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The Five Biggest Charter School Grifts

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2026 //
4

Bruce Baker taught for many years at Rutgers University in New Jersey. He now teaches education policy at the University of Miami. He will have many opportunities to observe and document edu-grifting in Florida.

In this post, he identities the five biggest charter scandals and explains how they worked. Much of what you will read was called “legal graft” by past pundits. In other words, the charter operators collect millions in public funds while providing a dubious education, and they get away scot-free.

In other words, take the money and run. No consequences.

He writes:

Five cases, four mechanisms, one ranking: this post lines up the biggest fraud prosecutions, the biggest company-store combination, and the biggest sweeps contract in the charter sector’s history against the single largest real-estate deal any operator has ever built, and asks which one moved the most money. The answer isn’t the one with an indictment attached.

In The Grift Model I group the ways charter operators route public money into private hands into four repeating types: enrollment inflation (getting paid for students who aren’t really being educated — phantom seats, unverifiable attendance, ghost enrollees); related-party transactions (a school’s own board or executives sitting on both sides of a contract); the company store (a captive vendor a school is required to buy from — curriculum, credentials, back-office services — that happens to be owned by the people running the school); and real estate (buying, or arranging for a related party to buy, the very buildings public dollars already financed, then leasing them back at a markup).

What I hadn’t done before is put the five biggest documented cases — regardless of category — on the same page and rank them by dollar figure. A caveat before I do: these numbers come from different kinds of documents (a criminal restitution order isn’t the same instrument as a municipal bond prospectus), cover different time spans, and in a couple of cases reflect an auditor’s or a prosecutor’s counting choice as much as anyone’s. I’m ranking them anyway, because the comparison itself is the point — and because the single largest number on this list isn’t attached to anyone’s indictment.

Here they are, five to one.

5. White Hat Management, Ohio: about $100 million over a decade

White Hat’s “sweeps” contracts with ten Hope Academy and Life Skills Center campuses in Cleveland and Akron routed roughly 95 percent of each school’s state funding to the management company, which then handled teacher salaries, facilities, and operations with minimal board oversight — company-store logic applied to an entire school’s back office rather than one vendor line. Over a decade that added up to something like $100 million. When several of the nonprofit boards tried to switch management companies, White Hat argued the computers, furniture, and classroom equipment it had bought with that money belonged to White Hat, not the schools — meaning the boards would have to buy back the property their own public funding had already paid for once.

In 2015, a divided Ohio Supreme Court sided with White Hat, 4–3, upholding the buy-back scheme as an enforceable contract term. Justice Paul Pfeifer’s dissent put it about as plainly as a judicial opinion gets: “the contracts require that after the public pays to buy those materials for a public use, the public must then pay the companies if it wants to retain ownership of the materials.” Justice William O’Neill called it, in a dissent The Progressive covered in full, “a fraudulent conversion of public funds into personal profit.” Neither dissent changed the outcome. Nobody broke a law here — a state’s highest court looked at the arithmetic and, on the merits, said it was fine. (Court News Ohio’s case summary has the full procedural history.)

4. ECOT, Ohio: $117 million ordered repaid

Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow was, at its peak, Ohio’s largest online charter school. Ohio funds schools on a formula built around enrollment and documented hours of learning activity — a formula that works fine when “attendance” means a body in a classroom, and considerably less well when it means a login timestamp nobody is verifying. A state audit covering fiscal years 2016 through 2018 found ECOT couldn’t substantiate the participation hours behind a large share of the funding it had claimed. The Ohio Auditor of State’s officeultimately found the school owed $106.6 million to the Ohio Department of Education, plus additional findings against ECOT-affiliated management entities, for a combined total just over $117 million. ECOT shut down in January 2018 rather than pay it back; Ideastream’s coverage of the final audit and the Dayton Daily News both note the state has spent the years since trying to collect. A related judgment against affiliated entities separately reached $161.6 million. It remains the largest attendance-fraud clawback in the sector’s history: virtual schools, virtual kids, real dollars.

