurality rather than a majority of
votes cast and ‘low plurality members score about a third more ideologically intense … than majority-backed
members, controlling for the partisan position of members’ districts’.

All of this, of course, is made worse by the role played by money in American politics. For example, in the decade
since the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling — that freedom of speech implied corporations had the same rights
as individuals to finance campaigns — more money has flowed directly to candidates, rather than via an organised
national party, facilitating the election of extremists who would not otherwise have been nominated. ‘Social media’
have probably also contributed, allowing candidates to bypass parties and get their message directly to voters.

The cumulative result of these factors is, as one study concluded, a system where ‘a small minority of Americans
decide the significant majority of our elections’. The primary and electoral system ‘disenfranchises voters, distorts
representation, and fuels extremism –– on both the left and, most acutely (at present), the right’. This probably
explains, another observer notes, ‘the stunning incongruity between Congress’s average 20 percent approval
rating and its more than 90 percent reelection rate’.

Questions:
1) Explain why economic and social matters play an important role in America’s political polarisation.
2) Why can we say that the American electoral system is “an election without a majority”?
3) Comment on the underlined sentence and give your opinion.

9
Text 2
After November Barry Casselman, AMAC, 2 June 2022
https://amac.us/after-november/

It is mostly guesswork to speculate about U.S. politics past November 2022, but it would seem that both major
political parties will face a showdown crisis between their own internal factions as they prepare to contest the 2024
presidential election.

The results of the 2022 national midterm elections, already shaping up to be an epic electoral event, will provide
the impetus for those internal confrontations. If Republicans gain control of both houses of Congress, the struggle
will be about Donald Trump more than ideology — as the battle for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination goes into
full swing. As Michael Barone put it so aptly, the party is Trumpist, but not necessarily Trump’s.

The internal struggle for the Democrats will likely be much more complicated. If the party loses control of Congress,
as now seems quite possible, much of the blame will be placed on President Joe Biden and his so far feckless
administration. If he does not then voluntarily retire (a historically rare event), he would almost certainly be
challenged from both his left and right — much as President Harry Truman was in 1948. (Former Vice President
Henry Wallace challenged Truman on the left, and South Carolina U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond on the right.
Truman defeated Republican Thomas Dewey in spite of this.) Joe Biden, however, has not the energy, charisma or
grassroots appeal of a Harry Truman to overcome serious internal opposition. His current approval ratings, already
down to the mid-to-upper 30s (as are the poll numbers of his vice president, Kamala Harris) would likely mean new
names on the 2024 ticket.

With a successful 2022 midterm providing momentum, and a very large “bench” of successful GOP governors,
senators, and recent former office holders and cabinet members, the Republican Party, barring the unforeseen,
would head for November 2024 as heavy favorites, but first the GOP has to secure a successful mid-term result —
not yet a certainty with five months to go.

The Democratic “bench,” as many have observed, consists mainly of older, more radical figures like Bernie Sanders
and Elizabeth Warren, and a few younger figures such as Pete Buttigieg and Gavin Newsom, but none so far who
seem likely able to replace Joe Biden only two years from now. Any new Democratic figure who wins a governorship
in a GOP wave in 2022 might become a contender.

The GOP presidential wannabes include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Governor and U.N.
Ambassador Nikki Haley, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton, former Vice
President Mike Pence, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, Texas Senator Ted Cruz, and
Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin — and more. But for now, Donald Trump is the presumptive favorite if he decides
to run.

Mr. Trump is currently participating in the 2022 midterm elections by endorsing and campaigning for gubernatorial
and U.S. House and Senate candidates in several states — most of whom have been Trump supporters in the past.
He has taken particular aim at his past critics in the party. So far, most of his endorsees have won, but some of his
targets have won despite his opposition to them. The net effect of this strategy will be clearer in November.

Economic conditions and domestic crises will, as they almost always are, be critical in the 2024 election cycle, and
will enable voters to make their choices from the likely large number of candidates. Candidates with experience and
bold ideas on the critical issues might have some advantage if there are very many candidates in the field, as there
were in both parties in 2016.

Public attitudes and any new voter priorities resulting from the recent pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the U.S. border
crisis, and a potential summer economic recession should not be ignored nor glossed over.

The 2024 presidential race is going to begin early, and it is likely to be an epic, noisy, and transformative contest.

Questions:
1) What are the projections for the Democratic party in the coming elections? Explain.
2) What are the projections for the Republican party in the coming elections? Explain.
3) Comment on the underlined sentence and give your opinion.

10
Text 3
George Washington once said parties were the problem – he was right
Gavin Esler, The National, June 1, 2022
https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/2022/06/01/george-washington-once-said-parties-were-the-
problem-he-was-right/

I have a confession. I like politicians. Not all politicians, obviously. But I do like quite a number of them, despite
evidence to the contrary. Voters in the US, UK and other countries across the world often tell opinion pollsters that
politicians are selfish and “only in it for themselves". I think many, perhaps most, politicians are better than this,
but even so, they are often likely to act with their political tribe rather than with their conscience.

For years I have been on friendly terms with politicians in Britain, Ireland, the US and elsewhere. The good ones try
to solve problems, rather than create them. Most tend to be reasonable, hard-working and talented.

One guide to their characters, as I discovered early, is to ask how they got into politics in the first place. In Northern
Ireland during the Troubles, the good ones usually began with community action, although since the communities
were very divided and violence an everyday reality, politics was still likely to be at times vicious. In England, one
politician, whom I like, began by running a university sports club. He was advised that the club was so popular he
could become president of the student’s union. That led him into a political party, although more recently he lost his
seat in Parliament. When I saw him recently, he looked 10 years younger than when he was an MP – and undeniably
happier.

Another politician told me recently that he ran a student newspaper and was then drawn into the debates on Scottish
independence. He is now an MP. A third is a very successful businessman who keeps trying to get a parliamentary
seat, although he knows that becoming a British MP will mean taking a big pay cut. I disagree with this friend on
many political issues but I think he will be an asset to Parliament eventually.

And then a few days ago, I spent time with a well-known British politician talking about the dire state of politics in
the country now. We discussed Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s wrecking of standards in public life through his lying
and deceit over drunken parties in Downing Street and other matters. But the bits of our conversation that stay with
me are not political at all. They are personal. This politician spoke of family loss, grief, and caring for others.

Now, whether I agree with any of these politicians on any of their policies is irrelevant here. I recognise decent
human beings from four different parties whose party policies are completely at odds with one another. They all
want to do "the right thing" even if they disagree on what the "right thing" might be.

Why do I believe any of this is worth thinking about? Because there is a sense of malaise and even disgust about so
much in party politics and democracy around the globe right now.

America is going through its traditional convulsions about why anyone can buy weapons whose only real use is in
warfare and then go on to murder school children. Self-serving US politicians know that their failure to change gun
laws will result in more deaths in more school shootings, yet the gun lobby wins every time. In Britain, Conservative
MPs know that Mr Johnson is a disaster for the country, yet many remain complicit in supporting him. Why? Because
they fear that a change of leader now will lead to a general election in which they will lose their seats in Parliament.
All across the world you can find examples of politicians putting their own and their party’s narrow interests before
the interests of their people or their country. I am not seeking to defend any of this. But what I am seeking to do is
to remind myself that most politicians I know do work hard and do try to act decently. Most are not stupid. But
watching on both sides of the Atlantic right now politicians defending the indefensible, the bizarre gun laws in the
world’s most important democracy, and the deceitful and deviant behaviour associated with the supposed "mother
of parliaments" in Westminster, it is surely long past time to recognise that party loyalty and sectional interest are
the problem.

In his famous farewell address to the American people in 1796, former president George Washington noted that
political parties carry within themselves great dangers because they become factions pursuing their own sectional
interests at the expense of society as a whole. That is the modern democratic paradox. Only through joining a
political party can talented people in a democracy manage to get into government. But political parties inevitably
tend towards factions and special interests. The gun lobby faction dominates in America. It is literally killing people.
The Boris Johnson fan club currently dominates in Britain. Its lies and deceit have undermined key principles and
norms of behaviour in our democracy.

I am naive, perhaps, in believing from those politicians that I know, that they are capable of independent thought
and of behaviour beyond narrow factional interest. Now would be a good time for them to show it.

Questions:
1) What does the author think about politicians in general?
2) How does he compare current American and British politics?
3) Comment on the underlined sentence and give your opinion.

11
III. Listening comprehension

Video 1
Democrat lawmaker argues party has abandoned rural
America, Fox News, 10 May 2022
https://video.foxnews.com/v/6305846620112

A. Pre-listening comprehension
1) Look at the book title and guess what the content could be about.
2) Who do you think Chloe Maxmin could be?
3) Do you agree with the subtitle “how to rebuild rural politics and why
our future depends on it”.

B. Listening comprehension
1) Give details about who the interviewee is.
2) What does 2010 symbolize?
3) How does the interviewee explain that amplification with the current mid-
term elections?

Video 2
“The Rise of Political Polarization”, University of California Television, 7 oct. 2020
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQRjnM9hQDk

☞ Watch from the beginning to 4.08 min

America is more politically polarized now than at almost any other time in our history. Dean Henry E. Brady of UC Berkeley's
Goldman School of Public Policy is studying that polarization and what, if anything, can be done to reverse it.

1) What does polarization mean to you?

2) What were the elements that led to polarization after the New Deal in the 1930s and how easily could they be
overcome at that time?
3) What made polarization deeper in the 1970s and 80s? Explain.
4) Why have the US come to extreme polarization today? Explain.
5) What could be the solution to the current issue?
6) Do you agree with part or all the points of that analysis? Explain.
7) Is politics polarized in your country?

IV. Cartoons
Document 1 “Midterms race” by Joe Heller, May 9, 2022
https://www.cagle.com/joe-heller/2022/05/midterms-race

12
Document 2 “Joe Biden’s future”, Bramhallzz NYDP, May 30, 2022
https://www.tribpub.com/gdpr/nydailynews.com/

Document 3 “Don’t look back”, Lisa for Wahington Post Writers Group, Jan 6, 2022
https://www.theday.com/article/20220106/OP06/220109660

V. Grammar
The articles: a, an, the, ∅

1) ______ president of ______ United States is Joe Biden.

2) ______ president Biden explained ______ last week that he was ready to step down.
3) As ______ honest person, the president told ______ truth.
4) A shooting took place in ______ university yesterday.
5) ______ USA is one of ______ biggest countries in ______ world.
6) ______ Mexico will probably refuse to build ______ wall.
7) ______ tea I drank yesterday was excellent.
8) As ______ journalist, I think ______ freedom of ______ press doesn’t exist anymore.
9) Mister Biden met ______ Queen Elizabeth a few months ago.
10) I heard him say that ______ French love ______ wine just like ______ Americans like ______ guns.

13
VI. What you need to know
• legislation - to legislate on - to legalize/to ban against
• a political party/force/movement/group • to deal with / to tackle an issue
• a politician - a policy - politics - a politic* • to implement a strategy — the implementation of
• an election (primary/midterm/general elections) a strategy/policy
- to elect - a voter - to vote for a candidate • a red state / a blue state
• a meeting - a caucus - a committee • statewide/nationwide
• to endorse a candidate • right-wing / left-wing
• to run for office - to be in office • moderate - radical - purist - progressive -
• incumbent - incumbency conservative (social conservatism) - liberal
• to win/lose an election/seats (social liberalism ≠ economic/classical liberalism)
• political leaning/ideology/stance/platform - main - libertarian
ideas - core principles • “big” government - social welfare - state
• to embrace an ideology/a strategy intervention
• to endorse/to defend/to put forward/to put forth • limited government - open-market economy -
an idea free enterprise
• to stand on (an issue) — to be in favor/to be • raise/cut taxes (raise ≠ rise)

- Donkey: The now-famous Democratic donkey was first associated with Democrat Andrew Jackson's 1828
presidential campaign. His opponents called him a jackass (a donkey), and Jackson decided to use the image of the
strong-willed animal on his campaign posters.
- Election day: is the day set by law for the general elections of federal public officials. It is statutorily set on "the
Tuesday next after the first Monday in the month of November" or "the first Tuesday after November 1". The earliest
possible date is November 2, and the latest possible date is November 8.
- Electoral college: a body of electors chosen by the voters in each state to elect the president and vice president
of the U.S.
- Elephant: In a cartoon that appeared in Harper's Weekly in 1874, Thomas Nast drew a donkey clothed in lion's
skin, scaring away all the animals at the zoo. One of those animals, the elephant, was labeled “The Republican
Vote.” That's all it took for the elephant to become associated with the Republican Party.
-General election: the public votes between the winners of the primary election
-Government Shutdown: A government shutdown happens when nonessential government offices can no longer
remain open due to lack of funding. The lack of funding usually occurs when there is a delay in the approval of the
federal budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The shutdown remains in effect until parties can reach a compromise
and a budget bill passes. During a government shutdown, many federally run operations will halt.
- The GOP: short for Grand Old Party, is a nickname for the Republican Party of the United States.
- Mid-term elections: Midterm elections in the United States are the general elections held in November of even-
numbered years not divisible by four, and thus near the midpoint of a president's four-year term of office. Federal
offices that are up for election during the midterms are members of the United States Congress, including all 435
seats in the United States House of Representatives, and the full terms for 33 or 34 of the 100 seats in the United
States Senate.
- PACs and Super PACs: PACs are funded by individual donations and other PACs, and tend to focus on specific
issues or interests. SuperPACs are funded by corporate donations, and tend to parallel specific candidates or
campaigns. They're regulated in slightly different ways; for example, donations to PACs are capped and donations
to SuperPACs are not. Also, PACs can donate directly to campaigns and SuperPACs cannot.
- Political party: a group of persons organized to acquire and exercise political power. Political parties originated
in their modern form in Europe and the United States in the 19th century, along with the electoral and parliamentary
systems, whose development reflects the evolution of parties. The term party has since come to be applied to all
organized groups seeking political power, whether by democratic elections or by revolution. (Britannica.com)
-Presidential elections: occur every 4 years, with registered voters casting their ballots on Election Day, which,
since 1845 has been the first Tuesday after November 1.
- Primary election: Candidates are elected for federal, state, and local positions during elections. State voters
elect governors and legislators through the primary process, and also vote for many local officials from city councilors
to county commissioners. Candidates who win primaries will run against each other in the general election for public
office.
-Third party: Also called a minor party, a third party is a US political party that distinguishes itself from the two
major parties (the Republican Party and the Democratic Party). Third parties rarely win elections in the United
States, but frequently influence national politics by drawing attention to issues often neglected by the major parties.
- Two-party system: describes an arrangement in which all or nearly all elected officials belong to one of the only
two major parties (Democrats and Republicans), and third parties rarely win any seats in the legislature. In such
arrangements, two-party systems are thought to result from various factors like winner takes all election rules.

14
 UNIT 3 – THE 3 BRANCHES OF GOVERNMENT
I. Facts
When the United States officially became an independent country in 1783 (following the American Revolution, which
severed the fledgling country from Great Britain), the main objective of its first leaders, the Founding Fathers, was
to create a political system that would allow their new country to always remain a democracy. This wish was both
logical and bold: it was logical because one of the main reasons why they had wanted to become independent in the
first place was that they no longer wanted to live under the yoke of the King of England and his dictatorial methods.
It was bold because they had to create something that did not exist at the time: a true democracy where the people
would be sovereign.

In order to solve this riddle, they adopted the Constitution of 1787 - still in use today - and applied it to create a
political system based on two main ideas: the separation of powers and checks and balances. These two founding
principles were intended to guarantee the democratic nature of the American political system and to make sure that
the United States could never be turned into a dictatorship.

The separation of powers is simply the idea that in order for a country to be a true democracy, the three powers
(executive, legislative, and judicial) cannot be given to the same person or institution; Instead, they must be
separate and power must be shared in order not to be confiscated. The following picture shows how this system (the
three branches of government) works.

The legislative power was given to Congress

(the House of Representatives and the
Senate), the executive power was given to
the President, and the judicial power to the
Supreme Court of the United States. Each
power was defined according to its role in the
law-making process: Congress is the
legislative power because it has to legislate
(create and adopt laws), the President is in
charge of executing the laws adopted by
Congress, and the judiciary is there to both
punish those who violate federal law and
make sure that the laws adopted by Congress
are constitutional.

But dividing power is not enough to ensure the

survival of a democratic system; each power
has to be given the means necessary to
defend itself against potential encroachments
by the other two. Otherwise, what would
prevent the President from trying to seize the
powers of Congress and/or the Judiciary? This
is what checks and balances are all about.
It is basically a system of mutual surveillance
that allows each branch of power to control
the other two and makes sure that no one branch becomes too powerful. For instance, the President has control
over Congress thanks to his veto power and over the Judiciary through his right to nominate federal judges (including
justices of the Supreme Court). The Judiciary can declare any law adopted by Congress or any decision made by the
President to be unconstitutional. As for Congress, it has the capacity to impeach any member of the federal
government up to and including the President. As said by one of the most famous Founding Fathers, James Madison,
“ambition must be made to counteract ambition.”

This system, designed in 1787, is still used today, more than 230 years later, which means that the American
Constitution is often considered to be the oldest still in use today. Accordingly, its main objective has become a
reality: from its independence in 1783 to today, the US has always remained a democracy. Although often criticized
and described as “dysfunctional,” the three branches of government remain the basis of this democratic system.

Questions:
A. Which branch of the U.S. government can propose bills?
B. Which branch of the U.S. government can declare executive actions and/or laws unconstitutional?
C. Which branch of government is the President part of?

15
 II. Reading Comprehension

Text 1
“US presidents have too much power. Restore checks and balances”
Larry R. Bradley, The Kansas City Star, July 2, 2020

Even in these divided times, most Americans can agree that our federal government isn’t working very well. During
my 20 years as an Army infantry officer and 14 years in sales management, I focused on making systems more
efficient and effective. Currently, as an advocate for electoral and governmental reforms, I still pursue these goals.
Instead of just complaining about bad outcomes from our government, we should adopt reforms to improve our
electoral process and restore the checks and balances in our Constitution.
For the past decade, I’ve advocated for an election reform called ranked choice voting. Under this proposal, voters
rank candidates in order of choice instead of just picking one. This simple change would result in less partisanship
by incentivizing candidates to appeal to more of the electorate.
But government reforms shouldn’t be limited to just the voting process. They must also address what happens after
candidates are in office — in particular, how our constitutional checks and balances have eroded. President Donald
Trump’s controversial deployment of troops in Washington, D.C., to disperse protesters last month renewed our
focus on presidential emergency powers and the proper use of our fighting forces.
But this presidential overreach with impunity has taken place under presidents of both parties. And while
presidents’ powers have expanded, it’s largely because Congress has been all too willing to abdicate
their own constitutional responsibilities for national security.
We are supposed to have three coequal branches of government. The president is the head of the executive branch,
meaning he or she executes policy determined by the legislative branch, such as the power of the purse and the
power to declare war. Congress is comprised of the people’s directly-elected representatives. In particular, every
seat in the House of Representatives is up for election every two years.
Yet for too long, Congress has been unable or unwilling to serve as the people’s representatives on war powers
issues. Members are too comfortable ignoring examples of executive overreach when a president from their party is
in office, and too willing to pass the buck on tough votes involving our nation’s security. As a result, it’s nearly
impossible for the public to have a real say in debates that have huge implications for military families.
Consider how presidents of both parties have increasingly relied on declarations of national emergency to seize new
powers. While some are appropriate examples of the executive branch acting in the national interest, others are
motivated by more narrow and partisan concerns.
Witness Trump’s dishonest declaration that allowed him to illegally raid congressionally-approved funds for military
construction to help build sections of his border wall. This is a violation of the separation of powers, and one that
should concern all of us, regardless of our views on the wall itself. (Although I think former professional wrestler
and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura exposed the folly best when he noted that a wall built to keep people out can
also be used to keep people in.)
Thankfully, there is a growing bipartisan movement both inside and outside Congress to restore the proper and
accountable role of our lawmakers on matters of war, peace and national emergencies. Our Kansas and Missouri
congressional delegations should support these efforts, recognizing that if they are truly to represent the interests
of the people, they shouldn’t allow this or any president to behave as a king.
It’s time we adopted reforms to make our government more effective — when all of us vote and when our elected
representatives are sworn to uphold the checks and balances outlined in the Constitution.
Questions
1) According to the author, what problems is the American political system currently facing?
2) What solutions is he proposing to solve these problems?
3) Comment upon the underlined sentence.

Text 2
‘‘Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low”
Jeffrey M. Jones, Gallup, July 5, 2022

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Americans are less confident in major U.S. institutions than they were a year ago, with
significant declines for 11 of the 16 institutions tested and no improvements for any. The largest declines in
confidence are 11 percentage points for the Supreme Court -- as reported in late June before the court issued
controversial rulings on gun laws and abortion -- and 15 points for the presidency, matching the 15-point drop
in President Joe Biden's job approval rating since the last confidence survey in June 2021.
Gallup first measured confidence in institutions in 1973 and has done so annually since 1993. This year's survey
was conducted June 1-20.

16
Confidence currently ranges from a high of 68% for small business to a low of 7% for Congress. The military is the
only institution besides small business for which a majority of Americans express confidence (64%). Confidence in
the police, at 45%, has fallen below the majority level for only the second time, with the other instance occurring in
2020 in the weeks after the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. This year's poll marks new
lows in confidence for all three branches of the federal government -- the Supreme Court (25%), the presidency
(23%) and Congress. Five other institutions are at their lowest points in at least three decades of measurement,
including the church or organized religion (31%), newspapers (16%), the criminal justice system (14%), big
business (14%) and the police. Confidence in large technology companies is also at a low point (26%) but has only
been measured the past three years.
Record-Low Confidence Across All Institutions
Gallup summarizes Americans' overall confidence in institutions by taking an average of the ratings of the 14
institutions it measures consistently each year -- all but small business and large technology companies. This year's
27% average of U.S. adults expressing "a great deal" or "quite a lot" of confidence in those 14 institutions is three
points below the prior low from 2014.
The confidence average is also down nine points from 2020, when Americans rallied around some of the institutions
most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, expressing greater confidence in the medical system, public schools and
organized religion.
Average confidence was at least 40% from 1979 to 1990 and from 1998 to 2004. Those latter years spanned the
dot-com economic boom and the rally in support of government leaders after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Since 2004,
a number of factors have conspired to keep confidence down, including the Iraq War, the Great Recession and
financial crisis, increasing partisan gridlock in Washington, a resurgence of populism, the COVID-19 pandemic, and
inflation rates not seen for four decades.
All Party Groups Less Confident in Institutions
All partisan groups are generally less confident in the 16 U.S. institutions than they were a year ago, with average
declines of four points among Republicans, five points among Democrats and six points among independents. All
three party groups are much less confident in the presidency than they were a year ago, showing declines of at least
10 points. Beyond that, the major changes among party groups tend to be isolated to one or two groups.
• Democrats and independents show more than a double-digit loss of confidence in the Supreme Court, with no
meaningful change among Republicans.
• Republicans have lost more confidence in banks than the other party groups have. Republicans also show
double digit declines in confidence in the military and the police.
• Independents are significantly less confident in organized religion than a year ago, while there has been a
smaller drop among Republicans and no real change among Democrats.
Small business and the military are the two institutions rated most positively by each of the three party groups,
while Congress is essentially tied for the lowest among all three. Republicans rate the presidency, newspapers and
television news similarly low to Congress. Television news ties Congress as the lowest among independents, while
the Supreme Court and big business are rated about as poorly as Congress is among Democrats.
Republicans and Democrats differ most in the confidence they have in the presidency (49 points), the police (39
points), newspapers (30 points) and public schools (30 points). The groups differ less, but still by significant margins,
in their confidence in the Supreme Court, organized labor, organized religion, the medical system, television news
and large technology companies.
Democrats are more confident than Republicans in most of these institutions; the exceptions are the
police, the Supreme Court and organized religion.
Americans' confidence in institutions has been lacking for most of the past 15 years, but their trust in key institutions
has hit a new low this year. Most of the institutions Gallup tracks are at historic lows, and average confidence across
all institutions is now four points lower than the prior low.
Notably, confidence in the major institutions of the federal government is at a low point, at a time when the president
and Congress are struggling to address high inflation, record gas prices, increased crime and gun violence, continued
illegal immigration, and significant foreign policy challenges from Russia and China. Confidence in the Supreme
Court had already dropped even before it overturned Roe v. Wade, though that ruling was expected after a draft
opinion was leaked in May.
The confidence crisis extends beyond political institutions at a time when a near record-low 13% of Americans
are satisfied with the way things are going in the U.S. Confidence in institutions is unlikely to improve until the
economy gets better -- but it is unclear if confidence will ever get back to the levels Gallup measured in decades
past, even with an improved economy.

Questions:
1) Which institutions are at their lowest approval rating? Which have positive views in the eyes of a majority
of Americans?
2) What major drops in confidence have been recorded amongst Republicans? Democrats? Independents?
3) Comment on the underlined sentence.

