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U.S. House Defies Republican Leaders, Votes for Sanctions on Russia, Aid for Ukraine

By dianeravitch
June 4, 2026 //
2

Half a dozen Republicans and one independent joined Democrats to authorize a start to aid to Ukraine and sanctions for Russia. They defied not only the Republican leadership, but Trump, who does not want to help Ukraine and has eased sanctions on Russia.

This has been a bad couple of days for Trump. He lost his $1.776 billion slush fund for his allies; Congress will not pay $1 billion for his ballroom; the House passed a War Powers Act to limit his war in Iran. It takes just a few Republican votes to block his authoritarian wishes.

Robert Jimison of The New York Times reported:

Defying Republican leaders, the House voted on Wednesday to take up a bill to impose sweeping new sanctions on Russia and provide additional aid to Ukraine, after a bloc of G.O.P. defectors joined Democrats in an effort to ratchet up pressure on Moscow more than four years into the war.

The bill, which still must win passage in the House, faces a difficult path to enactment, given divisions in the Senate over a sanctions package and objections from the White House. President Trump has repeatedly signaled he does not want Congress constraining his flexibility to negotiate directly with Moscow, and could veto the legislation if it reaches his desk.

Still, the 218-to-204 vote to take it up, in which six Republicans and one independent who normally votes with them crossed party lines to side with Democrats, sent a clear signal of bipartisan pressure on the matter. It added to a growing list of issues on which the Republican-led Congress has in recent weeks shown a greater willingness to challenge Mr. Trump, including the war with Iran, his push to fund a new White House ballroom and a bid to create a federal fund to benefit his political allies.

The legislation’s centerpiece is a broad package of sanctions targeting Russia’s oil and gas sector that is aimed at striking at the Kremlin’s primary source of wartime revenue. Lawmakers in both parties have argued for more than a year that sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies have failed to fully sever the energy revenues that continue to bankroll Moscow’s war effort.

The bill would expand restrictions on financial institutions that conduct business with sanctioned Russian officials and state enterprises and seek to crack down on entities that help Moscow evade existing sanctions. It also would target international organizations, companies, banks and governments that continue doing business with sanctioned Russian entities, provisions primarily aimed at actors in China, Central Asia and other jurisdictions that have helped Russia circumvent Western restrictions.

And the legislation would eliminate a sanctions waiver President Trump approved earlier this year that provided limited relief.

It would authorize roughly $1.8 billion in direct spending and more than $8 billion in loans for Ukraine’s war effort as the country continues to face deadly bombardment in Kyiv and other areas.

The bill languished for more than a year as Republican leaders on the House Foreign Affairs Committee declined to take it up, preventing lawmakers from debating and amending it.

That prompted Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the committee’s top Democrat, to turn to a procedural maneuver known as a discharge petition, which allows rank-and-file lawmakers to bypass the leadership and force a bill to the House floor if it gains the support of a majority of members.

The bill must pass the House and pass the Senate. Trump might veto it.

But it shows that Trump’s iron control of his party is slipping.

Categories Democrats, International, Republicans, Trump

Timothy Snyder on “Superpower Suicide”

By dianeravitch
June 3, 2026 //
2

Timothy Snyder is an expert on European history. He taught for many years at Yale University and held a prestigious chair in European history. In 2025, he accepted a chair at the University of Toronto. His Substack blog is titled “Thinking About…” This important essay appeared in May 9. Nothing Snyder says here has changed.

He wrote:

The United States has just spent billions of dollars to lose a war that enriches its oligarchs, impoverishes the citizenry, sabotages its alliances, and strengthens its enemies. As justification for the self-destructive mindlessness, the White House gestures towards Jesus and genocide.

On April 20th I was asked to speak in New York about ethics and power. My thinking, which I expressed in a conversation at the Council on Foreign Relations, on this little video, and in the media, was that our utterly unethical war was also utterly self-destructive. The war, a catastrophe in itself, suggests the guiding principle of Trump foreign policy: superpower suicide. The term was since come into more general use, and readers have been asking me to spell it out.

Empires have risen and failed before, but to my knowledge no state has ever chosen to kill its own power, and succeeded with such rapidity.

It is hard to see this clearly. Even as we oppose individual Trump adventures, we hope that in some way they are based on some understanding of the national interest. They are not. To get the perspective we need to see the nature of this anti-strategic self-slaughter, it will help to consider thirteen traditional bases of state power.

1. Statehood. A superpower must, at a minimum, be a modern state. This means that it must be an arrangement that includes, via law and other institutions, a larger body of citizens within a common endeavor. There is no sign that the Trump administration regards the United States of America as a state. It treats the existence of the United States as a commercial opportunity for a select few people, American and otherwise.

2. National interest. Another minimal requirement of superpower would be a sense of why that power must be used. The Trump administration exhibits no interest in the good of the people. Theorists of international relations have differed as to how leaders understand national interests; we are intellectually unprepared, however, for a situation in which the leader simply does not care about either the state or the nation.

3. Succession. Again, for a state to maintain itself as a superpower, it must maintain itself over time. The basic requirement of such continuity is a succession principle, a means by which authority is transferred from some people to other people while institutions continue to function. In the United States, democracy enables succession. Historically, there are means of succession, for example by dynasty (or dynastic adoption, as in second-century Rome) or by the decision of a politburo, as in China or the USSR (in the US this would be a capitalist politburo, the sort of oligarchical coven that got us JD Vance). Getting from democracy to such different arrangements would end the American republic. Trump aspires to stay in power indefinitely, and says so. By putting the vote in question, he puts America in question, and thus American power.

