Archives for category: Accountability
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

The Atlantic: Trump Declares War on the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
May 14, 2025 //
1

During Biden’s term in office, Republicans continually complained that Biden was “weaponizing” the Justice Department because it prosecuted Trump for inciting the insurrection of January 6, 2021, and for taking classified documents to his Mar-A-Lago estate.

Days ago, the Trump administration announced that it had reached a settlement with the family of Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a police officer as she attempted to be first to break into the House of Representatives’ chamber, where members of Congress were fleeing. The family is suing for $30 million. The police officer who shot her was defending the lives of our elected representatives, both Democrats and Republicans. It’s hard to imagine any other administration, whatever the party in power, paying off the family of a woman leading a mob into the House chambers to stop the electoral vote count.

Now that Trump is president again, he has turned the Departnent of Justice into his personal law office and assigned it the mission of prosecuting anyone whoever dared to cross Trump.

Trump is gleefully using his powers to weaponize the Department of Justice and to punish his political enemies. Not a peep from the Republicans, who unjustly accused Biden of doing what Trump is literally doing.

Trump has issued executive orders targeting law firms who had the nerve to represent Democrats or other Trump critics. His orders barred lawyers from those firms from federal buildings and directed the heads of all federal agencies to terminate contracts with the firms he designated. Several major law firms, fearful of being blocked from any federal cases, immediately capitulated. Trump exacted a price for releasing them from his attack: they had to agree to perform pro bono work on behalf of causes chosen by Trump. He currently has close a billion dollars of legal time pledged to him by those law firms that feared his wrath.

Individuals targeted by Trump must either find a lawyer who will represent them pro bono or face personal bankruptcy, that is, if they can find a lawyer willing to take on the Trump administration.

A few law firms have resisted Trump’s tyranny, and one of them–Perkins Coie–won a permanent injunction to block the enforcement of Trump’s ban. Perkins Coie represented Hillary Clinton in 2016, as well as George Soros. U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said that Trump’s attacks on specific law firms, based on the clients they represented, were unprecedented and unconstitutional.

Judge Howell cited the example of John Adams, who represented the British soldiers accused of killing five colonists in the Boston Massacre of 1770. In two separate trials, Adams prevailed. He believed that everyone deserved a good lawyer and that they had been provoked into firing. Adams was a patriot and a man who defended the law. He was not stigmatized for defending the British soldiers.

An issue that Judge Howell raised but set aside for another time was whether Trump’s orders, which single out specific groups or individuals for punishment without trial are bills of attainder, which the Constitution forbids. They surely look like it, and this issue will come up again in the future.

As law professor James Huffman wrote in The Wall Street journal about Trump’s targeting of law firms:

A presidential bill of attainder places the powers of all three governmental branches in the hands of one man. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 47: “The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”

Paul Rosenzweig, who worked in the George W. Bush administration, wrote in The Atlantic about Trump’s destruction of the rule of law, which he has twisted into an instrument of retribution for his personal grudges.

He writes:

When Thomas Paine asked what made America different from England, he had a ready answer: “In America, the law is king.” America has not always upheld that ideal, but, taking the long view, it has made great progress toward that principle. In recent decades, the Department of Justice has become an institutional embodiment of these aspirations—the locus in the federal government for professional, apolitical enforcement of the law, which is in itself a rejection of the kingly prerogative. That is why Donald Trump’s debasement of the DOJ is far more than the mere degradation of a governmental agency; it is an assault on the rule of law.

His attack on the institution is threefold: He is using the mechanisms of justice to go after political opponents; he is using those same mechanisms to reward allies; and he is eliminating internal opposition within the department. Each incident making up this pattern is appalling; together, they amount to the decimation of a crucial institution.

Investigations should be based on facts and the law, not politics. Yet Trump has made punishing political opposition the hallmark of his investigative efforts. The DOJ’s independence from political influence, long a symbol of its probity (remember how scandalous it was that Bill Clinton had a brief meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch?), is now nonexistent.

This development should frighten all citizens, no matter what their political persuasion. As Attorney General Robert Jackson warned in 1940, the ability of a prosecutor to pick “some person whom he dislikes and desires to embarrass, or selects some group of unpopular persons and then looks for an offense, [is where] the greatest danger of abuse of prosecuting power lies.” Choosing targets in this way flies in the face of the DOJ’s rules and traditions—to say nothing of the actual, grave harm it can inflict on people.

Far from eschewing the possibility of abuse, Trump and his allies at the Department of Justice positively revel in it. The most egregious example was Trump’s recent issuance of an executive order directing the government to investigate the activities of two of his own employees in the first administration, Chris Krebs and Miles Taylor, who later came to be political opponents of his. (Both men are friends and colleagues of mine.)

Their offense of perceived disloyalty is perhaps the gravest sin in Trump world, and as a result, they will now be individually targeted for investigation. The personal impact on each of them is no doubt immediate and severe. Krebs, who is a well-respected cybersecurity leader, has quit his job at SentinelOne and plans to focus on his defense. If Trump’s DOJ pursues this investigation to the limit, the two men could face imprisonment.

