Jason Garcia, investigative reporter, explains how giant for-profit charter chain Academica plans to grab a bigger share of local property taxes. Academica long ago figured out the importance of working with the right lobbyists and contributing generously to the right politicians. Their efforts have paid off in bigger profits.
In late February, toward the end of this year’s regular legislative session, Republican leaders in the state Senate introduced a measure to make public school districts across Florida give a bigger share of local property taxes to privately run charter schools. The idea seemed to catch some senators by surprise when it was presented to the Senate Finance & Tax Committee as part of a larger package of proposed tax cuts and changes. The charter school provision prompted an extended round of sometimes-confused questioning during the hearing; Sen. Ed Hooper, a Republican from Clearwater who is a part of the Senate GOP leadership team, confessed that even he did not fully understand it. But there was someone who knew about the property tax plan in advance: Academica Corp., the charter school management giant that stands to profit from the change. Records obtained by Seeking Rents show that the sponsor the Senate tax package shared a draft of the charter school language with a lobbyist for Academica the week before it was filed for the rest of the public to see. An aide to Sen. Bryan Avila (R-Miami Springs) emailed the still-secret tax-sharing scheme to Academica lobbyist Andreina Figueroa with a one-word subject line: “Review.”
Joyce Vance, former federal prosecutor for northern Alabama, sounds the alarm about a looming threat to the integrity of the fall elections. Trump knows he is likely to lose control of the House and possibly even the Senate. His own poll numbers are very low, in the mid-30s. His war on Iran is unpopular. Consumer prices are rising. Everyone feels the pain at the gas pump. The state of the economy is a millstone around his neck. Prominent MAGA boosters have defected, such as Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly.
Trump’s strategy: Eliminate the guardrails and put election deniers in charge, the people who think that Trump won in 2020, despite the fact that his claims were rejected in more than 60 courts, including the Supreme Court. In other words, cheat.
My friends at Fair Fight, the Georgia-based pro-voting and pro-democracy organization reviewed the results of a ProPublica investigation into how Trump is systematically removing election protections, and produced this summary, that brings you up to date and also provides an important suggestion for what you can do.
We’re all responsible for protection the right to vote. So this is important information to take in.
“The election denial movement is now interwoven within the federal government.”
On Monday, ProPublica released a massive new investigation breaking down how Donald Trump has dismantled federal guardrails that stopped him from overturning his 2020 election loss.
The 4,700+ word investigation, based on interviews with about 30 current and former executive branch officials, provides an unprecedented and detailed account of how thoroughly critical election security guardrails have been gutted within the federal government ahead of the 2026 midterm elections.
Key Findings from ProPublica’s Investigation:
We read the entire piece (twice) to make sure you’re aware of the findings.
Career officials who protected elections are gone – election deniers have taken over. ProPublica found that at least 75 career officials across several agencies who played key roles in safeguarding the 2020 election have been fired, resigned, or reassigned. They have been replaced by roughly two dozen political appointees Trump has installed in positions that could affect elections. Many are election deniers and ten actively worked to reverse Trump’s 2020 loss.
Federal programs designed to safeguard elections have been dismantled. Since Trump took office, nearly all federal election protection programs have been eliminated, severely defunded, or had nearly all their staff removed or reassigned:
CISA election team
NSC election security group
ODNI Foreign Malign Influence Center
DOJ Public Integrity Section
DOJ Civil Rights Division’s voting section
FBI Public Corruption Team
FBI Foreign Influence Task Force
FBI and DOJ Election Day command posts
False claims and politicization now drive federal election policy. ProPublica reports that White House election lawyer Kurt Olsen – sanctioned by judges for false 2020 claims – pressured the FBI’s Atlanta chief to seize Fulton County’s 2020 ballots using a discredited report. When the FBI chief examined the evidence and found it didn’t hold up, and was already dismissed by Georgia Republican officials, he was forced out. The raid happened anyway – using a version of the same rejected evidence. Former DOJ Public Integrity lawyers said they likely would have tried to block the investigation.
Trump is “flooding the zone” to distract us. Billionaires are trying to control what you see, buying up media and controlling algorithms. Share this. Help spread the word.
Comment from Lauren Groh-Wargo, Fair Fight Action CEO: “Let’s be clear about what ProPublica has documented – the federal officials who stopped Trump from overturning his 2020 election loss have been systematically removed and replaced by the same people who tried to help him do it. At least eight key election security programs have been gutted since Trump took office. This is a coordinated effort to ensure there are no guardrails left when Americans go to vote in 2026 – everyone must understand what’s at stake.”
This Investigation Builds on a Pattern of Reporting
ProPublica’s investigation is revealing a coordinated effort to interfere with the 2026 midterm elections:
In February, they revealed that several high-ranking Trump officials – including Kurt Olsen and DHS election integrity official Heather Honey – attended a summit convened by Michael Flynn where election deniers with White House access and influence discussed plans to declare a national emergency to take over the midterms.
In March, ProPublicareported that David Harvilicz, the DHS official in charge of voting machine security, has called to ban voting machines, questioned the validity of Democratic wins, and pushed for Republicans to overhaul election systems to their advantage. Harvilicz co-founded a technology company an election denier who participated in attempts to seize voting machines and spread false claims which Trump considered using as a basis to declare martial law and seize voting machines in 2020.
