Since Trump returned to office, he has made clear his hostility to protecting the rights of racial minorities and women. He was eager from the start to obliterate DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) and to withhold federal grants from institutions that did anything to advance the progress of minorities and women. His words and deeds have gladdened the hearts of white supremacists. Racism is baked into this administration–from Pete Hegseth firing and refusing to promote women and Blacks in the military to Trump welcoming white South Africans to settle here. If he could, he would recruit whites from Nordic nations.

Erwin Chemerinsky, dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law, writes about how the U.S. Department of Justice is now making war on civil rights.

Dean Chemerinsky wrote this article for The Contrarian:

A stunning opinion from the Justice Department on June 9 seeks to gut federal protections against employment discrimination. If allowed to stand, it would override a 55-year-old Supreme Court precedent and nullify a 35-year-old federal statute protecting workers from race and sex bias. Although it will change the practices of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Justice Department enforcement efforts, it is not binding on the courts, and they must reject this assault on civil rights.

In a series of decisions beginning in the 1970s, the Supreme Court said that proving race or sex discrimination in violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution requires demonstrating discriminatory intent. Because decision-makers rarely express racism or sexism as their motives for action, it is enormously difficult to prove intentional discrimination. Moreover, voluminous literaturedocuments that we all have unconscious biases that influence our choices. At the very least, we should be concerned when our laws or practices have the effect of perpetuating discrimination.

Therefore, many federal and state laws allow liability based on proof of disparate impact without needing to establish discriminatory intent. This is allowed because statutes can provide more protection of rights than exists under the Constitution.

In 1971, in Griggs v. Duke Power Company, the Supreme Court held that Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act — which prohibits employment discrimination based on race, sex, or religion — creates liability when there is disparate impact. The court concluded that even if there is not discriminatory intent, an employer may not use a job requirement that functionally excludes members of a certain race or sex if it has no relation to measuring performance of job duties. The court rightly interpreted Title VII as saying that tests or measures used in hiring are not permissible if they have a discriminatory effect unless they have some proven connection to the job.

In 1989, the Supreme Court interpreted Title VII to make it more difficult to create liability based on discriminatory impact, so Congress adopted the Civil Rights Act of 1991. This law was explicit that disparate impact was sufficient for liability for employment discrimination. The 1991 act said that if there was proof of disparate impact, the employer had the burden to demonstrate that a challenged practice is “job related for the position in question and consistent with business necessity.” The law requires employers to show the practice genuinely relates to job performance, not merely that it serves some legitimate business interest.

But on Tuesday, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, in a 25-page opinion, took the position that disparate impact liability no longer should be sufficient for liability under Title VII; there must be proof of discriminatory intent. And the opinion made it much easier for employers to show “business necessity,” saying that this “requires employers demonstrate only that the challenged practice rationally serves a valid business purpose.” The opinion says: “Workplace requirements and selection procedures — such as background checks, aptitude tests, and SAT score — are presumptively job related. Only irrational or arbitrary practices with no plausible job-relatedness can create disparate impact liability.”

In other words, the Justice Department opinion makes it much harder for plaintiffs to prove discrimination and much easier for employers to avoid liability. It completely nullifies the provisions of the 1991 Civil Rights Act.

This is not the first time the Trump administration has attacked disparate impact liability. President Trump’s April 2025 executive order, “Restoring Equality of Opportunity and Meritocracy,” declared: “It is the policy of the United States to eliminate the use of disparate-impact liability in all contexts to the maximum degree possible to avoid violating the Constitution, Federal civil rights laws, and basic American ideals.”

The Justice Department opinion is directed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. It says that the “EEOC’s existing interpretations … embrace an unconstitutional reading of Title VII.” Of course, it is not the Supreme Court has held this. Rather, it is just the very conservative Justice Department on its own saying that the federal government no longer will follow the Supreme Court’s 1971 decision in Griggs v. Duke Power Company or the provisions of the 1991 Civil Rights Act.

The Justice Department opinion is based on a curious mix of authority. It relies heavily on a concurring opinion from Justice Antonin Scalia from 17 years ago, in Ricci v. DeStefano, in which he expressed concern that disparate impact liability in employment could cause employers to consider race to ensure that their practices did not have a discriminatory effect. Scalia expressed no conclusions but said that it was an issue the court would someday need to confront. The Justice Department memo also cites extensively an article by conservative law professor Gail Heriot opposing disparate impact liability.

The Justice Department repeatedly refers to the Supreme Court’s recent opinion in Louisiana v. Callais, which interpreted Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. Congress had amended that provision in 1982 to allow for liability upon proof that a state or local government had an election practice that had a discriminatory effect against voters of color. The court said in Callais that the government could not use race as a predominant factor in drawing election districts even if needed to avoid a racially disparate impact.

