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“Democracy”: Pam Bondi Will Weaponize the Justice Department Against Trump’s Enemies

By dianeravitch
November 26, 2024 //
13

Our reader “Democracy” always posts wise, deeply researched comments. In this comment, Democracy makes us wonder whether Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz was a deep fake that would make anyone else look better. Such as Pam Bondi.

Pam Bondi will be loyal to Trump. Loyalty is the trait that matters more to Trump than competence or experience.

The Washington Post wrote about Bondi:

“Bondi said the Justice Department’s special counsel investigation into whether Trump associates coordinated with Russian interference in the 2016 election needed to be dissolved. She declared that the 45th president’s first impeachment in 2019 was a “sham.” And when Trump was indicted four times after leaving office, Bondi was blunt about who deserved legal scrutiny — and it wasn’t the former president.

“The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Bondi declared on Fox News in 2023, soon after Trump’s fourth set of criminal charges. “The investigators will be investigated.”

Democracy writes:

Pam Bondi as Attorney General.

What could go wrong? Let’s see.

Bondi was never a supporter of the Affordable Care Act and tried to extinguish it. As of February of this year, Florida had more than 4 million people receiving health care through the Affordable Care Act, the highest ACA enrollment in the country.

Bondi has been a long-time opponent of LGBTQ rights and same-ex marriage. After the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, Bondi said she had OPPOSED same-sex marriage NOT for any personal beliefs or political partisanship but because of “the rule of law.”

Bondi took that $25,000 political donation from a Trump CHARITY and then dropped any participation by Florida in a lawsuit against the Trump University flim-flam scheme. She denied that she did anything wrong or that there was any connection between the moola and her decision not to participate in the suit against Trump’s crooked tactics. Indeed, as one Trump University official said in court testimony, enrollees in the courses were directed to

“call their credit card companies and raise their credit limits two, three, or four times so that they would be able to invest in real estate,” to “charge the course to multiple credit cards” or “to open up as many credit cards as they could.” 

Bondi is a 2020 election denier, parroting Trump’s false claims that the election was “stolen” by “fake ballots” — she could never provide any evidence of this — and that any investigation into Trump’s incitement of the violent January 6 insurrection was a weaponization of the Justice Department for political purposes. Just last year she said on Fox ‘news” that,

“When Republicans take back the White House, you know what’s going to happen? The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones — the investigators will be investigated.”

Kinda sounds like “weaponization” doesn’t it?

The mission of the Department of Justice is “to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights.” According to its website, DOJ core values are

• Independence and Impartiality.

• Honesty and Integrity. 

• Respect.

• Excellence.

Obviously, the nomination of Matt Gaetz was laughably terrible. Pam Bondi may be a bit more palatable, but not by much. She is a liar, and a bigot, and a right-wing hack, and a seditious traitor…but with a “pretty” face. She’s the lipstick on the pig.

So what could go wrong? A whole lot.

Categories Accountability, Character, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Gender, Justice, Trump

Timothy Snyder: Trump’s Plan to Destroy Our Government

By dianeravitch
November 26, 2024 //
14

Timothy Snyder, professor of history at Yale University, is the author of On Tyranny. He writes and speaks frequently on television about the importance of defending our institutions against authoritarianism and resisting Putin’s quest to reclaim the Soviet Union.

He posted:

Each of Trump’s proposed appointments is a surprise.  It is comforting to think that he is simply a vengeful old man, lashing out this way and that.  This is unlikely.  He and Musk and Putin have been talking for years. And the whole idea of his campaign was that this time he had a plan.

We should be wary of shock, which excuses inaction.  Who could have known?  What could I have done?  If there is a plan, shock is part of the plan.  We have to get through the surprise and the shock to see the design and the risk.  We don’t have much time. Nor is outrage the point. Of course we are outraged. But our own reactions can distract is from the larger pattern.

The newspapers address the surprise and the shock by investigating each proposed appointment individually.  And we need this.  With detail comes leverage and power.  But clarity must also come, and quickly.  Each appointment is part of a larger picture.  Taken together, Trump’s candidates constitute an attempt to wreck the American government.  

In historical context we can see this.  There is a history of the modern democratic state.  There is also a history of engineered regime change and deliberate state destruction.  In both histories, five key zones are health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence.  These people, with power over these areas of life, can make America impossible to sustain.

The foundation of modern democratic state is a healthy, long-lived population.  We lived longer in the twentieth century because of hygiene and vaccinations, pioneered by scientists and physicians and then institutionalized by governments.  We treat one another better when we know we have longer lives to lose.  Health is not only the central human good; it enables the peaceful interactions we associate with the rule of law and democracy.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the proposed secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, would undo all of this.  On his watch, were his ideas implemented, millions of us would die.  Knowing that our lives will be shorter, we become nasty and brutish.

A modern democratic state depends upon the rule of law.  Before anything else is possible, we have to endorse the principle that we are all governed by law, and that our institutions are grounded in law.  This enables a functional government of a specific sort, in which leaders can be regularly replaced by elections.  It allows us to live as free individuals, within a set of rules that we can alter together.  The rule of law depends on people who believe in the spirit of law.  Matt Gaetz, the proposed attorney general, is the opposite of such a person.  It is not just that he flouts law himself, spectacularly and disgustingly.  It is that he embodies lawlessness, and can be counted upon to abuse law to pursue Trump’s political opponents.  The end of the rule of law is an essential component of a regime change.