3. Chester Community Charter School / CSMI, Pennsylvania: roughly $122 million combined

This is the case I use to show what happens when the company store, related-party real estate, and plain self-dealing all show up in a single school under a single owner. Chester Community Charter, Pennsylvania’s largest brick-and-mortar charter, is managed by CSMI, a company controlled by Vahan Gureghian. A 2009 Philadelphia Inquirer public-records fightestablished that CSMI had been paid roughly $60.6 million in management fees since 1999. In 2010, Gureghian sold the school’s buildings — which he owned personally — to a newly created nonprofit, for the specific and sole purpose of leasing them back to the school, for $50.7 million, financed through municipal bonds and requiring roughly $4 million a year in lease payments; Pennsylvania’s Auditor General found the school had also improperly claimed $1.27 million in state lease reimbursements on buildings the program’s own rules made ineligible, because the “related parties” on both sides of the lease were, functionally, the same person before and after the sale. Then, in 2016, a federal Office of Inspector General audit found that the school’s CEO — Gureghian himself — had written checks to himself totaling $11 million without board approval. Add the pieces up and you get a single owner, across roughly fifteen years, sitting on every side of upward of $122 million in transactions with the school he ran. No criminal charges resulted from any of it.

2. The A3 charter network, California: $400 million generated, about $80 million allegedly diverted

Between 2015 and 2019, Sean McManus and Jason Schrock used a network of 19 online charter schools, partnerships with struggling private schools, and summer athletic programs to enroll thousands of students who, per prosecutors, never took a class. The scheme generated roughly $400 million in California public education funding; investigators alleged about $80 million of it was funneled into companies the two men controlled. Voice of San Diego’s account calls it, by the state’s own description, one of the largest charter-school fraud cases in the country’s history — and yet neither man served a day in prison. McManus, an Australian citizen, was sentenced to four years but served it under house arrest with an ankle monitor in Australia; Schrock’s ankle-monitor time was credited against his sentence. Nine other defendants pleaded to reduced or misdemeanor charges. Both men paid roughly $19 million each in fines and restitution, and the California State Controller’s office says the state has recovered more than $240 million overall — real money back, on a fraud whose architects never spent a night in a cell.

1. National Heritage Academies, Michigan and six other states: $853.6 million

In 2021, National Heritage Academies — the country’s third-largest for-profit charter operator, with more than 90 schools — arranged to sell 69 of its campuses across seven states to Campus Partners 1, a nonprofit newly created for the transaction, with no operating history and, at the time reporters looked, no registration on file with Michigan’s attorney general. NHA’s owner, J.C. Huizenga, controls both the seller’s side (through Charter Development Co., which retained the facility-maintenance and ground-lease contracts) and, through his general counsel installed as the new nonprofit’s president, effectively the buyer’s side as well. The purchase was financed through $853.6 million in tax-exempt municipal bonds, issued by an industrial development authority in La Paz County, Arizona — a jurisdiction with no obvious relationship to any of the seven states where the schools actually sit. The schools then signed 30-year leases back to the very entities that had just “sold” them. Network for Public Education’s account and NCSPE’s coverage at Teachers College, Columbia University both flag the same detail: nothing about this required hiding anything, and no one has been indicted. Local commissions in Michigan raised transparency objections and briefly slowed a few approvals, but the deal closed.

It is, by a wide margin, the largest single dollar figure on this list — more than double the other four cases combined — and it’s the cleanest illustration in the sector of this project’s core argument: the extraction that scales isn’t the kind that needs a prosecutor. It’s the kind a bond market is happy to underwrite.

Open the link to see his comparisons of these five top educators-grifts.

Categories Accountability, California, Charter Schools, Cheating, Corruption, Education Industry, Ethics, For-Profit, Funding, Hoax, Ohio, Privatization, Vouchers

8-Year-Old Boy Starved and Beaten to Death. His Mother Allegedly Was Home-Schooling Him.

