Imagine this scenario: a candidate for Governor of a major state pays for a campaign ad that portrays his opponent as a liar. That in itself is not unusual. But suppose that candidate’s staff has located the mother of his opponent and has persuaded her (paid her?) to make an ad saying that her daughter is a liar, is possibly mentally unstable, and should not be elected Governor.
But this is what’s left out of the story. The context. The target of the ad–Dr. Amy Acton– has not spoken to her mother in more than 40 years. Between the ages of 9 or 10 and 12, she was raped by her stepfather. He was indicted by a grand jury for child rape but fled the state before trial. The candidate’s mother never divorced the man who raped her daughter. The daughter and her brother were removed from their mother’s care.
The mother is a felon, charged repeatedly for non-violent crimes like fraud, writing bad checks, and even animal cruelty.
The ad in which Dr. Amy Acton’s mother attacks her is the dirtiest trick of the midterm elections. It was funded by Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire who is running for governor of Ohio. Vivek must have gotten tired of hearing his Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, talk about living in distressful conditions as a child. Someone on his staff found Acton’s birth mother, who lied on video to hurt her daughter yet again.
How painful for Amy Acton, who suffered through a horrible childhood, was estranged from her negligent mother, and now must endure the pain of being insulted by the mother who failed to intervene to stop the rapes and protect her daughter.
Amy Acton rose above her childhood abuse, went to college, then to medical school and became a doctor. Before she entered the race for Governor, she served Republican Governor Mike DeWine as Ohio’s Director of the state Department of Health.
Governor Mike DeWine urged Ramaswamy to take down the ad; so did other Republican state officials.
But Trump thought it was a terrific ad and urged Ramaswamy to keep running it. Trump tends to side with men accused of sexual assault, never with their victims. Vivek plans to spend $4 million to continue to run the campaign ad.
Trump and JD Vance saw nothing wrong with the ad attacking Acton. Vance said that critics should “stop whining” about the ad and focus on winning.
The one sure conclusion I reach is that these men don’t care if children are sexually assaulted and raped. They side with rapists and pedophiles, not their victims.
To these symbols of “manliness,” women don’t count.
Did you know that reading fiction is inportant for your social and emotional development? Did you know the the widely adopted Common Core state Standards actually diminish the reading of fiction in school? The standards describe the percentage of time that should be devoted to “informational text” and fiction. As students grow older, teachers are supposed to reduce fiction and favor informational text. Studies have shown that fiction-reading has declined, which was the intended effect of the Common Core.
This article explains why the reduction of fiction reading harms students.
Richard Sima wrote the following column for The Washington Post.
Curling up with a good book isn’t just enjoyable. It’s also good for your brain. Reading in general — newspapers, magazines, nonfiction books — has been linked to slower rates of cognitive decline in older adults and even longer lives.
But reading fiction may have unique benefits. For example, the amount of fiction people read seems to be a better predictor of language ability than nonfiction, research finds. And, perhaps even more importantly, research has found that fiction is linked to better social cognition — our ability to think about and interact with other people — and an increased understanding of the world as a complex place. Why? Fiction forces you to imagine a story’s world and characters. It makes you grapple with different perspectives, mentally inhabiting distinct points of view, according to Nick Buttrick, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
This can help us find “better insight into our own experiences, insight into the experiences of others who are very different from us,” said Raymond Mar, a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, who recently wrote a review on the benefits of reading narrative fiction. “It just tends to evoke a form of reflection and contemplation, which can only be good for us.” Why reading is actually social Social health is important for overall health. And it turns out that reading, though often thought of as a solitary activity, can boost our social abilities. To understand why, it helps to look at how reading shapes us as we grow. Between ages 4 and 6, children develop a theory of mind — the ability to understand that others have different beliefs, perspectives and feelings. Studies find that children exposed to more storybooks are further along this developmental milestone than those exposed to fewer ones, Mar said.
A 2025 meta-analysis of 21 studies found that children who read more storybooks had more empathy. And there is evidence that empathy and reading go both ways. Better reading comprehension was a predictor of empathy later in life, while empathy also was a predictor of better reading ability, according to a 2024 study of more than 900 children. And adolescents who read more for fun became more social adults, a 2023 study found. Reading fiction “presents to us a complex cognitive and emotional simulation of the social world,” which is useful in the real world, Mar said. The power of storytelling These benefits may be due, in part, to the power of storytelling. Neuroimaging studies find that brain networks involved in understanding stories overlap with brain networks needed for theory of mind. This suggests that “while engaging with stories, we’re also pulling online the same kinds of brain networks that we use to understand other people,” said Mar, who wrote a review about these studies.
Other forms of storytelling, such as television and movies, may provide similar benefits, but “one of the things that you do when you read is you have to construct the world” in your head, Buttrick said. “The world is not given to you. You have to do the work of imagining.” This extra work may amplify the benefits of engaging in a story. Spending time with our favorite story characters may also help us feel connected. “Even if our friends aren’t around and can’t get together, we can always open up a book,” Mar said. Reading can be a social activity, too, one that reinforces the joys and benefits of reading. Book clubs, shared reading organizations and social media communities like BookTok can connect us with other readers and add yet another layer to building our social cognitive abilities. Talking to others about the books you read means you’re not only imagining the characters in a story, but also gaining an understanding of how other people respond to those characters, Buttrick said.
Exposure to difference Beyond helping our social cognition, reading fiction can expand our world and our understanding of its complexities. Good authors are master observers of the human condition and can expose us to experiences outside our comfort zone.
“Reading is an encounter with difference, with a different kind of mind, a different place, a different approach to the world,” Buttrick said. “And so a lot of the places where I think reading is most interesting are in places where it smashes this up with difference as strongly as it can.” In a 2022 study of more than 5,000 people published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Buttrick and his colleagues found that those who grew up reading more literary fiction were more likely to become adults with more complex worldviews — with more nuance, more psychological richness and intellectual humility.
“I think if we want to live in a world in which everyone’s treated as something like an individual, knowing that the world is complex, especially socially complex, is probably really good,” he said. But there are inherent difficulties with studying the effects of reading because “reading is a part of a person’s life,” Buttrick said. “And when people have more time, more space to read, more inclination to read, they’re not doing that at random.” Benefits probably take time to accrue, and socioeconomic status is a strong predictor of reading behavior and ability, though a 2025 study of more than 14,000 students found that leisure reading had the largest benefits for children whose parents had less education. “Successful art resonates with a great number of people because it captures something about being human that appeals to us and maybe that we don’t fully understand,” Mar said.
