Two Florida Editorial Boards Question Setting Aside a Day to Honor Charlie Kirk

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2025 //
1

The editorial boards of the Orlando Sentinel and the Sun-Sentinel wrote a joint editorial questioning the wisdom of setting aside a day to honor Charlie Kirk, who was assassinated earlier this year. They titled it “A Badly Misguided Honor for Charlie Kirk.”

Their editorial courage is a tribute to freedom of the press, which Charlie would have applauded.

In a society that treasures and protects free speech, it’s important to focus a spotlight on people who were hunted down because their ideas were too dangerous or offended too many people.

These names are threaded through the history of this nation, and of Florida as well. Teaching schoolchildren and reminding everyone of their importance is a worthy endeavor. But such efforts should be comprehensive. Unfortunately, Florida’s latest attempt at recognition is not.

A bill predictably likely to pass the Florida Legislature calls for every October 14, Charlie Kirk’s birthday, to be a statewide “Day of Remembrance” — forever. A Senate committee already passed it on a party-line 5 to 2 vote, with only Sen. LaVon Bracy Davis, D-Orlando (herself the daughter of civil-rights activists) and Tina Polsky, D-Boca Raton, voting no.

They meant no offense — nor do we — to the humanity of Kirk, who was shot during a speech to university students in Utah three months ago. And it’s important to note that, while most people associated with the concept of civil rights won that recognition for defending and uplifting freedom, many of Kirk’s positions called for the curtailment of rights and the erasure of personal liberty.

Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of Turning Point USA, inspired many people with his conservative activism, but he alienated many others with his pointed attacks.

He denounced the assassinated Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as “awful,” and “not a good person.” He called the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a “huge mistake.” He said the pop star Taylor Swift should change her name if she marries her fiancé Travis Kelce, as a sign of submission to him. He said gun murders were an acceptable price to pay for the right to own them. And on and on.

Whatever his views, Kirk had every right to express them to anyone willing to listen. That’s the American way. But the Legislature should be mindful of how hurtful some of his views were.

It goes without saying that his murder was a crime to be deplored by everyone, not just his conservative admirers. But elevating him with an officially recognized annual commemoration while ignoring other heroes with legitimate ties to Florida makes no sense.

One obvious, and tragically overlooked, example comes from Central Florida. Harry T. Moore, a Florida civil rights pioneer, was murdered when a Ku Klux Klan bomb planted under his bedroom blew up his home in Mims on Christmas night 1951. His wife, Harriette, died of her injuries a few days later. As an NAACP field secretary, Moore campaigned successfully for Black teachers to be paid the same as whites and to register more Black voters in Florida than any other Southern state.

He initiated the long and ultimately successful movement to vindicate four Black men unjustly accused in the infamous 1949 Groveland rape case.

No one was ever convicted of the bombing, although a KKK member committed suicide after being questioned by the FBI. A federal indictment against others was dismissed for lack of jurisdiction.

The Moores are included in Florida social-studies curriculum, but too often go in unmentioned in the roll call of civil rights martyrs. They were left off the martyr’s memorial in Montgomery, Ala., because of an arbitrary definition of the Civil Rights Era as having begun with the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954. But they died for the cause just as certainly as anyone else did.

And if Florida wants to commemorate Kirk, who lacked significant ties to Florida, our nation’s history is replete with other examples of courage.

Andrew Goodman, James Earl Chaney and Michael Schwerner were the young civil rights volunteers kidnapped and murdered by the KKK in Mississippi in 1964 for trying to register Black voters. Eight men eventually got relatively light federal sentences for the killings. Forty-one years later, Mississippi convicted a chief perpetrator. He died in prison.

Medgar Evers was the Mississippi civil rights activist shot to death outside his home in 1963. It took until 1994 to convict his killer, who died in prison.

Harvey Milk, elected to San Francisco government on a platform that included human rights for same-sex couples, was assassinated on Nov. 27, 1978.

Those are only a few of many private citizens who paid with their lives for speaking out for what they believed.

Others include the abolitionist publisher Elijah Lovejoy and Joseph Smith, founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, who died at the hands of mobs in Illinois a century ago.
To commemorate only one such victim, as Senate Bill 194 and HB 125 do, is not appropriate. But at least it’s less inappropriate than legislation that aims to rename streets for Kirk at every Florida state college and university.

A Day of Remembrance should honor not one martyr, but many, and right-wing political views should not be a prerequisite.


The Orlando Sentinel Editorial Board includes Executive Editor Roger Simmons, Opinion Editor Krys Fluker and Viewpoints Editor Jay Reddick. The Sun Sentinel Editorial Board consists of Executive Editor Gretchen Day-Bryant, Editorial Page Editor Steve Bousquet, Deputy Editorial Page Editor Dan Sweeney and editorial writers Pat Beall and Martin Dyckman. Send letters to insight@orlandosentinel.com.
© 2025 Orlando Sentinel

Categories Florida

Jess Piper: Not That Kind of White

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2025 //
6

Jess Piper lives on a farm in rural Missouri. She taught American literature in high school for many years. She left teaching to run for the state legislature. She raised a goodly amount of money but lost. She has chastised the Democratic Party for abandoning large swaths of the country. In rural areas, most seats are uncontested. They are won by Republicans who have no opponents. She’s trying to change that and restore a two-party system.

As a former teacher, she is upset that so many students are miseducated about race and racism. She posted her views about that here.

She wrote:

I can’t tell you how many times I was asked the same question while teaching American Literature: 

“If there is a Black History Month, why isn’t there a White History Month?”

My usual response? Because every month is White History Month. History is written by the victors — and colonizers. Much of the American history and literature we learned for generations erased the contributions of marginalized groups. 

