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SCOTUS, Explained is a newsletter written by senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Check out more developments on the United States Supreme Court on our site.

Friends,

We just wrapped up another busy sitting at the Supreme Court — this week, the Court looks very likely to give another big win to religious employers, and maybe a little less likely to blow up Medicaid in order to spite Planned Parenthood.

But, rather than send you my write-ups of those two arguments, I will invite you instead to consider that it is unwise for Trump to target John, Brett, and Amy’s friends and law school classmates.

—Ian

Trump’s single most arrogant action

All nine of the Supreme Court justices are lawyers. All of them have friends and law school classmates in private practice. All of them sit at the apex of a legal system that depends on lawyers to brief judges on the matters those judges must decide. Many of them were themselves litigators at large law firms, where their livelihood depended on their ability to advocate for their clients without fear of personal reprisals.

So it’s hard to imagine a presidential action that is more likely to antagonize the justices President Donald Trump needs to uphold his agenda, not to mention every other federal judge who isn’t already in the tank for MAGA, than a series of executive orders Trump has recently issued. These actions aim to punish law firms that previously represented Democrats or clients opposed to Trump.

The lawyers targeted by these orders are the justices’ friends, classmates, and colleagues. It would likely be easy for, say, Chief Justice John Roberts or Justice Brett Kavanaugh to empathize with law partners who do the exact same work they once did.

The striking thing about all the law firm executive orders is that they barely even attempt to justify Trump’s decision with a legitimate explanation for why these orders are lawful.

The order targeting law firm Perkins Coie attacks the firm for “representing failed Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton” in its second sentence. The order targeting WilmerHale accuses it of engaging “in obvious partisan representations to achieve political ends,” as if Democrats do not have the same right to hire lawyers who advocate on their behalf that everyone else does.

The order targeting Jenner & Block justifies that attack because the firm once hired Andrew Weissmann, a prominent television legal commentator who, in the executive order’s words, engaged “in partisan prosecution as part of Robert Mueller’s entirely unjustified investigation” into Trump. Weissmann left Jenner in 2021.

The sanctions laid out in these orders, moreover, are extraordinary. They attempt to bar the firms’ attorneys and staff from federal buildings, preventing lawyers representing criminal defendants from engaging in plea bargaining with federal prosecutors — and potentially preventing lawyers who practice before federal agencies from appearing before those agencies at all. They also seek to strip security clearances from the firm’s lawyers, and to strip federal contracts from companies that employ the targeted law firms.

It’s hard to think of a precedent for this kind of sweeping attack on a business that did some work for a president’s political opponents. During the second Bush administration, a political appointee in the Defense Department criticized lawyers who represent Guantánamo Bay detainees and suggested that their firms’ clients should look elsewhere for legal representation. But that official apologized shortly thereafter. And he resigned his position three weeks after his widely criticized comments.

George W. Bush himself did not attempt anything even resembling the sanctions Trump now seeks to impose on law firms.

As Perkins Coie argues in a lawsuit challenging the order against that firm, these sanctions are an existential threat to the firms Trump is targeting. Perkins says that it “has nearly 1,000 active matters that require its lawyers to interact with more than 90 federal agencies,” and it fears it can’t continue many of those representations if it isn’t even allowed into the building to meet with government officials. Similarly, the firm says many of its biggest clients, including its 15 biggest clients, “have or compete for government contracts” that could be canceled unless those clients fire the firm.

Trump, in other words, is claiming the power to exterminate multibillion-dollar businesses, with over a thousand lawyers and as many support staff, to punish them for things as innocuous as representing a Democrat in 2016.

It’s hard to count all the ways these orders violate the Constitution. Perkins, in its lawsuit, alleges violations of the First Amendment right to free speech and free association, due process violations because it was given no hearing or notice of the sanctions against it, separation of powers violations because no statute authorizes Trump to sanction law firms in this way, and violations of their clients’ right to choose their own counsel — among other things.

The Trump administration has not yet filed a brief laying out its response to these arguments, but in a hearing, one of its lawyers claimed that the Constitution gives the president inherent authority to “find that there are certain individuals or certain companies that are not trustworthy with the nation’s secrets.”

Normally, when a litigant wants the courts to permit something that obviously violates existing law, they try to raise the issue in a case that paints them in a sympathetic light. But Trump has chosen to fight this fight on the most unfavorable ground imaginable.

There may be a perverse logic to Trump’s decision to fight on such unfavorable terrain. If he wins the right to punish law firms for representing a prominent Democrat a decade ago, it is unlikely that the Supreme Court will stop him from doing anything at all in the future. Most lawyers will be too scared of retaliation to even bring lawsuits challenging Trump’s actions. Already, one of the firms targeted by Trump, Paul Weiss, appears to have caved to him by agreeing to do $40 million worth of free legal work on causes supported by Trump’s White House. (Like Perkins, Wilmer and Jenner sued to block the orders targeting them.)

And, of course, if Trump’s endgame is to openly defy the courts, an obviously unconstitutional executive order targeting law firms that are in the business of suing the government is a good way to bring about that endgame quickly.

These stunning executive orders dare the courts to either make themselves irrelevant, or to trigger what could be the final showdown over the rule of law.

The anti-Thurgood Marshall strategy

If you want to understand how litigants normally proceed when they want to convince the courts to make audacious changes to the law, consider Sweatt v. Painter (1950), a case brought by future Justice Thurgood Marshall a few years before he successfully convinced the justices to declare public school segregation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education (1954).

Marshall’s goal was to convince the justices that, as they eventually concluded in Brown, “separate education facilities are inherently unequal,” even if a state attempted to equalize the resources provided to segregated Black and white schools. Before he brought the much more difficult challenge to K-12 segregation, however, Marshall chose a more favorable ground to fight for integrated educational facilities: law schools.

In Sweatt, a Black man was denied admission to the University of Texas Law School solely because of his race. Rather than integrate UT, Texas opened a new law school for aspiring Black lawyers, and argued that this facility solved the constitutional problem because now Black law students could receive a similar education to the one they would receive at the state’s flagship university.

But the justices, all of whom were lawyers, understood the subtle hierarchies of the legal profession — in which where you go to law school can determine the entire trajectory of your career — all too well to be fooled by this arrangement.

As the Court’s unanimous decision explained, “the University of Texas Law School possesses to a far greater degree those qualities which are incapable of objective measurement but which make for greatness in a law school” — qualities like a reputation for excellence, and an alumni network full of successful lawyers eager to lend a hand to UT’s graduates.

