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First Day Statement by the White House

By dianeravitch
January 20, 2025 //
58

This statement was released by the White House today after Trump’s swearing in. Be sure to read the last two pledges:

The first promises to restore the names of Confederate leaders to federal facilities like military bases where they had been changed. They were changed to acknowledge that Confederate leaders were traitors. Trump will once again recognize them as heroes. Time will tell if he intends to re-erect the Confederate statues that were removed. For those that were destroyed, he could commission replacements.

The second pledges to remove any recognition of transgender people. Under Trump, they no longer exist.

. MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN

  • President Trump will take bold action to secure our border and protect American communities.
    This includes ending Biden’s catch-and-release policies, reinstating Remain in Mexico, building
    the wall, ending asylum for illegal border crossers, cracking down on criminal sanctuaries, and
    enhancing vetting and screening of aliens.
  • President Trump’s deportation operation will address the record border crossings of criminal
    aliens under the prior administration.
  • The President is suspending refugee resettlement, after communities were forced to house large
    and unsustainable populations of migrants, straining community safety and resources.
  • The Armed Forces, including the National Guard, will engage in border security, which is
    national security, and will be deployed to the border to assist existing law enforcement
    personnel.
  • President Trump will begin the process of designating cartels, including the dangerous Tren de
    Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations and use the Alien Enemies Act to remove them.
  • The Department of Justice will seek the death penalty as the appropriate punishment for
    heinous crimes against humanity, including those who kill law enforcement officers and illegal
    migrants who maim and murder Americans.
  • MAKE AMERICA AFFORDABLE AND ENERGY DOMINANT AGAIN
  • The President will unleash American energy by ending Biden’s policies of climate extremism,
    streamlining permitting, and reviewing for rescission all regulations that impose undue
    burdens on energy production and use, including mining and processing of non-fuel minerals.
  • President Trump’s energy actions empower consumer choice in vehicles, showerheads, toilets,
    washing machines, lightbulbs and dishwashers.
  • President Trump will declare an energy emergency and use all necessary resources to build
    critical infrastructure.
  • President Trump’s energy policies will end leasing to massive wind farms that degrade our
    natural landscapes and fail to serve American energy consumers.
  • President Trump will withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.
  • All agencies will take emergency measures to reduce the cost of living.
  • President Trump will announce the America First Trade Policy.
  • America will no longer be beholden to foreign organizations for our national tax policy, which
    punishes American businesses.
  • DRAIN THE SWAMP
  • The President will usher a Golden Age for America by reforming and improving the
    government bureaucracy to work for the American people. He will freeze bureaucrat hiring
    except in essential areas to end the onslaught of useless and overpaid DEI activists buried into
    the federal workforce. He will pause burdensome and radical regulations not yet in effect that
    Biden announced.
  • President Trump is announcing an unprecedented slate of executive orders for rescission.
  • President Trump is planning for improved accountability of government bureaucrats. The
    American people deserve the highest-quality service from people who love our country. The
    President will also return federal workers to work, as only 6% of employees currently work in
    person.
  • President Trump is taking swift action to end the weaponization of government against political
    rivals and ordering all document retention as required by law. President Trump is also ending
    the unconstitutional censorship by the federal government. No longer will government
    employees pick and require the erasure of entirely true speech.
  • On the President’s direction, the State Department will have an America-First foreign policy.
  • BRING BACK AMERICAN VALUES
  • The President will establish male and female as biological reality and protect women from
    radical gender ideology.
  • American landmarks will be named to appropriately honor our Nation’s history.
Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Extremism, Trump

Sherrilyn Ifill: The Truth

By dianeravitch
January 17, 2025 //
8

Sherrilyn Ifill is a law professor who holds an endowed chair at Howard University. She is a former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

In this post, she offers sage advice about how to recharge your batteries and re-engage in the struggle for a better society. She wrote this piece soon after the 2024 election. It’s good advice.

….But ours is a subtle strength
Potent with centuries of yearning,

Of being kegged and shut away
In dark forgotten places.
We shall endure
To steal your senses
In that lonely twilight
Of your winter’s grief.


-Pauli Murray, To the Oppressors (1939)            

The truth is that things are going to get very bad. America has gone over the cliff’s edge. How hard we land in the ravine below remains to be seen. But we are one week in, and things are already quite dire. Trump’s first round of cabinet nominees, and his insistence that his picks be installed without a vote of Congress is a defining moment. It demonstrates that there will be no bottom with this Administration.

