An audit of Arizona voucher funds for home-schools demonstrated that 20% of the purchases by parents were unallowable, spent on consumer items that had nothing to do with education, unless you consider condoms “educational.”
Of some 384,000 transactions from December 2024 to September 2025, about 84,000 were spent on non-educational purposes.
One way to stop this misuse of public funds is to bar those who misspend public funds from participating.
Audit data shows over 20% of vendor purchases made with Empowerment Scholarship Account dollars could be barred under the program’s guidelines.
The program, run through the Arizona Department of Education allows expenses for homeschooled students under $2,000 to be automatically approved by the department and later audited. But that audit could come months later, a process that Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne has blamed on understaffing.
The program was initially designed primarily for students with disabilities but was expanded to be available for all students in 2022. Many homeschooled students are eligible to receive about $7,000 per year through the program, though money allocated to special needs students can be much higher.
Records released by the Arizona Attorney General’s Office show Arizonans have spent millions of dollars on expenses that appear to fall afoul of the program’s guidelines. A risk-based audit performed by the Department of Education found that 20% of purchases were “unallowed.” A risk-based audit is a financial audit that examines where problems are most likely to happen. In this case, the audit examined a random sample of purchases made through the ESA program.
When the department’s risk-based audit detects “unallowed” purchases, it then performs a full audit of the account to review the account holder’s other purchases. Of the accounts that received a full audit, 46% of the purchases made by those account holders were “unallowable.”
Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat seeking reelection this fall, in a January letter to the Department of Education asked for tighter guardrails on expense approval.
“ADE must do more on the front end to prevent unallowable purchases, and it must do so immediately,” Mayes said in her letter.
Horne declined to comment to The Arizona Republic, saying his office would soon send a letter in response to Mayes.
But Mayes criticized the policy of automatically approving some purchases and auditing them later. That’s given people a “road map for how to game the system,” Mayes said.
What were the ‘unallowable’ ESA purchases discovered in the audit?
One of the heftier purchases was $7,500 in video gaming equipment.
Parents also paid themselves for homeschooling, which is prohibited under the program. One parent paid themselves $5,700, while others kept the payments to below $2,000.
Other expenses forbidden by the ESA handbook included coffee machines, $2,000 in Visa gift cards, a $1,700 diamond necklace and dog training. There were also trips to Mexico, a Kohl’s gift card, scuba diving equipment, swimming pools, condoms and lubrication.
The last national #NoKings was in October 18, 2025. That was a Saturday. Two days later, on October 20, 2025, Donald Trump began the demolition of the East Wing of the White House. He didn’t tell anyone–not in public, anyway–nor did he follow the law and seek the approval of two boards of review.
Before anyone had a chance to react, the East Wing was a heap of rubble.
Trump declared that he the finished plans to replace it with a grand ballroom that could seat 1,000 people. He showed drawings of a room dripping in gold. A room that belonged in Las Vegas alongside the glittering, gaudy attractions, not alongside the President’s house, which has a simple elegance.
When civic groups and historic preservationists complained that he broke the law, they pointed out that he neglected to get the approval of the Conmission of Fine Arts and the National Capital Planning Commission, which is required by law.
Trump immediately solved the problem of an independent review by replacing every member of both commissions with loyal flunkies.
No surprise, the Commission on Fine Arts unanimously approved Trump’s ballroom unanimously. The chairman of the Commission said the ballroom was desperately needed and credited its “beautiful” structure to Trump.
Meanwhile an independent group called the National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to block the ballroom. Their lawsuit was dismissed, but the judge suggested they could sue for other reasons, and they have. That suit is pending.
Having won the approval of the Commision on Fine Arts, the ballroom issue went to the National Capital Planning Commission, stacked with Trump devotees.
At the public hearing, 30 people testified; 29 were opposed.
The Society of Architectural Historians entered a scathing statement into the record, critical of every aspect of the design.
The NCPC decided to delay its decision until April 2.
There is no doubt whatever that the NCPC will enthusiastically endorse Trump’s grand ballroom. Trump is committed to the idea. At one of his first public briefings about the attack on Iran, Trump spoke tersely about the conflict, then segued to musing about the golden drapes in his new ballroom. That’s when he became animated.
Throughout the process, Trump again proved that he is above the law. He believes that the White House is his personal property, and he can change it however he wants. It’s the architectural version of DOGE. Trump sees no reason to seek approval from Congress or any other body for whatever he wants to do.
He doesn’t need Congress to approve the elimination of foreign aid or the gutting of the Department of Education. When he realized he needed the approval of two little-known agencies to get what he wanted, he replaced everyone on both panels that wasn’t a loyalist.
He knows how to rig the outcome. In his vanity and narcissism, he never loses. That’s why he continues to insist that the 2020 election was rigged despite the total absence of any evidence. He never loses.
Heather Cox Richardson pulled together the extraordinary events of the past few days. She is the master of the question, “Make it all make sense,” even when it doesn’t. Her commentaries are wildly popular. She has about 3 million subscribers on Substack and an equal number who follow her on Facebook.