4. Elites. For states to thrive and to accumulate and maintain power, the right people have to be in charge. There is no perfect means to achieve this, and there is the inevitable tension, as the Roman Stoics and others have noted, between the skills needed to rise to the top and those suited to serving some general interest. And those who rise to a position of authority will try to pass it on to their children; the Roman Catholic Church went to the extreme of insisting on priestly celibacy to block this tendency. Historically, powerful states seek ways to enable qualified people to serve in positions of authority, regardless of birth. Ancient China had an examination system. Napoleon established the principle of merit in both civilian and military life. The United States had a civil service that was the envy of the world as well as a military that was its most meritocratic institution. The Trump administration has chosen to disable the civil service and to purge the military command of people of quality. This process has been carried out by people who are themselves wildly unqualified to hold any sort of office, let along cabinet positions. To see where we are, we must understand that people such as Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth, about whom one might raise other objections, had no business accepting their nominations, since they lack any qualifications. The fact that such people could be considered, let alone appointed, is a marker of superpower suicide.

5. Education. In a deeper sense, a superpower must have a mechanism to refresh its society, and thus its politics and administration, by preparing its population to understand the challenges of the world. This administration has done the contrary. University students are forbidden to gather and to speak their minds; university administrations are threatened with retaliation if they allow their faculty to teach freely; libraries around the country, including in military academies, are purged of useful books; public education generally is replaced with scams whereby tax money is transferred from the poorer to the richer while schools themselves are starved; an unregulated internet is allowed and indeed encouraged to transform the public sphere into a realm of emotions and recriminations.

6. Science. The rise of great powers often involves an alliance between politics and science. The ancient Mesopotamians were astronomers whose systems of describing the heavens still mark our ways of thought; so were the Mayans. The Romans managed to operationalize Greek science to build, defend, and cure. The Renaissance was, by no coincidence, also the age of exploration. Modern imperial powers built state institutions to fund science and attract scientists; the United States from the 1940s was the outstanding example of this trend, and science (often as practiced by immigrants) was the most important basis of American superpower. Current American policy is to fund science on the basis of primitive ideological taboos, and to discourage young scientists from immigrating to the United States. Senior scientists are also leaving; a colleague in a central position in US science just told me that he is leaving the country in part because the overall environment is better in other places. It is also US policy to cast doubt on basic scientific observations, such as that of human-caused climate change.

7. Energy. Human groups that pioneer new forms of energy technology rise; those that do not fall. This might be the most profound truth of our history; a magnificent forthcoming bookdemonstrates the significance of energy transitions at the most profound level, that of the history of life on earth itself. Humans who mastered fire could consume more energy themselves. Humans who domesticated dogs could use their energy to hunt mammoths. Humans who domesticated plants could turn solar energy to their own purposes. Humans who understood weather and climate could turn wind energy to the purpose of exploration and conquest, as did the Vikings. The United States was established on the cusp of a transition to hydrocarbon energy: coal, oil, natural gas. These forms of energy are now becoming obsolete, not only in ecological but also in economic terms. And yet this administration has chosen to cancel America’s energy transition and subsidize technologies that have no future. This is superpower suicide in perhaps the most basic form. And nothing could benefit America’s chief rival, China, more than this choice.

8. Technology. It requires little effort to associate technology with the rise of great powers. Military achievement is associated intimately with innovation; from the spur to the machine gun, the causal relationship is not really contestable. While the United States spends gigantic amounts of money on weaponry, the Trump administration has chosen to focus on weapons from the past rather than of the future. Trump’s idea is battleships named after himself based on what he remembers of a movie. The plans for “Trump-class” battleships are a mixture of the fictional and the vulnerable, which does reflect the man. The notion is to invest untold amounts of money into a kind of weapon has been understood to be obsolete since 1943, and which if somehow built would be highly vulnerable to weapons other countries now have. This strategic atavism draws the United States away from national security in its most basic sense. The shape of modern warfare is revealed by the high-tech war between Russia and Ukraine, especially in Ukraine’s successful self-defense. The Trump administration chose to ignore the lessons of that war and to demean and defund America’s Ukrainian ally, to the detriment of American interests and American warfighting.

9. Diplomacy. This art, celebrated by great powers, has been trashed by the United States. It cannot be practiced without understanding other countries, as the most focused American diplomats have stressed (for example, Henry Kissinger, who can hardly be excused of softheartedness). It has rested, in the American and other cases, on the deliberate construction of a diplomatic corps where people train in languages and trade in knowledge. Under the Trump administration, the foreign service has been trashed. The principle of diplomacy, such as it is, is that other countries will do what we want because we are big and bad. This has not worked. The bizarre notion that the president can himself “make deals” is the sign of a religious cult; like most cults, its activity is the generation of ever more creative excuses for the lack of performance. There is no evidence that Trump knows how to negotiate, and abundant evidence that he does not: for example, defeat in trade wars with China; personal vulnerability to the preferences of Russian leaders, and the disaster of Iranian nuclear enrichment, of which Trump himself is the chief sponsor. In practice, critical negotiations, with Iran and elsewhere, have been put in the hands of two people, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, with close personal relationships with the president and obvious economic stakes in the relevant conflicts. The diplomacy of the Huns was far more sophisticated than this. It is hard to overstate how primitive the current American approach is, and how much joy it brings to America’s enemies.

