When Governor Greg Abbott sold his voucher program, he talked about helping the poorest kids escape public schools and choose better private schools; he talked about enabling those with disabilities go to private schools. He talked about spreading opportunity through school choice.
Some moderate Republicans and rural Republicans supported their community public schools, and they repeatedly voted down Abbott’s vouchers. So Abbott used the millions of dollars contributed by Pennsylvania billionaire to replace them with conservatives who backed vouchers.
But now the data are in on which students are getting vouchers. Three-quarters of them are private school students. This is similar to what happened in other states. Vouchers are not about helping public school students; the reality is that they subsidize kids who never attended public schools.
Maryam Ahmed of The Dallas Morning News reported:
As Texas’ $1 billion school choice program approaches rollout this fall, preliminary data shows most of the program’s applicants were already enrolled in private schools, fewer applications came from families in poorer districts, and less that 30 students with special needs got the top award amount of $30,000.
The Dallas Morning News analyzed data from the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts, which runs the Texas Education Freedom Account program.
The first year of TEFA has exposed key challenges voucher programs have faced nationwide: insufficient funding for some families to make the move to expensive private schools, difficulties for special education students finding private schools that can support their needs, and minimal benefits for lower-income and rural families.
Since similar data are reported in every state that has no income limits, it’s reasonable to conclude that the transfer of public money to kids in religious and private schools is a feature of school choice, not a bug.
Out of 5.4 million students enrolled in Texas public schools, 275,000 applied for vouchers. The legislation, passed last year, offers students $10,474 while disabled students can receive up to $30,000. Homeschooled students can get $2,000. Median private school tuition is about $9,400, not including books and transportation. Elite private schools charge much more.
Now we learn that the purpose of the voucher program was to “ease the burden” on families already paying for private school, not to help kids in public school:
TEFA spokesperson Travis Pillow said the program’s goal is not to “lure away” public school students but make private school affordable across the board. Many families with children in private school make major sacrifices to keep them there, Pillow said, and TEFA eases that burden….
Out of 5.45 million public school students in Texas, only about 68,000 even applied for TEFA — barely one percent. Half of those students were awarded funds, as of June 16 records provided to The Dallas Morning News, but more could drop out of the program if they can’t find a school to fit their needs.
But even a small drop in public school enrollment leads to budget cuts.
In Texas, public school districts receive a $6,215 allotment per student from the state, meaning fewer public school students directly translates to less funding…
About one in four of the voucher awards went to students with disabilities but only 20 in the entire state received the top award of $25,000-$30,000. However, private schools are not bound by federal law and may deny admission to students with disabilities. It is anticipated that many who received vouchers may return to their public school, where they are guaranteed admission and services.
If the state’s public education budget becomes strained, said Daniel DeMatthews, an educational policy professor at the University of Texas at Austin, lower-income and rural districts would likely be hit hardest.
Jan Resseger is a perceptive observer of policy and a passionate defender of children. She writes on this post about the myriad ways in which Trump’s signature legislation harms children. This bill will make many children hungrier, poorer, and less healthy.
She writes:
Huge omnibus laws filled with myriad amendments and unrelated provisions are always passed without sufficient public attention to the details and long term consequences. House Resolution 1, which the President has called the “One Big Beautiful Bill” was an omnibus tax and reconciliation law. President Trump signed HR 1 into law just a year ago on the 4th of July. The law poses a number of threats to the well-being of children and to public schooling. Many of us who follow public education policy are well aware of the Trump administration’s expansion of the privatization of public education with the new tuition tax credit school voucher program buried in HR 1, but other provisions of this federal law have also begun imperiling the welfare of our society’s most vulnerable children. The damage will only expand in the coming months and years.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently updated threats to children’s welfare in HR1: “Already the law is raising costs for families and taking away health coverage, food assistance, and other essentials from people who are already struggling to afford to meet their basic needs—all while showering more tax breaks on the wealthiest households and funding a violent immigration detention and deportation agenda. The law’s harm will only deepen as its more than $1 trillion in cuts for Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act… marketplaces fully take effect and states fully implement SNAP eligibility restrictions and take drastic measures ahead of the federal government’s significant shift of SNAP costs to states… (T)he law’s cuts will expand the still-deep inequities long experienced by those who face the most economic discrimination and poverty, including Black, Latino, and Indigenous people and families with people who are immigrants.”