Taken together, the reporting reveals an effort to embed election deniers inside key federal government roles and use government power to reshape the 2026 midterms.
The Election Integrity Network is the Connective Tissue
The Election Integrity Network, founded by Cleta Mitchell after Trump’s 2020 loss, is the organizational thread connecting these appointees. Mitchell played a central role in efforts to overturn Trump’s 2020 loss, she joined Trump’s infamous phone call to “find” votes in Georgia, was later subpoenaed by the House January 6th Committee and recommended to face charges by a Georgia grand jury.
At least 11 Trump officials have ties to Mitchell’s election denial network – they’ve been installed in agencies like DHS, DOJ, and CISA. One key example is Heather Honey, often seen as a protege of Mitchell. Honey falsely claimed more ballots were cast in Pennsylvania than there were voters in 2020, a claim Trump cited on January 6th – now holds a newly created DHS election integrity role and still gives EIN members private briefings from inside the government. Experts warn this coordination would likely have violated ethics rules under previous administrations, including Trump’s first term.
What Can You Do?
It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump and his allies are trying to put their thumb on the scales ahead of the 2026 midterms. They’ve spread false conspiracy theories about voting machines and voter rolls – and reporting shows those claims are now being used to justify federal action.
Trump’s March 2025 executive order attempted to force the decertification of voting machines used in multiple states. Courts blocked it – but the people who pushed for it are still in charge. False claims assembled by election deniers were used to justify the FBI’s seizure of 2020 ballots in Fulton County and federal power is being used to pressure states into handing over their un-redacted voter rolls containing Americans’ personal, private information.
This isn’t a red state or blue state issue. These efforts can target elections anywhere in the country. Regardless of who you support politically, you should want your vote to be protected and your elections to be fair.
Peter Greene wrote in Forbes about a Democrat-led effort to eliminate the federal voucher program from Trump’s “One Big Ugly Bill,” the one that takes from the poor and gives to the richest. Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona led the opposition to this program. Kelly knows how vouchers have harmed the state budget and public schools in Arizona.
One portion of the President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” was a federal school voucher program that any state could join. But before that plan can go into effect, a new Senate bill has been proposed that would undo the vouchers entirely.
Senators Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Mazie Hirono (D-HI) and an additional 28 senators have introduced the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act. The act would strike IRS Code Section 25, the portion of the IRS code that was inserted to create the federal school voucher program, eliminating that program.
The new voucher program was sold as a tax credit program. It would allow taxpayers to claim a $1,700 tax credit by diverting that payment from the IRS to a scholarship granting organization that would then award at least $1,530 of that donation to a student (the rules governing the program allow SGOs to keep 10% of the donated funds).
Kelly cites his home state of Arizona as a cautionary tale, where taxpayer-funded school vouchers have become costly: “Since 2022, our state’s universal voucher program has diverted and drained money from public schools; last year alone cost Arizona taxpayers nearly $1 billion. Instead of investing in classrooms, special education services, or school safety, lawmakers pushed massive tax giveaways and created a parallel education system that lacks transparency and accountability.”
12News and reporter Craig Harris have run a series of reports showing much of that money has gone to questionable and disallowed purposes, including dirt bikes, custom tires and luxury hotel stays. Choice advocates such as EdChoice have pushed back, but have had difficulty debunking Harris’s results.
“In Arizona, we’ve already seen how universal vouchers are leading to rampant fraud and benefiting people who already had the means to send their kids to private school, while decimating public education for everyone else,” said Kelly.
On X, Secretary of Education Lindas McMahon noted that Kelly surely knows “the Education Freedom Tax Credit does not take a single dollar away from public schools — it brings new, private money into education.”
When Kentucky’s similarly-structured tax credit scholarship program was challenged in court, the state made a similar argument that the program did not use any public taxpayer funds. But when the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled against the program, they rejected that argument. “The money at issue cannot be characterized as simply private funds,” they wrote, “rather it represents the tax liability that the taxpayer would otherwise owe.”
When it comes to granting tax credits, the federal government has one power that states do not. Most states require a balanced budget; the state needs to find a way to cover the money it lost by offering credits rather than collecting on the tax liability. The federal government can just add the uncollected taxes to its deficit tab.
Kelly noted in an interview, “It is a deficit bomb, this federal program.”
The Joint Committee on Taxation, a nonpartisan entity that assists Congress on tax legislation, estimated that the credit could cost $25.9 billion between 2025 and 2034 or around $3 billion to $4 billion a year. That would mean potential income of $300-$400 million for SGOs; several organizations are preparing to launch national SGOs to work with the federal voucher program.
In addition to Kelly and Hirono, the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act is cosponsored by Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), Chris Coons (D-DE), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Dick Durbin (D-IL), John Fetterman (D-PA), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Angus King (I-ME), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Ed Markey (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Jack Reed (D-RI), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Adam Schiff (D-CA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Tina Smith (D-MN), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).
On Saturday April 25, the White House Correspondents Association will hold its annual dinner, which honors the First Amendment and raises scholarship funds for journalism students.