A strange fact is that much of the history and literature I learned in the South was written by the losers, not the victors. I learned an entirely incorrect version of history because my textbooks and curriculum were shaped by The Daughters of the Confederacy — I didn’t understand that until college.

That was purposeful. 

For a few decades, we have made a conscious effort to highlight the experiences of minority groups in curriculum — no such effort is required for the majority because their experience is always present.

I think it is incredibly important to teach rural kids the literature and history of marginalized groups. Many of my former students lived in White spaces with limited travel experiences. 

So, I applied for scholarships to learn what I had not been taught, and I traveled the country every summer to learn to be a better teacher. I studied slavery in New York and Mount Vernon and Atlanta and Charleston. 

My students had the advantage of learning the history I had never learned. I had the confidence to teach the hard truth.

You can imagine, after so many years teaching an inclusive curriculum, I am horrified daily by the naked White supremacy I see coming from the Trump regime and many Republicans in general. 

I have lived under a GOP supermajority for over two decades, and these lawmakers often slide into racism and try to cover their tracks by attacking the rest of us as being “woke” or “DEI warriors.” 

It is projection.

A moment I will never forget is when a Missouri Representative stood on the House floor and spoke on “Irish slavery” to dispute the suggestion that Black folks have no exclusive claim to slavery and that both Black and Irish slavery should be taught in Missouri schools. He obviously failed American History as he did not understand chattel slavery and that most Irish immigrants were indentured servants, not enslaved people. 

Indentured servitude is not an ideal situation, but it is not comparable to chattel slavery.

You know my infamous Senator Josh Hawley, who held up a fist on January 6, but you may not know my other Senator, Eric Schmitt, who is an open White supremacist. When comparing the two men, I am left to say Schmitt is even worse than his insurrectionist counterpart. Hawley is a Christian nationalist. Schmitt is both a Christian nationalist and a White supremacist.

In a speech titled “What Is an American,” Schmitt wrote:

America is not “a proposition” or a shared set of values, rather it is a country for White people descended from European settlers, whose accomplishments should not be diminished by acknowledging the people that some of them enslaved, the Native Americans they killed, or anyone else denied equal rights at the founding.

Schmitt went on to say that the real Americans are those who settled the country, denying both the people who lived here centuries before colonization and the Black people who were forced here on slave ships. 

I am horrified by the speech — Schmitt references Missouri so many times that I want to scream. He is reinforcing the White supremacy that I specifically taught my students to watch for…to listen for. To speak out against. 

Senator Schmitt even went so far as to make light of George Floyd’s killing. The entire speech had a “blood and soil” feel. It makes me sick. I am embarrassed to be his constituent.

I opened my news app yesterday to see that JD Vance gave a speech at the Turning Point USA Summit in which he said, “In the United States of America, you don’t have to apologize for being white anymore.” 

My God. I am so tired. And I am White. 

I can only imagine what it feels like to be a person of color in America and hear the daily racism. To feel racism. To exist in this country when our government is attacking Black and Brown folks. Disappearing them. Killing them.

So, I fight to elect people who do not espouse racist views and do not want to harm immigrants. 

But I also do work in my own family. My children and grandchildren are White. They deserve the truth of the country of their birth. They should know what the Trump regime is doing in the name of White supremacy. So, I teach them.

I took my teenage daughter to Charleston. We visited the regular sites, and then I took her to the sites of the enslaved who were shipped across the world to be enslaved for their labor. She saw the slave pen downtown. I took her to Fort Sumter, where she listened to a Park Ranger tell her the main reason for the Civil War. 

Slavery.

No, it wasn’t Northern Aggression — it was slavery. And if she ever has any doubt, she should read the South Carolina Declaration of Secession, which clearly states that the state broke from the union because of “An increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery.”

I took her for a walk to Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. The site of a brutal racist massacre. I explained what a White supremacist did to nine Black people who were praying in their own church…people who invited their murderer in with the love and compassion of their faith. 

He murdered them because of the color of their skin and because he didn’t understand history. He thought Black people were given preferential treatment in this country. He had a profound lack of understanding that led him to murder.

The Trump regime is pushing this misunderstanding of history onto another generation, and we can’t sit by while it happens. Teaching hard history to White people is the business of other White people. Teaching about racism should not fall on the marginalized groups who are the target of racism.

Racism is a White problem…not the other way around. 

It’s on people who look like me to do the hard work of challenging the naked White supremacy we see in our country. 

We know the lies. We have to teach the truth.

~Jess

Categories Bigotry, Curriculum, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, History, Missouri, Propaganda, Racism

Thom Hartmann: Trump Called His Critics “Scum.” I Am Not Scum. Are You?

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2025 //
11

The day after Christmas, we invited our new neighbors to come over for a drink. Over Christmas cheer, we chatted about mundane things. Then, inevitably, the talk turned to our president. We quickly ascertained that we were likeminded and began comparing notes on his appointments, his policies, and his cruelty. I pointed out that his last “Christmas message” referred to his critics as “radical left scum.” We agreed that this reprehensible and that vulgar language degraded public discourse. What kind of a model did he set for our children? He sounded like a mob boss, not the President of the United States.

That night, I was happy to see that the brilliant journalist Thom Hartmann was as troubled by his coarse language as we were.

Thom wrote:

Yesterday, on Christmas of all days, Donald Trump chose to call Democrats “scum.” Not criminals. Not misguided. Not wrong. Scum. A word we usually reserve for things we scrape off the bottom of a shoe or skim off polluted water. A word whose entire purpose is to dehumanize.

That moment matters far beyond the day’s news cycle, and far beyond partisan politics. It matters because leaders don’t just govern; they model. 

Psychologists and social and political scientists have long pointed out that national leaders function, at a deep emotional level, as parental figures for their nations. They set the boundaries of what is acceptable. They establish norms. They shape the emotional climate children grow up breathing.