Donald Trump and his coterie of supporters are firmly in control of the most powerful and wealthy country in the world. And because they are in charge of this country – which perhaps undeservedly,  has stood as an example throughout much of the world as a symbol of freedom, equality, ethics, the rule of law and democracy – other countries will fall in our wake.

I am saying this now because I have always tried to be honest in my writings and analysis about this country. I say all of this because I have been able over the years to encourage my clients, my colleagues, my staff, my family and community to believe that we can fight and win. I have infected other people with my unshakeable optimism about what we can accomplish to transform this country.

I am going to keep fighting. It’s what I do. But I do not want to lead you astray. Because I do think that many of us – especially those of us in communities likely to be targeted by this Administration – need to see this moment as one in which we are focused on surviving this difficult time. I have faced the fact that we will not be able to move much forward in the next few years. In fact, I expect things to become so dire over the next two years, that we will scarcely recognize the country we live in. I expect that fear and cruelty will become part of our daily diet. We will hear the frightening sound of silence, as those who speak out most boldly against the excesses of the incoming administration, against its policies, against Musk and against Russia, find themselves at cross-purposes with a vindictive and cruel administration with almost unimaginable power to control communications, law, and the sense of reality itself.

Perhaps it won’t be that bad. But we are here in some measure, because far too many failed to imagine that the worst could happen. I have written already about “the nadir,” and I believe we must face it.

And so, our goal now must be first and foremost to survive this dark period with as much of our values, dignity, integrity, work, financial stability and physical and mental health intact as possible. We must also work to protect our families and communities, and to hold in place our most trusted and needed institutions, a modicum of the rule of law, our constitutional commitment to equality and to free expression.
As I have said in earlier pieces, this is “planting time.” Planting is work. That work must be aimed at building ideas, theories, paradigms, institutions, skills, practices, and alliances that we can seed now for a future harvest – a fulsome and lush democracy that will reflect the very best of us.

We are not “watching the Trump show” this time. We’ve seen it already. We can dip in every now and then, but we must not become paralyzed watching the train wreck. We will, of course, push back against injustice, and defend our rights and citizenship when necessary in the courts. We will demand that congressional representatives, our Governors and our Mayors, act to protect our democratic rights. Even when we know they will not stand up for what is right, we must not be silent. We must not make it easy for them to be cowards or to take our rights. We must still call, write and email our representatives and show up at town halls and meetings. Remember that those who have fought for us over these past years are tired too. Let them see us in these spaces and hear from us.

But our primary work must be first and foremost to work in our communities – both physical and ideological. To build them up and to share time and ideas with those committed to democracy and justice. We each need a curriculum of local service.

We also need a personal curriculum that will allow us to contribute to the building of the future we dream of for ourselves and our families. That means that our core work must be to commit during this time to do less watching, and more learning and more growing. We need to become better citizens for the democracy we want. That means we must dedicate time to expanding our thinking and our knowledge, and to building up our democratic imagination. That means our work is to imagine, to ally, to experiment, restore, befriend, study, read, write, serve, and create. Every one of us. Even as chaos swirls around us.

I encourage you to show your children and grandchildren real things – nature, animals, how things are built, how to cook from scratch. Teach them cursive writing, so that they have a signature all their own. Take them to live concerts and theater. Go on field trips. Infuse their lives with memories of things that are true and concrete.

If you teach, use primary documents in your teaching, take your students to historic sites, listen to audio of oral arguments and speeches so that they will feel confident in their understanding of history, and know that history was made by human beings not machines.

If you litigate, do it with the expectation that you will win. And act like it. Show out. Be excellent and remain confident. Those who can still feel shame – whether those at your opponents table or those on the bench – will feel it when you hold the standard high. And your clients will never forget it.

If you organize, never stop. Plant those seeds deep in our communities.

If you hold office. Hold it. Do not give up your power. Use your voice. Master every rule. Make a record. I repeat. Make a record–so that the truth might be known.