How to read more Start slow. Mar recommends getting off your phone before going to bed and spending that time reading instead. “Maybe you have to build up to an hour,” he said. “But you can start with 15 minutes and then work to 30 minutes, then 45 in an hour before you go to sleep. It’s probably a good thing.” Cultivate a habit. Consistency is key. “I don’t think that any one book will change a person’s life,” Buttrick said. “I think it’s the accretion of lots of books, you know, reading again and again and again, that really has an effect on how people think about the world more broadly.” Dive into the vast diversity of reading. Different forms of reading — short stories, graphic novels and fan fiction, for example — also count. Given his busy work schedule and reading of academic journals, Mar prefers to read short stories. “It’s hard for me to commit to a book,” said Mar, who has most recently read the works of Irish writer Claire Keegan.
(Buttrick is currently reading Spencer Ackerman’s “Reign of Terror” and gearing up to read William Vollmann’s 3,000-plus-page novel, “A Table for Fortune.” And I’ve been reading through my collection of Terry Pratchett, who is a hilarious satirical writer, including “Small Gods,” which tackles religion, and “The Truth,” which is about journalism.) Audiobooks can be beneficial, too. Buttrick said audiobooks still count as reading. In fact, the format may make certain books easier to grasp. Listening to James Joyce’s “Ulysses” not only makes it easier to understand and funnier, but also makes “you realize how much of it is just a song,” Buttrick said. Remember that reading should be enjoyable. “I don’t think of reading as a monastic experience that you have to do alone at night in order to grow as a person,” Buttrick said. Lean into what you enjoy.
Make it social. Book clubs are excellent and flourishing. It’s nice to have an accountability partner and others with whom to share perspectives, Buttrick said. Read unselfconsciously. Reading is for enjoyment. “A lot of times people seem embarrassed about the things that they’ve been reading,” Mar said. But “there’s nothing to be embarrassed about whatever you’re reading.” Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email BrainMatters@washpost.com and we may answer it in a future column.
Richard Sima is a neuroscientist turned award-winning science journalist who writes the “Brain Matters” column about mental health and why we do, think and feel the things we do.
This is a remarkable story. The parents of a 3-year-old in Winter Park, Florida, signed him up for a league of mostly 5-year-olds. The little guy dominated the game. No one could get the ball away from him, and he easily scored against the older boys.
Someone called the police and complained about the 3-year-old.
It’s not a hoax. Watch the little guy playing soccer, and you can see a future great in soccer.
A 3 year old soccer standout named Nevada was kicked out of his youth league in Winter Park, Florida, and police escorted his family off the field after parents on the opposing team complained that none of their kids could get the ball from him.
A family says police escorted them and their 3-year-old son off an i9 Sports youth soccer field in Winter Park after the league issued a trespass, following complaints from opposing parents that the boy held the ball too much and was “trying to put on a show.”
The incident, captured in video the family posted to TikTok under the handle @nevadaney10 and later shared widely, shows the child — identified by his parents as Nevada — playing in a league with kids roughly two years older. According to the family’s accounts in the video and related posts, he dominated possession, was substituted multiple times in a roughly 30-minute game, and still scored multiple goals (the family cited 10 in one game). Opposing parents are heard complaining that the play was unfair.
Nevada is black. Most of the other players are not. Could that be the reason he was ejected from the game?
Expanding on the story that Heather Cox Richardson told in the previous post, the following story in The New York Times explained the deal-making arranged by Jard Kushner and Howard Witkoff, two amateurs chosen by Trump to negotiate a peace plan to end the war that Russia started when it invaded Ukraine in 2023.
Now we know why Kushner and Witkoff emerged from their meetings with Putin wreathed in smiles. They got no concessions from Putin about ending the war. Their “peace plan” is to demand that Zelensky give Putin everything has done. Their peace plan is to demand that Zelensky surrender whatever Putin wants.
What they did get was Putin’s commitment to a massive project between the US and Rymussis to drill for liquified natural gas in Alaska.
The New York Times reported:
At first blush, the proposed venture looks like it would further the Trump administration’s goal of global “energy dominance.”
An American energy company intends to buy Russian technology and use it to access a massive supply of natural gas in Alaska, liquefy it and export it to allies abroad.
The Kremlin and the White House were interested in the idea. President Vladimir V. Putin discussed the plan last month with President Trump’s peace envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, people familiar with the negotiations said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomacy. It is one of a series of energy deals White House officials believe could help smooth relations with Moscow and eventually pave the way to end the war in Ukraine.
But it turns out that the company was not an all-American affair. The multibillion-dollar project has received secret funding from the same powerful Russian company that was to provide the technology, according to the energy executive who until last month led the U.S. firm and two others involved in company negotiations.
Joel Riddle, who was chief executive of the company, Polar LNG, until he resigned in September, said he had been misled about the sources of the start-up funding, which ostensibly came from a company in the United Arab Emirates.
Instead, Mr. Riddle said he learned, the true source of at least some of Polar LNG’s money was Novatek, a Russian energy giant under partial U.S. sanctions.
“It’s not only unlawful, but it’s not in the U.S. interest to have Russian technology controlling the commercialization of Arctic gas in the North Slope,” Mr. Riddle said in a brief interview.
These previously unreported tensions were also detailed in legal memos that Mr. Riddle attached to his resignation letter, which was reviewed by The New York Times. The memos, prepared by Baker Botts, an international law firm, said the Treasury Department’s sanctions enforcement unit had raised concerns that Polar LNG had ties to Novatek that might present “potential Russia-related sanctions concerns.”
Polar LNG on Friday issued a statement announcing a new acting chief executive, Tim Talkington, and described Mr. Riddle as a “disgruntled former employee.”
The project, if it happens, is a long way off. In addition to the sanctions issues that would have to be negotiated, the technology envisioned is highly complex and must overcome some of the most brutal weather conditions in the United States. It also is competing with another Alaska gas plan that already has the support of the Trump administration. But that the Polar LNG deal is being discussed at all shows how business deals of almost any stripe are on the table during the talks with the Kremlin.
The sequence of events illustrates the unorthodox, opaque mixture of deal-making and high-stakes diplomacy that has defined Mr. Trump’s attempts to end Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.
There is no indication that Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner were aware of Polar LNG or its ties to Novatek, even as the broad outlines of the deal came up in their talks with Mr. Putin beginning last year. A U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the closed-door talks, said that the deal had only been broadly mentioned and that no granular discussions had occurred.
The project, should it ever come to fruition, would doubly help Novatek, one of Russia’s biggest energy companies, first by using Novatek’s technology and second because the company would own an equity stake.
The Alaska gas discussions have taken place alongside talks to sell off part of another Russian energy giant, Lukoil, to the U.S. government and other investors, including some with business ties to Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner, causing consternation among some Washington lawmakers and outraging some of Ukraine’s supporters. The pair have also discussed the possibility of U.S. involvement in future Russian gas exports to Europe. (The administration has said that Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff were guided only by U.S. interests.)
Geoffrey R. Pyatt, who served as an assistant secretary of state for energy resources during the Biden administration, said the idea of bringing Novatek into the high north of Alaska is a terrible one. “It is terrible on environmental grounds, it is a terrible idea on economic and geopolitical grounds, and most importantly this feeds the belief that Putin can get an out-of-jail-free card.”