Marshall, in other words, understood that, by appealing to the professional sensibilities of the justices, he could make them see that the concept of “separate but equal” is at odds with itself. And once those justices took the easy step of empathizing with law students denied access to an elite school, it was much easier to get them to see themselves in grade school students shunted into an inferior elementary school.

Trump has done the exact opposite of what Marshall did in Sweatt. And that means that the same empathy that Marshall’s clients benefited from in Sweatt and Brown is likely to cut against Trump.

Not only that, but the justices who will ultimately hear this case are likely to have unique sympathy for lawyers attacked by a politician seeking to discredit them, because many of them experienced just that in their confirmation hearings.

When Chief Justice John Roberts was nominated to the Supreme Court, for example, one of the few controversies surrounding his nomination was whether the positions he took as a lawyer representing a client could be attributed to him personally. Roberts had been a judge for only about two years when he was nominated for the Supreme Court, so his judicial record was quite thin, and some Democrats and their allies hoped to point to his work as a lawyer to discredit him. Among other things, they pointed to a brief Roberts signed as a Justice Department lawyer, which argued that Roe v. Wade should be overruled.

The White House and Senate Republicans’ defense of Roberts at the time was that a lawyer’s job is to represent their clients’ interests, even if they do not agree with the client. So it is unfair to attribute a former client’s views to their lawyer. And this was an excellent defense! The Constitution gives everyone a right to hire legal counsel to represent them before the courts. This entire system breaks down if lawyers who represent unpopular clients or positions face professional sanction for doing so.

The point is that the most powerful judge in the country, like numerous other judges who’ve had their careers probed by the Senate Judiciary Committee, has a very personal stake in the question of whether lawyers can be punished because the wrong elected officials don’t like their clients.

That does not mean that the author of the Court’s unconscionable Trump immunity decision will suddenly have an epiphany and turn against Donald Trump. But if Trump’s goal is to turn Roberts (and numerous other judges) against him, attacking lawyers who stand in very similar shoes to the ones Roberts wore 20 years ago is a pretty good way to do it.

📲 For more thoughts from Ian Millhiser, follow him on the platform he refuses to call “X” or on Threads.

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Trump

Gary Legum: Elon Musk Is Screwing Up Social Security

By dianeravitch

April 7, 2025 //

Social Security is called the third rail of American politics. The third rail is the one you never touch because it will electrocute you. millions of retirees will want your scalp. Many have no other income.

But Elon Musk is fearless. He thinks he knows how to “fix” Social Security. Not only is he sure that billions are wasted on dead people but now he thinks the computer code must be rewritten.

Gary Legum of Wonkette explains how Musk is touching the third rail:

Having already fucked up the Social Security Administration six ways from Sunday with staff cuts and new ID requirements and field office closures, the incels of the ironically named Department of Government Efficiency are reportedly plotting one more big step in their rampage: They are planning to rewrite the SSA’s entire computer codebase in a more modern programming language. And they plan to have this project completed in “a few months.”

Oh guess what, it’s Saturday morning (Gary wrote this post Friday afternoon) and the Social Security website is already down.

It has been a long time since we had a database/computer technology-adjacent job, but we know enough to understand that migrating a huge system with a reported 60 million lines of code is not something that happens that quickly. This is a years-long sort of job, one that will take the efforts of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. It’s a delicate undertaking, and the vampires of DOGE have proven themselves anything but delicate.

Of course, they have also proven that they genuinely don’t give a shit if you wind up sleeping under a railroad trestle after their hacky changes leave you listed as “dead” in Social Security’s databases, so there is one more reason to not trust them if you needed one.

So, we hope you current Social Security recipients enjoyed getting your benefit checks or your benefit direct deposits on time! Hell, we hope you enjoyed getting them, period. Because there is an excellent chance all that is about to be deader than Elon Musk’s soul.

Wired reports on the new plan in a frightening new story with the words “System Collapse” prominently displayed in the title. It all reads as stupid as it sounds. The basic gist is that SSA systems still run on COBOL, a common, business-oriented programming language that has been around since the 1950s. COBOL has lasted this long for a variety of reasons, but a big one is that it still works really well. Programmers at the SSA still actively work with it despite the existence of newer, more modern programming languages for a few reasons, one of which is that it is very robust. So robust, in fact, that quite a few federal government systems still run on it.

The federal government tends to lag way behind in modernizing the technology that bureaucrats use to keep the country running. But as the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

And DOGE has already proven that it is unfamiliar with COBOL conventions, as Wired already explained in an earlier story about why, contra Musk’s band of Nazi virgins, there were not actually millions of Social Security checks going out to 150-year-olds.

This is one system you do not want to screw up until you are absolutely, positively sure any replacement system is up and chugging along. The computers at Social Security are paying benefits to 65 million Americans every month. For many of them, this is their only source of income. Fuck it up, and people, especially the elderly, can’t pay rent or buy food. Their existence is already precarious enough.

Yet that is likely to be the result when the weasels of DOGE (we very much appreciate the Wired locution referring to it as “the so-called Department of Government Efficiency,” as it is anything but that) get through here.

How enormous an undertaking is it to move the SSA off of COBOL? Let Wired tell you:

In order to migrate all COBOL code into a more modern language within a few months, DOGE would likely need to employ some form of generative artificial intelligence to help translate the millions of lines of code, sources tell WIRED. “DOGE thinks if they can say they got rid of all the COBOL in months then their way is the right way and we all just suck for not breaking shit,” says the SSA technologist.

Lot of problems with that, starting with the fact that even generative AI code still has to be checked for errors. And if it’s wrong, someone still has to manually fix it. What do you think the chances are that DOGE will thoroughly test any changes made by either humans or a technology capable of about the same level of thought as a blender? We’re not talking about Jarvis from the Iron Man movies, we’re talking about Large Language Models of code trained on other code written by humans that likely contains plenty of its own errors. The possibilities for disaster are infinite.

DOGE would also need to develop tests to ensure the new system’s outputs match the previous one. It would be difficult to resolve all of the possible edge cases over the course of several years, let alone months, adds the SSA technologist.

This is just basic quality assurance testing. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned about the sorts of dweebs hired by Elon Musk — and by Donald Trump for that matter, he’s still allegedly the president — is that they simply shrug when something breaks before moving along to the last thing. Careless people smashing things up and then leaving the mess in their wakes for others to clean up, as F. Scott Fitzgerald once memorably said of another generation of arrogant, over-moneyed chucklefucks.

