Archives for the month of: February, 2025
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Paul Cobaugh: Trump and Vance Are Traitors

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
18

Paul Cobaugh spent his career in the military, where he worked in intelligence. In his blog “Truth against Threats,” he expressed his horror and shame about what Trump and Vance did today to betray our country. For another view, consider Senator Lindsey Graham’s craven response; he called on Zelensky to resign, in a tweet. Loyalty above country; loyalty above democracy.

He wrote:

I’m still catching my breath after a long road trip, but wanted to share my most succinct thoughts about the White House, Trump fiasco today, with President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine. 

This is somber and I would ask, that you please consider the heartfelt nature of the following words. No cartoons, no graphics. This is simply, a plea, from the innermost part of my heart. 

My friends and family,

My heart could hardly be heavier, from a professional perspective. What I am about to say, has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s political party affiliation. It is simply a matter of being an American, loyal to my nation, its founding principles and our esteemed history, as a bastion of democracy and morality. Yes, it is true that we have erred, often in our history, but always as MLK said, and I paraphrase, “moved the arc of history, towards justice.” 

The fiasco today in the White House, represented a treasonous sellout of American values and our own national security. Please, hear what I am saying. The vicious and utterly dishonest attack on President Zelenskiy, by President Trump and VP Vance, with support from others, was the single most disgraceful act I have witnessed in my lifetime. That says something since I have lived through President Nixon’s resignation and President Clinton’s impeachment. 

President Zelenskiy of Ukraine has been doggedly leading his nation in their desperate defense, against a genocidal Putin for the last three years. Ukraine’s fight has always been our fight. They have been ours and NATO’s first line of defense against the world’s most dangerous adversary, Vladimir Putin. Putin, interfered in our 2016, 2020 and 2024 election, in cooperation with the Trump campaign. The evidence, in and outside of classified channels, is overwhelming. 

Putin’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine has been an exercise, in cultural and actual genocide, against the Ukrainian people. Stalin via the Holodomor or starvation of Ukrainians in the 1930s, was the first attempt at erasing Ukrainian culture from history. Putin, in his pathetic attempt to regain the territory of the former Soviet state, is doing the same. Putin is under sanctions by the International Criminal Court for genocide. The Ukrainian people, have suffered what no American could possibly understand and yet, they fight for not only their freedom, but their very lives and culture. 

Our current president and his entire administration supports Putin. There is no argument to support the opposite and I would respectfully challenge anyone, to argue these points. 

My friends and family, the massacre of men, women and children, along with the attempt to erase the very culture of Ukraine, is everything that our nation has long fought against, honorably. It is as simple as, this is what it means to be an American citizen. Democracy is our creed and the lifeblood of our nation. We cannot allow our nation to be submissive to the hopes and desires of genocidal despots, like Vladimir Putin. Still, POTUS Trump, has long admired and has attempted to emulate him. I cannot in any sense, stay quiet, without selling out my own morality. 

Americans defend freedom. That is who we are. We do not praise, endorse or support tyranny. Maybe President Trump does and his entire cabinet and party, but those of us who have demonstrated our values on the battlefield, can never allow ourselves to condone and assist such tyranny. The events today in the White House, did in fact endorse genocide, tyranny and every value abhorrent, to our nation’s values and history. 

President Trump, his sycophantic party and his entire cabinet, should feel absolutely nothing but shame this evening. Any moral American, would resign immediately. No one in this administration will do so. 

Many will argue that what occurred was fine with them, from a party perspective. My friends, our values transcend political parties. Americans do not do, what our president and VP did today, with the full support of the cabinet and party. 

I never endorse a party as that I do not believe in them. I will though, strongly and with every fiber of my moral spine, condemn this administration as un-American and a threat to US and global security. I ask all true patriots, to make your feelings clear to your elected congressmen and senators, that you will not stand for treason. 

I have employed the most reasonable language that I am capable of, to bring you this message. I emplore everyone, to revisit our constitution and demand that your representatives and senators, do so as well. I and others in my profession that have worked at the highest levels, predicted today, as far back as 2015. No one would listen then and in the interim. Please, consider my words now, before there is nothing left of what it means to be an American. 

My kindest regards to everyone,

Paul

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, International, Trump, Vance, J.D.

PBS: Brooks and Capehart on the White House Debacle

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
7

David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart converse every Friday night on the PBS Newshour about the big story of the week. In these exchanges, Brooks is the conservative, Capehart is the liberal. Tonight’s story, of course, was the Trump-Vance attack on Zelensky and the apparent preference of these two American leaders for Putin over our allies.