10. Alliances. Great powers have allies. To be sure, they might change these alliances rapidly for reasons of interest, as the East Roman (Byzantine) Empire famously did. The whole history of the Roman Empire, for that matter, was one of active diplomacy with neighboring barbarians (as the Romans saw matters); archaeology bears witness to the arrangements that were made. The history of modern European empires was also one considered alliances, as the architects of American superpower understood. Under the Trump administration, useful allies are mocked and marginalized for no reason other than personal whimsy and a sense of grievance. Because there is no sense of state or national interest, there can be no understanding that alliances are of service. Trump feels annoyed because he is losing a war and removes US troops from Germany; those troops are there to enable the United States to win wars. I personally cannot think of any other example in which the leaders of a great power behaved in this way, presumably because these kinds of choices are inconsistent with the maintenance of power. The United States now seems to be treating as “allies” middle eastern countries that have nothing to offer except their own interests in the use of American armed forces in their own region, permanent engagement in the disastrous politics of oil, and financial opportunities for people personally close to Trump.

11. The international system. Postwar America did something far more impressive than build a system of alliances; it essentially created a set of laws, rules, and norms that allowed American power to maintain itself and to expand. The European Union and NATO, so abused by the Trump people today, were indirect and direct results of American policies intelligently designed to maximize American trade and security interests. But the achievement was far broader than that, and indeed historically unprecedented: the construction of laws and conventions that kept one country in the center of the world. Today, the Trump people make themselves at the World Economic Forum, the Munich Security Conference and similar gatherings and complaining that the rules are against them — the exact opposite was the case, because America made the rules. In deliberately destroying its own international system, this American government is improving the position of its rivals China and Russia, who have been calling for exactly this to happen, but who lacked the ability to make it happen.

12. The idea of victory. A superpower wins in confrontations, at least some of the time. This administration loses again and again, and is seen to lose by others. Trump announced that his main weapon of influence would be tariffs, but then lost his trade war with China, leaving Beijing more powerful and more emboldened. The Russo-Ukrainian war is a curious case. It would serve the interests of the United States in prosperity and stability for Ukraine to win; but under Trump the United States has switched its policy to one of support for Ukraine to support for Russia. So it has lost in that way. But since the United States has made that pivot, Ukraine has performed ever better in the war, and Russia has performed worse. And so the United States, amazingly, has managed to be the loser in the same war a double sense: by failing to see its own interests, and then by failing to fail. The Iranian war is an obvious strategic defeat in every traditional sense; insofar as there were any American objectives, they were not achieved. Trump’s policies have left Iran with more enriched uranium in the hands of a more radical regime which holds new sources of economic power in the world. In the current situation, in which military options have been self-humiliatingly exhausted, the useful instruments would be those that involved communicating with the Iranian people or influencing Iranian society. Those institutions existed until very recently; they were willfully demolished, to great fanfare, in early 2026.

The United States is now governed by people who celebrate defeat in symbolic terms characteristic of states in disastrous decline. Consider Defense Secretary Hegseth’s description of the rescue of a US pilot as the resurrection of Jesus. The screaming blasphemy of this might distract us from its strategic helplessness. Christological images of this sort are used as propaganda to transform defeat in the real world into victory in some imaginary one. The US lost the war in Iran. Among other things it was not able to sustain an air campaign. The downing of a US fighter meant than an individual mission failed. It is happy news, of course, that the pilot survived. But the notion that this was a “literal miracle,” as Hegseth claimed, brings the United States, sadly, into the tradition of losers who use Jesus to claim to be winners. An historical example of this was Polish Romanticism, with its idea that the collapse of a republic (chiefly due to wealth inequality) made of Poland the “Christ of Nations.” Donald Trump’s own self-deification has to be seen in similar terms: a president who could assert power in this world would not have to claim that his real authority comes from another one. His fantasies of the total destruction of Iranian civilization are part of an apocalyptic panorama that is inconsistent with decent politics.

13. Finances. Though not the most interesting historical subject, budget disaster stands behind many of the most notable collapses of state power, ancient and modern. Under Trump our national debt now approaches $40 trillion. National debt is higher than GDP of the country for the first time since the end of the Second World War. That is a notable point of comparison: it is normal to run big deficits when facing the challenge of the scale of a world war. We are running huge deficits for an entirely different reason: because we decline to tax wealthy individuals and corporations. That is not an approach that is consistent with fighting and winning wars, nor with maintaining the social services that allow a modern society to function. More profoundly: it reflects an approach to politics — government as customer service to the very wealthy — that leads us from power to ethics.

The war can lead us to a diagnosis of superpower suicide. Wars cannot be won by people who have no idea what they are doing, because they have no frame of reference (such as the nation or the state) beyond their own feelings. They cannot be fought well when the wrong people are making the daily decisions and the wrong weapons are being deployed. They cannot be reasonably brought to an end when there is no practice of diplomacy and no notion of the value of alliances and no concern about corruption.

But even a strict focus on power will lead us back to justice. But just as the war is only a symptom of superpower suicide, so superpower suicide is only a symptom of a still deeper condition, the one that must be addressed.

Even if all we cared about were American power, we would have to ask ourselves how to undo the distortions of democracy and the drastic inequalities of that enabled world-historical levels of strategic buffoonery. After a year of Trump, we face a situation where reform and repair are not the relevant categories. And, in a certain sense, this is useful. The fact that we reached this point, the fact that just a year of Trump could bring superpower suicide, shows us that the prior status quo was unsustainable.

