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Pete Hegseth Is Incompetent: Impeach Him!

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2026 //
6

Republican Congressman Thomas Massie proposed impeaching Pete Hegseth on September 15, 2026. The very next day, House Speaker Mike Johnson adjourned the House until after the November election. Massie accused Johnson of adjourning a day early to be sure his resolution of impeachment would be ignored. He said he would bring it up again during the lame-duck session. Massie won’t be a member of Congress in the next term. Trump helped to oust him because Massie demanded the full release of the Epstein files.

If Massie’s proposal fails, the Democratic majority should hold impeachment hearings. Hegseth has been a destructive force as Secretary of Defense, which he insisted be changed to Secretary of War.

Here are Massie’s proposed Articles of Impeachment:

Waging war against Iran without congressional authorization.

Disregarding laws intended to protect civilians in wartime.

Ordering unlawful killings of suspected drug traffickers at sea.

Retaliating against Senator Mark Kelly for constitutionally protected speech.

Participating in the unauthorized capture of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.

Conducting an unlawful bombing campaign in Yemen.

That’s a beginning. Hegseth should also be impeached for firing highly qualified generals and admirals without cause and thus harming the military’s leadership and readiness.

Hegseth should be impeached for denying promotions to well-qualified officers who had been recommended by review panels. A disproportionate number of those denied promotion were women or Blacks. Hegseth seems to assume that only straight white men like himself are fit to lead.

The fact is that Hegseth had no qualifications to lead the Departnent of Defense, which has a bigger budget and more personnel than any other Department. He had no managerial experience. His highest military rank was Major in the U.S. National Guard. He seemed to love humiliating generals and admirals and anyone with higher rank.

Remember when he called all the highest-ranking military leaders in the world to a meeting where he lectured them about manliness and told them that he would not tolerate military people who were overweight or had facial hair? How demeaning to his audience! They listened in stony silence.

Hegseth led a crusade against transgender members of the military and pushed them out even if they had exemplary service records and had the approval of their leaders and colleagues. Thousands of service members were expelled or left voluntarily to satisfy his contempt for them.

Hegseth is best at leading culture wars, not actual wars.

He should be impeached and removed.

His successor, of course, would have to be approved by the Democratic-led Senate so Trump would be compelled to find a better candidate.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cruelty, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Politics, Race

Vice-Admiral Fired by Hegseth Flipped South Carolina Seat–Revenge is Sweet

By dianeravitch
November 4, 2026 //
3

Nancy Lacore served in the Navy and earned the rank of Vice-Admiral. She was chief of the Naval Reserve when Hegseth purged a bunch of highly experienced admirals and generals.

Lacore moved to South Carolina and decided to run for Congress. She ran in a reliable red district, the First Congressional District, which had been held by Nancy Mace, who gave up her seat for an unsuccessful run for Governor.

Lacore’s Republican opponent was Jenny Costa Honeycutt.

The results were close; after votes were counted, Lacore led by 1 point and claimed victory. The district had been gerrymandered in 2020 to make it a safe Republican seat.

As she campaigned, Lacore focused her remarks on Hegseth’s incompetence and his role in getting us into the Iran war.

As a member of Congress, she will have the opportunity to grill Hegseth and possibly to vote for his impeachment if the majority takes that route.

Revenge is sweet.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Character, Elections, Ethics, Gender, Justice, South Carolina

House Democrats Release Report about Trump Dealings with Epstein and DOJ Suppression of His Behavior

By dianeravitch
October 28, 2026 //
3

Have you ever wondered why Trump has so little sympathy for women who say they were victims of sexual assault or rape? Why he praised Vivek’s Ramaswamy’s ad attacking Amy Acton and belittled her history of being raped by her step-father? Why Trump’s Departnebt of Justice refuses to release all the Epstein files and why those released were heavily redacted?

The House Democrats released a scathing report linking Trump to Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal activities, accusing the Department of Justice of a cover-up, and linking Trump to 11 women who claimed they were raped by him.

Julie K. Brown, the journalist at the Miami Herald who broke the Jeffrey Epstein story open after it was buried and forgotten, writes here about one of the women mentioned in the Democrats’ report.

A new sex allegation has surfaced against President Donald Trump by a former Miss Switzerland contestant who alleges that he brutally raped her during one of his beauty pageants events in 1993. 

The details of her story mirror those of other women who have accused Trump of sexual abuse and even rape. But what’s also noteworthy about this story is the gawking and grinning Trump and Epstein did at these model gatherings. They hardly seemed interested in the business of modeling; if true, it was as if they were engaged in an intrasexual competition. 

The beauty queen, Beatrice Keul, has previously said she was 24 and attending Trump’s pageant when Trump tried to attack her in a hotel room. She now says that the attack was much more violent than she previously recounted, telling the Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee that Trump raped her during his American Dream Pageant.