Here is part of tonight’s transcript:

  • Amna Nawaz:From visits with heads of states to further restrictions on the press corps, we now turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That is New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.Great to see you both.
  • Jonathan Capehart:Hey, Amna.
  • Amna Nawaz:So you were both watching, of course, everything at the White House today in the meeting between Presidents Trump and Zelenskyy. We have talked about it a lot today, but I do want to play for you a little bit of the interview we know President Zelenskyy gave soon after that meeting.He sat down with FOX News and Bret Baier, and Baier asked him if Zelenskyy thought that the public spat there served Ukraine in any way. Here’s what Zelenskyy said.
  • Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukrainian President:I mean, this is not good for both sides anyway. And I will — I will — very open, but I can’t change our Ukrainian attitude to Russian. And I don’t want — they are killers, for us.This is very, very clear that Americans are the best of our friends. Europeans are the best of our friends. And Putin, with Russian, they are enemies. And it doesn’t mean that we don’t want peace. We just want to recognize the reality.
  • Amna Nawaz:Jonathan, what did you think when you were watching this unfold in the White House and what do you make of the way Zelenskyy is talking about it now?
  • Jonathan Capehart:I thought the low point for America on the world stage was the Trump-Putin press conference in Helsinki in 2017, when the president of the United States sided with the president of Russia against his own national intelligence apparatus.What we saw in the Oval Office was a travesty, horrendous, despicable. I — there aren’t any words to describe what we watched, where we saw a vice president who’s never been to Ukraine lecture a wartime president who was clearly summoned to the White House to humiliate him on the world stage either on behalf of or for the benefit of Vladimir Putin in Russia.And, look, I give President Zelenskyy major points for standing up for himself, for standing up for his nation and standing up for his people. He is in there fighting for America’s backing, which, I’m sorry, it should not even be in doubt, given the stakes that are involved and who he is trying to protect his people from.
  • Amna Nawaz:David, from that Helsinki meeting in 2018 to this meeting today, what do you make of it?
  • David Brooks:I will stick with today.(Laughter)
  • David Brooks:I have enough to say about today.I was nauseated, just nauseated. All my life, I have had a certain idea of about America, that we’re a flawed country, but we’re fundamentally a force for good in the world, that we defeated Soviet Union, we defeated fascism, we did the Marshall Plan, we did PEPFAR to help people live in Africa. And we make mistakes, Iraq, Vietnam, but they’re usually mistakes out of stupidity, naivete and arrogance.They’re not because we’re ill-intentioned. What I have seen over the last six weeks is the United States behaving vilely, vilely to our friends in Canada and Mexico, vilely to our friends in Europe. And today was the bottom of the barrel, vilely to a man who is defending Western values, at great personal risk to him and his countrymen.Donald Trump believes in one thing. He believes that might makes right. And, in that, he agrees with Vladimir Putin that they are birds of a feather. And he and Vladimir Putin together are trying to create a world that’s safe for gangsters, where ruthless people can thrive. And we saw the product of that effort today in the Oval Office.And I have — I first started thinking, is it — am I feeling grief? Am I feeling shock, like I’m in a hallucination? But I just think shame, moral shame. It’s a moral injury to see the country you love behave in this way.
  • Amna Nawaz:You heard Congressman Lawler, who would not criticize the president necessarily, but is a Ukraine supporter, say, we’re further away from a deal, they have to get back to a deal, the war has to end.You also heard Nick Schifrin report earlier, his European sources are saying there’s a fundamental transatlantic break now. Is this the realignment, Jonathan? Has this happened? The U.S. is now closer to Russia than to its European allies?
  • Jonathan Capehart:Undisputed. Yes. Yes.And the fact that the Europeans are already looking at it as a break, I think they have to do that. They can’t depend on the United States now. After what happened to President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, what happens to the Baltic states, what happens to Estonia if Russia rolls over the border? What happens to Poland if Russia rolls over the border?What happens if any of the NATO countries are attacked by Russia after what we just saw? They cannot depend on the United States anymore, after more than seven decades. I’m sure the Europeans are probably even more in shock than we are at this table.And I’m glad you used the word gangster, because that was the thing. When the — when President Trump got into it with President Zelenskyy, you don’t have any cards. Without us, you have no deal.It — that was gangster rule there. And between him and the vice president, it also felt like watching a wrestling match, where Vance jumps in the ring and then taps in the president, and then they gang up on a man who is literally fighting for the survival of his country.
Categories Extremism, Fascism, International, Trump, Vance, J.D.

Trump Rages Against Zelensky in White House Meeting, Ends Talks with No Deal, Blames Zelensky

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
54

Today, Trump met at the White House with President Zelensky of Ukraine to try to hammer out a ceasefire and peace deal. Trump has demanded 50% of all of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to pay for America’s past support. The agreement was prepared for signing, but the meeting collapsed because Trump said Zelensky was “disrespectful.”

This request for “payment” is a curious demand. After World War 2, the U.S. did not ask our European allies to pay us for helping them. Instead, we created the Marshall Plan and sent them billions of dollars to rebuild their societies. They recovered and became our staunchest allies, until Trump, who seems determined to ally us with Russia and break with Europe.

The White House meeting went badly. Both Trump and Vance berated Zelensky. Trump became outraged at Zelensky for his lack of gratitude. Trump repeated the lie that Ukraine started the war.

Before any deal was reached, Trump denounced Zelensky and said Zelensky wasn’t ready to make a deal. Zelensky left the White House. Apparently, he wasn’t willing to accept Trump’s insistence that Ukraine started the war or that Ukraine should give Putin whatever he wanted, while signing away half of Ukraine’s natural resources without any future security guarantees against another Russian invasion.

Maggie Haberman of The New York Times posted:

This is the angriest I’ve seen Trump publicly in a long time. Trump is angry that he isn’t getting thanked and is being challenged.

Trump is bellowing as loudly as he ever does in public.

“You’ve allowed yourself to be in a very bad position,” Trump says, again suggesting Russia’s invasion is Ukraine’s fault. Vance demands to know whether Zelensky has said “thank you” once, noting that Zelensky campaigned in Pennsylvania for Kamala Harris.

Zelensky was hoping for a moment with Trump that could be seen as some form of support from the United States. Instead, it became a two-on-one fight because Zelensky didn’t agree with Trump’s view.

Peter Baker of the New York Times posted:

Never has an American president lectured the leader of an ally in public like this, much less the leader of a country that is fighting off invaders.

I have covered the White House since 1996. There has never been an Oval Office meeting in front of cameras like this in all that time.

With raised voices, President Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Friday in a remarkably fractious White House meeting, accusing Zelensky of not being grateful enough for U.S. support and trying to strong-arm him into making a peace deal with Russia

Vance told Zelensky that it was “disrespectful” for him to come to the Oval Office and make his case in front of the news media, while Trump told the Ukrainian leader, “You’re not really in a good position right now.”

At one point, Trump said, “You either make a deal or we are out.”

The New York Times story about the public meeting was written by Peter Baker and summarized some of their notes:

President Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine on Friday in a remarkably fractious White House meeting, accusing the leader of the besieged country of not being grateful enough for U.S. support and strong-arming him into making a peace deal with Russia.

With voices raised, Mr. Vance told Mr. Zelensky that it was “disrespectful” for him to come to the Oval Office and make his case in front of the news media, while Mr. Trump told the Ukrainian leader, “You’re not really in a good position right now.” Mr. Trump added, “You’re gambling with World War III.” At one point, Mr. Trump said, “You either make a deal or we are out.”

The exchange in front of television cameras was one of the most dramatic moments ever to play out in public in the Oval Office and underscored the radical break between the United States and Ukraine since Mr. Trump took office. Mr. Trump has effectively sided with Russia while falsely blaming Ukraine for starting the war and not giving in to his demands for how to end it.

Despite Mr. Trump’s claim last week, it was Russia that first attacked Ukraine in 2014 and then mounted a full-scale invasion in 2022. Although Ukrainian elections have been suspended for the past three years under martial law, Mr. Zelensky became president on the back of a landslide election victory in 2019. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, by contrast, is an actual dictator whose elections have been widely dismissed as frauds and who faces an international arrest warrant for war crimes.

Mr. Trump had seemed to be trying to put his rift with Mr. Zelensky to the side on Thursday before their meeting at the White House, brushing off a question about whether he still considers the Ukrainian leader a dictator.

“Did I say that?” Mr. Trump asked. “I can’t believe I said that. Next question.”

At a later news conference with Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, Mr. Trump did not respond to a question about whether he owed Mr. Zelensky an apology for calling him a dictator. “We’re going to have a very good meeting,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for him.”

His sharp language last week about Mr. Zelensky contrasted with his assessment of Mr. Putin, whom he has only praised since winning a second term. Just this week, the president called Mr. Putin “a very smart guy” and “a very cunning person.” He said that he believes that Mr. Putin really wants peace and added on Thursday that “he’ll keep his word” if a deal is reached, despite multiple Russian violations of agreements in the past.

While he has spoken with Mr. Putin by telephone, Mr. Trump has given little sense of how he expects to negotiate either a cease-fire or an enduring peace agreement. During last year’s campaign, he promised to end the war within 24 hours and to do so even before his inauguration, neither of which he actually did.

During Thursday’s news conference with Mr. Starmer, Mr. Trump expressed a mix of optimism and fatalism about his chances of making peace. “I think it’s going to happen, hopefully quickly,” he said. “If it doesn’t happen quickly, it may not happen at all.”

Mr. Starmer and other European leaders have offered to contribute troops to a multinational peacekeeping force on the ground in Ukraine after the fighting halts. But Mr. Trump resisted pressure to commit U.S. forces to help, even without ground troops, or to offer security guarantees to Ukraine against renewed Russian aggression.

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has demanded that Ukraine turn over some of its natural resources as payback for military aid provided under President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to defend itself against Russia. While Mr. Trump has falsely claimed that the United States has contributed $350 billion and Europe only $100 billion, in fact, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, Europe has allocated $138 billion compared with $119 billion from the United States.

Under a draft of the rare minerals agreement reviewed by The New York Times, Ukraine would contribute half of its revenues from the future monetization of natural resources, including critical minerals, oil and gas. Mr. Trump characterized the deal on Thursday as an economic development boon. “It’ll be good for both countries,” he said.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, International, Trump

A New Partner in the Fight to Save Public Schools!

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
8

The Network for Public Education works with scores of state and local grassroots groups that want to protect and strengthen public schools. Almost 90% of out nation’s children attend public schools. We are fighting libertarian billionaires and religious zealots who want to dumb down and indoctrinate our children. Above all, they want to cut their taxes by undereducating our children.

We just added a new partner!

The Network for Public Education congratulates Our Schools Our Democracy (OSOD), a new partner in our work to protect, defend, and improve public schools. Its comprehensive research exposes the harm charter schools do to Texas Public Schools and serves as a blueprint for reforming charter school laws not only in Texas but in every state.

OSOD will focus on fighting school privatization in Texas, with a special emphasis on the impact of charter schools. According to their website, “Texas public schools, governed by locally elected school board members, are the cornerstone of our democracy and the heart of our neighborhoods. However, since state lawmakers first authorized open-enrollment charter schools 30 years ago, unchecked charter expansion has harmed public school districts in every corner of the state.”

Along with the organizational launch is the launch of a comprehensive report: Facing Facts: Charter Schools in Texas. The report presents startling facts on the financial drain of charter schools on public schools, the lack of charter transparency, and the irresponsible practices presently enabled by Texas law. It provides readers with the arguments they need to actively advocate for charter reform.

Please visit their exciting new website here. 

Categories Billionaires, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Resistance, Texas

ProPublica: Mike Johnson Shares Home with a Far-Right Pastor Who Has a Political Agenda

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
7

ProPublica reported that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson lives in the home of a far-right evangelical who lobbies for his extremist views.

How is this different from being roommates with a lobbyist for Big Pharma or the Tobacco Industry?

It’s not, but it may be more dangerous because this pastor is one of those wing nuts who knows nothing about the Founding Fsthers or the Constitutuion.

ProPublica reports:

In 2021, Steve Berger, an evangelical pastor who has attacked the separation of church and state as “a delusional lie” and called multinational institutions “demonic,” set off on an ambitious project. His stated goal: minister to members of Congress so that what “they learn is then translated into policy.” His base of operations would be a six-bedroom, $3.7 million townhouse blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

Recently, the pastor scored a remarkable coup for a political influence project that has until now managed to avoid public scrutiny. He got a new roommate.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has been staying at the home since around the beginning of this year, according to interviews and videos obtained by ProPublica.

The house is owned by a major Republican donor and Tennessee car magnate who has joined Berger in advocating for and against multiple bills before Congress.

Over the past four years, Berger and his wife, Sarah Berger, have dedicated themselves to what they call their D.C. “ministry center.” In addition to Johnson, who is an evangelical conservative, the pastor has built close relationships with several other influential conservative politicians. Dan Bishop, now nominated for a powerful post in the Trump White House, seems to have also lived in the home last year while he was still a congressman, according to three people.

A spokesperson for Johnson said that the speaker “pays fair market value in monthly rent for the portion of the Washington, D.C. townhome that he occupies.” He did not answer a question about how much Johnson is paying. House ethics rules allow members of Congress to live anywhere, as long as they are paying fair-market rent.

The spokesperson added that Johnson “has never once spoken to Mr. Berger about any piece of legislation or any matter of public policy.” Berger and Bishop did not respond to requests for comment.

If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.

Please read the rest of the article.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Read, History, Religion, Separation of church and state

Musk Takes a Chainsaw to the Federal Workforce and Creates Chaos

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
9

This article in Government Executive describes Elon Musk’s savage attack on the federal workforce as the “triple cleaver” approach. It is actually the chainsaw approach, the very implement Elon waved around on stage at the Conservative Political Action Committee’s annual meeting. As he fires people without regard to their contributions, their experience, their worth, he celebrates and jumps around like a monkey on stage. Does he care about the lives he’s wrecking? Does he worry about the damage to the agencies he is decimating? Of course not! He’s our king!

Government Executive writes:

This president summarily fired tens of thousands of federal employees. This one cut more than 400,000 federal jobs, implementing a hiring freeze and dangling buyout offers to a vast swath of employees. This one opened thousands of government jobs to competition from the private sector. This one went so far as to issue an executive order requiring that all applicants for government jobs pass a loyalty test. 

Now, in just a few weeks on the job, President Trump—via Elon Musk and his team of federal raiders—has found a way to outdo all of them. (Them being, in order: Reagan, Clinton, George W. Bush and Truman.) 

Musk and his squad at the United States Department of Government Efficiency Service—a name that even the most talented satirist couldn’t make up—have found a way to do what was once thought impossible, or illegal, or at least irrational: unload federal employees en masse. They have done so with a triple-meat-cleaver approach: a near-total hiring freeze, a buyout (sorry, “deferred resignation”) offer that may or may not be legal or affordable, and mass firings of workers without regard to their individual job performance or the importance of the work they do.

Most recent presidents have taken office having made promises to cut the fat out of the bureaucracy. But none have begun to do so in the absence of a rational plan, or even any consideration of the implications of what they were doing. That is, until now. 

Musk has gone so far as to declare the federal workforce “unconstitutional,” so it’s no surprise that he and his team are taking a “fire first and ask questions later” approach to workforce reductions. 

Their effort is radically different from the one taken by the previous Republican president: Trump himself. Back in 2017, federal management wonks were actually excited by a Trump initiative requiring agencies to develop restructuring plans aimed at reducing redundancy and improving efficiency in federal operations. Now that Trump has outsourced government reform to Musk and company, the emphasis is on simply slashing jobs, regardless of the consequences. The result is chaos.

Agencies have had to scramble to try to rehire employees in critical roles who were summarily fired. Other employees were let go after they accepted the deferred resignation offer, and are now left wondering if the promise of full pay through September still stands. 

Very few of the jobs Musk and Trump are eliminating are filled by poor performers, or disloyal deep-staters, or involve operations that have been identified as unnecessary. And the monetary savings involved are trivial. After all, you could eliminate the entire federal workforce, and the reduction in spending would barely register in the federal budget. 

As a percentage of American jobs, the federal workforce has been moving in one direction for decades—downward. It now stands at less than 2%. At the same time, we’ve asked federal agencies to take on more responsibilities—from airport security to combating deadly new diseases. And many of government’s already existing challenges have become more complex over time. Disaster response is just one example. 

Mindlessly hacking away at the federal workforce is reckless, cruel and wasteful. Undoing the damage already done will take years. And Musk is just getting started.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Musk, Elon, Trump

Climate Change is on the Chopping Block

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
6

At the blog called “Wonkette,” a writer called “Doctor Zoom” described the Trump administration’s determination to ignore climate science. Apparently, the “golden age” of our nation was the 1950s, before most people had given any thought to the environment and to the human role in fouling the air and the waters. Ignorance is bliss when you are ignorant.

Leading the charge to deny climate change and science is Lee Zeldin, the Trump-appointed administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Zeldin was a member of Congress who represented the East End of Long Island, an environmentally fragile area that is constantly threatened by climate change–beach erosion as water levels rise, the die-off of lobsters and scallops due to pollution and the warming of the seas. He should know better, but loyalty to Trump matters more to him than the damage suffered daily by his former district.

Doktor Zoom writes:

The Trump administration appears to be ready to take another wrecking ball to climate science, according to a report in the Washington Post Wednesday (Internet Archive link). EPA administrator Lee Zeldin, acting on yet another of Trump’s first-day executive orders, “has privately urged the White House to strike down a scientific finding underpinning much of the federal government’s push to combat climate change, according to three people briefed on the matter,” who were all not named because they aren’t authorized to say what’s going on in the Fascism Factory. 

Zeldin wants Trump to do away with the agency’s 2009 “endangerment finding” that greenhouse gases are a threat to public health, an official statement of widely held scientific consensus that underpins the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide, methane, and other planet warming gases under the Clean Air Act. It’s kind of a big deal, and wiping it away is just one more step in the administration’s agenda of replacing science with far-Right ideology that removes legal constraints on fossil fuel use. 

The original 2009 finding was based on over 100 peer reviewed scientific papers on climate change, involved the work of hundreds of scientists, and included over 500 pages of public comment. It came in response to a 2007 Supreme Court ruling that determined that CO2 and other greenhouse gases are “air pollutants” under the Clean Air Act; that ruling directed GW Bush’s EPA to stop fucking around and make a formal determination as to whether greenhouse gases endanger human health or welfare. Bush’s EPA finished its assessment in 2007, determining that yes indeedy, greenhouse gases are not healthy for children or other living things. 

Notoriously, however, Bush’s Office of Management and Budget refused to open the email with the EPA finding, leaving it to whoever won the 2008 presidential election. We shit you not! 

Barack Obama’s administration did its own version of the “endangerment finding,” which went through all the proper rule-making processes, and that’s the one that Zeldin’s EPA wants to undo. Eventually, the 28-page Bush EPA finding was also released in response to a public records request; at the time, an Obama EPA spokesperson said the earlier document “demonstrates that in 2007 the science was as clear as it is today.”

But three months ago, thanks to a narrow plurality of votes, science suddenly became totally different, because Trump and his crowd say it is. Isn’t science amazing?

As the Post explains, Trump’s executive order told the EPA to review the 

“legality and continuing applicability of” the endangerment finding. The order gave Zeldin 30 days to submit recommendations to Russell Vought, the head of the White House budget office.

And you can just bet that Trump knew exactly what he was ordering! No way some oil lobbyists wrote that EO for him. 

This time out, it appears that the EPA has completed its review and found that greenhouse gases are in fact no big deal, but we won’t see the finding until the administration is good and ready. EPA spokesperson Molly Vaseliou didn’t offer any comment to the Post either, simply saying in an email that “EPA is in compliance with this aspect of the President’s Executive Order.”

We bet once it’s released, it’ll be backed up by some very compelling science, like calling climate change a Marxist plot to destroy American prosperity. Those three anonymous insiders say that the effort to undo the endangerment finding has been getting advice from “Mandy Gunasekara, who served as EPA chief of staff at the end of Trump’s first term and wrote the EPA chapter in the conservative blueprint Project 2025,” and that’s probably all the science necessary. Gunasekara is so good at science that she’s not only a climate and energy expert, she also moonlights as an expert for Republican congressional hearings on how woke corporations are turning children transgender, so how’s that for a broad range of expertise? Yes, we know: You were told there’d be no polymaths.

Haha, we are kidding! In fact, Ms. Gunasekara probably knows less about climate science — or any science — than the average blogger, because she is not a scientist at all, but a paid liar about science. She has an undergrad degree in communication and media studies, and a law degree from U of Mississippi, and that’s enough to have gotten her quite a few jobs lobbying against science and praising the poor victimized oil industry. 

One of her early jobs was as an aide to the late Sen. James Inhofe (R-Oklahoma); Gunasekara was the lucky staffer who got to hand him the very snowball that he tossed on the Senate floorin 2015 to prove there’s no such thing as global warming. 