The systems that made the United States a superpower cannot be rebuilt as they were, nor should they be: they involved structural injustices that made the present attempt at self-annihilation possible. From where we stand now there are two ways forward: one is the self-induced downfall of the American republic; the other is to reconsider American ideals and to restructure American politics so as to bring the people greater power over a more just future.

*****

PS. If you would like to help Ukrainians defend themselves from Russia’s criminal war of aggression, please consider contributing to the Sky Defense campaign. For worse but also for better, as the Ukrainians have shown us, this is a time when civil society campaigns can contribute to general security.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, International, Lies, Science, Stupid, Technology, Trump, Tyranny

Colorado: Governor Polis Bends to Trump Pressure, Frees Tina Peters

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2026 //
2

Trump has spent a lot of time rescuing, pardoning and trying to reward the people who joined him in attempting to overturn his election loss in 2020. He is a giant baby. He is a sore loser. He lost decisively, and he refuses to accept it. More than 60 federal and state courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected his appeals because there was no evidence of election fraud.

Someday, with time, we will look back on Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat as a low point in our history. Of course, we will look at his two terms in office as the absolute nadir of our history, as a time he spent rolling back civil rights, environmental protections, international alliances, access to healthcare, defunding medical and scientific research, bullying universities, and censoring the mass media.

Trump bullied Governor Jard Polis of Colorado to free Tina Peters, and Polis succumbed:

Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by President Donald Trump, was released from prison Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado’s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.

Peters’ release was confirmed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. The state agency said it would have no more information about the 70-year-old inmate. Her sentence was shortened by Gov. Jared Polis last month after Trump waged a lengthy pressure campaign against the governor and his state.

Peters served less than a quarter of her nine-year sentence.

Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching security after the 2020 election. She snuck in an outside computer expert affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell — who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020 — and the person copied the county’s Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it was updated in 2021.

Peters then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof that the election was rigged. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move stoked false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.

Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump. An appeals court upheld her conviction in April, but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.

Trump had championed Peters’ case, but because she was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, lambasting him on social media and disinviting him to a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.

Polis commuted Peters’ sentence on May 15. In a letter, he wrote that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison, the sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for a first-time non-violent offender.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, called the move a “dark day for democracy” and said it amounted to “selling out our state’s justice system for Trump.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Colorado, Corruption, Cruelty, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, History, Injustice, International, Trump

Pasi Sahlberg: The Making of an “Education Warrior”

By dianeravitch
June 1, 2026 //
8

This article by Finnish educator Pasi Sahlberg tells the story of how he became an “education warrior.”

Pasi is one of the best-known education gurus in the world. He is an articulate advocate of a “whole child, child-centered” view of education. He believes in the power of teachers. He has stood strongly against standardized testing, incentives, punishments, and markets throughout his career.

He is one of my personal heroes.

Categories Accountability, Character, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Creativity, Curriculum, Education Reform, Equity, Ethics, Global Education Reform Movement (GERM), International, Play, Students

Jennifer Rubin on Trump’s Rumored Deal with Iran

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2026 //
4

Ever since Trump decided to go to war in Iran, we have heard only good news from the administration. Trump has said repeatedly that “we won,” but it is not true. Iran still has uranium and now controls the Strait of Hormuz, choking off the world’s supply of oil.

Now, rumors again say that a deal is soon to be announced. This is the closest I could find to a description of the deal that will be announced. According to The New York Times, many Senate Republicans are unhappy with the deal.

Jennifer Rubin at the Contrarian questions the details of the deal:

According to news reports, Iranian and U.S. negotiators are closing in on a deal to end Donald Trump’s reckless, unconstitutional war. As the terms revealed that Trump’s war failed to attain his aims (e.g. permanently ending Iran’s nuclear ambitions), Republicans began blasting the deal. A Trump Truth Social post attempted to contain the backlash. He insisted he had told the negotiators to proceed carefully because time was on our side.

It bears repeating that Trump’s overly cheery take that we are on the verge of a deal may be nothing more than Trump spin. (Axios reported the deal could take days to complete.) Negotiations could stall at any time, leaving the Strait of Hormuz closed and no agreement on Iran’s nuclear program.

The agreement reportedly under discussion would simply continue talks about Iran’s nuclear program. A final nuclear deal, if concluded, would require Iran to give up its stockpile of enriched material (or reduce the level of enrichment) and suspend enrichment for a fixed time (as under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). One imagines Iran will be happy to talk and talk and talk. The purported agreement, according to U.S. sources, would permit free shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. That would simply be a return to the status quo.

But most galling for Republicans, Trump’s agreement reportedly would unfreeze $25 billion in Iranian assets, a significant achievement for the economically hobbled Iranian regime. Recall that Republicans and Trump personally excoriated President Barack Obama’s agreement to unfreeze a mere $1.7 billion in conjunction with the JCPOA, which they claim amounted to funding Iran’s nefarious activities.

War hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) freaked out as details of the agreement dribbled out. “If it is perceived in the region that a deal with Iran allows the regime to survive and become more powerful over time, we will have poured gasoline on the conflicts in Lebanon and Iraq,” Graham warned on X. “A deal that is perceived to allow Iran to survive and possess the ability to control the Strait in the future will put Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Shia militias in Iraq on steroids.” Graham was not done with his scathing review:

This combination of Iran being perceived as having the ability to terrorize the Strait in perpetuity and the ability the inflict massive damage to Gulf oil infrastructure is a major shift of the balance of power in the region and over time will be a nightmare for Israel.

