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Hegseth and Trump: Bring Back the Confederacy!

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2025 //
8

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Trump have embarked on a project to honor the Confederacy. Hegseth plans to restore the Confederate statues that were removed from their pedestals, although some may have been melted down.

The latest? Hegseth is bringing back the grand portrait of General Robert E. Lee in his Confederate gray uniform to West Point; it was installed in 1972.

The funniest line in the article below is the statement by the Army’s communication director, who said: “Under this administration, we honor our history and learn from it — we don’t erase it.” Considering Trump censorship of words and images at the Smithsonian, the Kennedy Center, and in all other federally-funded institutions, that statement is ridiculous.

Perhaps even funnier is the renaming of military bases for obscure soldiers who had the same last name as Confederate generals.

The New York Times reported:

The Pentagon is restoring a portrait of Gen. Robert E. Lee, which includes a slave guiding the Confederate general’s horse in the background, to the West Point library three years after a congressionally mandated commission ordered it removed, officials said.

The 20-foot-tall painting, which hung at the United States Military Academy for 70 years, was taken down in response to a 2020 law that stripped the names of Confederate leaders from military bases.

That legislation also created a commission to come up with new base names. In 2022, the commission ordered West Point to take down all displays that “commemorate or memorialize the Confederacy.” A few weeks later, the portrait of General Lee with his slave in the background was placed in storage.

It was not clear how West Point could return General Lee’s portrait to the library without violating the law, which emerged from the protests that followed George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers in 2020.

“At West Point, the United States Military Academy is prepared to restore historical names, artifacts, and assets to their original form and place,” said Rebecca Hodson, the Army’s communications director. “Under this administration, we honor our history and learn from it — we don’t erase it.”

Both President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have been outspoken in their desire to restore Confederate names and monuments that were removed over the last five years. Mr. Hegseth recently called for returning a memorial to the Confederacy that was removed from Arlington National Cemetery at the recommendation of Congress. In a social media post this month, Mr. Hegseth said the Arlington statue “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings.”

Earlier this summer, Mr. Trump and Mr. Hegseth restored the names of Confederate generals to the Army’s bases, but with a twist seemingly designed to avoid running afoul of the 2020 law. Mr. Hegseth and his staff found obscure soldiers who served honorably and shared a last name with the Confederate generals.

Rather than simply reinstate the name of General Lee to an Army base in Virginia, the Pentagon honored Pvt. Fitz Lee, a Black soldier who fought in the Spanish-American War. In the case of Fort Bragg, named for Braxton Bragg, an incompetent Confederate general, Mr. Hegseth celebrated Pvt. Roland L. Bragg, who fought in the Battle of the Bulge during World War II.

The naming commission’s initial order to remove General Lee’s portrait was complicated by the general’s long history with the Army and the academy. General Lee graduated near the top of his West Point class and served as the academy’s superintendent from 1852 to 1855. His name and likeness were all over the campus.

The commission decided that portraits of General Lee in his blue Army uniform should remain. But the divisive painting of General Lee in his Confederate gray uniform was hauled away. The commission also recommended that West Point’s Lee Barracks, Lee Road, Lee Gate, Lee Housing Area and Lee Area Child Development Center all be renamed.

Categories Censorship, Ethics, History

Trump Wants Smithsonian to Downplay or Eliminate Dark Portrayal of Slavery

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2025 //
9

Trump warned that he was prepared to take an active role in reviewing exhibits in the Smithsonian museums, especially the African-American Museum. Too many show bad portrayals of their nation, he complained. Think about it: is it possible to show slavery in a positive light?

Trump’s insistence on purging the Smithsonian of the accurate portrayal of Black history is yet another example of his efforts to minimize and sanitize that history.

The New York Times wrote that Trump is hostile to an honest confrontation with the past:

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has led an effort to purge diversity, equity and inclusion policies from the federal government and threatened to investigate companies and schools that adopt such policies. He has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history, preferring to instead spotlight a sanitized, rosy depiction of America.

The administration has worked to scrub or minimize government references to the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen, who fought in World War II, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. Mr. Trump commemorated Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of slavery in the United States that became a federal holiday in 2021, by complaining that there were too many non-working holidays in America. He has called for the return of Confederate insignia and statues honoring those who fought to preserve slavery.

And he has previously attacked the exhibits on race at the Smithsonian, which has traditionally operated as an independent institution that regards itself as outside the purview of the executive branch, as “divisive, race-centered ideology.”

CNN described Trump’s determination to compel museums to remove exhibitions of events that show shameful behavior by whites and the government:

President Donald Trump escalated his campaign to purge cultural institutions of materials that conflict with his political directives on Tuesday, alleging museums were too focused on highlighting negative aspects of American history, including “how bad slavery was.”

In a Truth Social post, Trump directed his attorneys to conduct a review of museums, comparing the effort to his crackdown on universities across the country.