The efforts to bring Novatek equipment to Alaska have also included a businessman, Gentry Beach, with ties to the Trump family. A college friend of Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, Mr. Beach served as a finance vice chairman for Mr. Trump’s 2017 inauguration. Mr. Beach said in February that he had held negotiations with Novatekabout bringing its natural gas technology to Alaska.
Mr. Beach could not be reached for comment. It was not clear if he remained involved in the project, or whether he was aware of Novatek’s potential ownership stake in Polar LNG.
A spokesman for Donald Trump Jr. said the two men were no longer close, adding that Mr. Trump was not involved in the Polar LNG project. Novatek’s statement said that Mr. Beach had no role in its discussions to take a stake in Polar LNG. The U.S. official said Mr. Beach was not involved in the administration’s discussions related to Novatek.
Mr. Riddle is one of at least three Polar LNG executives who recently resigned. As they departed, Trump officials were notified about their concerns related to the secret Russian financing. Mr. Riddle said the executives had urged administration officials to investigate the matter. The Energy Department, where the warning was sent, did not respond when asked about the matter.
“I felt like I did the right thing to notify authorities at the appropriate time,” Mr. Riddle said.
Buried Riches
The Polar LNG plan called for the company to tap into the giant load of natural gas available in the northern reaches of Alaska, a byproduct of extensive oil extraction underway in the region.
Polar LNG’s proposal calls for it to buy a giant, 640,000-ton concrete-and-steel device from Novatek called a gravity-based structure that would be placed on the seabed just above the northern coast of Alaska, in an area known as Milne Point.
Map locates Milne Point, Alaska.
On top of that platform, equipment will be installed that would refrigerate gas supplied by an area oil producer, transforming it into a liquid that can then be loaded onto ships that travel through icy waters and deliver it to customers in Asia.
Novatek uses a similar approach to export natural gas from the Russian Arctic in a project called Arctic LNG 2. Mr. Putin said publicly last year that “we are discussing with our American partners” the possibility of using Novatek technology to produce liquefied natural gas in Alaska.
Korean-made ships with a special ice-breaking design that Polar LNG plans to use were initially built for Novatek, but delivery was stopped by the manufacturer after the United States imposed sanctions on the Arctic LNG 2 project.
From the start, Novatek was slated to supply the gas liquefaction station. But financing for the project was not supposed to come from Russia, according to executives involved in the effort.
Emphasizing the point, Polar LNG features images of the American flag and a bald eagle on its website, boasting that “Polar LNG helps ensure the United States leads,” adding that the project is “America’s Arctic Advantage.”
The company hired lobbyists in Washingtonand in Alaska to help push the project, according to federal and state records. In Washington alone, the company is spending $380,000 a quarter on lobbying, hiring a former Trump-era Interior Department acting assistant secretary, Adam Suess.
Novatek is already under U.S. sanctions that would require the Treasury Department to issue a license for its equipment to be used in Alaska. Recently passed sanctions legislation named after deceased Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, makes things even harder: The bill specifically targets Novatek, as well as its Arctic LNG 2 project, because of the company’s ties to Mr. Putin.
However, Mr. Trump temporarily waived the law’s Russia sanctions last week, presenting the move as necessary to keep peace talks going.
During a meeting held at the Four Seasons Hotel in late August in Abu Dhabi between executives of Polar LNG and its parent company, Tech Wave Industrial Projects Management, top executives from Novatek were present. That was when Mr. Riddle began to appreciate that Novatek was directly involved in approving funding to keep the effort going, text messages reviewed by The Times indicate.
Tech Wave is an Abu Dhabi-based company that specializes in managing oil, gas and construction projects. Its chief operating officer is Bjorn Gundersen, who a decade ago was listed in oil industry trade publications as a senior executive at Novatek supervising LNG projects.
Tech Wave, in a statement, confirmed that Mr. Gundersen had worked for Novatek before 2022, the year the war with Ukraine started. It also said Novatek “has no ownership interest” in the company. The statement did not address questions from The Times as to whether Novatek money helped finance the Polar LNG efforts.
Denis Solovyov, Novatek’s deputy chairman, and Leonid Mikhelson, the company’s chief executive, discussed their company’s providing as much as $15 million to Tech Wave to bankroll Polar LNG, the messages say. Asked about the messages and the Abu Dhabi meeting, Novatek said it could not comment on private correspondence, but that the company and Polar LNG had agreed to “provide each other with open communication.”
“All the necessary decisions were made at the meeting in Abu Dhabi,” Mr. Solovyov wrote in one message to Mr. Riddle sent in early September. “The first 5 million were supposed to arrive by today.”
It was several weeks after this exchange that Mr. Riddle resigned. Two other top Polar LNG executives, Dan Chandra, the company’s chief financial officer, and Jim Smith, a former Exxon Mobil executive who served as Polar LNG’s executive vice president, also have left in recent weeks.
Polar LNG, in a statement Friday, said that “Riddle was recently terminated from the company for cause,” adding: “The company is investigating claims concerning Riddle that may result in litigation.”
But Mr. Riddle resigned six days before the company issued him a letter saying it would terminate his employment immediately, in part because he had raised concerns that some of the company’s actions could be “subject to sanctions,” documents obtained by The Times show.
Questions about the potential ties to Novatek had by late this summer already reached Trump administration officials, according to a memo prepared by an outside law firm for Polar LNG, Baker Botts.
“Concerns regarding a perceived connection to Novatek will likely affect licensing or other regulatory approvals,” Baker Botts wrote in a memo to company executives that was shared with The Times.
In addition, the letter said that federal officials had already made clear in communications with the company that they were concerned that an investor in Polar LNG “has ties to Novatek and may be acting on Novatek’s behalf with respect to the project.”
Paul Luther, a Baker Botts lawyer who worked on the matter, declined on Friday to discuss it further.
Polar LNG would need a series of approvals from the federal government before the deal could move ahead, including a sign-off from the Treasury Department authorizing it to acquire the Novatek seabed platform, given that parts of the company are under sanctions. It would also require a permit from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to build a gas export facility.
Questions have already emerged about whether the Novatek device will function at the planned Milne Point location because of shallow waters there and the “potential disruption to traditional whaling and local opposition, particularly from the local native Alaskan population,” a lawyer for Polar LNG wrote in an internal company memo.
Certain Trump administration officials had already expressed skepticism about the Polar LNG plan, according to internal company documents seen by The Times and interviews with some of the people involved.
Part of the concern is that the Polar LNG project would be pitted against an even more ambitious plan to build a $50 billion, 800-mile natural gas pipeline to move natural gas from the northern slope to the southern coast of Alaska, where it could be more easily shipped out from existing ports there. That plan would also potentially supply Asian markets.