For political reasons, many of HR 1’s punitive provisions were delayed so that they will kick in only after the 2026 midterm election. The provisions with some of the most serious implications for families with children include future cuts to Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities predicts: “The harmful… megabill will take health coverage away from millions of people and dramatically raise health care costs for millions more. The law cuts $1.1 trillion from Medicaid and ACA marketplaces… The work requirement… will take away coverage for childless adults and some parents who can’t prove that they are participating in countable ‘community engagement’ activities at least 80 hours per month.”
KFF adds: “For the first time, the law conditions Medicaid eligibility for Medicaid expansion enrollees on meeting work and reporting requirements. These work requirements, which will go into effect in January 2027, or sooner at state option, represent the largest source of enrollment declines in the law.”
There are, however, two areas in which HR 1 has already seriously impacted families with children.
Sharp Drop in SNAP Participation It has been widely predicted that millions of families who need food assistance will, by 2028, loose access to food stamps (SNAP) due to the provisions of HR 1. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities’ Dottie Rosenbaum and Joseph Llobrera report, however, that the sharp drop in access to SNAP has actually begun in 2026:
“Millions of people are losing food assistance through SNAP due to the 2025… HR 1. This includes many children and others not targeted by HR 1’s eligibility restrictions. In fact, more people are losing SNAP, and faster, than the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) predicted. The latest data show that about 4.7 million fewer people (including 808,000 children) participated in SNAP in March 2026 compared to the average month in fiscal year 2025… The most likely reason is the impact of HR 1’s shifting of enormous new SNAP costs to states, which they owe starting in fiscal year 2028. CBO estimated the cost shift mandate would have no impact until 2028, but it has already led many states to erect barriers to people’s SNAP participation, such as requiring more paperwork and imposing other requirements that states often don’t have the staff to administer.” In 2028, HR 1 requires states to start paying part of SNAP costs, and states are already trying to make participation “harder to navigate” with “more paperwork, shortening certification periods or adding more case reviews.” (Emphasis is mine.) HR 1 ‘s SNAP requirements will reduce future coverage among parents by adding a work requirement for parents and caregivers of children who are 14 years old or over.
This week the Center for American Progress released a report demonstrating that HR 1 may eventually also reduce free school meals for children and school districts that now qualify: “When children lose access to SNAP and Medicaid, they may also lose their direct certification for free school meals. This harm expands beyond individual impacts. As a result, schools participating in the Community Eligibility Provision CEP may fall below the 25 percent of direct certified students required to qualify for the CEP, ending free school meals for the entire school or district.”
Spending on Immigration Last July, the American Immigrant Council summed up how HR 1 would help fund the President’s expanded immigration enforcement—what we have watched during the past year: “H.R. 1 provides $170.7 billion in additional funding for immigration- and border enforcement-related activities to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its sub-agencies, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP, as well as for the Department of Defense (DOD) for activities related to the military’s presence along parts of the southern border.”
The Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP) details some of the consequences so far for children in immigrant families across the United States: “This historic ballooning of immigration enforcement funding has turbocharged family separations and child and family detention, threatening child safety and well-being. An estimated 205,000 children, 145,000 of whom are U.S. citizens, have experienced having a parent in detention… Moreover, the high level of disenrollment in SNAP and Medicaid is in part due to HR 1’s exclusion of lawfully present immigrants, such as asylum seekers and refugees, as well as the chilling effect on people whose children are likely eligible but are disenrolling because they are concerned about their participation being used against them in immigration proceedings.”
Research has shown for decades that family poverty and problems like hunger and homelessness contribute to achievement gaps as children enter school. Thirty years ago in The Manufactured Crisis, David Berliner and Bruce Biddle declared: “the larger the proportion of citizens who live in poverty, the greater challenge for public schools.” (p. 220)
More recently the National Education Policy Center’s Kevin Welner explained the correlation of children’s economic circumstances with their school achievement: “Those of us who work in or with schools never question the enormous impact that a teacher or school can have on a student. But this essential truth coexists with another truth: that differences between schools account for a relatively small portion of measured outcome differences. That is, opportunity gaps in the U.S arise primarily outside of schools. This should not be a surprise. Poverty, concentrated poverty, and racialized poverty are pervasive features of America. School improvement efforts cannot directly help children and their families overcome decades of policies that perpetuate systemic racism and economic inequality. When children are born in the United States, their educational and life outcomes can all be predicted based on their parents’ education, income and wealth… Inequality in the U.S. is stark and enduring.”