“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s comments come days after the White House announced an unprecedented, sweeping review of the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the nation’s major public museums. The initiative, a trio of top Trump aides wrote in a letter to Smithsonian Institution secretary Lonnie Bunch III last week, “aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”

The letter said the review would focus on public-facing content, the curatorial process to understand how work is selected for exhibits, current and future exhibition planning, the use of existing materials and collections and guidelines for narrative standards.

Bunch — who has served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution since 2019 and is the first African American to hold the position — has made multiple comments about the importance of educating people about slavery through the National Museum of African American History and Culture specifically. He told Smithsonian Magazine that part of the purpose of that museum “was to help a nation understand itself — an impossible task without the full recognition of the horrors of slavery.”

Exhibits at the Smithsonian take years of planning and are heavily evaluated by teams of scholars and curatorial experts before they make their debut. Janet Marstine, a museum ethics expert, said that the demands laid out by the Trump administration “set the Smithsonian up for failure.”

“Nobody could provide those kinds of materials in such a comprehensive way, in that short amount of time, and so it’s just an impossible task,” she said. The White House has asked the Smithsonian to provide a wide array of materials, from internal emails and memos to digital copies of all placards and gallery labels currently on display.

The Smithsonian declined to comment on Trump’s latest remarks. A White House official, asked about the attorney review process Trump described, said the president “will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable.”

Still, Trump’s efforts to target colleges and universities — which he is now comparing to his focus on Smithsonian museums — has been even more aggressive. His administration has moved to strip federal funding from higher education institutions for a variety of reasons, including allegations of antisemitism and failure to comply with certain policy changes. Columbia University recently settled with the Trump administration for more than $220 million dollars and Trump has also been in a protracted battle with Harvard University after his administration froze $2 billion in federal funding.

The Trump administration’s push to align federal support with his cultural agenda has extended beyond the nation’s capital. The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities canceled tens of millions of dollars in federal grants earlier this year, affecting small museums, library initiatives, arts programs and academic research projects across the country.

Trump has previously praised the Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which he toured during his first term as president.

“I’m deeply proud that we now have a museum that honors the millions of African American men and women who built our national heritage, especially when it comes to faith, culture and the unbreakable American spirit,” Trump said during remarks at the museum in February 2017. Later that month, Trump said the museum “tells of the great struggle for freedom and equality that prevailed against the sins of slavery and the injustice of discrimination.”

Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order that put Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, in charge of stopping government spending on exhibits that don’t align with the administration’s agenda. He also tasked a former member of his legal team, attorney Lindsey Halligan, with helping to root out “improper ideology” at the Smithsonian.

“Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to divisive narratives,” the executive order said.

The Smithsonian began a review of its own in June, and has repeatedly stressed its commitment to being nonpartisan. The institution told CNN in July that it was committed to an “unbiased presentation of facts and history” and that it would “make any necessary changes to ensure our content meets our standards.”

The Smithsonian was established in the 1840s by the US with funds from the estate of James Smithson, a British scientist. As a unique trust instrumentality that is supported by federal funds, it is not an executive branch agency, which makes it a complex question whether the Trump administration has the ability to control its exhibits. It is governed by a 17-member Board of Regents led by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The fact that the Smithsonian is not an “executive branch agency” won’t deter Trump. He has ignored laws and the Constitution when they don’t support his agenda. Neither the Library of Congress nor the National Portrait Gallery is an executive agency. Yet Congress sat silently as Trump forced out their leaders.

Trump is rapidly assuming control of every federal agency that was designed to be independent.

No other President has attempted to do that.

Categories Censorship, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom to Learn, History, Lies, Racism, Trump

Florida Judge Strikes Down Part of Book Banning Law

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2025 //
2

Since Governor Ron DeSantis got his “Don’t Say Gay” law in 2023, Florida has led the nation in book banning. That nefarious activity is currently on hold because a federal judge struck down DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Anytime a book banning law gets knocked down, we should celebrate a victory for the freedom to read. Another court, higher-up, may overturn the decision, but for now it’s good news.

Stephany Matt of the Palm Beach Post reported:

A federal judge has struck a blow against Florida’s book bans, ruling that part of a DeSantis-backed law used to sweep classics and modern novels off school shelves is so vague that it’s unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Carlos Mendoza of the Middle District of Florida focused on the portion of the law that prevents books that “describes sexual conduct” in his Aug. 13 order, saying it’s “unclear what the statute actually prohibits” and to what detail of sexual conduct is prohibited.

The statute (HB 1069) was signed by Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2023, and it’s been used to remove thousands of books from Florida’s school library shelves.

Mendoza drew concern with classical literature and more modern works such as “The Handmaid’s Tale,” among 23 books removed from Orange County and Volusia County schools.

To defend book removals, DeSantis and state officials have pointed to “government speech,” a legal doctrine that the government has the right to promote its own views without being required to provide equal time or a platform for opposing views.

Mendoza disagreed.

“A blanket content-based prohibition on materials, rather than one based on individualized curation, hardly expresses any intentional government message at all,” he said. “Slapping the label of government speech on book removals only serves to stifle the disfavored viewpoints.”