Both the Biden and Trump administrations enthusiastically embraced the gas pipeline project, which Japan and Korea may help finance to increase their reliable supply of natural gas.
“The pipeline makes far more sense,” said Matthew McManus, who until April 2025 served as a deputy director at the State Department’s Bureau of Energy Resources and is now at the National Center for Energy Analytics. “The Polar LNG project would face years of permitting and concerns about ties to Russia.”
Mr. Talkington, Polar LNG’s acting chief executive, said his company sought to seize “a generational opportunity to advance U.S. energy dominance, unlock profound benefits for the state of Alaska, and strengthen American Arctic navigation.”
The fact that discussions are even going on about using Russian equipment — and potentially a Russian-financed company — to move American natural gas to international markets is a further insult to Ukraine, and should not be a part of talks over a possible end to the war, said Ilya Zaslavskiy, a gas industry consultant who previously worked in Moscow and New York who now does research on Russian sanctions and energy issues out of Washington.
“Any approach by Novatek to transfer technology should be seen as a Kremlin attempt to co-opt U.S. policymakers in order to undermine U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine and our allies,” Mr. Zaslavskiy said.
Heather Cox Richardson reports on the deals that Trump is making with Putin. The U.S. is going into business with Russia! Where is Lindsey Graham when we need him?
Trump can’t understand why Zelensky is unwilling to sell out Ukraine, as he is selling out the U.S.
Profits galore! Someone will make billions! But not you!
Despite Trump’s statement yesterday that billionaire Elon Musk had removed the restrictions from Starlink and Starshield that are crippling Ukraine’s ability to protect itself from Russia, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky said today the restrictions continue.
An article published tonight by Anton Troianovski and Eric Lipton in the New York Times sheds a spotlight on the oil deals that lie behind Trump’s rush to normalize relations with Russia at Ukraine’s expense, as well as repeated statements from him and his cronies that they want to open up business transactions with Russia as incentives for Russia’s president Vladimir Putin to stop his war on Ukraine—an argument that, on its face, never made sense.
Troianovski and Lipton report that a project designed to liquefy natural gas in Alaska and export it would not only use Russian technology but also be funded with money from a Russian company close to Putin that is currently under U.S. sanctions. That company, Novatek, told the reporters that it is planning to take “minority shareholder” status in the Polar LNG project, a move the reporters call “a striking effort by the Russian energy giant to seek ownership of American gas production.”
U.S. sanctions against Novatek mean Polar LNG would need special permission from the Treasury Department to use Novatek’s equipment. The Graham Act sanctions bill Congress recently passed specifically targets Novatek because of its ties to Putin—a likely reason that Trump just waived the new sanctions just two days before they were to go into effect.
Joel Riddle, the chief executive officer of the company, Polar LNG, resigned when he learned that the funding came not from the United Arab Emirates, as he had been told, but from Russia. “It’s not only unlawful, but it’s not in the U.S. interest to have Russian technology controlling the commercialization of Arctic gas in the North Slope,” Riddle told the New York Times reporters. At least two other Polar LNG executives have also resigned, citing their concerns about the Russian financing.
Talks about gas in Alaska were joined with talks about the sale of parts of Russian energy giant Lukoil to the U.S. government and investors, some of whom are tied to Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy—and business partner—Steve Witkoff. Also involved in the Alaska project is Gentry Beach, who was a college friend of Donald Trump Jr.
It seems that Trump, Putin, and their allies in the administration are trying to replace the post–World War II international order and carve the world up into the system of spheres of influence they want as quickly as possible before the midterms. Central to those systems are private deals that enrich Trump and his cronies.
On October 20, Cate Brown, Aaron C. Davis, and Sebastian Rotella of ProPublica reported that the deal to capture Venezuela’s oil sets up a strategic partnership between the U.S. and a Venezuelan oligarch, Alejandro Betancourt, who has been accused of money laundering. A deal signed by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls for the U.S. to take a 35% stake in Betancourt’s firm, North American Blue Energy Partners, by buying shares in a parent company that’s registered in Barbados.
A source told the ProPublica reporters that the people making the deal wanted to work with Betancourt because a publicly traded company would have to report to shareholders. They wanted flexibility and secrecy. The registration of the parent company in Barbados enables the identities of its investors, who could make fortunes from the deal, to remain hidden.
In exchange for the investment, the U.S. can buy up to 20% of the oil produced at a steep discount, but that cost doesn’t factor in moving the oil, which is so thick it has to be blended with other products to flow through pipes. Betancourt’s company currently produces only as much oil in one year as the U.S. uses in three days.
The U.S. insists the deal is a good one for both countries, but it appears to violate Venezuelan law, which prohibits oil concessions longer than 25 years, and to lock in U.S. control. The deal creates a powerful seven-member board to oversee the venture for 15 years. A majority of the board members must be U.S. citizens. The U.S. government can appoint a single, nonvoting member of the board, and it can oust Betancourt only with a supermajority of five votes from the board. Any disputes over the company must be resolved not in Venezuela, but in Texas.
The administration is also suggesting it will take steps to control Cuba. At 4:35 today, Secretary of State Rubio posted on social media: “To those who seek to create positive change in Cuba—now is the time. The disappointment of failed promises, corruption, and the privileged lives of only a few; seize this opportunity to create the change you desire through a discrete [sic] partnership with the CIA.”
After ten days in Morocco, we and two friends left the group and flew from Marrakech to Madrid. Both cities have magnificent airports. It has been many decades since I was in either city, and I was taken aback by the beauty and efficiency of their new airports.
Madrid is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. The public spaces are gorgeous, the streets and sidewalks are clean, the parks and gardens are well-tended, the city is vibrant and joyous.
Our group of four stayed in a charming, old-fashioned hotel near the city center. On the first night, we had dinner at the hotel.
The next day, we went to the most important museum in Spain: the Prado. It was a 15-minute walk from our hotel. We joined a guided tour and saw the highlights of the museum. My favorite was and is Bosch’s lurid, frightening, spell-binding “The Garden of Earthly Delights.” It’s a massive piece, painted on three panels. I can’t begin to describe it except to say that some art historians call it “The Garden of Lust.”
We saw paintings by Goya, Velasquez, El Greco, Titian, Rubens, Tintoretto, and many more of the world’s greatest artists. Visitors are not allowed to take pictures, so I can’t share what we saw. It is one of the greatest museums in the world, with a breathtaking colllection of old masters.
That night, we decided to dine at a highly recommended tapas bar, Bodega de la Ardosa. Most locals don’t dine until 8 or 9 pm, so we got there early–about 6 pm–and had no problem getting in and finding bar stools.
An unexpected surprise: the street–a quiet back street–was filled with video gear and tents and busy young people. We immediately recognized that they were filming a movie. At the center of the busy on-street set was Woody Allen. He is now 90 years old and still working.
We had a delightful meal, seated in the front window, where we could watch the action on the street.
