Paul Krugman: The Madness of the Mad King

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2026 //
5

Paul Krugman, a Nobel Prize winner in economics, wrote regularly for The New York Times. Now he writes a blog at Substack. In this post, he characterizes the deepening dysfunction of our president, Donald Trump.

Things are not going well politically for Donald Trump. The polls show him underwater on every major issue. And while he insists that these are fake, it’s clear that he knows better. He recently lamented that the Republicans will do badly in the midterms and even floated the idea that midterms should be canceled.

And as January 6th 2021 showed, Trump simply can’t stand political rejection. He will do anything, use any tool or any person at his disposal, to obliterate the sources of that rejection.

So as we head into the 2026 midterm season, the best way to understand U.S. policy is that it’s in the pursuit of one crucial objective: Propping up Trump’s fragile ego.

What was the motivation for the abduction of Nicolás Maduro? It wasn’t about drugs, which were always an obvious pretense. By Trump’s own account it wasn’t about democracy. Trump talks a lot about oil, but Venezuela’s heavy, hard-to-process oil and its decrepit oil infrastructure aren’t big prizes. The Financial Timesreports that U.S. oil companies won’t invest in Venezuela unless they receive firm guarantees. One investor told the paper, “No one wants to go in there when a random fucking tweet can change the entire foreign policy of the country.”

The real purpose of the abduction, surely, was to give Trump an opportunity to strut around and act tough. But this ego gratification, like a sugar rush, won’t last long. Voters normally rally around the president at the beginning of a war. The invasion of Iraq was initially very popular. But the action in Venezuela hasn’t had any visible rally-around-the-flag effect. While Republicans, as always, support Trump strongly, independents are opposed:

And now the story of the moment is the atrocity in Minneapolis, where…an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good by shooting her in the head.

Trump and his minions responded by flatly lying about what happened. But their accounts have been refuted by video evidence which show an out-of-control ICE agent gunning down a woman who was simply trying to get away from a frightening situation. Yes, MAGA loyalists will fall into line, preferring to believe Trump rather than their own lying eyes. But public revulsion over Good’s murder and Trump’s mendacity are high and growing.

A president who actually cared about the welfare of those he governs would have taken Good’s killing as an indication that his deportation tactics have veered wildly and tragically off course. He would have called for a halt of ICE actions and made sure there would be an objective and timely federal investigation into this national tragedy.

But for Trump, ICE’s violent lawlessness is a feature, not a bug. Sending armed, masked, poorly trained, masked and out-of-control armed thugs into blue cities is, in effect, a war on Americans, just as January 6thwas a war on American institutions. In effect, Trump would rather savage his own people than be held accountable for his actions.

So in Trump’s mind, Renee Nicole Good’s murder is at most collateral damage, in service to his insatiable need to dominate and feel powerful — so insatiable that he is attempting to create an alternate reality, claiming that that Good ran over an agent although there is irrefutable video evidence that she didn’t.

And when one set of lies doesn’t work, he switches tactics – changing the topic, deflecting, and spouting even more lies. Thus, just hours after Good’s death, Trump proclaimed that he was seeking a huge increase in military spending:

It’s a near certainty that Trump’s assertion that he arrived at an immediate 50% increase in the military budget after “long and difficult negotiations” is yet another lie. There’s been no indication whatsoever that a massive increase in defense spending was on anyone’s agenda before he suddenly posted about it on Truth Social.

So what was that about? Given the timing, it’s clear that Trump’s announcement was yet another exercise in self-aggrandizement, as well as an attempt to grab the headlines away from Good’s killing. But what’s also important to realize from Trump’s announcement is that he is now clearly conflating the size of the US military with his ego. Evidently the sugar rush of Maduro’s capture has left him wanting more and more military validation, particularly as his poll numbers tank.

So here’s a warning to the US military: if you continue to indulge the sick fantasies of this man, he will drag this country into more and deeper international morasses to feed his need for glory. Do what Admiral Alvin Holsey, an honorable man, did – stand down and refuse an illegal order. Here’s a warning to the Republicans: if you continue to allow this man to perpetrate war against his own people with impunity through the actions of ICE, you will be remembered as cowards and hypocrites. Here’s a warning to all his other enablers: if you do not do something to stop this madman, you will go down in history as traitors to this country.