The judge’s order is a win for Penguin Random House and five other publishers, the Authors Guild, two parents and authors Julia Alvarez, John Green, Angie Thomas, Laurie Halse Anderson and Jodi Picoult. Green is famous for his books “Looking for Alaska” and “Paper Towns,” both of which were mentioned in the order.

Penguin Random House is “elated” that the federal judge upheld First Amendment protections for students, educators, authors and publishers, and that books may only be removed if they lack “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value” when considered, said Dan Novack, vice president and associate general counsel of Penguin Random House.

“This is a sweeping victory for the right to read, and for every student’s freedom to think, learn, and explore ideas,” Novack said in a statement…

The judge’s order does not cast down all of the law, which restricts teachers from using preferred pronouns in schools outside their assigned sex at birth and expedites a process for people to object to reading materials and books in schools..

Categories Censorship, DeSantis, Extremism, Florida, Freedom to Read, Literacy

Federal Judge Overturns Ban on DEI

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2025 //
23

A Trump-appointed judge overturned the Trump administration’s ban on policies of diversity, equity and inclusion in schools and colleges, according to Collin Binkley of the AP. Will her ruling stand?

WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal judge on Thursday struck down two Trump administration actions aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the nation’s schools and universities.

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland found that the Education Department violated the law when it threatened to cut federal funding from educational institutions that continued with DEI initiatives.

The guidance has been on hold since April when three federal judges blocked various portions of the Education Department’s anti-DEI measures.

The ruling Thursday followed a motion for summary judgment from the American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association, which challenged the government’s actions in a February lawsuit.

The case centers on two Education Department memos ordering schools and universities to end all “race-based decision-making” or face penalties up to a total loss of federal funding. It’s part of a campaign to end practices the Trump administration frames as discrimination against white and Asian American students.

The new ruling orders the department to scrap the guidance because it runs afoul of procedural requirements, though Gallagher wrote that she took no view on whether the policies were “good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair.”

Gallagher, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, rejected the government’s argument that the memos simply served to remind schools that discrimination is illegal.

“It initiated a sea change in how the Department of Education regulates educational practices and classroom conduct, causing millions of educators to reasonably fear that their lawful, and even beneficial, speech might cause them or their schools to be punished,” Gallagher wrote.

Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy firm representing the plaintiffs, called it an important victory over the administration’s attack on DEI.

“Threatening teachers and sowing chaos in schools throughout America is part of the administration’s war on education, and today the people won,” said Skye Perryman, the group’s president and CEO.

The Education Department did not immediately comment on Thursday.

The conflict started with a Feb. 14 memo declaring that any consideration of race in admissions, financial aid, hiring or other aspects of academic and student life would be considered a violation of federal civil rights law.

The memo dramatically expanded the government’s interpretation of a 2023 Supreme Court decision barring colleges from considering race in admissions decisions. The government argued the ruling applied not only to admissions but across all of education, forbidding “race-based preferences” of any kind.

“Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’ and advanced discriminatory policies and practices,” wrote Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of the department’s Office for Civil Rights.

A further memo in April asked state education agencies to certify they were not using “illegal DEI practices.” Violators risked losing federal money and being prosecuted under the False Claims Act, it said.

In total, the guidance amounted to a full-scale reframing of the government’s approach to civil rights in education. It took aim at policies that were created to address longstanding racial disparities, saying those practices were their own form of discrimination.

The memos drew a wave of backlash from states and education groups that called it illegal government censorship.

In its lawsuit, the American Federation of Teachers said the government was imposing “unclear and highly subjective” limits on schools across the country. It said teachers and professors had to “choose between chilling their constitutionally protected speech and association or risk losing federal funds and being subject to prosecution.”

Categories Bias, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Gender, Inequity, Trump

Trump Orders Review of Smithsonian Museums to Remove Unpatriotic Exhibits

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2025 //
12

The Trump administration has announced plans to review the contents of exhibitions at several Smithsonian institutions. Trump has made clear that he wants all exhibits purged of negative or unpatriotic content. He wants exhibits to show only the positive aspects of American history. This is called censorship. When Trump is gone, the full story of American history will be restored the good, the inspiring but also the dark episodes where people were treated unfairly.

The Washington Post reported::

The White House will launch a sweeping review of Smithsonian exhibitions, collections and operations ahead of America’s 250th-birthday celebrations next year — the first time the Trump administration has detailed steps to scrutinize the institution, which officials say should reflect the president’s call to restore “truth and sanity” to American history.

The vetting process would include reviewing public-facing and online content, curatorial processes and guidelines, exhibition planning and collection use, according to a letter sent to Smithsonian Secretary Lonnie G. Bunch III on Tuesday and signed by White House senior associate Lindsey Halligan, Domestic Policy Council Director Vince Hale and White House Office of Management and Budget chief Russell Vought.