This year, for the first time, Trump has accepted the invitation. Trump avoided the dinner in the past, because it’s customary to roast the President and his administration.
Trump likes to hurl insults at others, but he can’t tolerate being laughed at, nor is he capable of making fun of himself. He likes to think that he is the best President in history, smarter than the generals and scientists. Everything he does, he thinks, is an unparalleled success.
Humor is not part of his deck of cards. Insults, boasting, and bullying are his main suits.
As it happens, the online publication STATUS got a copy of an invitation to an “intimate gathering” from billionaire David Ellison, whose father bought CBS and is closing in on CNN. According to Status, CBS invited Pete Hegseth and Stephen Miller to be their guests at the dinner on the 25.
So many ironies! No administration in memory has done more to erode the First Amendment than the current one. No president has done more to insult and belittle the press than Trump. No Cabinet member has stifled First Amendment rights more than Hegseth. The only coverage he tolerates is sycophancy.
And better yet, Ellison is holding his dinner at the U.S. Institute of Peace. The USIP was a private organization that was evicted from its building by DOGE. Trump decided it should bear his name.
So our great “peace” president is now at war with Iran, a war of choice. Our man of peace issued a warning that he would eliminate Iran’s entire civilization if they did not accept his demands. That’s a war crime.
Somewhere in the wings is Trump’s “Board of Peace,” which collected $1 billion each from countries that wanted to join. Trump is chairman of its board forever. There will be no audits. Trump has collected a bushel basket of billions to spread his gospel of peace.
It’s really sick.
The White House Correspondents dinner will not feature a comedian this year. Comedians might make the dire error of ridiculing Trump. So, instead of a comedian, they invited illusionist Oz Perlman to perform. That’s safe!
To show some backbone, I propose that they invite an unannounced guest to perform: Stephen Colbert.
The very idea of honoring Trump at a dinner that also honors the First Amendment is absurd. This president constantly attacks the press and calls them “fake news,” ridicules female reporters, says belligerently that the press is “the enemy of the people.” He does not deserve to be honored.
The best thing for the White Hiuse Correspondents to do is to boycott their dinner; or to hiss when he is introduced; or to withhold any applause at the end of his remarks.
These are not normal times. Trump is not a normal president. He is an ignorant, bitter narcissist, who is declining physicallly and mentally. He can be counted on to lie and spread hatred. He deserves no honor, no applause.
Nigel Long is a graduate of Shortridge Public High School in Indianapolis and the parents of students in the Indianapolis Public Schools. He lived through the systematic destruction of his city’s public schools. He opposed the so-called reformers, as he watched them erode and finally eliminate democratic control of the public schools.
Here he expresses his outrage at the theft of democratic control of the city’ schools. His article was posted by the Indiana Coalition for Public Education.
I want to talk about what happened in Indianapolis recently, not just for us, but for every city in America.
The Indianapolis Public Education Corporation board was announced. An unelected body now controls school closures, buildings, property taxes, and transportation across the entire boundaries of Indianapolis’ largest and oldest school district.
David Harris, the man who founded the Mind Trust in 2006, chairs the board. Janet McNeal leads Herron Classical Schools, a network the Mind Trust incubated. Edward Rangel runs Adelante Schools, another Mind Trust launch. Dexter Taylor leads Paramount Brookside, same ecosystem. The IPS board members included were elected with the same dark money that’s been buying school board seats since 2012. And Micheal O’Connor, the consultant the city paid over half a million dollars in public money to design the process that produced this board is now its acting executive director. This board didn’t emerge from the community. It was assembled by the people who funded the takeover.
“This board didn’t emerge from the community. It was assembled by the people who funded the takeover.”
This is the final chess piece in a 20-year game. And I know that because I was there for the first one.
I was a 9th grader at Shortridge High School when the Mind Trust brought John Legend to Indianapolis. I remember being on that field trip, sitting in that room, caught up in the excitement of a global superstar telling us that the future of our schools was bright. I didn’t know then that I was watching the beginning of the end of IPS as we know it. I was a kid. I didn’t know what any of it meant.
I graduated from Shortridge 13 years ago. And I have spent the years since watching that moment slowly reveal itself for what it was.
John Legend wasn’t there for us. He was there to give community cover to the privatization of Indianapolis public schools: a coordinated decades-long effort involving the Mind Trust, Stand for Children, RISE Indy, the Walton Family Foundation (Walmart), Bloomberg Philanthropies, Reed Hastings (Netflix), John Arnold (Enron), and the political allies who carried their water at the statehouse. The money trail is all public record. You don’t raise $134 million and fly in a Grammy winner because you’re running an education experiment. You do it because you need people to stop asking questions.
Since 2006, the Mind Trust has raised over $134 million (their own number, from their own website) working toward this exact moment. They used dark money to purchase school board seats. They ran a legislative process that was designed from the beginning to land exactly where it landed.
The cruelest part of this privatization agenda is that real parents with real concerns were recruited, conditioned, and in some cases compensated to be the public face of something they were never given the full picture on. Their frustration was real. What was done with it was manipulation. They took the pain of Black and brown families navigating a broken system, pointed it in the direction that served them, and called it community engagement. That’s not parent voice. That’s manufactured consent with a marketing budget.