To protect ourselves and our loved ones, there are also pragmatic things we must do. I’ve thought of a few:

  • Save some cash. And keep enough in the house for gas and food for a week.
  • Let yourself imagine what you would do if you lost your job in terms of finding new employment, paying rent/mortgage for several months, and start building what you need to be able to meet that moment if it comes.
  • Get needed vaccinations in case new HHS policies result in changes or delays in their development or availability. Stock up on COVID tests, and get the most recent COVID booster. Purchase Plan B if it’s available in your area.
  • Think about tightening security on your electronic devices. Be more thoughtful about social media, and even return to making phone calls and writing letters in some instances. I know it’s old school, but actually memorize the phone numbers of at least two loved ones.
  • Gird yourself spiritually, through your faith or other meditative practices, as we are all likely to hear or confront many disturbing and ugly interactions. Experience art, go on walks, dance, play Spades, Dominoes, Scrabble. We need resilience.
  • Walk away when you need to walk away. Challenge when you need to. Try to always have back up.
  • Take the bystander training offered by groups https://righttobe.org/ so that when you see outrages committed against members of your community or against strangers, you will have practice in how you might intervene or respond.
  • Get an online subscription to a news service from another country so that you have a reliable sense of what’s going on in the world, and how this country is being perceived.  
  • Are your taxes paid, or more importantly, filed?
  • Is your passport up-to-date?
  • If you have money to give – then give to your local library, the food pantry, homelessness services. But also give to cultural institutions. Get a library card and a membership to a museum. Give to organizations working to hold back the worst that this administration may dish out – the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, the ACLU, the National Women’s Law Center, and so many others.
  • I am going to write more in this space. I hope you’ll subscribe and even pay a nominal fee to sustain the writing. I’m right here, going through this with all of you. And for me there is beauty in our shared walk. Let’s do this together.

Categories Bigotry, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Civil Rights, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Elections, Equity, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, For-Profit, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Read, Trump

The Nation: Linda McMahon’s Very Important Rightwing Think Tank

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
2

Trump selected Linda McMahon to be the next Secretary of Education. She is well known for making it rich in the world of wrestling entertainment, in partnership with her husband. Less well known is her role as Chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Trump is close to AFPI, which promotes school choice and the “parental rights” movement, which promotes censorship of books and curriculum about racism and LGBT topics. They oppose any teaching that might make students “uncomfortable,” like learning about the history of racism, or that might teach students that LGBT exist.

The Nation published an article by Christopher Lewis and Jacob Plaza. The article tells the story of the think tank McMahon leads. It was launched after Trump’s loss in 2020 and its policy agenda defines Trump’s plans. To understand what Trump intends to do, learn more about AFPI.

Lewis and Plaza write:

Amid the incoming Trump administration’s flurry of unqualified, corrupt, and/or vengeance-driven cabinet nominees, it’s been easy to overlook Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick to head the US Department of Education. McMahon is best known for her role in running World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with her husband the longtime Trump crony Vince McMahon. Linda McMahon’s background in education is exceedingly thin; she served on the Connecticut Board of Education more than a decade ago, thanks to an appointment from another politically connected friend, then–Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell. McMahon has a teaching certificate but has never actually taught. Indeed, she was forced to resign her spot on the Connecticut board when the Hartford Courant reported that she’d lied on her résumé about having an education degree. Add in the alleged role of the WWE and its parent company in a sexual-abuse scandal involving “ring boys” for the wrestling league, and McMahon’s nomination, in any sanely administered political order, would be dead in the water. (McMahon and her husband both deny the abuse allegations in the pending WWE suit.)

Yet McMahon possesses one key credential for the next Trump administration—in addition, that is, to a proven track record to personal fealty to the president-elect, and a long string of Fox News appearances: She’s the former head of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), the policy nerve center for MAGA governance. For all the attention focused on the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 policy agenda, AFPI has been Trumpworld’s principal policy network, serving as a haven for former Trump appointees during the Biden years. AFPI hands assembled a detailed blueprint for Trump’s return to power, including plans to make the Trump tax cuts permanent and purge the federal workforce of civil service workers deemed insufficiently MAGA. In addition to McMahon, Trump has tapped several senior AFPI figures for cabinet posts, including EPA nominee Lee Zeldin, Agriculture nominee Brooke Rollins (the think tank’s president and CEO), and its Georgia chapter chair, Doug Collins, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Veteran’s Affair

As education secretary, McMahon would be charged with administering a uniquely destructive suite of policies, even by the usual standards of Trump governance. That’s because the Department of Education has been a bête noire of the American right ever since Jimmy Carter founded the agency in 1979. By creating a layer of federal oversight over locally run schools, the DOE has, in the overheated imaginings of right-wing policy mavens, arrogated deep-state sovereignty over the rights of parents to preside over the best educational options and life chances for their children. And as the Education Department has sought to clarify and standardize anti-discrimination policy for LGBTQ+ students, it’s become a pet target for anti-trans culture warriors on the right.