17
Text 3
“Biden’s Business Order Shows How He’s Using Executive Power to Shape Economy”
adapted from an article by A. Restuccia and J. M. Schlesinger, The Wall Street Journal, July 9, 2021

President Biden’s sweeping order Friday seeking to spur competition and curb the power of big business highlights
his willingness to use the presidential pen to rewrite economic policy, sidestepping a divided Congress unlikely to
enact his most ambitious proposals. In his first six months in office, Mr. Biden has been more aggressive than recent
predecessors in turning to executive orders and actions as he seeks to overhaul Washington’s approach to everything
from climate change to racial equity. The Friday action was unusually broad, even by recent standards, in directing
at one time more than a dozen agencies to explore 72 actions touching an array of issues, including expanding labor
rights, lowering prescription drug prices, restricting airline fees, and giving bank customers more flexibility to change
accounts.
The order is the culmination of a steady trend over the past two decades of presidents from both parties turning to
executive authority as gridlock on Capitol Hill has blocked them from legislating core parts of their agenda. “We’ve
seen during the last four presidencies, going back to the second Bush administration, an uptick in the number of
executive orders, especially in the early parts of the administrations,” said Dan Bosch, director of regulatory policy
for American Action Forum, a right-leaning Washington think tank. “It’s a recognition by presidents that they need
to act on their own to get things moving in the direction they want.”
Democrats have made competition policy and antitrust enforcement a key part of their agenda, arguing that the
federal government hasn’t done enough to preserve healthy, competitive markets. Republicans have agreed in some
circumstances, particularly in the tech sector, but they say the Biden administration’s moves risk making the U.S.
economy less productive. Democrats have narrow majorities in Congress, meaning most bills require the approval
of Republicans to pass.
Mr. Biden’s directives won’t take effect right away because he is urging federal agencies to issue rules or make other
policy changes, which can take months. If they are implemented, there are other limitations: Executive orders can
be overturned by future presidents and regulations can be unwound over time. Legislation enacted by Congress is
much more difficult to undo. “Executive orders can be initiated with the stroke of a pen, but they can also be
overturned just as easily,” said Susan Dudley, a senior White House regulatory official during the George W. Bush
administration.
President Biden’s sweeping order Friday seeking to spur competition and curb the power of big business highlights
his willingness to use the presidential pen to rewrite economic policy, sidestepping a divided Congress unlikely to
enact his most ambitious proposals. In his first six months in office, Mr. Biden has been more aggressive than recent
predecessors in turning to executive orders and actions as he seeks to overhaul Washington’s approach to everything
from climate change to racial equity.
The Friday action was unusually broad, even by recent standards, in directing at one time more than a dozen
agencies to explore 72 actions touching an array of issues, including expanding labor rights, lowering prescription
drug prices, restricting airline fees, and giving bank customers more flexibility to change accounts. The order is the
culmination of a steady trend over the past two decades of presidents from both parties turning to executive
authority as gridlock on Capitol Hill has blocked them from legislating core parts of their agenda. “We’ve seen during
the last four presidencies, going back to the second Bush administration, an uptick in the number of executive
orders, especially in the early parts of the administrations,” said Dan Bosch, director of regulatory policy for American
Action Forum, a right-leaning Washington think tank. “It’s a recognition by presidents that they need to act on their
own to get things moving in the direction they want.”
Democrats have made competition policy and antitrust enforcement a key part of their agenda, arguing that the
federal government hasn’t done enough to preserve healthy, competitive markets. Republicans have agreed in some
circumstances, particularly in the tech sector, but they say the Biden administration’s moves risk making the U.S.
economy less productive. Democrats have narrow majorities in Congress, meaning most bills require the approval
of Republicans to pass.
Mr. Biden’s directives won’t take effect right away because he is urging federal agencies to issue rules or make other
policy changes, which can take months. If they are implemented, there are other limitations: Executive orders can
be overturned by future presidents and regulations can be unwound over time. Legislation enacted by Congress is
much more difficult to undo. “Executive orders can be initiated with the stroke of a pen, but they can also be
overturned just as easily,” said Susan Dudley, a senior White House regulatory official during the George W. Bush
administration. That can add volatility to economic policy-making. “That makes it very difficult for businesses to
plan, if agencies are just going to be reversing decisions every four or eight years,” said Mr. Bosch. “It’s not a steady
course of policy.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Friday she wouldn’t rule out the possibility of legislative discussions with
Congress in the future, but she said Mr. Biden wanted to take action that would quickly have an impact. Many of the
policies ultimately implemented in response to the order will likely face legal challenges from affected businesses.
Those cases will be heard in a court system that was filled over the past four years by the Trump administration
with judges known for skepticism about aggressive regulatory action. Regulatory scholars said Mr. Biden’s order was
unusual in directing agencies like the FTC and FCC, which are run by bipartisan panels, to take specific action. “That
could fundamentally transform those agencies, trying to align them with White House sweeping rule making,” said

18
Adam J. White, a regulatory expert at George Mason University’s law school. “That’s going to attract a lot of attention
politically and also in litigation. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.”
Mr. Biden and his aides have often compared the ambition of his economic program to the transformative agendas
of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal and Lyndon B. Johnson’s 1960s Great Society. But those two presidents
enjoyed big Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress willing to enact their proposals. The president is
seeking congressional approval for a multi-trillion-dollar economic agenda. While the infrastructure element of his
proposal has bipartisan support, a second package focused on education, child care and climate change is unlikely
to win GOP buy-in. Democrats are planning to move that legislation through Congress using a budgetary maneuver
that allows the bill to proceed on a simple-majority vote, instead of the minimum 60 votes required to advance most
measures.
President Barack Obama boasted of his “pen and phone” strategy to promulgate rules on his own when Congress
blocked some of his major initiatives. Some of those, such as regulations aimed at curbing greenhouse gasses, were
later stopped by courts. In the last year of his administration, Mr. Obama issued his own competition policy executive
order similar to the one Mr. Biden signed Friday. Some of the rules that resulted from that directive were quashed
shortly after Mr. Trump took office. Mr. Biden signed 20 executive orders in his first three days in office and a total
of 40 in his first 100 days—more than Presidents Trump, Obama and Bush.
Questions
1. In what ways is Biden using executive orders and to what end?
2. What are the advantages and disadvantages of Biden’s use of executive orders?
3. Summarize the text in 50-70 words.

III. Listening Comprehension

How is power divided in the United States government?

TED-ED by Belinda Stutzman - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuFR5XBYLfU

Questions
1) Which two groups of elected officials make up the Legislative branch, and what is their primary function?
2) What are some of the functions of the Executive branch?
3) How many justices are there on the Supreme Court? For how long are they appointed?

IV. Cartoons
Question: Look at and analyze the following cartoons. What is the message that you believe the artist
is trying to convey?

Cartoon 1
“Checks, Balances
and the VP”, Mike
Keefe, intoon.com,
06/27/07

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Cartoon 2
“Current state of the 3 branches
of Government”, Gary Varvel, The
Indianapolis Star, 08/21/13

V. Grammar
PRESENT TENSES

Exercise 1
Complete the sentences using appropriately the present simple or the present BE+ing.

a. Presidential elections _______________ (occur) every four years, that is why the next one _______________
(take place) this year in November.
b. The Republican candidate always _______________ (win) in most Southern states.
c. Bad news for the Democrats, they _______________ (lose) ground in a lot of constituencies!
d. I _______________ (not agree) with his point of view on the legalization of marijuana.
e. The issue of same-sex marriage _______________ (become) a source of division within the Republican Party.
f. Each party _______________ (currently / blame) the other for the failure of Congress.
g. Libertarians _______________ (uphold) the freedom of the individual as the core principle of their ideology
while the Tea Party's platform _______________ (focus) more so on the implementation of strong tax cuts.

Exercise 2
Translate the following sentences into English.

a. Bien que le Parti républicain et le Parti démocrate dominent la scène politique américaine, il existe d'autres
mouvements idéologiques qui mettent en avant des positions alternatives et déterminent le résultat d’élections
en influençant l'opinion publique.
b. Allume la télévision, c'est le dernier discours de son mandat ! Il annonce qu'il ne se représente pas.
c. Le pays traverse une crise économique sans précédent et cela explique pourquoi le président adapte certaines
mesures de son programme à la situation.
d. Aux États-Unis, le Congrès légifère actuellement sur une réforme du système de sécurité sociale.
e. Ils plaident contre toute forme d’interventionnisme de l'état fédéral dans l'économie du pays, dans l'éducation
et dans la santé ainsi que contre la mise en place d'une loi visant à contrôler l'achat et l'utilisation d'armes à
feu. Et toi, tu es d'accord avec eux !

VI. Key Terms

Bicameral: A legislative body (a Congress or a Parliament) consisting of two chambers.

Bill: Law proposal made by either a member of Congress or by the executive branch.
Checks and balances: The idea that in order for the country to remain a democracy, each of the three branches
needs to be given the means to control the other two and make sure that nobody becomes too powerful.
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Congress: The legislative branch, responsible with adopting the laws and overseeing the work of the executive
branch, made of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives.
House of Representatives: The lower house of Congress, made up of 435 representatives, the number of
representatives of each state depends on the population of the state (the most populated state, California, has 53
representatives whereas Wyoming only has 1).
Justices: Used exclusively to refer to the judges of the United States Supreme Court.
Legislative: Branch of government that is responsible for passing laws and controlling the executive branch.
President: Holds the executive power, elected every four years (no more than two terms per president) by the
Electoral College after the American people vote in each state.
Senate: The upper house of Congress, made of a hundred senators (2 per state) elected for six years. 1/3 of the
Senate is renewed every two years.
Representative/Congressperson: A member of the House of Representatives.
Senator: A member of the Senate.
Separation of powers: The idea that the three powers of the government (executive, legislative, judiciary) need
to be given to three different institutions so that nobody can become so powerful as to threaten the democratic
nature of the system.
Supreme Court: Highest court in the country, made of 9 justices who are nominated for life, responsible with
interpreting the laws and the Constitution.
Veto: allows the President to refuse to sign a law if he disagrees with it politically and/or constitutionally. The law
can still be adopted but it then needs to receive the support of 2/3 of each house of Congress.

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 UNIT 4 — RELIGION
I. Facts
Despite the Founding Fathers’ intent for the US to be a secular country, religion, specifically Christianity (which
roughly 70% of the population identifies with), plays a very prominent role in society and is at the center of the
culture wars that divide the nation. Although Christianity is often associated with the Right, there are significant
numbers of Christians who identify with the Democratic Party. Catholics, for example, are roughly evenly split on
party affiliation, their traditional tendency to vote Democrat having declined over the years, largely due to that
party’s stance on abortion. That said, the Republican base is solidly Christian and the party relies on the powerful
Christian Right voting bloc for its electoral victories. Perhaps surprisingly, this group has coalesced around Donald
Trump as their champion and largely continues to support him, even after his election loss and the attack on the
Capitol earlier this year.

Although the Constitution clearly states in the First Amendment that Congress “shall make no law respecting an
establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” conflicts continue between various religious
groups and the irreligious. The US thus has a clear, constitutionally-mandated separation between church and state,
and yet it is heavily influenced by Christianity, despite its basis in Enlightenment thought. Examples of this seeming
contradiction include the existence of blue laws; the phrase “Under God” (added to the Pledge of Allegiance in
1954); the official motto of the US since 1956, “In God We Trust”; the fact that many politicians are sworn into
office on a Bible; the fact that today the President takes the oath of office by concluding “so help me God”; and the
fact that Presidents frequently invoke a deity (e.g. “God bless America”). Every President of the United States has,
at least ostensibly, been a Christian, with only two Catholics among them (Kennedy and Biden), the rest having
been Protestant. (Note: 'Catholic' and 'Christian' are not interchangeable terms as not all Christians are Catholic,
e.g., Protestants and Eastern Orthodox are not Catholic but are Christian.)

Although the earliest settlers from England arrived to make a profit, many that followed were seeking religious
freedom, notably the Puritans. Given that the US began as various English colonies, it is unsurprising that it has
always maintained a Protestant majority. Throughout American history, the population has experienced a series of
“Great Awakenings,” revivals and revitalizations of the Protestant faith which have shaped the culture and politics
of the country. The most recent such event took place in the late 20th century, creating the aforementioned Christian
Right voting bloc that influences elections nationwide. Evangelical Protestantism has taken on many extreme forms
such as the prosperity gospel, the mixing of religion and nationalism, and creationism. Such is the power of this
strain of Christianity that candidates in the 2016 Republican primary refused to answer the question of evolution
directly for fear of alienating their base. Due to the changing religious landscape of the country (the rise of
secularism and atheism and the arrival of other faiths), many evangelicals feel under attack, despite the power that
they still hold. This movement achieved its greatest victory and longtime goal in 2022 when the Supreme Court
overturned Roe v. Wade and its federal protection for abortions. Abortion has been one of the focal points of the
culture wars in the United States since 1973, motivating voters in both camps. While Christians live in every part of
the country, they are most concentrated in the region known as the Bible Belt, a very conservative, Protestant-
dominated area that covers the entirety of the South and overlaps with Republican-dominated states.

Religions other than Protestant Christianity have often been viewed with apprehension in the United States, e.g.
Jews and Catholics were commonly subjected to discrimination before being assimilated into mainstream society
during the 20th century. Both groups have since become extremely influential on American culture and politics, with
Muslims also having made their mark, though they are frequently a target of discrimination. Catholicism has existed
in English-speaking North America since the colonial period, but it really gained prominence with the arrival of large
waves of European immigrants from countries such as Germany, Italy, Ireland, and Poland in the 19th and early
20th centuries. Anti-Catholic bigotry showed itself on both occasions that a Catholic ran as the nominee for a major
party in the 20th century (Al Smith in 1928 and JFK in 1960), with some questioning whether they would serve the
interests of the Vatican rather than those of the US. As a testament to how far Catholicism has come in the United
States, President Biden, only the second Catholic to hold the office, barely had his beliefs mentioned at all during
his presidential campaign, and never in a negative light. The Catholic Church has seen declining membership, but
more recently immigrants from Latin America have increased its numbers.
As for Jews, they first arrived in the colonial period, but their numbers grew exponentially with the late 19th and
early 20th century waves of immigration. Like most other minority groups, Jews typically favor the Democratic Party
(due to what is often perceived as the exclusionary nature of the GOP). Muslims are a growing religious identity in
the US, though they, too, have been there since the colonial era (initially in the form of African slaves). Anti-Muslim
sentiment grew enormously following 9/11, and various politically-motivated rumors swirled around Barack Obama
such as he was a “secret Muslim,” attended an Islamic school as a child, and that his middle name was “Mohamed.”
Furthermore, during his presidency, many conservative pundits routinely referred to him as “Barack Hussein” (his
real middle name), in an attempt to connect him to America's two-time foreign foe Saddam Hussein and more
generally otherize him. Attacks against Muslims and Jews have increased over the past few years, though multi-
faith initiatives have been launched in order to create unity and more Muslims now serve in Congress than ever
before.

1. How has the religious landscape evolved in the US? Is the US a secular country?
2. Comment on the underlined sentence.

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II. Reading Comprehension

Text 1
“Faith on the Hill: The Religious Composition of the 117th Congress”
Adapted from Pew Research Center, January 4, 2021

When it comes to religious affiliation, the 117th U.S. Congress looks similar to the previous Congress but quite
different from Americans overall. While about a quarter (26%) of U.S. adults are religiously unaffiliated – describing
themselves as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – just one member of the new Congress (Sen. Kyrsten
Sinema, D-Ariz.) identifies as religiously unaffiliated (0.2%).

Nearly nine-in-ten members of Congress identify as Christian (88%), compared with two-thirds of the general public
(65%). Congress is both more heavily Protestant (55% vs. 43%) and more heavily Catholic (30% vs. 20%) than
the U.S. adult population overall. Members of Congress also are older, on average, than U.S. adults overall. At the
start of the 116th Congress, the average representative was 57.6 years old, and the average senator was 62.9 years
old. Pew Research Center surveys have found that adults in that age range are more likely to be Christian than the
general public (74% of Americans ages 50 to 64 are Christian, compared with 65% of all Americans ages 18 and
older). Still, Congress is more heavily Christian even than U.S. adults ages 50 to 64, by a margin of 14 percentage
points.

Over the last several Congresses, there has been a marked increase in the share of members who identify
themselves simply as Protestants or as Christians without further specifying a denomination. There are now 96
members of Congress in this category (18%). In the 111th Congress, the first for which Pew Research
Center analyzed the religious affiliation of members of Congress, 39 members described themselves this way (7%).
Meanwhile, the share of all U.S. adults in this category has held relatively steady. Over the same period, the
total number of Protestants in Congress has remained relatively stable: There were 295 Protestants in the 111th
Congress, and there are 294 today. The increase in Protestants who do not specify a denomination has corresponded
with a decrease in members who do identify with denominational families, such as Presbyterians, Episcopalians and
Methodists.

Still, members of those three Protestant subgroups remain overrepresented in Congress compared with their share
in the general public, while some other groups are underrepresented – including Pentecostals (0.4% of Congress vs.
5% of all U.S. adults), nondenominational Protestants (2% vs. 6%) and Baptists (12% vs. 15%). Jewish members
also make up a larger share of Congress than they do of the general public (6% vs. 2%). The shares of most other
non-Christian groups analyzed in this report (Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus and Unitarian Universalists) more closely
match their percentages in the general public.

Nearly all non-Christian members of Congress are Democrats. Just three of the 261 Republicans who were sworn in
on Jan. 3 (1%) do not identify as Christian; two are Jewish, and one declined to state a religious affiliation .
These are some of the key findings of an analysis by Pew Research Center of CQ Roll Call data on the religious
affiliations of members of Congress, gathered through questionnaires and follow-up phone calls to candidates’ and
members’ offices. The CQ questionnaire asks members what religious group, if any, they belong to. It does not
attempt to measure their religious beliefs or practices. The Pew Research Center analysis compares the religious
affiliations of members of Congress with the Center’s survey data on the U.S. public.

Methodists saw the largest loss – seven seats – followed closely by Baptists (six seats) and Catholics (five seats).
There also are four fewer Lutherans in the 117th Congress than there were in the 116th. By contrast, Protestants
who do not specify a denomination are up substantially, gaining 16 seats in the 117th Congress after also gaining
16 seats two years ago, when the 116th took office. Protestants in the Restorationist family also gained three seats
(all members of Congress in this category identify with the Churches of Christ). In total, there currently are three
fewer Christians in the new Congress than there were in the previous Congress, although this gap is all but certain
to narrow once three of the four open seats are filled. Five of the six candidates in the uncalled or outstanding races
identify as Christians; Jon Ossoff, a Democrat running for Senate in Georgia, is Jewish.

When it comes to the 63 members of Congress who are not Christian, a slim majority (33) are Jewish, a number
that has held relatively steady over the past several Congresses. The next largest non-Christian group is made up
of those who declined to specify a religious affiliation. There are 18 people in this category in the 117th Congress,
the same as in the 116th, which had seen an increase of eight members in this group. The three Muslim
representatives from the 116th Congress return for the 117th: Reps. André Carson, D-Ind.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.;
and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich. Similarly, both Buddhists from the previous Congress return: Georgia Democratic Rep.
Hank Johnson and Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie K. Hirono. Unitarian Universalists gained one seat, as Rep. Deborah
K. Ross, D-N.C., joins California Democratic Reps. Ami Bera and Judy Chu. There are now two Hindus in Congress
– Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., and Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., both returning members. Former Rep. Tulsi
Gabbard, D-Hawaii, who served in the 115th and 116th Congresses, ran for president in 2020 and withdrew her
reelection bid for her House seat. She is replaced by Kai Kahele, who declined to specify a religious affiliation.
One member, California Democratic Rep. Jared Huffman, describes himself as a humanist. He is listed in the “other”
category. Fewer than three-tenths of 1% of U.S. adults specifically call themselves humanists.

23
Sinema is the only member of the 117th Congress who identifies as religiously unaffiliated. Both Sinema and Huffman
have said they do not consider themselves atheists. Most members of the House and Senate are Christians, with
the House just slightly more Christian than the Senate (88% vs. 87%). And both chambers have a Protestant
majority – 55% of representatives are Protestant, as are 59% of senators. Within Protestantism, the largest
differences are in Presbyterians (3% in the House vs. 12% in the Senate) and Protestants who do not specify a
denomination (20% in the House, 11% in the Senate). Catholics make up a larger share in the House (31%) than
in the Senate (24%). The Senate, meanwhile, has a higher share of Jewish (8% vs. 6%) and Mormon (3% vs. 1%)
members than the House does. All of the Muslims, Hindus and Unitarian Universalists in Congress are in the House,
while there is one Buddhist in each chamber. The sole religiously unaffiliated member of Congress (Sinema) is in
the Senate, and the only member in the “other” category (Huffman) is in the House.

Differences by party
Fully 99% of Republicans in Congress identify as Christians. There are two Jewish Republicans in the House, Reps.
Lee Zeldin of New York and David Kustoff of Tennessee. New York Rep. Chris Jacobs declined to specify a religious
affiliation. All other Republicans in the 117th Congress identify as Christian in some way. Most Republican members
of Congress identify as Protestants (68%). The largest Protestant groups are Baptists (15%), Methodists (6%),
Presbyterians (6%), Lutherans (5%) and Episcopalians (4%). However, 26% of Republicans are Protestants who do
not specify a denomination – up from 20% in the previous Congress. There are 15 Republican freshmen in this
category, compared with three Democratic newcomers.

Now that Democratic Sen. Tom Udall of New Mexico has retired, all nine members of the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day Saints (sometimes called Mormons) in Congress are Republicans. Democrats in Congress also are heavily
Christian – much more than U.S. adults overall (78% vs. 65%).9 But the share of Democrats who identify as
Christian is 21 percentage points lower than among Republicans (99%). Democrats are much less likely than
Republicans to identify as Protestant (43% vs. 68%). Conversely, Catholics make up a higher share among
Democrats than they do among Republicans (34% vs. 26%). Among Democrats, 11% are Jewish, and 6% did not
specify a religious affiliation. All of the Unitarian Universalists (3), Muslims (3), Buddhists (2) and Hindus (2) in
Congress are Democrats, as are the single members in the “other” and religiously unaffiliated categories.

Looking back
While the U.S. population continues to become less Christian, Congress has held relatively steady in recent years
and has remained heavily Christian. In the 87th Congress (which began in 1961), the earliest for which aggregated
religion data is available, 95% of members were Christian, which closely matched the roughly 93% of Americans
who identified the same way at the time, according to historical religion data from Gallup.
Since the early ’60s, there has been a substantial decline in the share of U.S. adults who identify as
Christian, but just a 7-point drop in the share of members of Congress who identify that way. Today, 88%
of Congress is Christian, while 65% of U.S. adults are Christian, according to Pew Research Center surveys.

Questions
1) Which groups are underrepresented and which are overrepresented?
2) What differences exist between the two parties?
3) Comment on the underlined sentence.

Text 2
“For Conservative Christians, the End of Roe Was a Spiritual Victory”
Elizabeth Dias, The New York Times, June 25, 2022

For nearly 50 years, conservative Christians marched, strategized and prayed. And then, on an ordinary Friday
morning in June, the day they had dreamed of finally came.

Ending the constitutional right to abortion by overturning Roe v. Wade took a decades-long campaign, the
culmination of potlucks in church gymnasiums and prayers in the Oval Office. It was the moment they long imagined,
an outcome many refused to believe was impossible, the sign of a new America. For many conservative believers
and anti-abortion groups grounded in Catholic or evangelical principles, the Supreme Court’s decision was not just
a political victory but a spiritual one.

“It is more than celebration,” said Archbishop William E. Lori, chairman of the United States Conference of Catholic
Bishops Committee on Pro-Life Activities. “It is a moment of gratitude to the Lord, and gratitude to so many people,
in the church and beyond the church, who have worked and prayed so hard for this day to come.”

Even the timing of the decision had a spiritual overtone, coming on the day Catholics celebrate the Feast of the
Sacred Heart of Jesus, honoring the love of Jesus for the world. It gave people “the opportunity to expand our hearts
in love” for people at all stages of life, from before birth through death, Archbishop Lori said.

24
At midday Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, there was a buzz of excitement as parishioners and priests
expressed joy at the ruling that came one hour earlier. “In case you haven’t heard the news, the Supreme Court
has overturned Roe v. Wade,” said the Rev. Enrique Salvo, the rector of the cathedral, which is the seat of the
powerful Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York. One man seated in the pews pumped his fist in the air.

The sense of jubilation playing out in sanctuaries and homes cut a striking contrast to the mass protests from the
many supporters of abortion rights outraged by the ruling. Waving signs and using megaphones, they said that
conservatives were imposing their religious beliefs on the country and women’s bodies.

Many Protestants and Catholics do support abortion rights, but the Catholic Church itself has spent decades at the
forefront of the anti-abortion movement. “When you choose the opposite of life, you choose the opposite of love,”
Father Salvo said during his homily. “And we must always choose love.”

The turning point for America was “just a phenomenal work of the Lord,” said Margaret H. Hartshorn, the chairman
of the board of Heartbeat International, a network of anti-abortion pregnancy centers. She reflected on how far the
movement has come since Jan. 22, 1973, the day the court legalized abortion nationwide, and how far it could still
go. “I believe God will use this to help us to build a greater culture of life, that in 50 years no woman
will ever consider abortion,” she said.

For many, the importance of the moment was deeply personal. Bart Barber, the newly elected president of the
Southern Baptist Convention and the pastor of First Baptist Church of Farmersville, Texas, thought of his two adopted
children, now ages 16 and 19.

“Because of the joy I have in watching them grow into adulthood and make a difference, I cannot help but feel joy
for all of the other babies who will have that opportunity now,” he said.

But for him it was also a moment of mourning, and of resolve. “At this moment we realize the enormous toll of
babies’ lives lost,” he said. “Abortion is still legal in many states, and we have work before us to bring about justice
and protection for pre-born babies in those jurisdictions.”

Everything on Friday felt surreal, said Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, who was in front
of the Supreme Court, where women from her organization and others, like Students for Life, had gathered to pray
regularly since a draft opinion signaling the decision was leaked last month. “A grievous wrong was righted,” she
said. “I feel such incredible and deep gratitude, first to God, that I got to live to see this moment.”

David Bereit, who co-founded 40 Days for Life, a grass-roots faith-based effort with prayer and fasting campaigns
to end abortion, could not stop crying. For years he and his family had traveled across the world for the cause.
“When you invest a good chunk of your life into something, when you have been disappointed, let down, discouraged
so many times,” he said, “it seems like an answer to prayer.”

Time after time, the movement had seemed close to overturning Roe, recalled John Seago, the legislative director
of Texas Right to Life, which advanced the state law that bans abortion after about six weeks of pregnancy. So until
he actually saw the decision, he did not dare believe it was truly real.

Now his group would focus on making sure that abortion bans were followed, he said, especially as some district
attorneys were already refusing to enforce it. “This is a phenomenal moment for the pro-life movement that has
been working toward this ruling for 50 years,” he said.

Early Friday evening, staff members of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America gathered for a champagne toast at their
headquarters in northern Virginia. One by one, they shared stories of celebratory text messages and answered
prayers that seemed like miracles. For many, this achievement marked their life’s work. For others, it felt like a new
beginning.

“This moment is about redeeming the past and moving into the future,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president,
said. But the significance of the day was overwhelming.

“It’s really hard to get your mind around the idea that eventually millions of lives, branches of family trees will occur
that would not have occurred,” she said. “The only way I can do it is to think of one. It is worth a whole life to save
the life of another person.”

Questions
1) What are the names of the various groups and organizations mentioned in the article? What sort of language do
they use?
2) How do the pro-lifers cited in the article frame their position?
3) Comment on the underlined sentence.

25
Text 3
“The Political Implications of White Evangelical Decline”
Sarah Jones, Intelligencer, July 9, 2021
A new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute shows white Evangelicals last year experienced “the most
precipitous drop in affiliation” among American religious groups since 2006, shrinking from 23 percent of Americans
that year to 14 percent in 2020. Their mainline Protestant peers, however, have enjoyed something of a resurgence,
picking up members as Evangelical numbers declined.

There are inescapable political implications to any religious trend, and the fortunes of white Evangelicalism are no
different. In particular, they present potential problems for the GOP, which still relies on white Evangelicals as a key
portion of its base.

Among Republicans, two-thirds identify as white Christians of some persuasion, according to PRRI, with 29 percent
identifying as white Evangelicals specifically, a decline from previous years that reflects the general downward slope
of white Evangelical affiliation. People who identify themselves as white Evangelicals remain highly enthusiastic
about Donald Trump. A recent Pew Research study found that he actually expanded his share of the Evangelical vote
in 2020, rising from 77 percent in 2016 to 84 percent four years later.

While white Evangelicals are shrinking as a share of the population, they’re also getting older. PRRI reports that
they “are the oldest religious group in the U.S., with a median age of 56, compared to the median age in the country
of 47.” This isn’t exactly a sign that a religious tradition has a robust demographic future; it’s also, again, a problem
for the GOP, if not an insurmountable one. One possibility is that Republicans will continue to make inroads
with Hispanic voters, expanding its base to stave off irrelevance. Other possibilities are more concerning
still. Confronted with a demographic crisis that affects its core constituencies, the party could double down on
nationalist rhetoric and on voter suppression as a means of keeping power. Trumpism, in other words, may be the
glue that keeps its base intact, even though it alienates a larger share of the population.

The Republican Party’s traditional coalition has far to go before it fades altogether; liberal triumphalism won’t win
elections or protect anyone from the conservative movement’s encroaching hostility toward multiracial democracy.
Demographics are not destiny after all. Even so, the decline of white Evangelicals sends a deeper message. The
marriage of religion and politics — and quite specifically, religion and the nativist, far-right politics of the GOP —
might help win an election here and there. In this case, however, temporal victories may come at an ecclesiastical
cost. White Evangelicals haven’t lost their grip on political power quite yet, but their moral power is in question. As
they shrink, they may lose their ability to fulfill the religious calling at the heart of their identity. If Evangelism is
going to work, it requires some moral authority. Perhaps by siding with Trump, white Evangelicals are losing theirs, fast.

Questions
1) What is the worry here for the GOP?
2) Based on the article, what does Trumpism represent?
3) Comment on the underlined sentence.