America has lived through this before, both for good and, now, for ill.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this instinctively. In the depths of the Great Depression and the terror of World War II, he spoke to the country as a calm, steady parent. His fireside chats didn’t just convey policy; they conveyed reassurance, dignity, and solidarity. 

He treated Americans as adults capable of courage and sacrifice. He named fear without exploiting it. The result was not weakness, but national resilience. 

A generation raised under that moral tone went on to build the modern middle class, defeat fascism, and help construct a postwar world that valued democracy, human rights, and shared prosperity.

Contrast that with the bigoted, hateful, revenge-filled claptrap children have heard for the past decade from the emotionally stunted psychopath currently occupying the White House. Hours after calling you and me “scum,” he put up another post calling us “sleazebags.”

How presidential.

Presidents like Eisenhower warned Americans about the dangers of concentrated power and the military-industrial complex, modeling restraint and foresight. 

Kennedy appealed to service, famously asking what we could do for our country. Johnson, for all his flaws, used the moral authority of the presidency to push civil rights forward, telling America that discrimination was not just illegal but wrong. 

Even Reagan, whose policies I fiercely opposed, spoke a language of civic belonging and optimism rather than open dehumanization.

Go back further, to the Founders themselves, and George Washington warned against factional hatred and the corrosive effects of treating political opponents as enemies rather than fellow citizens. 

John Adams argued that a republic could only survive if it was grounded in virtue and moral responsibility. Thomas Jefferson wrote that every generation must renew its commitment to liberty, not surrender it to demagogues who feed on division.

They all understood something Trump doesn’t, or is so obsessively wrapped up in himself and his own infantile grievances that he doesn’t care about: the psychological power of example.

Donald Trump has spent ten years modeling for America the exact opposite of leadership. 

Ten years of cruelty framed as strength. 

Ten years of mockery, insults, and grievance elevated to the highest office in the land. 

Ten years of praising strongmen, including Putin, Xi, and Orbán, while attacking democratic institutions. 

Ten years of targeting Hispanics, Black Somali immigrants, demonizing refugees, and encouraging suspicion and hatred toward entire communities. 

And now he’s giving us the example of using ICE not simply as a law enforcement agency, but as a masked, armed, unaccountable weapon of state terror aimed not only at brown-skinned families, but at journalists, clergy, lawyers, and anyone else who dares to document their abuse.

Kids graduating from high school this year have never known anything else. That fact should alarm every parent.

Children learn what leadership looks like long before they understand policy debates. They absorb emotional cues, and notice who gets rewarded and who gets punished. 

When a president calls fellow Americans “scum” and suffers no consequences, the lesson is clear: cruelty is permissible if you have power. Empathy is expendable. Democracy is a nuisance. Accountability is optional.

This is how normalization works. What once would have been unthinkable becomes routine. The outrage dulls. The abnormal becomes background noise. And a generation grows up believing this is simply how adults in authority behave.

History tells us where that road leads: dehumanizing language precedes dehumanizing actions. 

Every authoritarian movement begins by teaching people to see their neighbors as less than fully human. Once empathy vanishes, abuses become easier to justify, and violence becomes easier to excuse.

That’s why we all — parents, grandparents, and citizens — have a special responsibility right now.

We can’t assume our nation’s children will automatically recognize how dangerous and abnormal this moment is; instead, we have to name it for them. 

We have to tell them, plainly and repeatedly, that this is not what healthy leadership looks like. 

That calling people “scum” and “sleazebags” is not strength. That praising autocrats while undermining democracy is not patriotism. That power without empathy is not leadership; it’s merely a simple pathology known as psychopathy.

And we must model something better ourselves.

Disagree without dehumanizing. Stand up without tearing others down. Teach that democracy, in order to work, depends on mutual recognition of one another’s humanity. 

Remind our kids that America has, in its best moments, been led by people who understood their role as moral examples, not just political operators. 

And that when CBS, Fox “News,” the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, Facebook, X, and other billionaire-owned rightwing media and social media pretend this is normal, they’re spitting on the graves of our Founders and participating in a gross violation of the basic norms of human decency.

Trump’s Christmas message wasn’t just offensive. It was a warning. 

The future lays before us now, and if we care about the country our children will inherit, we can’t let this moral vandalism to go unanswered.

Categories Character, Language, Trump

Performers Protest Name Change at Kennedy Center by Cancelling

By dianeravitch
December 30, 2025 //
5

Trump’s brazen appropriation of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts was shocking. Its board has been bipartisan since its opening more than fifty years ago. Trump fired the board members named by Biden, replaced them with his loyal allies, named himself chairman of the board, then was shocked, shocked, when the board decided to put his name on the Center, now the Donald J. Trump & John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. The logo was designed before the vote.

The name-change was disrespectful of President Kennedy and typically self-aggrandizing for Trump.

The Center was first conceived as a “national cultural center” in 1955 during the Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1964, Congress named the Center as a living tribute to the assassinated President Kennedy, who was a lover of the arts and who helped raise money for the new Center. Only Congress can change its name.

It opened on September 9, 1971, with Leonard Bernstein’s controversial MASS, commissioned by Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Read its history here. The MASS was both anti-war and anti-establishment and was a mixture of styles and genres.

In Trump’s many years as a resident of New York City, he never showed any interest in the arts.

Two performers who were scheduled to appear at the Kennedy Center recently canceled their appearances. (Many others had previously canceled after Trump’s takeover, including the blockbuster show HAMILTON, which was supposed to run from March 3 to April 26, 2026.)

One was Chuck Redd, a musician, who had been host of the Center’s annual Christmas Eve Jazz Concert for nearly two decades. Redd objected to the name change and canceled his appearance, which canceled the event as well.