By dianeravitch
September 24, 2026 //
13

This is one of the most horrifying stories of child abuse that I have ever read.

The parents of 8-year-old Isaiah Harrison thought he was too fat. The child was about 200 pounds. They kept him home from school, starved him, beat him, tortured him. When he died, they wrapped him in Saran Wrap and put his body in a freezer. At the time of his death, he weighed 65 pounds.

His mother claimed she was home-schooling him online. County officials and school officials failed to check on his condition.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

Pictures of Isaiah Harrison from 2024 show a bubbly, heavyset boy with a toothy smile and full cheeks.

Isaiah’s aunt, Charlene, said in court this week that her 8-year-old nephew was mischievous, often sneaking food in the middle of the night. He loved Domino’s pizza, video games and cats. Sometimes he would hide snacks in his family’s couch cushions…

By the time Isaiah’s remains were found inside a small freezer in his parents’ bedroom last October, he weighed just 65 pounds, according to L.A. County Deputy Medical Examiner Robin Parks. In 12 months, she estimated, he’d lost two-thirds of his body weight.

Prosecutors allege Isaiah’s rapid weight loss and mounting injuries happened over the course of a year inside a Lynwood apartment, when the boy was rarely seen in public and often kept chained to a piece of furniture, according to testimony delivered this week at a preliminary hearing on murder and torture charges against his parents and grandmother.

How he was able to waste away without anyone — including school officials or the county’s child welfare agency — raising alarms remains an unanswered question….

The boy’s parents — Destiny Harrison and Daniel Monzon, both 25 — and his grandmother Ana Carcamo-Zarceno, 46, were arrested after the boy’s body was found last year. They were held to answer on murder and torture charges Thursday after a four-day preliminary hearing in Compton, and face either life in prison or the death penalty if convicted at trial. They have pleaded not guilty…

Coroner’s records list Isaiah’s cause of death as a bacterial infection resulting from pneumonia, but other significant factors included blunt force trauma injuries and the impacts of long-term restraint. Monzon’s younger sister, who lived in the apartment, told a social worker that the defendants often restrained Isaiah with ropes and chains to prevent him from misbehaving or going into the kitchen for food, according to a videotaped interview played in court.
She said in the recording that it was Carcamo-Zarceno’s idea to withhold meals as a punishment, often denying food over Isaiah’s tearful pleas.
“Please, please I just want something, I’ll do anything,” the hungry 8-year-old boy would beg, according to his sister, whose identity The Times is withholding because she is a juvenile.
Often, his sister said, Isaiah was kept chained up overnight as punishment and left to urinate or defecate on himself. Rather than washing his clothes, Isaiah’s parents would throw them out whenever he soiled himself, according to his sister, who said eventually the boy was left to sleep naked while restrained.
Sheriff’s deputies later recovered a long rope and a black chain in the apartment, authorities have said. Isaiah’s sister testified that the boy was repeatedly punched, kicked and beat with hangers and wires….

The complaint accused L.A. County’s child protective services agency of failing to investigate the home “despite numerous alarming reports of abuse and cruelty.”
The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Isaiah’s relatives, also alleges the Lynwood Unified School District failed to investigate his alleged repeated absence from the classroom. Claypool alleged that two family members had told the school that Isaiah was at home and not able to go to school.
“That should have been a massive red flag to Lynwood that something is not right with Isaiah and he might be in danger,” said Claypool, who argued the warnings should have launched an investigation under California law. “Is he going somewhere else? Is there a problem at home? Is he sick or ill? None of that was done here.”
Relatives said Destiny Harrison was home-schooling Isaiah with a computer program. The school district did not respond to a request for comment. An attorney for Lynwood Unified argued in a court filing that the lawsuit failed to specify who within the district had reasonable suspicion of child abuse and would be considered a mandated reporter under the law.