At the event, she also recalled meeting Epstein and that he invited her to parties that he said he arranged for Trump at Mar-a-Lago. 

“I’m Jeffrey, Don’s best friend,” Epstein told her at the pageant, according to the report.

Read the Miami Herald Story Here.

The claim is part of a 53-page report compiled by Democrats on the House judiciary committee, which on Monday called for a special prosecutor to investigate Trump’s ties to Epstein and the administration’s “cover-up” of potential sex trafficking crimes by Epstein and other men, including Trump. 

“A growing body of evidence demonstrates that Donald Trump was an active participant in Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse of young women during the mid-to-late 1990s,” the report says.

There have been more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual improprieties, and even assault. Some of their accounts, which were previously known, are also included in the Dem’s report. 

One of the women, E. Jean Carroll, successfully sued Trump for raping her in a department store changing room. A federal jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in connection with the 1996 assault in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. 

Many of the women listed in the Dems’ report have previously gone public with their accounts— and sadly, in some ways, have been forgotten. 

Maybe it is time for the public to take a new look.

Categories Character, Corruption, Cruelty, Elections, Gender, Scandals, Trump

Vivek Ramaswamy is a Vile and Disgusting Man, Unfit to be Governor of Ohio or Anywhere Else

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2026 //
7

Imagine this scenario: a candidate for Governor of a major state pays for a campaign ad that portrays his opponent as a liar. That in itself is not unusual. But suppose that candidate’s staff has located the mother of his opponent and has persuaded her (paid her?) to make an ad saying that her daughter is a liar, is possibly mentally unstable, and should not be elected Governor.

But this is what’s left out of the story. The context. The target of the ad–Dr. Amy Acton– has not spoken to her mother in more than 40 years. Between the ages of 9 or 10 and 12, she was raped by her stepfather. He was indicted by a grand jury for child rape but fled the state before trial. The candidate’s mother never divorced the man who raped her daughter. The daughter and her brother were removed from their mother’s care.

The mother is a felon, charged repeatedly for non-violent crimes like fraud, writing bad checks, and even animal cruelty.

The ad in which Dr. Amy Acton’s mother attacks her is the dirtiest trick of the midterm elections. It was funded by Vivek Ramaswamy, a billionaire who is running for governor of Ohio. Vivek must have gotten tired of hearing his Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton, talk about living in distressful conditions as a child. Someone on his staff found Acton’s birth mother, who lied on video to hurt her daughter yet again.

How painful for Amy Acton, who suffered through a horrible childhood, was estranged from her negligent mother, and now must endure the pain of being insulted by the mother who failed to intervene to stop the rapes and protect her daughter.

Amy Acton rose above her childhood abuse, went to college, then to medical school and became a doctor. Before she entered the race for Governor, she served Republican Governor Mike DeWine as Ohio’s Director of the state Department of Health.

Governor Mike DeWine urged Ramaswamy to take down the ad; so did other Republican state officials.

But Trump thought it was a terrific ad and urged Ramaswamy to keep running it. Trump tends to side with men accused of sexual assault, never with their victims. Vivek plans to spend $4 million to continue to run the campaign ad.

Trump and JD Vance saw nothing wrong with the ad attacking Acton. Vance said that critics should “stop whining” about the ad and focus on winning.

The one sure conclusion I reach is that these men don’t care if children are sexually assaulted and raped. They side with rapists and pedophiles, not their victims.

To these symbols of “manliness,” women don’t count.

These men are unfit to hold office.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Character, Cruelty, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Gender, Ohio

Why Reading Fiction Matters

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2026 //
23

Did you know that reading fiction is inportant for your social and emotional development? Did you know the the widely adopted Common Core state Standards actually diminish the reading of fiction in school? The standards describe the percentage of time that should be devoted to “informational text” and fiction. As students grow older, teachers are supposed to reduce fiction and favor informational text. Studies have shown that fiction-reading has declined, which was the intended effect of the Common Core.

This article explains why the reduction of fiction reading harms students.

Richard Sima wrote the following column for The Washington Post.

Curling up with a good book isn’t just enjoyable. It’s also good for your brain.
Reading in general — newspapers, magazines, nonfiction books — has been linked to slower rates of cognitive decline in older adults and even longer lives.