The cases of Krebs and Taylor do not stand in isolation. Recently, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey (Trump’s former personal attorney Alina Habba) launched an investigation into the state of New Jersey for its alleged “obstruction” of Trump’s deportation agenda. In other words, because New Jersey won’t let its own employees be drafted as servants of Trump’s policy, the state becomes a pariah in Trump’s mind, one that must be coerced into obedience.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi has announced that the U.S. government is suing Maine because of the state’s refusal to ban transgender athletes from playing on girls’ high-school sports teams. Not content with threatening Maine, Bondi has also announced an investigation of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office because of its alleged opposition to the Second Amendment and its “lengthy” process for approval of gun permits. And she recently announced that she would target leakers of classified information by going after journalists, rescinding a policy that protected journalists from being subpoenaed to assist government-leak investigations.

But the most aggressive abuser of the criminal-justice system has to be the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin. Martin has asked the FBI to investigate several of President Joe Biden’s EPA grantees for alleged fraud—a claim so weak that one of Martin’s senior subordinates resigned rather than have to advance it in court. He has also begun to investigate, or threatened investigations of, Georgetown University, Senator Charles Schumer, and Representatives Eugene Vindman and Robert Garcia, among others. More recently, in mid-April, Martin sent a series of inquiry letters to at least three medical and scientific journals, asking them how they ensured “competing viewpoints,” with the evident intention of suggesting that the failure to include certain minority opinions was, in some way, content discrimination.

A less-well-known example of Martin’s excess is his use of threats of criminal prosecution to empower DOGE. When DOGE was first denied entry into the U.S. Institute of Peace, one of the lawyers for USIP got a call from the head of the U.S. attorney’s criminal division, threatening criminal investigation if they didn’t allow DOGE into the building. Magnifying that power of criminal law, Martin sent D.C. police officers to the agency, telling the police that there was “an ongoing incident at the United States Institute of Peace” and that there was “at least one person who was refusing to leave the property at the direction of the acting USIP president, who was lawfully in charge of the facility,” according to the journalist Steve Chapman.

A final example of DOJ overreach is, perhaps, the most chilling of all. In a recently issued presidential memorandum, Trump directed the attorney general to “investigate and take appropriate action concerning allegations regarding the use of online fundraising platforms to make ‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions and to make foreign contributions to U.S. political candidates and committees, all of which break the law.” Were the investigation neutral in nature, this might be understandable. But it isn’t.

In fact, there are two major fundraising platforms in use—WinRed (the Republican platform) and ActBlue (the Democratic one). Even though WinRed has been the subject of seven times as many FTC complaints as ActBlue, the Trump memorandum involves only the latter. By targeting his opponents’ fundraising, Trump is overtly marshaling the powers of federal law enforcement in his effort to shut down political opposition.

In essence, Trump is using the department to try to ensure future Republican electoral victories. One can hardly imagine a more horrifying variation on Lavrentiy Beria’s infamous boast: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.”

There is more to the article. I encourage you to read it in full.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Biden, Corruption, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, History, Justice, Lies, Trump

NEA: The Purpose of Block Grants is to Diminish Federal Responsibility for Education

By dianeravitch
May 13, 2025 //
2

Project 2025’s section on education proposes that the U.S. Department of Education’s largest funding streams for K-12 schools be turned into block grants to the states with minimal oversight. The two big programs are Title 1 for poor kids and the funding for students with disabilities (IDEA).

The states would be free to convert these funds into vouchers, instead of spending them on low-income students or students with disabilities.

The National Education Association explains here:

Block Grant Overview

Typically, the deal between the federal government and states when specific program funds are block-granted is that the federal government will provide less funding in return for less regulation and requirements. With less regulation, the assumption is that states should be able to do as much or more with less money. While it may be appealing initially to those who administer federal grants at the state and local level, in reality, fewer dollars mean fewer programs and services. States and school districts may have more flexibility in using federal funds but it comes at the expense of the students the federal grant program was designed to help in the first place.

 Many states already underfund their commitment to public education. If states and districts don’t cover the shortfall, students receiving Title I and IDEA services will suffer. Furthermore, both Title I and IDEA have maintenance of effort and supplement, not supplant requirements to ensure states and districts hold up their levels of spending when receiving federal funds. Those requirements will fall away, too, and, most likely, so will the funding commitments by states and districts.

Title I of the ESEA and IDEA were created to ensure all students have equal access to an education, regardless of family income or disability. Many states were failing to adequately educate students in these populations, if at all. The federal role here was clear: where a student lived or their circumstances should not determine the quality of their education. ESEA and IDEA enshrined this principle and attached specific conditions and requirements that states must follow, in return for federal financial assistance, to ensure that students from lower-income families and communities and those with disabilities have the same opportunity to learn as any other student. “No-strings-attached” block grant funding turns the clock back 60 years on education policy and progress, and turns its back on our nation’s commitment to educating all students. While one would like to think that we can trust states to do the right thing on behalf of all students, history tells us differently. 

Providing states with federal aid and fewer requirements leaves the door open for states to do as they wish. Title I of ESEA and IDEA include important requirements and protections for students and families precisely because they were lacking previously. At its core, the Department of Education is a civil rights agency, providing dollars, regulations, requirements, guidance, technical assistance, research, monitoring, and compliance enforcement to preserve and protect students’ access to a free and appropriate education. Strip it away, and you strip away the rights of certain students to a meaningful education.  

 

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Home Schooling, Inequity, Poverty, Privatization, Special Education, Trump, Vouchers

Michael Tomasky: Why No One Cares that Trump Is Raking in $1 Billion a Month

By dianeravitch
May 11, 2025 //
11

Why did Trump run for President in 2024?