Also, it makes one wonder why the war started to begin with if these perceptions are accurate.

He was not alone. “The rumored 60-day ceasefire — with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith—would be a disaster. Everything accomplished by Operation Epic Fury would be for naught,” tweeted Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the Senate Armed Services Committee chairman.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) chimed in as well, saying he was “deeply concerned” about the reported deal, the New York Times reported. “It would be a ‘disastrous mistake’ if an agreement resulted in Iran being able to enrich uranium, develop nuclear weapons, and have effective control over the Strait of Hormuz, he said.” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) on CNN observed, “It doesn’t make sense to me … now we’re talking about a posture where we may accept nuclear material remaining in Iran?”

The deal under discussion would dispel any notion that the United States “won” the war. The Wall Street Journal was quick to conclude: “The agreement, if completed, wouldn’t achieve Trump’s main goal of preventing Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon.”

If this deal holds, there will be no question that Trump’s war amounted to a major strategic failure. Maybe we get an agreement similar to the JCPOA, which would have been in place had Trump not exited the deal. (Getting back in war something you already had is nothing to cheer about.) The agreement would leave the regime (perhaps more radical than ever) in place, deny Israel any permanent end to the Iranian threat, reveal the limits of U.S. influence and power in the region, and, by default, afford China (as evidenced by Trump’s pathetic showing at the summit) increased stature and confidence. Preventing a restart of a war no one wanted and an end to the energy shock Trump provoked can hardly been called “wins.”

The entire episode underscores the utter fecklessness of the Republicans in Congress, who don’t exercise their constitutional authority or conduct even minimal oversight. The deaths and injuries to U.S. troops, the deaths of thousands in the region, the physical destruction in Iran and Lebanon, the damage to the Gulf states’ oil operations, the extensive depletion of U.S. munitions, the tens of billions in costs, and soaring energy costs (and broader inflation spike) have achieved no lasting, positive result for the United States or its allies in the region. At best, we would be back to an agreement akin to the JCPOA but with a much emboldened, more dangerous, and well-funded Iranian regime.

Whether this deal gets finalized or not, Congress must conduct extensive oversight to fully investigate the Trump regime’s malfeasance, incompetence, and lack of honesty. If war crimes were committed, the officials responsible need to be held accountable. And finally, Congress needs to pass legislation to prevent this and future presidents from unilaterally blundering into unnecessary, ill-advised and illegal wars in the future.

Categories Accountability, Hoax, International, Lies

Russia Kills 24 in Missile Attack on Apartment Building

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2026 //
11

Russia continues to attack civilian targets in Ukraine.

United 24 reports from Kiev:

Ukraine honored a 3-day ceasefire from May 9 to 11 at putin’s request so russia could hold its Victory Day parade uninterrupted. Just days later, russia launched one of its largest missile and drone attacks on Kyiv, once again targeting civilians in their homes.

In one district, a russian missile strike caused part of a residential building to collapse, trapping people, including children, under the rubble in the middle of the night.

Rescue workers searched through the debris for more than 28 hours. Emergency workers cleared more than 3,000 cubic meters of destroyed building structures.

24 people were killed. Among them were 3 children. 48 more were injured, including a newborn baby.

One of the children killed was 12-year-old Liubava Yakovlieva, a 6th grade student. Another victim was 15-year-old Mariia, who died together with her father and grandmother.

Among those killed were also Maryna, an English teacher, Svitlana, a kindergarten teacher, and many other Ukrainians whose lives were stolen by russia, leaving devastated families behind.

Every day, russian missiles take the lives of Ukrainian children, destroy families, and steal futures that should have belonged to them.

Today, Kyiv is in mourning for the victims of the May 14 attack. We honor the memory of everyone whose life has been taken by russia, and send our deepest condolences to their families and loved ones.

For Ukrainians, “protecting the sky” is not an abstract phrase. It means children getting to wake up in the morning. Families surviving the night. Homes staying intact.Join the Sky Defense fundraiser to save more lives

Thank you for your support!

Categories Cruelty, International

36 Nations Create Special Tribunal to Try Putin for War Crimes

By dianeravitch
May 16, 2026 //
19

Europe knows aggression when they see it. They are sick of Putin’s crimes of aggression against Ukraine. Some know they could be next. Now that Trump has cut off aid to Ukraine, now that Trump has shown his slavish devotion to Putin, Europe is stepping up to make Putin accountable for war crimes.

Euronews reports:

The tribunal on the crime of aggression against Ukraine marks “the point of no return” in the search for justice, the country’s foreign minister said on Friday. But the court will face limitations in bringing Putin to justice.

Thirty-six countries, mainly from Europe, have signed up to a special tribunal to prosecute Russian President Vladimir Putin for the crime of aggression against Ukraine, which will be headquartered in the Dutch city of The Hague.

The joint pledge was formalised on Friday during the annual meeting of foreign affairs ministers of the Council of Europe, a human rights organisation that has taken the lead in addressing the jurisdictional gap left by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Ministers endorsed a resolution laying down the structure and functions of the management committee that will oversee the tribunal. Among its tasks, the committee will approve the annual budget, adopt internal rules and elect judges and prosecutors. The countries commit to respecting the independence of the judicial proceedings.

Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, who took part in the ceremony, hailed the moment as “the point of no return” in the years-long search for accountability.

Very few believed this day would come. But it did,” Sybiha said on social media, evoking the spirit of the precedent-setting Nuremberg trials that brought to trial the surviving leaders of Nazi Germany.

“Putin always wanted to go down in history. And this tribunal will help him achieve this. He will go down in history. As a criminal,” he added.

Friday’s resolution was signed by Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Republic of Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine and the United Kingdom.Australia and Costa Rica were the only non-European signatories. The European Union also endorsed the initiative, even if four of its member states, Bulgaria, Hungary, Malta and Slovakia, did not add their names to Friday’s resolution

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, International

UNESCO Report on the Dangers of Ed-Tech: “An Ed-Tech Tragedy?”

By dianeravitch
May 5, 2026 //
9

I posted about this very important international study when it was first released in 2023. It is as relevant now as ever. Can we recognize failure and learn from it? Some European countries have. With some exceptions, we have not.

Ed-Tech is a major industry. Its profits are huge. We have allowed the hype and propaganda of the industry to remake schooling. Part of the marketing is the claim that “our public schools are failing.” The answer: buy more of what impairs learning. Or endorse school choice, charters, vouchers, and home schooling, even though there is zero evidence that these privately run schools are as effective as public schools.

Read the report. Reach your own conclusion. Did we dive into screens and laptops because they increased student motivation and effort? Or because we were swept along by the industry propaganda?

Three years ago, UNESCO released a major blockbuster report warning about the dangers of relying too much on education technology. The author of the report was Mark West. The title of the report is An Ed-Tech Tragedy? Educational Technologies and School Closures in the Time of COVID-19.

An alternate link: https://teachertaskforce.org/sites/default/files/2023-09/2023_UNESCO_An-ed-tech-tragedy_Educational-technologies-and-school-closures-in-the-time-of-COVID19_EN_.pdf

The puzzle at the heart of the document is the clash between learned experience and the imperatives of greed. We learned during the pandemic about the risks of becoming dependent on ed-technology as the main driver of instruction. As we reflect on the period from March 2020 to now, we can discern the damage that occurred to students when their teachers were replaced by virtual instruction: boredom, learning loss, mental health issues, loneliness, lack of socialization with their peers, lack of personal interaction with teachers. 

Yet with most people believing that the pandemic (or the worst of it) lies in the past, ed-tech corporations are focused on selling more of what has already failed. Why would we want to expand what has demonstrably proved inadequate and harmful to students?

You probably will take a long while to read the full report, but do read the summary and conclusions to whet your appetite. The overview concludes that the global reliance on ed-tech was necessary in the circumstances, but was a tragedy. Children need human teachers. They need people who look them in the eye and encourage them. Education is not a mechanical process; people are not widgets. 

The UNESCO report reviews the global evidence of the harm caused by dependence on ed-tech: 

[The report] exposes the ways unprecedented educational dependence on technology often resulted in unchecked exclusion, staggering inequality, inadvertent harm and the elevation of learning models that place machines and profit before people.

The summary says:

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? documents how widespread school closures and the hard pivot to remote learning with connected technology during the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in numerous unintended and undesirable consequences. 

Although connected technology supported the continuation of education for many learners, many more were left behind. Exclusion soared and inequities widened. Achievement levels fell, even for those with access to distance learning. Educational experiences narrowed. Physical and mental health declined. Privatization accelerated, threatening education’s unique standing as a public good and human right. Invasive surveillance endangered the free and open exchange of ideas and undermined trust. Automation replaced human interactions with machine-mediated experiences. And technology production and disposal placed new strains on the environment. 

Visions that technology could form the backbone of education and supplant school-based learning – in wide circulation at the outset of the health crisis – had promised better outcomes. Ed-tech proponents held that the immense challenges of school closures could be met with technology and that deeper technology integration would transform education for the better. But these high hopes and expectations unraveled when ed-tech was hurriedly deployed to maintain formal education as COVID-19 tore across countries. 

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? recounts this tumultuous period, documenting the actions and decisions taken by governments, schools and technology companies. The publication contrasts the promises of ed-tech with the realities of what ed-tech delivered as a response to school closures that impacted over 1.6 billion learners and stretched intermittently from the beginning of 2020 to the end of 2022. The evidence and analysis highlight trends observed across countries and zoom in on the specificities of local experiences, creating a global mosaic of what students, teachers and families experienced when connected technology was elevated as a singular portal to teaching and learning. 

Aimed at general and specialist audiences alike, this publication shows how the abrupt and deep changes brought about by the recourse to remote digital learning during the pandemic continue to ripple through the education sector even as schools have fully reopened. It questions whether more and faster integration of technology is desirable for learners, teachers and schools and if ed-tech is, as it is often billed, a key ingredient of educational resilience.

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? posits that new principles are needed to forge more humanistic directions for ed-tech development and use. In-person schooling and teaching should be guaranteed even as technologies improve and connectivity becomes more ubiquitous. Governments need to anchor this guarantee in the legal architecture upholding the right to education, especially for young learners. Moreover, future applications of ed-tech must show greater concern for holistic student well-being. While academic learning is central to education, it is not the only component. Ed-tech needs to support the multiple individual and collective purposes of education, from socio-emotional and personal development, to learning to live together, with the planet, as well as with technology. 