Categories California, Childhood, Evil, Health, Home Schooling, Parents

Why LAUSD Chose an Insider as Its New Superintendent

By dianeravitch
July 6, 2026 //
6

The elected board of the Los Angeles Unified School District recently chose Andres Chait, a veteran educator, as its new superintendent, succeeding Alberto Carvalho, who is under investigation in relation to an AI contract.

Chait has served in the LAUSD for nearly three decades. He started as a kindergarten teacher and rose through the ranks. His own children are students in the district.

From my experience, I think this is a wise decision. Many big-city districts went through a long period of disruptive reform, in which they selected inexperienced outsiders to “shake up” and “reform” the district. Most of these disruptions failed, as the outsider fired experienced educators and spent at least one year learning what educators do. Alan Bersin in San Diego, Joel Klein in New York City, and Michelle Rhee in the District of Columbia come to mind, though there were many more. The Broad Superintendent’s Academy was dedicated to churning out such superintendents, indoctrinated in the belief that schools with low scores should be closed, not helped, that state takeovers were a cure, not a harsh and futile measure, that veteran teachers were slackers.

Choosing a respected insider guarantees stability, not disruption.

The Los Angeles Daily News told the story. Open the link to read it.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, California, Education Reform, Los Angeles

California: Right-Wing Candidate Leads in Race for State Superintendent of Schools

By dianeravitch
June 5, 2026 //
9

Sonja Shaw, a right-wing school board president, came in first in the race for State Superintendent of Public Instruction in the recent election in California. She received 25% of the vote and is heading for a run-off against Richard Berrara, also a school board president, who received about 19% of the vote.

Shaw was supported by the far-right group Moms for Liberty. She was been outspoken in opposing transgender athletes who compete against females.

Howard Blume wrote in The Los Angeles Times:

Sonja Shaw — a Trump-aligned Republican whose public profile rose as she became identified with culture-war causes, including banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports — has emerged as the leading vote-getter in the June primary for California’s superintendent of public instruction.

With all precincts at least partially reporting Wednesday, Shaw, with 24.9% of the tallied votes, was well ahead of Democrat Richard Barrera, who had 18.9% of the votes. Even with vote-counting ongoing, that lead would be difficult to surmount.

Both Shaw, 43, and Barrera, 59, are school board presidents.

Shaw heads the elected Board of Education for Chino Valley Unified in San Bernardino County, a diverse but substantially conservative inland portion of Southern California…

Among its high-profile actions, the Chino Valley board majority put forward a policy that would require parents to be notified if their child expressed gender-identity issues at school. Shaw and her allies also approved a policy that allows parents to challenge the content of library books.

In the primary, Shaw was greatly helped by a candidate field that included seven Democrats, including veteran legislators and local school district officials…

Barrera heads the school board of San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest school district, serving an area with liberal leanings, but that is also politically diverse.

An obvious difference for Barrera was a $5-million independent campaign on his behalf from the California Teachers Assn., which he acknowledged Wednesday morning.

“The CTA campaign made all the difference and it’s based on a long track record and partnership that I’ve had with educators in San Diego,” Barrera said.…

Barrera sees the teachers union support as emblematic of a positive vision he has for education that will unite most voters around his campaign in November…

Positioned in a runoff against one Democrat — in a state where Democrats dominate — makes for a challenging campaign for Shaw.
“Tonight is not the finish line,” Shaw said. “It’s the beginning of the final stretch.”

Categories Administrators, superintendents, California, Elections, Ethics, Gender

California: Federal Appeals Court Overturns Ban on Open Carry of Guns

By dianeravitch
January 3, 2026 //
10

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals was long known as one of the most liberal courts in the nation. No more. In a 2-1 decision, the Court overturned California’s ban on open carry of guns. Two of the three judges were appointed by Trump. Expect more gun deaths. Expect to see people in restaurants and grocery stores packing a gun. Stay away from people with a hot temper.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

California’s ban on the open carry of firearms in most parts of the state is unconstitutional, a San Francisco-based federal appeals court ruled Friday.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals determined that the ban, which applied to counties with populations greater than 200,000, violates residents’ 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. Under those regulations, 95% of the state’s population was subject to the ban.