And long before any institution took an official position, there were everyday people in this city, parents, teachers, neighbors, who saw exactly what was happening and said so out loud. They got dismissed. They got ignored. They got outspent. The community has been screaming about this for years. What happened recently is what it looks like when nobody in power listens or cares about the community they are tasked to serve.
When nearly twice as many people testified against this plan as those who supported it, it didn’t matter. The votes were already lined up. The legislation was already written. The board members were already chosen.
That’s not democracy. That’s the performance of it.
My grandmother had a saying: fat meat is greasy. It means learning a lesson the hard way after ignoring advice that was right in front of you.
A lot of us have been saying this for years. The receipts have been public. The Mind Trust got exactly what they came for. Now all of us — students, parents, educators, communities — have to live in whatever comes next. If this is the first time you’re hearing it, I hope today is the day it becomes impossible to ignore.
I want to be clear about where accountability lives here because this is not a partisan story. State Republicans wrote the legislation and pushed it through. Local Democrats, on the city council and beyond, had every opportunity to protect democratic governance in this city and chose not to. Mayor Hogsett convened the very process that produced these recommendations and appointed the board that will now run our schools. There is no version of this story where the spineless performance of our local elected officials doesn’t deserve to be named directly.
Both parties failed Indianapolis. Full stop.
IPS spent years being held up as a broken system that needed fixing. What actually happened was a live demonstration of how to take a public school system apart and replace democratic accountability with private control without firing a single shot. The enrollment flight that became the justification for this takeover was engineered by the same organizations now running the solution. And everyone in that room when the final vote was cast knew exactly where it was going.
I say this as someone who cares about every child in this city, Black, brown, white, charter school, public school, all of them. Every student in Indianapolis will feel this. Charter families included. This was never about kids versus kids. It was always about who controls the institution.
This was never about kids versus kids. It was always about who controls the institution.
We are living through modern day colonialism dressed up in innovation language. And the proof is in the outcome. Our schools are more segregated today than they have ever been. That’s not an accident. That’s by design.
The IPS that shaped me — that shaped generations of Indianapolis kids — has potentially changed forever. That matters beyond politics because schools are not just buildings and test scores. They are where communities build identity, pass down culture, and figure out who they are. This city has a documented history of coordinated institutional action against Black communities that most people were never taught. Crispus Attucks was built in 1927 to keep Black students out of white schools, segregation dressed up as institution building. Indiana Avenue, once a thriving Black cultural and economic district, was deliberately destroyed between the 1950s and 1970s through highway construction, IUPUI expansion, and eminent domain. Over 12,000 people were displaced. 400 acres of Black history erased. Coordinated by universities, hospitals, city leaders, and state government. Busing in 1981 put the burden of desegregation on Black children while white families simply moved further out. And now this. One day this moment will be remembered alongside all of those — another decision about Black children where the outcome was predetermined before the community ever had a real say. Different decade. Different language. Same intention.
IPS was first. This sets a dangerous precedent for every district in this state. The Indianapolis-Marion County townships, the rural districts, the suburban districts. Any community that powerful people decide isn’t capable of governing itself is vulnerable to exactly what happened here. That’s the part that should terrify everyone regardless of where your kids go to school. This isn’t just about Black and brown communities anymore. It’s about who gets to decide that a community isn’t smart enough or capable enough to make decisions about their own children’s education, and then build the infrastructure to take that power away from them. Indianapolis just showed them how.
The only chance we have going forward is making sure our next mayor isn’t full of shit. And it means holding every elected official, Democrat and Republican, local and state, accountable for what they did and didn’t do when it mattered.
Here’s what I know. The ability to elect the people who make decisions about your children’s education is not a bureaucratic detail. It is democracy’s most basic promise. When you erode that at the school board level and nobody stops it, you have established that it can be done. And if it can be done with education, the institution we trust most with our children and our future, then nothing is off the table.
This feels like a loss because it is one. But public schools have survived worse because the communities behind them refused to quit. That community is still here. It has always been here. No appointed board can change that. The fight doesn’t stop today.
Show up for our school boards. Know who represents us. Demand better from our mayor, our city council, our state legislators.Get involved in our local elections like our kids’ future depends on it, because it does.The people making these decisions are counting on our exhaustion. We can’t give it to them.
Nigel Long is a cultural organizer, event producer, and community builder based in Indianapolis. He is the Founder of SoundOff and serves as Chairperson of BLACK: A Festival of Joy. He is a proud graduate of Shortridge High School and an IPS parent.
Jason Garcia is an investigative reporter who focuses on Florida politics. His blog Seeking Rents should be read by every Floridian, as well as anyone who cares about government ethics.
In this post, he shows how corporations buy the votes they need to pass bills that hurt the public interest.
The votes are for sale. The public can’t compete with the corporations. Except at the ballot box.
Question: Why does the public re-elect these scoundrels?
Garcia writes:
Florida lawmakers banked $14 million in campaign contributions on the day before the start of the 2026 legislative session, according to a Seeking Rents review of first-quarter campaign finance reports.