Wags online are suggesting that breaking Social Security is the entire point. Conservatives have long wanted to end the program. But too many people rely on it, so cuts are impossible to get through Congress. It’s the infamous third rail of American politics.

If, on the other hand, Social Security broke because a bunch of nerds broke it, and then nobody could get hold of anyone at the agency to help sort out why their measly $2,000 check hasn’t come through this month because DOGE shut down all phone help lines and closed many field offices that people could otherwise have gone to, well, that’s just an act of God that can’t be helped. Shrug and move on to the next thing, the Silicon Valley ethos.

We doubt it is one reason more than another. Sure, ending Social Security through the back door would fulfill a long-term goal of the Right. It could also be that the DOGE guys really are so high on themselves that they look at government programmers and think, What a bunch of dinosaurs! Get out of the way, old people, and let us show you how this shit gets done.

Well, we weren’t going to be able to retire for awhile anyway. Now maybe we’ll just work until we drop dead under that railroad trestle where we’ll spend our dotage.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Ignorance, Musk, Elon, Stupid, Technology

Washington Post: Trump and RFK Jr. Are Destroying Public Health Agencies

By dianeravitch

April 6, 2025 //

The Washington Post editorial board warned that Robert Kennedy’s deep cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services will damage the economy. They will also damage the nation’s health. Kennedy is not laying off paper-pushing bureaucrats. He is firing scientists and closing divisions working on drugs and cures for dangerous diseases and conditions.

The editorial board wrote:

The market took no time to weigh in on Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mass layoffs at the nation’s health agencies. As Health and Human Services employees arrived to work on Tuesday to discover their badges no longer worked, stock prices for health-care and biotech companies plunged. By the end of the day, the S&P’s index for the pharmaceutical industry had dropped 4 percent.

This should be a warning to the new HHS secretary and President Donald Trump: The employees of these institutions are as essential to the U.S. economy as they are to public health.

HHS officials have defended their planned 25 percent reduction in force (affecting about 20,000 employees) as a means to achieve efficiency. They claim it will save taxpayers about $1.8 billion annually. But this amount — minuscule relative to the multitrillion-dollar federal budget — could be wiped out by the economic damage that comes from discarding broad institutional knowledge.

The Food and Drug Administration, for instance, is slated to shed 3,500 staffers, or about 19 percent of its workforce. Among those who received layoff notices on Tuesday were many experts who assist with reviews at the Office of New Drugs. The director of this office, Peter Stein, resigned after being reassigned to patient affairs. Other top leaders have also been pushed out, including Hilary Marston, the FDA’s chief medical officer, and Peter Marks, its highest-ranking vaccine scientist.

HHS insists these layoffs will not weaken the agency’s core functions, especially drug approvals — but given how many high-level positions now sit vacant, this is hard to believe. Scott Gottlieb, who was FDA commissioner during Trump’s first term, said on X that the “barrage” threatens to bring “frustrating delays for American consumers, particularly affecting rare diseases and areas of significant unmet medical need.”

The National Institutes of Health, a sturdy engine of biomedical innovation, also saw many of its leaders defenestrated. Directors of at least four of the 27 institutes that make up the agency were removed from their posts, including Jeanne Marrazzo, the country’s most senior infectious-diseases official.

Meanwhile, hundreds of other layoffs at the agency’s research centers threaten to diminish its scientific prowess. The National Human Genome Research Institute, for one, which has made countless discoveries about the roles genes play in diseases, lost dozens of staffers as well as its acting chief, Vence L. Bonham Jr., who was installed just last month.

This turmoil comes amid the administration’s attempt to slash funding that NIH provides to outside research institutions. The administration seems not to care about U.S. investments in science that have been essential to building and maintaining a strong economy.

Equally concerning is what these layoffs could mean for public health. At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is set to lose 2,400 workers (an 18 percent reduction in staff), HHS cost-cutters have erased entire offices, including those dedicated to curbing HIV, tuberculosis, tobacco use, lead poisoning, substance abuse, birth defects and many other health threats. Kennedy — who also laid off many of the department’s communications staffers — has provided little rationale for any of these cuts. But if his goal is to save money, this is the wrong strategy. By keeping health-care costs down, public health programs often bring substantial returns on investment.

What makes these risky cuts especially baffling is that they’re being made only a few years after the covid-19 pandemic taught Americans about the need for a strong public health system, and amid the worst domestic measles outbreak in years. Bird flu also has begun spreading to humans — yet among those laid off were nearly all of the leading staffers at the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, which is assisting the government with its bird flu response.

It’s true that HHS’s vast bureaucracy has long needed serious — even radical — reforms to eliminate waste and make its agencies more effective. The CDC often acted clumsily during the pandemic and struggled to communicate effectively with the public. And although the FDA was streamlined during the Biden administration, it could use innovative ideas to energize its food division — perhaps by making it a stand-alone agency.

But the job cuts this week do not amount to efficient reform. The Trump administration has shown great skill at “moving fast and breaking things,” to borrow the motto used by chief bureaucracy-smasher Elon Musk. But Trump and Kennedy should remember, too, that when “you break it, you buy it.” The damage they do to the country’s public health and biomedical research infrastructure is their responsibility, and they will bear the political consequences.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Extremism, Funding, Health, Science, Stupid, Trump

Of Course, Trump Wants a Third Term!

By dianeravitch

April 6, 2025 //

Trump has said repeatedly that “many people” have urged him to run for a third term. Who does he talk to other than sycophants?

He made clear in a recent interview that his people are looking for ways to circumvent the 22nd Amendment, which says “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice…” Could that be any clearer?

One of Trump’s first executive orders attempts to eliminate birthright citizenship, which is explicitly guaranteed in the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, so it’s obvious that Trump has no respect for the Constitution despite having taken an oath to support and defend it. I would say that his failure to put his hand on the Bible explains his indifference to the Constitution but he is also indifferent to the Bible (unless he is selling it).

Of course, Trump wants a third term! What a great job he has! He can punish, insult, even prosecute his enemies. He can force powerful law firms to cower before him, he can threaten universities unless they abolish courses that he doesn’t like, he has the powers of a king because the U.S. Supreme Court said he has “absolute immunity” for anything he does as President. He could order the military to murder his critics and say it was for “national security.” Absolute immunity!

Better still, he doesn’t have to work! He flies home to Mar-a-Lago every weekend to golf. He signs a few executive orders every day. His crew of mean-spirited, hateful people does the heavy lifting; they write the executive orders. They think of new ways to diminish federal programs that help people in need. They are hard at work thinking up ways to reduce the number of people who get Medicare orcSocial Security.