Richard Grennell, Trump’s choice to be president of the Center, sent a letter to Redd informing him that the Center would be suing him for $1 million.

Adele M. Stan wrote in The New Republic:

The grounds for the suit aren’t entirely clear. The thing is, the Kennedy Center lost zero dollars due to Redd’s cancellation; it was a free concert. The only people who lost money due to vibrophonist’s protest were Redd and likely the musicians who were scheduled to perform with him. And, of course, one could argue that Redd’s move actually saved the Kennedy Center money, on staff and heating and the like.

But that didn’t stop Kennedy Center president Richard Grenell from either lying about that or displaying ignorance in his letter threatening Redd: “Your dismal ticket sales and lack of donor support, combined with your last-minute cancellation has cost us considerably,” Grenell wrote to Redd in an undated letter released on December 26. “This is your official notice that we will seek $1 million in damages from you for this political stunt.”

How one has “dismal ticket sales” for a free concert is never explained. However, the Washington Post reports that sales for tickets that cost actual money, such as those for the National Symphony Orchestra or the ballet, have plummeted since Grenell took over the Kennedy Center, reaching their lowest levels since the pandemic.

A second performer who took umbrage at the politicization of the Kennedy Center was a country singer from Mobile, Alabama, named Kristy Lee.

You may or may not have heard of her (count me among the not), but she sure nailed it.

The Daily Beast reported:

The artist who pulled out of a performance at the Kennedy Center after Donald Trump slapped his name on the storied arts institution is being lauded by fans for her decision.

Kristy Lee, a folk singer from Mobile, Alabama, told fans in a statement that she couldn’t “sleep at night” if she went through with her performance at the former John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, which was scheduled for Jan. 14.

“When American history starts getting treated like something you can ban, erase, rename, or rebrand for somebody else’s ego, I can’t stand on that stage and sleep right at night,” Lee shared with her 42,000 Facebook followers on Monday.

As of publication, the independent folk singer received nearly 300,000 likes on her Facebook post, compared to her 42,000 followers. 

Her cancellation came after the White House announced Thursday that the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts would be renamed to include Trump’s name following a vote by the venue’s board, which is now stacked with MAGA loyalists.

“I won’t lie to you, canceling shows hurts. This is how I keep the lights on,” the independent artist wrote. “But losing my integrity would cost me more than any paycheck.”

After Lee made headlines for pulling out of the show, she said she was flooded with messages of support—and even monetary donations. The singer later announced she would perform a live show from home in response to the outpouring of love.”I believe in the power of truth, and I believe in the power of people,” Lee wrote on Facebook. Chad Edwards/Courtesy of Kristy Lee/Chad Edwards 

“I want to thank everyone who’s reached out, and especially those who sent a surprise Venmo,” she wrote. “That kind of kindness keeps gas in the tank and songs on the road, and I don’t take it lightly.”

A spokesperson for Lee told The Daily Beast that the singer cited “institutional integrity” as her primary reason for canceling her performance at the venue, where ticket sales have reportedly plummeted since Trump’s takeover.

“As an artist, Kristy believes publicly funded cultural spaces must remain free from political capture, self-promotion, or ideological pressure,” the spokesperson said, adding that her decision was not directed at any patrons, staff, or artists at the Center. 

“Performing under these circumstances would conflict with the values of artistic freedom, public trust, and constitutional principles that the Kennedy Center was created to uphold.”

Trump set his sights on the Center months ago and has repeatedly suggested, both in speeches and on social media, that it be renamed the Trump-Kennedy Center. The board now includes White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Attorney General Pam Bondi, second lady Usha Vance, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Dan Scavino, and Allison Lutnick, the wife of Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.

A source told CNN that Trump phoned into Thursday’s board meeting ahead of the vote. A day later, the president’s name was swiftly and conspicuously added to the building, which now reads: “The Donald J. Trump and The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.”

The Daily Beast has reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment.

Redd and Lee are the latest to cancel. Ticket sales have plummeted since Trump took control of the Kennedy Center in February.

The Washington Post reported:

In the weeks after the February board changes, at least 20 productions were canceled or postponed, with names such as comedian and actor Issa Rae pulling out of planned performances at the center, and musical artist Ben Folds and opera singer Renée Fleming saying they were stepping down as artistic advisers.

One of the plays that canceled a run in 2026 was the wildly popular HAMILTON.

Categories Accountability, Art, Censorship, Trump

Trump Salutes Putin’s Commitment to Peace as Zelensky Arrives in Mar-a-Lago

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2025 //
14

Trump had a phone call with Putin before Zelensky arrived to confer with Trump about a peace plan. Trump spoke to Putin for two hours before Zelensky arrived.

When Zelensky’s airplane landed, no American was there to greet him, only Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.S. This contrasted with Trump’s warm welcome for Putin when they met in Alaska. Trump had Marines on their knees unfurling a red carpet for Putin, and Trump waited for Putin on the tarmac, greeting him with the joy of a boy for his beloved father.

The meeting takes place as Russia has stepped up the intensity of its nightly bombing of Ukrainian cities, with more drones and missiles than at any time since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Trump apparently believes that Russia wants peace, even as they daily target residential apartment buildings and power plants in Ukraine.

Trump and Putin are dear friends. Or, more likely, Putin plays Trump like a violin, praising him lavishly and inflating his giant ego.

I’m sorry to say it but Zelensky is wasting his time by counting on Trump. Trump has thus far asked Zelensky to accept “peace” on Putin’s terms. The U.S. is not Ukraine’s ally. He should rely on Europe because they don’t want the aggressor to prevail.

Simon Rosenberg of Hopium Chronicles wrote:

Trump and Zelensky had a press conference where both sides committed to keep working. Throughout the run up and the event today Trump and his team continued to repeat outlandish Russian talking points….