President Donald J. Trump is behaving more and more erratically these days, seeming to think he can dictate to other countries.
This morning, Trump told Barak Ravid and Zachary Basu of Axios that he needs to be involved personally in choosing the next leader of Iran. Speaking of Iranian politicians who are preparing to announce a new leader, Trump told the reporters: “They are wasting their time. Khamenei’s son is a lightweight. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy [Rodríguez] in Venezuela.”
Foreign affairs journalist Olga Nesterova of ONEST reported that in a call with Israel’s Channel 12 this morning, Trump called Israel’s president Isaac Herzog “a disgrace” and demanded Herzog pardon Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “today” because Trump doesn’t want Netanyahu distracted from the war with Iran. Trump said Herzog had “promised” him “five times” to pardon the prime minister, and he appeared to threaten Herzog when he added: “Tell him I’m exposing him.”
In a statement, Herzog noted that “Israel is a sovereign state governed by the rule of law” and said the pardon is being dealt with by the Justice Ministry, as the law requires. After its ruling, Hertzog’s office said, he will examine the issue according to the law and “without any influence from external or internal pressures of any kind.”
In a conversation today with Dasha Burns of Politico, Trump insisted that “[p]eople are loving what’s happening” and said: “Cuba’s going to fall, too.”
The most astonishing example of Trump’s international aggression came from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Although Trump initially said he attacked Iran to keep it from acquiring nuclear weapons, Leavitt yesterday explained that Trump joined Israel in a military attack on Iran because Trump had “a feeling based on fact” that Iran was going to attack the United States.
Trump’s assertion of power globally contrasts with increasing setbacks at home.
Since the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs Trump imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) as unconstitutional, the administration has tried to slow walk repaying the $130 billion the government collected under those tariffs. But yesterday, Judge Richard Eaton of the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled that companies that paid the tariffs are entitled to a refund.
After the Supreme Court’s decision, Trump immediately imposed new tariffs of 15% on all global trade, using as justification Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. As Lindsay Whitehurst and Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press noted, this is awkward because the Department of Justice under Trump argued in court last year that Trump had to use the IEEPA because Section 122 did “not have any obvious application” in fighting trade deficits.
Today the Democratic attorneys general of more than twenty states filed a lawsuit to stop the new tariffs imposed under Section 122. “Once again, President Trump is ignoring the law and the Constitution to effectively raise taxes on consumers and small businesses,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement Thursday.
The Department of Justice has also quietly backed away from Trump’s demand that it investigate whether former president Joe Biden broke the law by using an autopen to sign presidential documents. Yesterday, Michael S. Schmidt, Devlin Barrett, and Alan Feuer reported in the New York Times that prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., “were never quite clear what crime, if any, had been committed by the Biden administration’s use of the autopen.”
They concluded there was no credible case to make against Biden. The journalists noted that “the failed inquiry has only added to the sense among many federal investigators that Mr. Trump has become increasingly erratic in his desire to use the criminal justice system to punish his political adversaries for behavior that comes nowhere close to being criminal.”
Trump had been so invested in his attacks on Biden over his quite ordinary use of an autopen that he replaced a White House picture of Biden with one of an autopen, so the prosecutors’ shelving that investigation has to sting. Likely even more painful, though, is today’s news that Trump’s hand-picked National Capital Planning Commission has put off a vote to approve the ballroom Trump is proposing to replace the East Wing of the White House that he suddenly tore down last October.
At a Medal of Honor ceremony on Monday, Trump called attention to his ballroom and boasted: “I built many a ballroom. I believe it’s going to be the most beautiful ballroom anywhere in the world.” But the American people do not share Trump’s vision. The chair of the commission said “significant public input” has caused him to delay the vote until April 2. Jonathan Edwards and Dan Diamond of the Washington Post say that of the more than 35,000 comments the commission received, more than 97% were opposed to Trump’s plans for the ballroom.
But perhaps the biggest setback for the Trump administration showed in the testimony of now-former secretary of homeland security Kristi Noem before Congress this week. There, days after Trump launched a major military operation in the Middle East without consulting Congress, angry lawmakers of both parties exposed the lawlessness and corruption taking place in the department under Noem’s direction. But their stance was about more than Noem: her lawlessness and corruption represented the larger lawlessness and corruption of the Trump administration.
Noem testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday and the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday. In both chambers, Democrats jumped right to a central feature of the way in which Noem and the administration are setting up the idea that anyone who opposes the actions of the Trump administration is participating in “domestic terrorism.”