And here’s a warning to those directly perpetrating Trump-directed atrocities: He will not be in power forever, and I expect and hope that you will be held accountable, personally, and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Categories Accountability, Character, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Lies, Trump

How Trump Policies Hurt Families

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2026 //
3

The Trump administration is making life harder for young parents, says blogger “Home of the Brave.” Trump’s boasts about the economy don’t help families who are struggling to pay for groceries and to buy a home. Trump has even slashed funding for in vitro fertilization, which some families need to have children.

Donald Trump has dubbed himself “the fertilization president” and stacked his administration with self-described pro-natalists—most notably JD Vance—who say they’re concerned with increasing America’s birth rates. Trump has bragged, falsely and bizarrely, about being the “father of IVF” and said on the campaign trail that “we want more babies.”

Here’s the reality beyond the rhetoric: Trump’s presidency is a disaster for new parents and young families. If you’re looking to start a family today, Trump’s making that harder. And if you’re a new parent, Trump’s going out of his way to make that harder, too. Here are just some of the ways they’re doing it:

1.) Cutting funding for family planning.

Trump’s DOGE cuts have gutted federally-funded IVF programs. In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eliminated its Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance program, firing six researchers who tracked IVF effectiveness nationwide. People involved with the program told NBC News it was “a tremendous resource” and called its closure an “immediate loss.”

According to the Cleveland Clinic, since 1978 more than 8 million children have been born thanks to IVF, making it the most common type of fertility treatment available, and one of the most effective. Roughly 5 percent of couples experiencing infertility turn to the treatment, and it can offer life-changing results. For millions of Americans, IVF is their best hope for starting a family.

Far from being the “father of IVF,” Trump has made the treatment harder to get for ordinary Americans. When he originally came out in favor of IVF, many of Trump’s social conservative allies in the Republican Party were outraged, calling on him to “walk back” his remarks. They can rest easy now that they know that—as in so many other cases—Trump was lying.

2.) Driving housing costs through the roof.

Houses have become costlier year over year due to limited housing supply. With fewer houses on the market, demand from buyers—especially growing families—outpaces supply. This imbalance drives up prices, freezing out younger and less established homebuyers. To combat this, there’s bipartisan agreement on the need for millions of units worth of new home construction—and fast.

But Trump’s policies are making it harder to build anything. A large portion of the lumber used in American home construction comes from Canada. Steel, another critical building material, is imported predominantly from Japan. Trump has imposed steep tariffs on both countries, making the foundational materials needed to build homes more expensive, which drives up production costs and increases the final price. Regular American families bear the brunt of these increases.

On top of that, as many as 30 percent of construction workers in the United States are immigrants, and Trump’s campaign against immigration is shrinking the available labor supply for construction projects. Masked ICE agents are conducting jump-out raids on unsuspecting contractors and construction workers, in some cases trapping them on freezing cold job sites for hours. As a result, the construction industry is starting to see worsening labor shortages.

Trump built his image on being a real estate magnate, promising on the campaign trail that his administration would be “cutting the cost of a new home in half.” Instead, he’s the biggest obstacle to young parents and new families getting a roof over their heads.

3.) Making everything your child needs more expensive.

Any parent will tell you that you’re always buying something for your kids: babies grow out of clothes constantly, toddlers break toys, you’re forever restocking diapers and formula. It’s a never-ending cycle that is hard to budget for even in the best of times. Trump’s tariffs have made essential baby items—clothes, formula, cribs, strollers, car seats, toys—even more expensive than they already were.

Prices for toddler clothes have gone up 3.3 percent in recent months, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, whose non-political and widely-respected commissioner Trump recently fired for reporting accurate statistics. Other baby essentials have experienced similar jumps thanks to Trump’s tariffs. The Baby Center, a digital resource for parents, wrote that, unless diapers and other goods “are excluded from the tariffs, prices could increase … because manufacturing equipment, packaging, and materials may all be imported.”

Despite Trump’s “America First” monomania, we can’t source every single part of every single baby product here in the United States. It would make everything prohibitively expensive and undercut businesses’ bottom lines. And even if businesses were onboard with this scheme, it would take years or decades to re-shore all the necessary components to US soil. This is what happens when Trump’s economic illiteracy meets reality….

Trump has boasted about his lack of involvement in his children’s lives. He said tasks like changing the kids’ diapers were “just not for me” and he admitted in 2005 that he “won’t do anything to take care of” his children. According to Vanity Fair, his son Don Jr. told him, “You don’t love us! You don’t even love yourself. You just love your money.”