The 2-1 opinion was supported by two appointees of President Trump, U.S. Circuit Judges Lawrence VanDyke and Kenneth Kiyul Lee. U.S. Circuit Judge N. Randy Smith, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, dissented.

VanDyke, writing for the majority, stated that California’s urban ban on open-carry permits does not stand under the Supreme Court’s landmark gun rights ruling New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn. vs. Bruen. That 2022 decision made it much easier to carry a gun in public by striking down laws that required people to show a special need for self-defense…

VanDyke wrote in his opinion that California’s open-carry ban fails this test.

“The historical record makes unmistakably plain that open carry is part of this Nation’s history and tradition,” he wrote. “It was clearly protected at the time of the Founding and at the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Categories California, Extremism, Guns, Trump

Sacramento: How Could a Charter School Misuse $180 Million in Two Years?

By dianeravitch
September 8, 2025 //
6

Diana Lambert of Edsource reported that Jonathan Raymond, the former Superintendent of the Sacramento School District, agreed to take over the leadership of a “troubled” charter school called Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools. The school enrolls adults, many formerly incarcerated or new immigrants.

Wow, was it ever troubled!

Good for Raymond for taking on the challenge of fixing the school! The first thing he did was to dismiss the entire board.

The school owes the state $180 million dollars for money it should not have received or misspent. Most of the teachers were unqualified or were hired because they were friends or family of board members.

And on and on, demonstrating the need for the Legislature to establish oversight and accountability for charter schools, which the California Charter Schools Association has opposed for years.

Lambert wrote:

Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools opened in Sacramento in 2014 with high ideals — to help adult students, many formerly incarcerated or new immigrants, to earn a diploma, improve English language skills, or learn a trade. 

Now, the school is one reason state legislators are considering increased charter school oversight.

The charter school has been the subject of investigations and critical news reports since shortly after it opened its first campus. But, instead of increased oversight, the school was allowed to expand to more than 50 sites with 13,700 students and a budget of $195 million.

WHAT THE AUDIT FOUND
  • Twin Rivers and other organizations did not provide adequate oversight.
  • Highlands Community Charter and Technical Schools received more than $180 million in K-12 funds it was not eligible to collect and must now repay.
  • Graduation rates were so low they brought down the state’s graduation rate by half a percentage point.
  • Charter school leaders wasted taxpayer dollars on gifts and trips.
  • School leaders hired friends and family for jobs they weren’t qualified to hold.
  • Most teachers did not have the appropriate credentials to teach K-12 classes.

It wasn’t until the California State Auditor’s Office released a report in June, commissioned by state legislators, that the level of impropriety at the school became apparent.

The 80-page state audit found that the adult school received $180 million of K-12 funding for which it was not eligible, assigned teachers to classes they were not credentialed to teach, and avoided standardized testing by eliminating the 11th grade. 

The audit also found that school leaders spent $1.96 million on a three-day trip for staff to San Diego for professional development, $80,000 on a leadership conference in Maui, $33,000 a month to lease a semi-professional ballpark, and more than $145,000 on gifts for students.

“The Highlands audit has underscored for us the need for greater accountability on the part of charter authorizers of all sizes, to conduct more thorough oversight that is not solely reliant upon a charter school’s annual audit or a charter school’s assertions,” said Cassie Mancini, legislative advocate for the California School Employees Association at a state Senate hearing on Assembly Bill 84, a charter oversight bill, in July.

Legislators, charter school advocates and charter school authorizers have been working to revise two competing charter school bills with the goal of merging them into one. 