Listen to Trump here. The man negotiating the fate of the West is clearly unwell and delusional. Trump: “It’s funny, I settled 8 wars. Some were going on for 35 years. And we got them settled in a couple of days. Some of them — one was going on for 37 years. I settled it in one day. But this is a very complex one” (Via Aaron Rupar)

Listen to Trump here. The man negotiating the fate of the West is clearly unwell and delusional. Catch Zelenskyy’s facial expressions when Trump claims Putin wants Ukraine to succeed and is willing to help with reconstruction: 

Here’s that question again with a close up on Zelenskyy: 

Categories Democracy, International, Trump

Jan Resseger: Is the Era of Civil Rights Enforcement Ending?

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2025 //
4

Jan Resseger is a wonderful woman who spent most of her career advocating for social justice on behalf of the United Church of Christ. She is now retired but she never stops caring and acting. Here she summarizes the Trump administration’s accelerated retreat from enforcing civil rights laws.

One hint about Trump’s view of civil rights was his appointment of Harmeet K. Dhillon to lead the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Dhillon is a prominent opponent of civil rights and has litigated many cases to oppose policies that she believes are unfair to white men.

She wrote recently:

Nothing, except growing tariffs and the failure to mitigate the damage of the wars in Gaza and the Ukraine, has defined Donald Trump’s second term more than the administration’s attempt to undermine civil rights protection for students and educators in our nation’s 13,000 public school districts and the nation’s colleges and universities.

We watched an attack on Maine’s public schools where trans students compete in women’s sports. We watched the Department of Education withhold funds from the Chicago Public Schools because the district has a Black student student success plan that promotes what the Trump administration considers the dangerous principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion. And just this week, Education Week reported that the Department of Education is cancelling many grants for Full Service Community Schools and the Promise Neighborhoods program where funds are being spent on services the Trump administration believes promote diversity, equity, and inclusion. Many of the Department of Education’s efforts to curtail the protection of the civil rights of historically marginalized groups of students have been temporarily stayed by Federal District Courts, but a lot of these cases linger in temporary, local decisions without any legal resolution.

Some colleges and universities have felt enough pressure that they’ve signed agreements to share with the federal government admissions information including high school grades, test scores and family income of all applicants to prove they are not selecting their students based on proxy data that substitutes for race-based affirmative action. Others have lost federal research grants as a punishment for maintaining programs and policies the Trump administration believes promote diversity, equity, and inclusion and thereby discriminate against the white majority.

Is there any chance the Trump administration’s effort to stamp out civil rights will wind down in 2026?  Here are three events in December that indicate the attacks are likely to continue.

The Trump administration just ended the disparate impact test in civil rights enforcement.  For years the federal government has held schools accountable when data proves, for example, their discipline systems are discriminatory by race or ethnicity or disability status. Evidence of disparate impact has been used for decades to protect students and others from discrimination in institutions that receive government funding including education, law enforcement and fair housing. But that ended abruptly on Wednesday, December 9.

The Washington Post‘s Laura Meckler reported: “(T)he Justice Department moved Tuesday to kill a decades-old provision of civil rights law that allows statistical disparities to be used as proof of racial discrimination. The new regulations reinterpret a key plank of the Civil Rights Act and were issued without an opportunity for public comment, which is unusual for major regulatory action… Conservatives have long argued that proving discrimination should require proof that someone intended to treat people differently. And they say that when people are being judged by data, they feel pressure to make decisions based on racial quotas. In that way, the Trump administration argues, a policy meant to fight discrimination is actually fostering it… Supporters of disparate impact analysis say it is a critical tool because finding ‘smoking gun’ evidence to prove someone intended to discriminate is difficult.” Meckler notes that the way the new guidance was immediately implemented breaks federal precedent: “Federal agencies typically would allow time for public comment before publishing a final rule like this.”

Politico adds that Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump Justice Department’s Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, provided her particular justification for stamping out the disparate impact test: “Harmeet Dhillon, DOJ’s civil rights chief, highlighted that the rule change will lead to fewer civil rights lawsuits…. The prior ‘disparate impact’ regulations encouraged people to file lawsuits challenging racially neutral policies, without evidence of intentional discrimination… Our rejection of this theory will restore true equality under the law by requiring proof of actual discrimination, rather than enforcing race- or sex-based quotas or assumptions.”

By contrast, last spring when President Trump released an executive order trying to end “disparate impact,” the NY Times Erica Green considered disparate impact’s role in the history of enforcement of the Civil Rights Act: “The disparate impact test has been crucial to enforcing key portions of the landmark Civil Rights Act, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on race, color or national origin. For decades, it has been relied upon by the government and attorneys to root out discrimination in areas of employment, housing, policing, education and more. Civil rights prosecutors say the disparate-impact test is one of their most important tools for uncovering discrimination because it shows how a seemingly neutral policy or law has different outcomes for different demographic groups, revealing inequities.”

Trump’s DOJ just sued Minneapolis Public Schools to end the district’s effort to increase the number of teachers of color.  The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s Anthony Lonetree reported last week: “The U.S. Department of Justice has filed suit against Minneapolis Public Schools, accusing the state’s third-largest district of providing discriminatory protections to teachers of color in layoff and reassignment decisions.  The lawsuit… marks the latest salvo against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—in this case, the district’s efforts to bolster its minority teaching ranks. At issue is a contract agreement with educators that includes language shielding teachers of color from ‘last-in, first-out’ layoff practices and prioritizing the hiring of Black male educators at a north Minneapolis elementary school.”

Lonetree quotes Attorney General Pam Bondi justifying the lawsuit: “Discrimination is unacceptable in all forms especially when it comes to hiring decisions… Our public education system in Minnesota and across the country must be a bastion of merit and equal opportunity—not DEI.”  Here are words from DOJ’s lawsuit itself: “While defendants claim that these provisions are to stop discrimination, they require defendants to blatantly discriminate against teachers based on their race, color, sex, and national origin.”