They tried to get Noem to walk back her statements that Renee Good and Alex Pretti, both shot and killed by federal agents acting under her authority in Minnesota, were “domestic terrorists.” Noem refused to do so. She has not actually called them “domestic terrorists” but has said they were engaged in “domestic terrorism,” a distinction that reveals the administration’s attempt to criminalize political opposition. Rachel Levinson-Waldman of the Brennan Center explained that “[t]o actually be called a ‘domestic terrorist, an individual must commit one or more of 51 underlying ‘federal crimes of terrorism,’” which involve nuclear or chemical weapons, plastic explosives, air piracy, and so on. Good and Pretti, and the many others administration officials have accused, do not fit that description. But on September 25, 2025, Trump’s NSPM-7 memo claimed that those opposing administration policies are part of “criminal and terroristic conspiracies” and that those who participate in them are engaging in “domestic terrorism.”
Noem refused to back away from the idea that Trump’s opponents are engaging in “criminal and terroristic conspiracies” by, for example, opposing the behavior of federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Border Patrol. Leaving that definition behind would undermine the administration’s entire domestic stance.
Democrats slammed Noem for her handling of detentions and deportations, ignoring court orders, and detaining U.S. citizens. In the House, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, said she “turned our government against our people, and…turned our people against our government.”
Republicans also called Noem out. Noem’s poor handling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has left North Carolina still suffering after terrible storms in 2024, and Senator Thom Tillis (R-NC) went after her.
He highlighted a letter from the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), who said the department’s leaders have “systematically obstructed” the work of him and his staff. He identified eleven instances in which the department had refused to provide records and information. In a criminal investigation with national security implications, the department would permit him to access a database only if he revealed details of the investigation of individuals who might be related to the investigation.
Tillis said: “Does anybody have any idea how bad it has to be for the [Office of Inspector General] in this agency to come out and do this publicly? That is stonewalling, that’s a failure of leadership, and that is why I’ve called for your resignation.”
Lawmakers also focused on the corruption in DHS, which now commands more than $150 billion thanks to the Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Lawmakers referred to a November 2025 ProPublica story in which reporters traced a $220 million contract for an ad campaign featuring Noem. The contract went first to a brand new small company organized by a Republican operative just days before winning the contract, and then to a subcontractor, Strategy Group, owned by Noem’s former spokesperson’s husband and closely associated with Noem’s advisor and reputed affair partner Corey Lewandowski.
Noem insisted she had nothing to do with the contract award and claimed Trump had signed off on the ad campaign. About the contract, Representative Joe Neguse (D-CO) commented in apparent disbelief: “You want the American people to believe that this is all above board, that $143 million of taxpayer money just happened to go to this one company that doesn’t have a headquarters, doesn’t have a website, has never done work for the federal government before, and is registered apparently or attached to a residence from a political operative, and of course one of the subcontractors of that contract, as you know, is a political firm that’s tied to, to you back when you were governor of South Dakota?”
Since Noem’s testimony, the Strategy Group released a statement saying it received only $226,137.17 for its work on the ad campaign.
Also under scrutiny was Noem’s purchase of a private plane with a luxurious bedroom in it, which brought up questions about whether, as is widely reported, she is having a sexual relationship with a subordinate. She refused to answer, and insisted Lewandowski had had no role in approving contracts. Joshua Kaplan and Justin Elliott of ProPublica promptly fact-checked her: in fact, Lewandowski has signed off on a number of contracts.
Lawmakers’ indictment of Noem for her extreme partisanship, disregard of the law, corruption, and lying condemned similar behavior from the administration in general. Today Trump told Steve Holland and Ted Hesson of Reuters that he “never knew anything about” Noem’s $220 million ad campaign, suggesting she lied to Congress under oath. This afternoon, just before she went on stage to speak, Trump announced by social media post that he was replacing Noem with Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.
This is an assertion of power the president does not have: he can nominate Mullin, but the Senate must confirm or reject his appointment.
Apparently unaware she was fired, Noem proceeded to give a speech in which she recited a false quotation from George Orwell, the writer who devoted much of his work to the importance of manipulating language to facilitate authoritarianism, a fitting end to Noem’s career in the Trump administration.
But Noem is not likely to disappear from the news. Illinois governor J.B. Pritzker recorded a video saying: “Hey, Kristi Noem, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. Here’s your legacy: corruption and chaos. Parents and children tear-gassed. Moms and nurses, U.S. citizens getting shot in the face. Now that you’re gone, don’t think you get to just walk away. I guarantee you, you will still be held accountable.”
Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) was more direct: “Turns out lawlessness is not a winning strategy,” he posted. “See you at Nuremberg 2.0.”
This story could be told again and again. George Reyes was on his way to work. He is a citizen and a veteran. ICE agents stopped his vehicle, smashed his windshield, dragged him away, and jailed him for three days.
The author being detained by federal agents on July 10 / Credit: Blake Fagan via AFP
“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” – Thomas Paine
By George Retes
Last Wednesday, February 18, I officially launched my lawsuit against the federal government. For me, this was something that felt like it was never going to happen. Not because I didn’t want to or because I was afraid, but because I thought that was just the way the law works when you’re trying to hold federal officials—and the government that employs them—accountable for violating someone’s rights.