In detailing what happened when ed-tech was deployed in response to pandemic school closures, as well as questioning why ed-tech was often elevated as a singular solution, this publication clarifies how the education community can move beyond merely reacting to technological change and instead play a more assertive role steering the digitalization of education towards the more holistic goals of education to shape inclusive, just and sustainable futures. 

The future of education needs to be a humanistic one. The lessons extracted from what is premised here as an ed-tech tragedy illuminate the ways technology can better foster education that teaches and revitalizes human values, strengthens human relationships and upholds human rights.…

Ed-tech was supposed to solve a problem but it created other problems.

An Ed-Tech Tragedy? examines the many ways that the hurried embrace of technology solutionism steered responses to a global education challenge directly towards ed-tech. Along the way, the logic of technology solutionism changed understandings of educational problems to be solved. The analysis presented here helps reveal, for example, how technological solutions deployed during school closures took a narrow view of education and focused almost exclusively on furthering the academic progress of students in pared-down curricular subjects. This meant that little attention was paid to other education goals, such as fostering curiosity and inquiry and supporting physical health, mental well-being and social and emotional learning. This analysis also shows how ed-tech, originally cast as a solution to maintain learning continuity in the face of widespread disruptions to schooling, has more recently been positioned as a tool to help reverse learning loss. This ‘loss’, however, grew out of the deficiencies of technology-dependent remote learning to preserve the pace of academic learning that would have been typical without school closures stemming from the pandemic. The problem that ed-tech initially set out to solve morphed from assuring the continuity of learning to remedying lost learning. The way the problem was reframed while maintaining connected technology as the centrepiece of the solution is an example of technology solutionism at work.…

Recognizing the chaotic pivot from in-school learning to technology-facilitated distance learning as having a tragic arc provides a forceful rebuttal to a growing consensus that the education sector somehow ‘advanced’, ‘leapfrogged’, ‘catapulted’ or ‘disrupted’ itself to a better future when it deployed technology on a massive scale as an interim measure to confront a crisis. The evidence overwhelmingly points in the opposite direction: education became less accessible, less effective and less engaging when it pivoted away from physical schools and teachers and towards technology exclusively. ‘Tragedy’ in this sense signals regression – a denigration of the status quo,rather than a desired evolution. The narrative that ed-tech should be or must be a central component of ‘building education back better’ warrants new scrutiny after a careful examination of the experiences during the pandemic.

The invocation of tragedy also facilitates awareness that connected technologies, despite their growing reach, power and potential, remain tools in a repertoire of many others to construct stronger, more agile and more flexible education systems that can respond and adapt to disruption. Other tools include strengthened teacher training and support; enhanced school leadership and pedagogical management of schools; curricular renewal; smaller class sizes; and improved physical resources and infrastructure for schools and classrooms. Crises that necessitate the prolonged closure of schools and demand heavy or total reliance on technology have been exceedingly rare historically. Future crises may present entirely different challenges. The trauma of the pandemic has, in many circles, functioned to elevate technology as an almost singular solution to assure educational resilience by providing flexibility in times of disruption. Investments to protect education wrongly shifted away from people and towards machines, digital connections and platforms. This elevation of the technical over the human is contradictory to education’s aim to further human development and cultivate humanistic values. It is human capacity, rather than technological capacity, that is central to ensuring greater resilience of education systems to withstand shocks and manage crises.

Overall, the pandemic is a case study in how technology in its current iterations is not yet a suitable foundation for actualizing the diverse goals that communities assign to education. Expectations that technology may, in time, help further increase the reach, improve the quality and strengthen the agility of education are valid. For now, though, the experiences since early 2020 have shown it to be an alarmingly brittle solution – one incapable of effectively responding to widespread and extended school shutdowns. For far too many students, it was a solution that either never started in earnest or quickly broke down. The sudden shift to ed-tech also accelerated a concerning transfer of authority away from teachers, schools and communities and towards private, for-profit interests. Additionally, the censorship, data extraction, advertising, top-down control, intimidation and surveillance that so often characterize current models of digital transformation have made education less free and, arguably, less capable of facilitating critiques of and positive changes to the status quo. [emphasis added by DR.]

Countries made massive investments to digitalize education through much of the COVID-19 pandemic. But it remains far from clear whether these investments will improve education over the longer term and make it an engine of just, inclusive and sustainable development, especially when compared with conventional school-based and teacher-facilitated education. The digital transformation of education may yet be a force for beneficial change. But the logic of technological solutionism and its associated business models currently steering this transformation, led largely by the commercial technology entities that are remaking so many aspects of society, tend to treat education and knowledge as private commodities and not as global public goods that provide collective as well as individual benefits.

It is hoped that this analysis and its use of tragedy as a metaphor might moderate the discourse and popular view that the pandemic has ‘unshackled’ education systems and ‘launched’ them into desirable futures characterized by greater technology use. Documenting the severity and scope of the many negative consequences of ed-tech responses during the health crisis inverts the triumphalist narratives that accompany many descriptions of technology deployments to address the educational disruption caused by school closures. A critical examination of the assumptions of technology solutionism and a review of the existing evidence provide a corrective and a counterargument to notions that more, deeper and accelerated use of technology is uniformly positive for education…

Throughout the review that follows, considerable evidence illustrates how the rush to distance and remote learning with ed-tech accelerated the privatization of education in many contexts. While some countries and localities managed a shift to digital learning with limited privatization of the educational experience, a defining characteristic of the technology-centric response to the educational disruptions of the pandemic tended to be the elevation of for-profit, private ed-tech companies. In addition to considering the ways reliance on ed-tech impacted educational inclusion, equity and quality, this publication also explores the complex and often symbiotic links between ed-tech and the privatization of education during the pandemic.The rush to distance and remote learning with ed-tech accelerated the privatization of education.

Most such reports tend to summarize the status quo. This one challenges it. It’s time to take stock before the Ed-tech industry takes control of our most precious asset: our children.

Categories Ethics, Failure, For-Profit, International, Technology

Sweden Cuts Back on Digital Learning, Emphasizes Books and Writing on Paper

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2026 //
4

The BBC reports that that Sweden has joined Norway in ousting electronics from its classrooms and reviving the use of books. The Swedish government, like Norway’s, concluded that electronic tools were causing a decline in literacy rates.

Sweden’s government is championing a renewed focus on physical books, paper and pens in classrooms, designed to reverse falling literacy levels.

Another publication, Undark, reports that the government is investing in textbooks, nonfiction books, and fiction books.

And again in the BBC:

Schools in Sweden are returning to more traditional learning methods – such as reading from physical books – after seeing their reading standards drop while ipads and laptops were used.

There is now a focus on using more printed textbooks, handwriting and less screen time in early education. Experts say reading levels are getting better because of this.

Some teachers have said students are asking for more books and paper based learning in schools, saying they learn more quickly and retain information better than using a laptop. 

This isn’t a total ban on technology in the classroom and digital devices are still used, but the government is spending millions buying physical textbooks, and library books.

During the 2000s and 2010s, books were sidelined in Swedish classrooms and replaced with laptops and ipads.

The idea was to prepare students for life in a digital world.

But it seems to have backfired.

Sweden’s reading standards, which were among the best in Europe in 2000, began to fall.

In 2012, after years of getting worse, its Pisa scores — a worldwide test that measures reading, maths and science literacy among 15-year-olds — hit their lowest point.

Now, by popular demand, the books are back in the classroom and things are improving again.

The state has launched a national reading challenge for ten-year-olds and the classes that read the most books win prizes.

Sweden had intended to be a leader in the field of digital learning, but eventually concluded that the heavy use of Ed-tech was harming student learning. Increased screen time was leading to distraction, inability to concentrate, and lessened ability to do deep reading. “Studies have linked heavy digital use to reduced comprehension and memory retention as well as eye strain.”

The U.S. spends billions every year for Ed-tech. But the pushback is growing.

Jonathan Haidt of NYU, a critic of Ed-tech and social media for children, has kept a running tab on his Twitter account of cities and school districts in the U.S. that ban social media for children. where students spend less time on cell phones and social media, libraries report an increase in books checked out.

To those who are not on the payroll of Big Tech are likely to recognize that the frenzied spending of billions of dollars on Ed-tech had more to do with profits than with student learning.

Categories Curriculum, Democracy, International, Technology

How NOT to Celebrate the First Amendment!

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2026 //
6

On Saturday April 25, the White House Correspondents Association will hold its annual dinner, which honors the First Amendment and raises scholarship funds for journalism students.

This year, for the first time, Trump has accepted the invitation. Trump avoided the dinner in the past, because it’s customary to roast the President and his administration.

Trump likes to hurl insults at others, but he can’t tolerate being laughed at, nor is he capable of making fun of himself. He likes to think that he is the best President in history, smarter than the generals and scientists. Everything he does, he thinks, is an unparalleled success.

Humor is not part of his deck of cards. Insults, boasting, and bullying are his main suits.

As it happens, the online publication STATUS got a copy of an invitation to an “intimate gathering” from billionaire David Ellison, whose father bought CBS and is closing in on CNN. According to Status, CBS invited Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller to be their guests at the dinner on the 25.

So many ironies! No administration in memory has done more to erode the First Amendment than the current one. No president has done more to insult and belittle the press than Trump. No Cabinet member has stifled First Amendment rights more than Hegseth. The only coverage he tolerates is sycophancy.

And better yet, Ellison is holding his dinner at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The USIP was a private organization that was evicted from its building by DOGE. Trump decided it should bear his name.

So our great “peace” president is now at war with Iran, a war of choice. Our man of peace issued a warning that he would eliminate Iran’s entire civilization if they did not accept his demands. That’s a war crime.

Somewhere in the wings is Trump’s “Board of Peace,” which collected $1 billion each from countries that wanted to join. Trump is chairman of its board forever. There will be no audits. Trump has collected a bushel basket of billions to spread his gospel of peace.

It’s really sick.

The White House Correspondents dinner will not feature a comedian this year. Comedians might make the dire error of ridiculing Trump. So, instead of a comedian, they invited illusionist Oz Perlman to perform. That’s safe!

To show some backbone, I propose that they invite an unannounced guest to perform: Stephen Colbert.

The very idea of honoring Trump at a dinner that also honors the First Amendment is absurd. This president constantly attacks the press and calls them “fake news,” ridicules female reporters, says belligerently that the press is “the enemy of the people.” He does not deserve to be honored.

The best thing for the White Hiuse Correspondents to do is to boycott their dinner; or to hiss when he is introduced; or to withhold any applause at the end of his remarks.

These are not normal times. Trump is not a normal president. He is an ignorant, bitter narcissist, who is declining physicallly and mentally. He can be counted on to lie and spread hatred. He deserves no honor, no applause.

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of the Press, Hoax, Hypocrisy, International, Trump
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