McMahon probably won’t heed the growing chorus of conservative calls to abolish the DOE outright, but she can be counted on to aggressively pursue other key MAGA objectives in education policy. In line with her work at AFPI, McMahon will likely continue to promote the use of privately backed charter schools to defund public education—the most fundamental plank of right-wing education policy. In addition, she’ll probably resume her predecessor Betty DeVos’s campaign to deny basic Title IX protections to LGBTQ+ students. And it’s a safe bet that she’ll also re-up plans to promote Trump’s 1776 commission—MAGA’s agitprop answer to the 1619 Project, promoting a “patriotic” national curriculum to downplay and discourage honest discussion of America’s racial history in the schools.

Following the lead of billionaire right-wing donors, AFPI enthusiastically champions the charter-schools movement, while seeking to undermine the government’s role in providing quality public education. McMahon’s think tank has erected a whole policy infrastructure to promote charter schools, including direct public subsidies to them, the creation of education saving accounts (ESAs) for parents to enroll kids in charters, and proposals to weaken teachers’ unions in conjunction with the rise of open-shop charters. This agenda does more than harness the long-standing animus to government-backed education on the right—it advances the creation of a parallel education system for right-wing partisans. In this regard, as well as in its aggressive model of privatized education funding, the AFPI plan recalls the original role that neoliberal economics played in supporting the new ad hoc network of “segregation academies” launched in the American South after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling to desegregate the nation’s schools. The same basic dictum holds for today’s American right as it did then: If you can’t segregate with law, segregate with economics.

AFPI claims that charter school students have higher scores on standardized tests. In reality, the findings here follow what holds for better-funded public schools: namely, that well-funded charter schools tend to produce better test scores, while less well-off charters fare a bit worse, with some regional variations. Students in the competitive DC charter school system’s Opportunity Scholarships program, often cited as the gold standard by charter school advocates, actually performed worse on reading tests than those who did not attend the program.

School choice and voucher programs are a drain on the public’s coffers. For hard-right ideologues like the advisers at AFPI, that’s the whole point. Privatized education is part of the broader right-wing campaign to block the public sector’s ability to finance anything, especially if it would further racial equality. The National Education Association notes that voucher programs redirect scarce public funds toward unaccountable private school programs, and found zero evidence that these programs—which increase school segregation—improve students’ performance. In some cases, there are negative impacts.

What’s more, private management naturally leads to a focus on profit, financial self-sustainability, and expansion—mandates that typically lead to steep budget cuts in the schools, even if students suffer. According to the Network for Public Education, for-profit management companies run nearly one in seven charter schools.

AFPI has also endorsed federal legislation to create national education savings accounts. Like charter schools, ESAs seek to redirect public resources to market-driven gimmicks under the broad rubric of consumer choice. When parents open an ESA, they withdraw their children from the school district and receive a deposit of public funds in a savings account authorized by the government. Parents are then allowed to spend from that account on a range of educational expenses, including tutoring, therapy, or school supplies.

ESA plans create an obvious bind by forcing parents to navigate the education industry all on their own. The ESA scheme affords no safeguards for students whose parents made poor spending choices with the funds in their account. A report in Forbes recounted the story of a family using up its entire account before paying for a single English or math class. And like the broader charter model it upholds, the savings-account system reinforces, rather than weakens, the core inequalities of the US education system; it ensures that wealthier parents will be able to afford to send their children to the best schools.

For a bracing illustration of how charter and for-profit education schemes pillage publicly funded schools, consider Chicago’s experience. In 2013, the city closed 48 public schools to cover widening budget shortfalls. And Chicago’s public schools were going broke in no small part due to the rapid expansion of a parallel charter systemcaptained by ardent school privatizers. Since the insurgent charter schools operated outside traditional governance and accountability, they accumulated millions in debt while draining desperately needed funding away from public schools. Ultimately, 17,000 students were displaced, and Chicago was left with a more unequal and racially segmented school system than it had at the outset of the city’s charter-school fiasco.

To finish reading the article, open the link.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, History, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Guess Who Will Attend Trump’s Inauguration and Sit on the Platform?

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
7

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg will not only attend Trump’s Inauguration, they will be seated together on the platform.

Trump will show them off like house pets. Which they are. Trump brought out Musk’s inner Nazi. He intimidated Zuckerberg by threatening to put him in jail. He humbled Bezos, leading him to censor his journalists, who are fleeing the Washington Post.

Will they heel, sit and stay on command?

Sad.