  1. To stay out of jail.
  2. To destroy our government.
  3. To make money.

All three answers are correct. Michael Tomasky, editor of The New Republic, recounts the latest financial scandal associated with Trump–the sale of Trump crytocurrency that is pulling billions into family pockets. And he tries to figure out why the story appears to have faded, instead of blowing up as a mind-boggling violation of the emoluments clause. That’s the part of the Constitution that says Presidents are not supposed to be getting rich by being President, especially by any sort of gift from foreign powers. Trump evaded that restriction in his first term, when he owned the hotel closest to the White Hiuse, and visiting potentates rented the most lavish suites. That was small potatoes. An investment firm in Abu Dhabi just put $2 billion into Trump cryptocurrency. Tomasky asks: does anyone care?

He writes:

Nicolle Wallace had Scott Galloway on her MSNBC show Thursday. She began by asking him what he makes of this moment in which we find ourselves. Galloway, a business professor and popular podcaster, could have zigged in any number of directions with that open-ended question, so I was interested to see the direction he settled on: “I think we essentially have become a kleptocracy that would make Putin blush. I mean, keep in mind that in the first three months, the Trump family has become $3 billion wealthier, so that’s a billion dollars a month.”

Stop and think about that. A presidency lasts, of course, 48 months (at most, we hope). Trump has been enriching himself at an unprecedented scale since day one of his second term—actually, since just before, given that he announced the $Trump meme coin a few days before swearing to protect and defend the Constitution.

And now, we know that he’s having a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in two weeks for his top $Trump investors, whose identities we may never know. How might these people influence his decisions? This whole arrangement is blatantly corrupt. And The New York Times had a terrific report this week about Don Jr. and Eric going around the world (Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia) making deals from which their father will profit.

I read these stories, as I’m sure you do, and I think to myself: How on earth is he getting away with this? It’s the right question, but we usually concentrate on the wrong answer.

For most people, they think first of the Democrats, because they’re the opposition, and by the traditions of our system they’re the ones who are supposed to stop this, or at least raise hell about it. Second, we might think about congressional Republicans, who, if they were actually upholding their own oaths to the Constitution, would be expressing alarm about this.

They both shoulder some blame, but neither of those is really the answer. Every time I ask myself how he gets away with this, I remember: Oh, right. It’s the right-wing media. Duh.

After the election, I wrote a column that went viral about how the right-wing media made Trump’s election possible. Fox News, most conspicuously, but also Newsmax, One America News Network, Sinclair, and the rest, along with the swarm of right-wing podcasters and TikTokers, created a media environment in which Trump could do no wrong and Kamala Harris no right.

Think back—I know you’ve repressed it—to that horror-clown-show Madison Square Garden rally Trump held the week before the election. It was, as the Times put it, a “carnival of grievances, misogyny, and racism.” A generation or two ago, that would have finished off his campaign. Last year? It made no difference. No—it helped. And it helped because a vast propaganda network—armed with press passes and First Amendment protections—spent a week gabbing about how cool and manly it was.

Newsflash: They’re still at it.

First of all, Fox News is basically the megaphone of the Trump administration. In Trump’s first 100 days in office, key administration officials, reports Media Matters for America, appeared on Fox 536 times. That, obviously, is 5.36 times per day; in other words, assuming that a cable news “day” runs from 6 a.m. to midnight, that’s one administration official about every three hours. I’ve seen occasional clips where the odd host challenges them on this point or that, but in essence, this is a propaganda parade.

I tried to do some googling to see how Fox is covering the meme coin scandal. Admitting that Google doesn’t catch everything, the answer seems to be that it’s not. On the network’s website, there was a bland January 18 article reporting that he’d launched it; an actually interesting January 22 piece summarizing a critical column by The Washington Post’s Catherine Rampell, who charged that it was an invitation to bribery; and finally, an April 24 report that the coin surged in value after Trump announced the upcoming dinner—“critics” were given two paragraphs, deep in the article. (Interesting side note: Predictably, other figures on the far right have aped Trump by launching their own coins, among them former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and “QAnon Shaman” Jacob Chansley.)

But it’s not just Fox, and it’s not just on corruption. It’s all of them, and it’s on everything. You think any of them are mentioning Trump’s campaign promise to bring prices down on day one, or pointing out that all “persons” in the United States have a right to due process? Or criticizing his shambolic tariffs policies? I’m not saying there’s never criticism. There is. But the thrust of the coverage is protective and defensive: “Expert Failure & the Trump Boom” was the theme of one recent Laura Ingraham segment.

So sure, blame Democrats to some extent. A number of them are increasingly trying to bring attention to the corruption story, but there’s always more they could be doing. (By the way, new DNC Chair Ken Martin announced the creation one month ago of a new “People’s Cabinet” to push back hard against Trump. Anybody heard of it since?)

And of course, blame congressional Republicans. Their constitutional, ethical, and moral failures are beyond the pale, and they’re all cowards.

But neither of those groups is the reason Trump can throw a meme coin party and nothing happens; can send legal U.S. residents to brutal El Salvador prisons; can detain students for weeks because they wrote one pro-Palestinian op-ed; can shake down universities and law firms; can roil the markets with his idiotic about-faces on tariffs; can whine that bringing down prices is harder than he thought; can empower his largest donor, the richest man in the world, to take a meat-ax to the bureaucracy in a way that makes no sense to anyone, and so much more.