A White House official confirmed the plan, which was posted on the White House website Tuesday and first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

“The Smithsonian’s work is grounded in a deep commitment to scholarly excellence, rigorous research, and the accurate, factual presentation of history,” a Smithsonian spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. “We are reviewing the letter with this commitment in mind and will continue to collaborate constructively with the White House, Congress, and our governing Board of Regents.”

The institution already planned its own content review, ordered by the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents in June amid pressure from President Donald Trump. The regents instructed Bunch “to ensure unbiased content” across the institution and report back on “any needed personnel changes.”

The board at that time affirmed Bunch’s authority amid a high-stakes standoff between the White House and Kim Sajet, whom Trump had attempted to fire as director of the National Portrait Gallery. Sajet later resigned, saying her presence had become a distraction from the Smithsonian’s mission.

It is not immediately clear whether the White House’s action will supersede the Smithsonian’s review.

The letter states that the initial review will focus on eight museums: the National Museum of American History, the National Museum of Natural History, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the National Museum of the American Indian, the National Air and Space Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery and the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

To begin the process, officials requested that the museums provide information within 30 days concerning 250th-anniversary programming, current and future exhibition content, and other material.

The White House added that museums were expected to start making changes within 120 days.

“Museums should begin implementing content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions across placards, wall didactics, digital displays, and other public-facing materials,” the letter read.

Since returning to office in January, Trump has moved quickly to overhaul the country’s most prominent arts and cultural institutions. His focus on the Smithsonian has stoked concerns about political interference at the institution, which is not a traditional government agency and is historically considered nonpartisan.
In July, painter Amy Sherald withdrew her upcoming exhibition “American Sublime” from the National Portrait Gallery, citing concerns that the museum discussed removing from the show her painting of a transgender woman posing as the Statue of Liberty. (The Smithsonian said it discussed pairing the work with a video, not removing it.)

That same month, The Washington Post reported that a temporary placard containing references to Trump had been removed from an impeachment exhibit at the National Museum of American History as part of the Smithsonian content review. The museum later updated the display to restore context about Trump’s impeachments following swift outcry from members of the public and several Democratic leaders.

In March, Trump signed an executive order to eliminate “divisive narratives” across the Smithsonian museums and “restore the Smithsonian Institution to its rightful place as a symbol of inspiration and American greatness.”
The order, titled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” directs Halligan and Vice President JD Vance to remove “improper ideology” from the Smithsonian Institution, including its museums, education and research centers and the National Zoo.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, History, Trump

Rachel Maddow: Our Worst Fears Have Come True

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2025 //
5

This is one of Rachel Maddow’s best clips. She says that we worried about what Trump might do if he won re-election. Wonder no more. It is happening. He is a full-fledged authoritarian, intent on smashing the Constitution and our rights. what can we do? She has some ideas.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Funding, Immigration, Trump

Thomas Friedman: The World As We Knew It Is Rapidly Slipping Away

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2025 //
6

Thomas Friedman writes a regular column for The New York Times. This one is unusually perspicacious. I was deeply moved by its candor. And I agree with him. Trump and his enablers are turning the Presidency into a monarchy, giving him more power than any President ever had and more power than the Founders imagined. Checks and balances have been wiped out. The Supreme Court’s rightwing majority approves of all his power grabs. He is imposing heavy fines on universities without regard to basic principles of academic freedom. He has made it criminal to support policies that advance diversity, equity, and inclusion. He is waging war on science. He is forcing the news media to pay him tribute. He fires veteran data scientists unless they report good news.

In his first term, his most notable achievement was the funding of “Operation Warp Speed,” which invested in the rapid production of mNRA vaccines. These vaccines dramatically reduced COVID, which killed one million people in the U.S. Yet just days ago, Trump’s Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. cancelled $500 million in research grants for mNRA vaccines. RFK killed further development of Trump’s greatest triumph. When asked about it at a press conference, Trump took pride in what RFK was doing. Did he understand the question?

His actions are unprecedented. They are the actions of a dictator.

He writes:

Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has said and done as president, the most dangerous one just happened on Friday. Trump, in effect, ordered our trusted and independent government office of economic statistics to become as big a liar as he is.

He fired Erika McEntarfer, the Senate-confirmed head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, for bringing him economic news he did not like, and in the hours immediately following, the second most dangerous thing happened: The senior Trump officials most responsible for running our economy — people who in their private businesses never would have contemplated firing a subordinate who brought them financial data they did not like — all went along for the ride.

What they should have said to Trump is this: “Mr. President, if you don’t reconsider this decision — if you fire the top labor bureau statistician because she brought you bad economic news — how will anyone in the future trust that office when it issues good news?” Instead, they immediately covered for him.

As The Wall Street Journal pointed out, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer had actually gone on Bloomberg TV early Friday and declared that even though the jobs report that had just been released was revised downward for May and June, “we’ve seen positive job growth.” But as soon as she got the news hours later that Trump had fired the very B.L.S. director who reports to her, she wrote on X: “I agree wholeheartedly with @POTUS that our jobs numbers must be fair, accurate, and never manipulated for political purposes.”