The pattern is clear: The “fertilization president” and “father of IVF” is systematically making it harder and more expensive for American families to have and raise children. He’s gutted IVF programs, driven up housing costs, made baby essentials more expensive, and even taxed parents’ coffee—all while breaking his campaign promises.

American parents shouldn’t have to suffer because Trump was a lousy dad and an even worse president.

Categories Childhood, Cruelty, Economy, Extremism, Parents, Trump

Jan Resseger: McMahon and the Death of the U.S. Education Department

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2026 //
1

Jan Resseger reminds us of the purpose of public education by quoting Derek Black’s new book Dangerous Learning, in which he writes that “public schools are the place where children—regardless of status—share a common experience, come to appreciate the public good, and prepare for equal citizenship. The purpose of public education has always been to sustain a republican form of government.” The Trump administration does not want to “sustain a Republican form of government.” It blabbers on about parents’ rights, not the common good. It is determined to destroy the U.S. Department of Education because it protects the rights of students, especially the most vulnerable. Ironically, the claims for “parents’ rights,” has been turned into a battering ram against students’ rights.

Jan writes:

In his newest book, Dangerous Learning, constitutional law scholar Derek Black explores one of the most basic reasons our public schools, our society’s most extensive and inclusive civic institution, are essential: they are an enormous system whose promise is to serve the needs and protect the rights of nearly 50 million children and adolescents.  Justice cannot be achieved solely through the protection of parents’ rights, by which parents vie to advance their own children’s needs.

Black writes: “As rhetoric, educational freedom sounds good.  As a practical matter, it falls well short of freedom for all. It does not even attempt to ensure that private education works for children. At best, it is agnostic toward the school environments students enter. At worst, it uses public funds to facilitate patterns and values that America has spent the past half century trying to tame…  Public schools to be sure, are far from perfect. They have never fully met the needs of all students and all communities. But those shortcomings are clearly understood as problems to fix. They are seen as bugs, not features, of public education, which has operated for two centuries on the premise that public schools are the place where children—regardless of status—share a common experience, come to appreciate the public good, and prepare for equal citizenship. The purpose of public education has always been to sustain a republican form of government. And public schools are the only place in society premised on bridging the gaps that normally divide us—race, wealth, religion, disability, sex, culture, and more. The founders of the American public education system believed that rather than inhibiting liberty, a common public education is essential to it.” (Dangerous Learning, pp. 182-183)

Widespread educational justice across the nation cannot be achieved solely through the laws of the states. At the federal level, Brown v. Board of Education, and federal laws like the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act have for three quarters of a century been tools by which the federal government could challenge and rectify injustice in public schools.  In 1979, the U.S. Department of Education was founded to pull together many of the programs designed to increase opportunity for children in states whose public schools had failed to protect their educational rights due to their race, ethnicity, or disability—the work of the Office for Civil Rights, and programs supporting English language learners and special education for disabled students, for example.  The Education Department also increased investment in school districts which states had inadequately funded—Title I for school districts serving concentrations of poor children, for example, and grants for Full-Service Community Schools and 21st Century After-School Programs.

The Trump administration has, however, avoided acknowledging the history of educational injustice as the President has consistently promoted the goal of shutting down the U.S. Department of Education and “returning education to the states.”  When she was confirmed as Education Secretary last March, Linda McMahon declared: “President Trump pledged to make American education the best in the world, return education to the states where it belongs, and free American students from the education bureaucracy through school choice. I intend to make good on that promise.”  McMahon has laid off staff whose positions were created by Congress, threatened to send specific programs to other federal departments, and cancelled a raft of specific, congressionally allocated grant funding —all contrary to federal law. Many of these threats have been temporarily stayed by the courts; others are quietly moving forward.

Last week, McMahon took a new step to weaken the Department’s reach—by agreeing to waive federal rules that prescribe how federal funding can be spent and allowing states to combine at their discretion funding from specific federal grant lines. For the Associated Press, Colin Binkley explained: “The Trump administration is giving Iowa more power to decide how it spends its federal education money, signing off on a proposal that is expected to be the first of many as conservative states seek new latitude from a White House promising to ‘return education to the states.’ Iowa was the first state to apply for an exemption from certain spending rules.”  Binkley describes Education Secretary McMahon’s justification for giving Iowa control of spending federal dollars from four different grant programs: “McMahon told The Associated Press that the new flexibility will free up time and money now devoted to ensuring compliance with federal rules. With fewer strings attached, states can pool their federal dollars toward priorities of their choosing, including literacy or teacher training….”