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Elections, Ethics, Fraud, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Why We Started The Contrarian

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2025 //
25

Jennifer Rubin posted her first editorial as editor-in-chief of The Contrarian.

The Contrarian will be a central hub for unvarnished, unbowed, and uncompromising reported opinion and analysis that exists in opposition to the authoritarian threat. Our pre-election warnings that Donald Trump posed an unprecedented threat to our democracy were often treated as alarmist. However, the election of an openly authoritarian figure who traffics in conspiracies, lies, unconstitutional schemes and un-American notions, has moved the United States to an inflection point. The future of our democracy, and what Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth” hangs in the balance. And yet corporate and billionaire media and too many in the political establishment persist in downplaying the threat and seeking to accommodate Trump and his radical agenda. We refuse to follow the herd.

Unlike most corporate or billionaire media, The Contrarian will not offer Trump the benefit of the doubt. We will not normalize him. We will not engage in false equivalence. We will not excuse enablers in the media, government or business. We will not infantilize his supporters nor treat them as victims; we will confront them with the consequences of their presidential pick.

Trump is no ordinary politician and will be no ordinary president so the response must be extraordinary. His insane pronouncements—be it a premature and utterly false declaration that the New Orleans terrorist had just come over the border or a threat to annex the Panama Canal and Greenland—cannot be ignored or treated as hyperbole. They reveal a warped mind and dangerous agenda that would take America down the road of other authoritarian states such as Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.

We will not be distracted by shiny objects or phony scandals. Instead, we will call out Trump and his fellow bad actors’ dangerous, unconstitutional and immoral actions and vile rhetoric. We will put them in the context of American history and international authoritarian movements. We will call on a range of experts from psychology, sociology, political science, international relations and other fields to inform the discussion and analysis.

We do not call Trump a dictator—yet. That is because a conscientious pro-democracy movement determined to expose, denounce and counteract Trump’s authoritarian impulses has time to act, to preserve our pluralistic democracy. The Contrarian seeks to be in the vanguard of that effort. To that end, we will summon the opponents of authoritarianism from all walks of life—the media, the arts, government, academia, business, sports, culture, labor and civil society—to join a grand coalition, a national front for freedom, decency, democracy, justice, self-determination, and diversity.

The urgency of the task before us cannot be overstated. We have already entered the era of oligarchy—rule by a narrow clique of powerful men (almost exclusively men). We have little doubt that billionaires will dominate the Trump regime, shape policy, engage in massive self-dealing, and seek to quash dissent and competition in government and the private sector. As believers in free markets subject to reasonable regulation and economic opportunity for all, we recognize this is a threat not only to our democracy but to our dynamic, vibrant economy that remains the envy of the world.

Although the task before us is deadly serious, we emphatically believe that joy, humor, and most of all community are essential to preserving a free people. We will offer all three. We also realize the danger of preaching to the choir and failing to reach outside our bubble. We will offer a platform that includes multi-generational, fresh voices from whatever venue or field who can contribute to our endeavor. We are building a community of passionate defenders of democracy who are fed up with equivocation, timidity, and resignation.

We could not be more excited to begin this journey. Our irreverence, candor and refusal to pull punches may offend establishment politicians, campaign insiders, and complicit media. We hope so. Throughout all our work, we pledge to live up to our credo: Not Owned by Anybody.

Categories Censorship, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Why I Resigned from The Washington Post

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2025 //
11

Jennifer Rubin explains why she gave up her column at The Washington Post, previously one of the most prestigious positions in American journalism. Billionaire Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, with assets exceeding $200 billion, has bent his knee to kiss the ring of Trump. To stay in Trump’s good graces, he has censored the editorial board, even an editorial cartoonist. The Post is hemorrhaging great journalists. Bezos bought one of the nation’s greatest newspapers and is destroying it.

She writes today:

Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy.

The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.

I therefore have resigned from The Post, effective today. In doing so, I join a throng of veteran journalists so distressed over The Post’s management they felt compelled to resign.

The decay and compromised principles of corporate and billionaire-owned media underscore the urgent need for alternatives. Americans are eager for innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation.

Which is why I am so thrilled to simultaneously announce this new outlet, The Contrarian: Not Owned by Anybody. The Contrarian will offer daily columns, weekly features, podcasts and social media from me and fellow pro-democracy contrarians, many of whom have decamped from corporate media, others who were never a part of it. I am launching this endeavor with my cofounder, Norm Eisen. Founding contributors will include Joyce Vance, Andy Borowitz, Laurence Tribe, Katie Phang, George Conway, Olivia Julianna, Harry Litman (who recently resigned from the LA Times for reasons similar to mine for leaving the Post), and Asha Rangappa, among many other brilliant voices. We will provide fearless and distinctive reported opinion and cultural commentary without phony balance, euphemisms or gamified political punditry.