It’s all because Trump and his team operate within the protective cocoon of a media-disinformation environment that allows just enough criticism to retain “credibility” but essentially functions as a Ministry of Truth for the administration that would have shocked Orwell himself.

And just remember—a billion dollars a month.

Don’t be surprised to see Trump-branded stuff on the White House website any day now. Trump Bibles, Trump sneakers, MAGA hats, Trump watches, Trump trading cards, etc. why not?

Categories Accountability, Character, Corruption, Ethics, For-Profit, Media, Trump

Senator Chris Murphy Gives a Master Class in Cutting Through B.S.

By dianeravitch
May 10, 2025 //
4

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem testified before the Senate Appropriations Committee’s Subcommittee on Homeland Security a few days ago. During the hearing, Senator Chris Murphy gave her a stern lecture on all the ways she is breaking the law–by overspending her budget, by picking up and deporting people with legal status, by ignoring the due process rights of those detained, and by repeatedly breaking the law and defying Congress.

It’s five minutes of your time, time well spent.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Trump

New York: State Education Commissioner’s Staff Member Blasts Governor Hochul!

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2025 //
8

Ooops! State Commissioner Betty Rosa Did NOT write this great statement. It was written by a top deputy in her office named Jim Baldwin. She called to let me know after it was posted.

She sent the letter to me, and I assumed that she wrote it because she did not mention anyone else. I asked for her permission to post it, and she said yes. It never occurred to me that she was not the author. She does endorse the point of view!

Here is the original post:

Dr. Betty Rosa has a long career in education as a teacher, principal, District Supervisor, Chair of the New State Regents and now the New York Commissioner of Education, selected by the Regents. She believes strongly that all schools should meet state standards, including the politically powerful yeshivas run by ultra-Orthodox Jews. They are politically powerful because they vote as a bloc. Presently they are loyal to Trump because of his commitment to giving taxpayer dollars to religious schools. At the state level, the yeshivas want to be free of the state requirement that they teach their students in English.

The Hasidic community was eager to persuade legislators to lower the standards for their schools. The State Education Department demanded that they comply with state law and provide a “substantially equivalent” education to their students. They prefer to teach in Hebrew or Yiddish or both. Yesterday the New York Times reported that Hochul was going along with the Hasidim. Terrible! She wants to run again, and she wants their support in 2026.

Jim Baldwin, who is a deputy to State Commissioner of Education Dr. Betty Rosa, wrote the following letter to Governor Hochul:

Governor Hochul – you and legislative leaders have sold out children attending private schools in a most cynical manner- to curry favor with religious sects for purely political reasons.

The deficiencies in these schools are well documented by the State Education Department and in the media – most notably the New York Times. I know you are well aware of those findings.

As a former superintendent of schools and college president I encountered the deficiencies in yeshiva education first hand as we sought to help orthodox students achieve college degrees following “education” at a variety of yeshivas and seminaries. The yeshiva graduates were often illiterate, and could not demonstrate basic knowledge and skills let alone do college level studies. How could you allow this to continue?

Your failure to protect these children demonstrates lack of leadership and unwillingness to defend the basic rights of children to standards based educational opportunities that prepare them for life.

And then you have the audacity to pretend what you’ve done is just another option when it is a sham that will allow educational neglect to continue.

I have a long history of public service and educational leadership that put the interests of students first.

As a lifelong activist Democrat I am disgusted that you would not demonstrate principled leadership to stop this travesty.

Your attempt to appease the religious leaders who threaten your electoral success will almost certainly fail – and in the process you have alienated a significant number of us who would otherwise have voted for you once again.

Shame on you Governor.

Bravo, Dr. Rosa!

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Extremism, New York, Religion, Separation of church and state

Heather Cox Richardson: The New Pope’s Clash with MAGA

By dianeravitch
May 9, 2025 //
11

Heather Cox Richardson recounts the important exchanges between the new Pope, Leo XIV, and JD Vance, on the subject of immigrants. Vance, a convert to Catholicism, described Catholic doctrine and was quickly rebuffed at the time both by Pope Francis and by the future Pope. So, JD Vance has the dubious distinction of being rebuffed by two Popes!

She writes:

Today, on the second day of the papal conclave, the cardinal electors—133 members of the College of Cardinals who were under the age of 80 when Pope Francis died on April 21—elected a new pope. They chose 69-year-old Cardinal Robert Prevost, who was born in Chicago, thus making him the first pope chosen from the United States. But he spent much of his ministry in Peru and became a citizen of Peru in 2015, making him the first pope from Peru, as well.

New popes choose a papal name to signify the direction of their papacy, and Prevost has chosen to be known as Pope Leo XIV. This is an important nod to Pope Leo XIII, who led the church from 1878 to 1903 and was the father of modern Catholic social teaching. He called for the church to address social and economic issues, and emphasized the dignity of individuals, the common good, community, and taking care of marginalized individuals.

In the midst of the Gilded Age, Leo XIII defended the rights of workers and said that the church had not just the duty to speak about justice and fairness, but also the responsibility to make sure that such equities were accomplished. In his famous 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum, translated as “Of New Things,” Leo XIII rejected both socialism and unregulated capitalism, and called for the state to protect the rights of individuals.