For K-12 Dive, Kara Arundel lists four separate programs established by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act whose funding streams Iowa has been permitted to combine: Title II, Part A—Supporting Effective Instruction; Title III, Part A—English Language Acquisition; Title IV, Part A—Student Support and Academic Enrichment; and Title IV, Part B—21st Century Community Learning Centers (after-school programs). Arundel describes Iowa’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds expressing gratitude for giving her state more freedom: “Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds, speaking at the press conference, said the state is ‘confident that we can do even more by reallocating compliance resources. Iowa will begin shifting nearly $8 million and thousands of hours of staff time from bureaucracy to actually putting that expertise and those resources in the classroom.’ “

Several writers, looking at the modesty of last week’s Iowa waiver to consolidate grants are not yet anticipating that the Iowa situation bodes massive deregulation of federal funding.  Education Week’s Mark Lieberman explains: “The waiver approval appears to mark the first time since the 2015 passage of the Every Student Success Act that the federal government has used its authority under that law to allow a state to consolidate funding. But, in contrast with proposals the state put forward roughly a year ago, the new federal approval touches only 5% of Iowa’s overall allocation of federal education funds, the part that’s set aside for the state education agency. The bulk of federal dollars that flow to school districts each year—$900 million worth—will retain their current structure and spending and reporting requirements.”

Binkley reassures the public: “Iowa’s new plan leaves Title I funding untouched.”

Lieberman quotes Anne Hyslop, who now leads All4Ed, and who worked in the Department during the Obama administration: “This announcement could signal an acknowledgment from the department that its legal authority to flatten discrete funding programs and implement unrestricted block grants without congressional approval is limited, said Anne Hyslop… It also foreshadows an uphill battle for other states aiming to convert federal education funding to block grants, including Indiana, which submitted a request for that flexibility, along with relief from certain school accountability requirements in October.”

Chalkbeat’s Erica Meltzer adds States already control most aspects of education. Federal funding makes up about 10% of overall education spending, and those dollars do come with restrictions and reporting requirements that aim to ensure money is spent appropriately… Iowa’s waiver doesn’t allow districts to consolidate most of their federal funding, which would have represented a much larger pot of money.

However, the reporters acknowledge that, in the context of the Trump administration’s goal to return education to the states, the Department may increasingly grant waivers that limit federal oversight.  Will Iowa’s waiver be the first step as the Department of Education reduces guardrails that protect students’ civil rights?

Meltzer reports that the new waiver, “does allow Iowa school districts to take advantage of a 1999 federal provision called  Ed-Flex to roll over more money year over year to make it easier to invest in big-ticket items and longer-term strategies….”  Lieberman adds: “Separate from the waiver approval, McMahon also simultaneously announced she’s approved Iowa to join 10 other states currently participating in the department’s Ed-Flex program, which gives state education agencies the authority to waive certain spending regulations for individual districts… The 10 states currently participating are Delaware, Georgia, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Texas, Vermont and Wisconsin. Iowa is the first state to gain the distinction since McMahon became secretary.”

Meltzer concludes by cautioning readers: “(T)he Education Department still needs to ensure money is being appropriately spent, which is more challenging after massive layoffs.” She quotes Hyslop worrying: “(T)he U.S. Department of Education right now lacks the capacity to do meaningful oversight of how this program is being implemented or the waiver process in general.”

Specifically, Meltzer warns that one of the federal grants Iowa was allowed to merge supported English language instruction, a step that could well reflect the Trump administration’s attack on immigrants or its anti-DEI initiatives: “Advocates are particularly concerned that Iowa’s new block grant consolidates Title III funds that are required to go to English learners…. The Trump administration laid off most of the staff at the Education Department who support those students, and rescinded a guidance document considered to be the ‘bible’ in that field.” She quotes the Education Trust’s Nicholas Munyan-Penney: “I think of red tape equaling protections for students… We want to make sure that students have access to the protections and resources they need to be successful.”