As The Journal asked: “So were the jobs data that were ‘positive’ in the morning rigged by the afternoon?” Of course not.

The moment I heard what Trump had done, I had a flashback. It was January 2021, and it had just been reported that Trump, after losing the 2020 election, had tried to pressure Georgia’s Republican secretary of state to “find” him enough votes — exactly 11,780, Trump said — to overturn the presidential election and even threatened him with “a criminal offense” if he didn’t. The pressure came during an hourlong telephone call, according to an audio recording of the conversation.

The difference, though, is that back then there was something called a Republican official with integrity. And so Georgia’s secretary of state did not agree to fabricate votes that did not exist. But that species of Republican official seems to have gone completely extinct in Trump’s second term. So Trump’s rotten character is now a problem for our whole economy.

Going forward, how many government bureaucrats are going to dare to pass along bad news when they know that their bosses — people like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent; the director of the National Economic Council, Kevin Hassett; Labor Secretary Chavez-DeRemer; and the U.S. trade representative, Jamieson Greer — will not only fail to defend them but will actually offer them up as a sacrifice to Trump to keep their jobs?

Shame on each and every one of them — particularly on Bessent, a former hedge fund manager, who knows better and did not step in. What a coward. As Bessent’s predecessor, Janet Yellen, the former Treasury secretary and also the former chair of the Federal Reserve — and a person with actual integrity — told my Times colleague Ben Casselman of the B.L.S. firing: “This is the kind of thing you would only expect to see in a banana republic.”

It is important to know how foreigners are looking at this. Bill Blain, a London-based bond trader who publishes a newsletter popular among market experts called Blain’s Morning Porridge, wrote on Monday: “Friday, Aug. 1 might go down in history as the day the U.S. Treasury market died. There was an art to reading U.S. data. It relied on trust. Now that is broken — if you can’t trust the data, what can you trust?”

He then went on to imagine how his Porridge newsletter will sound in May 2031. It will begin, he wrote, with “a link to a release from Trump’s Ministry of Economic Truth, formerly the U.S. Treasury: ‘Under the leadership of President Trump, the U.S. economy continues to grow at record speed. Payrolls data from the Ministry of Truth, a subsidiary of Truth Social, show full employment across America. Tensions in the inner cities have never been so low. All recent graduates have found highly paid jobs across America’s expanding manufacturing sector, causing many large companies in Trump Inc to report significant labor shortages.’”

If you think this is far-fetched, you clearly have not been following the foreign policy news, because this kind of tactic — the tailoring of information to fit Trump’s political needs — has already been deployed in the intelligence field.

In May the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, fired two top intelligence officials who oversaw an assessment that contradicted Trump’s assertions that the gang Tren de Aragua was operating under the direction of the Venezuelan regime. Their assessment undermined the dubious legal rationale Trump invoked — the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act — to allow the suspected gang members to be thrown out of the country without due process.

And now this trend toward self-blinding is spreading to further corners of the government.

One of America’s premier cyberwarriors, Jen Easterly, who was the director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency during the Biden administration, had her appointment to a senior teaching position at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point revoked last week by Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll after Laura Loomer, a far-right conspiracy theorist, posted that Easterly was a Biden-era mole.

Read that sentence again very slowly. The Army secretary, acting on the guidance of a loony Trump acolyte, revoked the teaching appointment of — anyone will tell you — one of America’s most skilled nonpartisan cyberwarriors, herself a graduate of West Point.

And when you are done reading that, read Easterly’s response on LinkedIn: “As a lifelong independent, I’ve served our nation in peacetime and combat under Republican and Democratic administrations. I’ve led missions at home and abroad to protect all Americans from vicious terrorists …. I’ve worked my entire career not as a partisan, but as a patriot — not in pursuit of power, but in service to the country I love and in loyalty to the Constitution I swore to protect and defend, against all enemies.”

And then she added this advice to the young West Pointers she will not have the honor of teaching: “Every member of the Long Gray Line knows the Cadet Prayer. It asks that we ‘choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong.’ That line — so simple, yet so powerful — has been my North Star for more than three decades. In boardrooms and war rooms. In quiet moments of doubt and in public acts of leadership. The harder right is never easy. That’s the whole point.”

That is the woman Trump did not want teaching our next generation of fighters.

And that ethic — always choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong — is the ethic that Bessent, Hassett, Chavez-DeRemer and Greer know nothing of — not to mention Trump himself.

That is why, dear reader, though I am a congenital optimist, for the first time I believe that if the behavior that this administration has exhibited in just its first six months continues and is amplified for its full four years, the America you know will be gone. And I don’t know how we will get it back.

Categories Censorship, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, Lies, Trump

Science Research in New England Gets a Reprieve from DEI Ban, for Now

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2025 //
6

The Boston Globe reported on the resumption of science projects halted by the Trump administration because their subjects were Black, Hispanic, gay, or transgender. Trump is determined to wiped out federal recognition of these categories of people and to stop science research of all kinds.