The next day, we visited the Sophia Reina Museum, only a few blocks from the Prado. The masterpiece of their collection is Picasso’s “Guernica.” It is a gut-wrenching depiction of the Spanish Civil War, which was a prelude to World War II. It is widely considered to be one of the greatest anti-war paintings.
Picasso’s “Guernica”
That night, we had another surprise. About 10 pm, we heard a lot of noise outside the hotel, on the Gran Via. We looked out the hotel window, and there on the street was a large number of people chanting and marching. It was a protest march of students, teachers, and parents, protesting the underfunding of the schools.
The next day, we went to the Thyssen Museum, in close proximity to the other two. We saw wonderful 19th and 20th century art.
Here are some examples:
This beautiful picture was painted by Johannes Vermeer (who also painted “The Girl with a Pearl Earring.”)
We felt as if we could reach in and touch the water.
We loved this painting by Egon Schiele, called “Houses on the River (The Old Town)” 1914
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec painted Yvette Guilbert in 1893. I had previously seen only his dancing girls, dancing the can-can, in cabaret shows.Here is Edgar Degas’ famous painting of ballerinas, painted from 1877-1879. This is a painting called “The Psyche Mirror” by one of the very few women in the exhibition, Berthe Morisot, painted in 1879. A lush painting by Pierre Bonnard of Misia Godebska in 1908. When I think of Claude Monet, I think of a flower garden in bloom. But here was a stunning scene of thawing ice. It is titled “The Thaw at Vétheuil,”painted in 1880.
Edvard Munch, “Bay with Boat and House,” painted in 1881.
One Second Before the Awakening from a Dream Provoked by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate 1947 Unmistakenly John Singer Sergeant: Portrait of Millicent, Duchess of Sutherland 1904“Metropolis,” painted by George Grosz, 1916-1917Marc Chagall, “The Madonna of the Village,” 1938-1942
Romare Bearden, “Sunday After Sermon,” 1969.
Roy Lichtenstein, “Woman in Bath,” 1963
Having gone through this part of the museum’s collection, we moved on to the very large exhibition of the works of Salvador Dali. From my youth, I remember Dali has a showman with a fantastical pencil-thin mustache that pointed straight upward on both sides of his nose. He was a surrealist, and his works were utterly non-realistic. I learned from the show that Dali was obsessed with Freud and was convinced that his art was the visual exprrsssdion of Freud’s theories about dreams, sex, and violence.
I took many photographs but will post only a few here. By the end of the show, I had a very negative reaction to his work. He was an expert artist, but he fell in love with his absurd representations. Many of them seemed cynical, and I had a strong feeling of repulsion towards the way he expressed his artistic gifts.
“Composition with Three Figures.” Neo-cubist Academy 1926Honey Is Sweeter than Blood (also Blood Is Sweeter than Honey) 1941Photo by Philippe Halsman In Voluptate Mors 1951 Female Nude or Beigneuse [sic] 1928 Birth of Liquid Desires 1931-1932“The Bleeding Roses,” 1930
That was a lot to take in in one day. Over my lifetime, I tried to stay au courant, trying to see the ingenuity and beauty in the new work as it evolved. Yet now, I sped past the modern “masters” because so much of their work seemed shallow. How much talent does it take to paint straight lines that enclose boxes of different colors? Or to spatter paint on a canvas?
I found myself more in love with the work of the masters than the work of the modernists. Some of the latter looked like cartoons. I found greater talent in the realistic portrayals of some works from the 16th century than modernists of the past century. Or maybe I’m a fuddy–duddy.
To my eyes, Hieronymus Bosch is more modern, more powerful, more worthy of close study than some of our modern masters. He speaks to our fears and fantasies, in whatever era.
Friday night was our last night in Madrid. The hotel recommended a bodega around the corner, and we went there. It is called Vinitus. It’s almost a fast food bodega, but the food was not pre-cooked or mass-produced. We had shrimp croquettes, Iberian acorn-fed ham (incredible!), razor clams, a slice of beef loin topped with foie gras, grilled leeks, fried zucchini. The price was reasonable, and the food was excellent.
As soon as I recover, I’m finding an Italian specialty shop where I can buy that amazing Iberian ham.
We got home late Saturday.
I am grateful for two weeks of respite from the Great Orange Menace. I am eager for the mid-terms to be over, keeping my fingers crossed for good luck and good news.
Trump likes to say that our country was a laughing stock in the eyes of the world until he took over in January 2025. That’s a bald-faced lie. Right before the 2024 election, The Economist magazine said that the U.S. economy was “the envy of the world.”
Not any more. Trump is an international laughing stock.
Early voting started in New York on October 24. That’s job #1 for now. Get out and vote. Bring back sanity, competence, compassion, and social responsibility!
When Republicans start losing, they get desperate and spread lies. The best lies are created by Russian bots. Politifact rated a vile video attacking Talarico as a pedophile as an AI fake.
Russian disinformation group targets James Talarico with baseless claim in AI-generated video
IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT
The Russian disinformation campaign known as Storm-1516 used artificial intelligence to create a video that impersonated a real man, and claimed it showed a former student accusing James Talarico of misconduct, researchers say.
The account that initially shared the video was created in September and is based in Romania, NewsGuard reported.
A social media video purporting to show a former student accusing Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico of sexual misconduct is the latest example of how Russian groups are generating false information to influence U.S. elections, researchers say.
As of Oct. 22, X had suspended the account that originally posted the baseless claim, but other accounts have since shared it. NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, reported that X said the account was created in September with Romania as the signup country.
Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis issued an emailed statement to PolitiFact about the video.
“The most powerful people in the world know they can’t beat James Talarico with the truth, so they’re slandering him with AI deepfakes, foreign bots, and conspiracy theories to protect their broken, corrupt political system,” Ennis said.
What we know about the video’s origin
Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor and head of its Media Forensic Hub, said the video is the work of Storm-1516, a Russian propaganda campaign he said made a similar baseless attack on Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz in 2024 when Walz ran for vice president. In 2024, the group used a paid actor from West Africa to attack Walz, Linvill said.
Linvill said this video was generated to look like a real man who has an account on another platform. The video shows a man claiming to have been a former student of Talarico at Rhodes Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, where Talarico taught Language Arts before his political career as a state representative.
Graphika, a social media analytics company, said in a blog post that the X account that originally shared the video “very likely” impersonated a Facebook user by the same name. That person lives in Texas and was a former student of Talarico. The man has praised Talarico on his Facebook page on several occasions, as recently as February, Graphika noted.
Fact-checkers at Lead Stories spoke with that man and he said the video is not of him, and denied accusing Talarico of misconduct. PolitiFact reached out to him via Facebook, but he didn’t immediately respond. PolitiFact’s review of the man’s Facebook page found no video of him accusing Talarico.