Adult charter gets K-12 funds

Many of the problems the audit found at Highlands Community Charter seem to stem from how the school leaders interpreted the rules around a unique federal program that allows adult charter schools, working in partnership with a Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act agency, to receive K-12 funding, which is significantly higher than adult education funding…

Highlands Community Charter had a graduation rate of 2.8% and its California Innovative Career Academy, or CICA, had a rate of 16.9%. Highlands opened CICA, an independent study school, in 2019…

A large number of underqualified teachers and large class sizes, averaging 51 students per teacher, may have contributed to the poor academic performance of the school’s students, according to the audit. The state has no limit on class sizes in charter high schools.

At the time of the audit, only 53 of the school’s 250 teachers had a K-12 credential, said Bill McGuire, who served as executive director of the school during the year of the audit. He blamed the lack of appropriately credentialed teachers on inaccurate information from credentialing officials.

The charter school owes $180 million to the state. It’s asking for some sort of write-off since the money is gone. The authorizer, Twin Rivers, collected $12.9 million in fees but didn’t seem to oversee much.

A scam? An error? A rip-off? Call it what you will. California and every other state needs to establish meaningful oversight and accountability for charter schools. A huge amount of money was spent since the school(s) opened in 2014, and very few people were educated.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, California, Charter Schools, Funding

Federal Appeals Court Restores Trump’s Control of Ca. National Guard

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2025 //
4

Only hours after a federal district judge ordered Trump to return control of the California National Guard to Governor Gavin Newsom, a three judge federal appeals court blocked the lower court‘s order.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday temporarily blocked a federal judge’s order that directed President Donald Trump to return control of National Guard troops to California after he deployed them there following protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.

The court said it would hold a hearing on the matter on June 17. The ruling came only hours after a federal judge’s order was to take effect at noon Friday.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled the Guard deployment was illegal and both violated the Tenth Amendment and exceeded Trump’s statutory authority. The order applied only to the National Guard troops and not Marines who were also deployed to the LA protests. The judge said he would not rule on the Marines because they were not out on the streets yet.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had asked the judge for an emergency stop to troops helping carry out immigration raids, had praised the earlier ruling.

“Today was really about a test of democracy, and today we passed the test,” Newsom said in a news conference before the appeals court decision.

The White House had called Breyer’s order “unprecedented” and said it “puts our brave federal officials in danger.”

Categories Accountability, California, Democracy, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Federal Judge Orders Trump to Return Control of CA National Guard to Gov. Newsom

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2025 //
3

Just in: as reported by The New York Times:

A federal judge issued an order late Thursday blocking President Trump from deploying members of the California National Guard in Los Angeles, and ordered the administration to return control of the forces to Gov. Gavin Newsom. 

The restraining order from District Judge Charles R. Breyer, which takes effect Friday at noon Pacific time, delivered a sharp rebuke to President Trump’s effort to deploy thousands of National Guard troops on the streets of an American city, a move has contributed to nearly a week of political rancor and protests across the country. 

“His actions were illegal — both exceeding the scope of his statutory authority and violating the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution,” Judge Breyer wrote of Mr. Trump’s orders. But he gave the administration a chance to appeal.

From the Los Angeles Times:

A federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to “return control” of the California National Guard to Gov. Gavin Newsom after the president issued an extraordinary order deploying them to Los Angeles over the weekend.


U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, presiding over the case, granted California’s request for a temporary restraining order, granting the federal government a stay until Friday to appeal the ruling.

Breyer had expressed skepticism at a hearing Thursday over the matter, questioning whether President Trump had operated within his authority.

“We’re talking about the president exercising his authority, and of course, the president is limited in his authority,” Breyer said. “That’s the difference between the president and King George.”

“We live in response to a monarchy,” the judge continued, adding: “Line drawing is important, because it establishes a system of process.

In the lengthy decision, Breyer wrote that he is “troubled by the implication” inherent in Trump administration’s argument “that protest against the federal government, a core civil liberty protected by the First Amendment, can justify a finding of rebellion.”

Categories Accountability, California, Disruption, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Governor Gavin Newsom: Do Not Give In to a Lawless President

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2025 //
16

Governor Gavin Newsom spoke to the situation in Los Angeles, which Trump is using as a target in his campaign to distract the public from his incompetence. In his hateful way, Trump always refers to Governor Newsom as “Newscum.”