III. Listening comprehension

Video 1
“America has outgrown its ‘Judeo-Christian’ label. What’s next?”, 4:02
https://bigthink.com/Charles-Koch-Foundation/judeo-christian
1. According to Eboo, what similarities exist between the 1920s and today?
2. What is the background of the term Judeo-Christian? Why was it created? What is problematic about it today?
3. What is the concept of an “interfaith nation” as described in the video?

Video 2
“The Secret History of Muslims in the U.S.”, 3:19, New York Times, December 2018
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPYIdfYfEKM
1. What impacts have Muslims had on US history?
2. What examples of respect for Muslims are given in the video?
3. What does Professor Rashid mean when he says that people were trying to recover their heritage?

Video 3
“America’s Hidden History Series | For Your Gift of Support” 1:30, TBN, May 2019
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVNVcR1_Vx0
1. What claim is made regarding the telling of American history?
2. What do you receive for a donation of $70? And for $1,080 or more?
3. What do you think their goal is?
26
IV. Cartoons
Cartoon 1
Pat Bagley, Cagle, 5/13/15

Cartoon 2
John Cole, NC Policy Watch, 4/8/13

Cartoon 3
David Horsey, The Seattle
Times, 2004

27
V. Grammar
Present Perfect & Preterite

☞ Fill in the blanks with the correct tense (present perfect or preterite):

1. There __________ multiple Christian denominations since before the American Revolution. (to be)
2. Wicca __________ in the United States since at least the 1960s. (to be practiced)
3. John Fitzgerald Kennedy is the only Catholic president the US __________. (to have)
4. L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, ____________ many years ago, but his church ____________.
(to die; to continue)
5. Muslims ________________ in the US for centuries, and yet it wasn’t long ago that the first one
____________ to serve in Congress. (to live; to be elected)
6. There __________ a lot of interfaith cooperation since the beginning of the 21st century. (to be)
7. Snake handlers ___________ in the Appalachian Mountains since the 1910s. (to exist)
8. The Mormons _____________ themselves in Utah 170 years ago and they _____________ there ever since.
(to establish; to live)

VI. Key Terms

Bible Belt: a region covering the South dominated by socially conservative Protestants and characterized by
prominent Christianity and strong support for the Republican Party.
Blue laws: laws prohibiting certain activities, specifically on Sunday, often associated with New England, the
Puritans and their strict religious beliefs, e.g., in Connecticut it is illegal to buy alcohol in a shop on Sundays.
Born again: a term generally associated with evangelicals that is characterized by a zealous attitude and the belief
in a personal relationship with Christ
Creationism: the notion that existence is of divine creation as recounted in the Bible, in opposition to the theory of
evolution.
Cult: a pejorative term for a religion group, often small, with beliefs outside of the mainstream.
Culture wars: the conflict between right and left in the US, of which religion is a key factor. Examples of points of
disagreement include abortion, censorship, contraception, historical interpretation, LGBTQ rights, recreational drug
use, sexual education, and separation of church and state
Dominionism: the movement, characterized by a belief in evangelical supremacy, to establish Christian dominance
over the United States and its government, including the implementation of biblical law
Ecumenical: representing various Christian denominations, regardless of their specific beliefs
Evangelical: a general term for fervent Protestants, concentrated in but not unique to the South, who promote the
spread of their beliefs
First Amendment: an amendment to the Constitution that disallows Congress from passing laws that limit religious
freedom, freedom of speech, the right to assemble, and to petition
Great Awakening: a series of Protestant revivals and reimaginings that would have a profound impact on American
history, inspiring millions and championing various socio-political causes
Intelligent design: the pseudoscientific theory that runs counter to evolution and states that evidence of design
by God exists in nature
Megachurch: an evangelical church of unusually large size, e.g., Lakewood Church, which has a capacity of 16,800
Pro-choice: a euphemism for those who defend abortion, i.e., a woman’s right to choose.
Pro-life: a euphemism for those who are against abortion, i.e., the right to the life (for a fetus or embryo).
Protestantism: a general term for Western churches separate from Roman Catholicism, as diverse as Adventists,
Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Pentecostals, amongst others. The origins of Protestantism are
the Reformation
Puritans: extremely severe and pious Protestants disappointed with the extent of the English Reformation who
would have a major impact on the nascent New England colonies that is still felt today. Ironically, their former
domain is now amongst the least religious parts of the country. They are often associated with the Salem witch
trials.
Religious right: also known as the Christian right, this powerful voting bloc is characterized by socially conservative
views
Roe v. Wade: the Supreme Court decision that essentially legalized abortion in the United States. It is perhaps the

28
most famous decision in the US, being a flashpoint in the battle over abortion and the reason w hy SCOTUS
appointments are so important to many Americans.
Scopes Monkey Trial: the infamous, sensationalized 1925 court case in which a school teacher was accused of
having taught evolution, contrary to Tennessee law. This trial exposed and accelerated a schism in Protestantism
Secularism: the principle of separation of church and state

VII. Going Further

• Banking on Heaven, 2005 (a documentary focusing on a polygamous breakaway Mormon sect)
• Believer, 2018 (a documentary on LGBT Mormons)
• Friends of God: A Road Trip with Alexandra Pelosi, 2007 (a documentary on evangelicals, including the
aforementioned Lakewood Church)
• God’s Not Dead, 2014 (a Christian drama in which a university professor challenges a student’s faith; note: it
received terribly reviews but it is at the very least a window into evangelical thought)
• Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, 2015 (a documentary on the alleged abuse by the Church of
Scientology; note: in France it is considered a cult)
• Holy Hell, 2016 (a documentary on the Buddhafield cult by an ex-member)
• Inherit the Wind, 1960 (one of numerous films based on the play of the same name, it is a fictionalized account
of the Scopes Monkey Trial)
• Jesus Camp, 2006 (a documentary on a fundamentalist Christian summer camp)
• Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, 2016 (a documentary featuring the titular actress and her
experiences with the Church of Scientology)
• Marjoe, 1972 (a documentary about a former child preacher who continues to preach while acknowledging that
he does not believe)
• One of Us, 2017 (a documentary from the directors of Jesus Camp, this time exploring ex-Hasidic Jews from
Brooklyn and their experiences leaving their faith and subsequent ostracizing)
• Religulous, 2008 (a documentary by left-wing comedian Bill Maher that, as its name implies, is very critical of
religion)
• Sons of Perdition, 2010 (a documentary on teenagers that have been excommunicated from the Fundamentalist
Church of Latter-Day Saints - the same “church” as in Banking on Heaven)
• The Protocols of Zion, 2005 (a documentary about the reappearance of anti-Semitism in the US following 9/11)
• Truth be Told, 2012 (a very critical documentary on Jehovah’s Witnesses)
• The Witch: A New England Folktale, 2015 (a horror film focusing on a Puritan family, lavishly praised for its
realistic portrayal of colonial-era New England religion)
• Wild Wild Country, 2018 (a documentary on a 1980s cult based out of Oregon)

29
 UNIT 5 – IMMIGRATION
I. Facts
The first immigrants were the ancestors of Native Americans, who probably crossed the Bering Straits from Asia
around 30 000 years ago. Vikings probably visited North America from around 1 000 A.D. onwards, but if they did
settle, their colonies were short-lived.

1565 - 1790: The first European settlements were the forts established by Spain in Florida, such as St. Augustine,
from 1565 onwards, but proper colonies began with the English colony at Jamestown, in Virginia, established in
1607. Having left England to escape religious persecution, 100 English Puritans, the “Pilgrim Fathers”, arrived at
Plymouth, Massachusetts, aboard The Mayflower in 1620. They were followed by tens of thousands more, creating
several colonies in New England, along with Harvard University in 1635. Scottish and Irish immigrants began arriving
too, for the same religious reasons. The first settlers were overwhelmingly British.

The Dutch set up colonies from 1626, including New Amsterdam (former name for New York). Many German
Protestants also settled at around the same time. France set up colonies, notably in Louisiana, but several decades
later. Last, but certainly not least, Africans began arriving in very large numbers, as slaves, from around 1620
onwards. The first census was taken in 1790: there were 3,900,000 inhabitants: 2,560,000 British, 757,000 Africans,
270,000 Germans, 100,000 Dutch, 15,000 French and 2,000 Swedish, the remainder consisting of descendants of
the first English settlers.

1820 - 1880: By 1820, the population had reached 10 million, but only around 180 000 had arrived as immigrants
between 1790 and 1820. Large-scale immigration began again, especially from Ireland and Germany. After 1845, a
million Irish Catholics arrived, fleeing the Great Irish Famine, provoking the first wave of anti-immigration
xenophobia (e.g., the cartoon below on the left, from 1871). By 1880, 3 million Irish, 3 million Germans, 2 million
British, plus 750,000 French, especially from Canada and 230,000 Chinese had arrived. The Chinese Exclusion Act
of 1882 was passed to limit the latter’s arrivals. The cartoon below on the right, from 1882, shows a fictitious anti-Chinese wall:

1881 – 1930: With the invention of the steamboat, travel became quicker and easier, so immigration soared. 25M
immigrants arrived, of whom 4.6M Italians, 4M Austrians, 3.3M Russians (of whom 2M Jews, fleeing the pogroms),
2.3M Germans (this included Poles) and a further 4M British and Irish arrived.

1930 – 1965: The Great Depression plus a series of laws to limit immigration, including a system of restrictive
quotas by nationality, passed in the 20s, slowed the number of arrivals to less than 4M.

1965 – present day: The Immigration and Nationalities Act in 1965 abolished the quota system which had favoured
immigration from northern European countries, allowing a new influx of immigrants from other countries, especially
Mexico. It is estimated that over 60M immigrants have arrived since 1965.

According to the Census Bureau, net migration to the US (immigrants minus emigrants) in 2021 was 245K (for 330M
inhabitants), down from 477K in 2020 (mainly due to COVID). The size of the US is 9,834 km2.

These are comparable 2021 net migration figures for France and the UK (pre-COVID lockdowns):
France: Size : 644K km2 Population : 67M Net migration: 60,000 (estimation Statista)
UK: Size : 242K km2 Population : 67M Net migration: 240,000 (Source ONS)

So, is the USA still a “Land of Immigration”?

30
Introduction: The Godfather Part 2, Francis Ford Coppola, 1974
“Vito arrives at Ellis Island”, Hola Soy Jey, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubT-Bm36L2U (3’45)

You are going to watch an extract from The Godfather, part 2. Vito Corleone,
the founder of the Corleone dynasty in the US, arrives in New York for the
first time as a young boy.

1) Try to identify the places and time period mentioned in this extract.
2) Is Corleone his real surname?
3) To what extent does Vito Corleone’s personal history reflect the
history of immigration to the US?

Essay question/debate question: Is America a Melting Pot* or a Salad

Bowl*?
*See the Key Terms section at the end of the unit for definitions of these
terms.

II. Reading Comprehension

Text 1
The U.S. needs more immigrants and more babies
Editorial Board, The Washington Post, February 7 2022

For decades, the United States has remained dynamic and prosperous, even as other major industrialized societies
have stagnated. One major reason has been relatively high population growth, which reflects both the nation’s birth-
rate and how attractive the country is to immigrants. But the Census Bureau has reported that this engine of
prosperity is sputtering out.

The bureau found in late December that the nation’s population grew only 0.1 percent over the year ending on July
1, 2021, the slowest rate since its founding. The covid-19 pandemic is one explanation. During that period, the
disease took the lives of about half a million people directly, but it also killed indirectly, as those with other maladies
feared seeking care or could not get help in overburdened health systems. Meanwhile, economic uncertainty, public
health concerns and social isolation appear to have contributed to fewer babies being born.

But the pandemic merely magnified pre-existing trends. The 2020 Census revealed that the nation’s population grew
only 7.4 percent over the previous decade, the country’s second-slowest rate of growth ever, roughly tying the 7.3
percent increase during the Depression-era 1930s. The big baby-boom generation is aging, with its members
entering their 60s, 70s and 80s, leading to more deaths among this large cohort. Life expectancy has declined,
reflecting the effects of drug abuse, obesity, suicide and other factors that afflict young as well as old. A lower
national birth-rate means that natural replacement is not keeping pace.

If it were not for immigration, the picture would be far worse. The bureau found in December that the country’s
population rose by 392,665 people — and that 244,622 of them were immigrants. Relying on influxes of people from
abroad is an American tradition; immigration accounted for more than half of the country’s population growth
between 1965 and 2015. Yet immigration, too, is down, reflecting in part President Donald Trump’s nativist policies.

Robust population growth not only provides more workers to sustain the young and the old; more people means
more of the intellectual exchange, idea creation, entrepreneurship and competition that result from people
interacting in a free, capitalist society. National policy should promote vigorous population expansion.

A more welcoming immigration policy — one that secures the border, while expanding legal immigration — is an
obvious start. The federal government should also encourage more childbirth by making it easier to raise children
in the United States. A permanent expansion of the child tax credit, universal prekindergarten education and other
new child-care benefits would make having children a less daunting financial commitment. Such initiatives would
also help the nation do more with the population it has, making it easier for parents to enter the workforce. Similarly,
permanently bolstering Obamacare would make it easier for people to go out on their own, starting businesses
without the burden of losing employer-sponsored health-care coverage. This would enable people to find the places
in the economy in which they can be the most productive.

The United States remains better off than countries such as Japan, which is seeing negative population growth. But
complacency, social problems and reactionary politics still threaten the nation’s long-term prospects.

Questions
1. Why has the US economy been constantly growing, but what did the latest Census reveal?
2. According to the authors, what are the reasons for the change?
3. Comment on the underlined sentence in the text.

31
Text 2
The Situation at the Border Can't Be 'Solved' Without Acknowledging Its Origins
Julia G. Young, Time, March 31st 2021

With the U.S. “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,”
as Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement March 16, immigration at the U.S.-Mexico
border has emerged as one of the toughest challenges facing the Biden Administration, but the issue is one that has
dogged his predecessors for decades.

There’s a reason why the U.S. government has failed for so many years to “control” the border: none of these
policies have addressed the real reasons for migration itself, known as “push” and “pull” factors.

Today, the countries sending the most migrants to the U.S.-Mexico border–especially the Central American countries
of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador–are experiencing a combination of push factors that include poverty and
inequality, political instability, and violence. And while the current situation may be unique, it is also deeply rooted in history.

Many countries in Central America have struggled with poverty since the time of independence from Spain in the
early 19th century. In the years after Spanish control, they were typically ruled by small oligarchies that
disproportionately held wealth, land and power, and their economies were primary export-dependent, which brought
great riches to landowners but also great inequality and poverty of the majority. Those dynamics have carried
forward to today. More recently, climate change–in particular, drought and massive storms–has forced the
vulnerable rural poor out of the countryside.

Throughout Central America, political instability has also been a long-term problem. In the 19th and early 20th
centuries, there were constant struggles between liberal and conservative elites. The United States often
exacerbated these conflicts, deploying the U.S. Marines in Latin America whenever political uprisings seemed to
threaten U.S. business interests or national security.

By the mid-20th century, there were new and worse waves of political violence. Popular movements on the Left
attempted to challenge old hierarchies and ruling classes. Conservative political elites often responded to these
movements by inviting the military to take power. These conflicts generated huge surges in emigration, establishing
the migration patterns that persist today.

A final push factor is gang violence. MS-13, now one of the largest gangs in the world, was founded in Los Angeles
in the 1980s, within communities of Central American refugees who had fled civil wars. Many of these gang members
were subsequently deported to Central America. With governments incapable of dealing with this criminal influx,
there was a huge rise in violence, contributing to a new increase in emigration.

Pull factors in the U.S. have also created the conditions for continued unauthorized migration from Central America.
Since the 1990s, entire sectors of the U.S. economy have become increasingly dependent on low-wage immigrant
labour, especially agriculture, the service industry (restaurants and housecleaning), and construction.

Despite the demand, U.S. immigration policy makes it very difficult for would-be migrants from Latin America to
come to the United States legally. This situation incentivizes risky border crossings and unauthorized entry into the United States.

There is one way that immigrants from Central America can legally migrate immediately—and that is by requesting
asylum after they arrive in the United States. The previous administration made every effort to limit their ability to
obtain it. Now the Biden Administration must decide whether to restore the asylum framework, which has become
the only possible path to legal migration.

Given the complicated and deep-rooted reasons behind migration, lawmakers cannot control or “solve” the ongoing
crisis at the border by simply pouring money and resources into ever more militaristic border theatre. It’s no wonder
that decades of such policies have done little to change the underlying dynamics.

Instead, if Americans are serious about changing the situation at the border, we need to address the push and pull
factors behind Central American migration. We need to acknowledge the reality of the U.S. economy (in particular,
that it demands immigrant labour to work low-wage jobs) and work to construct new legal frameworks that reflect
that reality. We need to target financial and logistical support to encourage Central American countries to address
the poverty and inequality that fuel migration, rather than cutting foreign aid, as the Trump Administration did. We
need to do all we can to end the pervasive gang violence that pushes so many migrants out of their homelands. And
of course, we must continue to evaluate our own historical and contemporary role in creating the longstanding
problems that are pushing Central Americans to migrate.

Questions
1. What is the current situation at the border, is it new and how have previous governments fared?
2. What does the author suggest are the most important reasons for the crisis?
3. Comment on the underlined sentence from the text.

32
Text 3
Americans Say Immigrants Should Learn English. But U.S. Policy Makes That Hard
Olga Khazan, The Atlantic, June 4th 2021

“Speak English!” can be one of the cruellest things for an immigrant to hear. It can sound simultaneously like a
demand for instant assimilation, an accusation of disloyalty, and a presumption of stubbornness or ignorance. In
some circles, the call for immigrants to speak English has fused with a call for less immigration in general, as though
language differences are themselves offensive. It’s no accident that “You have to speak English!” was a Donald
Trump rallying cry.

The uncomfortable reality is that learning English can, in fact, make immigrants’ lives much better. Immigrants who
learn English improve both their earnings and their acceptance by other Americans. Unfortunately, it’s extremely
difficult for immigrants to find English classes that are affordable and accessible.

In the U.S., English proficiency and earnings are tightly bound. Overall, immigrants make up a sixth of the American
workforce, and immigrants who learn English earn more, mostly because they become eligible for higher-paying
jobs.

Rightly or wrongly, immigrants’ English skills influence Americans’ views of immigration. A majority of Americans
believe that a person must speak English to be considered American. Though Republicans are more likely to strongly
endorse this view, even majorities of first-generation immigrants and liberal Democrats believe that English fluency
is necessary for integration into American society. This isn’t necessarily a measure of xenophobia; people of both
parties tend to be accepting of those who speak English with an accent.

The U.S. has an unusually laissez-faire attitude toward immigrant integration. Other industrialized countries do more
to integrate immigrants and refugees into their society. In Sweden, foreigners get unlimited Swedish lessons at no
cost; sometimes these lessons are built into job-training programs. The U.S., though, has no national policy aimed
at helping immigrants become full-fledged Americans.

Recent immigrants to the U.S. generally have better English skills than those who immigrated a century ago. A
Mexican who immigrated in 2010 is more likely to learn English than an Italian who immigrated in 1910 was. Still,
about 10 percent of working-age adults—at least 11 million people—don’t speak English well.

Community colleges and private instructors offer English lessons for a fee, but many English learners don’t have the
money for these. (Most immigrants make less than $50,000 a year, and 15 percent live in poverty.)

The options for the majority of immigrants who can’t afford private classes are much more limited. “If somebody is
looking for free access to English-language classes, right now the adult-education system is the primary vehicle,”
says Ali Noorani, the president of the National Immigration Forum.

Where they do exist, these classes are in short supply—many states and localities have waiting lists. In
Massachusetts, 16,000 people were on the waiting list for ESL classes in 2018.

America is essentially demanding that immigrants learn English without giving them the means to do so.

Unlike some countries, the U.S. does not pay immigrants for their language-learning time, which they typically need
to spend working. Even when classes are available, immigrants might not attend, because they work two or three
jobs and lack transportation or child care.

To change America’s approach to teaching immigrants English, the federal government has to dump more money
on the problem. But increasing the number of immigrants who learn English, and how fast they do so, may also
require a cultural shift. For a more enlightened approach to English learners, Americans have to stop looking at
immigrants as “a collection of deficits.” “There aren’t a lot of places for optimism right now,” Vargas said, “but this
is one of them.”

Questions
1. Why is it so important for immigrants to speak English?
2. Why is it so difficult for immigrants to learn English?
3. Comment on the underlined phrase from the text.

33
Text 4
Keeping Title 42 in place won't slow US-Mexico border crossings, officials say
Priscilla Alvarez, CNN, May 24 2022

On March 20, 2020, in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, a public health order was issued, aiming to stop
the spread of Covid-19. The order allowed authorities to swiftly expel migrants at US land borders. The policy is
widely known as Title 42, for the portion of US code that allowed the CDC director to issue it. It effectively bars
migrants from seeking asylum on grounds of public health.

Since taking office, President Joe Biden has faced mounting pressure over his handling of the US-Mexico border,
dividing members of his own party following a decision by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to lift
Title 42.
Republicans hammered the administration for not being tough enough on the border. Some Democrats and
immigrant advocates, meanwhile, say the White House has waited too long to rescind Title 42. Regardless, the
administration will be forced to keep it in effect for now, after a federal court ruling on Friday in Louisiana.

Along the northern border of Mexico, advocates say some migrants remain undeterred and desperate. "I don't think
that just because Title 42 didn't go away today that people are thinking that was the one and only way they were
going to get over," said Sam Bishop, Mexico country director for Global Response Management.

Over the weekend, following the court ruling, Border Patrol agents arrested more than 500 migrants in the Rio
Grande Valley sector alone, which covers south Texas, according to US Customs and Border Protection. And in Yuma,
Arizona, border agents arrested over 1,500 migrants in a 24-hour period over the weekend, a Homeland Security
official told CNN.

Migration is at new highs amid deteriorating conditions in Latin America that were exacerbated by the coronavirus
pandemic. At the US southern border, about 40% of border crossers are now from countries outside of Mexico and
the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, according to a Homeland Security official.

The Department of Homeland Security, officials say, is operating under the belief that numbers will remain high even
with Covid-19 border restrictions still in place. In a statement following Friday's ruling, DHS maintained the
department would press forward with preparations to manage a potential increase of migrants at the border. Officials
are also racing to strike agreements with countries in the region to stem the flow of migrants journeying to the US
southern border.
DHS is similarly working with Mexico to mitigate traffic along key areas on the US southern border, like patrols,
checkpoints, and going after smugglers, the agency official said.

More than 6 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants have fled the country, according to DHS. Nicaraguans have
also increasingly been migrating, as well as Haitians who had moved to the region years ago. Arrangements on
migration management have already been struck with Costa Rica and Panama -- two countries that migrants pass
through when heading to the US southern border.

In the interim, though, a range of nationalities continue to journey to the US southern border. Some of those pose
a challenge to the Biden administration because they can't easily be expelled under Title 42 or deported -- at times,
fuelling more migrants from those regions.

"What US enforcement policy tends to do over the long term is shape who comes, rather than how many people
come," said Andrew Selee, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a nonpartisan think tank. "Title 42 matters on
shaping who comes, but it may not be the biggest factor in how many people come."

Still, Republicans and vulnerable Democrats urged the Biden administration to keep Title 42 in effect, arguing it was
a necessary tool until a comprehensive plan to manage the border was in place.

Friday's ruling means Title 42 will likely stay in place for months to come.

Questions
1. What is Title 42, why was it issued and what does Biden want to do about it?
2. What does the DHS expect will happen now and what are they doing about it?
3. Comment on the underlined phrase from the text.

34
 III. Listening comprehension

Video 1
“How hard is it to legally enter the US?” NowThisWorld, 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8T9651KKag (3:23)

1. How many visas were issued in 2014?

2. Have US immigration laws always been tolerant? Give some examples.
3. Why did the year 1965 signal a change in US immigration policy?
4. What countries have special arrangements with the US?
5. Is it possible to bar a head of state from entering the US territory?

Video 2
“How migrants are being ‘expelled’ from the U.S. border”, PBS, March 2021
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-migrants-are-being-expelled-from-the-u-s-border (3.35)

1. What is the problem and what has changed to make it worse?

2. Do the migrants understand what is going on and is Mexico equipped to deal with them?
3. Why does the reporter think the influx has increased so much?

Video 3
"Unless you're Native American, you came from someplace else" Barack Obama,
January 29 2013, TDC https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aiXuEk_CyWs (3:04)
The speech was made at Del Sol High School in Las Vegas, before the unveiling of the “Dream Act” or DAPA, voted
by the Senate but not by the House, extending DACA. Despite an executive order, it was never implemented.

1. What is it about immigration that is so divisive?

2. What does history tell us?
3. What do all newcomers face? What makes someone American?

☞ Sketch comedy
• Video 4: “US immigration” — Foil Arms and Hog (Irish YouTube channel)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rjab8fanzHc (0:58)
• Video 5: “Welcome video” — Saturday Night Live (US television show)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbIXmB2ZLmA (2.25)

IV. Cartoons

Cartoon 1
Michael
Ramirez, Las
Vegas Review,
April 10 2022

https://
www.
reviewjournal
.com/
opinion/michael-
ramirez/cartoon-
another-crisis-
coming-2559393/

35
Cartoon 2
Gary Varvell, Washington Times, February 28 2021
https://www.washingtontimes.com/cartoons/tooning-president-trump/

V. Grammar
Conditionals

A. Put the verbs in brackets into the correct form

First Conditional – present and future tenses
1°) If Kamala Harris ………… (find) a solution to the border crisis, it ………………………… (be) a miracle!
2°) The Republicans ……………… (cheer) loudly if it all ………… (go) pear-shaped.
3°) People ……… (find) other ways in if the DHS …………… (increase) border security.

Second Conditional – preterite and conditional tenses

1°) If immigrants …………………………(integrate) into U.S. society better, they…………… (strengthen) the country.
2°) Immigrants in the U.S. ………………………. (can) stay longer if they ……………………………………… (meet) certain criteria.
3°) The US ………………… (have) fewer collegiate athletes if they ……………………… (stop) international student labor.

Third Conditional – past perfect simple and conditional perfect

1°) The situation …………………………… (be) different if our elites ………………………… (not, decide) to promote sectarianism.
2° If Europe …………………… (not, suffer) from a series of crises in the 19 th century, maybe the great waves of
immigration ……………… (not, come).
3°) Children ……………………… (not, be separated) from their parents if the law …………… (not, change).

B. Put the verbs in brackets into the correct form (future/conditional clauses).
1°) If Vito Corleone ……………………… (not, emigrate) to the U.S., he …………………(not, become) the Godfather.
2°) Immigrants ………………………… (feel) better accepted if they …………………………… (be helped) to learn English.
3°) If Puritans …………… (not, be persecuted) in 17th century England, perhaps the U.S. ……………… (never, be created).
4°) Without a green card, you …………… (have) no chance of living in the U.S. when you …… (go) there next year.
5°) The U.S. …………… (need) more immigrants when the economy …………… (recover) fully from the crisis.

36
 VI. Key terms

Alien – no, not the film – someone relating, belonging, or owing allegiance to another country or government

Assimilation – the absorption and integration of people, ideas, or culture into a wider society or culture. (OED)

Boost the economy: Most research shows that encouraging immigration actually provides a boost to
the economy as immigrants are net contributors to the GDP. There is also evidence that they actually claim fewer
benefits and pay more tax than the native population.

DACA: Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program; this is a US immigration policy, implemented by President
Obama in 2012, using an executive memorandum. It allows illegal immigrants who came to the US as children to
apply for a two-year period during which they will not be deported and can apply for a work permit. The recipients
can apply for a renewal every two years, provided that they have no criminal record.