Prevost’s choice of the name Leo invokes the principles of both Leo XIII and his predecessor, Pope Francis. In his own lifetime he has aligned himself with many of Francis’s social reforms, and his election appears to be a rejection of hard-line right-wing Catholics in the U.S. and elsewhere who have used their religion to support far-right politics.

In the U.S., Vice-President J.D. Vance is one of those hard-line right-wing Catholics. Shortly after taking office in January, Vance began to talk of the concept of ordo amoris, or “order of love,” articulated by Catholic St. Augustine, claiming it justified the MAGA emphasis on family and tribalism and suggesting it justified the mass expulsion of migrants.

Vance told Sean Hannity of the Fox News Channel, “[Y]ou love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then, after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world. A lot of the far left has completely inverted that.” When right-wing influencer Jack Posobiec, who is Catholic, posted Vance’s interview approvingly, Vance added: “Just google ‘ordo amoris.’ Aside from that, the idea that there isn’t a hierarchy of obligations violates basic common sense.”

On February 10, Pope Francis responded in a letter to American bishops. He corrected Vance’s assertion as a false interpretation of Catholic theology. “Christians know very well that it is only by affirming the infinite dignity of all that our own identity as persons and as communities reaches its maturity,” he wrote. “Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups…. The true ordo amoristhat must be promoted is that which we discover by…meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”

“[W]orrying about personal, community or national identity, apart from these considerations, easily introduces an ideological criterion that distorts social life and imposes the will of the strongest as the criterion of truth,” Pope Francis wrote. He acknowledged “the right of a nation to defend itself and keep communities safe from those who have committed violent or serious crimes while in the country or prior to arrival,” but defended the fundamental dignity of every human being and the fundamental rights of migrants, noting that the “rightly formed conscience” would disagree with any program that “identifies the illegal status of some migrants with criminality.” He continued: “I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.”

The next day, Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, who said he was “a lifelong Catholic,” told reporters at the White House, “I’ve got harsh words for the Pope…. He ought to fix the Catholic Church and concentrate on his work and leave border enforcement to us.”

Cardinal Prevost was close to Pope Francis, and during this controversy he posted on X after Vance’s assertion but before Pope Francis’s answer: “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others.” After the pope published his letter, Prevost reposted it with the comment: “Pope Francis’ letter, JD Vance’s ‘ordo amoris’ and what the Gospel asks of all of us on immigration.”

On April 14, Prevost reposted: “As Trump & [Salvadoran president Nayib] Bukele use Oval to [laugh at] Feds’ illicit deportation of a US resident [Kilmar Abrego Garcia], once an undoc[ument]ed Salvadorean himself, [Bishop Evelio Menjivar] asks, ‘Do you not see the suffering? Is your conscience not disturbed? How can you stay quiet?’”

The new Pope Leo XIV greeted the world today in Italian and Spanish as he thanked Pope Francis and the other cardinals, and called for the church to “be a missionary Church, building bridges, dialogue, always open to receiving with open arms for everyone…, open to all, to all who need our charity, our presence, dialogue, love…, especially to those who are suffering.”

As an American-born pope in the model of Pope Francis, Pope Leo XIV might be able to appeal to American far-right Catholics and bring them back into the fold. But today, MAGAs responded to the new pope with fury. Right-wing influencer Laura Loomer, who is close to Trump, called Pope Leo “another Marxist puppet in the Vatican.” Influencer Charlie Kirk suggested he was an “[o]pen borders globalist installed to counter Trump.”

In the U.S., President Donald Trump, who said he would like to be pope and then posted a picture of himself dressed as a pope on May 2, prompting an angry backlash against those who thought it was disrespectful, posted on social media that the election of the first pope from the United States was “a Great Honor for our Country” and that he looks forward to meeting him. ‘It will be a very meaningful moment!” he added.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Ethics, Immigration, Religion, Vance, J.D.

Trump Withdraws Nomination of Ed Martin as U.S. Attorney for DC!

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2025 //
4

Trump pulled the nomination of the noxious Ed Martin, whom he had nominated to be U.S. Attorney for DC, a crucial post.

After Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina announced that he would not vote for Martin, his nomination was dead. The vote in the Senate Juduciary Committee would be 11-11, and Martin’s name would not go to the Senate floor.

In the world of horrible nominations for important posts, this was one of the worst. Ed Martin has been a vocal defender of the January 6 insurrectionists, even those who violently assaulted police officers. Think MAGA, then think extreme MAGA, and that’s Ed Martin. It was recently revealed that Martin appeared on Russian state media more than 150 times since 2016.

Thankful there is at least one Republican in the Senate who is not kissing Trump’s feet.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Justice, Trump

Rob Curran: ICE Is Taking Away Our Neighbors

By dianeravitch
May 8, 2025 //
8

Rob Curran writes about finance and other topics for Dow Jones, The Wall Street Journal, and other major publications. This article appeared in The Dallas Morning News.

Curran writes:

Neri Alvarado Borges was working for Latin Market Venezuelan Treats, which has locations in Far North Dallas and Lewisville, before he was deported to El Salvador’s Centro de Confinamiento Contra del Terrorismo last month.(Alvarado family / Courtesy)

****

The Trump administration has couched its aggressive ramp-up of deportations as an action to root out criminals. But signs are quickly emerging that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency is scooping up hardworking North Texas migrants with little or no criminal past in its “crackdown.”