That was a decade ago, and despite that demonstration, the planet has just kept getting hotter. That’s the thing about science: It’s true even if you don’t believe it. It’s true even if it leads to conclusions that might hurt oil industry profits. It will keep being true even when (we could say “if,” but come on) the EPA proclaims that greenhouse gases do not endanger humans and that Donald Trump is wearing a fine new suit of clothes that only smart people can see. 

Needless to say, climate advocates aren’t planning to let Mad King Donald redefine greenhouse gases as Our Industrious Friends, even if his uncle was a professor at MIT and he has a “natural instinct for science.” David Doniger, an attorney and senior strategist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told the Washington Post that if Trump’s EPA “proceeds down this path and jettisons the obvious finding that climate change is a threat to our health and welfare,” well then, “We will see them in court.”

And even if the Supreme Court somehow decides science isn’t real and that a president has the power to nullify it, setting back the fight against climate change for as long as he holds power and making America a pariah nation, we can still point to the evidence — the rest of the world will keep it — and say, “And yet it warms.”

Categories Environment, Extremism, Science

Jeff Bryant: Linda McMahon’s Gaslighting of Democratic Senators Was “Elegant”

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2025 //
19

Jeff Bryant, veteran education journalist, covered Linda McMahon’s Senate confirmation hearings for The Progressive. She is, of course, Trump’s choice for Secretary of Education. Everyone was stumped by her ability to dodge every question. Bryant said she was “elegant” in her obfuscations.

McMahon accepted the leadership of a department that Trump wants to abolish. She doesn’t know much about the department, so she had the challenge of defending an impossible position. She will lead a department that she wants to kill off.

McMahon became a billionaire with her husband, as an entrepreneur in the wrestling entertainment business. She may not know much about the functions of the U.S. Department of Education, but she has very strong and extremist views about education. She is Chairman of the Board of the America First Policy Institute. Go to its website and you will see what I mean. AFPI is closely allied with the aims of groups like Moms for Liberty. McMahon’s group thinks that teachers are “indoctrinating” students with radical ideas about race, gender, and America.

As Bryant writes about her testimony, she seems to have no strong views at all. Don’t be fooled.

He writes:

U.S. Senator Andy Kim, Democrat of New Jersey, likely spoke for many viewers of Secretary of Education appointee Linda McMahon’s Senate confirmation hearinglast week when he said, while questioning McMahon, “I guess I’m frustrated . . . . This whole debate we’re having right now, it just feels like it’s untethered from just the reality on the ground.”

Kim’s frustration grew from his exchange with McMahon about President Donald Trump’s efforts to cut and dismantle the Department of Education, in particular, the department’s Office for Civil Rights, and how that squares with the department’s obligation to address what Kim described as “a surge in antisemitism” in schools and on college campuses. McMahon’s ensuing non-answer—she pledged only to examine “what the impact” of the cuts would be—was just one example of her tendency throughout the hearing to obfuscate or respond to questions with platitudes.

During the hearing, McMahon refused to give U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, a clear answer to his question about whether schools that have race- or gender-related afterschool clubs are in violation of Trump’sexecutive order to eliminate federal grants to organizations that support diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Murphy called her lack of clarity “chilling.”

When Delaware Democratic Senator Lisa Blunt Rochester asked McMahon if she believed that every school receiving federal dollars should follow federal civil rights laws, McMahon said, “Schools should be required to follow the laws,” but refused to provide a straight answer when Blunt Rochester then asked, “If private schools take federal dollars, can they turn away a child based on a disability or religion or race?”

McMahon stated her resolve “to make sure that our children do have equal access to excellent education,” but said that was a responsibility “best handled at the state level”—even though the failure of states to ensure equal access was a major reason for the Department of Education’s creation in 1980. 

While she affirmed that many of the education department’s programs were established by law—though she was unsure of how many—she suggested that legally established education department functions might be relocated to other federal departments. When asked what she would do if Trump ordered her to carry out a policy change that violated congressionally established law, McMahon said, “The President will not ask me to do anything that is against the law,” which hardly seems plausible…..

Please open the link to finish the article. It was Senator Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire who said that McMahon was engaged in “elegant gaslighting.”

Bryant defines gaslighting:

Gaslighting—a process by which a person is psychologically manipulated through a pattern of comments or actions intended to make them question their perceptions of reality or accurate memories—more or less describes what Republicans have done with education policy for the past forty or fifty years.

Categories Education Reform

Jeff Bezos Tells Opinion Writers What to Write

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2025 //
18

It’s dizzying to watch the changing views of Jeff Bezos since he bought the Washington Post. First, he pledged not to interfere in the editorial content of his prize bauble. Last fall, he yanked an editorial endorsing Kamala Harris. Now he has new instructions for editorialists and opinion writers: we support personal liberties and free markets.

Joshua Benton of The Nieman Lab has the story. Open the link to read more reactions.

Benton writes:

The thing about American newspaper opinion sections is this: Their owners get final say. If the man who signs the checks — it’s almost always a man — really really really wants to see his cocker spaniel run City Hall, you’ll probably see “Our Choice: Fluffernutter for Mayor” stripped atop the editorial page. For generations — from Murdoch to Loeb, Hearstto Pulitzer, Daniels to Greeley — this has been one of the overriding perks of media ownership. If Jeff Bezos wanted to turn The Washington Post’s opinion section over to an AI-powered version of Alexa, he’d be within his rights to. So his announcement this morning — that Post Opinions would henceforth reorient “in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets” — is, in a sense, merely restating the traditional droit du seigneur given over to capital.