Governor Newsom said, as transcribed by The New York Times:

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California delivered a speech on Tuesday, titled “Democracy at a Crossroads.” The following is a transcript of his remarks as broadcast online and on television channels:

I want to say a few words about the events of the last few days.

This past weekend, federal agents conducted large-scale workplace raids in and around Los Angeles. Those raids continue as I speak.

California is no stranger to immigration enforcement. But instead of focusing on undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records and people with final deportation orders, a strategy both parties have long supported, this administration is pushing mass deportations, indiscriminately targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk.

What’s happening right now is very different than anything we’ve seen before. On Saturday morning, when federal agents jumped out of an unmarked van near a Home Depot parking lot, they began grabbing people. A deliberate targeting of a heavily Latino suburb. A similar scene also played out when a clothing company was raided downtown.

In other actions, a U.S. citizen, nine months pregnant, was arrested; a 4-year-old girl, taken; families separated; friends, quite literally, disappearing.

In response, everyday Angelinos came out to exercise their Constitutional right to free speech and assembly, to protest their government’s actions. In turn, the State of California and the City and County of Los Angeles sent our police officers to help keep the peace and, with some exceptions, they were successful.

Like many states, California is no stranger to this sort of unrest. We manage it regularly, and with our own law enforcement. But this, again, was different.

What then ensued was the use of tear gas, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, federal agents detaining people and undermining their due process rights.

Donald Trump, without consulting California law enforcement leaders, commandeered 2,000 of our state’s National Guard members to deploy on our streets, illegally and for no reason.

This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk.

That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder. And the president, he did it on purpose. As the news spread throughout L.A., anxiety for family and friends ramped up. Protests started again.

By night, several dozen lawbreakers became violent and destructive. They vandalized property. They tried to assault police officers. Many of you have seen video clips of cars burning on cable news.

If you incite violence — I want to be clear about this — if you incite violence or destroy our communities, you are going to be held to account. That kind of criminal behavior will not be tolerated. Full stop.

Already, more than 220 people have been arrested. And we’re reviewing tapes to build additional cases and people will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Again, thanks to our law enforcement officers and the majority of Angelenos who protested peacefully, this situation was winding down and was concentrated in just a few square blocks downtown.

But that, that’s not what Donald Trump wanted. He again chose escalation, he chose more force. He chose theatrics over public safety. He federalized another 2,000 Guard members.

He deployed more than 700 active U.S. Marines. These are men and women trained in foreign combat, not domestic law enforcement. We honor their service. We honor their bravery. But we do not want our streets militarized by our own armed forces. Not in L.A. Not in California. Not anywhere.

We’re seeing unmarked cars, unmarked cars in school parking lots. Kids afraid of attending their own graduation. Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals. His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses.

That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities. They are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the entire point.

California will keep fighting. We’ll keep fighting on behalf of our people, all of our people, including in the courts.

Yesterday, we filed a legal challenge to President Trump’s reckless deployment of American troops to a major American city. Today, we sought an emergency court order to stop the use of the American military to engage in law enforcement activities across Los Angeles.

If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.

Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control.

And by the way, Trump, he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him. What more evidence do we need than January 6th.

I ask everyone: Take time, reflect on this perilous moment. A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American traditions.

This is a president who, in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable, accountable for corruption and fraud. He’s declared a war, a war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. Databases quite literally are vanishing.

He’s delegitimizing news organizations and he’s assaulting the First Amendment. And the threat of defunding them. At threat, he’s dictating what universities themselves can teach. He’s targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundations of an orderly and civil society. He’s calling for a sitting governor to be arrested for no other reason than to, in his own words, “for getting elected.”

And we all know, this Saturday, he’s ordering our American heroes, the United States military, and forcing them to put on a vulgar display to celebrate his birthday, just as other failed dictators have done in the past.