Last week, editorial columnist Robert Wilonsky chronicled the case of Neri Alvarado Borges, a young Lewisville resident with a jigsaw-ribbon tattoo associated with autism awareness he wore in honor of his autistic little brother. Did Alvarado look like a hardened criminal to you?

In February, the Venezuelan citizen was seized by ICE officers outside his apartment, and eventually taken to an El Salvadoran prison with suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang. If he ever gets out, Alvarado’s trauma will be lifelong.

Paul Hunker is a Dallas immigration attorney and former chief counsel of the Dallas office of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Since the Trump administration took power, Hunker has been shocked by the profile of clients who come to him for help fighting deportation proceedings, he told me. These clients typically do not have criminal histories, Hunker said. They are hardworking members of the community, longtime residents. There’s a brief police encounter, a routine traffic stop, and they land in ICE custody.

“The model is detain-and-deport,” Hunker said. “The focus [in my time] was people who were a threat to their community, national-security threats and recent entrants. … Now they’re just going after everybody, even if they’ve been here for 20 years, with family ties. It doesn’t matter.”

ICE’s remit has changed drastically, and that change threatens to drag us all into something akin to a police state. ICE, and before it the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s enforcement arm, traditionally worked with the border patrol, focused on preventing undocumented migrants crossing the border. Apprehending a migrant in the act of an irregular border crossing is a vital part of rule-keeping, and something that has happened throughout U.S. history. Dragging family men out of their cars, throwing them into detention centers and kicking them out of the country is something ICE has never done. Until now.

That’s what appears to be happening to Jesus Ramos, of Lewisville. He, like me, is a green-card holder. Now, he’s facing deportation, allegedly because of nonviolent offenses in his past which have already been adjudicated. Ramos is on probation for simple assault and intent to possess drugs, according to reporting from NBC5.

He may have some substance-abuse problems, but Ramos is not a hardened criminal. Most families have members who go through similar struggles.

There are other stories. In Cedar Park in January, a young Venezuelan man with no criminal record was apprehended by ICE, according to an NPR story which withheld his name. Immigration officers told his family that the 18-year-old had appeared in an online video with guns and drugs, but they couldn’t produce the video for the family or for NPR.

ICE is still targeting serious offenders as the agency has always done since it launched in 2003, according to Hunker. But, as these cases and many of Hunker’s cases illustrate, ICE has new targets, too. And they are targets that we all know well.

ICE is targeting the people who climb on our roofs after hailstorms to fix the shingles. ICE is targeting the people who clean our houses and mind our children. What happens the next time your house-cleaner or your handyman drives home after a few too many?

That’s when the thorny moral question arises, the one your grandchildren may ask you: What did you do when dear, dear Nanny Gloria was swept up by burly officers and thrown in a cell?

What could you do? You will say. You were just one person.

“Tell your congressmen, ‘We don’t want this police state,’” said Hunker, who worked for ICE and its predecessor for more than 20 years. “‘Let ICE focus on people that are dangerous, and don’t try to deport those people who have their lives here.’”

I was reared in Ireland where memories of 1930s Central Europe were fresh. We are not there, yet or hopefully ever, but 20th-century history is no longer an abstract lesson. 

My grandmother met some of the young people brought to London in the Kindertransport operation that evacuated Jewish children from Central Europe before World War II. She inspired my mother with a compassion for displaced families, and an animus for state authorities who displaced those families because of their outsider status. 

It is all too easy, my mother taught me, to turn a blind eye to the state’s mistreatment of vulnerable outsiders. 

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Houston. I saw an ICE officer cruising around a strip mall in her patrol SUV, and felt a familiar chill. As a reporter with interest in the subject, I wanted to ask the officer why she was there, who she was looking for. But I turned my back, and moved on.

In Ireland, looking on from across the ocean, we contrasted Europe’s 20th-century dystopia with Reagan’s America, a land where hard work and enterprise counted for more than paperwork. Kids a few years ahead of us in school escaped to New York and Chicago from recession-wracked Ireland. A few won green-card lotteries. Most fudged the paperwork for a few years. Nobody shook them down. They were allowed to build skyscrapers, restaurant chains and plumbing empires, and sort the paperwork out later.

Now their children run emergency rooms, law offices and trading floors all over this nation.

That’s the story of immigration in modern America. The authorities have always sought to facilitate the inclusion of hardworking immigrants, rather than seeking to exclude and detain people for paperwork reasons.

The Trump administration continues to insist it is only targeting migrants with a criminal past. ICE’s broad interpretation of those criteria is what troubles me. Who’s to say that today’s deportation for DUI won’t be tomorrow’s deportation for a traffic violation, or for having the wrong surname?

Or writing a newspaper column critical of the regime. My green card is soon up for renewal. I sometimes fear it will be revoked by the thin-skinned Trump government.

But I must be able to look my children in the eye, and so I must speak up for Neri Alvarado and for Jesus Ramos and an unnamed Venezuelan 18-year-old.

Someone has to.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Immigration, Texas, Trump

Joyce Vance: Good News! It’s Working!