Lonetree explains the purpose of the school district’s hiring policy: “Students of color comprise nearly two-thirds of the district’s total student population, and Minneapolis Public Schools, like many districts around the state, has sought to place teachers whom students can relate to and aspire to be like.”

Is the Trump Department of Education making the Office for Civil Rights viable again? Will the December 5th recall of furloughed staff help families who have filed civil rights complaints?  After a year of massive layoffs and the closure of seven of the twelve regional offices of the Office for Civil Rights, for CNN last week, Sunlen Serfaty described what might have seemed like exciting news: “Beleaguered employees in the civil rights office got what they thought was welcome news last week. The Department of Education informed employees who had been terminated earlier this year, then placed on administrative leave in an ongoing court battle, that they are to return to work later this month. The email to about 250 employees noted they are needed to address the existing caseload.”

However, in the details in the Department of Education’s December 5th recall notice, there are some serious questions about what is happening: For the Associated Press, Collin Binkley explains: “The Trump administration is bringing back dozens of Education Department staffers who were slated to be laid off, saying their help is needed to tackle a mounting backlog of discrimination complaints from students and families. The staffers had been on administrative leave while the department faced lawsuits challenging layoffs in the agency’s Office for Civil Rights, which investigates possible discrimination in the nation’s schools and colleges. But in a Friday (December 5) letter, department officials ordered the workers back to duty starting Dec. 15 to help clear civil rights cases.”  (The emphasis is mine.)

And K-12 Dive‘s Anna Merod quotes Julie Hartman, the Office for Civil Rights’ press secretary for legal affairs emphasizing “in a Dec. 8 email that… (the agency) is  temporarily bringing back OCR staff from administrative leave starting Dec. 15.” (The emphasis is mine.)

Let’s be clear. The Office for Civil Rights has never enforced the 1964 Civil Rights Act merely by charging school districts with violations, getting court orders that school district staff be fired, or imposing fines. OCR’s staff have been known for decades to work with school district teachers, counselors and administrators to develop programs and policies ensuring that children’s civil rights are no longer violated.

There is currently a serious problem at the Office for Civil Rights because all year while more than half the agency’s staff have been laid off, a huge backlog of uninvestigated complaints has built up. Reporters confirm that 2,500 complaints await investigation. NPR’s Cory Turner reports: “(P)ublic data show that OCR has reached resolution agreements in 73 cases involving alleged disability discrimination. Compare that to 2024, when OCR resolved 390, or 2017, the year Trump took office during his first term, when OCR reached agreements in more than 1,000 cases.”  CNN‘s Serfaty adds that this year  OCR has been “dismissing cases at an increasing pace, court documents reveal. About 7,000 cases have been dismissed under the Trump administration—hundreds more than in the same period last year under Biden.”

All this makes one question whether the furloughed staff are really being recalled to work with school districts to overcome the issues that have stimulated 2,500 complaints filed by families. Kimberly Richey emphasized that the recall of staff on leave is temporary, that the e-mail to staff emphasized the need to clear the backlog of complaints.  What percentage of the complaints processed by returning staff will be pursued with efforts to mitigate civil rights problems, and what percentage will be merely dismissed without further work?

There are additional questions about how utterly temporary the recall of staff might actually be. It is important to recall that Congress passed a continuing resolution to end the October government shutdown and also to delay the massive staff firings launched during the shutdown  by Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought.  That continuing resolution ends on January 30, 2026.  Are staff at OCR being recalled to work from December 15, 2025 only until January 30, 2026, when they will be permanently terminated?

The future of civil rights enforcement by the Trump administration continues to look bleak. Will the OCR be shut down? Will its work be shunted to the Department of Justice as Linda McMahon continues to dismantle the Department of Education?  The Trump administration has persisted in abandoning what have been—for 71 years since Brown v. Board of Education—historic efforts to expand educational opportunity for groups of children who were historically marginalized.  As 2025 ends, the attack on academic freedom and civil rights does not seem to be winding down.

Categories Education Reform

After Demolishing East Wing of White House, Trump Will Seek Approval from Agencies He Controls

By dianeravitch
December 29, 2025 //
9

The National Trust for Historic Preservation, a private nonprofit tasked by Congress with helping preserve historical buildings, sued the Trump administration for tearing down the East Wing of the White House and asked a federal judge for an emergency stop-work order. The judge did not stop work on the new ballroom, but he did order the White House to get approval from the necessary agencies.

In his eagerness to build his gigantic ballroom, Trump bypassed the normal review process for making changes to a historic building.

Trump knew that if he went through the legally-required process, it would take years to get the necessary approvals, and some busybody preservationists might tell him to scale back his grand plans. The new ballroom–at 95,000 square feet– will be almost double the size of the entire White House–which is 55,000 square feet.

So he followed his personal motto: “Stop me if you can.”

Without asking permission he demolished the East Wing. It is gone, finished.

Now he will take his plans to the National Capital Planning Commission, which will hold hearings starting January 8.

Ordinarily, the NCPC review is rigorous and involves multiple hearings before a shovel touches the ground, reviewing esthetic and environmental issues.Trump expects to get done in a few months what customarily takes years of review before any work begins.

The 12-member NCPC will not pose a problem. The Washington Post reported:

The NCPC is led by Will Scharf, the White House staff secretary and Trump’s former personal lawyer, whom the president appointed as commission chair in July, and its members tilt toward Trump. The president appointed two other White House officials to the body, and the commission also includes nine seats apportioned to sitting Cabinet secretaries and other local and federal officials.