The avalanche of donations recorded on Jan. 12was, in part, the result of an annual fundraising orgy that takes place in Tallahassee on the eve of every lawmaking session. Legislators are forbidden from raising money during their 60-day session, which means they — and the special interests seeking to buy access and influence in the state Capitol — must scramble to beat the opening gavel.
Much of that last-minute money was essentially laundered through intermediaries — like political committees controlled by lobbyists or campaign consultants — that make it difficult to the trace the true origins of many donations.
For example, one of the biggest session-eve spenders this year was “A Stronger Florida,” a political committee linked to the lobbying firm Rubin Turnbull & Associates, which records show doled out more than $500,000 to more than three dozen legislators. Recent large donors to the lobbyist-controlled committee include the billionaire-run insurance firm Ryan Specialty, for-profit hospital owner HCA, online casino operator ARB Interactive, and Outpost Brands, which sells loosely regulated products infused with an opioid-like extract.
But two companies stand out for the amount of last-minute money they dropped on Florida’s Republican-controlled Legislature: Gun manufacturer Sig Sauer Inc. and home insurer Slide Insurance, both of whom, records show, showered nearly $500,000 on legislators on the final day of pre-session fundraising.
More than 30 lawmakers deposited a combined $480,000 in donations from Sig Sauer on Jan. 12— including House Speaker Danny Perez (R-Miami), Senate President Ben Albritton (R-Wauchula), incoming House Speaker Sam Garrison (R-Fleming Island), incoming Senate President Jim Boyd (R-Bradenton) and Sen. Jay Trumbull (R-Panama City), each of whom took $50,000 apiece via various fundraising committees they control.
The mass cash infusion came as Sig Sauer was lobbying those same lawmakers to pass a bill shielding the company from legal exposure related to a company-made pistol that can allegedly “ghost fire” without anyone pulling the trigger.
Emails and text messages obtained by Seeking Rents show lobbyists for Sig Sauer gave the original draft of the legislation to Trumbull and Rep. Wyman Duggan (R-Jacksonville), who received a $50,000 donation from the company in December.
Lobbyists for Sig Sauer emailed an aide to Sen. Jay Trumbull a draft of the legislation that became Senate Bill 1748.
The Sig Sauer bill passed the House of Representatives by a 75-29 vote but was unable to get through the Senate. The legislation could be resurrected in the future, though, particularly with the support of a legislator like Trumbull, who is in line to become president of the Senate after the 2028 elections.
Another text message obtained by Seeking Rents — sent by Eileen Stuart, a lobbyist for Sig Sauer, to Duggan, the House bill sponsor — shows that Sig Sauer representatives dined with Trumbull shortly before the session began. The lobbyist described the future Senate president as “firmly committed” to the legislation.
A text message from Sig Sauer lobbyist Eileen Stuart to Rep. Wyman Duggan.
Meanwhile, more than 40 lawmakers reported a combined $469,000 on Jan. 12 from Tampa-based Slide Insurance, which has become one of Florida’s moreinfamousinsurancecompaniessince launching in 2021.
It’s not clear what specific bills or issues the now-publicly traded company lobbied lawmakers on this session.
But the House of Representatives attempted tolimit the ability of insurance companies to shift money between affiliates and subsidiaries in order to avoid state laws prohibiting excess profits. And Slide has been particularly aggressive in the past when it comes to using internal transactions to move money across its corporate structure.
The profit-stripping legislation breezed through the House by a 106-3 vote. But it was never given a single hearing in the Senate.
Senate leaders were, it turns out, the biggest beneficiaries of Slide’s session-eve contributions.
Records show that a fundraising committee chaired by Boyd, the incoming Senate president, took $170,000 from Slide — more than a third of all the money the company donated on Jan. 12.
The No. 2 recipient? Trumbull, who will follow Boyd as Senate president and who took $45,000 from Slide Insurance the day before session began.
Now, all the contributions that Sig Sauer and Slide made the day before session went to Republicans — which makes sense, since Republicans hold supermajorities in both chambers of the Legislature (as well as the Governor’s Office and all three statewide elected Cabinet posts) and have complete control over the agenda in the Capitol.
But to be very clear, plenty of corporate interests buying access in Tallahassee also make sure to spend a bit of money currying favor with some Democrats, too.
A particularly interesting example: The new campaign-finance reports show that the giant landowner behind the “Blue Ribbon Projects” bill gave $10,000 on Jan. 12 to a committee controlled by Rep. Christine Hunschofsky (D-Parkland), the incoming House Democratic Leader.
It could perhaps help explain how the legislation — which would have enabled the largest landowners in Florida to develop city-sized projects on rural tracts of land with minimal local oversight — managed to pick up a handful of Democratic votes in each of the threeHousecommittees it passed this session, despite opposition from environmental groups and local governments.
The Blue Ribbon Projects bill ultimately failed in the Senate — but just barely.
Garry Rayno, writer of “The Distant Dome” for inDepthNH, has been covering the legislature for many years. The presence of a large faction of libertarians in the legislature make it difficult to predict what they will do.
In this post, he reviews the likely consequences of passing a voucher bill for which everyone is eligible.