The need for upstart outlets has never been more acute. The contradiction between, on the one hand, the journalistic obligation to hold the powerful accountable and, on the other, the financial interests of billionaire moguls and corporate conglomerates could not be starker.

The Post’s own headline last month warned: “Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media; Press freedom advocates say they fear that the second Trump administration will ramp up pressure on journalists, in keeping with the president-elect’s combative rhetoric.” And yet The Post’s owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Trump’s opponent, forked over $1M for Trump’s inauguration through Amazon, and publicly lauded Trump’s agenda.

None of us could imagine Katharine Graham sending LBJ or Nixon a $1M check. It would have been, as it is now, a fundamental betrayal of a great American newspaper. Defense of the First Amendment is incompatible with funding or cheerleading for the very person who seeks to “drastically undermine the institutions tasked with reporting on his coming administration.”

The Post’s downfall is hardly unique. ABC, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and corporate-owned cable TV networks (which have scrambled to enlist Trump-friendly voices) are catering to powerful interests, and have profound corporate conflicts. Instead of guarding their independence, they join financial leaders, politicians and other public figures currying favor with Trump and his orbit.

Through classic anticipatory obedience—a dangerous but all too familiar pattern—they normalize the authoritarian menace. If Trump has taken “attacks on the press to an entirely new level, softening the ground for an erosion of robust press freedom,” as The Post reported, it is because he finds insufficient resistance. Instead, owners whose outlets he targets quite literally rewarded him.

In closing, I want to reiterate that I have been honored to work for over fourteen years alongside the finest writers and editors in journalism. Above all, I was blessed to work for The Post under the Graham Family ownership and Fred Hiatt’s leadership of the editorial section. My admiration for their collective integrity, dedication to craft, courage, patriotism, and decency is boundless. But when new leaders sully the reputation of institutions entrusted to them and the fate of democracy is in the balance, we all must reevaluate our careers and our obligations to the world’s most essential nation.

History calls us all.

I treasure the readers who have stuck with me over the years. I invite them and all those interested in defeating authoritarianism as well as writers and content creators to join this exciting new venture in defense of democracy. Forward!

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Character, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Media

Editor at Washington Post Defends Killing Cartoon Critical of Bezos

By dianeravitch
January 12, 2025 //
11

David Shipley, editor of the Washington Post editorial page, took responsibility for spiking the cartoon by Ann Telnaes, an act that touched off a firestorm of controversy.

The cartoon showed several billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, paying homage to Trump.

Shipley stopped publication because, he said, the cartoon was repetitious of articles on the same subject.

Telnaes announced her resignation in a sharply worded piece on Substack.

Shipley sent the following letter to staff at the Post. By now, they must be deeply demoralized, given Bezos’ intervention to block the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris., his gift of $1 million to Trump for his inauguration, and the Amazon payment of $40 million to Trump for the license to the life story of Melania, produced by Melania. Bezos owns Amazon.

Shipley wrote:

Dear DOO,

It’s been nearly a week since Ann Telnaes resigned. I’ve been gathering my thoughts in that time and there are a few things I’d like to share. Given the depth of the response, and some of the assumptions that have been made, I hope you’ll read to the end.

Let me start with the basics.

Our owner, in his own words, is a “complexifier.” Jeff supports a news organization while having significant interests (and work) elsewhere. His support allows The Post to exist and produce excellent, independent journalism; it also means that editorial decisions can be viewed by the outside world through the prism of his ownership.

My decision not to run a cartoon by Ann in which Jeff was depicted is being viewed through this prism. I believe I made a sound editorial decision. Ann felt otherwise. She offered her interpretation. I’d like to offer mine.

First, I decided not to run the cartoon because it was repetitive. When I learned of Ann’s piece, we had just published a column on billionaire visits to Trump (with a clear mention of our owner) and we had a satire piece on the same topic underway (also with a clear reference to our owner). Yet another piece in the span of a few days struck me as overkill.

This is a subjective judgment, but it is a subjective judgment in sync with a longstanding approach. In my time here, we have focused on reducing the number of articles we publish on a given topic and from the same point of view within a given time frame – all as a way to improve the overall quality and variety of our report.