PROVIDENCE — Four months after her large-scale research study seeking to contain the spread of HIV was canceled by the Trump administration, Dr. Amy Nunn received a letter: the grant has been reinstated.

The study, which is enrolling Black and Hispanic gay men, is set to resume after a June court order in favor of the American Public Health Association and other groups that sued the National Institutes of Health for abruptly canceling hundreds of scientific research grants. 

The NIH said in a form letter to researchers in February and March that their studies “no longer effectuate agency priorities” because they included, among other complaints, reference to gender identity or diversity, equity and inclusion.

The order from US District Judge William Young in Massachusetts was narrow, reinstating nearly 900 grants awarded to the plaintiffs, not all of the thousands of grants canceled by NIH so far this year. Young called DEI an “undefined enemy‚” and said the Trump administration’s “blacklisting” of certain topics “has absolutely nothing to do with the promotion of science or research.”

The Trump administration is appealing the ruling, and the NIH continues to say they will block diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, prompting ongoing fear from scientists that their studies could still be on the chopping block even as they restart.

“We feel like we’re tippy-toeing around,” said Nunn, who leads the Rhode Island Public Health Institute. “The backbone of the field is steadfast pursuit of the truth. People are trying to find workarounds where they don’t have to compromise the integrity of their science.”

Nunn said she renewed her membership to the American Public Health Association in order to ensure she’d be included in the lawsuit.

Despite DEI concerns, she plans to continue enrolling gay Black and Hispanic men in her study, which will include 300 patients in Rhode Island, Mississippi, and Washington, D.C. 

Black and Hispanic men who have sex with other men contract HIV at dramatically higher rates than gay white men, a statistic Nunn aims to change.

The study was just getting underway, with 20 patients enrolled, when the work was shut down by the NIH in March. While Nunn’s clinic in Providence did not do any layoffs, the clinic in Mississippi — Express Personal Health — shut down, and the D.C. clinic laid off staff.

The four-month funding flip-flop could delay the results of the study by two years, Nunn said, depending on how quickly the researchers can rehire and train new staff. The researchers will also need to find a new clinic in Mississippi.

The patients — 100 each in Rhode Island, Mississippi, and D.C. — will then be followed for a year as they take Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis, or PrEP, to prevent them from contracting HIV. 

The protocol that’s being studied is the use of a patient navigator for “aggressive case management.” That person will help the patient navigate costs, insurance, transportation to the clinic, dealing with homophobia and other barriers to staying on PrEP, which can be taken as a pill or a shot.

The study’s delay means “the science is aging on the vine,” Nunn said, as new HIV prevention drugs are rolled out. “The very thing that we’re studying might very well be obsolete by the time we’re able to reenroll all of this.”

The hundreds of reinstated grants include titles that reference race and gender, such as a study of cervical cancer screening rates in Latina women, alcohol use among transgender youth, aggressive breast cancer rates in Black and Latina women, and multiple HIV/AIDs studies involving LGBTQ patients.

“Many of these grants got swept up almost incidentally by the particular language that they used,” said Peter Lurie, the president of the Center of Science in the Public Interest, which joined the lawsuit. “There was an arbitrary quality to the whole thing.”

Lurie said blocking scientists from studying racial disparities in public health outcomes will hurt all Americans, not just the people in the affected groups.

“A very high question for American public health is why these racial disparities continue to exist,” Lurie said. “We all lose in terms of questions not asked, answers not generated, and opportunities for saving lives not implemented.”

The Trump administration is not backing down from its stance on DEI, even as it restores the funding. The reinstatement letters from the NIH sent to scientists this month include a condition that they must comply with Trump’s executive order on “biological truth,” which rescinded federal recognition of transgender identity, along with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color and national origin.

Kenneth Parreno, an attorney for the plaintiffs, said he was told by Trump administration lawyers that new letters would be sent out without those terms.

But Andrew Nixon, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, said Wednesday the administration “stands by its decision to end funding for research that prioritized ideological agendas over scientific rigor and meaningful outcomes for the American people.”

“HHS is committed to ensuring that taxpayer dollars support programs rooted in evidence-based practices and gold standard science — not driven by divisive DEI mandates or gender ideology,” Nixon said in any email to the Globe.

The Trump administration’s appeal is pending before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston. A motion for a stay of Young’s decision was denied, and the Trump administration is appealing that ruling to the US Supreme Court.

The ongoing push to remove DEI from science has created fear in the scientific community, which relies on federal funding to conduct its research and make payroll.

“Scientific morale has taken a big hit,” Nunn said. “People are apprehensive.”

Indeed, major research institutions have faced mass funding cuts from the federal government since Trump took office. Brown University, the largest research institution in Rhode Island, had more than $500 million frozen until it reached an agreement with Trump on Wednesday.

In exchange for the research dollars to be released, Brown agreed not to engage in racial discrimination in admissions or university programming, and will provide access to admissions data to the federal government so it can assess compliance. The university also agreed not to perform any gender-affirming surgeries and to adopt Trump’s definitions of a male and female in the “biological truth” executive order.