Trump’s grandiose plan must also win the approval of the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts. That should not be a problem either, because in October, Trump fired all six members of the Commission. That Conmission (if Trump has appointed new members) will review the proposed ballroom that will replace the East Wing and also Trump’s plan to build an Arc d’Trump.

It’s clear sailing with no dissents anticipated.

Categories Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Trump

Cruelty is not Part of the Christmas Spirit

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2025 //
49

Trump promised to deport “the worst of the worst” when he campaigned for re-election. But everyone has seen that zealous ICE agents most of those arrested and deported have no criminal records. Most are hard-working immigrants who want to be good citizens. But there is no legal path to citizenship. Stephen Miller wants to rid the nation of all immigrants, especially if they have brown skin, no matter how exemplary their life has been.

The leadership of our country has initiated one of the darkest moments in American history.

What country is this?

Categories Ethics, Immigration

Heritage Foundation Staffers Resign to Join Pence

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2025 //
7

This is an important development. Our nation needs at least two sensible political parties. A two-party system with vigorous third parties is healthy for our democracy.

When one of our two major parties is captured by an extremists cult, it’s a very bad sign. When that cult revels in cutting ties with our historic allies, in brutalizing immigrants and even citizens who look like immigrants (brown skin color), in sending troops to American cities, in killing people on boats that might or might not be transporting drugs instead interdicting them, in abandoning civil rights laws, and in treating the president as a king to be obeyed and worshipped, that cult is not a normal participant in American politics because it is not bound by the Constitution.

Thus, in my opinion, it is very good news that sane conservatives are abandoning the Heritage Foundation–whose leader was the architect of Project 2025–and joining forces with Mike Pence.

Pence is a conservative through and through, and I disagree with him on most issues. But in 2020, he refused Trump’s direct order to join the insurrection by refusing to certify Biden’s election. Pence certified Biden’s election and was reviled by MAGA for following the Constitution, not Trump. They chanted “Hang Mike Pence” on January 6, 2021, and even built a scaffold outside the U.S. Capitol. Trump shrugged with indifference, and the mob searched for Pence.

Politico wrote about the splintering at the Heritage Foundation.

More than a dozen staffers at The Heritage Foundation are leaving the conservative think tank to join a nonprofit led by former Vice President Mike Pence as the embattled organization continues to reel from ongoing turmoil.

Advancing American Freedom — founded by Pence in 2021 “to defend liberty and advance policies that build a stronger America” — announced Monday that three senior officials who led the legal, economic and data teams at Heritage would be joining the group next year, along with several members of their teams.

This is good news for the conservative Republican Party and good news for our democracy. Genuine conservatives can’t abide the extremism of MAGA.

I’ll be watching to see what Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger do in the future.

Categories Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Pence, Republicans, Trump

What Should Mayor Mamdani Do to Improve NYC’s Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
December 26, 2025 //
16

Bob Lubetsky and Bill Stroud are veteran leaders of the New York City public schools. They have sound advice for incoming Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The new Mayor will be sworn in on January 1. He promised, during his campaign, to eliminate the autocratic mayoral control imposed in 2002. Will he?

They wrote:

Zohran Mamdani’s election as Mayor of NYC represents a new way of thinking about New York City’s life and  its inhabitants, as well as the policies a candidate should represent to achieve office. In short, Mr. Mamdani has disrupted and dislocated all of the tried and true shibboleths of politics: a Muslim can’t be elected in a heavily populated Jewish city; a democratic socialist will be opposed by the monied interests who will  support other candidates and, most damning of all, the claim that he must be a closet communist. Zohran has proven his opponents wrong on all counts!  There is much to be learned – not only for politicians – but for all who must choose between continuity or disruption, between challenging orthodoxy and change. 

 The New York City Department of Education has been mired, for as long as anyone can remember, in a hierarchical framework that assumes greater intelligence and ability resides in those at the top of an organization. Although there was a period of improvement in high school graduation rates with the small schools movement, such a bureaucratic structure has demonstrated over and over again that it is incapable of igniting enthusiasm from teachers nor the continuous advancement of student achievement. 

Given Mayor Mamdani’s campaign focus on democracy, the appointment of a Chancellor will be an indication of commitment. The campaign of Mayor Mamdani has disrupted and challenged our beliefs about what can be accomplished. 

 It is time to disrupt the structure of the DoE and reinvest teaching with the excitement and energy that comes from schools dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge and the development of students’ potential to be powerful citizens. The Department of Education can identify pockets of outstanding schools in every part of New York City. What it is not able to accomplish is to excite the public about what is happening in all of its 1800 schools, whether pre-K, elementary, junior high or high school. The time is right for a reorganization capitalizing on the era that has put to lie the beliefs and assumptions of those who believe improvement will occur when we get just the right individuals at the top to lead a fiercely bureaucratic organization – that what we need is the right kind of smart, capable people.

The mayoral election has both excited the voters and put to rest many of the tired ideas of what is possible (more than 2 million votes were cast in the Mayoral election, more than any time since 1969!) We believe that the time is now for creating a government that seeks to better meet the needs and desires that are different from past administrations.

Disruption and not continuity must become the modus operandi of the new administration.  It is time to dismantle the old bureaucracy and develop more democratic structures and methods of decision-making. Those closest to the work should have the ability to make decisions based on high quality evidence gleaned from accomplished educators and the research community. The command and control structure that dominates the NYCDOE needs to be put to rest.

 Both of us have worked as educators outside the US and have led schools in NYC and been central office administrators.  We have seen up close the consequences of a hierarchical educational structure and have supported schools within highly bureaucratized and closely monitored educational systems.  