To that same end, I did not feel the cartoon was strong. Could it have been made better? Possibly. In fact, we’d recently worked with Ann on a cartoon that had gone through edits and was published after she and editors had finished working together.

In this regard, I regret that we did not have the opportunity to revisit this possibility. In what (unfortunately) turned out to be my final conversation with Ann last Friday afternoon, it was my understanding that she and I had agreed to take the weekend to consider options and that we would speak on Monday. I respect Ann’s work and was actively considering her suggestions bar one – the idea that we add language to her contract restricting editing – when she put out her Substack on Friday night, closing the door on any possibility of further discussion.

The decisions on redundancy and quality were both judgments on my part. I stand by them. At no point did I discuss any of this with Will Lewis or Jeff Bezos. This was my call.

Now let me share a couple broader thoughts. Do I pay extra attention if Jeff is in a column or a cartoon or the subject of a story? Of course I do. Does this prevent us from commenting on him? No. Look at the record. The two other pieces we ran – pieces I saw and was aware of – should dispel that bit of mythology. Do we allow dissent? Yes. Erik Wemple published a chat taking issue with my actions. Letters to the editor will do the same. If you have additional doubts, look at our published response to the decision not to run a presidential endorsement. If the work is good, if it is relevant, if it advances the story, we’ll publish it. This is my prism.

My job is a balancing act. Was I extra careful here? Sure. It’s obviously true that we have published other pieces that are redundant and duplicative. We have also published things that others judged strong and effective, and I did not. So, yes, scrutiny is on high when it comes to our owner.

But this extra scrutiny has a purpose. I am trying to ensure the overall independence of our report. Though we have a “complexifying” owner, I will not use that as a reason to exempt him from the evenhandedness we ought to extend to any public figure (an evenhandedness other news organizations extend to their owners). Nor will coverage of him be an exception to our strategic turn toward heightened curation and diminished repetition. By exercising care, we preserve the ability to do what we are in business to do: To speak forthrightly and without fear about things that matter.

I know many of you are concerned that we might be wavering in this regard. I get that concern, but I don’t think it’s true. I believe that The Post’s business success depends on its integrity and its independence. These things cannot be separated. If you don’t have them, you don’t have a business – nor are you adhering to the mission that this newspaper has always held dear. As the person responsible for this department, I am guided by this belief. And if I believe we can’t act on it any longer, I will share that feeling with you and act accordingly. But that’s not what’s happening now.

America and the world are entering a complicated moment. It’s one in which honesty, clarity of thought, fair-mindedness and courage will be required. These are the values that will guide our coverage – and my judgments. This is who we are, and it’s my belief that our work shows it.

D.

P.S. Many of you have already shared your (varied) views on the situation; please know that my door is always open to discuss decisions. I want to hear your thoughts about how we do what we do.

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Just Published: My Review of the Trump Education Agenda

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2025 //
5

This article just appeared on the website of The New York Review of Books.

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/01/11/their-kind-of-indoctrination/

It is my review of Trump’s plans for K-12 education.

NYRB is the most distinguished literary-political journal in the nation. It has a huge readership. It reaches a different audience than education journals.

If you subscribe to NYRB, you can open it in full. If you don’t, it costs $10 for 10 issues. Or, if you wait, I will post it in full in a few weeks.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, History, Ignorance, Inequality, Lies, Privatization, Racism, Religion, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Dan Rather: Is Jeff Bezos Killing the Washington Post?

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2025 //
10

Dan Rather, the fearless reporter for “60 Mibutes,” now retired, writes about Jeff Bezos’ ham-handed interference with the editorial independence of The Washington Post. The moral of the story is that newspapers should not be owned by billionaires with other financial interests, especially those who need a good relationship with the President, like Bezos. Why should Bezos cut staff because the Post is losing money? His net worth is more than $200 billion. Why destroy one of the nation’s greatest newspapers to recoup $77 million in losses? That’s chump change for Bezos.

When a journalistic institution is the one making headlines, it’s rarely good news. Such is the case for a revered American newspaper, The Washington Post. A mothership of American journalism, whose reporters helped topple an American president and inspired generations of young reporters, is listing and taking on water.

As Donald Trump and his army of “alternate” truth-tellers get ready to take the reins of government again, the country desperately needs the best and brightest journalists watching and reporting on their every move. And yet we wake to news that the Post is expected to lay off dozens more staffers the very month Trump returns to power.