While some have avoided speaking out, fearing further funding cuts, Nunn said she felt a “moral and ethical duty” to do so.

Categories Censorship, Equity, Ethics, Funding, Gender, Race, Research, Science

Prominent Scholar Cancels Class at Columbia to Protest Capitulation to Trump

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2025 //
14

Rashid Khalidi is a noteworthy Palestinian-American scholar of Middle East history and politics. Born in New York City, he was educated at Yale University and Oxford University, where he received his doctorate. He taught at several universities, mostly at Columbia University, where he spent many years and retired as the Edward Said Professor Emeritus of modern Arab studies. He is also an activist on behalf of the Palestinian cause. He recently released an open letter in opposition to Columbia’s deal with the Trump administration, which punished Columbia for tolerating anti-Semitism.

As long-time readers of this blog may remember, I was appalled by the brutal attack on peaceful Israeli civilians on October 7, 2023. I was horrified by the wanton slaughter of men, women, and children, of young people at a dance, of farm workers and Bedouins, the brutal rape of young women, and the hostage-taking. The rage of Israelis was understandable to me. I am not a Zionist but I have always supported Israel’s right to live in peace among its Arab neighbors.

I have no sympathy for terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and the others who would like to obliterate Israel and who have no interest in a negotiated settlement that produces a two-state solution. Two states living side by side, in peace.

But, it has become clear that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is not pursuing peace. The war should have ended long ago. Negotiations should have concluded, with a release of the hostages, an end to armed conflict, and plans for a new Palestinian state and a rebuilt Gaza. Instead, far-right Israeli politicians talk about controlling Gaza and establishing a permanent presence. Instead, the IDF continues to kill innocent civilians and to block the distribution of food and medical supplies.

As a Jew, I am ashamed of Netanyahu’s actions and policies. I’m also ashamed of the Israeli West Bank settlers who attack Palestinians trying to live a peaceful life.

As a Jew, I’m sick of Trump using “anti-Semitism” as a shield for his attacks on academic freedom and universities. This is a cynical ploy, coming from a man who welcomes the company of Nazi sympathizers and enjoys their support.

As a Jew, I support academic freedom, the freedom to teach and to learn, the freedom to read what one chooses, and the rights of those who hold different views to speak without fear or censorship.

That is why I am posting Rashid Khalidi’s letter.

Professor Khalidi wrote an open letter to Columbia’s acting president, published in the Guardian on Friday.

Khalidi wrote:

Dear Acting President Shipman,

I am writing you an open letter since you have seen fit to communicate the recent decisions of the board of trustees and the administration in a similar fashion.

These decisions, taken in close collaboration with the Trump administration, have made it impossible for me to teach modern Middle East history, the field of my scholarship and teaching for more than 50 years, 23 of them at Columbia. Although I have retired, I was scheduled to teach a large lecture course on this topic in the fall as a “special lecturer”, but I cannot do so under the conditions Columbia has accepted by capitulating to the Trump administration in June.

Specifically, it is impossible to teach this course (and much else) in light of Columbia’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews. Citing its potential chilling effect, a co-author of the IHRA definition, Professor Kenneth Stern, has repudiated its current uses. Yet Columbia has announced that it will serve as a guide in disciplinary proceedings.

Under this definition of antisemitism, which absurdly conflates criticism of a nation-state, Israel, and a political ideology, Zionism, with the ancient evil of Jew-hatred, it is impossible with any honesty to teach about topics such as the history of the creation of Israel, and the ongoing Palestinian Nakba, culminating in the genocide being perpetrated by Israel in Gaza with the connivance and support of the US and much of western Europe.

The Armenian genocide, the nature of the absolute monarchies and military dictatorships that blight most of the Arab world, the undemocratic theocracy in Iran, the incipient dictatorial regime in Türkiye, the fanaticism of Wahhabism: all of these are subject to detailed analysis in my course lectures and readings. However, a simple description of the discriminatory nature of Israel’s 2018 Nation State Law – which states that only the Jewish people have the right of self-determination in Israel, half of whose subjects are Palestinian – or of the apartheid nature of its control over millions of Palestinians who have been under military occupation for 58 years would be impossible in a Middle East history course under the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

It is not only faculty members’ academic freedom and freedom of speech that is infringed upon by Columbia’s capitulation to Trump’s diktat. Teaching assistants would be seriously constrained in leading discussion sections, as would students in their questions and discussions, by the constant fear that informers would snitch on them to the fearsome apparatus that Columbia has erected to punish speech critical of Israel, and to crack down on alleged discrimination – which at this moment in history almost invariably amounts simply to opposition to this genocide. Scores of students and many faculty members have been subjected to these kangaroo courts, students such as Mahmoud Khalil have been snatched from their university housing, and Columbia has now promised to render this repressive system even more draconian and opaque.