Rayno wrote about what vouchers will accomplish: They will subsidize the well-to-do while diminishing the resources of poor districts.
He wrote:
This week the House will vote on what is perhaps one of the Republicans’ biggest priorities, universal public school open enrollment or Senate Bill 101.
The bill has changed since it left the Senate with a new funding source so one town’s school property tax dollars are no longer sent to another school district following one of its students.
Under the new plan, the district enrolling another district’s student would receive a $9,000 payment from the state’s often tapped Education Trust Fund which was originally established to hold state tax dollars for public education separately to guarantee the state meets its obligation to provide its students an adequate education and to pay for it.
Over the last five years about $130 million dollars has been drawn from the trust fund to largely subsidize the education of children who were not supported by the state dollars because they are in private, or religious schools or homeschooled and their parents were footing the bill.
Despite two superior court rulings the state is not meeting its obligation to pay for an adequate education for its students, lawmakers have not seen fit to increase state aid to public schools which receive about $4,200 per pupil in state aid, along with differentiated aid for poverty, English language learners and special education making the average per pupil aid around $5,000 per student.
If this bill passes, and it probably will, even more money will be drawn from the Education Trust Fund to pay for students moving from one public school to another.
The State Department of Education declined to predict how many students might take advantage of the new open enrollment policy, so just how much of a hit the trust fund will take is not known.
The trust fund is not the only entity that will experience financial loss with the new policy.
The school district losing the student will lose his or her state aid which ranges from $4,200 on the low end to about $8,000 on the high side.
Chances are the districts losing students will be in property poor communities that can ill afford to lose any state aid for their schools without impacting property taxes. Even if they reduce staff if enough students leave, many costs like buildings, electricity, heating and transportation will remain the same.
The district receiving the students will receive the $9,000 per student state aid but its average per pupil cost is likely to be higher than the state average of about $23,000 per student.
That means the receiving district will have to pick up the difference in theory although adding a few students is not likely to change overall costs much.
And the big issue still hanging over the open enrollment bill is who pays for a student’s special education costs who transfers.
The sending district is responsible for those costs, so some — and it may actually be many — school districts will be sending the receiving districts substantial checks to cover special education services which have been growing steadily more expensive with the state and federal governments not living up to their obligations to pay those bills.
That means local property taxpayers in a sending district will continue to pay the majority of the special education costs for their student if he or she transfers out of the district.
Under the bill, parents are responsible for their student’s transportation to the new school although they can make arrangements with the receiving districts to drop their student at a convenient bus stop, but that is not guaranteed.
Looking at the bigger picture, who will be able to participate in the new open enrollment scheme? Probably not a single parent — most likely a mother — who has to work one or two or three jobs to support her children, or poor families with both parents working.
The largest group served by the open enrollment plan will be children of well-to-do parents who have the time and money to drive their children the 10 or 50 or 100 miles to the school of their choice be it for academics, the theater, music, art or athletic program, or even the special education services, to schools in property wealthy school districts.
Once again it is the reverse Robin Hood concept where the property wealthy districts and wealthy families receive the greatest benefit while the property poor districts and their families will see less state aid and dwindling educational resources for their children.
Much like the state’s voucher program, while it was originally touted as a way for low-income parents to access the best educational environment for their children, the greatest benefit is to those families wealthy enough to send their children to private or religious schools or to homeschool their children.
There is a lot of rhetoric about open enrollment providing the best educational experience for children, but that is only true if you can afford to and have the time to transport their children to another school district.
Since the supporters of the voucher program or Education Freedom Accounts, were able to open the program to any eligible parent in New Hampshire last year regardless of income this year, they have proposed several other ways to expand it beyond the legal cap of 10,000 students this year and 12,500 this coming school year by opening it up to military families and allowing EFA students to take classes at their local public schools at no cost.
When the program originally passed, EFA students were not allowed to go back to their former school for a class or two, there was a bold black line.
Now supporters of the program want to blur the line which is fine for the student and his or her parents but not the school districts which lost the state aid associated with those students.
The proposed changes do not help those low-income parents who were used to finally get the program passed by including it in the budget package during the 2021 session, but are now seldom mentioned. The program did not have the votes to pass on its own five years ago.
If the voucher program were truly helping kids who do not do well in the public school environment from low-income families, there would be a lot less opposition.
Those kids are a small minority and do not receive the vast majority of the benefits.
Those who benefit from the new open enrollment program are the same people who benefit from the voucher program, those wealthy enough to send their children to private and public institutions and homeschool, not those leaving public schools, who are few and far between and a declining percentage.
The greatest beneficiaries of this “school choice” push are not the ones who need government’s help. They can do quite well on their own.
And all of these changes to public education do nothing to reform it or fund it adequately, but do make it more difficult to provide for the educational needs of 90 percent of the state’s children who attend public schools.
And that is the bigger picture too many people fail to see.
Andrew Kirell writes: This morning, Pete Hegseth unloaded on the press again, this time invoking the Bible and likening journalists to the Pharisees, the New Testament figures who opposed Jesus.
Hegseth accused the press of constant negativity despite Trump’s “historic and important success” in Iran. “Sometimes it’s hard to figure out what side some of you are actually on,” he added.