But the scale of the hypocrisy on display here is eye-watering.

Let’s get the motivation out of the way. This is the same Jeff Bezos who decided to cancel the Post’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just before the election — a move that led to more than 250,000 paying Post readers cancelling their subscriptions within days. The same Bezos who flew to Mar-a-Lago to cozy up to Donald Trump after the election. The same Bezos whose Amazon donated $1 million to Trump’s inauguration and paid $40 million for a Melania Trump documentary — the most it had ever paid for a doc, nearly three times what any other studio offered, and more than 70% of which will go directly into Trump’s pockets. All that cash seems to have served as a sort of personal seat license for Bezos, earning him a spot right behind the president at the inaugural. The tech aristocracy’s rightward turn is by now a familiar theme of the post-election period, and it doesn’t take much brain power to see today’s announcement as part of the same shift. 

But Bezos’s assertion of power is downright laughable compared to the rhetoric he was using just four months ago when trying to justify his killing of the Harris endorsement. Remember his muddled, oligarch-splaining op-ed? His core argument back then was that the worst thing a newspaper’s opinion section could do is appear to be taking one side politically.

Bezos, October 28, 2024: We must be accurate, and we must be believed to be accurate. It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. Anyone who doesn’t see this is paying scant attention to reality, and those who fight reality lose. Reality is an undefeated champion. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility (and, therefore, decline in impact), but a victim mentality will not help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility.

Presidential endorsements do nothing to tip the scales of an election. No undecided voters in Pennsylvania are going to say, “I’m going with Newspaper A’s endorsement.” None. What presidential endorsements actually do is create a perception of bias. A perception of non-independence.Ending them is a principled decision, and it’s the right one.

Endorsing a candidate for president is bad because it can create the perception of bias — that the newspaper is institutionally tilted to one side or another. 

So the solution is…to have the owner spend months shipping millions off to Trump HQ and then declare that certain opinions not in favor on the political right will now be verboten in the Post’s pages?

Bezos, February 26, 2025: We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets. We’ll cover other topics too of course, but viewpoints opposing those pillars will be left to be published by others.

Back in October, Bezos was saddened by even the concept that his personal interests might influence the Post’s content.

Bezos, October 28, 2024: When it comes to the appearance of conflict, I am not an ideal owner of The Post.Every day, somewhere, some Amazon executive or Blue Origin executive or someone from the other philanthropies and companies I own or invest in is meeting with government officials. I once wrote that The Post is a “complexifier” for me. It is, but it turns out I’m also a complexifier for The Post.

You can see my wealth and business interests as a bulwark against intimidation, or you can see them as a web of conflicting interests. Only my own principles can tip the balance from one to the other. I assure you that my views here are, in fact, principled, and I believe my track record as owner of The Post since 2013 backs this up. You are of course free to make your own determination, but I challenge you to find one instance in those 11 years where I have prevailed upon anyone at The Post in favor of my own interests. It hasn’t happened.

But of course — when one of the wealthiest humans in the history of the species decides to block critiques of “free markets” from one of the nation’s most important news outlets, it has nothing to do with any of his interests. Completely unrelated.

Bezos, February 26, 2025: I am of America and for America, and proud to be so. Our country did not get here by being typical. And a big part of America’s success has been freedom in the economic realm and everywhere else. Freedom is ethical — it minimizes coercion — and practical — it drives creativity, invention, and prosperity…

I’m confident that free markets and personal liberties are right for America. I also believe these viewpoints are underserved in the current market of ideas and news opinion. I’m excited for us together to fill that void.

A few months ago, Bezos was confident that the Post had to differentiate itself from the swarm of misleading online content by being staunchly independent of any ideological agenda:

Bezos, October 28, 2024: Many people are turning to off-the-cuff podcasts, inaccurate social media posts and other unverified news sources, which can quickly spread misinformation and deepen divisions…

While I do not and will not push my personal interest, I will also not allow this paper to stay on autopilot and fade into irrelevance — overtaken by unresearched podcasts and social media barbs — not without a fight. It’s too important. The stakes are too high. Now more than ever the world needs a credible, trusted, independent voice, and where better for that voice to originate than the capital city of the most important country in the world?

But today, the existence of all that internet muck is positioned as a perfect excuse to abandon all desire for a broad-based opinion section.

Bezos, February 26, 2025: There was a time when a newspaper, especially one that was a local monopoly, might have seen it as a service to bring to the reader’s doorstep every morning a broad-based opinion section that sought to cover all views. Today, the internet does that job.

So, to recap: A newspaper can’t be seen as taking a side. Until it’s essential that it be seen as taking a side. Bezos would never use his own ideological beliefs to restrict the Post’s work. Until he decides he must use his own ideological beliefs to restrict the Post’s work. 