You have stated that no “red lines” have been crossed by these decisions. However, Columbia has appointed a vice-provost initially tasked with surveilling Middle Eastern studies, and it has ordained that faculty and staff must submit to “trainings” on antisemitism from the likes of the Anti-Defamation League, for whom virtually any critique of Zionism or Israel is antisemitic, and Project Shema, whose trainings link many anti-Zionist critiques to antisemitism. It has accepted an “independent” monitor of “compliance” of faculty and student behavior from a firm that in June 2025 hosted an event in honor of Israel. According to Columbia’s agreement with the Trump administration, this “Monitor will have timely access to interview all Agreement-related individuals, and visit all Agreement-related facilities, trainings, transcripts of Agreement-related meetings and disciplinary hearings, and reviews”. Classrooms are pointedly NOT excluded from possible visits from these external non academics.

The idea that the teaching, syllabuses and scholarship of some of the most prominent academics in their fields should be vetted by such a vice-provost, such “trainers” or an outside monitor from such a firm is abhorrent. It constitutes the antithesis of the academic freedom that you have disingenuously claimed will not be infringed by this shameful capitulation to the anti-intellectual forces animating the Trump administration.

I regret deeply that Columbia’s decisions have obliged me to deprive the nearly 300 students who have registered for this popular course – as many hundreds of others have done for more than two decades – of the chance to learn about the history of the modern Middle East this fall. Although I cannot do anything to compensate them fully for depriving them of the opportunity to take this course, I am planning to offer a public lecture series in New York focused on parts of this course that will be streamed and available for later viewing. Proceeds, if any, will go to Gaza’s universities, every one of which has been destroyed by Israel with US munitions, a war crime about which neither Columbia nor any other US university has seen fit to say a single word.

Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an anti-university, a gated security zone with electronic entry controls, a place of fear and loathing, where faculty and students are told from on high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions. Disgracefully, all of this is being done to cover up one of the greatest crimes of this century, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia’s leadership is now fully complicit.

– Rashid Khalidi

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Higher Education, Trump

A Purge Sweeps Away Veteran Columnists at Washington Post

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2025 //
10

Jeff Bezos, the billionaire owner of The Washington Post, decided it was time to change the political orientation of the opinion section of the newspaper. The purge actually began shortly before the 2024 election, when Bezos forbade the editorial board from publishing an endorsement. The board had already written its endorsement of Kamala Harris. It never was published.

Some members of the editorial board quit. Over 200,000 subscribers canceled their subscriptions. Some of the Post’s best-known columnists quit, including Jennifer Rubin, Eugene Robinson, and Ruth Marcus. Some of its leading reporters quit and were quickly hired by other journals, including Ashley Parker and Michael Scherer, senior national political correspondents, who left to join The Atlantic;  Tyler Pager, White House reporter, who moved to The New York Times;  Josh Dawsey, investigative politics reporter, joined The Wall Street Journal;Philip Rucker, National Editor at The Post, joined CNN as Senior VP of Editorial Strategy;  Matea Gold, managing editor, was hired by The New York Times.

The Post had a reputation for journalistic excellence and defense of democratic values. When Trump was first elected in 2016, the Post adopted the motto “Democracy dies in darkness.” The motto proclaimed its defiance of any efforts by Trump to stifle democratic values and institutions.

Nine years later, democracy is under threat, and the defiant tone of 2016 is gone. Bezos now says he wants the editorial section to champion personal liberties and economic freedom. Those vague words mean different things to different people. They are by no means defiant.

With Trump determined to monopolize power, to rewrite the Constitution or ignore it, to crush academic freedom, to break democratic norms and laws, the threats to democracy have never been greater.

Bezos wants to be Trump’s friend.

Oliver Darcy, a media critic, described the purge of the opinion section:

Over the past several days, an astonishing exodus from The Post’s opinion section has taken shape. Jonathan Capehart, Philip Bump, Catherine Rampell, Perry Bacon, and Eduardo Porterhave all—in one way or another—announced their departures. Separately, Dana Milbank and Karen Tumulty have opted to return to the newsroom. While the circumstances of their moves differ (they had been in motion prior to O’Neal’s entrance), the cumulative effect has been unmistakable: a significant brain drain inside one of the paper’s most high-profile departments.

Even Monica Hesse, a columnist focused on gender and society—whose role, I’m told, was requested by Bezos himself during the height of the #MeToo movement—is no longer on solid footing. O’Neal informed her over the last several days that her column does not align with his editorial vision, according to people familiar with the matter. Whether she will remain at The Post in some capacity or accepts a buyout remains unclear. But the fact that her column is no longer desired by management is yet another marker reflecting the shifting nature of Bezos as well as the newspaper he leads.

And it’s not just the columnists heading for the exits. Editors, too, are taking the hint. Michael Larabee, a deputy opinion editor who has worked at the newspaper for two decades, is departing, according to people familiar with the matter. Alyssa Rosenberg, who has overseen letters and community engagement, is also leaving. Stephen Stromberg, another deputy opinion editor, is said to be weighing his options, though his plans have yet to be finalized.

A spokesperson for The Post declined to comment.

Democracy dies in darkness.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Freedom of the Press
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