The United States of America exists not only because laws are passed, but because we can expect that these laws will be implemented by civil servants.  We might find bureaucracy annoying; its absence, though, is deadly.  We cannot take the pollution out of the air ourselves, or build the highways ourselves, our write our Social Security checks ourselves.  Without a civil service, the law becomes mere paper, and all that works is the personal connection to the government, which the oligarchs will have, and which the rest of us will not.  This is the engineered helplessness promised by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who are to head a black hole named after a cryptocurrency.  There are already oversight instruments in government.  DOGE is something entirely different: an agency of destruction, run by people who believe that government should exist for the wealthy or not at all.

In a modern democratic state, the armed forces are meant to preserve a healthy, long-lived people from external threats.  This principal has been much abused in American practice.  But never before Donald Trump have we had a president who has presented the purpose of the armed forces as the oppression of Americans.  Trump says that Russia and China are less of a threat than “internal enemies.”  In American tradition, members of the armed forces swear an oath to the Constitution.  Trump has indicated that we would prefer “Hitler’s generals,” which means a personal oath to himself.  Pete Hegseth, Trump’s proposed secretary of defense, defends war criminals and displays tattoos associated with white nationalism and Christian nationalism.  He is a fundraiser and television personality, with a complicated sexual past and zero experience running an organization.  

In a world of hostile powers, an intelligence service is indispensable.  Intelligence can be abused, and certainly has been abused.  Yet it is necessary to consider military threats: consider the Biden administration’s correct call the Russia was about to invade Ukraine.  It is also necessary to counter the attempts by foreign intelligence agencies, which are constant, to harm American society.  This often involves disinformation.  Tulsi Gabbard, insofar as she is known at all, is known as a spreader of Syrian and Russian disinformation.  She has no relevant experience.  Were she to become director of national intelligence, as Trump proposes, we would lose the trust of our allies, and lose contact with much of what is happening in the world — just for starters.  We would be vulnerable to all of those who wish to cause us harm.

Imagine that you are a foreign leader who wishes to destroy the United States.  How could you do so?  The easiest way would be to get Americans to do the work themselves, to somehow induce Americans to undo their own health, law, administration, defense, and intelligence.  From this perspective, Trump’s proposed appointments — Kennedy, Jr.; Gaetz; Musk; Ramaswamy; Hegseth; Gabbard — are perfect instruments.  They combine narcissism, incompetence, corruption, sexual incontinence, personal vulnerability, dangerous convictions, and foreign influence as no group before them has done.  These proposed appointments look like a decapitation strike: destroying the American government from the top, leaving the body politic to rot, and the rest of us to suffer.

I do not defend the status quo. I have no doubt whatsoever that the Department of Defense and the Food and Drug Administration require reform.  But such a reform, of these or other agencies, would have to be guided by people with knowledge and experience, who cared about their country, and who had a vision of improvement.  That is simply not what is happening here.  We are confronted instead with a group of people who, were they to hold the positions they have been assigned, could bring an end to the United States of America.  

It is a mistake to think of these people as flawed.  It is not they will do a bad job in their assigned posts.  It is that they will do a good job using those assigned posts to destroy our country.

However and by whomever this was organized, the intention of these appointments is clear: to create American horror.  Elected officials should see this for what it is.  Senators, regardless of party, should understand that the United States Senate will not outlast the United States, insist on voting, and vote accordingly.  The Supreme Court of the United States will likely be called upon.  Although it is a faint hope, one must venture it anyway: that its justices will understand that the Constitution was not in fact written as the cover story for state destruction.  The Supreme Court will also not outlast the United States.

And citizens, regardless of how they voted, need now to check their attitudes.  This is no longer a post-electoral moment.  It is a pre-catastrophic moment.  Trump voters are caught in the notion that Trump must be doing the right thing if Harris voters are upset.  But Harris voters are upset now because they love their country.  And Harris voters will have to get past the idea that Trump voters should reap what they have sown.  Yes, some of them did vote to burn it all down.  But if it all burns down, we burn too.  It is not easy to speak right now; but if some Republicans wish to, please listen.

Both inside and outside Congress, there will have to be simple defiance, joined with a rhetoric of a better America.  And, at moments at least, there will also have to be alliances among Americans who, though they differ on other matters, would like to see their country endure.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Health, Insane, Justice, Republicans, Trump

Was Today the Worst Day in American History?

By dianeravitch
November 25, 2024 //
40

The blog known as “That’s Another Fine Mess” declared November 25 , 2024, the worst day in our history. Read on to know why.

Do you agree?

Donald Trump’s real reason for running for re-election in 2024 was to stay out of prison. He knew that only a return to the White House would prevent him standing trial for initiating the January 6 insurrection, and standing trial for the theft of top secret documents. Conviction in either case would mean he would end his days as a convicted felon, quite possibly dying in prison.


Mission accomplished.


November 25, 2024, will be remembered in American history as the day the constitutional rule that no individual is above the law was ended.


Whether this leads to the end of the democratic constitutional republic – that has existed because of that rule – being overthrown by Donald J. Trump is unknown at this point, but it is at a minimum a severe blow to the foundation of that republic that will be difficult if not impossible to repair.