Department of Homeland Security - The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S.
federal executive department responsible for public security, rather like the interior or home ministries in other
countries. It is in charge of border security, immigration and customs, but also anti-terrorism and cyber security,
along with disaster prevention and management.

Deportation: A formal process by which a foreign national can be removed from the U.S. because they have violated
an immigration law, this takes place for example after a demand for asylum has failed after a legal examination.

Expulsion: Much quicker and less complicated, this involves turning people round at the border and sending them
back where they came from. No demand for asylum is examined so no provisional detention is necessary. The U.S.
government has been using this technique at the border since the start of the Covid pandemic, citing public health
reasons (initiated by the Trump administration on March 20 2020 (Title 42) but not yet rescinded by Biden). However,
this is clearly a violation of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the American Convention On Human Rights and the 1952
Immigration and Nationality Act.

Green Card – a permanent resident permit. Every year there is a lottery and 55 000 foreign nationals win green
cards. Having a green card does not mean however that the holder becomes a U.S. citizen. If a green card holder
commits certain crimes, they will be deported.

Immigrant – the person

Immigrate – the verb

Immigration – the idea

Illegal immigrants: people who enter a country illegally

Influx of immigrants: this is usually used in a negative sense meaning that there are too many immigrants

Quota: The United States for example has a quota system whereby a fixed number of green cards are issued every
year.

Melting pot: a mixture of many different types of people and cultures, producing one American identity. Essentially,
this is mono-culturalism.

Salad Bowl: the different types of people and culture combine like a salad - the ingredients are juxtaposed but do
not merge into a single homogeneous culture. Each culture keeps its own distinct qualities. This is multi-culturalism.

37
UNIT 6 – MANIFEST DESTINY AND FOREIGN POLICY
I. Facts
• “Manifest Destiny”, Steve Jones, Dec. 2020 www.thoughtco.com/american-manifest-destiny-3310344

The term "Manifest Destiny," which American writer John L. O'Sullivan coined in 1845, describes what most 19th-
century Americans believed was their God-given mission to expand westward, occupy a continental nation, and
extend U.S. constitutional government to unenlightened peoples. While the term sounds like it is strictly historical,
it also more subtly applies to the tendency of U.S. foreign policy to push democratic nation-building around the
globe.

• “Territorial expansion: whose land is it?”

www.unitedstateswestwardexpansion.weebly.com

o Watch the history of the US territorial

expansion from 1776 to 1959 from Grolier
Encyclopedia on
www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGJJGkIWpH0 (3’16)

o Watch how the US took more than 1.5 billion

acres from Native Americans on the interactive
time-lapse map produced by University of Georgia
historian Claudio Saunt on
www.slate.com/blogs/the_vault/2014/06/17/
interactive_map_loss_of_indian_land.html

• The Natives’ history: from repression to recognition from Howard University School of Law and
History.com (https://library.law.howard.edu/civilrightshistory/indigenous):

Prior to 1492 Prior to contact from Europe, indigenous culture thrived in the Americas. Tribes ranged from
Alaska, down the Pacific Coast and across the Great Plains all the way to the Eastern Seaboard (the Atlantic Coast).
1492 Christopher Columbus discovered America. Columbus Day has been counter-celebrated with
Indigenous People’s Day since 1992.
c. 1595 Pocahontas was born. Her tribe, the Pamunkey of Virginia, was officially recognised in 2015.
1621 First Thanksgiving between the Pilgrims and Natives.
1754-1763 The French and Indian War was the North American conflict in a larger imperial war between
Great Britain and France known as the Seven Years’ War. The dispute was over land, the war
providing Great Britain with enormous territorial gains.

1778-1820 TREATY ERA: as European nations began to colonise the Americas, they entered into treaties with
the Natives whose land they occupied. The US signed its first treaty with the Delaware tribe. The US
National Archives holds 374 of the treaties, known as the Ratified Indian Treaties.
1804-1806 Lewis & Clark expedition: Native American Sacagawea served as translator and guide in their
exploratory expedition of the West.

1820-1850 REMOVAL ERA: as the US grew in population, the federal government sought to displace Native
Americans to increase room for western expansion.
1830 Congress passed the Indian Removal Act under President Andrew Jackson, displacing thousands
of Natives from their homes.
1838 The Trail of Tears marks the climax of the displacement policy with over 4,000 Cherokee members
dying in their march west beyond the Mississippi River.

1850-1887 RESERVATION ERA: the federal government restricted tribal members to reservations – portions
of land allocated to federally recognised tribes – in order to facilitate westward expansion and
americanise tribes. Devastating impact on Native culture felt until today.
1851 Congress passed the Indian Appropriations Act, creating the Indian reservation system. Native
Americans not allowed to leave their reservations without permission.

38
1862 The Homestead Act accelerated settlement of US western territory by allowing any American to
put in a claim for up to 160 acres of federal land (65 hectares).
1876 Native American forces led by Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull, resisting the federal government’s
efforts to confine their people to reservations, defeated General Custer’s federal army in the Battle
of the Little Bighorn.

1887-1934 ALLOTMENT AND ASSIMILATION ERA: an attempt to control and alter the customs and practices
of Native Americans.
1887 The Dawes Severalty Act ended tribal control of reservations and divided their land into individual holdings.
1890 Wounded Knee Massacre: iconic battle on the Pine Ridge reservation where 300 Sioux were killed
by the army; generally seen as the end of 400 years of Indian wars.
1924 The Indian Citizenship Act provided the Natives dual citizenship in their tribe and with the US.

1934-1953 SELF-GOVERNMENT ERA: federal policies toward Native Americans began to change.
1934 The Indian Reorganisation Act: a New Deal policy which gave the Natives more power to self-govern.

1953-1968 TERMINATION ERA: a reversal in policies toward Natives

1953 The Indian Termination Act allowed to abolish tribes and relocate Natives until 1968.

1968-present SELF-DETERMINATION ERA: civil rights activism

1968 The Indian Civil Rights Act guaranteed civil rights to all American Natives.
1968 The American Indian Movement (AIM) was founded.
1969 The Proclamation of the Indians of All Tribes as part of the Red Power Movement started a
2-year occupation of Alcatraz Island, drawing attention to the plight of the Natives and their right to
self-determination.
1973 Wounded Knee Occupation led by Sioux and the AIM over protests against civil rights and treaties.
1978 The American Indian Religious Freedom Act allowed free practice of religion for any Native.
1990 Congress expressed deep regret on the centennial of the Wounded Knee Massacre.
Congress enacted the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to better assist in
repatriation and protection of ancestral remains and sacred tribal objects.
Native women began marching across the United States and Canada to demand justice for their
"stolen sisters" known as the Missing and Murdered Indian Women (MMIW) crisis.
2007 The UN adopted the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples but the US voted against.
2013 President Obama signed the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 under which
Congress granted tribal courts the authority to try non-Natives for violent crimes against women.
Furthered in 2019 by the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act.
2018 in Blackhorse v. Pro-Football, Inc, according to the Trademark Trial and Appeals Board, the
Washington D.C. team's name and mascot (Redskins) was considered disparaging and its trademark
protection was cancelled.
2020 Environmental activism with tribes all around the country protesting against the impact on wildlife
and cultural resources with the construction of the border wall between Mexico and the US, the
proliferation of dams disrupting rivers, the construction of pipelines.

☞ Suggested essay: Why can it be said that geography makes history in the United States of America?

39
 II. Reading Comprehension

Text 1 – Native Americans and American past

Massacre Leader’s Name is Removed from Yellowstone Mountain
The New York Times, 13 June 2022, April Rubin
www.nytimes.com/2022/06/13/us/yellowstone-mountain-renamed.html

Mount Doane, a 10,551-foot peak, has been renamed First Peoples Mountain in an acknowledgment of the park’s
historical connections with Indigenous people, the National Park Service said.
A mountain in Yellowstone National Park, named for an Army officer who participated in a massacre in which at least
173 Native Americans were slaughtered, has been renamed in honor of America’s Indigenous people, the National
Park Service said.
The National Park Service said on Thursday that the U.S. Board on Geographic Names had voted unanimously to
rename Mount Doane, a 10,551-foot peak in the southeastern part of Yellowstone. It will now be known as First
Peoples Mountain, the Park Service said in a statement.
The mountain had honored Gustavus Doane, an Army officer and explorer who, in response to the alleged murder
of a white fur trader, helped lead an attack in 1870 that became known as the Marias Massacre. He boasted about
the attack in his accounts of the exploration of the land that would become Yellowstone National Park two years
later.

The change was announced as the Interior Department under Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American
cabinet member, is taking steps to strip oppressive and offensive names from geographic features across the national
park system.
This year, the department announced that it would remove the racist term “squaw” from 660 geographic sites,
including mountains, rivers and lakes. The Park Service was ordered to take similar steps. A task force was created
to rename landmarks.
In January, the Interior Department said it was seeking nominations for a committee whose members would identify
geographic features that should be renamed “as part of a broad effort to review and replace derogatory names of
the nation’s geographic features.”
In 2016, the Park Service renamed North America’s highest peak — Mount McKinley in Alaska — as Mount Denali.
That name, meaning “the great one” or “the high one” in the Alaska Native language Koyukon, pays tribute to the
state’s Indigenous population. President William McKinley, for whom the mountain was christened in 1896, had little
connection to the state, the Park Service said.

First Peoples Mountain was renamed based on input from the 27 tribes in Montana, Washington, Oregon, Idaho,
Wyoming, North Dakota and South Dakota that have historical connections to Yellowstone. Indigenous people lived
for at least 11,000 years on the land that would become Yellowstone. They were pushed out by the government
when the park was established in 1872, according to Smithsonian Magazine.
“This name change is long overdue,” Chief Stan Grier of the Piikani Nation told The Associated Press in a statement.
“We all agreed on ‘First Peoples Mountain’ as an appropriate name to honor the victims of such inhumane acts of
genocide, and to also remind people of the 10,000-year-plus connection tribal peoples have to this sacred place now
called Yellowstone.”
Since the change was announced, William Snell, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Tribal Leaders Council,
said the organization had received inquiries from tribes in California about replicating the process as a way of
rectifying other injustices.
“It’s a demonstration of working closely with American Indians and making sure that wrongs are righted and history
is rewritten and corrected,” he said.
In its statement, the Park service said the renaming of First Peoples Mountain is not likely to be the last of its kind.
“Yellowstone may consider changes to other derogatory or inappropriate names in the future,” it said.

Questions
1. Why was Mount Doane renamed First Peoples Mountain?
2. Is the new name appropriate? Are there other examples of renaming?
3. Comment on the underlined passage of the article.

Text 2 – Foreign policy: what degree of engagement and why?

Use the US Department of State website at www.state.gov to answer the questions:

(1) What are the key priorities of the State Department?

(2) Does it deal only with conflicts?
(3) Does the US have bilateral relations with Afghanistan, China, Cuba, France, Iran, Israel, Korea, Russia, Saudi
Arabia, the UK, and why?
40
Text 3 – America on the international stage
Russia or China? The U.S. Has a Choice to Make
Zachary Karabell, The New York Times, 30th May 2022 www.nytimes.com/2022/05/30/opinion/china-us-russia-strategy.html

In a speech on Thursday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed the long-awaited outlines of the Biden administration’s
official posture toward China. Rather than Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Mr. Blinken said, it is China that represents the most
potent and determined threat to the American-championed world order.
Only China, he continued, has “both the intent to reshape the international order” and the power to do so, he said. The
United States will seek to rally coalitions of other nations to meet Beijing’s challenge.
The writing had been on the wall. Just days earlier, President Biden pledged to defend Taiwan if China moved to seize the
democratically ruled island, he met with regional allies, and his administration proposed a new plan to counter China’s
growing economic clout in Asia.

But the intensifying fixation on China’s potential to disrupt the world order shrinks space for cooperation with Beijing and
distracts from the real threat: Russia.
Under Mr. Putin, Russia demolished the Chechen capital, Grozny, in 2000; invaded Georgia in 2008; annexed Crimea in
2014; and used its air force in 2015 and 2016 against opponents of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Mr. Putin’s regime has used
cyberattacks, assassinated domestic opponents and passed laws that impose draconian prison sentences on anyone
questioning the state. He launched a brutal invasion of Ukraine and has hinted at possibly using nuclear weapons. He has
not just declared his intent to redraw international borders and resurrect the ghost of the former Soviet Union; he has acted on it.

Thwarting further Russian misbehavior through trade embargoes, preventing resupply of the country’s military and
establishing an international phalanx against Mr. Putin requires global cooperation. That includes China.
We need to be clear-eyed about China, of course. It is without doubt a more powerful potential adversary than Russia on
every metric — military, economic and ideological. The Communist Party, under the firm control of Xi Jinping, pursues a
form of state-sponsored capitalism that disadvantages foreign companies in the China market and builds up powerful
national champions. The primacy of the party trumps rule of law, and free-speech and political rights are harshly
suppressed. China’s appalling treatment of its Uyghur minority and suppression of basic rights in Hong Kong have been
rightly condemned.
China also spends more on its military than any country besides the United States, which is intended to counter American
military pre-eminence in East Asia. Rising nationalism is expressed in the belief that Taiwan must be reunified with mainland
China and that the South China Sea is a Chinese lake.

But these issues don’t necessarily make China a threat to American prosperity and security, not unless you believe in every
antagonistic word coming from Chinese officials, every war plan devised by its military, and the inevitability of “the
Thucydides trap” — the notion that emerging powers will tend toward conflict with established ones. Neither does it follow
that any country which does not adhere to liberal democratic norms is a budding threat to the United States. The United
States has never based its entire foreign policy on human rights, nor should it; that would be a recipe for endless
intervention and conflict globally. And grounding policy on what might happen is an equally slippery slope.
The Communist Party views the United States as an adversary. But it has been willing to engage diplomatically, has
repeatedly championed the inviolability of state borders and is not averse to self-interested compromise over issues like
trade and climate change. Its rhetoric over Taiwan has been little more than saber-rattling and appears restrained
compared to how the United States has historically treated Latin America.

Advocates of a new Cold War with China will surely roll their eyes at these assertions. They will say that China has wriggled
out of trade commitments, repeatedly violated agreements on climate, used espionage to steal intellectual property, and
is building a military designed to inflict harm on the United States and its allies.
But it is logical for an emerging great power like China to make plans for its defense, including potential conflict with the
United States. It’s also worth remembering that China is deeply intertwined with the U.S. and global economy. It holds
more than a trillion dollars’ worth of American debt in the form of U.S. Treasury securities, benefits from the cumulative
effect of U.S. investment in China and needs access to foreign markets. All of these realities shape its behavior just as
much as the possibility of a future confrontation with the United States. Russia, by contrast, is constrained only by how far
Mr. Putin is willing to go.

Rather than cast China as our next great enemy, American security would be better served by the realization that Russia’s
behavior only highlights the ways that China and the United States remain bound to each other despite their tensions. We
should nurture rather than endanger these ties, which are crucial for both countries to remain prosperous, stable and
secure. We should also not allow our dislike of China’s domestic system to be the basis of how we engage a country whose
centrality to the global system is second only to ours.
It’s rarely wise to take on two adversaries at once. Mr. Biden should find new ways to work with China, rather than trying
to coerce it to be different. He should take bold steps to tone down the rhetoric, such as lifting Trump-era tariffs on Chinese
goods in return for Beijing’s reduced support for Putin. Otherwise, he will miss an opportunity to be a savvy, strategic
president rather than one who fights with China at every turn.

Mr. Karabell is author of “Inside Money: Brown Brothers Harriman and the American Way of Power.” He is a former portfolio
manager of the China-U.S. Growth Fund with Fred Alger Management.

Questions
1) Why is China perceived as a greater threat to the US than Russia?
2) To what extent does the ‘Thucydides Trap’ apply to China?
3) In light of the last two paragraphs, what kind of grand strategy should President Biden follow?

41
III. Listening Comprehension

Video 1 – What is tribal sovereignty?

Native Governance Center, www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOYcgvEU0V0 (2’36) Released November 6, 2020.
1. What does ‘tribal sovereignty’ mean?
2. How many tribes has so the US government recognised so far?
3. Is tribal sovereignty consistent with the US constitution?
4. What are the advantages of tribal sovereignty?

Video 2 – Culture or subculture?

“Change the Mascot”, National Congress of American Indians
www.youtube.com/watch?v=mR-tbOxlhvE (2’00) Released January 27, 2014.

1. Give a list of Indian tribes. Use the subtitles if need be.

2. How many did you know before?
3. How does the document tackle Native American culture?

Video 3 – Native American Boarding Schools

Kare11 News, www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsRcPZp7RHA (6’21) Released November 11th, 2021.

1. What was the purpose of Indian boarding schools?

2. Why can we speak of ‘cultural genocide’?
3. Is it a past long gone?

Video 4 – History of US foreign policy

Florida PASS Program, www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LFZAzJ4-ds (8’07) Released August 14th, 2020.

1. What is the difference between isolationism and globalism in light of US history? Give examples.
2. What were the consequences of containment and détente on the US vision of the world?
3. Why was 9/11 such a turning point in US foreign policy?

IV. Cartoons
Image 1 – Nation building
www.picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/john-gast-american-progress-1872/

Using the technical elements of the

painting (frame, centre, sides,
foreground & background, corners,
colours and light) and the network of
figures of speech present (allegory,
metaphor, metonymy, syllogism),
show that this work of art serves
manifest destiny propaganda.

42
Image 2 – Americans, American Indians, Indigenous People, Natives or Redskins?
www.aistm.org/cartoons10.htm

☞ Suggested essay: Use the cartoons above and the data below to explain the current situation of the Natives.

AIAN: According to the 2020 Decennial Census, 1.3% of the U.S. population or 4.3 million people out of a
total population of 331m, is identified as American Indian or Alaska Native (AIAN), which makes them the
smallest community in the US. Alaska has the highest proportion of AIAN. Oklahoma has the largest AIAN
population.
The Navajo nation is the largest tribe before – in decreasing order - the Cherokee, the Mexican American
Indian, the Chippewa, the Sioux, the Choctaw, the Apache, the Creek, the Iroquois, and the Blackfeet.
Compared to the nation as a whole, AIAN have a lower life expectancy, are more likely to die of a heart
disease, have the highest youth suicide rate, are 5 times poorer, and attend post-secondary education at a
rate 5 times lower. (www.ncai.org)
About 30% of AIAN live on reservations, where living conditions were cited as “comparable to Third World”
in a 2014 Gallup Independent survey. (www.nativepartnership.org)
Assimilation: The action of making or becoming like; the state of being like; similarity, resemblance,
likeness.
Genocide: The deliberate and systematic extermination of an ethnic or national group.
Identity: The quality or condition of being the same in substance, composition, nature, properties, or in
particular qualities under consideration; absolute or essential sameness; oneness.
Nation: A large aggregate of communities and individuals united by factors such as common descent,
language, culture, history, or occupation of the same territory, so as to form a distinct people.
Tribe: A group of people forming a community and claiming descent from a common ancestor.
Reservation: U.S. Originally: an area of land set apart or reserved by the government for occupation by
American Indians, esp. by those of a particular tribe or nation.
Bureau of Indian Affairs: its mission is to enhance the quality of life, to promote economic opportunity,
and to carry out the responsibility to protect and improve the trust assets of American Indians, Indian tribes
and Alaska Natives. www.bia.gov
National Congress of American Indians: founded in 1944, the oldest, largest and most representative
American Indian and Alaska Native organization serving the broad interests of tribal governments and
communities. www.ncai.org

43
Image 3 – The special relationship and superpowers
Steve Bell, The Guardian, September 2nd, 2021.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/picture/2021/sep/02/steve-bell-on-the-special-relationship-and-
superpowers-cartoon

Image 4 – Domestic v. foreign policy

Kal, The Economist, March 26th 2022 www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2022/03/26/kals-cartoon

44
Image 5 – Playing with fire
Kal, The Economist, April 23rd 2022 www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/2022/04/23/kals-cartoon

☞ How do images 3, 4 & 5 reflect the clout of the US on the international stage?

V. Grammar
“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Winston Churchill, 20 August 1940.

Quantifiers
• Nature: adjectives or adjectival phrases
• Function: inform about number or quantity, therefore help answer the question ‘how much/many?’
• Syntax: placed before a noun, therefore vary whether the noun is countable or uncountable
•

NUMBER/QUANTITY COUNTABLE NOUNS UNCOUNTABLE NOUNS

= turning a noun into plural is = turning a noun into plural is
possible/you can count impossible/you cannot count

+++++ all (the) students all (the) money

every/each student IS
++++ more more
+++ many /a lot of much / a lot of
a good many students ARE
many a student IS
+++ a great deal of students a great deal of
++ a number of students
++ several
+ some some
+ a few a little
a couple of
- few little
-- fewer less
0 no no
45
Please note

- de plus en plus/de moins en moins

o De plus en plus d’étudiants : more and more students
o De moins en moins d’étudiants : fewer and fewer students ; less and less students
o De moins en moins d’argent : less and less money

- every, much, many, many a

o every is always followed by a singular noun. Remember: everyone=tout le monde (avoid all the
people)
▪ except in every 2 years, every 3 months…
▪ every other day=un jour sur deux
o much is always followed by a singular/many is always followed by a plural
o many a little boy has wanted to become a fireman

Fill in the blanks using the following quantifiers only once:

a couple of / a great deal of / all / every / few / fewer and fewer / little / many a / much / some

1. Half way through the presidential term, there remains ________________ years before the next election.
2. America being a superpower, its president is confronted with ________________ foreign policy issues.
3. __________ political analysts predicted that Donald Trump would get elected.
4. Not __________ Americans wanted to see Donald Trump elected.
5. Not __________ American wanted to see Hillary Clinton elected.
6. It may take __________ time before Americans elect a female president.
7. ________________ time have we seen the same Hollywood western telling the story of the good white American
against the bad Indian.
8. Under the manifest destiny doctrine, the political goal was to have ________________ Natives.
9. It takes __________ patience to secure an international agreement.
10. In difficult negotiations there is __________ room left for fun.

VI. Key Terms

Arms race: competition for strongest military capacity

To back: to support

Balance of power: equilibrium of power between nations

Big Stick policy: Theodore Roosevelt’s foreign policy, illustrated by an African proverb “Speak softly and carry a
big stick; you will go far.”

Blockade: the isolation of a nation, area, city, or harbour by hostile ships or forces in order to prevent the entrance
and exit of traffic and commerce

Civilian: not a member of the military

Containment: restricting spread of something

Counterpart: one that has the same functions as another

Coup d’état: when a government is overthrown/toppled illegally or by force

Crisis: irregular plural, crises

Department of State (US) /Foreign Office (UK): the federal department in the US that sets and maintains
foreign policies. Visit www.state.gov, or www.gov.uk.

To deter: to prevent or discourage from acting

46
Nuclear deterrence: the military doctrine that an enemy will be deterred from using nuclear weapons as long as
he can be destroyed as a consequence

Escalation: the act of increasing; contrary: de-escalation

To exert power: to exercise power

Foreign affairs: political field pertaining to/relating to/concerning international relations and national interests in
foreign countries

Foreign/domestic policy: the diplomatic policy of a nation in its interactions with other nations; as opposed to
the administrative decisions related to all issues and activity within a nation’s borders

(war) Hawks & Doves: conventional image used to oppose those in favour of a military intervention to those who
advocate a peaceful settlement of a conflict

Grand strategy: a term of art from academia referring to the collection of plans and policies that comprise the
state’s deliberate effort to harness political, military, diplomatic, and economic tools together to advance that state’s
national interest (like, for example, containment during the Cold War)

Hyperpower: a state that is vastly stronger than its potential rivals, and so dominates world affairs

Insurgents: rebels
Jacksonianism: foreign policy tradition that is inward looking, shuns international engagement, but prepares to
aggressively defend US national security if the country is threatened

Leading from behind: coined by a White House official to describe Pdt Obama’s actions in Lybia, marked by
hesitation, delay and indecision

Megaphone diplomacy: when negotiations are held through press releases and announcements, aiming to force
the other party into adopting a desired position

(As the saying goes) ‘Might (= power) is right’: the belief that you can do what you want because you are the
most powerful person or country

Mighty: strong, powerful

Monroe Doctrine: a cornerstone of US foreign policy as stated by Pdt James Monroe in 1823, that opposes the
influence or interference of outside powers in the Americas

Non-kinetic warfare (NKW): when war does not involve active (kinetic) military action, e.g. cyberattacks

Plot: conspiracy

Hard/Soft power: the ability to achieve one’s goals by/without military force; soft power was first coined by
Harvard Professor Joseph Nye in 1990

Sharp power: manipulation technique used by authoritarian regimes like China or Russia; coined by the National
Endowment for Democracy in 2017

Smart power: combination of hard and soft power

Quagmire: a situation from which extrication is very difficult, e.g. the Vietnam War

To retaliate: to counterattack

The Talion law: « An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. »

Retrenchment: strategy designed to reduce a country’s international and military costs and commitments.

Rogue (= dishonest) state: a state whose foreign policy poses a threat to neighbouring or other states, through
its aggressive intent, build-up of weapons (particularly WMD), or association with terrorism

ROW: Rest of the World; row pronounced /rəʊ/ means quarrel

Secretary of State (US)/Foreign Secretary (UK): the one in charge of foreign affairs at the head of the
Department of State/Foreign Office

To settle a conflict: to conclude a dispute

To sit at the table of negotiations: to come together/to convene in order to come to an agreement e.g. a peace
treaty

Showdown: confrontation

Stalemate: deadlock

To wage war: to engage in a conflict

47
Warfare: the waging of war against an enemy; armed conflict

Asymmetrical war: war between belligerents whose relative military power differs significantly, or whose strategy
or tactics differ significantly

Proxy war: a war that results when opposing powers use third parties as substitutes for fighting each other directly

Warmonger/peacemaker: somebody who advocates war/peace

Wilsonianism: the conviction that US foreign policy should be the promotion of democracy around the world as
stated by Pdt Woodrow Wilson’s in his 1918 Fourteen Points Speech

To withdraw (pull out) troops: to retreat

WMD: Weapons of Mass Destruction

Unipolar/bipolar/multipolar world: distribution of power in which one/two/several state(s) exercise(s) most of

the cultural, economic, and military influence

☞ Suggested essay Using the terms above, how would you describe America’s current foreign policy? What
geopolitical challenges is the US confronted with?

VII. Going Further

Read
• Ce qui est arrivé à Wounded Knee : L’enquête inédite sur le dernier massacre des Indiens, Laurent OLIVIER,
2021. Casts light on the controversial responsibility of the Sioux or the army in that landmark massacre.
• Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West, Dee BROWN, 1970. A classic.
• US Foreign Policy, Michael COX & Doug STOKES, 2018. A reference textbook.
• Foreign Affairs. Founded in 1922, leading magazine in American foreign policy and global affairs, published
every 2 months by the Council on Foreign Relations, accessible on Factiva via the ENT or via individual
subscription at www.foreignaffairs.com. See also www.cfr.org, the Council on Foreign Relations website.
• Foreign Policy. Founded in 1970, award-winning bi-monthly publication available in print and at
www.foreignpolicy.com.

Watch (just a short list)

• Western films. More often than not, a conventional demonisation of the savage Indian against the white man.
• Dancing with Wolves, by Kevin Costner, 1990. The turning point in Hollywood’s vision of the American Indian.
• Far and Away, by Ron Howard, 1992. Illustrates the land run of 1893 as a further consequence of the 1862
Homestead Act which deprived the Natives from their land.
• Hostiles, by Scott Cooper, 2018. A cathartic exploration of the American west.
• Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, by Stanley Kubrick, 1964. A classic
of Cold War fiction.
• Apocalypse Now, by Francis Ford Coppola, 1979. A classic about the Vietnam War.
• Platoon, by Oliver Stone, 1986. Another classic about the Vietnam war.
• The Good Shepherd, by Robert De Niro, 2006. About the CIA.
• Charlie Wilson’s War, by Mike Nichols, 2007. A reality-based Cold War film.
• Argo, by Ben Affleck, 2012. About the 1979 hostage crisis at the US embassy in Tehran.
• Dirty Wars, by Richard Rowley, 2013. Documentary film about the War on Terror.
• Narcos, on Netflix, 2015-2017. About the fight against drug lord Pablo Escobar from the point of view of an
American Drug Enforcement Administration agent.
• Homeland, on Netflix, 2011-2020. About the CIA and the war against terrorism.

Visit
The National Museum of the American Indian, in New York and/or Washington, D. C. https://americanindian.si.edu

48
 UNIT 7 – CIVIL RIGHTS
(Focusing on Race Relations and LGBTQ Rights)

I. Facts
1. Definitions

A mention of Civil Rights in the U.S. usually calls to mind various events and key figures in the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Yet, the notion of civil rights is one that applies to many more contexts and
categories of people. It is also often used interchangeably with civil liberties. A few definitions are therefore in
order, starting with dictionary definitions of civil rights:
• “the nonpolitical rights of a citizen, especially the rights of personal liberty guaranteed to U.S. citizens by
the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution and by Acts of Congress” (Merriam-Webster)
• “the rights that every person in a society has, for example to be treated equally, to be able to vote, work,
etc. whatever their sex, race or religion” (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary)
• “the personal rights of the individual citizen, in most countries upheld by law, as in the U.S.” (Collins English Dictionary)
• “A civil right is an enforceable right or privilege, which if interfered with by another gives rise to an action
for injury.” (Legal Information Institute)

The following paragraph from Encyclopedia Britannica explains the distinction between civil rights and civil liberties:

“Civil rights are an essential component of democracy; when individuals are being denied opportunities to
participate in political society, they are being denied their civil rights. In contrast to civil liberties, which are
freedoms that are secured by placing restraints on government, civil rights are secured by positive
government action, often in the form of legislation. Civil rights laws attempt to guarantee full and equal
citizenship for people who have traditionally been discriminated against on the basis of some group
characteristic. When the enforcement of civil rights is found by many to be inadequate, a civil rights
movement may emerge in order to call for equal application of the laws without discrimination.”

As the Encyclopedia Britannica definition indicates, when guarantees of equal citizenship are lacking or when
civil rights are not equally or properly enforced, civil rights movements and legislation often expand. This has been
the case in the U.S. for various groups with a history of being discriminated against. This particular unit mainly
focuses on racial/ethnic minority groups and the LGBTQ community throughout various jurisdictions. That being
understood, civil rights campaigns have historically existed to advocate for the rights of other groups such as women,
the disabled, immigrants and other minorities. Moreover, many of the current movements overlap and adopt an
intersectional approach.

2. Statistics
One of the ways of measuring racial and ethnic diversity in the U.S. is to focus on census figures. The last census
took place in 2020. There has been criticism of the way race is defined in the census, which can lead to confusion
and misleading returns. In 2020, people could choose to indicate their “race and Hispanic origin”, the five races
being white, Black or African-American, American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other
Pacific Islander. “Hispanic” is not considered as a race but an ethnicity; nevertheless, a lot of respondents who
identify as Hispanic ticked the “Other race” box or “two or more races”.1

Bases on estimates from the 2020 Census2, here is the racial and ethnic composition of the U.S. population:

1
https://www.census.gov/topics/population/race/about.html
2
https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045221
49
 While the census does not collect information on sexual orientation or gender identity, polls and academic
research aim at providing resources for laws, policies, and judicial decisions that could affect the LGBTQ population.
As of 2021, around 7.1% of the American population identify as LGBTQ3.

Source: Gallup

3
https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx
Interesting state-by-state data can be found here: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/quick-facts/us-state-data/ and
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/visualization/lgbt-stats/?topic=LGBT#density, as well as a 2022 report the transgender population in the
U.S.: https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/
50
 3. Basic Milestones
It is impossible to sum up various rights movements in a few sentences. This section therefore only refers to
key concepts or events. There are many angles from which to look at any movement for civil rights: political,
economic, historical, cultural, linguistic, geographic etc. So as to apprehend the complexity of the world, scholars
have coined the term intersectionality4,which translates to the overlapping categories of oppression fought against
by civil rights groups, such as race, nationality or immigration status, religion, sexual orientation, sex or gender
identity to name a few.

When it comes to race relations in the U.S., the focus is often on black-white relations over the centuries 5: from
slavery to the Civil War and Reconstruction, from Jim Crow and segregation to the Civil Rights Movement and
from the Civil Rights era to the current movements (Color of Change, Black Lives Matter, M4BL) which challenge
systemic racism 6, police brutality and mass incarceration among other issues.
In order to study the movement(s) for LGBTQ rights in the U.S., it is historically relevant to read about the rise
of gay and lesbian associations from the mid-1920s to the 1950s, the repercussions of the raid on the Stonewall Inn
in New York in 1969 and the first Pride parade in 1970, the removal of homosexuality from the list of mental
disorders, the stigma against homosexuals during the emergence of AIDS in the 1980s, the fight for the repeal of
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the inclusion of transgender service members in the Army, as well as advocacy for state
legislatures and Congress to pass hate crime and anti-discrimination laws, the movement for the formal recognition
and eventual legalization of same-sex marriage, as well as the current push for transgender rights.

Exercise: LGBTQ+ Rights Quiz

Circle the correct answer(s) to the following questions to recap LGBTQ rights milestones.

1. Which New York bar did the police raid on June 28, 1969?
a. The Stonehenge Inn b. The Stonemason Inn
c. The Stonewall Inn d. The Stonehead Inn

2. What state was the first to allow same-sex marriage?

a. Vermont b. Massachusetts
c. Hawaii d. Connecticut

3. What year did the first Pride parade take place?

a. 1975 b. 1970
c. 1983 d. 1985

4. How did same-sex marriage become legal throughout the U.S.?

a. Through an Act of Congress b. All 50 states and D.C. passed bills to
allow it
c. The Supreme Court recognized it as a d. Through an amendment to the U.S.
constitutional right Constitution

5. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination based on:
a. sex b. sexual orientation
c. gender identity d. all of the above

6. Under what President was Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repealed?

a. President Barack Obama b. President George H.W. Bush
c. President George W. Bush d. President Bill Clinton

7. How many states have anti-discrimination laws protecting LGBT communities?

a. 0 b. 42
c. 27 d. 21

4
First popularized in 1989 by American lawyer and UCLA School of Law professor Kimberlé Crenshaw as applied to race and gender studies
5
more resources at https://www.ushistory.org/us/57f.asp
6
President Johnson’s administration assembled a commission responsible for a landmark report about the causes of racial unrest in the late 1960s.
It concluded that institutions and society had led to these riots since it had created, maintained and condoned segregation, racism and cycles of
poverty. (The Kerner Report. (2016). United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, p. 209)
51
 8. When was homosexuality removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders?
a. 1968 b. 1973
c. 1985 d. 1992

9. How many LGBTQ Representatives and Senators are there in the current Congress?
a. 0 b. 17
c. 11 d. 28

10. What state was the first to recognize a third gender: nonbinary?
a. California b. New York
c. Ohio d. Oregon

II. Reading Comprehension

Text 1
“Congress Passes Historic Bill Making Lynching a Federal Hate Crime”
Theodore R. Johnson, The Bulwark, March 8, 2022

After hundreds of attempts across more than a century, a federal antilynching bill now awaits the president’s signature.

Yesterday, Congress accomplished something that it has failed to do over the course of our nation’s history: After
nearly 250 attempts going back 122 years, it passed a bill making lynching a federal crime.
Last Monday, the last day of Black History Month, the House of Representatives passed the Emmett Till Antilynching
Act by 422 to 3. The Senate followed last night, passing the bill by unanimous consent.
It is a remarkable fact, given the American history of mob violence directed at people because of their race or
ethnicity, that there has never been a person federally convicted of the crime. Once President Joe Biden puts his
signature on the bill, lynching will join the other acts defined as hate crimes under federal law.
The path to this historic day was long and winding and littered with intransigence.
Two years ago, the last attempt at passing a version of this bill was blocked by Senator Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who
declared that that version contained unnecessarily broad definitions of lynching. He pointed, for example, to a
provision that suggested that conspiring to damage religious property or intimidating someone attempting to vote
would qualify as lynching. He defended his position, saying, “I think that’s a crime to deface a church, but if you
were one of the Black Lives Matter folks at Lafayette Square and you painted ‘BLM Forever’ or something on a
church, that could be considered lynching under this bill.”
His concerns were addressed: Paul joined the three black sitting senators—Republican Senator Tim Scott and
Democratic Senators Cory Booker and Raphael Warnock—in cosponsoring the version that just passed. In
a statement, Paul said he was pleased “to strengthen the language of this bill, which will ensure that federal law will
define lynching as the absolutely heinous crime that it is.”
The first congressional attempt to pass antilynching legislation came in 1900. More than 1,100 black Americans had
been lynched in the previous decade (as well as more than 400 whites). But when Rep. George Henry White, a black
Republican from North Carolina, introduced an antilynching bill, white segregationist Democrats blocked it in
committee. In 1918, when there was not a single black American in Congress, Missouri Rep. Leonidas Dyer
introduced an antilynching bill that four years later passed the Republican-controlled House. But it was promptly
filibustered in the Senate by white segregationist Southerners who declared the matter an issue for the states and
not the federal government.
President Franklin Roosevelt, to the displeasure of his wife Eleanor and the black leaders who met with him, did not
back a 1935 effort for fear of losing white votes in the South.
In 1955, Emmett Till, a 14-year-old black boy from Illinois, was lynched in Mississippi after being accused of using
vulgar language toward a white woman—a woman who later admitted she made the whole thing up. His extremely
brutal and public lynching further energized the civil rights movement. But it did not compel Congress to act on
antilynching legislation.
All told, antilynching bills were introduced hundreds of times in Congress, and they always failed. Until now.
Some commentators have argued that the antilynching bill isn’t necessary—not because they agree with the
segregationists from a century ago but because they argue that lynching is already illegal. Indeed, Paul made this
assertion in 2020. Murder is a crime in all fifty states; nearly all states have laws on the books criminalizing race-
based violence; and the revision of federal hate crimes statutes in 2009—with the passage of a bill named for James

52
Byrd Jr. and Matthew Shepard—clarified the ways in which racially motivated violence can be prosecuted as a federal
crime. What then, opponents ask, is the point of passing this new bill focusing specifically on lynching?
The Emmett Till Antilynching Act defines lynching as the conspiracy to commit a hate crime that results in death or
serious bodily injury and carries a penalty of not more than 30 years in prison. It is the “conspiracy” aspect of the
crime that distinguishes it textually from other hate crimes.
But more than that, naming the crime in federal law carries tremendous weight, both legal and social. As I
have written previously, it matters that people who violently assault Asian Americans or Jewish people are charged
with hate crimes and not just assault. It matters that we can convict people of terrorism instead of just mass murder.
And it matters that the three men who followed Ahmaud Arbery, accosted and detained him, and then killed him
were charged with federal hate crimes, but could not be charged with lynching. The social stigmas and penalty
associated with being a terrorist or a lyncher are meaningful and a declaration of a society’s values and norms. For
a nation with our history, the importance of this legislation extends far beyond the letter of the law.
Democratic Rep. Bobby Rush, who introduced the bill in the House, said after its passage, “Today is a day of
enormous consequence for our nation … the House has sent a resounding message that our nation is finally reckoning
with one of the darkest and most horrific periods of our history, and that we are morally and legally committed to
changing course.” Last night, Sen. Tim Scott, who has sponsored multiple attempts at antilynching bills, said upon
the bill’s passage in that chamber, “Tonight the Senate passed my anti-lynching legislation, taking a necessary and
long-overdue step toward a more unified and just America.”
We should be proud of our country today. Our generation has managed to do something previous generations
neglected or could not manage. By squarely facing the ugliness of lynching—the horror of the violence and the
oppressive fear it created—and declaring it incompatible with who we now are as a people, we have revealed a little
more of the beauty in the nation’s progress.

Theodore R. Johnson is a writer at The Bulwark and the director of the Fellows Program at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Questions:
1. What bill has Congress passed? Why had the previous attempt in 2020 failed?
2. Why does Johnson say, “the path to this historic day was long”?
3. Why do some think the bill is unnecessary and how does Johnson answer their arguments?
4. Discuss the underlined sentences.

Text 2
“Supreme Court Allows Elite High School’s New Admissions Rules”
Adam Liptak, The New York Times, April 25, 2022

A group including parents of Asian American students challenged the new criteria at Thomas Jefferson High School
for Science and Technology in Virginia.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday temporarily approved new admissions criteria at an elite public
high school in Virginia that eliminated standardized tests, clearing the way for the use of a policy intended to diversify
the student body in choosing the class that will enter in the fall.
The court’s ruling rejected a request for emergency relief from a group that objected to the new rules, saying they
harmed Asian American students.
The court’s brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons, which is typical when the court acts on emergency
applications asking the justices to intervene while appeals are moving forward. The court’s three most conservative
members — Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Neil M. Gorsuch — said they would have reinstated
a trial judge’s ruling blocking the new criteria. They, too, did not explain their thinking.
The school, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va., known as T.J., changed
its admissions requirements in 2020 in the wake of protests over the murder of George Floyd.
The school, among the best in the nation, is in Fairfax County, outside Washington, and accepts students from the
county and from several surrounding counties and cities. Like admissions criteria at other elite public high schools
across the country, the school’s policies have been at the center of fierce debates among politicians and parents
about whether and how to diversify enrollment.
A related issue is already before the Supreme Court, which will hear challenges to admissions programs at Harvard
and the University of North Carolina in the fall. Those programs explicitly take account of race as one factor among many.
The high school’s new program, by contrast, uses race-neutral criteria. In addition to doing away with standardized
tests, the program sets aside spots for the top 1.5 percent of students from each public middle school in the area,
leaving about 100 openings for everyone else, including applicants from private schools and students who have been
home-schooled.

53
Admissions administrators also consider “experience factors,” such as whether students are poor or are learning
English or are attending a middle school that was “historically underrepresented” at the high school. The
administrators are not told the race, sex or name of any applicant.
After the changes went into effect in 2021, the percentage of Asian American students dropped to 54 percent from
73 percent. The percentage of Black students grew to 7 percent from no more than 2 percent; the percentage of
Hispanic students grew to 11 percent from 3 percent; and the percentage of white students grew to 22 percent from 18 percent.
Across all of Fairfax County’s public schools, about 37 percent of students are white, 27 percent are Hispanic, 20
percent are Asian and 10 percent are Black.
The changes were challenged by a group called Coalition for TJ, which includes some American parents of Asian
American students and which is represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation, a conservative legal organization that
says it defends Americans from government overreach.
The group argued that the new admissions process amounted to race discrimination aimed at Asian American students.
Judge Claude M. Hilton of the Federal District Court in Alexandria ruled for the challengers, saying that the changes
were “racially motivated.” The discussion of the planned changes, he wrote, was “infected with talk of racial balancing
from its inception.”
“It is clear that Asian American students are disproportionately harmed by the board’s decision to overhaul T.J.
admissions,” he wrote. “Currently and in the future, Asian American applicants are disproportionately deprived of a
level playing field.”
A divided three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in Richmond, Va., stayed
Judge Hilton’s decision while an appeal from the school board moved forward. That had the practical effect of keeping
the new procedures in place for a second admissions cycle.
In a concurring opinion, Judge Toby J. Heytens wrote that the high school’s new admissions program was lawful.
“The Supreme Court has repeatedly stated that it is constitutionally permissible to seek to increase racial (and other)
diversity through race-neutral means,” he wrote. “Indeed, it has required public officials to consider such measures
before turning to race conscious alternatives.”
Judge Heytens added that it would be impractical to switch back to the old criteria so late in the cycle, with
admissions decisions for the fall due this month. “None of the current applicants was required to take the formerly
mandated standardized tests, two-thirds of which are no longer commercially available,” he wrote.
Lawyers for the school board told the Supreme Court that a ruling for the challengers would threaten race-neutral
means of achieving diversity that the court had at least tacitly endorsed. In Fisher v. University of Texas in 2016,
for instance, the court rejected a challenge to an admissions program that included, among other elements,
guaranteed admission to top students at every high school in the state.
The school board’s brief added that the percentage of Asian American students receiving offers of admission under
the new program “substantially exceeded their share of the applicant pool,” adding that “Asian Americans were the
only racial group that was substantially overrepresented compared to its share of the applicant pool.”
“Moreover, the Asian American admissions rate under the plan was 19.48 percent, well within the historical 2004-
2020 range of 16.8 percent to 25 percent,” the brief said. “Those facts alone foreclose the coalition’s claim that
Asian Americans were disadvantaged in the admissions process.”

Questions:
1. What policy was being challenged in this case? What effect had it had since its implementation?
2. Who challenged the policy and why? What did the lower courts decide and why?
3. What did the U.S. Supreme Court decide? What larger context does this case fit into?
4. What do you think of the strategy adopted by Thomas Jefferson High School?

Text 3
“Alabama’s Transgender Youth Can Use Medicine to Transition, Judge Rules”
Rick Rojas, The New York Times, May 14, 2022

A federal judge temporarily halted part of a new law that prevents doctors from prescribing puberty blockers and
hormone therapies to transgender youth. He upheld a ban on sex-altering operations.

A federal judge late Friday blocked portions of an Alabama law that prevent medical professionals from providing
care that helps transgender children and teenagers transition, making it a felony offense that is punishable by up to
10 years in prison.
The severity of the punishment — which also includes threats of criminal prosecution for parents and educators who
support a child in transitioning — has stood out even amid a wave of legislation by conservative lawmakers that has
focused on transgender young people, including efforts to thwart access to what doctors call gender-affirming care
and barring some transgender students from participating in school sports.

54
The Alabama law, which was signed by Gov. Kay Ivey and went into effect on May 8, was challenged in federal court
by several families with transgender children, physicians who work with transgender patients and the U.S. Justice Department.
In an order issued late Friday night, Judge Liles C. Burke of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
Alabama temporarily halted the state from enforcing parts of the law that make it a felony to prescribe hormones
or puberty-blocking medication while the court challenge continued.
Judge Burke found that particular element of the law most likely unconstitutional, writing that parents have a
fundamental right to direct the care of their children within medically accepted standards and that limiting care to
gender-nonconforming children amounted to sex discrimination.
However, Judge Burke ruled that other parts of the law remained in place. Medical professionals are still forbidden
to perform gender-affirming surgical procedures on children. (Doctors had testified that such operations were not
being performed on children in Alabama before the law had been enacted.) And educators and school nurses are
not allowed to withhold — or “encourage or coerce” students to withhold — from their parents “the fact that the
minor’s perception of his or her gender or sex is inconsistent with the minor’s sex.”
Supporters of the law, named the “Vulnerable Child Compassion and Protection Act,” contend that it was intended
to safeguard children, arguing that the treatment was experimental and that doctors were “aggressively pushing”
minors to take medication to transition. “Alabama children face irreversible damage from unproven, sterilizing and permanently
scarring medical interventions pushed by ideological interest groups,” lawyers representing the state said in court documents.
But in his ruling, Judge Burke, who was appointed by President Donald J. Trump, wrote that the state failed to
produce “credible evidence to show that transitioning medications are ‘experimental.’”
“Parents, pediatricians and psychologists — not the state or this court — are best qualified to determine whether
transitioning medications are in a child’s best interest on a case-by-case basis,” Judge Burke wrote. He added that
the state’s “proffered purposes — which amount to speculative, future concerns about the health and safety of
unidentified children — are not genuinely compelling justifications based on the record evidence.”
The judge also said the medical establishment largely endorsed transition medications as “well-established,
evidence-based treatments for gender dysphoria in minors.”
The American Medical Association has criticized legislative efforts like the Alabama law as “government intrusion
into the practice of medicine that is detrimental to the health of transgender and gender-diverse children and adults.”
In a letter to the National Governors Association last year, the organization said that transition-related care was
medically necessary and that forgoing it could have devastating consequences. Transgender people are up to three
times as likely as the general population to report or be diagnosed with mental health disorders and have a
heightened risk of suicide.
A study published this month that provided one of the first large data sets on transgender young people found that
children who go through a so-called social transition at a young age are likely to continue identifying by the new
gender after five years. (…)
The U.S. Justice Department had also joined the challenge in Alabama, contending that the law violates the
Constitution’s equal protection clause because it discriminates against transgender youth and “denies necessary
medical care to children based solely on who they are.”
Last year, a federal judge found that a similar law in Arkansas “would cause irreparable harm” as he blocked it from
being enforced. The Arkansas law, known as the “Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act,” was passed by
lawmakers after overriding a veto from Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, who contended that the legislation “puts
a very vulnerable population in a more difficult position.”
Still, elected officials in conservative states have pursued a range of aggressive measures this year meant not just
to limit transgender youth’s access to medical care but also to penalize parents and medical professionals who are
helping them transition.
In Idaho, lawmakers advanced legislation that would alter the state’s genital mutilation law to make it an offense
punishable to up to life in prison to provide gender-affirming care or help a child leave the state to obtain it.
In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott told state agencies that medical care helping a child transition should be considered
abuse and investigated as such. The order had been stalled by a state court, but the Texas Supreme Court ruled on
Friday that child abuse investigations over transition care could continue.
Those measures have been part of a broader effort by conservative lawmakers that critics argue is intended to
marginalize the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender communities.
On the same day that Ms. Ivey signed the Alabama bill on medical care, she also approved legislation that requires
students to use restrooms and locker rooms for the sex listed on their original birth certificates, as well as limits on
classroom discussions on gender and sexual orientation — a version of what critics call a “Don’t Say Gay” measure
that has been enacted by other states. (…)

Questions:
1. What Alabama law was being challenged in this case? What similar state laws does the article mention?
2. What did Judge Burke decide and why?
3. Look up what the Equal Protection Clause is and discuss the underlined sentence.

55
III. Listening Comprehension

Audio 1
“Confederate monuments are removed as Americans consider how to remember the past”,
Morning Edition, NPR, December 30, 2021
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/30/1069027408/confederate-monuments-are-removed-as-americans-
consider-how-to-remember-the-past

Questions:
1. How many and which types of monuments have been removed/renamed?
2. What events have catalyzed these changes?
3. How have public officials in Alabama reacted?
4. What has the approach been in Charlottesville?

Video 1
“Breaking down the case: Guilty verdict in federal hate crimes trial over killing of Ahmaud
Arbery”, 11Alive, February 22, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWDtzh8wg5g&t=481s

Questions:
1. What conclusion does Page Pate draw from the time it took the jury to reach a verdict in this case?
2. What new details were introduced during the federal trial?
3. What do the host and Pate say about the composition of the jury?
4. What charges were the three men convicted of?
5. What do they say about the role video played in this case?
6. Why do they think the federal government found it important to bring those charges?
7. What does Pate say about the frequency of federal hate crimes prosecutions?
8. Why does he say this hate crime prosecution was more successful than usual?

Video 2
“How Biden’s executive order will impact policing”, PBS NewsHour, May 26, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gj_D5MJhOJs

Questions:
1. What does President Biden’s policing executive order provide for?
2. Does Christy Lopez this federal order can have an effect at state and local level? If so, what does she think
is key to it having an effect?
3. What new database does the order create? How likely does Lopez think it is to be more efficient than past
efforts?
4. What does she make of the fact several law enforcement organizations approved of the order?
5. What additional provisions does she think are worth focusing on?

Video 3
“TEAM 10: Racist language in real estate deeds”, ABC 10 News, September 25, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXB3DCgrhXc

Questions:
1. What issue does the report focus on?
2. Who’s Kathleen Harmon and what happened when she moved to the Skyline neighborhood of San Diego?
3. How was the situation different for home buyers in the early 19 th century?
4. What did a report published by the city of San Diego find?
5. What does Derrick Luckett say about the effect of the covenants?
6. What did the U.S. Supreme Court decide in 1948?
7. Do such clauses still exist today and what legislation has Assemblymember Kevin McCardy introduced?

56
Video 4
“The history of anti-Asian hate crimes in America”, CBS Sunday Morning, August 1, 2021
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JX-GD4fGFHk

Questions:
1. How many Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders are there in the U.S.? How has the hate crimes rate against
them increased recently?
2. How might that be the result of recent events and of a long history of discrimination/stereotyping AAPI individuals?
3. How did those stereotypes crystallize around the killing of Vincent Chin in 1982?
4. What happened in March 2021 and what action did Congress take?
5. What does Zia think might help address violence against the AAPI community?

Video 5 - The Florida Parental Rights in Education Law

• “VERIFY fact sheet: Florida’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill, explained”, 10 Tampa Bay, February 25,
2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=romKodGoEF0
• “Parental rights? Or an attack on the LGBTQ community?: Breaking down HB1557”, ABC
Action News, March 25, 2022 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuZ3hwqW8Os

Watch both videos and answer the following questions:

1. What two provisions of the Parental Rights in Education bill have drawn the most attention/controversy?
2. What arguments are given/points are made for and against the bill?

Video 6 - Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s New Policy on Gender-Affirming Care

a. “Transgender families in limbo after Texas directive”, ABC News, June 2, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhTkjgoFtq8

Questions:
1. Who are Kimberly and Kai Shapley and how does Kimberly describe her own evolution?
2. What letter has Governor Greg Abbott sent to the Department for Family and Protective Service?
3. How does Kimberly’s fear reflect statistics about transgender youth?
4. What type of other bills affecting trans people have been introduced this legislative session?
5. What action has Amber Briggle taken and how does she say Abbott’s letter has affected her family?
6. What does Channa Lloyd say is Attorney General Ken Paxton’s main argument?
7. What has the Texas Supreme Court decided?

b. “Texas allows investigations of trans families to continue. Here’s what it means for both
sides.”, KHOU 11, May 14, 2022
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=incBau0uKTk

Questions:
1. What did the Texas Supreme Court decide and why? How limited is the ruling?
2. What were the reactions on either side?

57
IV. Cartoons
a. b.

c.
d.

e. f.

58
V. Grammar
The Passive Voice
L’anglais de A à Z, Units 283-287 Structure: BE (conjugated) + past participle

A. Transform the following sentences using the passive voice.

1. By 1800, slave traders had transported 10 to 15 million blacks as slaves to the Americas, representing
perhaps one-third of those they had seized in Africa. (Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States)
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
2. Harriet Tubman conducted the Underground Railroad. She escorted more than 300 slaves to freedom thanks
to this network from the early to the mid nineteenth century.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
3. In 2015, the Supreme Court found same-sex marriage bans unconstitutional in the landmark Obergefell v.
Hodges decision.
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
4. They are making demands for reparations “for 250 years of slavery, 90 years of Jim Crow, 60 years of
separate but equal, 35 years of state-sanctioned redlining.”
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

B. Use the verb in brackets and complete the sentences in the passive voice.

a. It ………………… (say) that American voters would be more willing to elect a gay president than a woman president.
b. Bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth ………………………. (discuss) in various states at the moment.
c. Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man …………………………… (publish) in 1952 and ……………………………………. (immediately
hail) as a masterpiece. In it, unparalleled truths ………………. (tell) about the nature of bigotry and its effects on
the minds of both victims and perpetrators.
d. According to popular view, if the Stonewall raid had not happened, the gay rights movement
………………………………………… (recognize) in a broader culture.
e. “Where justice ……………………… (deny), where poverty ………………. (enforce), where ignorance prevails, and
where any class ………………. (make) to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade
them, neither persons, nor property will be safe.” (Frederick Douglass, Narrative of the Life of Frederick
Douglass, an American Slave, 1845)

VI. Key Terms

☞ These are terms you can encounter when reading about civil rights issues in the U.S.

Affirmative action: A set of procedures designed to eliminate unlawful discrimination between applicants, remedy
the results of such prior discrimination, and prevent such discrimination in the future. Applicants may be seeking
admission to an educational program or looking for professional employment. It can be targeted to ethnic minorities
or to other groups like women or war veterans. (Civil liberties.org)
Black Lives Matter (BLM): an international activist movement, originating in the African-American community,
that campaigns against violence and systemic racism toward black people. BLM regularly holds protests against
police killings of black people and broader issues of racial profiling, police brutality, and racial inequality in the United
States criminal justice system.
Civil Liberties: fundamental individual rights, such as freedom of speech or religion, especially as protected from
excessive governmental intrusion by constitutional guarantees. (American Heritage Dictionary)
Civil Rights: rights belonging to an individual by virtue of citizenship, especially the fundamental freedoms and
privileges guaranteed by the 13th and 14th amendments to the Constitution and subsequent Acts of Congress.
(American Heritage Dictionary)
Cisgender: a gender identity, or performance in a gender role, that society deems to match the person’s assigned
sex at birth. (LGBTQIA Resource Center Glossary, UC Davis)
Deadname: refer to a transgender person by the name and/or pronouns they used before transitioning to the
gender they currently identify as. (Fairlex Dictionary of Idioms)
Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: policy adopted during the Clinton presidency which forbade gays, lesbians and bisexuals
from openly serving in the military. It was repealed in 2011.

59
Driving While Black (or brown): a form of racial profiling. It is a play on the real offense “driving while
intoxicated”. The irony of the phrase suggests that being black (or brown) is a crime.
Gender: the behavioral, cultural, or psychological traits typically associated with one sex (Merriam-Webster). /
A social construct used to classify a person as a man, woman or some other identity. (LGBTQIA Resource Center
Glossary, UC Davis)
Gender Identity: a sense of one’s self as trans*, genderqueer, woman, man, or some other identity, which may
or may not correspond with the sex or gender one is assigned at birth. (LGBTQIA Resource Center Glossary, UC Davis)
Gender nonconforming (or Gender Non(-)Conforming): person who does not subscribe to gender expressions
or roles expected of them by society. (LGBTQIA Resource Center Glossary, UC Davis)
Implicit Bias: term referring to relatively unconscious and relatively automatic features of prejudiced judgment
and social behavior. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) Implicit bias is an unconscious, unintentional bias. Unlike
explicit bias, which an individual is conscious and knowledgeable of, implicit bias exists when an individual does not
have direct control or understanding of their perceptions and motivations. (Cornell University Law School)
Intersectionality: a framework for understanding how multiple categories of identity (such as race, gender and
class) interact in ways that create complex systems of oppression and power. (American Heritage Dictionary)
Jim Crow laws: adopted by States in the South of the US after 1876. They claimed to defend a “separate but
equal status” for black people and imposed segregation in schools, public places, public transport, restrooms…for
black and white citizens.
LGBTQQIA+: abbreviation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex and Asexual/Allies.
“+” stands for what’s not included in the acronym such as Transsexual, Pansexual and 2-Spirit among others.
Lynching: Violent punishment or execution, without due process, for real or alleged crimes. (West’s Encyclopedia of
American Law) / put to death (often by hanging) by mob action without legal approval or permission (Merriam-Webster)
Miscegenation: interbreeding between members of different races.
Nonbinary (or non(-)binary): relating to a person who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that is
neither entirely male or entirely female (Merriam-Webster)
Queer: One definition of queer is abnormal or strange. Historically, queer has been used as an epithet/slur against
people whose gender, gender expression and/or sexuality do not conform to dominant expectations. Some people
have reclaimed the word queer and self identify as such. For some, this reclamation is a celebration of not fitting
into norms/being “abnormal.” (LGBTQIA Resource Center Glossary, UC Davis)
Race relations: forms of behavior which arise from the contacts and resulting interaction of people with varied
physical and cultural characteristics. As defined by Robert E. Park (1939), the concept refers to all relationships
which are capable of producing race conflict and race consciousness and which determine the relative status of
groups in the community. The term is variously employed to cover forms of intergroup, interethnic, and majority-
minority relationships. (encyclopedia.com)
Racial profiling: discriminatory practice by law enforcement officials of targeting individuals for suspicion of crime
based on the individual's race, ethnicity, religion or national origin. (ACLU)
Reconstruction: In U.S. history, the period (1865–77) that followed the American Civil War and during which
attempts were made to redress the inequities of slavery and its political, social, and economic legacy and to solve
the problems arising from the readmission to the Union of the 11 states that had seceded at or before the outbreak
of war. (Britannica.com) “A significant number of African Americans held public office, including two U.S. senators
and 20 members of the House, between 1870 and 1900. But when the federal government withdrew its support for
Reconstruction in the late 1800s, the gains made by African Americans were quickly stripped away and replaced by
a patchwork system of legal segregation (including, in some instances, legal segregation of Latinos, Asians, and
Native Americans as well).” (Civilrights.org)
Redlining: Redlining can be defined as a discriminatory practice that consists of the systematic denial of services
such as mortgages, insurance loans, and other financial services to residents of certain areas, based on their race
or ethnicity. (Legal Information Institute)
Sex: either of the two major forms of individuals that occur in many species and that are distinguished
respectively as female or male especially on the basis of their reproductive organs and structures (Merriam-
Webster) / a medically constructed categorization. Sex is often assigned based on the appearance of the genitalia,
either in ultrasound or at birth. (LGBTQIA Resource Center Glossary, UC Davis)
Sexuality: quality of being sexual / a manner of being sexual or engaging in sexual activity / sexual activity
(American Heritage Dictionary)
Sexual Orientation: enduring emotional, romantic, sexual or affectional attraction or non-attraction to other
people. (LGBTQIA Resource Center Glossary, UC Davis)
Systemic (or Institutional) Racism: Racial discrimination that has become established as normal behavior within
a society or organization. (Oxford Living Dictionaries) Institutional racism refers to the policies and practices within
and across institutions that, intentionally or not, produce outcomes that chronically favor, or put a racial group at a
disadvantage. Poignant examples of institutional racism can be found in school disciplinary policies in which students
of color are punished at much higher rates that their white counterparts, in the criminal justice system, and within
many employment sectors in which day-to-day operations, as well as hiring and firing practices can significantly
disadvantage workers of color. (The Aspen Institute)
Transgender: relating to a person whose gender identity [and/or expression] does not conform to that typically
associated with the sex to which they were assigned at birth. (American Heritage Dictionary)
60
 UNIT 8 — GUNS
I. Facts

A. The 2nd Amendment to the American Constitution.

It is part of the U.S. Bill of Rights and was drafted by Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State, on December 15th,
1791. It defines the United States’ constitutional position on guns but there are major disagreements over the
interpretation of the text.

“A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State,

the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Discussion questions:
1. What do you think the words “well-regulated militia” referred to in 1791? And today?
2. What “arms” were available in 1791? What about now?

B. Historical and legal background.

(adapted from: http://blogs.kged.org/americas-loaded-history-with-guns/ and
https://time.com/5169210/us-gun-control-laws-history-timeline/)

1791- The 2nd Amendment is ratified.

The amendment results, in part, from the Founding Fathers’ interest in enabling armed citizen militias during
peacetime, as an alternative to maintaining a powerful standing army.
1835- The invention of the revolver by Samuel Colt in 1835 helps boost the buying and selling of
handguns.
1865 -The Civil War marks a turning point. Freed Slaves are Denied the Right to Own Guns.
The Civil War led to the mass production of weapons. After it was over, soldiers were allowed to take their guns
home. Following the end of the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, every former Confederate state enacted its
own set of Black Codes that were intended to deny basic rights to newly freed blacks. In many states, the codes
prohibited blacks from owning firearms.
1871- Foundation of the NRA, the main gun rights lobby group.
The National Rifle Association was founded by two Union veterans six years after the end of the Civil War. It is only
in the 1970s that the NRA began to actively oppose most gun control laws as an attack on civil liberties. By 2020,
the NRA had more than 6 million members and is considered as one of the most power lobby groups in the USA.
1934 – First federal gun laws enacted.
The National Firearms Act (NFA) — part of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal for Crime”— was meant
to curtail “gangland crimes of that era such as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.” The following year, Congress
passed the Federal Firearms Act, which requires sellers to obtain a federal gun license and record the names and
addresses of gun buyers. It also prohibits the sale of guns to convicted felons.
1939- United States v. Miller.
In 1939, the US Supreme Court heard the case United States v. Miller, ruling that, through the National Firearms
Act of 1934, Congress could regulate the interstate selling of short-barrel shotguns. The court held that there was
no evidence that a sawed-off shotgun “has some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well-
regulated militia,” and thus “we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such
an instrument.”
In the late 1960s – The Black Panthers.
“After racist ownership restrictions had fallen away, the Black Panthers tried to close the power differential,
assembling shotgun-armed posses in Oakland, California, to observe officers as they interacted with Black civilians. 7
They met the implicit threat of a police shooting with the equal threat of an armed intervention, and officers relented:

7
“The Panthers understood that guns changed the dynamic, that an officer was going to be less likely to harass them if the officer
thought that they could exercise self-defense, that is why they carried the guns”. Adam Winkler, professor of constitutional law at
the University of California, in Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America.
61
With the Panthers present, traffic stops and arrests occurred without beatings. The Panthers’ tactic didn’t last —
state legislatures and Congress quickly passed laws restricting access to guns and the ability to carry guns openly
in public. In fact, many political historians believe that American lawmakers would never have found a cause in gun
control without a parade of armed Black people on magazine covers and news shows stirring anxiety in the White
populace.”8
1968- President Johnson enacts sweeping gun control legislation.
The Gun Control Act broadly regulates the sale of guns across state lines (interstate commerce). It also increases
license requirements for sellers and prohibits drug users and the “mentally incompetent” from owning guns.
1972- The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is created to enforce gun laws.
1974 - The National Council to Control Handguns (NCCH) is created.
The non-profit organization for gun control will later become the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun violence in 2001
and just Brady in 2019. It addresses such issues as the “gun show loophole”, “stand-your ground” and “castle”
laws,9 vigilantism, semi-automatic weapons and “conceal carry” and initially campaigned to prevent individuals with
a criminal record from owning guns.
1993- Congress mandates background checks for gun buyers.
President Bill Clinton signed the Brady Handgun Prevention Act, which imposes a mandatory waiting period of up to
five days when buying a handgun and requires buyers to undergo comprehensive background checks. It established
the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), which is maintained by the FBI. The law is named
after former White House Press Secretary James Brady, who was shot during a 1981 assassination attempt on
President Ronald Reagan and became paralyzed. He died in 2014.
1994- Federal ban on assault weapons.
President Clinton signed one of the largest crime bills in US history, commonly known as the Assault Weapons Ban:
nineteen military-style or “copy-cat” assault weapons—including AR-15s, TEC-9s, MAC-10s, etc.—could not be
manufactured or sold. It also banned “certain high-capacity ammunition magazines of more than ten rounds,”
according to a U.S. Department of Justice Fact Sheet. Weapons and magazines manufactured before the ban,
however, are exempt from the law. The ban is a turning point in the politics of gun control, which is growing
increasingly divisive.
2004- Assault Weapons Ban expires, the possession of semi-automatic weapons is legalized under
Bush’s presidency.
The Republican-controlled Congress does not renew the Assault Weapons Ban after intense lobbying from the NRA.
2008 and 2010- The Supreme Court overturns local handgun bans and expands gun owners’ rights.
The Supreme Court ruled in the case District of Columbia v. Heller that the Second Amendment protects an
“individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia”. It essentially changed the nearly 70-
year-old precedent set in United States v. Miller in 1939 and struck down Washington D.C.’s ban on handguns. But
the Supreme Court also asserted that “the right to bear arms is not unlimited and that guns and gun ownership
would continue to be regulated”. In McDonald v. Chicago, the Court further extended gun rights by ruling that the
Second Amendment extends to states (not just federal enclaves). This was confirmed by the New York State v.
Bruen decision (2022).
2012 – Obama fails to convince Congress to ban assault weapons.
Following the Sandy Hook primary school shooting which claimed 26 lives including those of 20 children, President
Obama rolled out a plan for the most sweeping changes to federal gun laws since the 1994 assault weapons ban. It
included stricter regulations on specific weapons, prohibiting the sale of certain semi-automatic rifles and high-
capacity magazines, and requiring background checks for all gun buyers. It was rejected by a Republican-controlled
Congress.
April 2021-The Biden administration announced a set of “six initial actions to address the gun violence public health
epidemic,” among them a proposed rule to help stop the proliferation of “ghost guns” which are “homemade guns”
assembled by the purchaser from parts or kits.
November 2021- Kyle Rittenhouse is acquitted of all charges in the killing of two protesters during the unrest
which took place in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on August 25, 2020. The 18-year-old, who had bought his assault weapon
when he was only 17, pleaded self-defense.
May 14, 2022- Mass shooting in Buffalo, NY. 19-year-old White supremacist Payton Gendron shot and killed 10
black people in a Buffalo supermarket which is in the heart of a predominantly Black community. When the suspect
arrived there, he was heavily armed, used an assault weapon, and livestreamed the shooting. Investigation showed
that he had discussed his plan on the hate forum 4Chan and shared his posts on Discord.

8
Champe Barton. Police, Power, and the Specter of Guns, The Trace, ·June 13, 2020, The Trace.
https://www.thetrace.org/2020/06/police-power-guns-george-floyd/
9
See the “key terms” section to know more about these laws.
62
May 24, 2022- Mass school shooting in Uvalde, Texas. 19 children and two teachers were killed at Robb Elementary
school. It is the deadliest shooting ever at a Texas public school. The killer had legally bought two AR-style rifles
just after his 18th birthday, days before his assault.
June 2, 2022- As a response to the Uvalde shooting, the House Judiciary Committee returned for an urgent session
focused on bills intended to address the age limit for purchasing guns, the sale of large-capacity magazines and
firearm storage. The “package” passed the House on June 9 th. Because of its proposed ban on assault weapons, the
package was not expected to be voted on by the Senate.
June 22, 2022- The Senate proposes and votes its own bipartisan “Gun Safety Bill.” The measure provides grants
for states to implement so-called red flag laws, which allow for the temporary confiscation of firearms from
individuals who are deemed threats to themselves or others, as well as other crisis intervention programs. It closes
what’s known as the “boyfriend loophole” by barring individuals with misdemeanor convictions of domestic violence
against dating partners or former dating partners from purchasing a firearm for at least five years. The bill also
requires the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System to contact state authorities, local law
enforcement and a state’s juvenile justice information system to see if an individual under the age of 21 has a
“disqualifying” juvenile record for purchasing a firearm, including mental health problems. Finally, the bill includes
new spending for school security and mental health treatment.
June 23, 2022- New York State v Bruen. The Supreme Court strikes down New York State concealed handgun
law.
June 24, 2022- Exactly one month after the Uvalde shooting, the House of Representatives votes in favor of the
bipartisan bill (“Gun safety bill”) passed by the Senate on June 22. It is considered as the most sweeping gun bill in
decades. It was signed into law on June 25 by President Joe Biden.

Discussion questions and vocabulary:

1. Which events/decisions do you think were the most consequential and why?
2. Complete the grid using vocabulary from the facts section. The words you need are in italics in the text.

1. Arme (x3) 4. Porter une arme/ 7. La guerre de 10. Permis de port 13. Période d’attente
porter une arme en Sécession d’arme(s) (obligatoire)
la dissimulant

2. Arme de poing 5. Fusil/ armes 8. Munitions 11. Fusillade 14. Vérification des
d’assaut antécédents
(judiciaires et
médicaux)

3. Un casier judiciaire 6. Interdire (x3) 9. Faire des victimes 12. Le vide juridique 15. Des
sur les foires aux règlementations plus
armes strictes

63
 II. Reading Comprehension
Text 1
“Mass shootings turn America's gun culture into a killing culture”
The Editorial Board 10, USA TODAY, June 6th, 2021

Our View: Gun violence has not moved Congress to act. Or perhaps Americans' love of guns
is just too strong.

Lost amid the weekly spasms of gun violence – the latest a shooting spree outside a Miami-area banquet hall early
Sunday that left two dead and 21 wounded – are the numbers documenting America's unique love affair with
firearms.
Whether the result of a constitutionally guaranteed right to own a gun, or a natural consequence of a U.S. history
forged by conflict and rugged individualism, or both, USA's gun culture is without peer.
There are more guns than people in the United States, with 121 firearms for every 100 residents, (although the
weapons are concentrated in about a third of U.S. households.) America has less than 5% of the world's population
but about 40% of privately owned guns. War-torn Yemen holds second place, with 53 firearms per 100 people.
And gun ownership in the USA is rising rapidly. During the socially disruptive pandemic, the federal government
tracked gun sales exceeding a million per week – the first time that benchmark was hit since officials started
gathering data in 1998.
Whether a corollary to that or not, gun-related homicides and nonsuicide shootings have risen just as fast, with a
25% jump in 2020 over 2019. According to an analysis by the gun-control group Everytown, firearm deaths of all
types last year will likely exceed 40,000 – marking 2020 with the highest gun-related death rate in two decades.
About three-quarters of U.S. homicides are related to firearms, a gun-killing ratio that far surpasses Canada (39%),
Australia (22%) and England and Wales (4%).
The same pattern is borne out within the USA, where states with the most gun ownership have recorded the highest
rate of firearm-related deaths, though most of the difference is driven by suicides.
While not the means by which most gun deaths occur in America, mass shootings are traumatizing, high-profile
tragedies that lately have become numbingly routine.
The Miami-area incident came just days after a mass shooting in San Jose, California, where a gunman fatally shot
nine before killing himself. Six weeks before that, nine died in a mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis.
And there were four killed in Orange, California, March 31; 10 in Boulder, Colorado, March 22; and eight in Atlanta
on March 16. In fact, eight of the 15 worst mass shootings in the United States have been in the past decade.
America's culture of guns has become a culture of killing. This Editorial Board has long supported sensible gun
control laws such as closing the gun-show loophole by expanding background checks (favored by 81% of Americans),
banning high-capacity magazines (favored by 64%) and banning assault-style rifles (63%).
President Joe Biden has lately taken modest gun-control steps through executive action, most notably cracking down
on homemade firearms known as ghost guns. But truly effective change is possible only through federal legislation.
Sensible restrictions imposed by individual cities or states can be blunted by relaxed access to guns in neighboring
areas. Biden has a legislative wish list that includes expanding background checks and banning assault-style rifles.
But there seems less appetite than ever in Congress for tightening gun laws.
Pew Research polling shows that rank-and-file Republicans have grown even more recalcitrant about reform. For
example, only 37% support banning assault-style rifles – the weapon of choice for mass shootings – down from
54% in 2017 and 50% in 2019.
There was a time when it was thought that a single horrible event, such as the slaughter of first-graders in Newtown,
Connecticut, in 2012, could spur Congress to act. That hasn't happened. Now mass shootings seem to be happening
at a harrowing pace. Will lawmakers continue to remain unaffected?
Or perhaps Americans' love of guns is just too strong.

Questions:
1. How do you understand the term “gun culture”?
2. How does the text define and explain “America’s gun culture”?
3. How does USA TODAY justify its claim that “America’s culture of guns has become a culture of killing”?
4. Discuss the underlined sentence.

10“USA TODAY's editorial opinions are decided by its Editorial Board, separate from the news staff and the USA
TODAY Network. Most editorials are coupled with an Opposing View, a unique USA TODAY feature.”
64
Text 2
“Gun Owners of America: Guns save lives every day”
Erich Pratt*, Opinion Contributor, USA TODAY, Aug 5th, 2019

Opposing view: Nearly 90% of police agree that mass shootings would be 'reduced' or
'avoided altogether' by the presence of legally armed citizens.

*Erich Pratt is the senior vice president of Gun owners of America.

A father uses his concealed handgun to stop a mass shooting in a McDonald's in Alabama. A man uses his gun to
stop a racist gunman outside a Kentucky Kroger.
Guns are being used to save lives every day. But sadly, the only time the national news media want to spend several
days covering a firearms story is when the guns are used in a negative way.
The well-publicized shootings over the past week are heart-wrenching. But just as we should not punish sober drivers
for the actions of a reckless drunk, neither should we demonize firearms or their owners when they are misused by
an evil terrorist.
We know, because of research directed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that guns are used 16 to
100 times more often to protect life than to take life. That means there are a whole lot more “guns save lives stories”
not being reported by USA TODAY.
We celebrate the brave police officers who stopped three active shooters over the past week.
But as much as the USA TODAY Editorial Board wants to discount the idea of the “good guy with a gun,” let’s not
forget that almost 90% of police agree that mass shootings would be “reduced” or “avoided altogether” by the
presence of legally armed citizens.
There are multiple examples of good guys or gals stopping mass shooters from all over the country, and the FBI has
documented some of them. But it’s worth noting that the very types of firearms the Editorial Board wants to restrict
are extremely popular — and are frequently used in the defense of life:
►A Houston man fired several rounds while fighting off five home invaders this year, using his AK-47 as his primary
means of defense.
►A Florida man utilized his AR-15 to fire 30 rounds while fighting off seven intruders last year.
►A petite Maryland mom chased three burglars out of her home simply by loading a round into the chamber of her
AR-15.
All these victims were facing multiple attackers, which necessitated having firearms that held multiple rounds.
Finally, to borrow a phrase from the Editorial Board, we have been hit by a series of terror attacks. But terrorists —
whether they’re a “lone wolf” or organized — don’t care about our gun laws, any more than the terrorists who
ignored France’s draconian gun control laws in 2015 and used fully automatic firearms to murder 90 people at the
Bataclan theater.
No, if terrorists were to strike into our malls and neighborhoods, we should hope and pray there will be people like
Stephen Willeford — a retired plumber who used his AR-15-style rifle to mortally wound a de facto terrorist in Texas
two years ago.

Questions:
1. Briefly explain why Erich Pratt says that “guns save lives.”
2. How does the author proceed to make his point?
3. Discuss the underlined sentence. Do you agree with it?

☞ DISCUSSION/DEBATE: Read both texts from USA TODAY (texts 1 and 2) and say which arguments from
either side you find to be most convincing.

Text 3 (1725 words)

“A gun and a prayer: How the far right took control of Texas’ response to mass shootings”
Eleanor Klibanoff, TEXAS TRIBUNE, 29, 2022

The “God-given right” to self-defense has become a rallying cry in Texas politics, further cementing gun
ownership as a holy cause and political identity. The state’s Republican leadership has spent decades
carrying the banner.

65
As the gunman approached her family in the corner of the restaurant, Suzanna Hupp wanted nothing more than a
gun in her hand.
But Texas law in 1991 didn’t allow that, leaving her defenseless. Her father was fatally shot when he ran at the
gunman, unarmed. Her mother died holding him on the floor of that Luby’s restaurant in Killeen. Twenty-one other
diners and the gunman also died that day.
The Luby’s shooting, as it became known, shocked the nation and galvanized Hupp, who escaped through a window.
She spent the next 30 years, including 10 in the state Legislature, fighting to give others the option she did not
have.

Unlike other mass shooting survivors who advocate for gun restrictions — the parents of Sandy Hook Elementary
students or the teenagers who watched their classmates die at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — Hupp’s
goal has been eliminating gun regulations.

For all the conversation about common sense and compromise, these are the two fundamental choices: The answer
to preventing future tragedy is either fewer guns or more. At their core, these philosophies do not form a Venn
diagram. They are ideologically distinct and incompatible worldviews.

While there will be discussions in the coming weeks about incremental steps and public support for tightening gun
regulations, the political reality is that three decades of Republican dominance in the state have erased the middle
ground. In Texas, the chosen response to mass shootings is a gun and a prayer.
The state’s elected officials, influenced by an ultra-conservative religious movement and profit-driven gun companies,
have chosen the path of least regulation, elevating firearm ownership into a referendum on faith and freedom.

Addressing the state Wednesday after a gunman massacred 19 students and two teachers, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick
made it clear how the state should respond to mass shootings.

“In these other shootings — Sutherland Springs, El Paso, Odessa, Santa Fe — it’s God that brings a community
together. It’s God that heals a community,” Patrick said. “If we don’t turn back as a nation to understanding what
we were founded upon and what we were taught by our parents and what we believe in, then these situations will
only get worse.”

Texas is on a path that may not reflect public opinion but absolutely reflects the larger political forces sweeping the
state. And it’s not just Texas: Republican state legislatures, data shows, are 115% more likely to pass legislation
loosening gun laws in response to mass shootings.
Texas remains among the more heavily armed states in the country — more than a third of Texas households have
a gun, and while the rate of household gun ownership has declined nationally since the 1980s, it has not declined
as quickly or consistently in Texas.

More than 1.7 million Texans have an active state firearm license, and Texas has more federally registered guns
than any other state. Nationally, data shows two-thirds of gun owners own more than one gun, and nearly a third
own five or more guns.
“If the states are laboratories of democracy, where we figure out what policies work, you might think over time we’d
converge on a set of policies,” said Chris Poliquin, who researches gun laws at the University of California, Los
Angeles. “But you don’t actually see that on gun policy.” […]

When Hupp first got involved in the gun rights movement, many states banned concealed carry and the United
States was on the verge of passing a federal assault weapons ban.

But a change had been building for some time. Since the 1960s, the country had been in the process of shifting
from what Wake Forest University researcher David Yamane calls “gun culture 1.0” — guns for sport or recreation
— to 2.0 — guns for self-defense.

“A lot of people in developed, suburbanized parts of the country who maybe previously thought they didn’t need a
gun anymore, because they’re not on the frontier, start to develop the notion that they might have to defend
themselves,” Yamane said. “That link has become much more prominent these days.” […]

“In the ’90s and 2000s, people really do start to see guns increasingly as a viable option to face down crime,
uncertainty and unrest,” Yamane said. “There’s an element of defensive gun ownership that looks at the gun as a
tool of last resort for when the worst possible thing is happening.”

At the same time, the National Rifle Association began bringing more of its lobbying firepower to state legislatures,
fomenting the idea that the world was full of things that needed defending against.

“The NRA built this identity around gun ownership and then it portrayed that identity as being threatened,” said
Matthew Lacombe, the author of “Firepower: How the NRA Turned Gun Owners into a Political Force.” “So the
minority of Americans who oppose gun control are historically more politically active than the majority that support.”

In Texas, like other red states, the NRA slid sideways into the newfound alliance between evangelical Christians and
the Republican Party, aligning gun rights with the religious right.
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Gun ownership became a symbolic weapon in fighting the culture wars.*1 […]

In 2018, after a gunman killed 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, NRA
executive vice president Wayne LaPierre spoke to a conservative convention.
“There is no greater personal, individual freedom than the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protect yourself
and the right to survive,” LaPierre said. “It is not bestowed by man, but granted by God to all Americans as our
American birthright.”

The idea that God has granted Americans a fundamental right to bear arms is not a new one, but it’s become an
article of faith.
True believers derive the inherent right to self-defense by drawing a line from the Declaration of Independence —
that all men are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness” — to the Second Amendment as the legal representation of God’s will.

This is the cross that some gun owners have chosen to bear — that their defense of gun rights is not just about
firearms, but about ensuring the continued manifestation of God’s will on Earth.
Andrew Whitehead, author of “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States,” said
equating gun rights with the “will of the sacred” essentially erases any hope of finding a middle ground.

“If we do anything about gun control, we are turning our backs on God’s desire and plan for this country and the
Founding Fathers and all of those things,” Whitehead said. “It’s so strongly ingrained and has become so central to
that identity, so to float the idea of gun control is almost to attack, in their view, their Christian identity.”

Christian nationalism is an effort to more closely intertwine evangelical Christian morality and American civic identity.
It’s associated with a slate of other conservative political agenda items, all framed around bringing America and its
citizens’ hearts back to God.

Modern Christian nationalism tightly defines a “true American” and a “true Christian” in largely white, evangelical,
conservative terms, emphasizing capitalism, traditional gender roles and parents’ rights.
Not all evangelical Christians subscribe to Christian nationalist ideas. But some of those ideas have taken hold in the
Texas Legislature in recent years.

In 2019, after the second mass shooting in Texas in a month, state Rep. Matt Schaefer, R-Tyler, tweeted that he
was “NOT going to use the evil acts of a handful of people to diminish the God-given rights of my fellow Texans. Period.”
Schaefer’s tweet thread went on to say he opposed gun reform measures, including universal background checks,
bans on assault weapons and mandatory gun buybacks. Instead, he said he would support praying for the victims,
for protection and for hoping “God would transform the hearts of people with evil intent.” […]

It’s not just gun control. Support for Christian nationalist ideas is a predictor for support for a slew of other political
agenda items, Whitehead said, including the most high-profile right now: ending abortion.

After 10 people were killed in a school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas, in 2018, Gov. Greg Abbott suggested considering
a “red flag” law. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick then nixed it. After 23 people were killed at a Walmart in El Paso and seven
people were killed in Midland-Odessa in 2019, Patrick discussed expanding background checks. Instead, the
Legislature passed permitless carry.

But after the mass shooting in Uvalde, neither Patrick nor Abbott indicated any interest in reforming the state’s gun
laws. On Fox News, Attorney General Ken Paxton said it’s unreasonable to think we can “stop bad people from doing bad things.”

“We can potentially arm and prepare and train teachers and other administrators to respond quickly,” he said. “That,
in my opinion, is the best answer.” […]

“The more the gun control advocates try to put in place what they euphemistically call common-sense gun laws …
those of us that believe in the Second Amendment and everything it was set in place to protect tend to hold much
tighter,” Hupp said. “We recognize what their ultimate goal is, which is to completely disarm citizens.”

Howard, one of a minority of Democrats in the state Legislature, said Texas’ approach to gun policy reminds her of
the bumper stickers she would see in the 1960s: “America: Love it or leave it.”

It feels like her fellow legislators are telling her — and any Texans who want gun control — “if you don't like it, you
can just leave,” she said.

“That’s not something I have felt until recent years,” she said. “This is my home, and the fact that what I believe
and people like me believe, and the way we would like to have society structured, is just totally discounted, it feels
like we don't matter.”

*1 Culture wars: disagreements about cultural and social beliefs between groups, especially between people with more conservative
opinions (= generally against social change) and people with more progressive opinions (= generally supporting social change): issues of
gender and identity inspire strong feelings on both sides in the culture war. (Cambridge Dictionary)

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Questions:
1) According to E. Klibanoff, when it comes to gun ownership, response to mass shootings, and gun legislation,
how specific is Texas?
2) How does the author define “the far right” and what does its influence and actions consist in?
3) Comment on the underlined sentence: “Gun ownership became a symbolic weapon in fighting the culture wars.”

III. Listening Comprehension

“Congress passes sweeping gun control package, heads to the Senate”
ABC News, June 10, 2022. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pz-tQHyjqOU. 6:05.

From beginning to 2:39:

1) Why does the female anchor say that the package voted on by the House “faces an uphill (=difficult, tiring)
battle to the Senate”?
2) Who is Jonathan Metzl and in what context was he interviewed?
3) Why does he mention Israel and Switzerland?
4) What are the three points that stand out when it comes to gun violence legislation in the US?

From 2:39 to 5:49:

1) Complete the male anchor’s question (2:54):
Do you think ……………………… should be debating …………….
……………. or should state laws that ………………… to be ………………………….
be adopted at the federal level?

2) Summarize Mr. Metzl’s answer.

3) How does he concur with the anchor’s analysis that gun violence is “about us”, “that something is wrong
with us”?

IV. Cartoons
A. Compare the classic painting and its modern interpretation.

LEFT. Norman Rockwell’s “The Runaway”, cover of the Saturday Evening Post, 20th Sept. 1958.
RIGHT. Mad magazine. “The militarization of officer Joe”.
https://www.madmagazine.com/blog/2014/08/21/if-norman-rockwell-depicted-todays-america-the-militarization-
of-officer-joe

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 B. Do the following cartoons promote gun rights or gun control? What point is being made in each
cartoon?
• Cartoon A - Britt (2016)
• Cartoon B - William Warren (2013)
• Cartoon C - Ed Steinz (2012)
• Cartoon D – Skiley (2013)

A)

B)

69
 C)

D)

70
 V. Grammar
INFINITIVE WITH TO, -ING GERUND, BASE VERB
☞ Find the correct form for each verb.

1) This man is too honest …………………………. any kind of crime. (commit)

2) You can’t …………………………. that gun into the shop. (bring)
3) She doesn’t feel like …………………………. today. (go out)
4) The murderer refused …………………………. to the police. (surrender)
5) His mother ………………………… him apologize for threatening his friend yesterday. (make)
6) Kyle Rittenhouse said he’d rather ………………………… a semiautomatic rifle. (buy)
7) I didn’t mean …………………………. that man. (harm)
8) Unfortunately, we can't afford …………………………. a new rifle this year. (buy)
9) The President urged Congress ………………… an appropriate national “red flag” law. (pass)
10) I miss …………………………. to the shooting range. (go)
11) Are you done …………………………. your weapon yet? (fire)
12) Finally, the Senate managed ………………………… a bipartisan bill on guns. (pass)
13) The NRA succeeded in ……………………………. for more states to pass “stand your ground” laws. (lobby)
14) The Justice Department, within 30 days, will issue a proposed rule to help …………………. the proliferation of “ghost
guns.” (stop)

VI. Key terms

BACKGROUND CHECKS: Federal law requires anyone who buys a gun from a licensed dealer to submit to a
background check. Convicted criminals and people who have been declared by a judge to be "mentally defective"
are among those barred from buying a gun.

BRADY: Non-profit organization which is the main gun control lobby group in the US. It addresses such issues as
the “gun show loophole”, “stand-your ground” and “castle” laws, vigilantism, semi-automatic, and concealed carry weapons.

CONCEALED CARRY: the practice of carrying a weapon (such as a handgun) in public in a concealed manner.

GUN CONTROL: efforts to regulate or control the sale of guns.

MASS SHOOTING: when one person kills more than 4 people in a single shooting event.

NRA (National Rifle Association): today, a lobby/single interest-group that stands for the protection of the
Second Amendment which guarantees a citizen's right to keep and bear arms.

OPEN CARRY (noun and verb): the practice of openly carrying a firearm on one’s person in public.

RED FLAG LAWS: laws which allow the seizure of guns from a person deemed dangerous. 19 states and Washington
D.C. have enacted these laws. Connecticut was first in 1999.

STAND YOUR GROUND LAWS: In 2005, Florida passed a law related to the castle doctrine, expanding on that
premise with “stand your ground” language related to self-defense and duty to retreat. Florida’s law states “a person
who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be
has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force,
if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself
or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.” (National Conference of State Legislature,
https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-and-criminal-justice/self-defense-and-stand-your-ground.aspx)

THE CASTLE DOCTRINE: The common law “castle doctrine” says that individuals have the right to use reasonable
force, including deadly force, to protect themselves against an intruder in their home. This principle has been codified
and expanded by state legislatures. (National Conference of State Legislature, https://www.ncsl.org/research/civil-
and-criminal-justice/self-defense-and-stand-your-ground.aspx)

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 VII. Going further

A. Movies
Michael Moore. Bowling for Columbine. 2002
Gus Van Sant. Elephant. 2003
Lynne Ramsey. We Need To Talk About Kevin. 2011.

B. Videos
Trevor Noah. The Daily Show: “Emantic Bradford Jr’s death and Why the Second Amendment does not apply to
Black men,” 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWwQjH7T .
CNN. “Militarization of the Police?”, August 2014 (after the killing of Michael Brown and the protests that followed)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQAOfNXwAGA
Klepper Podcast. “When Guns, Race and Activism Intersect, Things Get Complicated.”,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGPaU1D_ICM

C. Articles
-Lopez, German. “How the NRA resurrected the Second Amendment”. Vox. May 4, 2018.
-Stephens, Brett. “Repeal the Second Amendment”, The New York Times. 10/05/2017.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/opinion/guns-second-amendment-nra.html?_r=0-
- Karen Grigsby Bates. “Stand Your Ground Laws Complicate Matters For Black Gun Owners”
(https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/02/27/517109271/stand-your-ground-laws-complicate-matters-
for-black-gun-owners?t=1593429440463
-Harriott, Michael. “Report: White Men Stockpile Guns because they are Afraid”, The Root.
https://www.theroot.com/report-white-men-stockpile-guns-because-they-re-afraid-1823779218. 19 Nov 2019.
- Kopel, David. “Firearms, technology and the second amendment”, The Washington Post, 2017.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2017/04/03/firearms-technology-and-the-original-
meaning-of-the-second-amendment/

D. Websites
Gun rights:
• The National Rifle Association (NRA). https://home.nra.org/
• Gun owners of America (GOA). https://www.gunowners.org/

Gun control:
• Brady. https://www.bradyunited.org/
• American State Legislators for Gun Violence Prevention. https://www.aslgvp.org/

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 UNIT 9 – THE DEATH PENALTY
I. Facts
Definition:

A death penalty is the sentence of execution for murder and some other capital crimes (serious
crimes, especially murder, which are punishable by death). The death penalty, or capital
punishment, may be prescribed by Congress or any state legislature for murder and other capital
crimes. (https://definitions.uslegal.com/d/death-penalty-law/)

A. Legal background

Death sentences are typically state affairs but take place within federal legal guidelines (Supreme Court). Crimes
punishable by death may include first-degree (premeditated) murder, murder with special circumstances, rape with
additional bodily harm, and the federal crime of treason. Capital punishment is referred to in the American
Constitution in the 5th, 6th, 8th and 14th amendments but abolitionists mainly refer to the 8 th amendment to put an
end to the death penalty as it aims at prohibiting “cruel and unusual punishment”:

“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual
punishments inflicted.” (Amendment VIII, 1791)

According to the Death Penalty Information Center (see map below), the death penalty is still legal in 28
states in 2020, though 3 of them have already applied a governor-imposed moratorium (California, Oregon and
Pennsylvania):

Source: https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/state-and-federal-info/state-by-state

The federal government (including the US military) also uses capital punishment. The federal government
and states have their own set of aggravating circumstances for capital punishment (the number of victims, the
victim’s age and whether they are a police officer or a federal agent for example). Rape, air piracy, terrorism,
kidnapping, bank robbery are also aggravating circumstances.

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 B. Historical backgrounds and facts about the death penalty

The practice of capital punishment was imported by the first settlers. In 1608, captain John Kendall was executed
in Virginia for being a spy for Spain. There were no executions in the United States between 1967 and 1977. In
1972, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down capital punishment statutes in Furman v. Georgia, reducing all death
sentences pending at the time to life imprisonment. Subsequently, a majority of states passed new death penalty
statutes, and the Supreme Court affirmed the legality of capital punishment in the 1976 case Gregg v. Georgia.

Since then, more than 7,800 defendants have been sentenced to death and of these, 1,518 have been executed
(June 11, 2020). Among them, 16 women. 22 individuals were executed between 1976 and 2005 for crimes
committed as juveniles. Since 1976, 288 individuals have been granted clemency (as of July 2018). In 1977,
Oklahoma becomes the first state to adopt lethal injection as a means of execution.
For federal death row inmates, the president alone has the power to grant a pardon. 2,721 inmates (among
them 55 women) are still on death row on October 1, 2018 the most recent date for which data is available from
the Criminal Justice Project.
The US government and US military have 62 people awaiting execution as of December 21, 2018. African
Americans make up 42% of the death row population despite the fact that blacks only make up 13 % of the US
population. Studies have shown that they are 40 % more likely to get the death penalty than whites for the same
crime (see https://deathpenaltyinfo.org/death-penalty-black-and-white-who-lives-who-dies).

1997: the American Bar Association calls for a suspension of the death penalty until changes “are made to make
certain that death penalty cases are administered fairly and impartially.”

March 16, 2011: The Drug Enforcement Agency seizes Georgia's supply of thiopental, over questions of where
the state obtained the drug. US manufacturer Hospira stopped producing the drug in 2009. The countries that
still produce the drug do not allow it to be exported to the US for use in lethal injections.

January 16, 2014: Ohio executes inmate Dennis McGuire with a new combination of drugs, due to the
unavailability of drugs such as pentobarbital. The state uses a combination of the drugs midazolam and
hydromorphone, according to the state corrections department. The execution process takes 24 minutes, and
McGuire appears to be gasping for air for 10 to 13 minutes, according to witness Alan Johnson, a reporter with
the Columbus Dispatch.

March 2015: Utah enacts legislation allowing for execution by firing squad if the drugs they use are unavailable.

October 2018: Washington state Supreme Court abolishes the death penalty.

April 2019: The U.S. Supreme Court confirms a legal standard established in a 2015 case, under which prisoners
seeking to challenge a torturous lethal injection must present a suitable alternative way for the state to execute
them.

2020: Colorado repeals capital punishment. All death sentences have since been commuted to life sentences.

Exercise 1: Vocabulary.
Find the translation for the following words.

Circonstances aggravantes
Abolir/abroger
L’accusé
Condamné à mort
Un détenu dans le couloir de la mort
Une erreur judiciaire
Être innocenté
Peloton d’exécution

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Exercise 2: Questions.
Test your knowledge!

1. How many people were executed in the US in 2020?

a. 17 b. 44 c. 88 d. 121

2. Which state has highest number of death row prisoners in January 2020?
a. California b. Texas c. Kansas d. Virginia

3. Which state has had the highest number of executions since 1776?
a. Texas b. California c. Virginia d. Ohio

4. Which region has the highest number of executions?

a. South b. Midwest c. West d. Northeast

5. Since 1999, the number of death sentences per year has increased dramatically.
a. True b. False

6. It is legal to execute defendants with ‘mental retardation’ in the US.

a. True b. False

7. The death penalty lowers homicide rates.

a. True b. False

8. Those who commit a crime when they are under 18 years of age are ineligible for the death
penalty in the U.S.
a. True b. False

9. Women accounted for … of the total death row population in 2019.

a. 0,5% b. 2% c. 8% d. 17%

10. Which execution methods are still authorized in the US today?

a. Electrocution b. Gas chamber c. Hanging d. Firing squad

11. Electrocution has been the primary method used by most states plus the US government since
1976.
a. True b. False

12. It is more expensive to try, convict and execute an offender than to incarcerate them for life.
a. True b. False

13. What percentage of death row inmates cannot afford to pay for their own attorney?
a. 35% b. 54% c. 78% d. 95%

14. The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world.
a. True b. False

15. The United States ranks 5 in Amnesty International list of state executioners.
a. True b. False

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 II. Reading Comprehension

Text 1
“America’s ‘Machinery of Death’ Is Slowly Grinding to a Halt”
Maurice Chammah, The New York Times, 06/30/2022

Fifty years ago, as the Supreme Court was gearing up to hear arguments in Roe v. Wade, the justices thrust
themselves into another fierce public debate. In the case of Furman v. Georgia, the court threw out the entire
architecture of capital punishment, with several justices arguing it was excessive, arbitrary and marked by racial
disparities.
It had been five years since the United States had executed anyone, and just half of Americans supported capital
punishment. The country seemed to be on the brink of joining the British and the Canadians, abandoning the noose
and the electric chair as artifacts of a more punitive past.

Of course, that’s not what happened. It took half a century to undo Roe, but Furman was wiped away in just four
years. Support for executions surged, state officials rewrote the laws, and the Supreme Court endorsed their efforts.

The public seems to have returned to the same ambivalence about the death penalty that preceded the Furman
decision. Public opinion polls conducted by Gallup show support for capital punishment hovers just above 50 percent
— its lowest point since the early 1970s. Death sentences and executions are both falling, thanks in large part to
aggressive efforts by defense lawyers.

Last year, just 18 people were sentenced to death in the United States, down from 315 in 1996, according to the
Death Penalty Information Center. Twenty-seven states retain capital punishment, but just 14 have carried out an
execution in the past five years. About a third of the country’s 2,500 death row prisoners are in California and other
states with official moratoriums on executions.

The Supreme Court, with six conservative justices, has largely left it to state and local leaders to decide who should
die and by what method. One might assume that as with abortion, the court’s approach would reflect a sharp divide
between red and blue states, but there is far less uniformity among Republican leaders on the death penalty than
on abortion. While some conservative governors and attorneys general pursue executions, a growing number of
lawmakers on the right are teaming up with civil rights groups and Democrats to curtail the punishment or even
abolish it.

In 1972, more than 600 people were on death row in prisons across the country when lawyers for the NAACP Legal
Defense Fund — led by the willowy, ascetic professor Anthony Amsterdam — arrived at the Supreme Court to argue
the cases of three Black prisoners condemned to die, including William Henry Furman. These lawyers had collected
data showing that Black defendants were more likely to face execution than their white peers. Mr. Furman had been
convicted of killing William Joseph Micke Jr. during a robbery. He claimed to have tripped while trying to flee,
shooting Mr. Micke by accident.
The court limited the case to one question: Did the death penalty in those three cases constitute cruel and unusual
punishment? On June 29, 1972, in an opinion expressing the view of five justices, with the other four filing separate
dissents, the court found that the death sentences against the men, were cruel and unusual and thus
unconstitutional. In a concurrence, Justice William Douglas said the system “leaves to the uncontrolled discretion of
judges or juries” the decision of who “should die or be imprisoned. Under these laws no standards govern the
selection of the penalty. People live or die, dependent on the whim of one man or of 12.”

Mr. Amsterdam’s victory was short-lived. Executions were halted for the next four years as states scrambled to
revise their laws so that they would not run afoul of the Constitution. Then, in 1976, the court, in a series of cases,
laid out the more limited circumstances in which the death penalty could be imposed.
Over the ensuing decades, the justices continued to “tinker with the machinery of death,” as Justice Harry Blackmun
once put it. The court developed a complex body of jurisprudence while letting hundreds of executions proceed. In
2002, for instance, the court prohibited the execution of people with intellectual disabilities; in 2005, it banned the
execution of those who committed their crimes before age 18.

Nowadays, the number of executions and death sentences are in decline. Civil rights lawyers — including many
mentored by Mr. Amsterdam — developed strategies to persuade juries and prosecutors to spare the lives of their
clients. The aggressive defenses they mounted drove up the prosecution costs of pursuing death sentences, creating
a fiscal-conservative argument against the death penalty. And they repeatedly won the freedom of people wrongly
convicted and sentenced to death.

In the past decade, state courts in Delaware and Washington found their states’ death penalty systems
unconstitutional, while governors in California, Oregon and Pennsylvania suspended all executions and state
legislators approved bills to abolish the punishment in Colorado and Virginia that were signed by their governors.
District attorneys in major cities that used to churn out death sentences — Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles,
Philadelphia, New Orleans — said they would seek the death penalty rarely or not at all.

76
Last year, I discovered in my reporting that in at least half the states with an active death penalty, Republican
lawmakers had recently sponsored or written bills to ban or constrain the punishment. The Republican-led legislature
in Ohio, for instance, voted to prohibit the death penalty for defendants who had severe mental illness at the time
of the offense. The Republican governor signed the bill. And some Ohio Republicans, along with fellow Republicans
in Georgia, Utah and a few other states, are talking about abolishing the death penalty.
“For a long time it gnawed at me, being pro-life, that I was willing to let somebody be killed,” Jean Schmidt, a
Republican and member of the Ohio House of Representatives, told Vox.

When capital punishment finally disappears — and it is on its way out, even if that will be a very slow process — it
will be because opponents succeeded in making their case, not to nine justices, but to millions of voters and jurors.

Maurice Chammah is a staff writer at The Marshall Project and the author of “Let the Lord Sort Them: The Rise and
Fall of the Death Penalty.” This essay was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news
organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system.

Preliminary work: Find the words corresponding to the following definitions in the text:
• to prepare to do something (verb):
• to support publicly a person, statement or course of action (verb):
• to stay close to something (verb):
• a temporary stopping of an activity, especially by official agreement (noun):
• tall, thin and attractive (adjective):
• to do something that is not allowed by a law or rule (verb):
• to make small changes to something in order to repair or improve it, especially in a way that may not be
helpful (verb):
• (formal) to allow somebody/something to escape harm, damage or death (verb):
• (informal, often disapproving) to produce something quickly and in large amounts (verb):
• to make somebody feel anxious, frightened or uncomfortable over a long period of time (verb):

Questions:
1. Summarise the facts and conclusions of the 4 Supreme Court’s decisions mentioned in the document.
2. Summarize the news report.
3. Why does the opinion writer compare capital punishment with abortion?

Text 2
“Biden’s silence on executions adds to death penalty disarray”
Michael Tarm, Associated Press Chicago, 06/18/2021

Activists widely expected Joe Biden to take swift action against the death penalty as the first sitting president to
oppose capital punishment, especially since an unprecedented spate of executions by his predecessor ended just
days before Biden took office.

Instead, the White House has been mostly silent. Biden hasn’t said whether he’d back a bill introduced by fellow
Democrats to strike the death penalty from U.S. statutes. He also hasn’t rescinded Trump-era protocols enabling
federal executions to resume and allowing prisons to use firing squads if necessary, something many thought he’d
do on day one.

And this week, his administration asked the Supreme Court to reinstate the Boston Marathon bomber’s original
death sentence.

The hands-off approach in Washington is adding to disarray around the death penalty nationwide as pressure
increases in some conservative states to find ways to continue executions amid shortages of the lethal-injection
drugs. Worse, some longtime death penalty observers say, is that Biden’s silence risks sending a message that he’s
OK with states adopting alternative execution methods.

His cautious approach demonstrates the practical and political difficulties of ending or truncating capital punishment
after it’s been integral to the criminal justice system for centuries, even as popular support for the death penalty
among both Democrats and Republicans wanes.

Support for the death penalty among Americans is at near-historic lows after peaking in the mid-1990s and steadily
declining since, with most recent polls indicating support now hovers around 55%, according to the nonpartisan
Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.

Biden didn’t make capital punishment a prominent feature of his presidential run, but he did say on his campaign
website that he would work “to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize
states to follow the federal government’s example.”

77
That simple-sounding promise was historic because it wasn’t just about the federal death penalty, which, before
former President Donald Trump, had been carried out just three times in the previous five decades. Then, 13 federal
prisoners were executed during Trump’s last six months in office during the height of the coronavirus pandemic.
Biden’s promise also took direct aim at states, which, combined, have executed some 1,500 inmates since the
1970s; 27 states still have death penalty laws.

But the fact that the Biden administration chose to actively push for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s execution suggests the
president’s opposition to the death penalty isn’t as all-inclusive as many activists believed.

Meanwhile, states have resorted to other means as drugs used in lethal injections have become increasingly hard to
procure. Pharmaceutical companies in the 2000s began banning the use of their products for executions, saying
they were meant to save lives, not take them. The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has declined to explain how it obtained
pentobarbital for the lethal injections under Trump.

Some states have refurbished electric chairs as standbys for when lethal drugs are unavailable.

On Wednesday, South Carolina halted two executions until the state could pull together firing squads.

To the disbelief of many, Arizona went so far as to acquire materials to make cyanide hydrogen — the poisonous
gas deployed by Nazis to kill 865,000 Jews at Auschwitz — for possible use in the state’s death chamber.

“Execution processes are becoming more and more out of touch with core American values,” Robert Dunham,
director of the Death Penalty Information Center, said about Arizona’s purchase. “It provides a very clear picture of
what the death penalty has become in the United States.”

Protocols put in place under Trump and not rescinded by Biden allow the U.S. government to employ execution
methods sanctioned in states where a federal defendant was sentenced, Dunham said. That means, in theory, federal
executioners could also use hydrogen cyanide.

Dunham said death by hydrogen cyanide stands out as uniquely brutal, invariably leading to an “extended, torturous
death.”

Even if there’s virtually no chance the U.S. government would ever embrace an execution method favored by Nazis,
Dunham said the very idea that it’s theoretically possible should horrify Biden administration officials and spur them
to act with an even greater sense of urgency.

Abe Bonowitz, director of the anti-capital punishment group Death Penalty Action, said he and other activists have
spoken with administration officials and received some behind-the-scenes assurances that Biden will eventually
support legislation to abolish the federal death penalty. “We know this is not the biggest fish they have to fry right
now. But we are hearing they will get to it,” said Bonowitz, who has been critical of Biden’s silence.

The president could take the path of least resistance, politically speaking, by telling his Justice Department not to
schedule federal executions during his term. But that would fall far short of fulfilling his campaign promise, and it
would leave the door open for future presidents to restart executions.

He could also use his executive powers to commute all federal death sentences to life in prison, but there’s no sign
of that happening. Granting full clemency to everyone on death row could be politically problematic for Biden and
other Democrats, who have a slim majority in both the House and the Senate. Among those whose lives would be
spared by such a Biden order would be Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black church members during a Bible study
session in South Carolina and was the first person sentenced to death for a federal hate crime.

Preliminary work: Find the words corresponding to the following definitions in the text:
• a large number of things, which are usually unpleasant, that happen suddenly within a short period of time
(noun):
• to officially state that a law, contract, decision, etc. no longer has any legal force (verb):
• a group of soldiers who are ordered to shoot and kill somebody who is found guilty of a crime (noun):
• dealing with people or a situation by not becoming involved and by allowing people to do what they want to
(adjective):
• a lack of order or organization in a situation or a place (verb):
• to become gradually weaker or less important (verb):
• to encourage somebody to behave in a particular way by offering them a reward (verb):
• a person or thing that can always be used if needed, for example if somebody/something else is not available
or if there is an emergency (noun):

Questions:
1. What is the gist of the news report?
2. How does the journalist account for Biden’s stance on the death penalty? Does he agree with it?
3. Discuss the underlined sentence.
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Text 3
“Ohio’s death penalty is back, and that’s a good thing 11”
Dawson Mecum, The New Political, September 19, 2017

Some people would argue that the death penalty is inhumane or a waste of time and money. Opinion
writer Dawson Mecum disagrees.

Controversial political topics always seem to rotate between election years. But there are certain issues that are
always at the top of the list and will stay there for as long as America has free speech. The death penalty is and
forever will be one of the most controversial issues when it comes to modern politics. Those who oppose the death
penalty accuse those who support it of being unethical and immoral, when in reality, the death penalty is necessary
to serve and protect future victims.

Over the summer, Ohio had its first execution since 2014. Ronald Phillips was 19 years old when he committed one
of the most heinous of crimes. Phillips was convicted of raping and murdering Sheila Marie Evans, his girlfriend’s 3-
year-old daughter, in Akron in 1993. The execution was put on hold due to Phillips and two other inmates challenging
that the usage of certain drugs in capital punishment was cruel and unusual.

The real cruel and unusual punishment was the rape and murder of a 3-year-old girl who never got to enjoy the life
that was in front of her, and who never got to have those moments of childhood that we cherish and hold onto so
dearly. But to some, the death penalty is an uncivilized idea that has no place in a civilized country like America.