Look, this isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. he made that order apply to every state in this nation.

This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.

Democracy is next.

Democracy is under assault right before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.

There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility.

The rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don.

The founding fathers didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment. It’s time for all of us to stand up. Justice Brandeis, he said it best. In a democracy, the most important office — with all due respect, Mr. President — is not the presidency, and it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen.

At this moment, at this moment, we all need to stand up and be held to account, a higher level of accountability. If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please, please do it peacefully.

I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment.

Do not give into him.

Categories Bigotry, California, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Immigration, Justice, Trump

Trump Shows His Fascist Face

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2025 //
6

It was inevitable. And now it’s happening. During his first term, Trump repeatedly encouraged violence. He told police officers in New York not to be so nice when they arrest people. He asked “his” generals if they could shoot protestors in the legs. He broadcast fake videos showing him beating up a cartoon character labeled CNN. He urged his crowds at rallies to beat up protestors and said he would pay their legal fees. He wants to seem like a real man, a tough guy. But don’t forget that this tough guy dodged the draft five times with a podiatrist’s note about bone spurs in his feet.

This week, his troubles were mounting. There was the very public split with Musk, who dropped hints about Trump’s name in the still confidential Epstein files. There was Elon’s claim that Trump would have lost the election and control of the House without Elon’s help. What kind of “help”? There was the tariff mess, which was causing a global economic disruption and predictions of inflation. And Trump’s poll numbers were plummeting.

What a perfect time to send in large numbers of ICE agents to immigrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles! Send them to Home Depot, where immigrants cluster in search of work–not the “criminals, rapists, and murderers” he warned us about, but laborers looking for work.

Voila! Their friends, families, and neighbors turned out to protest the ICE raids, and all at once there are crowds and people waving Mexican flags (a big mistake, they should have waved American flags). The situation was volatile but there was no reason to think that local and state police couldn’t handle it.

Trump is shrewd: he saw his chance to distract public attention from his failing policies, and he took it. Without bothering to contact Governor Newsom, Trump mobilized the National Guard. He ordered 2,000 into the troubled neighborhood. Then he sent in another 2,000, plus 700 Marines.

Only the Governor can call up his state’s National Guard, except in the most exceptional situations (the last time it happened was 1965, when President Johnson mobilized the National Guard in Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators because Governor George Wallace refused to do so).

It is even more unusual for a President to call in the military to oppose ordinary people, which is normally handled by state and local police. There is an act-the Posse Comitatus Act–that specifically forbids the Army and Air Force from acting against civilians on American soil. A different law, 10 U.S. Code 275, forbids Navy and Marine Corps members from the same thing. Trump claims that the anti-ICE protests are an insurrection, which allows him to call in the Marines. Legal scholars disagree, but most think he overreached and that there was no insurrection in Los Angeles.

Indeed, the large show of force drew an even larger crowd to the protests and made it more dangerous. Nonetheless, there seem to be more military at the scene than protestors.

Miraculously, no one has been killed (unlike the genuinely violent insurrection on January 6, 2021, where Trump rioters viciously beat police officers and several people died). He sat back and watched the insurrection on television and is now considering whether to reimburse them for their legal expenses after being imprisoned for engaging in insurrection.

Trump said on national television that “many people” had been killed during the protests (not true) and that if he had not sent in the troops, the city would have been “obliterated.” This is nonsense. The clash between the protesters and the military is contained to a few blocks of a very large city.

Today, there were spontaneous peaceful rallies in many cities to show support for the demonstrators in Los Angeles.

The best response: show up for a “No Kings” rally on Saturday. Check the website http://www.nokings.org to find one or create one where you live. Be peaceable. Sing. Dance. Bring American flags. The Constitution protects the right to assemble peacefully.

Trump is not only diverting attention from his monstrous One Ugly Bill, he is laying the groundwork for martial law and dictatorship.

Categories Accountability, California, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Hoax, Resistance, Trump, Tyranny
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