This morning, Special Counsel Jack Smith moved to drop both cases. This afternoon, that motion was granted in the case of the Seditious Insurrection by Juge Tanya Chutkan. The action was taken “without prejudice,” meaning that the charges could be brought again at some time in the future. Does anyone think that one of the first acts of Attorney General Pam Bondi will not be to drop the cases in such a way that they can never be reinstituted?


This is the worst defeat of the forces of democracy in the history of this country.


Two men are solely responsible for this outcome: President Joseph R. Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland.


As productive as his presidency has been, Joe Biden suffered from the fatal flaw of being unable to see that his bedrock belief in “go along to get along” congressional bipartisanship had been decisively overthrown over the 20 years before he took office as president – something he hold have learned from his botched handling of the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court in 1991 – and was no longer an operating philosophy that could be successful. His Irish stubbornness led to his inability to see modern Republicans as the deadly enemy of everything he believed in that they were – which he only began to clearly see in the final two years of his presidency, when it was too late – was directly responsible for this defeat. His inability to take the kind of decisive action against that enemy – commencing the investigation and prosecution of the criminal Trump and his fellow conspirators on Day One of his term of office – meant that the enemy would be able to use the rights and privileges of a defendant when the investigation and prosecution was finally authorized too late, and defeat the system by retaking power, using the rules of the system to defeat it.

Biden’s inability to understand the true nature of the threat he faced was compounded by his decision to nominate the exact wrong candidate to be his Attorney General. Merrick Garland did not and does not have the heart of a fighter, which is the quality that was most needed in whoever took that office at that time. His judiciousness would have been excellent had he been able to become the Supreme Court Associate Justice President Obama nominated him to be. It is tragic that neither Garland – the victim of the “conservative movement” that had consumed the GOP – nor then-Vice President Biden who took part in making the nomination and was an eyewitness to the treason of Mitch McConnell as President of the Senate – took the proper understanding from what they had been part of. 

Both men desperately held on to obsolete beliefs with the tenacity of French Generals who stared uncomprehendingly at the German panzers that thoroughly defeated them in 1940. They clung to the idea that they could “look forward” and ignore the Great Crime that had been committed, but this time papering over the recent past only made the defeat inevitable. How thorough this defeat will loom in the history of the United States cannot be known at this time, but it cannot be seen as anything other than the Major Defeat that it is. There is no argument to be made that it is anything other than a disaster.

Those who fail to understand when the knowledge on which they have based their lives becomes obsolete cannot end other than how Joe Biden and Merrick Garland have arrived at the end their careers. This failure will outweigh all their other successes, viewed with the 20-20 hindsight of history.

Joe Biden should have listened to the counsel of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who said: “Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me.”

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Injustice, Lies, Trump

Yale Drops No-Test Admissions Policy

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2024 //
12

Yale University, one of the nation’s most elite institutions, has dropped its policy of no-test scores for admissions. Instead, it will require students to submit one of four standardized tests when they apply. The elite universities were flooded with applicants last year, and some were able to accept only 3-5% of applicants. Last year, 57,465 students applied for admission; only 3.7% were accepted.

My guess is that the re-introduction of standardized test scores will discourage some from applying and will immediately disqualify those with very low scores.

The Yale Daily News reported:

After four years of a test-optional policy allowing applicants to decide whether to submit test scores, applicants to Yale’s class of 2029 must submit standardized test scores.

Under Yale’s text-flexible admissions policy, applicants may select one or more types of tests from a list of four options — SAT, ACT, Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate. Those who choose to send AP or IB scores are required to include results from all subject exams that they have taken…

Among peer institutions, Yale stands out for its test-flexible admissions policy for the class of 2029. Of the other seven Ivy League institutions, Harvard, Brown and Dartmouth require the SAT or ACT.  Princeton, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania and Cornell are still test-optional for the current admissions cycle…

John Yi ’13, associate director of the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, believes the test-flexible policy helps the University communicate that “academic preparation is a core component of our admissions process, but that there is not a one-size-fits-all exam that communicates that strength.” Whichever tests applicants choose to send, they are only part of a “much broader puzzle” among other components of applications….

Yale College received 6,754 early applications to the class of 2029, a 14 percent decrease from early applications from the previous year. This group of applicants will be the first to be evaluated under Yale’s test-flexible policy. ..

Yi wrote to the News that under test-optional admissions, Yale saw a “large increase” in applications from students without test scores whose other application elements — transcript, recommendations and personal essays — also “lacked evidence” that they were prepared to succeed at Yale.

On the other hand, he emphasized that the test-required policy prompted applicants to view testing as the “single most important factor” because everyone had to submit the same tests, discouraging applicants with lower test scores who would be great Yale students. With a test-optional policy, it is “easy” for applicants to imagine that test scores are “completely extraneous” to the review, he wrote. 

“I would reassure students that the standardized testing piece is far less interesting to us than all the other components of the application,” Yi wrote. “Each student’s context is unique, and the test-flexible policy is designed to help them shine their brightest in the admissions process — not to trick or trap them.”

Categories Accountability, Higher Education, Standardized Testing

Is Trump Trying to Destroy the Federal Role in Public Health?