Callais was entirely about voting rights, not employment discrimination. In the voting rights context, Supreme Court precedent held that the government cannot use race in drawing election districts. But there is no such Supreme Court precedent that private employers cannot consider race or sex to avoid disparate impact liability. Quite the contrary, the only Supreme Court cases about affirmative action in employment — United Steel Workers of America v. Weber (1979) and https://www.oyez.org/cases/1986/85-1129 (1987) — allowed voluntary programs to increase participation of racial minorities and women in the workforce. Perhaps the conservative Supreme Court we have now will reconsider these decisions, but they remain the law.

Most important, even if the Supreme Court extends Louisiana v. Callais to employment and even if the court overrules its earlier decisions about affirmative action in employment, that does not provide a basis for the Justice Department’s making it very easy for any employer to win an employment discrimination case by asserting a business necessity.

Nor is there any basis for the Justice Department saying that proving employment discrimination under Title VII requires that the plaintiff demonstrate that there is an “equally effective alternative” that would have less discriminatory effect. The federal employment discrimination statute is explicit that if an employment practice has a disparate impact, it is illegal unless the defendant can show a business necessity. There is absolutely nothing in the law that creates the additional burden imposed by the Justice Department that the plaintiff must show another way to achieve the employer’s goals.

It is not surprising to see the Trump Justice Department trying to push the law in a very conservative direction. But it is astounding to see it disregard long-established Supreme Court precedent and nullify a federal statute. Hopefully, the courts — and even this Supreme Court — will say the Justice Department has gone too far in gutting the protection for workers in this country to be free from race and sex bias in employment.

Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and Jesse H. Choper Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Berkeley School of Law.

Greg Olear writes delightful posts, in which he calls of his vast knowledge and research to say something that no one else has said or will say. This post explains why Jared and Ivanka want Sazan Island, a few miles off the coast of Albania.

They think they discovered it, and they want to turn it into a super-deluxe resort where people like themselves can find the quiet and luxury that they seek.

The people of Albania don’t like the idea of turning Albanian property and nature reserve over to these Americans, and the protests grow louder and larger every day.

Olear points out that the Kushner’s already own an estate on a secluded island in Florida. Why another one?

And that brings him to the fascinating story of Sarawak, which was gifted to a British adventurer named James C. Brooke, who became the Rajah of Sarawak. It’s a great story:

Brooke was certainly well-off, but hardly the scion of a British robber baron. Nor did he work at some cushy desk job. He was a professional soldier and seafarer. He was enterprising. He was bold. And he was opportunistic. Adventuring in the East Indies, he found himself doing mercenary work for the Sultan of Brunei—putting down uprisings and blowing up pirate ships and saving the Sultan’s uncle from assassination attempts. As gifted as he was at taking out pirates, Brooke was positively elite—Epstein-like, one might even say—at currying favor with the rich and powerful.

From the Sultan, Brooke received the governorship of Sarawak, the Malaysian slice of northern Borneo. In 1841, he was given sovereign power over the region, as well as a new title: Rajah of Sarawak. It’s kind of nuts, in hindsight. An upper-middle-class Englishman, a white guy, became head of state of a new nation in the East Indies! And it wasn’t some bogus title, either. Brooke cannily allied himself with Britain, so while he enjoyed absolute power, he also had the world’s most powerful navy to protect him when he needed it—the best of both worlds. He issued currency, putting his portrait on the coins and banknotes. He established a hereditary monarchy, the White Rajahs of Sarawak, that only ended because the Japanese overran Borneo in the Second World War.

It’s a neat trick to tie Sarawak to Sazan Island., and Olear does it.

Read it to see how he pulls all these threads together.

Public health experts are worried about the Trump administration’s plans to downsize global aid programs that have saved millions of lives. One such program is the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). The program was initiated in 2003 during the administration of President George W. Bush. It is widely credited with saving 26 million lives. Some thought it unlikely that Trump would slash a program that has been effective and that was launched by another Republican president.

But the program will be dramatically cut, from $2 billion to $150 million yearly. The cutbacks will occur under the auspices of Trump’s America First priority. Rationale: If people die in other countries, it’s not our problem.

This article appeared in Medpage Today and was written by Rachel Robertson::

A major change to how the popular President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) program operates took effect on June 1, which experts warn will result in a massive decline in the U.S.’s public health presence abroad.

Historically, the U.S. State Department brokered Congress-appropriated dollars for PEPFAR programs and CDC would receive approximately $2 billion in PEPFAR funds annually for the agency’s programs around the world. But under the new plan, foreign nations will choose à la carte what services they want to buy from CDC, though countries that receive more than $125 million in U.S. aid will have to purchase a minimum package.

The new guidance is part of the Trump Administration’s “America First Global Health Strategy” and was first brought to light opens in a new tab or window by Emily Bass, an AIDS activist who has written a book about PEPFAR, last month on her Substack. In a document detailingopens in a new tab or window the government’s strategy, the State Department claims that this “America First” approach will disrupt a “culture of dependency” in how U.S. global health programs currently operate. But slipped in there is that foreign health assistance from the U.S. could also leverage access to other countries’ resources, like key minerals.

Tom Frieden, MD, MPH, who served as CDC director from 2009 to 2017 and is now president and CEO of the nonprofit Resolve to Save Lives, told MedPage Today that “the underlying concept is a good one, with countries deciding what services they want partnership on and with which partners. But the reality is that you cannot order off a menu if the restaurant is closed, and this approach would end CDC’s ability to support partner countries and protect Americans.”

Frieden noted that under this State Department plan, the funding that CDC receives from PEPFAR could plummet to $150 million, or 7% of the fiscal year 2025 level, which is not nearly enough to continue the agency’s global operations.

Frieden and seven other former CDC directors published an op-ed in STAT opens in a new tab or window last week urging the State Department to reform PEPFAR instead of “dismantling it.” They cautioned that the government’s plans could result in at least 18 CDC global outposts closing by year’s end, since most are sustained with PEPFAR funding, and up to 85% of the agency’s global presence being pulled back in the next 2 years.

“Without a transition plan and a manageable timeline, the result will not be a more effective PEPFAR — it will be the rapid dismantling of America’s overseas public health capability and the relationships that have taken years to build,” they wrote.

A few years ago, I read a book called The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. And happier. Less anger, less resentment, less envy. More unity. More of a sense of “we,” not us vs. them.

We are now at the other extreme. Some people are paid sums they can never spend in 100 lifetimes.

This is unhealthy.

Jeff Sommer of The New York Times reported on the 10 richest people in America.

Even among the nation’s best-paid corporate chiefs, Elon Musk stands alone. His compensation last year was a mind-boggling $132.3 billion. That’s not just 2.5 million times what the typical Tesla employee made; it’s 153 times the compensation of the second-highest paid chief executive.

Dylan Field, who heads Figma, an online design platform, was runner-up to Mr. Musk in the rankings. But in terms of wealth created, he was way behind. His pay, $864.4 million, was a mere rounding error for Mr. Musk.

These astonishing figures come from the latest annual survey of the highest-paid chief executives conducted for The New York Times by the research firm Equilar. The study found that seven other chief executives of public companies had paydays last year of at least $100 million, more than ever before.

Median pay for the 100 highest-paid chief executives in publicly traded companies reached $39.4 million — a new peak, and a leap of 35.8 percent in just one year.

As an editor and as a columnist, I’ve been involved in these Equilar surveys since they started in 2007. They have always shown that chief executives in the United States are exceedingly well paid. But lately, the trend is starker.

Right after Mr. Field in the latest rankings was Shankh Mitra of Welltower, a real estate investment trust that focuses on health care, with compensation of $821 million. Welltower shareholders last month disapproved of that pay package in a rare negative vote. One critic called it an “egregiously management-friendly” transfer of wealth from shareholders. But the “say on pay” vote was nonbinding. A vast majority of such measures are approved at public companies every year.

In the 1950s, the gap between the pay of a typical employee and a CEO was 1-20. For every dollar a typical employee earned, a chief executive made twenty. This era was characterized by much narrower income disparity compared to recent decades. (Forbes)

Peter Greene notes that a few Democratic governors are warming to the Trump federal voucher program. Will it hurt or help the state’s public schools? Greene has the answer.

He writes:

Discussion has heated up about the federal voucher program and, specifically, whether blue states should opt in, and whether such opt-inning is inevitable. Colorado’s Jarid Polis and New York’s Kathy Hochul appear to be primed to take Trump Education Dollars. Folks are looking at Pennsylvania’s voucher-curious governor Josh Shapiro (I suggested he not, but that may not be enough to keep it from happening). 

The temptation centers around two issues. 

First, people from the state are probably going to take the tax credit that goes with contributing to the voucher program. Shouldn’t governors, the argument goes, make sure that money from their own state doesn’t end up going to some other state. It’s an odd argument, because without the tax credit, those dollars would have gone to DC and on to Lord Knows Where anyway, so it’s not like non-participating states are losing anything                    

Second is the assertion that some of this voucher money can be used to fund public schools and not just private ones. Consider, for instance, this slide show from a presentation by Marguerite Roza of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. Roza spent fifteen years at University of Washington’s Center for Privatizing 

Reimagining Public Education (taking one year off to work with the Gates Foundation) and took the Edunomics director’s job in 2012. Edunomics folks have thrown their weight behind some bad reformy ideas like the Super Sardinemaster teaching model (fire all the bad teachers and jam all the students into class with the good ones). 