On July 10, 2025, I was driving to my job as a security guard at a licensed farm in Camarillo, CA. Federal immigration agents were lined across the road that led to the farm I worked at. I clearly stated my citizenship and fully complied with officers, even though they were all yelling contradictory orders and no one was clearly in charge. Yet, despite doing everything right, I was detained and treated as if I had no rights. Agents engulfed my car with tear gas, smashed my window, sprayed pepper spray in my face, and dragged me out. I was choking on gas, unable to breathe, and even though I wasn’t resisting, I had one agent kneeling on my back and another kneeling on my neck while my hands were already behind my back.
I was first taken to a Navy base, where the agents took my fingerprints, picture, and swabbed my DNA. I was then taken off the base to a detention center and held for three days without charges. No phone call. No lawyer. No medical care, even though my skin burned from the chemicals. I never even got to shower. Friday morning, I was put on suicide watch, which means they put me in a yellow concrete room with a concrete bed and tiny mattress on top. They left the light on 24/7. I was in a hospital gown, and a guard watched me. I was in those conditions from Friday morning to the point I was released. I was released with zero charges and no explanation for anything that happened.
After my release, the harm did not stop. Instead of correcting the record, officials from DHS, specifically DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, used social media to spread false and misleading statements about me, in an attempt to justify my detention and undermine my credibility.
I was wrongfully detained and then publicly misrepresented by the very agency that violated my rights. That is not transparency. That is damage control at the expense of the truth. And since they only respond through social media, I would like to ask them to answer these questions, not only to me, but to the world: Why didn’t I ever get a phone call? Or a shower? Or a lawyer? If your accusations are true, why was I released without charges?
Under a law called the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), a person filing a lawsuit against the government must wait six months before they are even allowed to file suit. And even after all that, the chances of actually prevailing in your lawsuit are very low because of the so-called “discretionary function immunity” that the federal government gets. It is even harder to sue federal officials individually. Not because the court system is defending this, but because there is no clear law that allows people to sue individual federal officials for violating their rights.
There is another law that’s sadly relevant here: 42 USC 1983. As my attorneys wrote in Bloomberg Law, Section 1983 “allows constitutional claims to be brought against those acting under color of state law.” But, if, instead, an official is acting under color of federal law (which generally means an official working for the federal government), the result is “near-complete immunity from conventional lawsuits.”
All of that could be easily fixed by Congress. All Congress would have to do is amend the law to allow us to hold federal officials accountable for violating someone’s rights. The law already does this for state officials, so this change would be an easy fix that would hold all law enforcement to the same standards, implying that no one, no matter the badge, is above the law.
This week, I attended the State of the Union as a guest of Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.). I was honored and extremely grateful for the opportunity. Never did I think I would be in this situation, surrounded by these people, and yet here I was. By attending, I was a living reminder of government overreach and how it has impacted so many people, contrary to this administration’s claims that they are only going after “the worst of the worst.” I listened as the president painted DHS’s actions as appropriate simply because we need to fix the border issue. But this characterization is not true. This is not immigration enforcement; it’s madness.
When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.
I’m fully aware that my lawsuit might fail; that the world might look at my story and choose to just move on; that the federal officials who did this to me might get off scot-free. But there’s another future possible here: one where we succeed in court, where people choose not to look away, where federal agents can’t unjustifiably detain a US citizen with impunity. That’s the future I choose to believe in, and the one I’m fighting to make real—not only for myself, but for every single person in this country.
What happened to me is not about politics. It is not about immigration policy. And it is not about one bad decision made in a chaotic moment. It is about power without accountability. If a US citizen, an Army veteran, someone who complied with officers’ directions, identified himself, and broke no law, can be treated this way—detained without charges, denied basic rights, physically restrained, and then publicly smeared to justify it—then no one in this country is as safe as they believe they are.
The Constitution does not only apply when it is convenient. Civil rights do not disappear because an agency makes a mistake. And truth does not stop mattering because it is uncomfortable. I am asking for accountability and my day in court, not just for myself, but for everyone who does not have a platform, a lawyer, or the ability to stand in front of you and tell their story. Because if this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.
The measure of this country is not whether we admit when we are wrong, but whether we are willing to correct it.
George Retes is a US citizen and Army veteran who served in Iraq and was jailed by ICE and held for three days without an explanation.
Jason Garcia, an investigative reporter who writes, a blog called “Seeking Rents” uncovered a new Republican plan to shovel taxpayers’ money to charter schools. Under Ron DeSantis and a Republicanncontrolled legislature, Florida is determined to crush public schools by sending public money to charter schools and vouchers.
Here is a new twist: Republicans want school districts to share their funding with charter schools they did not authorize.
Garcia reports:
Five years ago, Republican leaders in Tallahassee gave the charter school industry something it had been seeking for years: A way around local voters.
The change — obscured inside larger education legislation that also included restrictions on the participation of transgender students in school sports — gave state colleges and universities the power to authorize new charter schools.
In other words, it enabled charter schools — public schools run by private management entities rather than public school districts — to bypass locally elected School Boards and work instead through the governor-appointed boards that control state colleges and universities.
The industry now wants to make local voters help pay for these state-imposed charters, too.
The idea is contained inside a package of tax cuts and tax-policy changes proposed last week by the Florida Senate. It would require school districts to split revenue from what’s sometimes called the “additional millage” — an optional property tax that county voters can levy via referendum in order to raise extra funding for their local schools — with every charter school in the area.
A school district currently only has to share proceeds from the additional millage with charters that the school district itself approved.
The immediate impact would be minor: There are currently only 12 charter schools across Florida that have been approved by an “alternate authorizer” like a college or a university.
But it could escalate quickly.
Just last month, for instance, the board of trustees at Miami Dade College signed off on six new charter schools — doubling, in one meeting, the number of charters in Florida approved without permission from the local school board.
They are the first of what could become a wave of new charters unleashed by the Miami college, which just launched a new authorization program late last year, according to WLRN Public Radio and Television.
WLRN reported in December that Dade College had begun pitching its authorization services to prospective charter operators. During one webinar, a college administrator told attendees that they could expect friendlier treatment from governor-appointed college boards than voter-elected school boards.
“I think one of the benefits of going to a college authorizer is that colleges are wanting to do this,” he said. “We’re going to be looking at the same types of things that the districts look at, but with the mindset that we really do want to make this a partnership, and we want to make it successful.”
It’s not the only potential accelerant that could lead to more charters sidestepping school boards.
Florida lawmakers last year approved a major expansion of the state’s “Schools of Hope” program, an incentive program through which charter school operators can get lucrative cash grants and low-interest loans if they open up new campuses in certain locations. The law was pushed through Tallahassee in part by lobbyists for Success Academy, the New York charter network that plans to open new schools in Miami.
The new law enables Schools of Hope charters to work through college and universities rather than solely through school districts.
Miami, Florida’s most populous county, certainly seems to be the focal point of this latest legislative proposal, too.
Additional millage property taxes expire every four years unless extended by voters through. And Miami’s tax, which generates more than $400 million a year, is currently set to lapse on June 30, 2027 — which means the School Board may soon schedule another countywide referendum.
The provision requiring local school districts to share money with state-imposed charters would take effect just before that vote could happen.
In his first term, Trump wanted the U.S. Census to ask about citizenship. Critics worried that inserting the question would lower the response rate, leading to an undercount. In June 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court “ruled that Trump had not provided a sufficient rationale to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census as part of his broader campaign to stop illegal immigration.”
But that was then, this is now.
Science reports that the Trump administration scrapped plans to overhaul the census and inserted the citizenship question. The result, say knowledgeable insiders, will be an inaccurate census.
The U.S. Census Bureau spent 6 years preparing for a test this spring of ways to make the 2030 decennial census both more accurate and less expensive. In 1 day this month, the administration of President Donald Trump discarded many of those changes and replaced them with an approach researchers warn will likely do the opposite. That’s in part because the test will now include a citizenship question—something Trump has wanted to add since the previous census.
The agency originally planned to ask more than 650,000 residents in six test sites to respond to the same nine questions as on the 2020 census. But on 3 February, the Census Bureau posted a notice that “turned the plan on its head,” says Terri Ann Lowenthal, former staff director of a congressional panel that oversees the agency. In addition to paring down the sites to two, both midsize cities in the South, the agency said it would use some version of the much longer American Community Survey (ACS), an annual survey that monitors demographic changes and asks where residents were born and whether they are a U.S. citizen.
Taken together, the changes blow up the agency’s carefully crafted plans to better reach groups who are traditionally undercounted and to hold down costs, which reached $13 billion in 2020, says former Census Bureau Director and statistician Robert Santos. “It’s no longer a test of how to conduct the decennial census,” explains Santos, an appointee of former President Joe Biden who stepped down 1 month after Trump took office. “The changes make no sense and are not something the Census Bureau would have done on its own.”
Despite the Trump regime attacking the Constitution, eroding our rights, and filling every office with incompetent or malevolent individuals, our legal system has frustrated some (certainly not all) of their evil designs.
Not three hurrahs but only two. Why? The Department of Justice is now wholly under Trump’s control. It has become Trump’s law firm, answering only to him. The U.S. Supreme Court has been far too accepting of Trump’s reckless policies. Too many federal judges have gone along with him.
All too often, the regime has ignored the judges. Rulings against Trump’s policies have come from all kinds of judges, including some appointed by Trump. Grand juries have refused his efforts to indict his enemies.
Nonetheless, many federal judges across the country have repeatedly blocked the regime. Many have defended the right of due process for immigrants, many of whom are arrested without a warrant or access to a lawyer, then disappeared into a detention camp or deported to a country they never lived in.
Here are reasons for cheer.
The U.S. Supreme Court declared that Trump does not have the power to slap tariffs on every other country, because the Constitution gives the power of the purse to Congress, not the President. Trump, furious, responded by slapping a 10% tariff on every country, then raised it to 15%. Will the Supreme Court ignore his open defiance?
This is the same Court that ruled that the President is above the law. Absolute immunity. Trump is the kind of guy who loves absolute immunity for any actions he takes.
Even more powerful than the decisions of judges has been the refusal of grand juries to indict Trump’s enemies and critics. That’s why he attacked Iran without congressional approval. Why should he bother? He is above the law, the dream of a habitual law-breaker.
Many federal judges have repeatedly defended the very American idea that immigrants–even undocumented immigrants–have legal rights. They have repeatedly interfered with ICE’s efforts to arrest, detain, and oust immigrants, without a hearing, without due process.
Federal judges confounded Trump’s vendetta against big law firms who represented Trump’s enemies.They frustrated his vengeance so consistently that the Justice Department dropped the charges. The law firms that quickly acquiesced to Trump have egg on heir collective faces.
The grand juries have been dogged in their refusal to bow to Trump’s pursuit of vengeance.
When Sean Charles Dunn, a paralegal in the Justice Department hurled his footlong Subway sandwich (turkey) at US Customs and Border Patrol agents, he was charged with a crime, fired from his job, and hauled before a grand jury. The grand jury refused to indict him. The “Sandwich Guy” was briefly a folk hero for his defiance.
Mark Joseph Stern, writing in Slate, said that the grand jury’s refusal to indict appeared to be an instance of jury nullification, stating that “a grand jury will typically indict a ham sandwich, but it turns out a D.C. grand jury won’t indict the guy who threw the sandwich.”
Trump told Pam Bondi to go after his enemies and she did.
She charged former FBI Director James Comey with lying to Congress, but the grand jury refused to indict him. She charged him again, and the next grand jury did not indict him.
Bondi then went after New York State Attorney General Leticia James, who won successful convictions of Donald Trump in New York state courts.
Trump wanted her indicted for bank fraud and mortgage fraud. (DOJ allegedly received confidential information from Bill Pulte, chair of the Federal Housing Finance Agency). Eric Siebert, the first interim federal prosecutor in Virginia, who was respected by both parties, refused to bring charges because the evidence was flimsy. He resigned and was replaced by Lindsay Halligan, a personal attorney of Trump’s who had no experience as a prosecutor.
Halligan persuaded a grand jury to indict James but the prosecution was invalidated because Halligan had not been confirmed by the Senate and her predecessor had used up the 120 days when he was interim prosecutor.
Two new grand juries refused to indict James, even though they heard only the prosecutors’ evidence, not her defense. .
In another high-profile case, Secretary of Hegseth wanted to punish six members of Congress–all military veterans–who endorsed a video declaring that members of the military should not obey illegal orders. Hegseth himself was on video saying exactly the same thing a few years ago, but no matter. Trump said that their actions were “seditious” and deserved the death penalty. In another comment, he called them “traitors.” Trump’s top aide Stephen Miller said that the six were engaged in an “insurrection.”
The case was put before a grand jury by the U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, a former FOX News host.
Not one member of the Grand Jury supported the indictment.
In a separate case, Hegseth tried to reduce Senator Mark Kelly’s rank and pension to punish him for participating in the video. Kelly said he had free speech rights. Federal Judge Richard Leon, a Bush II appointee, enjoined Hegseth’s actions. Hegseth is appealing; he wants to bring Kelly down. His case, however, is absurd. How can a U.S. Senator be muzzled because he is a veteran? How can the Secretary of Defense be allowed to vindictively reduce the rank and pension of those who served honorably but had the temerity to speak their mind?
A few days ago, Federal Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts ruled that the government’s policy of deporting immigrants to third countries–countries they have never lived in–is illegal. This is an unusually cruel policy. The decision will of course be appealed.
So three cheers for the brave judges who stand up for the rights of individuals.
Three cheers for Grand Juries, especially those who think for themselves and refuse to be cowed by political bigwigs.
And two cheers for our legal system, which moves very slowly and can bankrupt anyone who does not have a pro bono lawyer.
That was fast. Yesterday the Justice Department announced it was withdrawing from efforts to punish four big law firms that refused to capitulate to Trump’s demands. Today, it changed course.
Did Trump intervene? We know he never admits defeat. He’s still searching for evidence that he won the 2020 election.
One would think that between launching a war and obsessing about the drapes in the new White House ballroom, he would have enough on his plate.
But give in to defiant law firms? Let them boast that they beat him? Him, the most powerful, most winningest man in the world? Never!
The Trump administration indicated on Tuesday that it planned to renew its defense of executive orders that it had leveled against law firms, a sharp reversal a day after asking a court whether it could abandon the fight.
In a motion filed with the appeals court in the District of Columbia, where the cases are playing out, the Justice Department formally asked to withdraw its request on Monday to abandon the cases against four law firms. It was not immediately clear how the court would respond; the department is scheduled to file a brief in the case on Friday.
The Justice Department did not comment. The White House declined to comment.
On Monday, the administration, in a court filing, asked an appeals court if it could walk away from its appeal of victories the firms had won against the White House. The move was a significant concession by the White House that it could not stand behind its orders.
But on Tuesday morning, the Justice Department abruptly changed its position. In an email to the four firms contesting the executive orders, a department official apologized for the short notice and said it would file a motion to withdraw its voluntary dismissal.
The email was sent to the firms shortly after 10 a.m. The Justice Department asked the firms to indicate whether they planned to oppose its attempt to reverse course by 10:30 a.m. It was not immediately clear how the firms would respond.
But nearly two hours later, the Justice Department formally filed a motion to withdraw the motion from the previous day.
A White House official said that there were ongoing discussions in the White House Counsel’s Office about how to proceed.
The orders seek to bar firms that refuse to capitulate to President Trump from government business and suggest that their clients could lose government contracts. They had spurred widespread panic in the legal profession and led many firms to submit to Mr. Trump rather than face the existential threat his directives represented.
But four firms — Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and Susman Godfrey — fought the orders, quickly receiving favorable rulings from district court judges. Nine others struck deals, most notably Paul Weiss, drawing sharp criticism.
It was not immediately clear on Tuesday what had prompted the about-face. One question that the administration’s decision a day earlier to abandon its cases raised was whether the deals it made with the nine firms would survive and whether those contracts — which were not made public — were considered unconstitutional given that the district court ruling would be final.
The introduction of vouchers for private and religious schools is accompanied by certain lies.
Vouchers won’t cost much
Vouchers will save poor kids from failing public schools.
Voucher schools will be more accountable than public schools.
Vouchers won’t hurt public schools.
Every one of those claims is a lie. Vouchers always cost far more than was predicted. In every state, most vouchers are claimed by students who are already in enrolled nonpublic schools. Voucher schools typically are completely unaccountable for their use of public funds.
West Virginia passed a law to allow taxpayer-funded school vouchers in 2021, and they’ve been tweaking it ever since. They opened it up to more and more students. Consequently, the costs of the program are ballooning: when the law was passed, supporters declared it would cost just $23 million in its first year, and now the estimate for the coming school year is $245 to $315 million.
With that kind of money on the line, you’d think that the state might want to put some accountability and oversight rules in place. You know– so the taxpayers know what they’re getting for their millions of dollars.
But you would be backwards. Instead, the legislature is considering a bill to reduce accountability for private and religious schools. SB 216, the Restoring Private Schools Act of 2026, is short and simple. It consists of the current accountability rules for private, parochial or church schools, or schools of a religious order– with a whole lot of rules crossed out.
What are some of the rules that the legislation proposes to eliminate for private and religious schools? Here’s the list of rules slated for erasure:
The requirement for a minimum number of hours of instruction.
The requirement to maintain attendance and disease immunization records for each enrolled student.
The requirement to provide, upon request of county superintendent, a list of the names and addresses of all students in the school between ages 7 and 16.
The requirement to annually administer a nationally normed standardized test in the same grades as required for public schools. Ditto the requirement to assess the progress of students with special needs.
Since there’s no test requirement, there is also no requirement to provide testing data to parents and the state department of education.
The requirement to establish curriculum objectives, “the attainment of which will enable students to develop the potential for becoming literate citizens.” Scrap also the requirement for an instructional program to meet that goal.
So under this bill, private schools would not have to have a plan for educating students, would not have to spend a minimum amount of time trying to educate students, and would not have to provide the state with any evidence that they are actually educating students.
The bill does add one bit of new language:
As autonomous entities free of governmental oversight of instruction, private, parochial, or church, schools may implement such measures for instruction and assessment of pupils as leadership of such schools may deem appropriate.
In other words, private religious schools accepting taxpayer-funded vouchers may do whatever the hell they want.
The bill is sponsored by Senator Craig Hart. Hart calls himself a school teacher, and is mentioned as an agriculture/FFA teacher, though I could find no evidence of where he teaches. He was elected in 2024 after running as a hardcore MAGA. He has pushed for requiring Bibles in school, among other MAGA causes.
Said Eric Kerns, superintendent of Faith Christian Academy, “It just gives private schools a lot more flexibility in what they would be able to do as far as assessment and attendance and school days. Our accountability is that if people aren’t satisfied with the education they’re receiving, then they go to another private school or back to the public school or they homeschool.” Also known as “No accountability at all.” A school is not a taco truck.
As reported by Amelia Ferrell Knisely at West Virginia Watch, at least one legislator tried to put some accountability back in the bill. GOP Sen. Charles Clements tried to put back a nationally-recognized testing requirement and share results with parents. Said Clements
I want to see private schools survive, but I think we have to have guardrails of some sort. There’s a lot of money around, and it’s a way for people to come in and not produce a product we need … I think it just leaves the door open for problems.
Exactly. And his amendment was rejected. The School Choice Committee chair said the school could still use a real test if they wanted to, but the bill would allow more flexibility to choose newer test options; I’m guessing someone is pulling for the Classical Learning Test, the conservative unwoke anti-SAT test.
Democrat Mike Woelfel tried to put the immunization record back; that was rejected, too.
Look, the Big Standardized Test is a terrible measure of educational quality, and it should be canceled for everyone. But for years the choice crowd promised that once choice was opened up, we’d get a market driven by hard data. Then it turned out that the “hard data” showed that voucher systems were far worse than public schools, and the solution has not been to make the voucher system work better, but to silence any data that reveals a voucher system failure.
The goal is not higher quality education. The goal is public tax dollars for private religious schools– but only if the private religious schools can remain free of regulation, oversight, or any restrictions that get in the way of their power to discriminate freely against whoever they wish to discriminate against.
This is not about choice. It’s about taxpayer subsidies for private religious schools, and it’s about making sure those schools aren’t accountable to anyone for how they use that money. It’s another iteration of the same argument we’ve heard across the culture–that the First Amendment should apply because I am not free to fully exercise my religion unless I can unreservedly discriminate against anyone I choose and unless I get taxpayer funding to do it.
We’ve been told repeatedly that the school choice bargain is a trade off– the schools get autonomy in exchange for accountability, but that surely isn’t what’s being proposed here. If West Virginia is going to throw a mountain of taxpayer money at private schools, those schools should be held accountable. This bill promises the opposite; may it die a well-deserved death.
At the beginning of his second term, Trump demanded that many large law firms be punished because they had opposed him in the past or represented his opponents. He threatened to bar them from any federal work unless they agreed to donate millions of dollars in pro bono services to causes of his choosing. Most law firms, among the most prestigious in the country, quickly accepted Trump’s demands.
Four major law firms decided to fight the executive order. They won in federal courts. Yesterday the Trump Department of Justice announced that it was dropping its efforts to punish the four resisting firms. The ones who quickly conceded owe Trump nearly $1 billion in legal services.
As historian Timothy Snyder wrote in his book On Tyranny, Do Not Obey in Advance. The losing law firms did not fight for their independence. They obeyed in advance.
The Trump administration plans to abandon its defense of the president’s executive orders sanctioning several law firms, according to people familiar with the matter.
The Justice Department as soon as Monday was expected to drop its appeals of four trial-court rulings that struck down President Trump’s actions against law firms Jenner & Block, WilmerHale, Perkins Coie, and Susman Godfrey.
Trump issued a string of executive orders last year against several law firms and individual lawyers that would have stripped security clearances, restricted their access to federal buildings and directed agencies to end any federal contracts with the firms and their clients.
While the administration lost its battle in court, the executive orders nonetheless put a lasting chill on the industry. Fear of the orders prompted nine large firms to make deals with the president, promising nearly $1 billion in pro bono work for causes favored by the administration. Many of the same firms that took a leading role opposing the Trump administration in court during his first term have shied away from taking on pro bono cases adverse to the government.
“This affected the interest of big law firms doing what they normally do, to stand up for people without representation,” said Scott Cummings, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. “In that sense, Trump achieved something important that will linger.”
In targeting the firms, Trump cited their connections to his political rivals and criticized their diversity initiatives and pro bono work advocating for immigrants, transgender rights and voting protections. The White House had singled out these firms for representing clients including Hillary Clinton and George Soros, and for ties to figures such as Robert Mueller, who as special counsel led the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
The orders set off a panic among law firm leaders across the country, especially after one of the biggest firms, Paul Weiss, chose to settle with the White House rather than gamble on suing the administration.
Others chose a combative approach, arguing in a series of lawsuits that Trump’s actions amounted to unconstitutional retaliation and an abuse of executive power. The firms said the orders would be devastating to their business and that they risked losing lucrative clients that work with the federal government….
An ideological mix of judges ruled against the administration, saying the executive orders undermined bedrock principles of the U.S. legal system. In one decision, Judge Richard Leon, an appointee of President George W. Bush, said blocking the sanctions was necessary to preserve an “independent bar willing to tackle unpopular cases, however daunting.”
Joyce Vance has an excellent post about the law firms that defended themselves and those that capitulated at once to Trump.
She wrote:
So far, four different federal judges have held the orders are unconstitutional. While one of those judges was appointed by Barack Obama and another by Joe Biden, two of them were appointed by George W. Bush— bad math for the administration.
As for the firms that capitulated early on, they too appear to have miscalculated. Neera Tanden, who served in the White House during the Biden administration, explained the cost on Twitter:
Former Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, who is now the Director of the Center for Law and Public Trust at NYU Law School, explained it like this: “The law firms that capitulated to blatantly unconstitutional orders out of fear and for increased profit undermined the rule of law and the legal profession in this country. This episode will be remembered as demonstrating the difference between institutions that had the courage to uphold the Constitution and fight bullying, and those that didn’t and gained nothing. Let’s hope that media companies, universities, and other organizations pay heed.”
Standing up to the bully is the right response. Yes, it requires some initial courage. But the bully ultimately backs down. And every time he does, we win. Today, we won again, thanks to some lawyers who were willing to take the risk and be brave.
Diane Ravitch's blog 