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2024 //
7

Trump announced the appointment of Dr. David Weldon, a former Congressman from Florida, as director of the Centers for Disease Control. He has unorthodox views, to say the least. But we can always count on the Secretary of Health and Human Services, to maintain the integrity of our premier public health agency.

Oh, wait, Trump’s nominee for Secretary is the noted conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Is Trump trying to gut our public health agencies? How many career physicians who are noted authorities in their field will quit rather than work for know-nothings?

The New York Times reported about Dr. Weldon:

President-elect Donald J. Trump chose Dr. David Weldon, a former congressman, on Friday to serve as the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Dr. Weldon, 71, is a native of Long Island and earned a medical degree in New York before moving to Florida to practice. Starting in 1995, he served seven terms in Congress, representing the 15th District of Florida, before forgoing re-election and returning to his medical practice.

As a member of Congress, Dr. Weldon pushed the false notion that thimerosal, a preservative compound in some vaccines, had caused an explosion of autism — a hypothesis that experts say has no evidence. He also introduced a “vaccine safety bill” that aimed to relocate most vaccine safety research from the C.D.C. — which he said had an “inherent conflict of interest” — to a separate agency within the Department of Health and Human Services.

Mr. Trump’s choice signals yet again his commitment to reforming the role of federal health agencies in radical ways. Though Dr. Weldon is an internist, his skepticism of vaccine safety and concern about C.D.C. overreach echo those of other nominees, including Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“In addition to being a Medical Doctor for 40 years, and an Army Veteran, Dave has been a respected conservative leader on fiscal and social issues,” Mr. Trump wrote in a statement released Friday night, saying that Dr. Weldon would “restore the CDC to its true purpose.”

“Americans have lost trust in the CDC and in our Federal Health Authorities, who have engaged in censorship, data manipulation, and misinformation. Given the current Chronic Health Crisis in our Country, the CDC must step up and correct past errors to focus on the Prevention of Disease.”

As a member of congress, Dr. Weldon also authored the so-called Weldon Amendment, which barred the Department of Health and Human Services from funding federal or state programs that “discriminated” against health insurance plans that did not cover abortions.

He unsuccessfully sought a Senate seat in 2012 and a Florida House seat in 2024.Dr. Weldon also served as president of the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, a trade group for Christian organizations that offered an alternative to traditional health insurance.

The groups have come under scrutiny for potentially misleading people into thinking the groups had some legal obligation to pay their medical claims. Dr. Weldon has said that the members of his association were clear that they were not offering insurance, which is subject to strict regulations.

For the first time, the incoming C.D.C. director will need Senate confirmation. If Dr. Weldon is successful, he will sit at the helm of an agency with a budget of more than $15 billion, which has historically been used to track and respond to infectious disease outbreaks.

But Mr. Trump’s choice to lead its parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, is Mr. Kennedy, who has been outspoken about his plans to deprioritize communicable disease research in favor of preventive medicine.

If Mr. Kennedy, too, is confirmed by the Senate, the mission and focus of the C.D.C.’s work may change.

Reed Abelson contributed reporting.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Florida, Health, Trump

Trump Team Trying to Slip Matt Gaetz Across the Finish Line

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2024 //
16

Ron Filipowski, editor of the Meidas Report, updates the Trump Team’s relentless effort to make Matt Gaetz the U.S. Attorney General. When Republicans are trying so hard to suppress the Ethics Committee’s report about Gaetz, it seems two things are likely: 1, the report must be very bad for Gaetz; 2, it will be leaked.

Gaetz is without a doubt the most unqualified person ever chosen to lead the Justice Department. Trump has already nominated his personal defense attorneys to top jobs in the Justice Department. He can now rest assured that he will never again be investigated. And Trump has introduced another product that he’s selling on the side. And, surprise, surprise, Trump does know the people who wrote Project 2025!

… Trump is reportedly set to appoint Ross Vought as his Budget Director. So his Border Czar wrote the section on Project 2025 on the border, his FCC nominee wrote the section on Project 2025 on the FCC, and his Budget Director wrote the section on Project 2025 about the budget. But Trump said in the campaign he has no connection to Project 2025 and doesn’t know any of the people involved.

… Surprising criticism from Rand Paul on Trump’s announced plan to declare a national emergency in order to use the military to round up and deport migrants. “I think it’s a terrible image. That’s not what we use our military for. We never have. I will not support an emergency to put the Army into our cities.”

… The updated popular vote count according to Cook Political is now Trump – 49.89%, Harris – 48.24%. Trump’s lead continues to shrink.

… JD Vance said today that the Senate just needs to confirm every Trump nominee with no questions asked since Trump “just won a major electoral victory.”

… Thom Tillis said that Republicans citing recess appointments of previous presidents like Obama is a much different situation than what Trump wants to do because none of those were Cabinet-level positions: “Not for a Cabinet-level position. That should be absolutely off the table. And quite honestly, any serious candidate .. I would have to really wonder if they would want it or be willing to accept that under a recess appointment…”

… Trump raged on Truth Social that his amazing nominees are being criticized: “This is what the Radical Left Lunatics do to people. They dirty them up, they destroy them, and then they spit them out.”

… ABC has obtained Venmo and PayPal records showing payments of $10,000 from Matt Gaetzto two women he allegedly paid for sex. One was a minor at the time. Maybe he was just donating to their tuition out of the kindness of his heart.