Will 2026 be the year that the Department of Education expands the use of waivers to undercut the federal oversight of funds that protect equality of educational opportunity across our nation?  We will need to watch carefully as the chaotic education policy in McMahon’s Department of Education continues into its second year.

Categories English Language Learners, Ethics, Funding, Lies, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Why Is the Justice Department Refusing to Investigate Killing of Renee Good?

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2026 //
6

This short video was made by Liz Oyer, who used to be the attorney in charge of Presidential pardons at the Justice Department.

Please watch.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Justice, Trump

Rick Wilson: The Entire Joint Chiefs of Staff Should Resign Over Greenland Plans

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2026 //
4

Mad King Donald the First won’t let go of his absurd desire to take Greenland. He says he must have it, by purchase or by invasion. The Greenlanders don’t want to be part of the United States. They prefer their 300-year-old association with Denmark, which subsidizes them and provides free healthcare and education and whatever else the islanders need.

Trump doesn’t care what the residents of Greenland want. He wants the minerals of Greenland.

National security is not an issue, because the U.S. has a military base in Greenland and the right to open more.

Trump wants Greenland because he wants Greenland. He’s like a child demanding ice cream. He wants it. He’s all-powerful. He is limited only by “his own morality,” not the Constitution.

Rick Wilson calls on all the generals in the Joint Chiefs of Staff to resign en masse to stop this madness.

He writes:

The lights are burning late in the E-Ring of the Pentagon tonight, but don’t mistake the activity for preparation. It is the frantic, sweating industry of men trying to figure out how to drape a flag over an impending crime of such sweeping malice, stupidity, and toxicity that it will shame this nation for generations. 

The word is out. The “stable genius” has finally moved from the fever swamp of his Social Media feed to the operational reality of the War Room. The order has been cut: The United States of America is to prepare for a kinetic invasion of Greenland. Yes, Greenland. That vast, icy, sovereign territory of Denmark, a founding member of NATO, a nation that has bled beside American GIs from the Korengal Valley to Kandahar. 

Because Donald Trump wants the rocks, the ice, and the ego-stroke of a colonial land-grab, he has ordered the most powerful military in human history to become a gang of Arctic marauders

.And here is the terrifying part: the Joint Chiefs of Staff, men who have spent four decades wearing the uniform, men who talk endlessly about “honor,” “integrity,” and the “rules-based international order,” are currently sharpening the knives. They are looking at maps of Nuuk and Thule not as partners, but as targets.

A Strategic Suicide Pact

Let’s be clear: Greenland poses no threat to the United States. It is not a launchpad for terror. It is not harboring WMDs. Neither the Chinese nor the Russians are poised to take it by either guile or force. 

It is an autonomous territory of a loyal, democratic ally. By executing this order, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) aren’t just following a “controversial” policy; they are participating in a strategic suicide pact that will dismantle seventy-five years of American alliancess in a single afternoon, giving China a strategic license to invade Taiwan, and Russia one to take Latvia, Lithjuaina, and Estonia, to say nothing of continuing their illegal war against Ukraine. 

The moment an American boot hits Greenlandic soil without an invitation, NATO, the most successful military alliance in the history of the world, is dead. Article 5 becomes a cruel joke, a relic of a time when America’s word actually meant something. If the United States can invade its own allies for “strategic depth” or mineral rights, why would any nation in Europe ever trust us again? We are effectively telling the world that the “rules-based order” was just a mask for “might makes right.”

A Banquet for Autocrats

While our generals plot the logistics of an Arctic heist, our true adversaries are watching with a mixture of disbelief and predatory delight.

In Beijing, Xi Jinping is likely raising a glass. For years, the U.S. has lectured China on the sanctity of sovereignty and the “freedom of the seas” in the South China Sea. If the “Leader of the Free World” can annex territory in the North Atlantic because he wants to own the “real estate,” what possible argument does Washington have when the PLA decides to “unify” Taiwan? We are handing China the moral and legal precedent to set not just Taiwan, but the entire Pacific on fire. Every diplomatic lever we hold regarding Taiwan will snap the moment we violate Danish sovereignty.

In Moscow, Vladimir Putin is salivating. He has worked for a quarter-century to fracture the West, and Trump is handing him the pieces on a silver platter. A U.S. invasion of a NATO ally is the ultimate “Go” signal for Russian tanks to roll into Tallinn, Riga, and Vilnius. If America won’t respect the borders of its friends, why should Russia respect the borders of its “near abroad”? The Baltics, Poland, and the Caucasus will be the menu for the next Russian banquet, and we will have no moral authority to stop it.