The tangled issues buried in the mammoth HR 1, what President Trump calls the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” threaten the well-being of millions of poor children enrolled in our nation’s urban and rural public schools. It will be urgently important for educators and public school advocates to press Congress to correct the bill’s myriad injustices.
The Network for Public Education publishes an annual ranking of states in relation to their support for their public schools. This year, for the third year in a row, Nebraska topped all other states in the ranking of states. The legislature, led by Republicans, wants school choice, including vouchers. The legislature allocated $10 million for a voucher program. The public voted by 57%-43% in 2024 to repeal the voucher program. The majority of the public wants good public schools.
Carol Burris writes:
Since our state-by-state report card, Public Schooling in America, began, Nebraska has consistently ranked among the top states for its support of public education. This year, it rose from fifth place to first.
Nebraska is one of only two states — the other being Kentucky — with no charter schools and no state voucher program. Both states’ legislatures passed voucher laws, but in Nebraska, voters overturned it by referendum. In Kentucky, the courts struck down both the charter and voucher laws, and voters went on to defeat an attempt to amend the state constitution to allow them.
Beyond the absence of privatization, Nebraska earned high marks for creating a positive climate for teaching and learning. It has fewer underqualified teachers than most states and a high teacher-attractiveness rating. It also has one of the best student-to-counselor ratios in the nation. It bans corporal punishment, and it is one of only two states that place homeschooling restrictions on families under investigation by Child Protective Services. Unlike most states, Nebraska requires families to provide annual notification when they homeschool.
Even at the top, Nebraska has room to improve. On public school funding, it landed in the middle of the pack. The state distributes what it spends equitably, but given its ability to pay, it can afford to invest more.
Nebraska also, unfortunately, opted into the federal voucher program, and it remains to be seen how much funding Scholarship Granting Organizations will direct to the state’s private and/or public schools. For now, however, Nebraskans’ commitment to their public schools has made the state a beacon of hope.
Trump boasted about the U.S. Supreme Court decision Trump v. Slaughter gave him more power than any other President. That decision removes protection from members of independent commissions. With the exception of the Federal Reserve Board (which regulates the banking system and whose stability is crucial to the economy), Trump now has the power to fire any member of any independent commission without cause. He can stack those commissions with his cronies, with people who have no expertise but will do whatever he wants.
What’s the point of having “independent” commissions if they are not independent of political influence?
Thom Hartmann wrote that the Court majority just rolled back the Pendleton Act of 1883, which created the Civil Service:
The six unscrupulous Republicans on the Supreme Court — over the loud objections of the three true constitutionalists on the Court — are aggressively dragging America back not just to the 1950s but, as of yesterday, to the 1830s.
Arguably the most depraved president in American history, Andrew Jackson (aka “The Indian Killer” a title he gave himself), Trump’s favorite, whose picture he hung in the Oval Office, invented what came to be called the “Spoils System.”
If you wanted a job in the federal government, or a favorable ruling from one of the then-few federal agencies, all you had to do was give a big enough gift to President Jackson, or pledge your loyalty to him instead of the Constitution and the people, and your wish would be granted…
The Federal Reserve protects the nations’ banking system and thus ensures stability and prosperity for America’s billionaires and the companies that made them that way. By blowing up Trump’s attempt to remove the Fed’s one Black governor (presumably as part of his and Hegseth’s Make America White Again campaign), the Republicans on the Court defended America’s oligarchs.
The other federal agencies, like the FTC, mostly protect you and me. They oversee our environment, consumer product safety, the purity of our food and drugs, and so on. If anything, America’s oligarchs consider them a pain in the ass.
If Democrats win the Presidency and control of both houses of Congress in 2028, they can write new laws reviving limits on Presidential power, protecting merit-based appointments, and strengthening the federal civil service.
Until that happens, Trump can fire any member of the Federal Trade Commission,
Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, concludes that the U.S. Supreme Court has become too partisan. The public does not trust its judgments. Term limits won’t change it soon enough. He proposes expanding the Court and gives his rationale.
Was Thursday among the darkest days in the history of the Supreme Court? You could make a case. First, a majority cleared the way for a pesticide manufacturer to get thousands of lawsuits off its books from farmers who’d used its product and gotten cancer. Next, it ruled that the administration could turn away asylum-seekers at the border. And then it held that gun owners could now freely carry their weapons into private establishments that serve the public.
Let’s pause over that one for a paragraph. Here’s a good description of the particulars of the gun case and the legal arguments on both sides. But the upshot is this: Everywhere in America, gun owners will presumably be able to take their guns to shops, stores, malls, movie theaters, restaurants, bars, amusement parks, Baby Gaps, you name it. Does any rational person think that the Founders, who simply wanted men to have muskets to protect themselves from invaders, would want someone to be able to take a military-style semiautomatic rifle and 600 rounds of ammo into a Chuck E. Cheese?
But the worst of Thursday’s big four decisions was Mullin v. Doe, which will allow the Trump administration to begin deporting Haitians and Syrians who were granted Temporary Protected Status by the Obama administration in 2010 and 2012, respectively. My colleague Matt Ford shredded the decision in his piece, writing that the court “effectively blessed Trump’s bigotry toward Haitians and dealt potentially catastrophic damage to federal civil rights laws.”
The cases combine to give the executive branch more power. They turn several lower court decisions on their head (as The New York Timesnotes today, immigration hard-liners had lost case after case on TPS until yesterday). And in the case of Mullin, in particular, the highest legal authority in the land—namely, Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority—pretends that Donald Trump’s blatant racism toward Haitians doesn’t exist; that there was nothing “overtly racial” in Trump’s many disgusting and false comments about the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio, and beyond.
This conservative court is out of control—blatantly partisan and ideological, the six-member majority scarcely even pretends otherwise anymore.
Some major decisions about executive power—Trump’s power—are yet to be handed down this term, involving the firing of Fed Governor Lisa Cook, the removal of Democratic appointees from independent agencies, and of course the birthright citizenship case. If the court rules predictably on two of these three, or certainly on all three, it will have completed a term—with the aforementioned four decisions already on the books, as well as Callais v. Louisiana, which did away with Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—that might well be the most reactionary in its history. And all this is on top of the earlier reversal of a 49-year-old precedent in 1973’s Roe v. Wade and the handing to Trump of sweeping immunity for all “official” acts.
It’s now unavoidable: This has to be a front-and-center issue in 2028. Democratic presidential contenders will have to answer the question: What do you plan to do about the Supreme Court?
Many of them will be afraid to dip a foot into these waters. They shouldn’t be. Poll after poll shows us that majorities disapprove of the court and think of its decisions as being more political than jurisprudential. According to Gallup, disapproval of the court topped 50 percent five years ago and has stayed there ever since (in contrast, that number was just 29 percent as recently as 2010). So the public—not just the progressive base of the party—is ready to hear ideas.
Terms limits, the most common idea bruited, are fine. But imposing term limits won’t really change the makeup of the court for years; maybe decades. How many more rights will they strip away before then? How much more power will they give to the uber-rich to buy political campaigns and candidates? How much more immunity will they grant to corporations? How many new ways will they find to weaken protections for workers and litigants against corporate power? And perhaps most of all, how will they figure out how to allow the executive branch to undermine the laws passed by Congress and refuse to write regulations and enforce the laws Congress has passed?
No—terms limits are no longer enough. It’s time to talk seriously about court expansion. And I think there’s a smart and totally constitutionally defensible way to do it.
The United States has 13 federal circuit courts. That number, naturally, grew over the course of the country’s history, as the number of states grew and as the population expanded. This is relevant here because each Supreme Court justice is responsible for overseeing a certain number of circuits. Historically, Congress has expanded the number of justices as it simultaneously increased the number of circuits.
Admittedly, all this happened a very long time ago. But still, it’s precedent. The court was established in 1789 at six justices. In 1807, Congress expanded the number of federal circuits to seven, and added a justice to match. In 1837, Congress created nine circuits and nine justices. In 1863—even while the United States of America had lost the 11 states of the Confederacy—Congress created 10 circuits and 10 justices. The current nine-justice format was set in 1869.
Later expansions in the number of circuits did not simultaneously add justices. But why not revive that thought? The country has had today’s 13 circuits since 1982. The population of the country in 1982 was 230 million. Today, it’s around 345 million. That’s a lot more people. And the courts are horribly backlogged.
That could be solved by just adding judges. But it’s also a justification for increasing the number of circuits. From there, a case can clearly be made that increasing the number of circuits requires increasing the number of high court justices. Or at the very least, Democrats can pursue a hybrid solution that would keep the number of circuits at 13 and add a large number of judges within those circuits—while increasing the size of the Supreme Court to 13. Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia, a leader on these issues, introduced such a bill in 2023, and it had around 60 co-sponsors.
It would all be completely constitutional and completely legal. Which is more than can be said for a lot of the things Trump and the Republicans are getting up to, as they try to find new and blatantly illegal ways to stop mail-in voting and otherwise take the franchise away from citizens.
But the big door-opener here by Trump and the GOP is their rancidly unconstitutional mid-decade redistricting move. The Constitution clearly and plainly states that districts will be redrawn every 10 years, after the decennial census. What Trump and his party are doing with this redistricting is completely lawless.
Once they’ve done that, all bets are off. Democrats should do whatever they need to do to rebalance power. But—they should stay within the law. What I’m talking about here, what Johnson’s bill would accomplish, would be entirely within the law. Congress can set the size of the Supreme Court. And I believe that a smart Democrat, framing the argument the right way, can take that case to the American people and win it. He or she can convince the voters that far from destroying the court, such an action would constitute saving it from its own extremism—and saving the rights we cherish that these ideologues are stripping away.
When it comes to supporting its public schools, Florida ranks dead last in the nation. Not only was it dead last of all states, it was at the very bottom in 2024 and 2025.
Florida betrays its state constitution, which contains a clear mandate to create and protect strong public schools.
Article IX, Section 1(a) states:
“The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida. It is, therefore, a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders. Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education…”
Under the misleadership of Republican politicians like Jeb Bush and Ron DeSantis, Florida has diverted billions of dollars to privately governed charter schools and unaccountable vouchers for private and religious schools and home schooling. Bush and DeSantis have ignored and abandoned Florida’s state constitution.
And among all the states, Florida’s school rank dead last.
Based on the NPE report Public Schooling in America 2026, Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for public Education, wrote:
This is the third consecutive year that Florida’s statehouse has earned last place when it comes to supporting public schools. Florida’s lawmakers don’t merely encourage privatization through charters, vouchers, and homeschools; they actively engineer conditions that undermine public schools and worsen the environment for teaching and learning.
The damage from Florida’s universal voucher program is staggering. Close to four billion dollars in state education funding now flows annually to voucher programs — nearly one in four state education dollars diverted away from public schools, including to families whose children never set foot in a public school. And the funding mechanism puts the burden directly on school districts, which must absorb the loss.
Meanwhile, Florida continuously revises its school rating standards to ensure more public schools are labeled as failing, while simultaneously incentivizing and subsidizing charter expansion. Its Schools of Hope program even allows charters to colonize unused space inside public school buildings. Success Academy’s Eva Moskowitz teamed up with a Florida billionaire to help draft the enabling legislation, then used it to muscle her chain into the Miami charter market with generous public funding in tow.
Fifty percent of Florida’s charter sector is run by for-profit operators — one of the highest shares in the nation. Only Michigan has more. Florida is home to Academica, the largest for-profit charter chain in the country, and to Charter Schools USA. Both profit from the real estate they build and lease back to their own branded schools.
Charter schools claim to be equally open to all students. That is not the case in Florida, which lost points for the numerous enrollment privileges its laws permit. Florida is one of a small number of states that allow company-based charter schools. The Villages, the largest retirement community in the country, has its own charter school, and it functions less like a school of choice than a company store. The school was created by the community’s developer, and at least one parent must be employed by The Villages or a company that services it. If that parent quits or is fired, the child must leave immediately. For a low-wage service worker who might want to change jobs, the school becomes a trap — a reason to stay put rather than pursue something better.
Florida sinks to the bottom not only because of its weak charter and voucher laws and the financial incentives it offers to expand privatization, but because it actively undermines its public schools through policy and funding decisions at every turn. Florida lost every possible point on school funding — whether measured by cost-of-living-adjusted teacher salaries, equitable funding distribution, or funding based on capacity to pay. It has low teacher satisfaction, high student-to-teacher and student-to-counselor ratios, weak anti-bullying laws, and it still permits corporal punishment.
Of 102 possible points, Florida disgracefully earned only 14. You can read our full NPE 2026 report card here.
Graham Platner won the Democratic primary for the Senate, despite troubling allegations by women who questioned his treatment of them. When a woman he had dated said last Monday that he had forced her to have sex without her consent, it was all over for Platner. He was accused of having raped the girlfriend. He denied it, but the air was out of his balloon.
Tonight Platner denied the allegations, blamed the “establishment” for derailing his campaign, but announced that he was suspending his campaign.
The Maine Democratic Party will hold a convention and pick a new candidate.
This is the best outcome. In retrospect, the most damning evidence against Platner came from his wife, who told a campaign leader that her husband had been sexting with other women after they were married. Why would he do that? That’s a career destroyer.
Last night at 10:20 pm, the Post published a vile, disgusting story about Platner that never should have seen the light of day, in my view..
In that article, Lyndsey Fifield, the conservative woman who worked for the Heritage Foundation and was part of a group supporting Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, made a lewd accusation against Platner that could not be verified or corroborated. She said that when she had sex with Platner, he took off his condom without her consent, even though he knew she did not use birth control. Apparently this happened more than once. She dated him over a three-year period and said he “repeatedly” engaged in sex without a condom.
It started like this:
“An ex-girlfriend of embattled Senate candidate Graham Platner told The Washington Post that he repeatedly removed protection without her consent when they were having sex. “Lyndsey Fifield, who said she dated Platner from 2013 to 2015 in D.C. and has previously accused him of physical abuse, said that she told Platner on multiple occasions that he had to wear condoms during sex because she was not on birth control. “He would pull condoms off,” she said in an interview. “He would do it in a sneaky way. He wouldn’t tell me.” “In a statement in response to questions about Fifield’s allegation, Platner’s campaign called the claim “categorically false and politically motivated.” The statement noted Fifield supported now-Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh when he was accused of sexual assault before his confirmation, an allegation he denied.”
Most of the comments–at least the first 100 or so–attacked Fifield’s credibility and motives. One asked why she didn’t use birth control. Another asked why she continued to have intercourse with him.
My reaction was that the charges should never have been published because a) there was no way to verify her allegations; b) how he had sex with a female friend is irrelevant to his character or fitness for office. Having unprotected sex is dangerous, because it might produce an unwanted pregnancy. But, to my knowledge, it is not criminal.
Rape and sexual assault are criminal acts. They do reflect on one’s fitness for office. We should have learned from Trump’s adjudicated behavior not to trust men who abuse women.
The story was disgusting. The Washington Post should be ashamed to have published this slime.
I’m glad Platner stepped aside. I’m sorry all the allegations about him did not come out long ago.
I hope the Maine Democratic Party picks a strong candidate who can unite the party and beat Susan Collins.
Trump is the master of using the courts to win his battles, but lately he’s been on a losing streak.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied his request to excuse him from paying E. Jean Carroll $5 million, which was awarded by a jury in New York. With the interest it has accrued, Trump now owes her $5.8 million.
An appeals court on Wednesday denied President Trump’s bid to pause the removal of his name from the Kennedy Center while he challenges a lower court ruling.
A three-judge panel determined the administration’s lawyers did not prove the president or the performing arts center would suffer irreparable harm if his name was removed from the venue as ordered.
“First, they argue that removal of President Trump’s name will inflict irreparable harm in terms of expense and time ‘squander[ed][.]’ Since that removal has already occurred, stay would not avert those harms (even assuming they would qualify as irreparable),” the judges wrote in their order.
“Second, Appellants allege financial harm to the Kennedy Center if they are not permitted to reinstate President Trump’s name. They argue that removal of President Trump’s name ‘threatens to impede the Center’s fundraising efforts and [will] contribute to the financial decline of the Center.’ Appellants, however, have failed to support this assertion with any specific facts or evidence,” they added.
Judge Gregory Katsas, a Trump appointee, and Judges Patricia Millett and Robert Wilkins, both Obama appointees, denied the Trump administration’s motion for a stay pending appeal.
Donald Trump dropped down in Ankara, Türkiye, for the big NATO summit, and wasted no time confirming every European leader’s worst instincts about whether or not the United States is any longer their friend.
You see, the stupid senile bitch Trump still thinks that part of the NATO deal is that the other members should jump up to help every time Benjamin Netanyahu tricks him into starting a war no other American president was stupid enough to start. He thinks they owe that to him. He thinks that’s part of Article 5. He’s the stupidest, most useless brain of any human who’s ever taken up space on God’s green earth.
So he arrived in Ankara and, during a press availability with Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, immediately started in babbling about his Greenland shit again.
“Greenland doesn’t help Denmark, Denmark doesn’t spend money to really help Greenland, but it’s an important part for the United States,” the president continued.
Greenland “should be controlled by the United States, not by Denmark,” he concluded.
Sorry about all this yet again, Europe.
Notably, it was reported this weekend that France has had to prepare for the very real possibility of a “shooting war” with the US over Greenland. Now here comes Trump to start running his fucking mouth about that again, and Danish PM Mette Fredriksen is having to reiterateat NATO that she will defend Greenland, and that it’s “not for sale.”
Trump also continued yesterday to make threats to remove troops from Europe, said hopeful words about a peace deal for his father Putin in Russia and Ukraine (despite how his opinion on the matter is less than irrelevant), and said Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is a “nice person,” while whining some more that she wouldn’t help him bomb Iran at Netanyahu’s request. This, despite how just this weekend, he was still fanning the flames of the stupid feud he started with her by telling pathetic, unbelievable lies about her wanting to be in the same room with him.
He also recommenced his bitching that if it hadn’t been for the foul fucking dictator he was meeting with at the time, for whom he’s always had a little Trumpy boner, he might not have even come to the NATO summit:
“I was very disappointed with NATO, and frankly, if it weren’t held in Turkey, where my friend happens to be a very strong leader, a very strong person, it’s possible that I wouldn’t have attended. I felt I had to attend because of the fact that, you know, I know he’s gone all out.”
Did y’all hear about trashball Erdoğan’s latest stunt, denying a gay cruise ship permission to dock in Istanbul because of the homosexual lifestyle? Motherfucker does not belong in a community of respected nations like NATO, but we understand why they might keep him there as a means of controlling him. (It’s good that Turkey’s bid for European Union membership is forever stalled.)
Of course, the same could probably be said for the United States these days.
Anyway, back to Trump’s humiliation of himself and of the United States!
Here is Trump today in a press conference with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, HEREBY DEMANDING an end to all trade with Spain, including tourism!
“Spain is a wasted cause. We don’t want to do any trade business with Spain, please. […] Cut off all trade with Spain, please! Including visits, OK? We don’t want anything to do, watch them come running back …”
Can Trump actually do that unilaterally? Of course not, but he’s too stupid to understand that. And of course only 4.9 percent of Spain’s exports — 18 billion euros worth — head to the United States, whereas 23 billion euros worth of goods come from the US to Spain. Trump knows nothing about trade, but that’s called a trade surplus.
As for the tourism, does Trump think Spaniards are flocking to American shores? Or is he going to try to ban Americans from visiting Spain, AKA the second-most-visited tourism destination in the world?
Just curious how the dumb bitch is planning to humiliate himself here.
Spain has not committed to Trump’s THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER demands to kick its defense spending up to five percent of its annual budget by 2035. And Pedro Sánchez is always mean to him, and he does it while looking handsome and in Castilian Spanish, so it’s a humiliation for Trump on all fronts and that’s why he’s mad.
Trump finished that clip above by whining that Spain also mistreats Mark Rutte, Trump’s special boy who always stays in character pretending he respects Trump, and Trump buys it, because Trump is stupid and easily flattered.
In response to Trump’s comments, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s office said that Spain “maintains an excellent social, cultural, and economic relationship with the US, and we have no intention of seeing that change.”
The spokesperson said the Spanish government regarded such statements “as a matter of routine.”
The spokesperson referenced the U.S.’ trade surplus with Spain, and the fact that the European Union handles trade for the bloc’s 27 member countries.
How do you say “Yeah we hear that old bitch running his mouth” in Spanish? (Something like Sí, oímos a ese viejo cabrón parloteando sin parar, maybe.)
So anyway, that’s been what the beginning of the NATO summit has looked like. And Rutte had such high hopes for there being a united NATO front against Vladimir Putin! Too bad the ass he’s got his tongue up is that of a stupid orange Hitler wannabe who thinks he’s impressive because he (allegedly) passes dementia tests.
If you have not read that incredible Wall Street Journal article from this weekend about all the ways European leaders work together to make Trump their useful idiot, how they scheme to manage that dumbfuck, all as they strategize on how to get out of their now-abusive relationship with Trump’s America, now would be a good time.
American allies have begun pushing the gas pedal on an unprecedented experiment in de-Americanization. Authorities from France to the Netherlands are quietly removing American tech from their systems, adopting European open-source software and urging civil servants to no longer use Microsoft Teams or Office.
It begins with an account of the secret meeting European leaders had at the beginning of this year on exactly how to break up with America. It discusses how Meloni thought Trump could be reasoned with at that meeting, but now no longer does. It talks about how they literally all craft their text messages to make the illiterate idiot feel safe:
When texting Trump, Rutte would echo the president’s own syntax and hyperbole, keeping his messages congratulatory, with staccato sentences. He immersed himself in the role so thoroughly some heads of government who worked with him began describing him as an actor who never broke character.
Soon, European leaders were following his lead. Finland’s president and Norway’s prime minister started workshopping their text messages to Trump, talking about which words they should render in capital letters. Sometimes, the Norwegian leader preferred his Finnish counterpart to send a message. Nordic officials worried that the mere mention of Norway, home of the Nobel Peace Prize, could reopen a sore wound.
The American president, that’s who they are talking about.
How they talk to him about advocating for a ceasefire in Ukraine, when he starts taking Putin’s side? They use his words: “Stop the killing,” because those are the simple words Trump understands. “Trump lectured top EU official Ursula von der Leyen for advocating sanctions on Russia, so she started referring to economic pressure as tariffs.”
If you want the senile dumbass to do anything, call it a tariff! Wow.
And then there’s:
Weeks into Trump’s second term, Macron visited to discuss NATO and Ukraine. The two spent hours together, and the U.S. president seemed open to his ideas. They used a tablet to dial into a video call led by Justin Trudeau. But as the Canadian prime minister was talking, Trump, frustrated with a technical issue that prevented him from chiming in, lobbed the device over the Resolute Desk and onto the floor, an official present said.
Like a toddler cat with dementia.
Does Trump bring foreign leaders into a room off the Oval Office full of MAGA hats and — no shit — Florsheim shoes, and tell them to pick whatever they’d like? He does. Apparently he thinks their wives (???) might like to relist the swag he gives them on Facebook Marketplace, or take it on Antiques Roadshow?
During their chat, Trump told [German Chancellor Friedrich] Merz he had something to show him, and walked the chancellor of Germany into a small study off the Oval Office. It was, Trump announced, “the Lewinsky room” and he had filled it with MAGA memorabilia, including red hats and boxes of Florsheim dress shoes. “Just grab whatever you want,” a congenial Trump told his German guests, adding that their wives could sell the swag for “thousands of dollars.”
“That’s the most embarrassing thing I’ve ever heard about Trump” has now happened more than once in this article.
If you want to see something really embarrassing, just watch the full presser with Rutte. You’ll be able to envision Trump throwing things off desks like a fucking baby quite easily.
There’s a second part of the report out now, on how Canadian PM Mark Carney has been at the forefront of the effort to get Europe thinking and acting as its own superpower in a world where it can’t rely on the USA, hammering to them the message that “the old America isn’t coming back.”
You’ll want to read that one while you, too, grapple with the world’s growing embrace of Carney’s thesis.
Diane Ravitch's blog 