… Tim Burchett responded to the House Ethics report on Gaetz getting hacked: “Can someone hack the Epstein files for Americans to see?” Careful what you wish for.

… Lindsey Graham met with Gaetz today in his office. Lindsey told CNN: “I fear the process surrounding the Gaetz nomination is turning into an angry mob, and unverified allegations are being treated as if they are true. I urge my Senate colleagues not to join the lynch mob.”

… Meanwhile, the Senate made a formal request for the House Ethics report on Gaetz to be turned over to them so they can do their job properly.

… But the Ethics Committee voted along party lines with Republicans voting to keep the Gaetz report secret and Democrats voting to release it. After Republican Chair Michael Guest told the press that the full committee “agreed” not to release the report, Dem Rep Susan Wild flamed him, saying that was a complete lie, they all agreed not to discuss the vote, but since Guest lied about what happened she felt compelled to disclose it was a straight party-line vote…

… Trump rolled out a new product line today – Trump Guitars. He is selling an electric Trump Guitar on his website for $1,500 and an acoustic Trump Guitar for $1,250. They have an American flag with Trump’s face on them. He is also offering signed guitars for $10,000 and promises that they will arrive before Christmas if you order now.

… The website for the Trump guitars does NOT say where they are made, so you know what that means.

… Nikki Haley trashed Tulsi Gabbard today: “She said that Trump turned the US into Saudi Arabia’s prostitute. This is going to be the future head of our National Intelligence? She tried to cut our annual defense budget. Tulsi Gabbard defended Iran. She went to Syria for a photo op with Assad while he was massacring his own people. She said she was skeptical he was behind it. This is disgusting. Everything she said about it was Russian talking points. Every bit of it. That was Russian propaganda.”

… More from Haley: “After Russia invaded Ukraine, she blamed NATO. The Russians and the Chinese played her talking points on Russian and Chinese TV. She’s defended Russia, Syria, Iran and China. DNI is not a place for a Russian-Chinese-Iranian-Syrian sympathizer.”

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Eliminating the Department of Education?

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2024 //
12

Trump has promised to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. He needs Congressional approval to do it. Trump made this promise during the campaign. The details are spelled out in Project 2025. The elimination of ED is step one. Then right wingers approve their dream, which is to “block grant” all the big funding. That means that the money goes to states without limits on how it is spent. They can spend it as they wish, without federal oversight. But then comes the kicker: the federal government stops funding Title 1, Special Education, and other “categorical programs,” and the states have to fund it themselves. This works for the well-off states, because they currently pay more than they receive. But the poor states, which voted overwhelmingly for Trump, are screwed. They receive more from the federal Department of Education than they pay in. Tough justice. Bad for kids.

What about the U.S. Department of Education?

Heather Cox Richardson wrote:

One of President-elect Trump’s campaign pledges was to eliminate the Department of Education. He claimed that the department pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” He promised to “return” education to the states. 

In fact, the Department of Education does not set curriculum; states and local governments do. The Department of Education collects statistics about schools to monitor student performance and promote practices based in evidence. It provides about 10% of funding for K–12 schools through federal grants of about $19.1 billion to high-poverty schools and of $15.5 billion to help cover the cost of educating students with disabilities.

It also oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan program, including setting the rules under which colleges and universities can participate. But what really upsets the radical right is that the Department of Education is in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding, a policy Congress set in 1975 with an act now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). This was before Congress created the department.

The Department of Education became a stand-alone department in May 1980 under Democratic president Jimmy Carter, when Congress split the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare into two departments: the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education. 

A Republican-dominated Congress established the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare in 1953 under Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower as part of a broad attempt to improve the nation’s schools and Americans’ well-being in the flourishing post–World War II economy. When the Soviet Union beat the United States into space by sending up the first  Sputnik satellite in 1957, lawmakers concerned that American children were falling behind put more money and effort into educating the country’s youth, especially in math and science. 

But support for federal oversight of education took a devastating hit after the Supreme Court, headed by Eisenhower appointee Chief Justice Earl Warren, declared racially segregated schools unconstitutional in the May 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision. 

Immediately, white southern lawmakers launched a campaign of what they called “massive resistance” to integration. Some Virginia counties closed their public schools. Other school districts took funds from integrated public schools and used a grant system to redistribute those funds to segregated private schools. Then, Supreme Court decisions in 1962 and 1963 that declared prayer in schools unconstitutional cemented the decision of white evangelicals to leave the public schools, convinced that public schools were leading their children to perdition. 

In 1980, Republican Ronald Reagan ran on a promise to eliminate the new Department of Education.

After Reagan’s election, his secretary of education commissioned a study of the nation’s public schools, starting with the conviction that there was a “widespread public perception that something is seriously remiss in our educational system.” The resulting report, titled “A Nation at Risk,” announced that “the educational foundations of our society are presently being eroded by a rising tide of mediocrity that threatens our very future as a Nation and a people.”

Although a later study commissioned in 1990 by the Secretary of Energy found the data in the original report did not support the report’s conclusions, Reagan nonetheless used the report in his day to justify school privatization. He vowed after the report’s release that he would “continue to work in the months ahead for passage of tuition tax credits, vouchers, educational savings accounts, voluntary school prayer, and abolishing the Department of Education. Our agenda is to restore quality to education by increasing competition and by strengthening parental choice and local control.”

The rise of white evangelism and its marriage to Republican politics fed the right-wing conviction that public education no longer served “family values” and that parents had been cut out of their children’s education. Christians began to educate their children at home, believing that public schools were indoctrinating their children with secular values. 

When he took office in 2017, Trump rewarded those evangelicals who had supported his candidacy by putting right-wing evangelical activist Betsy DeVos in charge of the Education Department. She called for eliminating the department—until she used its funding power to try to keep schools open during the covid pandemic—and asked for massive cuts in education spending.

Rather than funding public schools, DeVos called instead for tax money to be spent on education vouchers, which distribute tax money to parents to spend for education as they see fit. This system starves the public schools and subsidizes wealthy families whose children are already in private schools. DeVos also rolled back civil rights protections for students of color and LGBTQ+ students but increased protections for students accused of sexual assault. 

In 2019, the 1619 Project, published by the New York Times Magazine on the 400th anniversary of the arrival of enslaved Africans at Jamestown in Virginia Colony, argued that the true history of the United States began in 1619, establishing the roots of the country in the enslavement of Black Americans. That, combined with the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020, prompted Trump to commission the 1776 Project, which rooted the country in its original patriotic ideals and insisted that any moments in which it had fallen away from those ideals were quickly corrected. He also moved to ban diversity training in federal agencies. 

When Trump lost the 2020 election, his loyalists turned to undermining the public schools to destroy what they considered an illegitimate focus on race and gender that was corrupting children. In January 2021, Republican activists formed Moms for Liberty, which called itself a parental rights organization and began to demand the banning of LGBTQ+ books from school libraries. Right-wing activist Christopher Rufo engineered a national panic over the false idea that public school educators were teaching their students critical race theory, a theory taught as an elective in law school to explain why desegregation laws had not ended racial discrimination. 

After January 2021, 44 legislatures began to consider laws to ban the teaching of critical race theory or to limit how teachers could talk about racism and sexism, saying that existing curricula caused white children to feel guilty.

When the Biden administration expanded the protections enforced by the Department of Education to include LGBTQ+ students, Trump turned to focusing on the idea that transgender students were playing high-school sports despite the restrictions on that practice in the interest of “ensuring fairness in competition or preventing sports-related injury.” 

During the 2024 political campaign, Trump brought the longstanding theme of public schools as dangerous sites of indoctrination to a ridiculous conclusion, repeatedly insisting that public schools were performing gender-transition surgery on students. But that cartoonish exaggeration spoke to voters who had come to see the equal rights protected by the Department of Education as an assault on their own identity. That position leads directly to the idea of eliminating the Department of Education.

But that might not work out as right-wing Americans imagine. As Morning Joe economic analyst Steven Rattner notes, for all that Republicans embrace the attacks on public education, Republican-dominated states receive significantly more federal money for education than Democratic-dominated states do, although the Democratic states contribute significantly more tax dollars. 

There is a bigger game afoot, though, than the current attack on the Department of Education. As Thomas Jefferson recognized, education is fundamental to democracy, because only educated people can accurately evaluate the governmental policies that will truly benefit them.

In 1786, Jefferson wrote to a colleague about public education: “No other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness…. Preach, my dear Sir, a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against [the evils of “kings, nobles and priests”], and that the tax which will be paid for this purpose is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Education Reform, Equity, Extremism, Funding, Health, Inequality, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Andy Borowitz: What Do We Do Now? Thoughts for Voters

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2024 //
18

Andy Borowitz has words of wisdom for Democrats and Never Trumpers. Do not despair. Prepare. Big electoral wins breed hubris, overconfidence, overreach. Or, pride goeth before a fall.

He writes:

Maybe you’ve been asking yourself:

1. “How could Donald Trump have won 51 percent of the popular vote?”

2. “How hard is it to immigrate to New Zealand?” 

3. “What the actual f..k?”

Fair questions.

Let’s try a thought experiment. Could Tuesday’s election results have been any worse?

Well, what if, instead of 51 percent, the Republican nominee had won 59 percent? Or 61 percent? And what if he had won 49 states?

Those aren’t hypotheticals. Those were the results of the 1972 and 1984 landslides that reelected Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. 

With thumping victories like those, what could possibly go wrong for the winners?

If history’s any guide, some nasty surprises await Donald Trump.

In 1972, the Democratic presidential nominee, George McGovern, won just 37.5 percent of the vote, carrying only Massachusetts and the District of Columbia for a total of 17 Electoral College votes. He didn’t even win his home state, South Dakota. 

In 1984, Democrat Walter Mondale did carry his native Minnesota, but that was as good as it got for him. In the Electoral College, he fared even worse than McGovern, with a whopping 13 votes. 

In the aftermath of these thrashings, the Democratic Party lay in smoldering ruins, and Republicans looked like indestructible conquerors.

Now, some might argue that those GOP victories, though statistically more resounding than Trump’s, weren’t nearly as alarming, because he’s a criminal and wannabe autocrat. 

But Trump’s heinousness shouldn’t make us nostalgic for Nixon and Reagan. They were also criminals—albeit unindicted ones. And they were up to all manner of autocratic shit—until they got caught. 

The Watergate scandal was only one small part of the sprawling criminal enterprise that Nixon directed from the Oval Office in order to subvert democracy. For his part, Reagan’s contribution to the annals of presidential crime, Iran-Contra, broke myriad laws and violated Constitutional norms. 