He then launched into a lengthy biblical analogy, describing the Pharisees (and thus journalists) as “self-appointed elites of their time” who “witnessed a literal miracle” yet sought to “explain away the goodness in pursuit of their agenda.” The “legacy, Trump-hating press,” like the Pharisees, he said, is “calibrated only to impugn.”
The sermon-like rant stood out, given the recent dust-up over Trump sharing an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus — a post he later deleted and claimed was meant to depict a “doctor.” The White House may have backed away from the religious comparison, but Hegseth’s comments only seem to resurrect it. “So…they are doubling down on Trump being Jesus?” The Bulwark’s Tim Miller wrote.
Stelter’s take
This sentence from Hegseth was the tell: “I just can’t help but notice the endless stream of garbage, the relentlessly negative coverage, you cannot resist pedaling.” He just can’t help himself.
The “holy war” type talk, insinuating that doubting Trump is like doubting Christ, was both deeply offensive and surprisingly insecure.
Gretchen Carlson put it perfectly on X: “As a Christian, how dare you use religion to shame those who simply ask questions.”
As a practical matter, a defense secretary who thinks the press is ignoring US military victories (the press has not done that, but I digress) would provide greater access to service members and share videos from the war zone. There are lots of ways to do that. But Hegseth has been pushing the press out. He’s not even giving fulsome access to MAGA media outlets.
>> Bottom line: Hegseth’s media-bashing hasn’t worked. The polling hasn’t budged. Trump and Hegseth’s messaging is not moving public opinion, which remains broadly opposed to the war.
Imagine this: The multi-billionaire Ellison family, which recently bought CBS, is currently the winner of a bidding war for Warner Brothers Discovery, which includes CNN and other news and entertainment outlets. The total deal is worth $111 billion. The Ellisons won’t buy Warner Brothers Discovery on their own. Some $24 billion of the $111 billion deal will be advanced by three Middle Eastern states: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi. Saudi Arabia is putting up $10 billion of the $24 billion.
The Ellisons say that these investors will have no role in corporate governance or policymakers. It’s possible, but can you imagine CBS or CNN airing a Frank documentary on women’s rights in Arabic nations?
Ellison’s Middle Eastern Money: It’s happening: David Ellison is set to take $24 billion in Middle Eastern money to fund his acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, raising a mountain of ethical and regulatory questions. The WSJ’s Jessica Toonkel and Lauren Thomas reported that about $10 billion will come from Saudi Arabia, an anti-free speech country with a long list of human rights abuses, including cracking down on independent journalism. Now the country will be part-owner of a giant U.S. media conglomerate with not only tremendous cultural influence, but which will own and control two newsrooms, CNN and CBS News.
The funding, of course, has already raised concerns on Capitol Hill, where Democrats have demanded the Treasury Department conduct a thorough review of the transaction. Of course, given that the Treasury Department is under Donald Trump’s control, that is unlikely. But if Democrats win in November, they could drag Ellison in to testify—and Ellison will still need approval from the states and the European Union.
Norm Eisen was the White House ethics officer during the Obama administration. There were no financial scandals during the Obama administration; President Obama did not profit from his office during his presidency.
The financial conflicts of interest during the Trump administration are too numerous to mention.
This post is also an advertisement for The Contrarian, where this post appeared. It is a premier site for those trying to save democracy from Trump’s authoritarianism and grifting.
Eisen writes:
When I was the Obama White House ethics czar during the Great Recession, I would not even allow the president to refinance his modest family home in Chicago. He was regulating the banks in a time of crisis, and it wouldn’t have looked right.
That’s not exactly the approach that President Trump, his cronies, and their families have adopted. I’ve written before about the Top 10 most outrageous corruption scandals of this administration. This week, my Democracy Defenders Fund colleagues and I added another item to the list. Working with former New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, we filed a complaint with the Securities and Exchange Commission urging it investigate ALT5 Sigma(ALTS).
This company boasts Trump’s son Eric as a board member and Trump Special Envoy Steve Witkoff’s son Zach as its board chair. Its history in recent months is one of serious failures of compliance, breakdowns of governance, and profoundly concerning financial connections with another Trump and Witkoff-linked venture, World Liberty Financial (WLF).
The story starts in August, when ALTS told the world that it had raised $1.5 billion through various investment vehicles. ALTS then moved the money to WLF by buying $750 million of its $WLFI governance tokens, about 7% of total supply. As detailed in our letter, “ALTS appears to have steered as much as $500 million of private investor money directly into the pockets of the Trump family and their associates.” When this money hit their wallets, Zach Witkoff (co-founder and CEO of WLF) and Eric Trump (also a WLF co-founder) assumed leadership roles on the board of ALTS.
These facts give rise to questions that are of the utmost importance to the integrity of our financial markets and of our democracy, as our letter explains. The most profound: who were the investors who funded the ALTS $WLFI purchase–and did they do so in order to get in the good graces of the Trump administration?