As was the case in the fall, the problem with these swings is less their content than their naked service to one man’s agenda. A newspaper is free to endorse or not endorse whoever it wants. An owner is free to shape his opinion section to his will. But the realpolitik context of those decisions clashes wildly with Bezos’s lecturing tone and freshman-level political analysis. I doubt today’s announcement will generate another 250,000 subscription cancellations, if only because there are so many fewer subscribers left to cancel. But the impact will be felt. Only three months ago, the Post was prepping a plan to “win back” wayward subscribers by focusing on the paper’s star reporters and columnists — people like Ashley Parker, Eugene Robinson, and Dana Milbank. Parker’s already jumped ship; how are opinion voices like Milbank and Robinson supposed to fit into the new no-critiquing-the-genius-of-unrestrained-markets regime?

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Failure, Freedom of the Press, Media

Arkansas: A Brief, Powerful Demonstration of Critical Race Theory

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2025 //
26

Trump and his acolytes have thrown around the term “critical race theory” without e we defining it. He picked it up from rightwing extremist Chris Rufo, who thought that it could be used as a blunderbuss to smear public schools. He convinced large numbers of anxious white parents that the public schools were teaching their children to be embarrassed and feel guilty about being white. That, Rufo implied, was the inevitable result of teaching the unpleasant facts about slavery, Jim row, and racism.

Here is a different point of view, written by Alan Leveritt in The Arkansas Times.

He readily admits that he is a beneficiary of critical race theory.

He writes:

Believed to be circa 1945, a map illustrates redlining practices in the Little Rock area. Red means Black neighborhoods and no loans, while green means white neighborhoods and access to FHA loans.

Credit: dsl.richmond.edu

I came close to graduating from college, damn close in fact. Last I looked (about 30 years ago) I was three hours and an overdue parking ticket short of a history degree from UA Little Rock. But even though I remain a doubtful scholar, I am a devoted student of Arkansas history and its ability to instruct us regarding some very big issues facing our country. 

I am, of course, talking about critical race theory. 

Army 1st Lt. J.P. Leveritt came back from World War II, got his master’s degree in physical education and in 1950, along with my mother, built one of the first houses in Lakewood in North Little Rock for $8,000. Thus began my family’s long and beneficial association with critical race theory. 

To paraphrase the Oxford American Dictionary, critical race theory argues that many of our social and economic institutions have been created for and by white people. Those institutions, many dating back almost a century, were designed to lift white people up and keep Black people down. I am a direct beneficiary of that system. 

When President Franklin Roosevelt tried to create the Federal Housing Administration as part of the New Deal, his proposal to make home ownership accessible to ordinary people through federal home loan guarantees met with opposition from members of both parties. What we take for granted today was just one step from communism then. Southern Democrats ultimately agreed to support the establishment of a Federal Housing Administration on the condition that Black citizens be excluded. Now white people could more easily become homeowners and Black people could more easily become renters. 

When my parents bought their home in Lakewood, they had to sign a covenant never to sell to Black buyers. This was an actual FHA requirement. Had they not signed, the FHA would have refused to guarantee them any loans in Lakewood. If Black people could move into Lakewood, the property values there would crater, putting the FHA loans at risk, was the explanation. 

Another FHA innovation was to rate neighborhoods based on class and race, the thought being that neighborhoods occupied by Black people were too risky for government guaranteed loans. The Little Rock/North Little Rock redline map is color-coded, with green neighborhoods approved for FHA loans and red neighborhoods (predominantly African American) ineligible for bank loans. Thus the son of Lakewood homeowners inherits $175,000 upon his mother’s death in 2012, while the Black son of Rose City renters gets nothing. 

This is an example of critical race theory in action. The primary source of intergenerational wealth is home equity. Even though Black households earn 60% of what white households earn, they only have 5% as much wealth. That wealth should have come from home ownership, which never occurred because the game was rigged. 

My dad had a good war. He grew up in Smackover and went to Arkansas A&M at Monticello, where he played for the Rambling Boll Weevils and learned deep tissue massage as a trainer. He was headed to North Africa as a medic but through a series of happy accidents, wound up in the White House as President Truman’s masseuse and private trainer. 

As with all vets after the war, the GI Bill allowed him to further his education and receive low-interest home loans among other benefits. But while the language of the GI Bill was inclusive of all vets, it was administered by the states, which meant that Black vets, especially in the Jim Crow South, received on average 70% of the benefits their white comrades did. Despite the GI Bill of 1944 offering free college education, it was 11 years before the first Black veteran enrolled as an undergraduate in a state-supported college in Arkansas with the exception of all-Black Arkansas AM&N. Up to then, they were directed to vocational schools if at all.  The low-interest home loans the GI Bill provided weren’t much help, either. Because Black veterans could not live in white neighborhoods and Black neighborhoods were redlined, they seldom could get a loan to buy a house where they were permitted to live. 

Discrimination for FHA mortgages and GI benefits has in part been remedied by various civil rights laws, many of them from President Lyndon Johnson’s time. But to understand the great economic disparity between the races, we need to know history, especially Arkansas history. The economic disparities we see today are a direct result of what happened years ago when we came up with race-based barriers to education and wealth. 

Why would our Legislature and governor try to disappear this history? Why would they try to decertify an Advanced Placement African American Studies class in our high schools, or discourage honest study of systems that set some of us up to thrive but left others to struggle? Their argument that if we teach these facts, some white child might be made to feel guilty is pure nonsense. 

Get over it. It’s our history. Teach our kids the truth and maybe they will be better people than we are. 

Categories Arkansas, Bigotry, Racism
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