The hubris engendered by both men’s landslides propelled them to reckless behavior in their second terms—behavior that came back to haunt them. Nixon was forced to resign the presidency; Reagan was lucky to escape impeachment. 

After the Watergate scandal forced Richard Nixon from office, this bumper sticker helped Massachusetts voters brag that they handed him his only Electoral College loss in 1972.

Of course, Trump would be justified in believing that no matter how reckless he becomes, he’ll never pay a price. He’s already been impeached—twice—only to be acquitted by his Republican toadies in the Senate. And now that the right-wing supermajority of the Supreme Court has adorned him with an immunity idol, he’ll likely feel free to commit crimes that Nixon and Reagan could only dream of. Who’ll stop him from using his vast power to persecute his voluminous list of enemies?

Well, the enemy most likely to thwart Trump in his second term might be one who isn’t on his list: himself. The seeds of Trump’s downfall may reside in two promises he made to win this election: the mass deportation of immigrants and the elimination of inflation. 

Trump’s concept of a plan to deport 20 million immigrants is as destined for success as were two of his other brainchildren, Trump University and Trump Steaks. The US doesn’t have anything approaching the law-enforcement capacity to realize this xenophobic fever dream. 

And as for Trump’s war on inflation, the skyrocketing prices caused by his proposed tariffs will make Americans nostalgic for pandemic-era price-gouging on Charmin.

It’s possible that Trump’s 24/7 disinformation machine, led by Batman villains Rupert Murdoch, Tucker Carlson, and Elon Musk, will prevent his MAGA followers from ever discovering that 20 million immigrants didn’t go anywhere. And it’s possible that if inflation spikes, he’ll find a scapegoat for that. (Nancy Pelosi? Dr. Fauci? Taylor Swift?) 

And, yes, it’s possible that Trump will somehow accomplish his goal of becoming America’s Kim Jong Un, and our democracy will go belly-up like the Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City. 

But I wouldn’t bet on it. I tend to agree with the British politician Enoch Powell (1912-1998), who observed that all political careers end in failure. I doubt that Trump, with his signature blend of inattention, impulsiveness, and incompetence, will avoid that fate.

And when the ketchup hits the fan, the MAGA movement may suddenly appear far more fragmented and fractious than it does this week. You can already see the cracks. Two towering ignoramuses like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert should be BFFs, but they despise each other—the only policy of theirs I agree with. 

If things really go south, expect MAGA Republicans to devour each other as hungrily as the worm who feasted on RFK Jr.’s brain—and that, my friends, will be worth binge-watching. I’m stocking up on popcorn now before Trumpflation makes it unaffordable. 

Marjorie Taylor Greene (L), wishing a space laser would strike Lauren Boebert (R). (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

One parting thought. Post-election, the mainstream media’s hyperbolic reassessment of Trump—apparently, he’s now a political genius in a league with Talleyrand and Metternich—has been nauseating. It’s also insanely short-sighted. Again, a look at the not-so-distant past is instructive.

In 1984, after Reagan romped to victory with 59 percent of the popular vote and 525 electoral votes, Reaganism was universally declared an unstoppable juggernaut. But only two years later, in the 1986 midterms, Democrats proved the pundits wrong: they regained control of both the House and Senate for the first time since 1980. Those majorities enabled them to slam the brakes on Ronnie’s right-wing agenda, block the Supreme Court nomination of Robert Bork, and investigate Iran-Contra.

The lesson of the 1986 midterms is clear: the game’s far from over and there’s everything to play for. If we want to stem the tide of autocracy and kleptocracy, restore women’s rights and protect the most vulnerable, we don’t have the luxury of despair. The work starts now.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, History, Humor, Trump

What Peter Greene Thinks About the Nominee for Secretary of Education

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2024 //
8

Think how much worse it could be. It could have been a Mom for Liberty. Or Chris Rufo.

Open the link.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Elections, U.S. Department of Education

What’s on the Musk-Ramaswamy Chopping Block?

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2024 //
13

Trump put Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of a “Department of Government Efficiency” and told them to have fun cutting the federal budget. A billionaire and a millionaire who know nothing about government programs will start hacking away.

The Washington Post helpfully assembled a list of programs that are prime targets.

Jacob Bogage wrote:

Trump government efficiency advisers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have pledged not to bring a chisel to government spending, but rather “a chainsaw.” The particular approach Ramaswamy has in mind could threaten dozens of programs that tens of millions of Americans rely on each day.


Ramaswamy floated on social media a proposal to eliminate programs that Congress funds but where specific spending authorization has lapsed. That may sound like an easy source of savings, but it would ax veterans’ health-care programs, drug research and development, opioid addiction treatment — even the State Department.


“We can & should save hundreds of billions each year by defunding government programs that Congress no longer authorizes,” Ramaswamy wrote.


The approach from President-elect Donald Trump, Musk and Ramaswamy’s out-of-government “Department of Government Efficiency,” or DOGE, demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress and federal spending, experts say.


Though Ramaswamy suggested that programs Congress no longer authorizes are prime targets for cuts, in reality, many programs where Congress has let authorization lapse are covered by funding bills that policy wonks call “self-authorizing.”

