Politics and views in the United States.

President Biden defends dissent but says "order must prevail" on campus, former President Trump won't commit to accepting the 2024 election results and Nebraska lawmakers circumvent a ballot measure repealing private school vouchers.

TRANSCRIPT

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Welcome to 2024 Talks, where we're following our democracy in historic times.

Dissent is essential to democracy, but dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education.

President Joe Biden says Americans have the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.

In a televised address, Biden condemned the campus unrest over Gaza, but rejected Republican demands to send in the National Guard.

He said the growing student protests haven't changed his posture toward the Israel-Hamas war.

School administrators who've called in police to dismantle student encampments are facing faculty backlash.

At UCLA, they're reportedly considering a work stoppage.

Columbia University professor Rashid Khalid says his colleagues have called for a vote of no confidence in the school's president.

This is the conscience of a nation speaking through your kids, through young people who are risking their futures, who are risking suspension, expulsion, criminal arrest in order to wake people up in this country.

More than 2,000 people have been arrested on college campuses in the past two weeks.

Former President Donald Trump is refusing to commit to accepting the results of the 2024 election.

He tells the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he'd accept a loss in Wisconsin, but only, as he puts it, if everything's honest.

The Biden campaign said Trump's comments again confirm that he's a threat to democracy.

Montana is the latest state to let parents pay private school tuition with public money, but advocates for students with disabilities are suing to stop that.

Riley Summers Flanagan with Helena-based Upper 7 Law says to get the money, students must first renounce their right to a free quality education under the state constitution.

It appears just to be a gambit to try to privatize public money and to send it to vendors who have no accountability and no responsibility to genuinely meet the needs of kids with disabilities.

Meanwhile, Nebraska lawmakers have voted to circumvent a ballot measure aimed at repealing a school voucher program.

Democratic State Senator Carol Blood calls it an act of cowardice to deny the will of the voters.

When we refuse to hear the voices of the 117,000 people who said, "Yes, we want to vote on this issue," who are we to decide that we know better than them?

Alabama lawmakers will let President Biden be on the November ballot.

Last month, the Secretary of State warned Democrats their national convention, when Biden would be formally nominated, would miss the state's certification deadline.

Democratic State Senator Marika Coleman praised the bipartisan fix.

If one of the nominees is not on the Alabama ballot, then that's a whole lot of people in the state of Alabama that are disenfranchised.

The Biden campaign faces the same issue in Ohio, where lawmakers have less than a week to make the adjustment.

I'm Katherine Carley for Pacifica Network and Public News Service.

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