It is clear to us that control is often illusory and always inimical to innovation.  In a school system that has achieved recognition not for its accomplishments but because it is among the most segregated school systems in the US, which currently has 150,000 homeless students, essentially flat NAEP scores over nearly 50 years, a disillusioned teaching staff, a host of alienated and disaffected students and parents, and a wide swath of special education students whose basic educational needs have not been addressed, NYC requires something new and different. A reinvigorated Department of Education whose disruption will help educators focus on the real work of education, which is, as Socrates wrote long ago—”the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”

Disruption aimed at reinvigorating teaching with the energy and enthusiasm that brought wide-eyed, devoted young people into the teaching profession can return excitement to the profession and to the classroom.  Once again education will echo the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.”  What disruptive framework will inform and guide the next Chancellor so as not to disappoint yet again? 

 Considering what recommendations we would offer to Mayor Mamdani as he considers whom to appoint as the new NYC public schools Chancellor, we would seek a candidate who believes in the following 5 Core Ideas and can begin the planning/implementation process on day one. These ideas and their implementation needs to be carefully planned and implemented so that they stimulate considered discussion within the Department focused on how to implement the five specific strategies identified below. 

1.   Deepening and Strengthening Democracy, one of the guiding principles of the Democratic Socialist Party of America, but also a foundational principle of countries that identify themselves as democratic.  If democracy is truly to guide our behavior, then democracy should be evident inside the central office and throughout the system, most especially in the institution in which students and their teachers spend most of their waking hours.  The specific structures and nature of these relationships and practices need to be worked out in each school, but the overall guiding principle must be the inclusion of all in the school community and the classroom, and the specific role that each will play in achieving the goal of deepening and strengthening democracy at the school level.  Democracy should also characterize relationships throughout the system and structure of the Department of Education.  The old command and control model of decision-making needs to be put to rest, finally.

2. Invert the Pyramid of decision-making so that decisions are made by those closest to the work. Classroom teachers must be at the core of decisions about what occurs in the classroom. No longer should institution-wide formulas apply to all classrooms and schools, as decision making regarding teaching methodologies and curriculum will reside with teachers. All resources must be directed towards supporting students and the classroom teacher. The goal of all those involved in supporting and assisting teachers must be to provide assistance and useful, timely research information to support classroom decisions, including recognizing state mandates, as well as learning about the latest research findings relevant to classroom instruction and school organization.

3. Decentralize the NYC Department of Education and establish a Zone of Innovation. The current central office staff of more than 2,000 needs to be reduced and repurposed to support school-level decisions. Schools should be organized into Zones of Innovation consisting of 20 schools. Membership would be by application, (with approval by the school community,) and would receive a financial incentive to support efforts at meeting the democratically developed goals for each school. Each 20 schools would continue to be supported by already existing structures, but over time, these structures would be modified so as to be more aligned with a vision of all schools becoming part of a Zone of Innovation. Membership in the Zone would be phased in over time with the specific determinants of membership to be determined.

4. Dissemination of Innovation through a new Division of Research & Innovation. A new Division of Research & Innovation would be formed for the purpose of identifying best practices and new research findings (preK-12) identified to support the work of schools. Learnings from these experiences would be disseminated through a system-wide structure that would advertise such innovations and seek feedback. The fact that the largest school system in the US does not have an effective research division is an embarrassment.

5. Portfolio Assessment would become the preferred assessment model. Assessment of students, in order to be valid, needs to be curriculum based. Such an approach would allow schools and teachers to recapture the original meaning of Assessment, a word derived from the Latin Assidere meaning to “sit beside.” Standardized tests need to be deprioritized to rethink curricula and testing as a form of pedagogy, thereby reducing the pressure that comes with these Assessments so that the original meaning can be recaptured as teachers sit with students to learn and explore together. The research findings on the impact of a student’s socio-economic background on paper and pencil test scores is clear (see for instance “The Pernicious Predictability of State Mandated Tests of Academic Achievement in the United States.” https//doi.org/19.3390/educsci14020129). Among the alternatives to test based accountability –The New York Performance Standards Consortium (https://performanceassessment.org ) has permission to administer only one Regents exam for its 38 member schools – English – and to use Performance Based assessment in all the other Regents tested areas; the assessment system used by the International Baccalaureate Schools is another performance based system. There are numerous other examples worth investigating.   

New York City’s embedded and seemingly intractable educational issues – the hyper segregation of schools, the embarrassingly awful services provided to students with special needs; the abandonment of child-centered teaching in favor of teacher dominated strategies that have little or no research basis; the decontextualized pursuit of facts rather than the more difficult and potentially contentious issue of promoting understanding; structures and pedagogy that better meets the needs of our other-than-English speaking students; the substitution of a narrow form of vocational education as a solution to our current economic crisis and rising youth unemployment, to name but a few – can successfully be addressed with the restructuring and repurposing of the DOE. 

What we have outlined is but a beginning. The dawning of a new day will begin when Mayor Mamdani takes office but must be reflected in how the institutions under his control are organized, how they interact with others, whether they promote change or tinkering at the edges, and whether they truly are democratic.  The early signs point to a very different way of organizing and thinking about the work of governing New York City.  We are hopeful that the ideas presented herein will stimulate discussion and reconsideration of how the NYC Department of Education can become a beacon of light and hope for all of New York City and perhaps beyond its borders.  

-Bob Lubetsky 

-Bill Stroud

Bob Lubetsky is a former teacher and high school principal who led a NYC alternative school that has been replicated throughout Europe.  He previously worked as a central office administrator for the NYC Department of Education and also has experience as a teacher and staff developer in Europe and Africa.  He has also worked at the NYC Leadership Academy and was previously Program Director of the Educational Leadership Program at CCNY.

Bill Stroud is a former teacher who founded two high schools in New York City and was a central office administrator.  He has been a staff developer in 6 countries outside the US where he is much sought after as a staff developer because of his experience. 

Categories Democracy, Education Reform, Innovation, New York City
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