In her slide show, Roza gets one thing exactly right– the Treasury Department hasn’t yet issued the exact rules for the federal vouchers (Education Freedom Tax Credits), so there’s a whole lot we don’t yet know. 

What seems clear is that the mechanics of the federal vouchers (like all other vouchers) make it hard for public schools to get a piece of the funding stream. The donors hand money to the Scholarship Granting Organization, and the SGO hands the money to a famnily– not the school. 

So the missing link is the means of having the families hand their money to a public school.

They aren’t going to hand it over in the form of tuition, because it’s a free public school. Roza suggests there are three “scenarios” under which the public school could get its hands on some of that money.

Scenario 1: Homeschool or private school students who purchase add-ons from the district. I’m not clear what that might involve; at least in Pennsylvania, most of those students are entitled to get extras from their district for free, including everything from advanced classes to extracurriculars like band and theater and sports. In this state, I’m pretty sure the public school couldn’t charge an other-schooled student for anything that district students get for free.

Scenario 2: Disrtict students who sign up for “extras” like tutoring, summer programs, etc. Students could even choose “priced electives/clubs, e.g.financial literacy, robotics, possibly APs and VocEd, etc.” I don’t even know where to start with this. If some of these “extras” are being provided by third parties, klike a tutoring service, then the district doesn’t get a penny. But if we are talking about a district that offers some parts of its academic program only for those who will pay for it, that’s a crazypants model, a model that takes the “public” right out of public education. 

Especially given some of her examples: “Below grade-level students can opt in to extended yearservices, small group supports, homework help, etc.” Are you behind in school? Maybe in danger of not graduating on time? Well, for just a few dollars more, you can get the rest of the education that we promised you!

But that’s really just the warm-up for 

Scenario 3: Every district studentparticipates in a bundled set of“enhanced” services.

This is absolute dystopian bullshit, a literal use of the “subscription to unlock what ought to be regular features” model from the world of software. This image is taken straight from the slide:

“”Go get us some of that free federal money,” declares Imaginary School District, “or your kid will only have access to Public Education Basic, with none of the benefits of our Plus or Premium plans.” Look at Roza’s hypothetical list. AP classes? Full day K? Orientations!! Mental health!!! What the hell school district charges for that stuff? Surely she also meant to include lunches on her list. 

This is like airline pricing (“You can buy a ticket to fly on our plane, but if you would like to bring luggage or sit down or breathe our air, that will be extra!”)

In her presentation, Roza suggested that this is all just a neat way to replace fund raisers. She also suggests that districts could require families to fill out a scholarship form as part of registration. She also recommends you do some arm-twisting of friends and relatives to make their contribution to the SGO that serves your kids. Which would seem to suggest a funding system that re-enforces the already-existing gap between wealthy and non-wealthy districts. Do you have lots of folks who can donate to your district’s SGO? No? Well, it’s Public Education Basic for you.

This sure seems like a recipe for creating a multi-tier school system, where options that ought to be part of the program become upsells. It’s a proposal to lower the floor for what constitutes a minimal free public education down into the basement, with steps out of that basement on a strictly pay-to-play basis. But there’s another downside.

This is also a recipe for putting local schools at the mercy of federal operators, because now a major revenue stream will flow through DC. That means federal leverage over local policy (“Get rid of those Naughty Books or you are cut off from federal voucher funds”). There is a certain genius in the federal vouchers in that should MAGA be swept out of office, the revenue flowing through this program will create pressure from even blue states to keep this right wing policy in place. 

The federal voucher program does not support school choice; it’s a private school subsidy wrapped in a tax shelter. It’s not meant to help public schools, and it won’t, unless they are willing to bend themselves into a twisted fun-house mirror version of what a public school system is meant to be. 

Historian Adam Laats points out that this kind of public subsidy for private schools has a history of failure, And a zillion people have pointed out that this voucher, like all voucher’s, is about the school’s choice, not school choice (because your right to choose is not nearly as sacred as school operators’ right to discriminate against any children for any reason). 

And maybe that’s part of the point of these various attempts to sell the idea that this will be a subsidy for public schools as well as private schools. Except, of course, if the federal government really wanted to subsidize public schools, they could just do it or, at the very least, stop trying to slash the meager amount of funding that they do provide, instead of sending the money to public schools via this long, twisty path. Honestly, this whole “federal vouchers will benefit public schools” argument is the kind of convoluted baloney that only a thinky tank wizard or a government bureaucrat could love. Which, unfortunately, doesn’t mean it won’t work.