Really, what Trump have to do other than sign executive orders? Not much. His staff knows not to bore him with intelligence briefings.

It’s true that he has to tolerate Little X, Elon’s snot-nosed kid, who put a booger on the Resolute Desk. (Trump was not content to order the cleaning of the historic desk, he sent it out to be completely refinished, all because of a booger.)

Great job! All expenses paid. Full-time security for Trump and all his family, and he “works” fifteen minutes a day signing executive orders that his mean team wrote.

The USA was a great country while it lasted. Will he name it Trumplandia after he has taken Canada and Greenland?

Politico analyzed four ways he could try for a third term:

Repeal or revise the 22nd Amendment. But that seems highly unlikely since it would require 3/4 of the states to ratify any change in the Constitutuon.
Sidestep the Constitution by having JD Vance run for President and Trump as Vice President, with Vance pledging to resign if elected so Trump can be President again.
Ignore the Constitution. Trump could run again, a subservient Republican national Committee would endorse him, and a supplicant Supreme Court would comply.
Defy the Constitution. Refuse to leave office. Call a national emergency and suspend another election.

All the stuff of Fascism. But none of it beyond Trump’s egotism.

Categories Character, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, History, Lies, Trump

Andrew Tobias: Trump Unleashes Chaos on the World

By dianeravitch

April 6, 2025 //

Andrew Tobias writes about the stock market, politics, and life in general. In this column, he echoes what I have long believed. Wherever Trump goes, chaos follows. I am undecided about the reason for this phenomenon. On one hand, I think Trump loves chaos because he wants all eyes to be on him all the time. As a malignant narcissist, he demands your full attention so he creates a daily distraction–like renaming the Gulf of Mexico–or a daily disaster–like slapping tariffs on every other nation (except Russia and Belarus) and crashing the global economy. He is an overgrown 3-year-old whose narcissism, bigotry, and ignorance of the Constitution or history are destroying our government, our values, and the world’s respect for our nation.

Here is his latest:

Bob’s Sandwich / So Awful, Even Introverts Are Here

Condensed from the Winnipeg Free Press:

Chaos follows Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’

. . . Trump claims that the U.S. is being raped and pillaged — his words — by foreign nations, that Americans were subsidizing economies all over the world, because Americans buy more foreign products than foreign nations buy American.

But there’s a clear problem with that analysis. A trade deficit is not a debt or a subsidy.

Let’s say you want a good sandwich. Bob can make it better or more cheaply or more conveniently than you can.

You pay Bob $5. Bob hands you your sandwich.

Yes, Bob gets your money, but you get the sandwich you wanted at the price you were willing to pay. You arguably have a $5 trade deficit with Bob, because Bob didn’t buy anything from you.

Donald Trump would argue that you’re propping Bob up with a $5 subsidy.

But you didn’t subsidize Bob. Bob did not steal anything from you. You didn’t give Bob a gift — you chose to buy his sandwich for your own reasons.

Much the way Americans have chosen to buy products from Canada or any other nation — because the value or quality was worth the money.

Trump has decided to add a tariff, a tax on Bob’s sandwiches.

A host of economists have suggested what’s likely to come next — significant inflation for American consumers, chaos in the global supply chain, and, most likely, layoffs and business closures. Stock markets are already delivering their verdicts.

The irony is that, as president, Trump’s ability to levy tariffs is tangential at best — he has had to manufacture emergencies to justify his actions. And there’s been a gross failure by the legislative branch in the United States to rein him in and represent the interests of their own constituents.

The real question now is whether anyone in America will stand up to him.

The damage to Canada’s relationship is obvious and will be long-lasting — one can only imagine what that damage will be to the reputation of the U.S. globally.

The damage to America — and Americans — may be incalculable.

Tobias continues:

Which is why so many Americans joined more than 1,200 protests throughout the country yesterday, many carrying home-made signs like this one:

Mine said:

NATO NOT PUTIN

on the front and . . .

. . on the back.

There were lots about Social Security and Medicare and Veterans and Fascists and . . .

LEASH YOUR DOGE

One of my favorites summed it up:

WAY TOO MUCH FOR ONE SIGN

Inflation rising, recession looming, stocks plunging, measles spreading, medical research slashed . . . and tariffs slapped on islands from whom we import nothing (including the one with only penguins) . . . but not on Russia (from whom we imported $3.27 billion worth of goods last year).

Categories Bigotry, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Stupid, Trump

New York Will Not Comply with Trump’s Ban on DEI

By dianeravitch

April 5, 2025 //

Michael Elsen-Rooney of Chalkbeat reported that New York will not comply with Trump’s demand to ban Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. The Trump Department of Education warned states that refusal to comply might lead to a suspension of federal funding.

The Department’s demand is illegal. Federal law explicitly forbids any interference by federal officials with the curriculum or program of any public school.

Elsen-Rooney wrote:

New York will not comply with an order from President Donald Trump’s administration to certify that school districts are eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, state Education Department officials said in a Friday letter obtained by Chalkbeat.

The letter represents some of the earliest and most forceful pushback to Thursday’s threat that gave state education agencies 10 days to guarantee that no public schools in their states have DEI programs the Trump administration deems illegal — or lose billions of dollars in federal education funding.

Federal officials cited the 2023 Supreme Court decision banning race-based affirmative action in college admissions in arguing that any school DEI program used to “advantage one’s race over another” violates federal Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

But New York officials countered that the state has already certified on multiple occasions that it follows federal anti-discrimination law, and that the U.S. Education Department has no legal right to threaten to withhold federal funding over its own interpretation of the law.

The state Education Department “is unaware of any authority that USDOE has to demand that a State Education Agency … agree to its interpretation of a judicial decision or change the terms and conditions of [New York State Education Department]’s award without formal administrative process,” wrote Counsel and Deputy Commissioner Daniel Morton-Bentley.

“We understand that the current administration seeks to censor anything it deems ‘diversity, equity & inclusion. … But there are no federal or State laws prohibiting the principles of DEI,” Morton-Bentley continued. “And USDOE has yet to define what practices it believes violate Title VI.”

The state will not send any “further certification” of compliance with federal law, the letter concluded.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Education did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civics, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Evil, Fascism, Freedom to Learn, History, New York, Racism, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Olga Lautman: Trump Cancels Efforts to Save Kidnapped Children of Ukraine

By dianeravitch

April 5, 2025 //

Olga Lautman keeps a close watch on Trump’s tyranny and his allegiance to Putin. She is especially appalled by his decision to abandon the thousands of Ukrainian children kidnapped by Russian troops and transported to Russia. Trump doesn’t care. Anything to make Vladimir happy.