The Corruption of the E-Ring

The Joint Chiefs are supposed to be the “sober adults” in the room. Their role is to provide candid, unvarnished military advice—to tell the President not just what he can do, but what he should do, and when an order is a catastrophic violation of our national interest.

But the E-Ring has become a place of quiet complicity. To plan this invasion is to stain the integrity of the entire general officer corps. It turns the professional military into a logistics department for a madman’s real estate ambitions. It tells every young lieutenant and NCO that the “Law of Armed Conflict” is just something we put in PowerPoints to look civilized, but that at the end of the day, we’re a mafia nation, a lawless actor, the biggest bullies on the block.

The moral injury to the force will be catastrophic. How do you look a soldier in the eye and tell them they are fighting for “freedom” while they are occupying a peaceful democratic neighbor? How do you maintain discipline in a force that knows its leadership has abandoned the Constitution for the sake of political convenience?

Categories Education Reform

The Economist: After Maduro in Venezuela

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2026 //
8

Perhaps the strangest feature of Trump’s invasion of Venezuela is that he left the leadership of the regime in place, removing only Maduro and his wife. Four of the six Venezuelan leaders who were indicted for criminal activities are now running the country.

On the one hand, Trump avoids the problem of a renegade army and security apparatus, which can help repress the citizenry while the U.S. schemes to steal their oil.

On the other, the Maduro regime continues to be thuggish and corrupt.

The Economist magazine conducted a poll in Venezuela and found that most people were pleased that Maduro is gone.

The polling shows that Mr Maduro, who presided over torture and economic collapse and brazenly stole the presidential election in 2024, was deeply hated. Just 13% of respondents even mildly opposed his capture. Strikingly, more than half of them said their opinion of America had improved after the raid.

Its deputy editor Robert Guest wrote this commentary in the January 10-16 issue::

Outside a supermarket in Caracas a few years ago, I saw national guardsmen checking people’s identity before they were allowed in. The logic was that, courtesy of the revolutionary government, the state-owned shop sold essential groceries at below-market prices. So you needed men with truncheons and tear-gas to make sure shoppers only came in on their state-appointed shopping days.

Nicolás Maduro’s dictatorship was one of the most thuggish in the world. It was also one of the most economically incompetent. When I walked into that shop, half the shelves were bare and none of the groceries that were supposed to be on sale for less than they cost to make were, in fact, available. A combination of price controls, socialist dogma and industrial-scale corruption had dramatically impoverished a once-prosperous country. The economy shrank by 69% under Mr Maduro—a swifter decline than would normally occur during an all-out civil war. Small wonder Venezuelans in Miami danced in the streets when Donald Trump kidnapped Mr Maduro and whisked him to a courtroom in New York. But they were not dancing in Caracas, for fear of being arrested and tortured. For though the despot is gone, the rest of the regime is still in place.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, International, Trump, Tyranny

U.S. Justice Department Will Investigate Renee Good and Her Widow, Not ICE Officer Who Killed Her

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2026 //
5

The Trump administration is determined to prove that Renee Good was a domestic terrorist who was trying to kill an ICE officer by running him down with her car. He had to kill her to save his own life. The many videos that have been released demonstrate that these assertions were lies. Renee Good was attempting to flee the scene and did not strike or injure ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who fired three shots point blank at her and killed her.

The New York Times reported that key federal prosecutors in Minnesota quit rather than defend the administration’s lies. The government wanted them to investigate the victim’s widow for links to terrorism.

Three Minnesota federal prosecutors resigned over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and its reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.

Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.

Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent last Wednesday.

Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.

Two other senior career prosecutors, Harry Jacobs and Melinda Williams, also resigned on Tuesday. Mr. Jacobs had been Mr. Thompson’s deputy overseeing the fraud investigation, which began in 2022. Mr. Thompson, Mr. Jacobs and Ms. Williams declined to discuss the reasons they resigned

The Guardian reported that several attorneys in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division resigned in protest when they learned that the Government would investigate the victim but not the killer.

The Guardian reported.

Several attorneys in the US justice department’s civil rights division have reportedly resigned in protest at a decision not to investigate the fatal shooting of an unarmed US citizen by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis – while the FBI presses ahead with an inquiry into the victim.