NewsGuard reported that the videos had many signs of AI generation, such as unnatural eye movements and stagnant facial expressions, and that an AI detection tool showed a 98% likelihood of being a deepfake. A deepfake is a machine generated image or video that changes faces, bodies or voices, making people appear to do and say things that they never did or said.
Graphika said social media accounts known to amplify Storm-1516 content and several accounts from U.S. conservatives shared the video. It said a prominent Storm-1516 amplifier, SGAnon, originally shared the video, then deleted it, writing on X that an analysis showed it was “artificially generated.”
The Russian disinformation playbook
Linvill said Storm-1516 typically uses the same influencers to spread false narratives into political conversations.
“If you examine the recent content of the influencers who first shared this narrative you can easily identify other Storm-1516 lies,” Linvill said. “We believe they are paid to do this. In the same way marketing companies pay influencers to share products, the Russians pay influencers to share lies.”
The New York Times recently reported that Russia and other foreign governments have stepped up efforts to influence U.S. elections, mostly targeting Democrats.
Linvill co-wrote a recent report about Storm-1516 and its work targeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and found such campaigns often are not aimed at changing people’s behavior or opinions, but seek to shape public discourse.
He said the study’s findings apply to this baseless Talarico narrative.
“By entrenching people in this view of Talarico, the Russians likely hope to exacerbate extreme partisanship and also encourage people to get off the couch and vote for Ken Paxton,” Linvill said. “People who already like Talarico are going to dismiss this claim as the obvious fake it is, but they aren’t the audience.”
We rate the claim that this video shows Talarico’s former student accusing him of misconduct Pants on Fire!
Michelle H. Davis has been writing on her blog “Lone Star Left” about people who are running for the Texas legislature. I find her portraits compelling, because I learn a lot about districts that Democrats have written off and forgotten.
This series is called Meet the Candidates. Over the next three months, I’ll spotlight a handful of Democratic races each month, mainly in the Legislature and in Congress. These aren’t endorsements. They’re introductions, a way to understand who’s running, the districts they hope to represent, and what’s at stake for people across Texas.
Who is Laticia Ambroz?
Laticia Ambroz has lived in Texas for over 60 years. She’s from Quitman, out in Wood County, deep in the piney woods of East Texas. She and her spouse raised three kids. Now she’s got eight grandkids and a great-grandbaby on the way.
Growing up, her mother taught her a simple but powerful lesson. Always leave things better than you found them. That’s her whole campaign. And when Ambroz looks at the state of Texas government right now, she says she can’t in good conscience leave it to her grandchildren, or to yours, without doing something about it.
Here’s the part that matters. Ambroz is running in Senate District 1, a nineteen-county stretch of deep East Texas covering Bowie, Gregg, Harrison, Smith, Titus, Wood and more, currently held by Republican Bryan Hughes. The last Democrat to even show up on the ballot against him was Audrey Spanko, back in 2020. This isn’t a swing district. It’s a district Republicans have gotten used to not having to defend.
So why run somewhere the deck is stacked six ways from Sunday? Because somebody has to, and because Ambroz isn’t pretending otherwise. Her pitch is refreshingly unglamorous. Revitalize the East Texas economy, fight for a living wage, get rural healthcare within driving distance of the people who need it, fund public schools like they matter. It’s the kind of platform that used to be called common sense before that phrase got weaponized by the other side. Ambroz wants it back.
The district.
Is District 1 winnable in 2026? Almost certainly not, not with the current partisan lean and Hughes sitting comfortably unopposed the cycle before. But “unwinnable” and “not worth covering” aren’t the same thing, and a Democrat willing to put her name on the ballot in a district this red deserves the same fair hearing as anybody running in a toss-up.
Here’s what these nineteen East Texas counties are actually made of. Four counties do the heavy lifting. Smith County (Tyler) alone carries about a quarter of the entire district. Gregg County (Longview) adds another 124,239. Bowie County (Texarkana) brings 92,893. Harrison County (Marshall) chips in 68,839. Those four counties together are well over half the district. Everything else, Cass, Panola, Rusk, Upshur, Wood, Camp, Franklin, Delta, Red River, Marion, Morris, Titus, Fannin, Hopkins, Lamar, is small-town and rural East Texas, none of them cracking 70,000 people on their own.
If Democrats are looking for where the bodies actually are, it’s Tyler and Longview. That’s the floor of any real strategy here.
This district is old. 18.5% of the population is 65 or older, against 13.4% statewide. Working-age adults (18-64) are underrepresented at 57.7% versus 61.6% statewide. That shows up again in the household data: 35.1% of households here draw Social Security income, compared to 25.4% statewide. This is a retiree-heavy district, and retirees vote. Reliably.
Racially, it’s 62.9% Anglo, 37.1% non-Anglo. Black residents make up 17.0% of the population, actually higher than the state average of 14.1%. Hispanic residents are 16.7%, well below the state’s 39.7%. But that Hispanic population isn’t evenly distributed either. Titus County is the outlier of the entire district: 57.1% non-Anglo, 43.8% Hispanic, driven almost certainly by the poultry processing industry around Mount Pleasant.
Spanish-surname voter registration is only 6.8% of registered voters districtwide, against a state average of 24.7%, even though Hispanic residents are 16.7% of the population. That’s a registration and organizing problem. There’s a gap between who lives here and who’s on the rolls, and closing it, even partially, is base math.
Per capita income is $33,672, a full seven grand below the state’s $40,752. Only 22.8% of adults 25 and up hold a bachelor’s degree or higher, versus 33.8% statewide. This is a working-class, non-college district, and it is not a wealthy one. Poverty sits at 14.4%, slightly above the 13.8% state rate, and single-parent families make up 51.3% of families in poverty, with women heading the overwhelming majority of those households.
2024 general election: Trump 76.6%, Harris 22.5%. Cruz 74.7%, Allred 23.5%. Down the entire ballot, every statewide Democrat lands in that same 20-23% band, Supreme Court, Court of Criminal Appeals, Railroad Commission, all of it. This is a straight-ticket district. Nobody’s splitting tickets for a good Democrat down-ballot. Turnout was 63.5%, meaning roughly 405,000 people showed up, and roughly three out of four of them voted a straight Republican line regardless of the specific race.
This is not a competitive seat in 2026.
Forget flip math. Focus on three things. First, Tyler and Longview are where turnout operations get built, because that’s where the population is and where a Democratic floor already exists at the county level even if it’s thin. Second, the Spanish Surname VR gap in Titus County and beyond is real, uncontested organizing turf, registration work that doesn’t require converting a single Republican, just registering people who are already there. Third, message on the material conditions, income below the state average, education access below the state average, a manufacturing and healthcare workforce that depends on public investment staying intact. Culture war framing is a losing bet in a district like this. Kitchen-table economic populism, rural hospital access, wages, cost of living, is the only politics that has any shot of moving a number that currently sits at 23%.