Lautman writes:

For years, the world watched as Russia systematically kidnapped tens of thousands of Ukrainian children, erasing their identities and forcing them into Russian families. This isn’t just a war crime—it’s genocide in real time.

Now, Trump’s regime is actively helping Russia cover up this genocide. His State Department quietly terminated a crucial contract that was facilitating the transfer of evidence on Russia’s mass abduction of Ukrainian children to European law enforcement, according to The New Republic.

This decision cripples efforts to track and recover abducted children, making it harder to hold Russia accountable for what international courts have already labeled a war crime. By cutting off this support, Trump’s regime is not just abandoning Ukraine—they are actively obstructing justice.

This isn’t just inaction—it’s complicity in one of the most horrific acts of genocide and war crimes.

Russia’s War Crime: The Mass Kidnapping of Ukrainian Children

Under Putin’s direct orders, at least 20,000 Ukrainian children—though the real number may be much higher—have been stolen from Ukraine and transported to Russia. Many have been ripped from orphanages and hospitals in occupied territories, while others—despite having living relatives—have been abducted and placed in “re-education” camps designed to erase their Ukrainian identity. These children are tortured, subjected to psychological reprogramming, and stripped of their Ukrainian heritage, culture, and language. They are then forcibly granted Russian citizenship and placed with Russian families as part of an illegal state-run program aimed at assimilating them into Russian society and erasing their Ukrainian identity forever.

Russia does not even attempt to hide these hideous crimes. Grigory Karasin, head of the international committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, openly boasted that 700,000 children from illegally occupied territories in Ukraine have been taken to Russia. The sheer scale of this state-sponsored mass abduction is staggering—one of the largest forced deportations of children in modern history. This is not just a war crime— it is clear evidence of Russia’s genocidal intent to erase Ukrainian identity by targeting children, severing them from their families, their culture, and their homeland.

The International Criminal Court recognized this as a war crime as investigations continue. In March 2023, the ICC issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Commissioner for Children’s Rights, for the “unlawful deportation and forced transfer of Ukrainian children.” This systematic abduction is not just a violation of international law—it is genocide. Russia is not merely stealing children but destroying Ukraine’s future by erasing an entire generation.

And now, Trump, Musk, and Rubio are actively helping Russia cover up the genocide and war crimes.

Trump’s State Department Blocks Efforts to Track Abducted Ukrainian Children

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. State Department funded a Yale research team that tracked kidnapped Ukrainian children using satellite imagery and open-source intelligence. Their work was crucial in exposing Russia’s state-run program of forced deportation and illegal adoption, providing undeniable evidence of war crimes committed against Ukrainian children.

Now, that work is under threat. Trump’s Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has canceled the program, cutting off funding and blocking the transfer of key evidence to European law enforcement. Without this support, it will be significantly harder to locate and rescue kidnapped children, hold Russia accountable for genocide and war crimes, and ensure that stolen children are returned to Ukraine.

The Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale worked with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s Bring Kids Back UA campaign, which has helped track and locate hundreds of abducted children, successfully repatriating approximately 1,240 so far. With funding cut off, these efforts are now at risk.

Genocide and War Crimes: What’s at Stake

Under the Genocide Convention, the forced deportation and assimilation of children meets the legal definition of genocide, as it involves forcibly transferring children from one group to another with the intent to erase their identity, conducting mass deportations under state policy, and destroying cultural, linguistic, and familial ties. The International Criminal Court has already taken action by issuing arrest warrants, but its ability to prosecute and hold Russia accountable depends on cooperation from governments like the United States.

Instead of aiding these efforts, Trump is actively sabotaging them, cutting off crucial funding for investigations and making it harder to track abducted children and bring perpetrators to justice. Even the U.S. Congress, led by Rep. Susan Wild (D-PA-7), recognizing the horror of this crime, overwhelmingly passed a resolution in 2024 condemning Russia’s abduction and forced transfer of Ukrainian children.

Yet, Trump’s regime is doing the opposite—helping obstruct justice while aligning itself with Russia’s war crimes.

Trump’s Loyalty to Moscow

This isn’t an isolated incident—it’s part of Trump’s broader fealty to the Kremlin and his regime’s Russia-aligned policies. From cutting off military aid to amplifying Kremlin propaganda, Trump continues to systematically weaken Ukraine’s ability to defend itself while strengthening Russia’s position. Every move he makes advances Russia’s strategic goals, further undermining Ukraine’s sovereignty and the West’s ability to hold Russia accountable.

We all saw as JD Vance ambushed Zelensky in the Oval Office meant to send a clear message that the U.S. is no longer a reliable partner. Trump echoes Kremlin propaganda at every opportunity, falsely branding Zelensky a “dictator” and insisting that Ukraine must hold elections immediately—a demand that directly serves Russia’s interests, as Moscow has repeatedly attempted to assassinate Zelensky and would exploit an election to further destabilize Ukraine.

Trump’s so-called “peace plan” is nothing more than a thinly veiled attempt to force Ukraine into surrender, as he insists that Kyiv must “negotiate”—a demand that would strip Ukraine of its sovereignty and hand Putin exactly what he wants.

Meanwhile, Trump’s State Department is actively obstructing efforts to hold Russia accountable for war crimes, cutting off support for investigations into the kidnapping and forced deportation of Ukrainian children. At every turn, Trump is working to weaken Ukraine, embolden Russia, and dismantle any accountability for Russia’s crimes—all while seeking to reestablish financial deals with Moscow and prioritizing his personal and political interests.

As part of carrying out Russia’s agenda, Trump is also attacking NATO and attempting to dismantle alliances that have kept America safe, further isolating the U.S. while handing Putin exactly what he wants.

What Can We Do?

We cannot stay silent while the U.S. government helps Russia cover up genocide. And if Trump is willing to excuse war crimes against children, what won’t he justify?

Please call your members of Congress and demand answers. Ask them why the State Department cut funding for tracking abducted Ukrainian children and why the U.S. is turning its back on accountability for Russian war crimes.

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, International, Trump

A Message to Journalists: Don’t Be Fooled! Follow the Money!

By dianeravitch

April 5, 2025 //

Every once in a while, I read an article that is so important and so powerful that I want to give it as much attention as possible. This is such an article. Please read it and share it. Post the link on every social media site. Send it to school board members and journalists.

The article was written by Dr. Maurice Cunningham, a retired Professor of Political Science at the University of Massachusetts. Cunningham has been studying “dark money” in education for years. It was published by “Our Schools” and “Independent Media Institute.”