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2025 //
5

Veteran prosecutor Joyce Vance shared some good news: the nomination of Ed Martin to be U.S. Attorney in DC is hanging by a thread and may be dead. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina interviewed Martin and said he would vote no in the Senate Judiciary Committee because Martin supported the January 6 insurrectionists, even those who assaulted police officers. Since the split on the committee is 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats, Martin’s nomination would not get to the Senate floor. If you live in North Carolina, please call Senator Tillis and thank him.

Vance writes:

Last night, I wrote to you about Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee to be the United States Attorney in Washington, D.C.. Martin, until quite recently, used the handle “Eagle Ed Martin” on Twitter, a reference to his days working for Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. Apparently, someone mentioned to him during the last month that the handle wasn’t appropriate for a U.S. Attorney hopeful.

But no whisper in the ear could fix Martin’s other flaws, from utter lack of qualifications and knowledge about how to do the job to flagrant ties to people known for their open antisemitism. Last night, I suggested we all needed to be in touch with our senators on the Martin nomination. Although we still need to do that, the message is different now. That’s because North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, made it known that he won’t support Martin. 

Before Martin goes to the floor of the Senate for a confirmation vote, he has to make it out of committee. And that’s unlikely to happen now. The Senate Judiciary Committee is made up of 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. All of the Democrats oppose Martin. With Tillis abandoning him, the best Martin could do is 11-11, and a nominee who receives a tie vote doesn’t advance. For all practical purposes, the outcome of that vote will be a death knell for his nomination.

Martin may end up rewarded for his loyal service to Trump and Musk with another plum job, one that doesn’t require Senate confirmation. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate the moment and the fact that it looks like he won’t be the top law enforcement officer in the District of Columbia. Defeating Martin’s nomination wasn’t a foregone conclusion—far from it. It took lots of research, lots of conversation, and lots of hard work by a lot of people. You never know which issue, or even which call or letter, is going to be the last straw. What matters is that Trump and his plans are not inevitable, and it makes a difference when all of us push back against the horrible as hard as we can.

Tillis told reporters this morning that he is unable to support Martin because of Martin’s support for defendants convicted of committing crimes in connection with January 6. He is certain to face a sustained backlash from MAGA’s inner circle, so if he’s your senator, make sure you thank him, and if your senator is on the Judiciary Committee (that’s Grassley, Graham, Cornyn, Lee, Cruz, Hawley, Tillis, Kennedy, Blackburn, Schmitt, Britt, and Moody on the Republican side and Durbin, Whitehouse, Klobuchar, Coons, Blumenthal, Hirono, Booker, Padilla, Welch, and Schiff for the Democrats) this is a good time to reach out and either thank them for opposing or encourage them to show a little backbone and follow Tillis’ lead. Martin, after all, supports the people who overran the Capitol, threatening these folks and their staff. He is the least qualified selection I can recall seeing to lead a U.S. Attorney’s office, even edging out Trump’s former attorney Alina Habba, the New Jersey nominee, who should be rejected as well. This is a very big win for pro-democracy forces.

There was also a win on a very different front, one that didn’t get a lot of national attention. Trump’s efforts to cut staff and funding at national parks have garnered a lot of attention in the protests that have cropped up across the country. Many protests have taken place at the parks themselves, notably at Yosemite, where staff unfurled an upside-down American flag atop El Capitan to signal distress. On March 1, people protested at all 433 sites in the national park system—the 63 national parks and additional sites like monuments and historic places. Americans, it turns out, love their national parks.

Despite that, the Trump administration continues to keep them on the chopping block. Last week, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration had suspended all air-quality monitoring at national parks, stating that “The Interior Department, which includes the National Park Service, issued stop-work orders last week to the two contractors running the program, the email shows.”

The reporting provided detail that makes it clear this is a serious matter:

  • Data was being collected on ozone and particulate matter and being used in connection with requests to grant permits to industrial facilities like power plants and oil refineries in close proximity to the parks.
  • The pollutants data was being collected on are “linked to a range of adverse health effects,” including “heart attacks, strokes, asthma attacks and premature death.”
  • One goal of the program is “to curb regional haze,” which has “reduced visibility at scenic viewpoints in parks nationwide” over the past few decades.

Park Service employees pushed back and demanded that monitoring continue. They pointed out that states lack the equipment and resources to monitor and that without federal monitoring, they would be flying blind. It’s part and parcel of discontinuing environmental justice work at the Justice Department. Data makes it possible to protect the environment and the people who live in it. Trump is creating a permissive environment for business—when you can’t document the consequences of a new plant permit, for instance, it’s hard to oppose it.

But today, Washington Post reporter Teddy Amenabar posted on social media that “After The Post’s article was published, a Park Service spokesperson said the stop-work orders would be reversed and that ‘contractors will be notified immediately.’” Whether it’s traditional media, new media, protests, or our communications with our elected officials, it’s clear that none of what Trump wants to do is inevitable. Sunlight continues to act as a disinfectant. Government employees need public support right now, especially as many of them continue to bravely do the right thing, whether it’s federal prosecutors or park rangers. They richly deserve our support.

So if you’ve been questioning whether what you’re doing matters, it does. The signs you make, the protests you go to, the letters and calls you make to elected officials, your efforts to share information (like this newsletter) with people—all of these efforts matter. It all adds up, small victories and large ones.