Ambroz isn’t going to flip SD1. Nobody is, not this cycle. But if the goal is building infrastructure for the next decade instead of just showing up to lose gracefully every four years, this data tells you exactly where to plant the flag.
The incumbent.
Being a third-generation city girl myself, there’s one thing in the Texas Legislature that always gets under my skin. And that’s these country hillbilly lawyers who grew up deep in Klan Country, who run for office for the sole purpose of taking our state back to Jim Crow, while enriching all of their oil-loving, country club buddies back home. And if there ever were one, that would be Senator Bryan Hughes.
In 2021, when Republicans were ramming through SB1 and all of their voter-suppression laws, Hughes spearheaded a provision to keep Black churches from voting on Sunday (Souls to the Polls). After a ton of public pressure, that provision was stripped from SB1, but by golly, he sure did try it. It was Bryan Hughes who put it there, specifically him.
In the same session, Hughes fronted the ban on teaching critical race theory in Texas schools, along with an attempt to bar Texas corporations from adopting board diversity quotas.
Some Democrats described SB7’s provisions as “the new Jim Crow,” saying the bill amounted to voter suppression targeting Black voters specifically. Hughes’s response wasn’t to engage with that. He called it unfortunate that Texans were injecting “national political stuff” into what he framed as a straightforward policy discussion.
Hughes told CNN half a dozen times that the Texas Attorney General’s office had 400 open voter fraud cases, calling it documented fact beyond question. The actual number of pending voter fraud charges in Texas was 43, with only one stemming from the 2020 election in which more than 11 million Texans voted. He inflated the crisis by nearly tenfold on national television to justify a bill critics say targets Black and disabled voters.
And really, it’s only the tip of the iceberg with Hughes. He loves to write laws that will harm marginalized communities most.
In Laticia Ambroz’s own words.
Below are some questions I asked Ambroz, based on previous reader polls, along with her answers.
Q: Do you support a statewide minimum wage increase to at least $15/hour?
Absolutely, this is basic to helping Texas families survive. A livable wage is essential to a healthy economy. If people, moms and dads, are not having to work multiple jobs to make ends meet, they have more time to spend at home supporting their children-with homework, enjoying family meals, and instilling family values. Raising the minimum wage ensures that families and individuals can afford groceries, rely less on state benefits, and can keep a roof over their heads. Increasing the minimum wage to $15/hour should just be the starting point. People need to be able to afford housing, food, and medical care, which means a wage that keeps up with inflation, and we need to aggressively figure out how to slow inflationary costs.
Q: Should Texas end tax subsidies and abatements for large corporations?
This should be #1 on our list. Texas government is selling the People of Texas short. The State of Texas is so vast and has so many natural resources; in our own right, we are a wealthy state. We need industry to continue to be a healthy and wealthy state, but careful consideration has been thrown out the window. Why are we giving everything away? Why do we continue to line the pockets of the billionaires who are bleeding us dry? If you want to do business in Texas, Corporations must pay their fair share in taxes, be responsible stewards of our natural resources, and provide good-paying jobs and benefits for the people of Texas. If corporations cannot do this, then Texas does not need them. The Lone Star State should attract corporations that want to be partners with us.
Q: Do you oppose school vouchers and efforts to privatize public education?
This is the worst! 95% of our school children are in public schools. Our schools are already underfunded; the student-to-teacher ratio needs to be addressed, and teacher salaries need to be adjusted for the professionals that they are. This is our future, the future of Texas, and every child in Texas deserves the best education that we can provide. Texas is sadly lacking in education, and private and public schools are not the answer. Do not let Austin politicians run our public schools; they are not educators, and the school system should not be a for-profit entity, which is what they will turn it into.
Q: Should Texas guarantee free school meals to all K–12 students, regardless of income?
Yes, Children learn better with a full belly. School breakfast and lunch should be provided. This is a very small price to pay for quality schools.
Q: Do you support closing or downsizing state prisons and redirecting that funding to community-based alternatives like mental health care, housing, and youth programs?
Yes, so many of the people incarcerated need mental health assistance, and incarceration is not the answer. Getting the help needed beforehand and assisting in therapy and training would be a good start. Addressing affordable housing is a must across the board, and keeping our youth involved, educated, and supported is essential. People are lonely and looking for a place to belong, we need to provide that place, we need to support programs that provide that place.
Bonus Question: What does being a Democrat mean to you in 2026?
Being bold, thinking outside the box, considering all available options; actions speak louder than words.
Here’s what you’re actually looking at in SD1.
A retiree-heavy, working-class district that Trump carried by 54 points, represented by a man who spent every session trying to keep Black churches from voting on Sunday, banning honest history in classrooms, and lying to CNN about voter fraud by a factor of ten. Bryan Hughes is the honest face of what the state party has become when nobody’s forced to answer for it.
Laticia Ambroz is not going to beat him in 2026. Pretending otherwise insults both her and you. But somebody has to be on that ballot saying a $15 minimum wage isn’t a radical idea, that gutting corporate tax abatements while East Texas families choose between groceries and gas is a policy failure and not an act of God, that a fully-funded public school beats a voucher scheme every single time. Somebody has to be the name Democrats in Bowie, Smith, and Gregg County see when they open their ballot, so the muscle doesn’t atrophy completely between now and the year this district finally becomes contestable.
That’s infrastructure. It’s registration drives in Titus County where the Spanish surname numbers don’t match the population. It’s a floor in Tyler and Longview that doesn’t currently exist. It’s making sure the next Ambroz, or the one after her, isn’t starting from zero.
Hughes is betting nobody’s watching this district closely enough to notice what he’s spent a decade building. Ambroz is betting he’s wrong.
What is Donald Trump thinking about most of the time? To begin with, he’s traveling the nation now–mostly to red districts and red states–in hopes of holding on to unrestrained power. And he’s certainly on the lookout for opportunities to make more money, for himself and his children. There can never be enough money.
But his peculiar obsession is redecorating. He can’t leave anything alone. And he doesn’t want anyone to stop him once he gets a bee in his bonnet.
He tore down the East Wing of the White House last fall, on the day after the big No Kings Day, a sort of FU to the millions who joined protests against his peremptory rule. His response: I am a king, I don’t need no stinking approval by historical review boards or environmental review boards or anyone else. When a judge said he did need those approvals, he fired every member of those nonpartisan boards and stacked them with his sycophants and employees. Problem solved.
He’s following the same process with his other redecorating ideas: the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performjng Arts (which will close for two years because a judge wouldn’t let him become a co-equal with John F. Kennedy as an honoree of the memorial); the Lincoln Reflecting pool, the Arch of Trump, the painting of the granite Executive Office Building (experts have cautioned granite should not be painted).
Other changes, large and small, consume his time: turning the austere Oval Office into a gold-bedecked bordello; fencing in Lafayette Park, across from the White House; paving over Jackie Kennedy’s Rose Garden. Also, the Oval Office now has a very large sign in gold lettering, saying “The Oval Office.”