If you want to understand the attacks on public schools, on teachers, and on teachers’ unions, read this article. If you want to understand how the organized groups that smear public schools got started, read this article. If you read a story about two or three “moms” sitting around their kitchen table and worrying whether the teachers at the local public school are indoctrinating their children, read this article. If those “moms” raised over $1 million in their first year, read this article.

They have fooled many journalists. Don’t let them fool you!

Cunningham warns:

“These groups are the creation of deep-pocketed conservative networks, not “grassroots” advocates.“

By Maurice Cunningham

“If your mother says she loves you, check it out” is a bromide drilled into every journalist. So it is baffling why, if an interest group includes the words “moms” or “parents,” it is just taken at its word, especially when a little digging can reveal that many of these groups are the creations of billionaires out to destroy public education.

As the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization, I have been following billionaire-backed education interest groups for more than a decade. Since big money lacks public credibility, it often masquerades as organizations claiming to represent the interests of “parents,” “moms,” “educators,” and “families.” The concocted stories about how these groups were created are often repeated by an incurious press, which misses the opportunity to tell its readers a more interesting story: how billionaires and right-wing activists pour money into upbeat-sounding organizations to further their aim of privateering our public school system.

These astroturf operations have been proliferating resulting in serious negative impacts. Consider the havoc wreaked on some school boards by Moms for Liberty (M4L). M4L even got into presidential politics in 2024, boosting Donald Trump, at the behest of the donors, who co-founder Tina Descovich termed as M4L’s “investors.”

Consider a November 2024 Washington Post story on Linda McMahon’s nomination to be secretary of education. The article contrasted remarks from National Education Association (NEA) President Becky Pringle with an alternative view from Keri Rodrigues, founding president of the National Parents Union (NPU), which the reporter Laura Meckler called “a grassroots group,” thus giving the impression that NEA and NPU are similar organizations.

They are not. NEA is a well-established teachers’ union that credibly claims 3 million members and is governed by a democratic structure. NPU appeared on the scene in 2020, surfing in on millions of dollars from the foundations of American oligarchs, including the Walton family, Mark Zuckerberg, and Charles Koch.

In 2024, Rodrigues, a fixture at education privateering groups, told the Boston Globe that NPU could get its message to “250,000 families to vote against” a ballot question sponsored by the teachers’ union and would “put that network to work.”

There is zero evidence that this extensive network exists or that it did anything on the ballot question. There is also no proof to validate Rodrigues’s claimthat the organization has 1.7 million members nationally.

A 2021 Washington Post article introducing Moms for Liberty chronicled its claimed rapid rise without raising questions about how it grew so fast. The story simply provided the M4L narrative of its creation story, centered around former Florida school board members Descovich and Tiffany Justice. It omitted M4L’s third co-founder Bridget Ziegler, though it did quote her husband, Christian Ziegler, about the group’s political potency.

Bridget Ziegler served briefly on the M4L board and was replaced by GOP campaign consultant Marie Rogerson. Christian Ziegler was then the powerful vice-chair of the Florida Republican Party and a key Trump supporter. (In 2023, the Zieglers became famous for a threesome scandal. She quickly resigned from her executive position with the Leadership Institute, an established training institution for right-wing activists. Christian was removed from his perch as chair of the Florida Republican Party.)

The Post October 2021 story featured a photo of Descovich pulling aside, Superman style, a white jacket to reveal the group’s logo t-shirt while posing next to an American flag. The questions about the group’s ties to the Republican Party and suspicious financing were laughed off by the founders of M4L. The Post followed up a month later by printing an op-ed by Descovich and Justice.

NPU, M4L, and similar groups organize as nonprofit corporations under sections 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Service Code. As nonprofits, their Form 990 tax returns are made public but only in November, following the tax year. The information is skimpy but valuable. Journalists can access the Form 990s by requesting them directly from the nonprofits or from the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, which helps trace donors as well.

These groups leave clues that no reporter can miss:

Don’t buy the phony origin stories: These organizations all claim to be about moms joining together to improve education. But in no time, they have access to millions of dollars in donations and have the services of elite law firms, pollsters, media consultants, and often, ties to the Republican Party.
Follow the money: It isn’t easy in the first two years of a nonprofit’s existence, but there are signs: easy access to right-wing media, hiring expensive consultants, and big-budget conferences.
Watch how these groups work: The founding leadership usually consists of veteran right-wing operatives or communications professionals with years of experience in privateering organizations.
Get the big picture: Right from the beginning, M4L had obvious ties to Republican and right-wing organizations that often went unreported.
Keep following the money: When nonprofit tax forms finally become public, they’ll reveal how much was donated and can help identify the top contractors and how much they were paid.

Let us expand on these insights to show how these secretive operations can be exposed right from the beginning by using Form 990.

Don’t Buy the Phony Origin Stories

The typical “moms” or “parents” creation story goes something like this: outraged by some aspect of their children’s public school education, two or three “moms” band together to attract other like-minded parents to cure the deficiencies of the system, which are always the fault of the teachers’ unions. In truth, the “moms” are agents of far-right billionaires often tied—like M4L and Parents Defending Education (PDE)—to the secretive Council for National Policy, which seeksto privateer K-12 for profit, expand Christian education, and promote homeschooling.

According to the billionaire-funded online publication the 74, NPU “is the brainchild of two Latina mothers,” Keri Rodrigues and Alma Marquez, who “had disappointing experiences with education, both as parents and students, and with advocacy groups.”

To its credit, the 74 was candid about the funding of NPU: the foundations of billionaires, including Bill Gates, the Walton family, the late Eli Broad, and Michael and Susan Dell, and organizations like the City Fund, which gets its money from Reed Hastings, John Arnold, and Walton family members, inheritors of the Walmart fortune.

Nonetheless, the tenor of the story was of a grassroots moms’ start-up. Other news outlets ignored the 74’s detailing of billionaire funding. An online search through the New York Times website supplemented with a library search through Gale OneFile showed 13 NYT stories or columns that mention the National Parents Union since the group’s public launch on January 1, 2021. Only one column by Michelle Goldberg noted that “The National Parents Union is funded by the pro-privatization Walton Family Foundation.” The Waltons are, however, the only funders Goldberg mentioned.

The New Yorker came closest to the truth in a June 2021 piece: “The Walton foundation set up the National Parents Union in January 2020, with Rodrigues as the founding president.” A review of Form 990s for NPU and the Walton Family Foundation from 2020 through 2023 that I reviewed shows that NPU accepted more than $11 million in contributions. The Walton Family Foundation donated around $3 million of that amount.

The media is failing to cover the single most important fact the public needs to know about “parents” and “moms” groups: who is supplying them with millions of dollars in funding.

As for M4L, although a few media outlets wrote it had three founders, most followed the practice of CNN, which in December 2021 omitted Bridget Ziegler and described “the two women behind Moms for Liberty, a group of conservatives that came together in January,” downplaying the fact that at that time, the state GOP vice-chair’s wife was also one of the co-founders. By January 9, 2021, soon after its incorporation, M4L’s online store was offering magnets, t-shirts, and hats, and a “Madison Meetup” package of right-wing materials.

While mainstream media was valorizing M4L’s origin story, right-wing outlets produced a steady stream of propaganda about the organization. Later in January 2021, Descovich appeared on the Rush Limbaugh Show (guest-hosted by Todd Herman). Media Matters for America found that, by July 2022, M4L “representatives have been regulars on right-wing media, appearing on Fox News at least 16 times and Steve Bannon’s “War Room” at least 14 times.”

Another supposedly grassroots parents’ group that has an origin story grounded in deception is PDE. In lodging a civil rights complaint against the Columbus, Ohio, public schools in May 2021, PDE President Nicole Neily told the Columbus (Ohio) Dispatch, “We just all work from home… We’re all working moms.”

In fact, Neily is a well-compensated political operativein the Koch network. According to the Koch-connected Speech First’s Form 990 for 2019, which was available after November 2020 and thus before PDE was founded in 2021, Neily was paid $150,000 in 2019.

Follow the Money

Due to the barriers to tracing the funding of such groups, it can be hard to follow the money, especially in the first two years of operation. But in 2021, an article in the New Yorker described how the VELA Education Fund, a partnership of the Walton Family Foundation and the Charles Koch Institute, had given NPU $700,000 in 2020 to “help people with fewer resources,” including promoting homeschooling during COVID-19. This is despite the fact that NPU was not familiar with homeschooling.

Press outlets have also overlooked funding sources of M4L. In 2021, co-founder Descovich told CNN that M4L had raised more than $300,000 through t-shirt sales, small donors, and fundraising events. However, one such event was a gala featuring former Fox News personality Megyn Kelly in June 2021, six months into M4L’s first year. The top tickets went for $20,000. The Celebrity Speakers Bureau pegged Kelly’s speaking fee as between $50,000 and $100,000. The event raised at least $57,000.

In July 2021, Descovich appeared at a Heritage Foundation virtual town hall on “Preserving American History in Schools.” By October 29, 2021, M4L was referring members to the Leadership Institute for training and sending members to the Heritage Foundation for events and other resources. Both these organizations have been part of the right-wing political firmament since the 1970s. A bit of digging showedthat M4L was deeply embedded in far-right politics. But most press accounts ignored that evidence and the public remained largely in the dark.

In April 2021, PDE headed by Neily, brought on Elizabeth Schultz as a “senior fellow,” who had worked under Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos during his first term and was a vocal anti-LGBTQ activist.

Watch How These Groups Work

These groups can be intertwined. PDE, M4L, and another faux-grassroots group, No Left Turn in Education (NLTE), all came on the scene around the same time, with NLTE being founded in 2020. PDE’s website includes a map called “IndoctriNation” with lists of affiliates across the nation. The April 15, 2021, listings (the website appears to have gone live only in March 2021) showed that most of its allies were chapters of M4L and NLTE with few actual members, according to my research in 2021.

Media reports seemed content to accept the “moms working from home” creation story despite the obvious early support from well-resourced groups.

NPU held its organizing meeting, which it claims drew representatives from all 50 states, in New Orleans in January 2020. To promote the event, NPU employedMercury Public Affairs, an international public relations firm. To draw press attention, NPU also commissioned polling from Echelon Insights, a Republican pollster that has also worked for the Walton family.

In the same year of its founding, in 2021, PDE published detailed plans, such as “How to Create ‘Woke At’ Pages,” that instruct parents on how to use secrecy to attack “woke activists” in the education system. PDE also began initiating lawsuits against local school boards, represented by the Republican law firm of Consovoy McCarthy.

William Consovoy, who passed in 2023, was in the Federalist Society, the nationwide network of conservative lawyers that helped form Trump’s picks for the U.S. Supreme Court. Consovoy had been a law clerk to Justice Clarence Thomas and represented Donald Trump during a congressional investigation. The firm also represented Trump in 2020 as he tried to intervene before the Supreme Court to stop the vote count in Pennsylvania. When PDE’s 2021 Form 990became available, it showed PDE paid Consovoy McCarthy $800,000 in legal fees.

Get the Big Picture

The clues kept coming, only to be ignored by the press.

In 2022, M4L held its first national summit in Tampa, Florida. In its reporting of the event, NBC portrayedthe group as a political powerhouse, reporting that attendees “browsed booths set up by conservative groups, including Turning Point USA, the Leadership Institute and Heritage Action, and the evangelical Liberty University” without describing these organizations for what they are—the critical infrastructure of Christian nationalism.

Media reports on the event generally ignored who the sponsors of the summit were or the amounts of their donations. The Leadership Institute donated $50,000. The Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action for America provided $10,000 each. And PDE chipped in $10,000. Meanwhile, Descovich was still peddling the story that M4L was getting by on t-shirt sales, even though an aide to Leadership Institute’s Morton Blackwell bragged about how the institute had provided the relevant training to help the group “become a national force.”

When there were questions raised about how M4L could fund such a lavish event with t-shirt sales, M4L denied any connections to deep-pocketed right-wing groups, and most news reporters presented a simple “he said, she said” account and moved on. Reporters generally missed the bigger story that the institutional right was creating and passing off phony “moms” and “parents” operations.

Keep Following the Money

Once Form 990s were filed, the deception became obvious, but that didn’t mean it got covered by big media outlets.

The 2022 Form 990 for NPU showed that Keri Rodrigues was paid $410,000 from NPU and a sister organization. She paid her husband, the chief operating officer of both organizations, $278,529. Yet, in August 2024, CBS Morning News presented Rodrigues as a typical parent worried about back-to-school shopping.

PDE’s Form 990 for 2021 was even more revealing, as exposed by True North Research’s Lisa Graves and Alyssa Bowen for Truthout in 2023. Graves and Bowen showed that PDE is deeply tied with far-right Supreme Court fixer Leonard Leo, even paying $106,938 to his for-profit consulting firm.

PDE, a brand-new operation, raised $3,178,272 in its first year in 2021. It paid Neily, who is also on the board, a total compensation of $195,688 for her 40-hour work week.

According to Speech First’s Form 990 for 2021, Neily put in an additional 20-hour week for Speech First, earning another $86,117 and a total of $281,805 from both Koch- and Leo-funded operations combined. In 2023, PDE pushed Neily’s base salary and other compensation up to $341,400. This is quite an income for a stay-at-home working mom.

The trail from NPU leads back to the Walton family and billionaire allies who have been working to undermine teachers’ unions and siphon public money to charter schools for years.

Scratch the surface of groups like M4L and PDE, and you find the Heritage Foundation, the Leadership Institute, and Leonard Leo—the elite of far-right politics who work to replace public schools with for-profit schools, religious schools, and homeschooling. These details make for a very important story that most journalists have overlooked.

Stop Being Fooled

Reporters should not be fooled by the techniques used by these fake “mom” and “parent” groups on behalf of their extremist overseers. As Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway show in Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming, these techniques have been used by “scientific” nonprofits created by the same conservative groups, including the Heritage Foundation, to contest climate change.

Many have tracked the origin of these techniques back to the tobacco industry’s fight to protect their profits from the growing body of research linking their products to cancer and other health problems.

In 1994, tobacco giant RJ Reynolds created the industry front group Get Government Off Our Back to advance a “smokers’ rights” campaign to fight against the tsunami of scientific evidence exposing the health risks of tobacco. Reynolds kept its backing a secret while promoting it as a movement of “grassroots” smokers.

Meanwhile, in his farewell address, former President Joseph R. Biden warned about how the wealthy are a big threat to democracy:

“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

For years, the same oligarchy that threatens basic rights has been threatening our freedom to have access to a high-quality system of public education. There is no reason they should be aided by credulous reporters from trusted news sources. If we can question our moms on whether they really love us, we can question the authenticity of these moms and parent groups.

Maurice Cunningham PhD, JD, retired in 2021 as an associate professor of political science at the College of Liberal Arts, University of Massachusetts, Boston, and is the author of Dark Money and the Politics of School Privatization.

Categories Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Corruption, Dark Money, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Fake News, For-Profit, Fraud, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hoax, Parent Groups, Privatization, Propaganda, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, School Choice, Shame, Unions, Vouchers

Watch This Surprising Performance at the Kennedy Center!!

By dianeravitch

April 4, 2025 //

As you know, Trump took control of The Kennedy Center and named himself chairman of the board. He kicked all Democrats off the board and named Trumpers to replace them.

Some artists cancelled, some continued to perform. Trump’s new director, Richard Grennel, canceled the national tour of a children’s show called “Finn,” because it promoted love, kindness, and tolerance.

A band called Guster was performing at The Kennedy Center on March 29, and the band leader talked about the cancellation of “Finn.” Then he invited the cast of “Finn” to join him onstage and the audience went wild.

You have to see this.

I almost cried: tears of joy.

Categories Art, Bigotry, Censorship, Courage, Creativity, Evil, Extremism, Freedom, Ignorance, Love, Resistance, Stupid, Trump

Join the Rally to Save Texas Schools on April 5

By dianeravitch

April 4, 2025 //

As a native Texan and a graduate of the Houston Independent School District, I join my fellow Texans in demanding that the state fund its public schools.

Governor Abbott received millions of dollars from out-of-state billionaires like Jeff Yass, the richest man in all Pennsylvania, to defeat anti-voucher rural Republicans, who put their constituents first. Abbott makes no pretense: he wants vouchers to subsidize the 10 percent in private schools. He doesn’t care about the students in public schools.

Ninety percent of the students in Texas attend public schools. Yet hard-hearted Governor Greg Abbott wants the legislature to pass vouchers, which will be used overwhelmingly by students already enrolled in private schools. I don’t think Governor Abbott has ever visited a public school but he has paid visits to many Christian schools.

Vouchers are welfare for the affluent. They don’t improve achievement for those who use them, nor do they improve achievement for those who don’t.

Most of the children in public schools are Black and Brown. Most of the legislators are White. Is there a clue in that asymmetry?

Would it be too much to ask the legislators to think of the state’s future? It is in the public schools.

Join the rally on Saturday April 5 at the State Capitol.

Dear Superintendents and Trustees,

Save Texas Schools, a non-partisan coalition of parents, students, teachers/school staff and community partners, has stood for funding Texas public schools as well as reforming our testing and accountability systems since 2009. In 2011, we brought 13,000 people to the Texas State Capitol when schools were threatened with a $10 billion reduction in funding. Our actions helped cause the state to significantly reduce those cuts and eventually restore funding in 2013.

Texas is currently facing an even worse crisis in public school funding. With no increase in the basic allotment to account for inflation in 2021 and 2023, public school funding has been reduced by $10 billion in real dollars, or approximately $1,300 per student. With the end of ESSER funding, which helped districts get through the past several years, the majority of school districts statewide are facing significant deficits this year and next. The current funding proposal put forward in HB2 is not nearly enough to cover current gaps and future inflation, as well as possible federal funding cuts.

We believe that the legislature has more than enough to bring funding back to 2019 levels, given the amount of unspent funds that should have gone to public schools in 2021 and 2023 that are sitting in the state’s coffers. Getting back to 2019 levels would mean adding $1,300 per student to the basic allotment. Many education groups around the state, including Raise Your Hand Texas and Fund Schools First, a school district and business coalition in North Texas, are saying the same thing.

We would like to ask two things . . .

1. Join the call for an increase to the basic allotment of $1,300 per student. Texas school funding is a complicated subject, but a simple and straightforward message can galvanize parents, teachers and community members.

2. Encourage your stakeholders to join the Save Texas Schools rally at the Texas State Capitol on Saturday, April 5th. Thousands of Texans will be there to say NO! to underfunding and private school vouchers and YES! to testing and accountability reform. We have already held one rally on a cold and rainy Saturday in February with 1,200 people coming out (click here for a rally video). We believe that, at this crucial moment, we can impact school funding during this time of crisis.

A rally flyer is attached and more information is available at www.savetxschools.org. We also have bus transportation coming from many parts of the state. Information and registration is available on the website.

Thank you for all you do for the children and families of Texas, especially in these difficult times!

Allen Weeks, Ph.D.

Executive Director

Below are photographs I took when I participated in the Save Our Schools rally in 2013. The kids were wonderful, as were the marching bands and parents. Will the legislature listen this time? These wonderful youngsters are our future. We must not let them down.