In other words, instead of needing two laws — one to approve funding for an agency and another to actually allocate the money — Congress only passes one: the allocation, which intrinsically gives a department authority to spend its funding. It is Congress’s way of making legislative work more efficient, and its legality has been confirmed by numerous government studies.


There is plenty of room for policymakers to uncover and eliminate excess federal spending, experts say, an issue made even more serious by the country’s deteriorating financial health. The national debt is expected to eclipse $36 trillion in the coming days; Trump’s first-term policies accounted for $8.4 trillion of that amount, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.


It just might be more difficult than DOGE’s backers suggest.


“It is obviously important for the government to be good stewards of taxpayer dollars. There’s real bipartisan areas where people agree there’s stuff to be done. But what Elon and Vivek and Trump are going for is not that,” said Bobby Kogan, an analyst at the center-left think tank Center for American Progress. “They don’t even get the basics right. They get the size of the budget wrong. They named it after a meme. In no way are they actually taking this seriously.”

Musk and Ramaswamy beg to differ, and have called the DOGE commission the United States’ next Manhattan Project.


“There’s a new sheriff in town. Donald Trump’s the president. He has mandated us for radical, drastic reform of this federal bureaucracy with the learnings of that first term,” Ramaswamy said on Fox News. “And look, Elon and I — Elon is solving major problems of physics. I came from the world of biology. What we’re solving here now is not a natural problem. This is a man-made problem, and when you have a man-made problem, you better darn well have a man-made solution. That’s what we’re bringing to the table.”
Trump transition officials did not immediately return a request for comment.


The programs without separate spending authorization that Ramaswamy would do away with represent more than $516 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The 10 largest make up $380 billion. Here’s a look at what some of those programs do.

Veterans’ health care


A 1996 law set eligibility requirements for military veterans to receive hospital, medical and nursing home care and authorized spending for those services and patient enrollment. That law has not been renewed, but Congress regularly allocates additional Department of Veterans Affairs funding and allows benefits to increase automatically based on inflation. VA provides medical care to more than 9.1 million enrolled veterans, according to the agency.
Drug development and opioid addiction treatment.


Most of this spending relates to the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act of 2016. That law provided money to the National Institutes of Health and Food and Drug Administration to modernize pharmaceutical research and medical trials. It funded research for cancer cures and state-level grants for opioid addiction and other substance abuse treatment.


State Department


In 2003, Congress passed the Foreign Relations Authorization Act, which set policy priorities and created spending authority for the State Department. That law has not been renewed, but Congress every year since has passed annual funding bills for the department, which Trump has announced he’ll nominate Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) to run.


Housing assistance


President Bill Clinton in 1998 signed the Quality Housing and Work Responsibility Act, which overhauled federal housing assistance policies, including voucher programs and other antipoverty assistance. The Department of Housing and Urban Development and other agencies continue using this law to implement federal housing programs.


Justice Department


In 1994, Congress passed the landmark Violence Against Women Act and has renewed it multiple times since. In 2006, lawmakers packaged a VAWA renewal with authorizing legislation for the Justice Department. As with the State Department, Congress has not approved new authorizing legislation for the Justice Department since, but it has funded the agency — and even authorized hundreds of millions of dollars more for a new FBI headquarters — every year.


Education spending


The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act delegated power to state and local education officials to set primary and secondary education achievement standards. It gives billions of dollars in federal grant money to state and local education officials to fund schools and school districts. Those standards are still used by the Education Department, even though the legislation has not been reauthorized. Trump has suggested he’d like to eliminate the entire department.


NASA


Stripping funding for NASA, which was last reauthorized in 2017, could spell doom for Musk’s commercial spaceflight firm, SpaceX. The company has contracts worth more than $4 billion — including for return trips to the moon and retiring the International Space Station — linked to programs approved in the 2017 law.
Health-care and student loan programs
What’s known as the Affordable Care Act, or Obamacare, was actually passed in two separate bills in 2010. The Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act represents the second bill, which included some tax revisions and technical changes to the ACA. The law has not been reauthorized since, but the Department of Health and Human Services reported in March that more than 45 million people have health insurance coverage backed by the Affordable Care Act.

The law that made those final tweaks to the ACA also overhauled the Education Department’s student loan program. Where some schools relied on private lenders to issue federally backed loans, with this law, the government itself became the lender. That change has since enabled President Joe Biden to offer student loan debt relief, though many of his most ambitious policies have been blocked by the courts. Student loans are generally funded through mandatory spending — similar to social safety net programs such as Medicare and Social Security — and not subject to annual spending laws.


International security programs


The 1985 International Security and Development Cooperation Act bundled together authorizations for a number of international security programs, including funding and regulations for arms sales to allies, economic aid for developing countries, airport security, anti-narcotics-trafficking policies, the Peace Corps and more. This Reagan-era law continues to be foundational to congressional funding and federal policy.


Head Start


Head Start provides preschool education for children from low-income families. In the 2023 fiscal year, more than 800,000 children enrolled in Head Start programs, according to the National Head Start Association. The program also helped place more than 530,000 parents in jobs, school or job-training programs. It was last authorized in 2007.

The article contains a graphic of programs that are on the chopping block, along with their appropriations. I can’t copy it. If you subscribe to the Washington Post, please open the link and post the graphic in your comment.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Health, Ignorance, Trump
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