At least four leaders of the division’s criminal investigations section have stepped down, according to MS NOW, citing three people it said were briefed about the departures.

It follows a decision by Harmeet Dhillon, the Donald Trump administration-aligned assistant attorney general for civil rights, not to investigate the 7 January killing of Renee Nicole Good by Jonathan Ross, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, as would be usual in the case of a shooting by law enforcement.

Separately, the FBI – which seized total control of the investigation after freezing out local officials – is looking into Good’s “possible connections to activist groups”, according to the New York Times. A succession of Trump administration officials, including the president himself, have portrayed Good, without presenting evidence, as a “domestic terrorist” or “paid agitator” – while video of her confrontation with Ross appears to show her trying to steer her vehicle away from him when she was shot three times in the face…

The resignations are the latest in a flow of departures from the civil rights division since Donald Trump began his second term a year earlier. In May, the Guardian reported that more than 250 attorneys had left, been reassigned or accepted a deferred resignation offer since January, a roughly 70% reduction.

Dhillon, a former Republican official in California, and an election denier who promoted the “big lie” that Trump’s 2020 election defeat was fraudulent, was confirmed by the Senate in April. She worked quickly to realign the division’s priorities away from its longstanding work tackling discrimination and protecting the rights of marginalized groups and towards Trump’s political goals, including exposing voter fraud, which is rare, and focusing on anti-transgender issues.

“I don’t think it’s an overstatement to see this as the end of the division as we’ve known it,” a civil rights division attorney told the Guardian at the time.

Subsequently, in September, the online news outlet Notus reported that only two lawyers remained out of 36 at the justice department’s public integrity unit assigned to investigations of corrupt politicians and law enforcement.

What you need to know about Harmeet Dhillon, the lawyer appointed by Trump to lead the Civil Rights Division, is that she spent years litigating against civil rights law. Thus, she is just what you would expect: a prosecutor ready and willing to investigate the murder victim, but not the murderer.

Categories Civil Rights, Justice, Shame

Heather Cox Richardson: How Fascists Gain Power

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2026 //
2

Heather Cox Richardson obtained a pamphlet written during World War II for our troops overseas. Its purpose was to explain the tactics of fascists: how they gain power, how they lie to distort reality, how they use hatred to divide and conquer.

The pamphlet is insightful, incisive, and remarkably relevant to the world we live in now.

What we are learning is that “It can happen here.” We must arm ourselves with knowledge to preserve our democracy.

She writes:

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”

—

Notes:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=armytalks

War Department, “Army Talk 64: FASCISM!” March 24, 1945, at https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, History

Margaret Hoover Interviews Elliot Abrams About Trump’s Errors in Invading Venezuela

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2026 //
21

Margaret Hoover is host of a weekly program about public affairs every Friday night on PBS. It’s called “Firing Line,” the same title as William Buckley’s talk show of decades back.

Margaret, a direct descendant of Herbert Hoover, is a Republican but is not especially conservative.

On this program, she interviews Elliot Abrams.

Elliot Abrams is an expert on foreign affairs and national security. He worked for President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, and President Trump, in his first term. Abrams is known as a hawk.

What’s fascinating about the conversation is that Abrams is highly critical of Trump’s invasion.

He acknowledges that Maduro was a ruthless, brutal dictator who ran the Venezuelan economy into the ground and caused millions of Venezuelans to flee the country. Some of maduro’s top leaders have hidden bank accounts in which they have stowed hundreds of millions of dollars.

He asks why Trump failed to consult Congress.

He wonders why Trump ordered the arrest of Maduro and his wife but not the others who were indicted and are now running the country.

He wonders why Trump left the leaders of this corrupt regime in place. He assumes they will wait Trump out and continue to reap the rewards of their corruption. Given the cost and difficulty of reviving Venezuela’s oil industry, he doubts that any of the major American oil companies will risk doing so.

It’s a fascinating conversation. I urge you to watch.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, International, Trump

Rachel Maddow Investigates the “Real Reason” that Trump Invaded Venezuela

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2026 //
4

I saw the show where Rachel Maddow tried to understand why Trump sent troops to invade Venezuela, kidnap its President Nicolas Maduro and his wife, and bring them to the U.S. to stand trial.

She reviews the usual reasons and determines that each of them is insufficient.

What’s the real reason? Open the link and see.

Categories Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom, Trump
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