The 147-year-old newspaper is apparently bleeding money, a problem of its own making. When billionaire Post owner Jeff Bezos pulled the newspaper’s endorsement of Kamala Harris just days before the election, a reported 250,000 readers cancelled their subscriptions in protest. That accounts for 10% of the paper’s online audience.

“I just cancelled my Washington Post subscription. The web site asked why, and the closest option was ‘concern with the content.’ There was no option about surrendering to fascism, but that’s the real reason,” a former subscriber posted on X.

For Bezos, founder of Amazon, the Post’s financial losses are peanuts considering his $200 billion plus net worth. But his love of the paper and his passion for quality journalism seem to be shrinking.

Back in 2013, when Bezos bought the Post from the family of venerated publisher Katharine Graham, he said he wanted to transform it from a regional newspaper to a global one. He provided money — big money — to expand the newsroom and encouraged reporters to extend their reach by embracing the “gifts of the internet.”

Over the ensuing decade, his interest in the paper ebbed and flowed, but he mostly stayed out of the editorial decision-making. Then he pulled the Harris endorsement causing an exodus of top editors, opinion writers, and reporters.

But Bezos wasn’t done burnishing his rep with the former president. After the election, he pledged $1 million to help pay for Trump’s inauguration and agreed to stream it live on Amazon Prime (an additional $1 million in-kind contribution). Just before Christmas, he was seen at Mar-a-Lago, kissing the ring with fellow super-rich guy Elon Musk. And he has green-lit a documentary about Melania Trump to air on Prime. I’m guessing it will be what’s known in the trade as a “sweetheart profile.”

While it isn’t great that the owner of one of the most important papers in the country is cozying up to an incoming president who says he will be a dictator on “day one,” Bezos’s actions aren’t surprising. He didn’t become a billionaire by being selfless.

But on Friday, things took another turn at the Post. Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Ann Telnaes quit in protest after a cartoon of hers was killed.

In a piece she published on Substack, Telnaes explained that “there have been instances where sketches have been rejected or revisions requested, but never because of the point of view inherent in the cartoon’s commentary. That’s a game changer…and dangerous for a free press…”

Since 2005, a third of newspapers in the United States have folded, and two-thirds of newspaper reporters are gone. On an Axios podcast, Victor Pickard, a professor of media policy and political economy at the University of Pennsylvania, explained that “We no longer have a commercial market that can support the levels of journalism that democracy requires.”

Another model needs to be found, and fast. We’ve learned the hard way that benevolent billionaires aren’t going to rescue American journalism. Smarter people than I are working on ways to do just that … an important topic for another Steady down the road.

In the meantime, fingers crossed. As I have said over the years and repeat now for emphasis: A free and independent — fiercely independent when necessary — press is the red beating heart of democracy.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Censorship, Freedom of the Press, Media

Amazon Pays $40 Million for Documentary About Melania

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2025 //
21

There’s all kinds of graft, both legal and illegal. The Trump family seems to have mastered the art of legal graft. Tech billionaires and others have fallen to their knees to kiss Trump’s ring and to humbly offer him $1 million to help pay for his inauguration ceremonies. So far, the inauguration fund has swelled to $170 million, probably the most in history.

The ABC network paid Trump $1 million for his inauguration and, for good measure, gave $15 million to Trump rather than fight a lawsuit defending George Stephanopoulos for saying on air that Trump had “raped” E. Jean Carroll. ABC might have won in court on First Amendment grounds, but it capitulated.

Amazon, owned by Jeff Bezos, was even more ingenious. It agreed to pay the Trumps $40 million to license a documentary about Melania. She will be the executive producer. Of course, Bezos had already paid his $1 million into the inauguration fund. He is the publisher of The Washington Post, the guy who prevented the publication of an editorial endorsing Kamala.

The documentary will surely be a glowing reprise of the life of Mrs. Trump, since she is in charge. But will it include her career as a nude model? The photos are all over the internet, and no kidding, she has a stunning body. But will they be in the documentary? Doubtful.

Remember that part of the Constitution called the “Emoluments Clause”? It has been generally understood to mean that the President should not take any gifts or compensation from anyone, presumably to avoid the appearance of a bribe.

However, Trump flouted that clause with the permission of the Supreme Court, which never found a conflict in Trump’s ownership of a hotel in close proximity to the White House, where foreign leaders rented elaborate suites.

Trump can accept major gifts now because he is not President yet. However, he sought to block his sentencing in a New York court in the grounds that the President-elect enjoyed the same immunity from criminal proceedings as a sitting President. Trump is ingenious.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Funding, Shame, Trump
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