Speaking of big ones, Donald Trump appears to have knowingly lied when he invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) in order to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. In his proclamation, he said, “TdA operates in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela, and commits brutal crimes, including murders, kidnappings, extortions, and human, drug, and weapons trafficking. TdA has engaged in and continues to engage in mass illegal migration to the United States to further its objectives of harming United States citizens, undermining public safety, and supporting the Maduro regime’s goal of destabilizing democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States.”

Not so fast. An intelligence community memo was partially declassified yesterday, two weeks after a FOIA request was made for it—that’s lightning speed in the world of FOIA, where requests can drag on for years. The memo contradicts Trump’s claimed basis for invoking the AEA. Hat tip to my friend Ryan Goodman, whose new Substack is great if you haven’t seen it already, for highlighting the parts of the memo that contradict Trump’s claim that TdA is mounting an invasion of the U.S. on behalf of Venezuela’s government.

Someone involved in responding to FOIA requestsseems to have been highly motivated to make sure the American people have access to the truth. Win.

It’s not clear how or whether this will impact ongoing litigation. Judges largely defer to presidential assessments of this nature under the political questions doctrine. We don’t know if this revelation will have any impact in court, although there should be some ambit, even if it’s small, for courts to reject presidential assessments that run entirely contrary to the facts. But in the court of public opinion, where facts still matter, here are some facts, from the people who know the subject best.

Finally for tonight, the North Carolina Supreme Court race that we’ve been following so carefully since last November seems to finally be over, and Allison Riggs, the Democrat who won the race, will now be declared the winner per an order issued by a federal judge who is a Trump appointee. Two recounts confirmed Riggs’ victory, but the disgruntled loser challenged it nonetheless. He tried to convince courts to disallow ballots cast by North Carolina voters who complied with all of the rules for voting by changing the rules about what ballots could be counted after the fact. He could still appeal this ruling, but it is a solid decision and unlikely to be reversed on appeal. The bottom line democratic principle is that you don’t get to move the goal posts to secure a victory. Didn’t work for Trump, and it didn’t work in North Carolina. Chalk another one up for the rule of law.

Whether it’s lawsuits or your letters, engaged citizens get results. We have a long way to go, but take heart; we are making progress. We can get there. Every little step forward adds to the tally in favor of democracy.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Justice, Lies, Trump

Secretary Linda McMahon Sent a Rude, Threatening Letter to Harvard

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2025 //
7

The Trump administration has declared war on Harvard University, for what is now–in the Trump era–the usual reasons: allegedly, that Harvard is not doing enough to stop anti-Semitism (a claim that is opposed by many Jews, who don’t want to be the favorite cause of a hateful, bigoted President); that Harvard engages in the policies of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which have been banned by the Trump administration; and that Harvard engages in “racism” by admitting and hiring nonwhite students and professors. The Trump administration has demanded the power to monitor Harvard’s curriculum, admissions, and hiring. Such a federal takeover is obviously unacceptable to Harvard, as it should be unacceptable to any private institution.

To Harvard and other universities, such a government intrusion would compromise academic freedom and their independence. Frankly, the best characterization of this government takeover of independent private institutions is fascist.

The Trump administration is currently withholding $2.2 billion that is dedicated to medical and scientific research. Does it make sense to punish Harvard’s alleged DEI transgressions by stopping funding for projects seeking cures for tuberculosis and ALS?

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon wrote a condescending, insulting letter to Harvard, warning that it would no longer receive any funding until it accepted Trump’s demands. She posted it on Twitter.

Page 1
Page 2
Page 3

She accused Harvard of “disastrous mismanagement,” snd she warned, “This letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek grants from the federal government, since none will be provided.” Her biggest grievance appears to be that Harvard continues to practice affirmative action despite the Supreme Court banning it. The Trump administration considers any effort to admit or hire people of color to be racism. So the very presence of Black students and professors is evidence that Harvard engages in “ugly racism.”

In her letter, Secretary McMahon rants about Harvard’s abandonment of “merit” and of the excellence for which it was once known.

This stance is ironic, coming from a member of the most unqualified, incompetent Cabinet in modern American history. Was McMahon the best qualified person to be Secretary of Education? Did her experience in the world of wrestling entertainment qualify her to lecture Harvard about academic excellence? Was there no Republican State Commissioner of Education or university president available?

Was Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the best person to run the department of Health and Human Services? Did Pete Hegseth become Secretary of Defense because of his merit?

Various Twitter accounts have posted a copy of her letter with her grammatical errors marked in red pencil. They claim this was Harvard’s response, but it was not.

Harvard responded with a dignified letter to McMahon that restated their intention not to be cowed by her threats, rudeness, and bluster.

The New York Times reported,

In a statement on Monday night, a Harvard spokesperson said the letter showed the administration “doubling down on demands that would impose unprecedented and improper control over Harvard University and would have chilling implications for higher education.”

The statement suggested it would be illegal to withhold funds in the manner Ms. McMahon described.

“Harvard will continue to comply with the law, promote and encourage respect for viewpoint diversity, and combat antisemitism in our community,” the statement said. “Harvard will also continue to defend against illegal government overreach aimed at stifling research and innovation that make Americans safer and more secure.”

I’m betting on Harvard. They are fighting for academic freedom and for freedom from government control of a private institution. They will have the best legal talent. They will be represented by lawyers with sterling conservative credentials.

Harvard will be here long after the Trump administration is a memory, a very bad memory, like the McCarthy era.

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Higher Education, Trump, U.S. Department of Education
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »