Heather Cox Richardson: Will the Rule of Law Survive Attorney General Todd Blanche?

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2026 //
2

Heather Cox Richardson is masterful at analyzing the important events of recent days and putting them into perspective. Trump now has firm control of the Justice Department, since his personal defense attorney has been confirmed as Attorney General of the United States. The department will brazenly reflect the President’s agenda and diligently persecute and prosecute his political enemies. Expect that the Justice Department will have a task force devoted to proving that Trump won the election of 2020 and another one seeking ways to exonerate and compensate the insurrectionists who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

After his confirmation, Blanche said that there were people who were absolutely harmed by a “weaponized” Department of Justice, and both he and Trump want to “make them whole” to compensate for their sufferings.

I responded on Twitter:

“Is it now legal to break into the U.S. Capitol, beat up police, and disrupt Congressional proceedings?”

At last Trump has his own Roy Cohn.

Richardson writes:

On Monday, August 10, Todd Blanche took the oath of office as attorney general, administered by federal appeals court judge Emil Bove, another of Trump’s defense lawyers before moving to the Department of Justice, where he was Blanche’s top deputy. In that capacity, CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz recalled, he fired career prosecutors and pushed Trump’s takeover of the department.

Using Bove to swear in Blanche looked like a victory lap for the Trump team. Although the press was excluded, two other Trump loyalists, FBI director Kash Patel and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, attended Blanche’s swearing-in.

Retired conservative judge J. Michael Luttig told MS NOW: “Todd Blanche now becomes the symbol of Donald Trump’s corruption of the rule of law in America and the actual ruin of the Department of Justice of the United States. This is another shameful act of acquiescence, if not obeisance, by the Senate Republicans; they will bear this badge of shame the rest of their lives.

Never before in American history has an attorney general been confirmed who was as corrupt as Todd Blanche. The Department of Justice is already in shambles.”

“And,” Luttig added, “he will further ruin the Department of Justice.”

As soon as he took office, Blanche issued a memo dramatically expanding executive privilege, which he described as the authority of the president to “withhold certain sensitive information for the public good.” Executive privilege has enabled the president to shield conversations with key advisors from public scrutiny with the logic that a president must be able to get a wide range of advice, given freely, by those in the executive branch.

Now, though, the Department of Justice under Blanche says the president can shield “presidential communications with private advisers so long as the communications relate to official presidential decisionmaking.” The memo defines as a “private adviser” “anyone the President consults outside the Executive Branch.” As John Light of Talking Points Memo notes, this definition would enable the White House to defy congressional subpoenas for anyone to whom the president talks.

As Avery Lotz of Axios reports, Democrats had been planning to begin investigations of Trump’s corruption if they retake control of the House and/or the Senate. Recognizing that the White House would stonewall them, they intended to subpoena companies, college officials, and private citizens to testify. The memo, which is not legally binding but which indicates the administration’s position, would hamper that effort.

Lotz notes that the administration is already fighting a subpoena in a lawsuit filed by the American Bar Association that orders Trump’s senior personal lawyer, Boris Epshteyn, to testify about the deals the Trump administration struck with major law firms early in his second term.

Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA) wrote: “This latest opinion should be seen as a partisan measure to insulate the president and his corrupt activities from Congressional subpoenas when the majority flips.”

Thursday was the day that Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia held a status conference in the case of Phang v. Blanche. This is a lawsuit brought by independent journalist Katie Phang to force the Department of Justice to produce unredacted versions of documents from the Epstein files that she says were redacted against the explicit instructions in the Epstein Files Transparency Act. With that law, Congress ordered the Department of Justice to release all the files gathered by the FBI investigation into sex abuser Jeffrey Epstein, with redactions only to protect victims, no later than December 19, 2025.

Almost eight months later, the Department of Justice has refused to do so, probably producing about half the files, with many of the documents heavily redacted at the same time that it released some of the victim’s names, photographs, and identifying information.

As legal analyst Joyce White Vance explained in her Civil Discourse, Phang sued in April for access to an unredacted version of a handful of files, including emails about a “torture video” and sexual activity with girls, as well as notes from FBI interviews with a victim who claims Trump sexually assaulted her when she was 13 and materials in foreign languages, which the Department of Justice has not produced at all. She also asked the Department of Justice to explain why they made the redactions they did, something the law requires but the Justice Department has not done.

In late June, Sullivan granted Phang’s request.

But the Department of Justice under then–acting attorney general Todd Blanche, who interviewed Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell shortly before she was transferred to a far less restrictive prison that should have been inaccessible to a sex offender, did not turn over those documents.

So, in July, Sullivan ordered the government to turn over the unredacted documents to him so he could review them himself to see if the decision by the Department of Justice not to release them was correct. Once again, the Department of Justice refused. As for an explanation for why the department hadn’t explained the decisions to redact, the Justice Department lawyer told the judge the process was “underway” but couldn’t say when it would be done or why translating documents in foreign languages wasn’t practical. He claimed the materials the department is withholding are simply duplicates of things that have been released, but offered no proof of that assertion.

Ultimately, as Vance explains, Sullivan asked: ““So you’re saying I’ve learned everything I’m going to learn from the government?” The lawyer for the Department of Justice, Andrew Block, answered: “That’s right.”

Sullivan wasn’t satisfied. “The public has a right to know what the hell is going on in this case. The victims have a right to know. The court has a right to know. The law is still in full force and effect. The court is just ensuring compliance.”

To make it clear he was being reasonable, in expectation of a review from a higher court, Sullivan repeatedly told Block he was willing to work with the department, but warned that he had held prosecutors in contempt of court in the past. Sullivan gave Phang’s lawyers 10 days to propose an order to deal with the failure of the Department of Justice to comply with his orders to produce the files Phang requested.

The administration is also undermining another popular law. This week, under Trump, the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) in the Treasury Department not only ended the registry Congress set up in 2021 over Trump’s veto to make shell companies identify their owners, but also destroyed all the data it has already collected.

FinCEN combats money laundering. Congress set up the Corporate Transparency Act after documents leaked to BuzzFeed News and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in 2020 found that between 1999 and 2017, banks had flagged more than $2 trillion in potentially laundered money, moved by criminals operating out of Russia, China, Iran, and Syria through shell companies. These are legal entities that don’t have physical plants or operations, but can be used for holding and moving money.

Shell companies also meant that the political system in the U.S. was awash in secrecy. “[I]t’s illegal for foreigners to contribute to our campaigns,” one Democrat reminded Congress in a speech for the bill, “but if you launder your money through a front company with anonymous ownership there is very little we can do to stop you.” One of the documents flagged how much Russian money was flowing into the U.S. in 2016 through Deutsche Bank.

The U.S. was the easiest place in the world for criminals to form an anonymous shell company enabling them to launder money, evade taxes, and engage in illegal payoff schemes—Trump’s fixer Michael Cohen used a shell company to pay off adult film actress Stormy Daniels to keep her from taking the story of her sexual encounter with Trump public before the 2016 election. So Congress passed the Corporate Transparency Act to undercut the shell companies that enabled money laundering in America.

The act required the owners of any company that was not otherwise overseen by the federal government (by filing taxes, for example, or through close regulation) to file a report that identifies each person associated with the company who either owns 25% or more of it or exercises substantial control over it. That report, including name, birthdate, address, and an identifying number, would go to FinCEN. The measure also increased penalties for money laundering and streamlined cooperation between banks and foreign law enforcement authorities.

The plan was to pull the rug out from both domestic and international criminals that take advantage of shell companies to hide from investigators. The measure passed on a bipartisan basis; then-senator Marco Rubio of Florida, now secretary of state, co-sponsored it, calling it the “most significant anti-corruption and money laundering law in decades.” 

Now the Treasury Department says it will not collect the information the law requires, raising the question of whether the Trump administration is openly refusing to implement a law.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democrats, Education Reform, Funding, Republicans, Resistance

Board of Kennedy Center Votes to Put Trump’s Name on the Building Again, Defying Court Order

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2026 //
11

One of Donald Trump’s first acts when he returned to the Presidency was to take full control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. During his first term in office, Trump never attended any event at the Kennedy Center.

In 2025, Trump fired its board of directors, all except members of Congress, whom he can’t fire. He replaced the bipartisan board with his cronies, who promptly named Trump the chairman of the board. The board proceeded to fire the professionals who ran the Center and to adopt a resolution renaming the Center. Henceforward, the board decreed, the Center would be known as the John F. Kennedy and Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts.

That decision led the Center into a spiral of decline. Many performers and shows cancelled. The Washington National Opera moved out. Ticket sales dropped.

The Kennedy Center suffered incalculable reputation damage after he politicized it. Why did he do it?

Despite his wealth and notoriety, Trump was never accepted into the world of high culture in New York City. He was never invited to serve on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, or any of the city’s other prestigious institutions of high culture. Nor was he known as a donor to those institutions.

He built his brand as a brash businessman who hung out in night clubs with mobsters and beautiful women and sought recognition in the gossip columns of the city’s tabloid press. He was rich, and he was a celebrity, but he was never admitted into elite circles.

His vendetta against the Kennedy Center should be seen in that perspective.

His puppet board at the Kennedy Center did his bidding. In addition to adding his name to the facade of the building, the board decided to close the Center for two years for repairs and renovations. The closure would halt the embarrassment of canceled performances and empty seats. Some critics worried that Trump would tear down the Center as he tore down the East Wing of the White House. Act fast and don’t apologize.

One board member, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio, sued to stop the board’s decision to rename the Center and also to close it for two years for Trump-directed “renovations.”

U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled on May 29, 2026, that the Kennedy Center board did not have the legal authority to rename the institution. He said that Congress had established the name by statute and only Congress could change it. He ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the building and from all official Kennedy Center materials. Judge Cooper gave the board a deadline of 14 days.

The Kennedy Center board considered an appeal to delay or reverse the order but ultimately complied. Workers began on June 12 to erect scaffolding in front of the building, moving at a snail’s pace, and began removing Trump’s name at 1:20 a.m. on June 13.

Since then, the facade of the building that shows its name has been covered by white tarps.

At first, Trump petulantly said that Congress should run the Kennedy Center, but he soon reverted to control mode.

On August 13, 2026, the Kennedy Center board voted to put Trump’s name back on the building. It wants to add an inscription saying the center was “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” despite Judge Cooper’s earlier ruling. And it voted to name the large plaza in front of the Center for Trump. It also voted to close the Center for two years, which Judge Cooper said it could not do without more detailed plans and reasons.

Congresswoman Joyce Beatty is suing to reverse the board’s defiance of Judge Cooper’s May 29 decision.

At the same time, the Trump administration is appealing Judge Cooper’s original order.

Judge Cooper could hold the board in contempt of court. Or he could order them not to change the name, as he did in May. Or he could accept the new wording for the facade, which seems unlikely. Or the board could challenge Judge Cooper’s decision to higher courts. Or Congress could step in and rewrite the statute so that Trump could add his name.

Why is the board so insistent on honoring Trump? His hand-picked President Richard Grennell praised Trump for “his visionary leadership.” Board members appointed by him have lavished praise on him.

Trump needs this sycophantic behavior. At his Cabinet meetings, Cabinet secretaries mouth the same obsequious language, stoking his ego, which is insatiable.

Why does this squabble over the Kennedy Center even matter? The U.S. is stuck in a war with Iran that has caused loss of life, depleted our supply of weapons, and harmed the global economy by limiting the flow of oil.

But Trump is deeply engaged in his vanity projects, of which this is one. He is obsessed with his ballroom, which has been stopped by the courts temporarily but is under construction. He assumes it will be known as “the Donald J. Trump Ballroom” forever. He intends to build a 250′ triumphal Arch, despite overwhelming public opposition. He ripped out Jackie Kennedy’s rose garden and paved it over.

He’s doing something to the portico of the White House, but it is hidden by huge shrouds. He is installing a permanent helipad on the White House grounds. He is renovating the Lincoln Bedroom into who-knows-what. He wants to paint the historic grey granite Eisenhower Office Building white, although preservationists have warned him against it (the paint won’t last and it is likely to damage the granite).

All of this is about leaving a permanent mark on D.C. He was not engaged in vanity projects during his first term. Now, at the age of 80, aware of his mortality, he is obsessed by his passion to create a permanent legacy.

Of the many monuments in Washington, D.C., that honor presidents–the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Kennedy Center–all were created after the honoree was dead.

Perhaps Trump, who is deeply insecure despite his braggadocio, is afraid he won’t be honored after his death. He remains angry that he never was accepted into the top ranks of New York City’s elite. They treated him like scum. That may be why he is so intent on building Trump monuments while he can.

Act first, get permission later from commissions packed with your flunkies.

Categories Art, Corruption, Ethics, History, Trump

To Understand Putin’s Plan to Destroy NATO and the European Union, Read This

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2026 //
1

Today, The New York Times published an astonishing article about Putin’s attempt to destabilize NATO and the EU by driving tiny Moldova back into Russia’s orbit.

Moldova shares a border with Ukraine. Putin hopes to thwart the West by persuading Moldova to oust its pro-Western government.

Putin created an elaborate pro-Russian organization inside Moldova, spending millions of dollars to pay collaborators, agitators, and priests.

The Times‘ articleis a gift article with no pay wall. It begins:

It resembled in many ways a summer camp. Barbecues and beach volleyball games were on offer. A wellness spa was called “Relax and Have Fun.”

The men and women who attended the program at a resort complex in a remote part of Serbia also took part in more sinister activities, like learning to break through police cordons and set buildings on fire. They donned flak jackets and trained with assault rifles.

Their counselors, it turned out, were operatives with ties to Russia’s military intelligence service, known as the GRU. Their purpose, according to intelligence officials from three countries who described the activities, was to build a cadre of disciplined shock troops trained in election interference.

The target was tiny Moldova, a country of about three million people that carries outsize importance for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The Kremlin’s campaign included methods familiar elsewhere in the West, like hacking and disinformation. But in Moldova, its intervention went further than perhaps anywhere else outside Ukraine, and stands as one of the most extensive and audacious plots to date in Mr. Putin’s effort to destabilize the West, the three Western intelligence officials say.

Besides the camp in Serbia, Russian agents ran training programs in Bosnia and Moscow that were designed to turn pro-Russian Moldovans into foot soldiers. Moscow paid hundreds of Orthodox Moldovan priests to recruit voters and to push Russian narratives from the pulpit. And it spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a sophisticated vote-buying scheme financed by a Moldovan billionaire in exile and conceived and operated from Skolkovo, the Kremlin’s knockoff Silicon Valley outside Moscow.

Moscow’s campaign has not stopped. This spring, Russian missiles targeted energy infrastructure that provided service to Moldova, polluting waterways and disrupting electricity flows.

This article is based on interviews with activists who took part in the Russian effort; senior Moldovan law enforcement and security officials; and more than half a dozen European and American intelligence officials. The New York Times also reviewed thousands of documents related to Russia’s attempts to interfere in Moldova’s elections.

Many of those interviewed insisted on speaking anonymously, either to discuss sensitive security operations or because they feared retribution.

Details about Russian efforts in Moldova have emerged in court cases and local reporting, but the scope and extent of the campaign, including the vote-buying scheme and role of Russia’s intelligence services, has not been previously reported.

Publicly, Russian officials have denied interfering in Moldova’s affairs, and have dismissed accusations that Moscow is trying to undermine the West. Last December, Mr. Putin, in an address to military commanders, castigated European leaders for “stoking hysteria” over the threat from Russia.

Soon afterward, though, he gathered the leaders for a secret briefing to deliver the exact opposite message, according to officials from two countries with knowledge of the episode. Their goal for 2026, Mr. Putin told them, is “the collapse of NATO and the E.U. from within,” the people said.

Ms. Sandu, wearing a blue outfit, walks toward a lectern, with flags in the background.
The pro-Western government of President Maia Sandu has set European Union membership as a priority, making it a Kremlin target.Credit…Daniel Mihailescu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Categories Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, International

Michael Hiltzik: Trump’s New Vaccine Schedule Endangers the Lives of US Children

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2026 //
8

Let’s begin by stating a simple fact: Donald Trump is not a doctor. As a matter of fact, he has no credentials as a scientist or a researcher. Neither does Robert F. Kennedy Jr,, who is Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. RFK Jr. is in charge of the nation’s enormous public health agency; states and localities look to HHS for guidance to protect people against risks to their well-being.

It’s hard to imagine a worse choice for Secretary of HHS. For years, he has been a critic of vaccines; he believes that there is a link between vaccines and autism, but mainstream scientists don’t agree with him.

During the pandemic, the number of parents who were resistant to vaccines increased, and they look to RFK Jr. as their leader.

Measles is surging. As of August 2026, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has confirmed 2,465 measles cases across the United States for the year 2026, already surpassing the 2,289 total cases reported for the entirety of 2025. 93% of those who got measles were unvaccinated.

Children will get sick. Some may die because of the bad advice these unqualified men give.

Michael Hiltzik of The Los Angeles Times writes:

The tsunami of fabricated claims in the order and voiced by Trump and others at the Oval Office announcement Monday is almost overwhelming.

If there’s a saving grace in this episode, it’s that most states and the vast majority of parents are likely to ignore Trump’s order. But the order will leave its mark by magnifying the confusion many parents already face in making decisions about their children’s immunizations. That’s a public health threat all on its own.

Here’s a look at Monday’s order, which claims to “deliver gold standard childhood vaccine recommendations.”

El secretario de Salud y Servicios Humanos, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., comparece ante la Comisión de Finanzas del Senado, en el Capitolio, en Washington, el jueves 4 de septiembre de 2025. (AP Foto/Mark Schiefelbein)

First, the order pares the list of recommended immunizations to 11 diseases from 17. Six immunizations — for hepatitis A and B, rotavirus, meningococcal disease, flu and COVID-19 — are knocked down from “recommended” to “shared clinical decision-making.” That’s code for expanding the opportunity for parents to refuse the shots for their children.

Trump calls for supplanting the combined measles, mumps and rubella vaccine by individual vaccines for each disease, administered at separate physician visits. 

He calls on the Department of Justice to pursue cases against states and localities whose immunization rules contradict “parental authority, religious freedom, disability accommodations, and equal protection under the law, including their obligations to provide religious and medical exemptions from childhood and adolescent immunization requirements.” 

He revived the canard about vaccines contributing to a rise in autism, despite the connection having been thoroughly refuted by years of clinical research. 

Trump also called on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, under whose imprimatur federal vaccine recommendations are issued, to revise its recommendations to match those of other “peer, developed countries.”

That last item points to Trump’s disregard for the niceties of government procedure. In effect, he has presented his newly installed director of the CDC, Erica Schwartz, with a heaping, steaming platter of policy manure. Schwartz only won Senate confirmation on Wednesday, after a hearing in which she pledged to “never betray the science” on which CDC policies are based. This is her first test.

Schwartz hasn’t commented on the Trump order as of this writing. I asked the CDC for her view on the executive order, but received no reply.

Trump unveiled his executive order at an Oval Office ceremony at which no licensed physician was in attendance. Trump himself issued mouthfuls of balderdash during the event. “I’ve seen proof,” he said, “where they have a vaccination that looks like the size of a bottle of soda, poured into a little child’s body, and bad things happen.”

Let’s be crystal clear: There’s no such thing. To quote infectious disease expert Jake Scott of Stanford Medicine, “every vaccine given at a baby’s two-month visit adds up to about half a teaspoon. A 20-ounce soda bottle is more than 200 times that.”

At Monday’s announcement, Trump called the MMR vaccine “quite lethal.” Asked by a reporter what evidence he had for that, he replied, “What I’ve heard is that there are some people that say it is that way.”

Trump’s order cites no scientific research to justify splitting multivalent vaccines such as the MMR into individual parts, even though it’s obvious that doing so and requiring multiple doctor visits will raise the cost and time-wastage for many households and despite research showing that the bundled vaccines don’t present a health threat to children and work as expected. 

I asked the White House for the scientific grounds for splitting up the vaccine. “President Trump is one of countless parents who have voiced questions and concerns about the combined MMR vaccine,” said White House spokesperson Kush Desai. “The Administration’s push to develop separate vaccinations for all three diseases … ultimately will increase vaccination rates for all three diseases.” 

In fact, experts generally hold that splitting the shots will decrease vaccination rates for all three diseases by erecting an unnecessary obstacle to the shots. That was Japan’s experience when it split off mumps from the MMR vaccine and ended up with a higher incidence of mumps than before.

As it happens, almost nothing Trump called for is practical or possible today. Monovalent childhood vaccines aren’t available in the U.S., or in most other developed countries.

Physicians oppose a return to monovalent vaccines because that would “unnecessarily delay administration of the three vaccine components, leaving children susceptible for a longer period of time to serious, life-threatening diseases,” according to the American Academy of Pediatrics. “Use of monovalent vaccines also would increase the number of injections a child would need and increase the number of visits required to complete the vaccination series.” 

In other words, the bundled vaccines are better for children’s health.

Developing separate measles, mumps and rubella vaccines and bringing them to market could take a decade of R&D including clinical trials. Drugmakers aren’t likely to embark on the process now, knowing that a new administration will take office Jan. 20, 2029, and — assuming it hews to accepted science — likely as not will reverse these recommendations. 

Also, vaccine policy is firmly in the hands of the states. None are mandated to follow federal standards. To date, almost all states have maintained their previous mandates or otherwise decoupled their policies from the federal recommendations. According to the healthcare information site KFF, by Jan. 20 this year, 28 states and the District of Columbia — including all states with Democratic governors — had announced that they wouldn’t follow the federal government. 

In Florida, a red state, the anti-vax surgeon general Joseph Ladapo — whom I earlier labeled “the most dangerous quack in America” — has recommended ending all childhood vaccine mandates. But Florida lawmakers haven’t gone along, and the mandates are still in place.

Trump’s latest order is an attempted end run around a federal judge’s ruling in March that blocked Kennedy’s attempt to cut the vaccine schedule to 11 immunizations. Trump followed that ruling with the executive order citing peer countries May 29.

Vaccine specialists find Trump’s citing “peer nations” to be “nonsensical,” to quote Paul Offit, one of the nation’s leading vaccinologists, of Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. When if comes to child immunizations, Offit has observed, there are no “peers” to emulate: “Different developed world countries make different decisions based on demographics, health system capacity, vaccine access, and vaccine cost,” Offit notes. 

For example, Denmark, which Kennedy has held up as a model, doesn’t pay for the rotavirus vaccine, “which prevents a virus that causes vomiting, diarrhea, and severe dehydration,” Offit says. But it has been recommended in the U.S. since 2006, eliminating as many as 70,000 hospitalizations every year. 

“Denmark should mimic the U.S., not the other way around,” Offit says.

The bottom line is that childhood immunizations save lives. The advent of the measles vaccine reduced the incidence of that disease in the U.S. from an average of 530,000 cases per year to fewer than 50. Cases of whooping cough, polio, smallpox, rubella and diphtheria fell by 99-100% after vaccinations for each became standard.

Trump and Kennedy want to return us to those bad old days by refashioning them fictitiously as the good old days. They would expose millions of children to severe disease and death, which that could be averted by the science at hand. It’s a terrifying turn in American medical policy. In heaven’s name, why would they want to do it?

Categories Accountability, Health, Medicine, Science

John Thompson: Will New Methods Undermine the Love of Learning in Oklahoma?

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2026 //
1

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher, worries that the latest fads will undermine public education and replace teachers with technology. He’s right to worry. Those are the outcomes that the new crop of reformers actively pursue.

He writes:

I’m frustrated by the need to prepare for this year’s legislature, and the dangers that Oklahoma schools will face. But, too many other states will also be targeted by Trumpist right-wingers. So, I believe we all need to connect the dots and address the potentially existential threats regarding urban education.

The Oklahoma City Public Schools survived the loss of tens of thousands of students due to the “White Flight” of the 1970s, which was a tragic response to racial desegregation. 

It also survived the No Child Left Behind, and the Race to the Top’s test-driven, competition-driven corporate school reforms. It then survived the Pathways to Greatness’ excessive closures of schools, Covid, and the Ryan Walters administration, as well as attacks on students who are immigrants. These challenges dramatically contributed to OKCPS enrollments dropping from 46,172 in 2016 to 35,652 in 2024.

And, due to demographics, it is likely that the district will continue to lose students to the exurbs. As the Bellwether Foundation reports, “Nationally, public school enrollment declined over the past decade and is projected to continue decliningthrough at least fall 2031.” It is “driven by falling birth rates, expanding private school choice programs, and migration trends.”

Our schools have survived decades of underfunding, and they face the threat of SQ 844, which could cut property tax funding, as hundreds of millions of dollars are given to private schools. And like schools across the nation, the OKCPS will have to struggle with social media, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and the so-called “end of reading.”

Moreover, the Oklahoma Voice reported, “the number of graduates completing Oklahoma teacher preparation programs, including college degrees in education, has fallen by about 40% since 2013.” And, “Emergency certified educators, once considered a stop-gap measure, were the most common of all first-year teachers in 2025. And, “They represented 38.8% of teachers in their first year.” And, “So far, they represent 45.5% of 2026 first-year teachers, but state data doesn’t yet reflect the full hiring cycle.” 

I’m worried that the legacies of these challenges and today’s education policies, will do more than undermine reading, and teaching and learning. I’m worried that the Oklahoma Readers Act could create destructive school cultures that push vulnerable school systems over the tipping point.  

I’m struck by the new surge of scholarly research and investigative reporting which reveal the growing harm being done by the politicization of the “Science of Reading,” and the “Mississippi Miracle.”Oklahoma passed the Strong Readers Act based on the unfounded claims that the “Mississippi Marathon” improved students’ reading capacities. In fact, it briefly increased test scores for 4th graders, but not for 8th graders, which is evidence that it did not improve reading comprehension.

Yes, there has been a debate over the benefits and harms of retaining students who do not score high enough on tests. But, it is hoped that Mississippi-style investments in tutoring and student supports will minimize the harms. However, a growing body of evidence explains how the politicization of tutoring, turning it into test prep, which is often being conducted by AI (even for kindergarteners), is hurting kids more than was anticipated.

Moreover, since Mississippi failed to increase 8thgrade test scores, Governor Tate Reeves bragged about expanding policies that raised 4th grade scores to 8th grade.  So, what does that look like in middle schools?

A new report in Wired magazine documents the ways that Mississippi’s test-prep drills are degrading teaching and damaging reading. It began with a visit to a class which has:

20 eighth graders enrolled, but only 10 are present; six have been pulled out for remedial work with a consultant the district has hired to boost test scores, and the remaining four are absent for unclear reasons. The students in the room each grab a Chromebook and log in, at speeds ranging from feet-dragging to actively resistant. They open the StudySync software program, which shows them each a series of questions tailored to their weaknesses. Their faces look like they’re being marched to the guillotine.

It explains how the middle school “now begins and ends with screens.” And, “They’re not reading books for the love of books.”

The article ends with the teacher saying that she “can’t think of a single student across her five periods who reads for fun, who considers her class anything beyond an ordeal to be survived.”

And that gets back to the danger that I have long worried about. What will happen if the growing number of experts are right, and the Strong Readers Act undermines schools’ learning cultures from kindergarten to high school? After all, many advocates for the “Miracle” are also calling for a return to the reward-and-punish mindset of NCLB. And it sure sounds like they want to bring back the winners-and-losers, corporate reforms on steroids.

Our urban schools have been beaten down by a range of market-driven mandates, as well as other challenges that are not under their control. What happens when scripted curriculums take more time away from the essential background knowledge that comes from learning history, science, the arts, and critical thinking, and that are essential to reading comprehension. 

What is the result when test-prep undermines the joy of reading; and digital technology increasingly replaces human contact? Will our struggling schools cross over a tipping point?

Will it mean the eras of public education, and reading are coming to an end?        

Categories Education Reform

Missouri: The Voters Rebuke Their State Leaders

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2026 //
1

Missouri, the Republican-dominated legislature asked voters to pass two anti-democratic referenda. One was to restrict future referenda on constitutional amendments and limit the voice of the public. To pass, a proposed constitutional amendment would have needed a majority not only statewide, but also in each of Missouri’s eight congressional districts. One district could block an amendment supported by a statewide majority.

The other constitutional amendment would have eliminated property taxes and elevated sales taxes, a highly regressive tax system that favors the richest.

Voters said “NO” to both. By 80%. The two propositions lost in every county. Maybe Missouri voters should not keep voting for the same party every year? Maybe they should oust the scoundrels who control the legislature?

This post recounts the events and the votes.

It also includes a link to a startling story by Ray Bradbury, titled August 4, 2026. Bradbury wrote it 70 years ago. It is a story about AI before AI existed.

Categories Elections, Literature, Missouri, Technology

The Ballad of Stephen Miller

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2026 //
11

Here is a country song about Trump’s most avid associate, Stephen Miller. Miller is the chief architect of Trump’s immigrant deportation policies. He has pushed Homeland Security to reach a goal of one million immigrants deported each year.

Those who are arrested and detained are not “the worst of the worst.” They are not “rapistd and killers.” Though it may be that some of those arrested are criminals, many are hard-working people who are raising their children and contributing to their communities.

Why doesn’t ICE focus on the undocumented immigrants who are in prison and leave law-abiding people alone. Congress should create a path for those who entered the country illegally to work towards citizenship.

Deport the worst of the worst. Deport murderers and rapists. Encourage and help good people to participate in our society and to become loyal citizens.

Categories Cruelty, Humor, Immigration

Jan Resseger: The Trump Administration’s War on Children

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2026 //
1

Jan Resseger keeps a steady focus o what matters most in a decent society: the well-being of children. Trump and his minions don’t care. Not about children. Not about the rule of law. Not about democracy. Trump cares about greed and self-enrichment. He seems to care about his children. He cuts them in on the grift. His youngest son Barron is said to be worth $150 million. But he doesn’t care about yours.

The fact that he just issued guidance on childhood vaccinations, which reduces mandated vaccines and puts America’s most vulnerable at risk of serious illness and death, tells you all you need to know about this scientifically ignorant man.

Jan writes:

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s important new book, Regime Change, explores how the second Trump administration functions—the cast of characters, their relationships, and their operational style. A reader is also exposed, however, to the President’s and the administration’s big policy concerns—imposing tariffs, ridding the country of immigrants, ending nuclear weapons in Iran, proclaiming that everything is more affordable, and ending the public’s fixation on Jeffrey Epstein. These issues have also been widely covered broadly in the news.

Here are topics that do not appear at all in Regime Change‘s index: children, public education, CHIP, SNAP, Head Start, or Child Care.  There is not even a mention of Trump’s tuition tax credit private school vouchers launched in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The issue of birthright citizenship is mentioned in the index only as a subhead under immigration, and in the book itself birthright citizenship is covered only in one sentence describing its proposed elimination by an early Trump executive order. In the index, there is only one page citation to the U.S. Department of Education itself, but the reference is to brief coverage of the administration’s attempt to eradicate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” at Harvard University.

The lack of regular news coverage—particularly in the local newspapers—about Trump’s damaging public education policy and the administration’s failure to protect children’s well-being and children’s rights does not, however, mean that these issues have been untouched by Trump administration policy. For those of us who do not need CHIP or SNAP, who can afford quality child care and preschool, whose children attend well-funded public schools, whose families have been citizens for generations, however, there is minimal exposure to the Trump administration’s threats to the institutions on which vulnerable families and children depend.

Just this past week the Trump administration took two steps that, if they do come to pass, will seriously impact some of our society’s most vulnerable children—poor children benefiting today from Head Start, and the children of immigrants from whom the President is once again trying to steal the protection of birthright citizenship. First Focus on Children’s President Bruce Lesley has identified what he calls the Trump administration’s “organized abandonment” of the needs and rights of our society’s most vulnerable children.

The Trump administration attempted to destroy Head Start.     At the end of last week, the Trump administration formally proposed new federal administrative guidance to deregulate the quality of Head Start programs that currently serve 700,000 children across the United States.  The destruction of Head Start had been predicted early last week but on Thursday in a notice in the Federal Register, the administration formally proposed radically diminishing 133 pages of rules that have shaped Head Start since it was established in 1965 as a centerpiece of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.  The Center on Law and Social Policy explains that the proposed new rules are being disguised by the administration with language describing “an effort to ‘streamline,’ ‘enhance,’ and ‘modernize’” the program.  Politico‘s Mackenzie Wilkes reports: “The Heritage Foundation has long called for the elimination of Head Start, but the conservative group published a report last month saying the program should be deregulated in many of the ways the proposed rule suggests while ‘officials work to end the program.’ ”

The Associated Press‘s Moria Balingit outlines the changes the new rules would prescribe: “Head Start… is currently governed by more than 100 pages of regulations… (which) require centers to have low staff-to-student ratios and a research-backed curriculum, among other things, and they ensure centers are providing wraparound services that are critical to children in poverty, including medical and dental screenings and parent coaching. The proposal would toss out nearly all of that rule book. Education Week”s Elizabeth Heubeck adds: “The new proposal would require (that) all classroom instruction be conducted in English, except for immersion programs operated on Native American tribal lands. An estimated 30-35% of children enrolled in the Head Start program are dual language learners.”  The program would also exclude many non-citizen children and children in some immigrant families.

While Congress establishes federal departments and the specific offices within the departments, the legislative branch has no power over the executive branch’s right to establish formal administrative rules and guidance.  It is possible that the rules announced in last week’s Federal Register can be challenged in court, and it is also possible, of course, that public outrage might cause the Trump administration to modify the new rules during the 60 day period when the public is invited to submit public comments before the rule becomes final. A future President, of course, could replace the Trump administration’s new rules.

President Trump signed two new executive orders to undermine birthright citizenship.     Last Thursday, The Washington Post‘s Isaac Arnsdorf, Justin Jouvenal, and David Nakamura reported: “President Donald Trump took another stab at restricting automatic citizenship for people born in the United States after the Supreme Court rejected his earlier attempt. In two executive orders signed Thursday, Trump reached for different legal maneuvers to test the limits of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. The first order said children would be ineligible if born to ‘alien enemies,’ members of foreign terrorist organizations, or foreign lobbyists. The second order said children of people who fraudulently request tourist visas for the purpose of giving birth in the U.S. would not become citizens… The new orders marked a fresh effort to… deliver on a campaign promise by expanding the categories of people who the administration argues fall outside the constitutional guarantee.”

The reporters quote legal experts who doubt that the first executive order could survive a legal challenge: “An estimated 15 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S., while only a few thousand people are foreign lobbyists registered with the Justice Department. No significant populations of U.S. residents are designated as alien enemies or foreign terrorists, making that provision largely symbolic.”

The reporters attribute the second executive order to White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, who has made stopping “birth tourism” a priority. They provide data to demonstrate that what is called “birth tourism” is relatively infrequent. “In 2024, fewer than 10,000 babies were born in the U.S. to people with foreign addresses, out of 3.6 million total live births.”

None of the legal experts the reporters quote believes that either of these executive orders would be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court or would challenge in any way what Chief Justice John Roberts declared in his June 30, 2026 decision in Trump v. Barbara: “Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.”

First Focus on Children’s Bruce Lesley believes that both of  last week’s executive orders are seriously misguided: “The legal question isn’t simply what the government thinks about immigration. It’s whether an innocent child can lose fundamental rights grounded in the Constitution because of something government officials allege about a parent’s conduct and intent… The latest effort to gut a fundamental constitutional operating principle since our nation’s founding has been written clearly in the Constitution since 1868, is being sold to the public with pathetic history and legal arguments the Supreme Court itself rejected 128 years ago and early this year. Every administration has the authority to enforce immigration laws. However, none has the authority to rewrite the Constitution… by redefining which babies they deem are precious and which are pushed into the shadows of our society.”

Although there has obviously been some news coverage of the week’s public policy initiatives impacting our society’s children, the well-being of our children is neither the top policy concern for officials in the Trump administration nor the top story for the reporters who track the administration’s agenda. Because the needs of children are definitely not the primary lens through which the Trump administration views and conceptualizes our society’s important needs, it is especially important to watch for news about children’s welfare, their rights, and the enormous institution of public schools that serves the mass of our children

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Industry, Environment, Ethics, Evil, For-Profit, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Health, Science, Trump

Indiana: Republicans Have Systematically Undermined Public Schools, Where 87% of Students Are Enrolled

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2026 //
2

Indiana once took pride in its public schools. Not any more. Since the Republican Party took charge of state government, public schools have been neglected and underfunded.

Veteran educator Vernon Smith was elected to the state legislature after his retirement. He wrote this article, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

He wrote:

Sixteen years ago, Republicans assumed full control of Indiana’s state government, holding the governor’s office and winning majorities in the House and the Senate. Since achieving this trifecta, the Republican supermajority has systematically cut funding and programs that made this state work for the people who live here.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than the state’s complete neglect of public schools for nearly two decades. Since taking power, the Republican supermajority has done everything in its power to undermine public education, and Indiana’s children are worse off for it.

Let me explain where years of Republican education policy have gotten us. Last month, the Network for Public Education released a report revealing Indiana ranks 45th out of 50 states in support of public education. Last year, only 31.2% of students showed proficiency on both the math and ELA sections of the ILEARN test. More than half of fourth graders can’t read proficiently, and nearly seven-in-ten eighth graders aren’t proficient in math.

A record number of school districts across the state — nearly 40 — have turned to ballot referenda to secure the money they need this year because the state won’t properly fund them and has cut their local funding sources. These are the results of Republicans chipping away at Indiana’s public school funding for years.

Consider where their priorities lie. More than 87% of Hoosier children attend traditional public schools. Yet year after year, the supermajority pours its energy and political capital into expanding charter schools and private school vouchers for the children of families who were, in most cases, never going to need the state’s help in the first place. The legislature has made it clear: they have no issue abandoning working-class Hoosiers in favor of giving an extra leg up to the most fortunate among us.

When Indiana first opened the door to charter schools and voucher programs, lawmakers sold it as a lifeline for children of color and children in poverty whose assigned schools were failing them. But once the door was propped open, my Republican colleagues expanded it year after year, extending vouchers to families making well over six figures. If this were truly about rescuing kids who’d been failed by the system, it would have stayed targeted at the kids who needed rescuing. Instead, it grew into a subsidy for everyone but the working-class families the program was designed to serve.

None of this is by accident. The supermajority was warned by Democrats, education professionals and concerned Hoosiers of the consequences that their policies would inflict on our schools. It is the direct, foreseeable and self-inflicted result of almost two decades of choices made by men and women who have mistaken their own supermajority for a mandate to neglect the children they were elected to serve.

Districts across the state are being forced to ask voters to approve referenda to raise their own local property taxes just so schools can keep the lights on and pay their teachers. Let’s not pretend this educational belt-tightening is born of necessity. Indiana has nearly $4 billion in surplus and reserve funds, which is more than enough to return to our previous, robust support of public education. Our schools and the children attending them are being asked to make do with less while the state sits on more money than it knows what to do with.

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I do not say this lightly, and I do not say it out of partisan loyalty. I say it as a man who spent nearly 20 years as a school principal and six years as a teacher before I ever spent a day in the Statehouse. I have seen firsthand what happens when a school has what it needs, and I have seen what happens when it doesn’t.

I am telling you, plainly: Indiana’s Republican supermajority has had 16 years to prove it knows the difference too. It does not. If it did, we would not rank 45th in the nation for public school support. We would not be watching our children fall further behind their peers in other states while the people entrusted with fixing it offer nothing but superficial, special-interest-backed policies that don’t address the underlying issues.

This is where years of unchecked Republican domination have gotten us: two decades of failure and of backs turned on the generation that makes up the future of this state, this nation and the world beyond.

For 16 years, they have stood before us and promised that this would finally be the year public education in Indiana gets fixed. And for 16 years, they have failed to deliver on that promise. The only question left is how much longer Hoosiers are willing to take their word for it and allow more children to fail academically

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Indiana, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers

Join NPE in Houston–September 26-27 for an Exciting Exchange of Ideas

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2026 //
0

I will be in Conroe, Texas, just outside Houston, for the convening of the Network for Public Education from September 25-26.

Please join us.

The Network for Public Education (NPE) and NPE Action National Conference will take place from September 26 to September 27, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency Conroe in the Greater Houston area (Conroe, Texas). The theme for this year’s event is “Public Schools Build Democracy”. 

Event Details

  • Dates: Saturday, September 26 (8:00 AM) – Sunday, September 27, 2026 (3:00 PM)
  • Location: Hyatt Regency Conroe, 1001 Grand Central Pkwy, Conroe, TX 77304
  • Registration Cost: $199 per ticket (includes meals)

Featured Keynotes & Highlights

  • Keynote Speakers: Author/journalist Katherine Stewart, Dean Emerita/Professor Leslie Fenwick, and Texas AFT President Zeph Capo.
  • Core Panels: Discussions covering student-led public school advocacy movements, fighting back against school closures, and union/alternative educator preparation partnerships. 

For the agenda and registration, open this link:

https://networkforpubliceducation.org/2026-national-conference/

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund
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