The death penalty is a last resort option. The death penalty should not be about closure or revenge. It should simply
be about bringing justice to those who commit crimes against humanity.

A life sentence in Ohio where the offense is second degree murder is 15 years to life. So, what happens when the
accused is released? According to the Institute of Justice, about 76.6 percent of released prisoners are rearrested,
and of those prisoners who were released, 56.7 percent were arrested within their first year of being released. The
death penalty makes sure that those who are convicted of rape, aggravated murder or any other heinous crime do
not have the chance to harm anyone else. It negates the possibility of these criminals hurting anyone else.

The cost of the death penalty, however, is a concern. According to a study done by The Dayton Daily News, the cost
of the death penalty in Ohio is an estimated $3 million per death penalty case, including execution per inmate. In
comparison, the average cost of life without parole is estimated to be about $1 million. About $16 million in funds
is used to maintain the death penalty in Ohio. While some argue these funds could be used in a more efficient way,
it should be the price of saved lives and justice that matters more.

The death penalty should be done right, as well. In January of 2014, the same drug that was used in the Phillips
execution was used in another where the inmate took an unusually long time to die. Witness reports say that the
man struggled and was visibly in pain once the drug was administered. Drugs administered to inmates placed on
death row should meet medical requirements and cause as little suffering as possible.

According to a study led by Samuel Gross at the University of Michigan, the true number of wrongly accused people
sentenced to the death penalty is unknowable, but estimated to be between 1.6 and 4 percent. This number should
continue to go down with the improvements in technology and advances in the criminal justice field.

The death penalty does have a hint of uncertainty wrapped around it. With the constant changes between crime
rates and executions, it is nearly impossible to determine whether the death penalty deters crime with the studies
that have been conducted. The uncertainty of the deterrence rate brings the argument to a standstill.

The death penalty does not necessarily deter criminals from committing these heinous crimes, but what it does
make sure of is that these evil and uncivilized human beings can never harm another soul, and that is the goal of
justice — to make it easier for people to sleep at night knowing there is one less criminal out there.

Questions:
1. What are the author’s main arguments in favour of the death penalty?
2. Which arguments are the most compelling to you and why? Which ones do you dismiss altogether and why?
3. Comment on the underlined sentence: “the goal of justice [is] to make it easier for people to sleep at night
knowing there is one less criminal out there.”

11
In March 2019, Ohio Governor DeWine ordered the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to find a new method for
executing death row inmates. Until that happens, all executions are on hold. Between 2017 and 2019 four inmates have been
executed.
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Text 4
“The death penalty makes a mockery of our justice system. Abolish it.”
David Bon Drehle, The Washington Post, March 15, 2019
There once was a burning political issue known as capital punishment. Others called it the death penalty. Entire
political careers in the 1980s and 1990s were built on it or ruined by it. Democrat Michael Dukakis lost the presidency,
many pundits said in 1988, by seeming mushy when asked what he would do if some guy murdered his wife. The
1992 nominee, Bill Clinton, learned the lesson. He jetted home to the Arkansas governor’s mansion in the middle of
the campaign to preside over the execution of a mentally impaired prisoner.
But, as with other obsessions from the mix-tape era — such as Biosphere 2, the Y2K Bug and Hillary Clinton’s hairstyles —
capital punishment has lost its grip on the public. The nation’s largest death row was shut down Wednesday with hardly a
yawn in response.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) announced that he will not pursue the execution of any of the 737 death-
sentenced inmates at San Quentin State Prison. Calling capital punishment “ineffective, irreversible and immoral,”
Newsom ordered the decommissioning of the execution chamber and rescinded the state’s protocol for lethal
injection. These steps will make it more difficult for future California governors to reverse course.
The governors of Colorado, Oregon and Pennsylvania have already renounced the death penalty and have suffered no
appreciable political backlash. Including California, these four indefinite pauses cover roughly one-third of all death
row prisoners in the United States. Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) has suspended the death penalty in his state — home
to another 144 condemned prisoners — until an execution protocol can be devised that meets court standards.
Elsewhere, halts originally ordered by governors have led to outright abolition. Last year, Washington’s state
Supreme Court cemented a 2014 moratorium by declaring the death penalty unconstitutional. In Illinois, a
governor’s moratorium became permanent in 2011 when the legislature abolished capital punishment.
What used to be political dynamite has become about as explosive as damp newsprint. By walking away from capital
punishment, elected leaders are essentially converting death sentences to life imprisonment without parole — and
getting away with it for much the same reason Newsom was able to scale back California’s pie-in-the-sky bullet train
earlier this year. The public is wise to expensive gestures that produce scant results.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly over nearly half a century that the death penalty is different from all
other punishments. It must meet stringent standards to be lawful. This perfectionism, fine on paper, has proved
impossible for lower courts to satisfy reliably and efficiently.

So Newsom’s moratorium comes some 13 years after California’s last execution. In 2006, the state ended the life
of a triple-murderer whose appeals had been rattling through the courts for nearly 25 years. Since then, nothing.
Just endless waiting and endless litigation, with a price tag that experts reckon is in the billions. Nationwide, fewer
than 1 percent of death row prisoners were executed in 2018. A death row prisoner in 2016 (the most recent year
for which data is available) was almost exactly as likely to die of natural causes as by execution. That’s not surprising
given that the median age of inmates on death row was approaching 50.

These realities —high costs and rare results— first altered the politics of the death penalty at the local level, beginning
some 20 years ago. Elected prosecutors, seeing their budgets decimated by the expense of capital trials and appeals,
stopped seeking the death penalty. Between 1981 and 2000, U.S. courts imposed more than 200 death sentences per year
—sometimes more than 300. But then the number fell sharply and hasn’t topped 50 per year since 2014.
Meanwhile, police officials came to the same realization. A poll of 500 police chiefs in 2008, commissioned by the
Death Penalty Information Center, found that capital punishment ranked last among their preferred crime-fighting
strategies. This is the background against which so many governors have felt safe to be sane. State by state, they’re
putting an end to this wasteful folly. State legislators are inching in the same direction. From New Hampshire to
Wyoming, lawmakers are advancing bills to end capital punishment — led, in many cases, by conservatives.

Sooner or later, this sea change is likely to register on the institution that gave us this mess. In 1972, the Supreme
Court looked out at a nation in which hundreds of prisoners languished on death rows and hardly any were executed.
The court struck down this arbitrary system, and for four years there was no death penalty in the United States. But
states promised that a more elaborate system would deliver reliable results.
Well, the results of that experiment are in. After more than four decades of tinkering with the system, capital punishment
is a costly mockery of justice. What was unconstitutional in 1972 remains so today. The high court should call the whole
thing off.

Questions:
1. Find the words corresponding to the following definitions in the text:
• People who know a lot about a particular subject and who often talk about it in public (noun):
• Too emotional in a way that is embarrassing (adjective):
• The cells in a prison for prisoners who are waiting to be killed as punishment for a serious crime (noun):
• To stop opening for business; to stop working (verb):
• To officially state that a law, contract, decision, etc. no longer has any legal force (verb):
• Complete, total, open, direct (adjective):
• A temporary stopping of an activity, especially by official agreement (noun):
• Hardly any; not very much and not as much as there should be (adjective):
• Very strict and that must be obeyed (of a law, rule, regulation, etc.) (adjective):
• To move or make something move slowly and carefully in a particular direction (verb):
• To be forced to stay somewhere or suffer something unpleasant for a long time (verb):

80
 2. What is happening in California?
3. Is the journalist surprised by this decision? Why?
4. Comment on the underlined sentence from the text: “What used to be political dynamite has become about
as explosive as damp newsprint.”

III. Listening Comprehension

Video 1
“Court rules on the use of lethal injection drug”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khm7bF8HDvk (1:50), CNN, June 29, 2015

Questions
1. How many drugs are mainly used for lethal injection?
2. What happened after the American company stopped making the first one?
3. What seems to be the problem with Midazolam?
4. Why did the Supreme Court uphold the use of Midazolam?

Video 2
“Kavanaugh: Attorney was "relentless, determined" to keep African
Americans off Curtis Flowers' justice”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmV6zq8Ikss (2:03), CBS, June 22, 2019.

Questions
1. Why is Chris Flowers on death row and how did his case gain notoriety?
2. What was the Supreme Court ruling about?
3. How does Brett Kavanaugh explain the court’s ruling?

IV. Cartoons

Cartoon 1 http://www.theeditorialcartoons.com/store/add.php?iid=112764

Joel Pett, 13 June 2014

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Cartoon 2 https://www.davegranlund.com/cartoons/

Cartoon 3 https://deathpenaltynews.blogspot.com/2010/05/cartoons-on-capital-punishment.html

82
 V. Grammar
ASKING QUESTIONS, REPORTED SPEECH

1. Asking questions

Read the following questions and find the key structure of questions in English:
1. Is he innocent?
2. Do you believe in retribution or Lex Talionis?
3. Should the US abolish the death penalty?
4. Will Texas remain the state with the highest number of executions?

Structure: __________________________________________________________

EXERCISE: Find the question that corresponds to the following answer.

1. ___________________________________________________________________________
→ George Stinney is the youngest person ever executed in the US in the 20 th century.

2. _____________________________________________________________________________
→ He was 14.

3. ______________________________________________________________________________
→ He was accused of murdering two white girls.

4. ______________________________________________________________________________
→ He was electrocuted.

5. ______________________________________________________________________________
→ The trial took place in 1944 in South Carolina.

6. _____________________________________________________________________________
→ The trial lasted 4 hours.

7. _____________________________________________________________________________
→ No one knows for sure whether he killed those two girls.

8. _____________________________________________________________________________
→ No, he is not. The youngest person ever executed in the US was 12-year-old mulatto Hannah Ocuish in 1786.

2. Reported Speech. Read the following rule and grids

As a rule, when you report something someone has said you go back a tense, i.e. the tense on the left changes to
the tense on the right:

Direct speech Indirect speech

I said, ‘I am not very happy at work.’ I told her I was not very happy at work.
They said: ‘we are going home.’ They told us they were going home.
He said, ‘Jane will be late.’ He said that Jane would be late.
‘I have been working,’ she said. She said she had been working.
‘What happened to make her so angry?’ he He asked what had happened to make her so
asked. angry.
‘stop/don’t speak’ I told her to stop/I told him not to speak
Modal verbs
Will Would
Can Could
Must Had to
Shall Should
May Might
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 In these examples, the present (am) has become the past (was), the future (will) has become the future-
in-the-past (would) and the past simple (happened) has become the past perfect (had happened). The tenses are
said to have “shifted” or “moved back” in time. Note that the 'single style' inverted commas (‘’) are commonly used
by UK natives as opposed to Americans (“”).

When the introductory verb is in the present, tenses do not change:

“She’s happy,” he says (direct speech) → he says she is happy (indirect speech)

Expressions of time must also be changed:

This (evening) That (evening)

Today Yesterday
These days Those days
Now Then
A week ago A week before
Last weekend The previous weekend
Here There
Next week The following week
Tomorrow The next/following day

EXERCISE: Report the questions and answers. Make the necessary changes (tense, pronouns). You
can use the following introductory verbs: to want, to wonder, to claim, to suggest, to tell, to say, to
argue, to explain, to add, to declare, etc.

1. “Should the death penalty be banned in this country?” (Oprah Winfrey)

→ Oprah Winfrey (to ask)
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
2. “We have a system of justice that treats you better if you’re rich and guilty than if you’re poor and
innocent.” (Bryan Stevenson, founder and Executive director of Equal Justice initiative)
→ Bryan Stevenson (to claim)
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
3. “In China, drug dealers get that thing called the death penalty. Our criminal drug dealer gets a thing
called “how about a fine?” (Donald Trump)
Donald Trump (to declare)
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
4. “If murder is wrong and not admissible in our society, then it has to be wrong for everyone, not just
individuals but governments as well.” (Sister Helen Prejean, author of “Dead Man Walking”)
→ Helen Prejean (to say)
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
5. “The death penalty is invalid because it is imposed in an arbitrary and racially biased manner.” (5
Supreme Court justices of the State of Washington, October 11, 2018)
→ Five supreme Court justices (to state)
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________
6. “Fix, don’t abolish the death penalty.” (The editorial team, Columbus, Dec 29 2018)
→ The editorial team (to urge)
___________________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________________

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 VI. Key Terms

an advocate/a proponent: a person who publicly supports a particular cause or policy

an attorney(-at-law)/a lawyer: a person who is trained and qualified to advise people about the law and to
represent them in court, and to write legal documents
a public defender (US)/state-appointed lawyer: a lawyer who is paid by the government to defend people in
court if they cannot pay for a lawyer themselves
aggravating circumstance: any fact or circumstance that increases the severity of culpability of a criminal act
a charge: an accusation + to charge with (verb)
to convict: to find guilty of a crime
a convict: someone who has been found guilty of an offense
death row: a prison block or section for those sentenced to death
a defendant: an individual, company, or institution sued or accused in a court of law
a plaintiff: a person who brings a case against another in a court of law
DNA: the chemical in the cells of animals and plants that carries genetic information (the abbreviation for
‘deoxyribonucleic acid’)
a deterrent (effect): a measure that discourages or is intended to discourage someone from doing something
evidence (uncountable noun): any matter of fact that a party to a lawsuit offers to prove or disprove an issue in the case
a felony: a serious crime, characterized under federal law and many state statutes as any offense punishable by
death or imprisonment in excess of one year. Crimes classified as felonies include, among others, treason, arson,
murder, rape, robbery, burglary, manslaughter, and kidnapping.
a first-degree murder: it is generally a killing which is deliberate and premeditated. It is distinguished from second
degree murder in which premeditation is usually absent, and from manslaughter which lacks premeditation and
suggests that at most there was intent to harm rather than to kill.
guilty: culpable of or responsible for a specified wrongdoing
to incarcerate, to imprison, to confine: to put somebody in prison or in another place from which they cannot
escape
Life Without (the Option of) Parole: the second harshest sentence after the death penalty. When sentenced to
LWOP, a convict will remain in prison for the rest of his/her life, without being offered the option of release from jail.
a miscarriage of justice: the conviction and punishment of a person for a crime they did not commit
a penalty (plural: penalties): a punishment established by law or authority for a crime or offense
a prosecution: the institution and conduct of legal proceedings against a person
a prosecutor: a person, especially a public official, who institutes legal proceedings against someone
recidivism: the behavior of a repeat or habitual criminal. A measurement of the rate at which offenders commit
other crimes, either by arrest or conviction baselines, after being released from incarceration + a repeat
offender/a recidivist
a retributionist: a believer in retributive justice
a ruling: the court decision on a case or any legal question
a sentence: a court judgment, especially a judicial decision of the punishment to be inflicted on one adjudged guilty
+ a life sentence (the punishment by which somebody spends the rest of their life or a very long period of time in prison)
a stay of execution: a delay in carrying out a court order. “The prisoner was granted a stay of execution by the
Supreme Court”/ un sursis à l’exécution.
a trial: formal examination of evidence in court by a judge and often a jury, to decide if somebody accused of a
crime is guilty or not
to try (a case): a civil or criminal case is tried, in the sense of being tested for the facts. In a criminal case only, it
can be said that the court tries the defendant, that the accused is tried.

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 VII. Going Further
Going further, Fran

- Into the Abyss (2011, Werner Herzog): a documentary film about two men convicted of a triple homicide that
occurred in Conroe, Texas. Michael Perry received a death sentence for the crime.
- True Crime (1999, Clint Eastwood): based on Andrew Klavan's 1995 novel of the same name. Eastwood stars in the
film as a journalist covering the execution of a death row inmate, only to discover that the convict may actually be innocent.
- Trial By Fire (2018, Edward Zwick): tells the tragic story of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in
Texas for killing his three children after scientific evidence and expert testimony that bolstered his claims of innocence
were suppressed. Based upon David Grann's article "Trial by Fire" that appeared in The New Yorker in 2009.
- Dead Man Walking (1996, Tim Robbins): the movie adaptation of sister Helen Prejean’s true story. A nun,
while comforting a convicted killer on death row, empathizes with both the killer and his victim's families.
- The Green Mile (1999, Frank Darabont): the adaptation of Steven King’s novel. The novel and the film tell the
story of a death row corrections officer during the Great Depression and the supernatural events he witnessed there.

See also:
- Execution Day For One Of The Youngest Men On Death Row In Texas, BBC (3:17)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNMQfrzFxdw
- Meeting America's Death Row Inmates: Part 1 (Prison Documentary) (45:15)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tqypS2cm0g

86
Map of the Contiguous United States
The map shows the contiguous USA (Lower 48) and bordering countries with international boundaries, the national capital Washington D.C., US states, US state borders,
state capitals, major cities, major rivers, interstate highways, railroads (Amtrak train routes), and major airports.

Source: One World - Nations Online Project https://www.nationsonline.org/oneworld/map/usa_map.htm

87
 Debating

1) What is debating?
A debate is a structured argument. Two sides speak alternately for and against a particular
contention usually based on a topical issue. Unlike the arguments you might have with your family
or friends however, each person is allocated a time they are allowed to speak for and any
interjections are carefully controlled. The subject of the dispute is often prearranged so you may
find yourself having to support opinions with which you do not normally agree. You also have to
argue as part of a team, being careful not to contradict what others on your side have said.

2) Why debate?
It is an excellent way of improving speaking skills and is particularly helpful in providing experience
in developing a convincing argument. Those of you who are forced to argue against your natural
point of view realize that arguments, like coins, always have at least two sides.

3) The basic debating skills

-Style: Style is the manner in which you communicate your arguments. This is the most basic part
of debating to master. Content and strategy are worth little unless you deliver your material in a
confident and persuasive way.

-Speed: It is vital to talk at a pace which is fast enough to sound intelligent and allow you time to
say what you want, but slow enough to be easily understood.

-Tone: Varying tone is what makes you sound interesting. Listening to one tone for an entire
presentation is boring.

-Volume: Speaking quite loudly is sometimes a necessity, but it is by no means necessary to shout
through every debate regardless of context. There is absolutely no need speak any more loudly
than the volume at which everyone in the room can comfortably hear you. Shouting does not win
debates. Speaking too quietly is clearly disastrous since no one will be able to hear you.

-Clarity: The ability to concisely and clearly express complex issues is what debating is all
about. The main reason people begin to sound unclear is usually because they lose the “stream of
thought” which is keeping them going. It is also important to keep it simple. While long words may
make you sound clever, they may also make you incomprehensible.

-Use of notes and eye contact: Notes are essential, but they must be brief and well organized to
be effective. There is absolutely no point in trying to speak without notes. Of course, notes should
never become obtrusive and damage your contact with the audience, nor should they ever be read
from verbatim. Most people sketch out the main headings of their speech, with brief notes under
each.
When writing notes for rebuttal during the debate, it is usually better to use a separate sheet of
paper so you can take down the details of what the other speakers have said and then transfer a
rough outline onto the notes you will actually be using.
Eye contact with the audience is very important but keep shifting your gaze. No one likes to be
stared at.

4) Content
Content is what you actually say in the debate. The arguments used to develop your own side’s
case and rebut the opposite side’s.

The final logistics of how long you will be debating, how many people will be in your
group, and how the debate will unfold (ie: which team speaks first etc.), will all be
decided by your tutorial leader.

88
Example of Debating

I.) The Motion: the motion is the subject of the debate. It is always defended, or supported, by the Government,
and opposed by the Opposition Party. An example of a general motion is “This House Believes The Future Will Be
Bright”. An example of a more specific motion, based on current events, is “This House Would Teach Creationism in
Public Schools”. This House means The Government.

II.) The Composition of the Two Teams: The Government vs. The Opposition. There are 5 members of each
team.

Government Opposition
1) Prime Minister 1) Leader of the Opposition
2) First Speaker 2) First Speaker
3) Second Speaker 3) Second Speaker
4) Third Speaker 4) Third Speaker
5) Whip 5) Whip

III.) Basic Procedure

The motion will be announced at least one week before the debate so that the teams have time to prepare. The
members of the teams will be chosen. Each speaker will speak for 3 to 4 minutes. Notes are allowed, but good public
speakers do not just read! They communicate! Team members should consult together to distribute roles and talking
points. The prime minister is always the first to speak. Next, the leader of the Opposition. The teams take turns
speaking.

IV.) Role of the first and last speakers

The Prime Minister introduces the motion, and defines the different elements of it. He or she also introduces the
other members of the team and the points they will address. He or She tries to make a strong first impression
explaining in general and inspiring terms why they support the motion.
The Leader of the Opposition must respond to what the Prime Minister said. He or She will have a different
definition for the elements of the motion. He or She will introduce the team and explain why they oppose the motion,
in general terms.
The Whip must listen carefully to the arguments of the other team. The role of the Whip is to sum up the debate,
but not in a general way. He or She must show the weaknesses of the arguments of the other team, while proving
that his or her own team’s arguments were better, more coherent, more convincing. Put simply, destroy the other
team!

V. Interaction
a) Points of Information are the opportunity for the opposing team to ask questions of the person speaking. The
person must raise his or her hand or stand up and say “On that point, Sir or Madame” or “Point of Information”
before asking the question. Ex. “What does creationism have to do with objective truth?” The speaker should try to
answer one or two questions briefly, i.e. 20 seconds. N.B. The first one minute of a speech is protected time in which
points of information are not yet allowed.
b) Rebuttal means to refute or directly disprove the arguments of the other team. If you don’t challenge an
argument then it remains believable. Each speaker (except the Prime Minister) should first rebut specific elements
of the previous speaker’s arguments before beginning his or her prepared speech.
c.) Spontaneous interaction or debate may be allowed between members of the two teams, however, the Speaker
of the House (probably the teacher) may ask for order. If there is class time left after the formal debate why not
have direct confrontational debate?

VI. The Jury will decide who won the debate and will explain the reasons.
It will be made up of students from the class.

VII. Judging Criteria

1) Presentation (structure, coherence, public speaking qualities)
2) Arguments (logic, coherence, relevance, convincing, quality of the arguments, superficial or researched and
developed?)
3) Star Quality (personal charisma, communication with the audience, humor, emotion)
4) Interaction (points of information, rebuttal…)

89
 Useful phrases for debating
1. Asking about or for an opinion

Could you tell me...? What do you think about/of...?

What’s your opinion about...? Do you think/feel...?
How do you feel about...? May I ask you...?

2. Asking for an explanation

Could you explain to me...? Could someone please tell me...?

Just tell me the reason why? I don’t really understand...?
I just don’t see why/what/how... Are you saying that...?
What do you mean by that? I beg your pardon?
I didn’t quite get that. Excuse me, did you say that...?

3. Giving your opinion

In my opinion/view... If you ask me...

As far as I can see/I’m concerned...
I have the/a feeling that...
Well, I’d say...
You can take it from me that...
What we have to decide is...
It’s a fact that...
The way/As I see it
Let me put it this/another way...
Sorry to interrupt you, but...
Personally (speaking) I think...
My view/point of view is that...
What I actually meant was...
It seems to me that...
I think/feel/reckon/believe...
If you want my opinion...
First of all, /To start with I’d like to point out...
There can be no doubt that...
Nobody will deny that...
Everyone knows...
Let’s get this clear (first)...
The point I’m trying to make is...
I’m absolutely convinced that...
The way I look at/see it is this

4. Giving an explanation

Look, it’s like this: What I mean is...

The reason for this is... The main problem is...
Just let me explain... Well, the reason is...
Well, the thing is... Above all we must keep in mind that...

5. Agreeing with an opinion

I (quite) agree. I agree completely/entirely.

I couldn’t agree (with you) more. I entirely/completely agree with you on that.
That’s true/right. That’s just it.
Quite/Exactly/Precisely/Right/Certainly/Definitely You’re quite/so right.
I think so, too. I don’t think so either.
That’s just my feeling/opinion. That’s just how I see it/feel about it, too.
That’s a very good/important point. You’ve got a good point there.
Yes, of course/definitely/absolutely Marvelous.
That’s exactly what I mean/say. Yes, that’s obvious.
That’s exactly how I see it. That’s what I think
How very true. So do I/So am I
Yes, indeed. I’m all in favor of what you’ve been saying.

6. Qualified agreement

Yes, perhaps, but .... Yes, possibly, although...

Yes, but on the other hand... Yes, up to a point.
I agree up to a certain point, but... Yes, in a way.
Maybe, I suppose so. Well, it depends.
I don’t think it’s as simple as that... I see what you mean, but I think that’s not the whole story
You may be right there. Yes, but there’s also another aspect to consider

7. Polite disagreement

I disagree (with you), I’m afraid. No, I really can’t agree, I’m afraid.
I don’t quite agree there. I’m not so certain/at all sure if that’s true/correct

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 I’m not (quite) so sure (really).
Do you really think so/believe that?
Well, that’s one way of looking at it, (but)
You can’t really mean that.
I wouldn’t say so.
I don’t think you’re right/that’s right.
I don’t want to argue with you, but ....
Are you seriously suggesting that ...?
8. Making a complaint
I can’t quite understand how/why
I’m disappointed with
It really is terrible/ridiculous that
Forgive me for mentioning it, but ....
Do you realize that ....?
I’m disappointed to hear that.
Something ought to be done about it.
Can’t something be done to/about ....
9. Reacting to a complaint
I’m (awfully) sorry to hear that
Well, there’s nothing we can do about that
What do you expect us/me to do?
I’m sorry you should take it that way.
10. Strong disagreement
I doubt that very much
Don’t you dare say so!
Bloody hell, no!
You’re pulling my leg!
That doesn’t convince me at all.
I’ve never heard of such a thing.
You can’t be serious!
That’s not correct
You don’t understand.
I don’t think so, really!
That’s out of the question
I can’t accept your view, that ....
I’m afraid, I can’t agree with you there
Really?
How stupid can you get?
That’s (simply) not true!
Surely, you’re not serious, are you?
You can’t be serious!
I doubt if ...
I don’t agree with you at all.
Oh, come on, you must be joking/kidding!
That’s not how I see it
That’s no excuse
That doesn’t make sense to me
You’re hopeless/wrong
I think you got that wrong
For heaven’s sake!
I’m sorry I can’t agree.
I’m not convinced that ....
Well, I have my doubts about that
You don’t really mean that, do you?
I don’t think so.
Surely you don’t mean that?
I can’t go all the way with you on that point.
I have my problems with what you’re saying
I’ve come to complain about ...
I’m fed up with ....
I’m sorry I have to say this, but ....
That’s what I want to know.
Are you aware that ....?
What are you going to do about it?
Look, I really must protest about ....
I really must apologize for this.
This isn’t my/our fault, you know.
I’ll find out what has happened
I'll see what I can do.
I think you got that wrong
Rubbish!
Shame on you!
On the contrary!
You’re contradicting yourself.
You’re wrong, you know.
It’s not like that at all!
You’re contradicting yourself
I’m afraid, I don’t think you quite understand.
That’s not fair!
I can’t believe that I’m afraid
Do you really think that’s a good idea?
Well, you would, wouldn’t you?
Don’t be silly/stupid!
What a silly/stupid thing to say!
I don’t think, you can say ....
I doubt it/that very much
Oh, come on, think about what you’ve just said!
I’ve got my doubts about that.
I disagree entirely/completely.
That’s out of the question
It’s not as simple as that!
I believe you’re mistaken
Let’s be sensible about this
You won’t listen to reason
I’m not impressed
Well that’s one way of looking at it, but
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DEBATE PREPARATION SHEET

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 Phonemic Chart

Source: http://www.phonemicchart.com/ (Another chart with “American” vowels is also available on this
website)

If you would like to hear the corresponding sounds, you can go to the following website:
https://www.englishclub.com/pronunciation/phonemic-chart-ia.htm

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