The concerns about this transaction are only deepened by what went on in the period in and around this massive financial transfer to WLF. In August, ALTS disclosed that several months earlier a Rwandan court had ruled that ALT5 Sigma Canada Inc., a subsidiary of the company, and its former principal were criminally liable for illicit enrichment and money laundering, ordering imprisonment, fines, and dissolution of the subsidiary. Shortly thereafter, the CEO of ALTS was suspended without explanation, auditors changed multiple times within just a few weeks, and the company failed to meet the due date for filing its annual report. It’s little wonder that ALTS was at risk of being delisted from Nasdaq and its share price has plummeted. Despite the immense capital influx from these transactions, the share piece has declined by around 75%. The company is looking at hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for the 2025 fiscal year.
Given these troubling data points, our letter urges the SEC’s Enforcement Division to “carefully examine these issues because they indicate, both individually and collectively, that ALTS may have engaged in a number of securities violations, thereby harming investors and financial marketplace writ large.” This is not just a story about corporate governance. It is a test of whether the rules that protect investors and the integrity of American markets still apply when political power and private profit intersect.
Our SEC letter calling for an investigation of ALTS is just one of many similar filings we’ve made. This one is outrageous enough that even Trump’s SEC may investigate. But whatever they do, we’re laying down a marker for the press, the public and other enforcement authorities. Whether for state attorneys general and securities regulators, a future more independent Congress, or future federal regulators, there will be a trail of breadcrumbs to follow. Meanwhile, we must all demand answers.
Our ability to continue pushing back against Trump and his cronies’ web of dubious dealings is, of course, supported by your paid subscriptions. We are deeply grateful that you Contrarians make this work possible as well as our weekly pro-democracy Contrarian coverage. See for yourself in this week’s roundup of our best content produced by my terrific colleagues:
Jen Rubin wrote on the cascade of civil and political failures behind Trump’s genocidal threats on Tuesday: “some muddled tale of a diplomatic breakthrough should in no way diminish the illegality, the horror, or the frightful intrusion of religious zealotry into our politics.”
Brian O’Neill wrote on how Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be helping to produce the strongest Islamic Republic since 1979. “It would be one of the great strategic self-inflicted wounds in Middle East policy.”
On the podcast this week, Jen spoke with Robert P. Jones about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s crusader rhetoric and the dangers of Trump’s “refrigerator-magnet style” theology, and with Joyce Vance about Iran after the ceasefire, the Republicans finding a shred of conscience, and more.
Norman Ornstein thinks it’s time to call an emergency an emergency and invoke the 25th Amendment. “We have a malignant narcissistic psychopath as president, with control over the military and the atomic arsenal, who is deteriorating mentally before our very eyes.”
Stacey Young wrote on just how much Pam Bondi’s reign as AG degraded the Justice Department: an exodus of talent, criminal cases shut down, an utter loss of good faith with the courts and more. “Now, the best way we can fight for the department is from the outside.”
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) joined Jen to consider the next attorney general—and the next vacant cabinet seat—amid war with Iran. “I think Kash Patel stands a very good chance of being shown the door.”
Stacey Abrams wrote on how Republicans have made disadvantaged communities a scapegoat for failed economic policies, including a Texas comptroller who quietly decertified more than 15,000 minority- and women-owned businesses in December.
Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera of Common Cause reminded us that, despite what the Trump regime claimed, ICE has never left Minnesota and is continuing operations across the state. “The media may not be all over it … but the need is still there.”
John Boyd, founder of the Black Farmers Association, spoke to April Ryan to sound the alarm on Trump’s devastating attack on small and minority farmers. “There’s going to be a lot of generational land that changes hands.”
Jennifer Weiss-Wolf wrote on how the Trump administration is putting the onus on states to fund social services — while making it impossible for them to provide those services.
Amid the many hype and doom cycles about AI, Adam Conner of the Center for American Progress gave us a breakdown of what AI is actually doing right now — to the economy, to warfare, to your job.
Josh Levs wrote on the problem with AI summaries having taken the place of traditional media as the first source of information for many, even when it comes to war — and how this is compounded by the media’s acquiescence to AI-first search.
Tim Dickinson gave us a rundown of all the things Trump is naming after himself, which somehow includes both the Institute of Peace and the “most lethal warship ever built” at the tip of the iceberg.
Meredith Blake checked in with the second lady, who thinks kids should read more but doesn’t have much to say about the Trump administration defunding libraries (or anything else).
Azza Cohen took a nuanced look at Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s first female prime minister, as both gender-empowerment opportunist and persevering target of media sexism. “That a woman can be the head of a political party named ‘brothers’ is some kind of ironic victory.”
This week, we saw anti-war protests nationwide in New York, Illinois, Washington, D.C., Missouri, Tennessee, and more. Get help organizing from Indivisible, find protests in your area at mobilize.us, and send us your protest photos at submit@contrariannews.org.
Rep. Sylvia Garcia (D-TX) joined Jen Rubin with an update on the ongoing standoff over ICE funding and why there is still cause for hope. “The point really is people’s freedoms … so we’re not going to vote for one more penny until these reforms are done.”
Carron J. Phillips wrote on how the 2026 Women’s Final Four will be deservedly remembered for one thing — and it wasn’t the championship game. “Sports are more enjoyable when what’s at stake is more than the final score.”
This column is based on our letter and associated materials
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