The latest manifestation of his redecoration of the nation’s Capitol is his plan to turn a popular public golf course into a championship course that would attract major PGA tournaments.
When environmental and civic groups heard about his plan, they sued to block it until there was proper vetting of the project. How would it affect the numerous trees on the site? Would the public still have access? Would it still be affordable to the people who live in the District?
The judge told the Interior Department and the National Park Service not to start this project without getting her approval. They delivered their plan at 5 pm on Friday before the Columbus Day weekend. The next day, nearly 500 mature trees were cut down. She was furious. Trump didn’t care. That’s the way he rolls.
An image Donald Trump posted this morning, of his vision for the locally cherished East Potomac Park golf courses in DC. Last weekend, Trump operatives illegally cut down hundreds of mature trees on the courses. Today he announced plans to close the courses altogether next month, to convert them to a PGA venue. DC-ites will note that this plan entirely eliminates the famous bike and running path around the perimeter of Hains Point, which among other things is a featured part of the annual Marine Corps Marathon. (Trump posting.)….
When I put up my previous chronicle, a federal judge was throwing the book at MAGA officials from the White House, the Interior Department, and the National Park Service for their illegal, surprise-attack toppling of several hundred mature trees at East Potomac Park, in Washington. (Also known as Hains Point.)
This desecration cut especially deep for people in the DC area, even when compared with … everything else. It’s not just that it will take another century to replace trees that were a hundred years old. It’s that Hains Point, which sits on the waters of the Potomac directly across from National Airport, and its park and recreation spaces have a unique place in DC community culture.
The golf and tennis facilities are distinctly public, and open to all, for very low fees. You see a wide range of people using them: Golfers and tennis enthusiasts, young families pushing strollers, runners and bikers and skaters taking the multi-mile course around the whole Hains Point peninsula, bird-watchers and nature-lovers and so on. Notably, they come from the full range of DC’s population. And this is what Trump now wants to bulldoze and turn into “One of the Best and Most Spectacular Golf Courses anywhere in the World,” as he put it this morning in a post.
In that post, he explicitly called out the new course’s appeal to the PGA tour and as a venue for golf’s “major” events. Toward that end, he said that the current courses would be closed altogether starting next month. “Thank you for your attention to this matter,” he concluded. Grrrrr.
Bruce Baker’s evaluation of education policy in Florida demonstrates that the state operates on the crazy theory that cutting funding is good, diverting funding from district schools to charters and vouchers is good, and underpaying teachers makes them better.
Several themes emerge from the analyses presented in this report.
First, regarding long term trends in Florida school funding, adequacy and efficiency:
• Florida schools have been squeezed by declining state aid since the early 2000s as the state has pursued its race to the bottom on taxpayer financing of public elementary and secondary schools.
• That squeeze has resulted in declining competitiveness of teacher wages over time and even more so, declining staffing ratios in schools increasing the workload on those that remain.
• Adjusted for labor costs over time, school spending per pupil in Florida and in Miami-Dade specifically, is less than it was 30 years ago.
• Florida school districts have responded by producing achievement levels beyond expectations given the resources they’ve been provided. Florida school districts are efficient when compared to school districts nationally, accounting for differences in costs.
• Still, because of the long slow reduction in effort, spending, staffing ratios and competitive wages, student outcomes in Florida have continued to decline, dropping among states and dropping in recent, post-COVID years as other states and the nation, on average, have begun to rebound.
• As the state has reduced its share of funding for public schooling, local districts have been forced to make up the difference with increased property taxes, to mitigate further damage to student outcomes by slowing the declining of competitive wages for teachers.
Second, regarding providing equal educational opportunity to all children in Florida:
Financing Florida’s Schools
• The state school finance system provides no discernable support to schools serving students with greater educational needs, outside of additional support for children with disabilities.
• The state’s charter school sector exacerbates inequality across student populations by operating within low-income neighborhoods, but serving far fewer children from low-income families, fewer children who are English learners and fewer children with disabilities.
• The state’s charter school sector also yields poor educational outcomes on state assessments when compared to traditional district schools or district magnet schools serving similar populations within the same district.
Finally, regarding spending for the greatest return on investment:
• The state has currently budgeted $3.8 billion dollars to be spent on students attending private schools, approximately 70% of which will likely be spent on children from higher income families who had not previously attended public district schools. That 70% of $3.8 billion would likely yield far greater return on investment and greater public benefit, based on existing research, if invested in public district schools in high poverty settings.
These findings lead to a clear set of policy recommendations. As shown in this report, the state has the economic capacity to pursue these recommendations. Even at the state’s own prior (2000s) education effort, funding for public schools would be 28% higher than it is presently. Add to that, more efficient allocation of funds currently being diverted to the school voucher program, and much of the state’s public education adequacy gap could be eliminated. As such, we propose the following recommendations:
Recommendation #1 – Phase 1: Engage in the work of setting a manageable standard of “high quality” public schooling for Florida’s children by engaging in analyses of the costs associated with providing each and every child in Florida with equal educational opportunity to achieve high education outcomes.
d. Establish a statewide commission on school funding.
e. Engage stakeholders in setting standards of excellence for Florida children.
f. Engage experts to estimate the costs associated with meeting those standards, applying appropriately rigorous methods.
Recommendation #1 – Phase 2: Guided by those estimates, reform the school finance formula and increase state aid to schools so as to provide them with the necessary resources for all children to have equal educational opportunity to achieve high education outcomes. That is, meet the constitutional standard ratified by Florida voters in 1998 and 2002. This should include estimates of commensurate funding for charter schools, based on needs and costs.
b. Take eliminating or reducing property taxes off the table. The most effective form of property tax relief is increased state aid, as would occur under implementation of this recommendation.
Recommendation 2 – Part 1: Impose a moratorium on charter school expansion, including the Schools of Hope Program. The existing charter school sector in Florida is compromising equity, eroding efficiency and producing poor educational outcomes for those it serves. New York’s Success Academies have no proven track record of serving children like those they’d be called upon to serve in Miami-Dade, having served very few English learners and underserving Latino communities in New York. Like Miami-Dade’s current charter sector, they have also underserved low-income populations and children with disabilities. Introduction of Success Academies in Miami-Dade will most likely exacerbate equity concerns that are already significant.
Recommendation 2 – Part 2: Establish new regulations for evaluating existing charter operators and vetting new charter operators to ensure improved equity in the distribution of students by their needs across schools. Adopt and enforce stricter regulations pertaining to student outcomes.
Recommendation 2 – Part 3: Adopt updated charter school legislation to ensure that charter schools are sufficiently “public,” required to operate as if “state actors,” protecting children’s constitutional rights and abiding by all relevant federal statutes.
Recommendation 3: Freeze expansion of the voucher program to free up state resources to support a fully funded, overhauled public school finance formula, to provide a uniform system of schools.