But reading fiction may have unique benefits. For example, the amount of fiction people read seems to be a better predictor of language ability than nonfiction, research finds. And, perhaps even more importantly, research has found that fiction is linked to better social cognition — our ability to think about and interact with other people — and an increased understanding of the world as a complex place.
Why? Fiction forces you to imagine a story’s world and characters. It makes you grapple with different perspectives, mentally inhabiting distinct points of view, according to Nick Buttrick, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

This can help us find “better insight into our own experiences, insight into the experiences of others who are very different from us,” said Raymond Mar, a professor of psychology at York University in Toronto, who recently wrote a review on the benefits of reading narrative fiction. “It just tends to evoke a form of reflection and contemplation, which can only be good for us.”
Why reading is actually social
Social health is important for overall health. And it turns out that reading, though often thought of as a solitary activity, can boost our social abilities.
To understand why, it helps to look at how reading shapes us as we grow.
Between ages 4 and 6, children develop a theory of mind — the ability to understand that others have different beliefs, perspectives and feelings. Studies find that children exposed to more storybooks are further along this developmental milestone than those exposed to fewer ones, Mar said.

A 2025 meta-analysis of 21 studies found that children who read more storybooks had more empathy. And there is evidence that empathy and reading go both ways. Better reading comprehension was a predictor of empathy later in life, while empathy also was a predictor of better reading ability, according to a 2024 study of more than 900 children. And adolescents who read more for fun became more social adults, a 2023 study found.
Reading fiction “presents to us a complex cognitive and emotional simulation of the social world,” which is useful in the real world, Mar said.
The power of storytelling
These benefits may be due, in part, to the power of storytelling.
Neuroimaging studies find that brain networks involved in understanding stories overlap with brain networks needed for theory of mind. This suggests that “while engaging with stories, we’re also pulling online the same kinds of brain networks that we use to understand other people,” said Mar, who wrote a review about these studies.

Other forms of storytelling, such as television and movies, may provide similar benefits, but “one of the things that you do when you read is you have to construct the world” in your head, Buttrick said. “The world is not given to you. You have to do the work of imagining.”
This extra work may amplify the benefits of engaging in a story.
Spending time with our favorite story characters may also help us feel connected. “Even if our friends aren’t around and can’t get together, we can always open up a book,” Mar said.
Reading can be a social activity, too, one that reinforces the joys and benefits of reading. Book clubs, shared reading organizations and social media communities like BookTok can connect us with other readers and add yet another layer to building our social cognitive abilities.
Talking to others about the books you read means you’re not only imagining the characters in a story, but also gaining an understanding of how other people respond to those characters, Buttrick said.

Exposure to difference
Beyond helping our social cognition, reading fiction can expand our world and our understanding of its complexities. Good authors are master observers of the human condition and can expose us to experiences outside our comfort zone.

“Reading is an encounter with difference, with a different kind of mind, a different place, a different approach to the world,” Buttrick said. “And so a lot of the places where I think reading is most interesting are in places where it smashes this up with difference as strongly as it can.”
In a 2022 study of more than 5,000 people published in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Buttrick and his colleagues found that those who grew up reading more literary fiction were more likely to become adults with more complex worldviews — with more nuance, more psychological richness and intellectual humility.

“I think if we want to live in a world in which everyone’s treated as something like an individual, knowing that the world is complex, especially socially complex, is probably really good,” he said.
But there are inherent difficulties with studying the effects of reading because “reading is a part of a person’s life,” Buttrick said. “And when people have more time, more space to read, more inclination to read, they’re not doing that at random.”
Benefits probably take time to accrue, and socioeconomic status is a strong predictor of reading behavior and ability, though a 2025 study of more than 14,000 students found that leisure reading had the largest benefits for children whose parents had less education.
“Successful art resonates with a great number of people because it captures something about being human that appeals to us and maybe that we don’t fully understand,” Mar said.

How to read more
Start slow. Mar recommends getting off your phone before going to bed and spending that time reading instead. “Maybe you have to build up to an hour,” he said. “But you can start with 15 minutes and then work to 30 minutes, then 45 in an hour before you go to sleep. It’s probably a good thing.”
Cultivate a habit. Consistency is key. “I don’t think that any one book will change a person’s life,” Buttrick said. “I think it’s the accretion of lots of books, you know, reading again and again and again, that really has an effect on how people think about the world more broadly.”
Dive into the vast diversity of reading. Different forms of reading — short stories, graphic novels and fan fiction, for example — also count. Given his busy work schedule and reading of academic journals, Mar prefers to read short stories. “It’s hard for me to commit to a book,” said Mar, who has most recently read the works of Irish writer Claire Keegan.

(Buttrick is currently reading Spencer Ackerman’s “Reign of Terror” and gearing up to read William Vollmann’s 3,000-plus-page novel, “A Table for Fortune.” And I’ve been reading through my collection of Terry Pratchett, who is a hilarious satirical writer, including “Small Gods,” which tackles religion, and “The Truth,” which is about journalism.)
Audiobooks can be beneficial, too. Buttrick said audiobooks still count as reading. In fact, the format may make certain books easier to grasp. Listening to James Joyce’s “Ulysses” not only makes it easier to understand and funnier, but also makes “you realize how much of it is just a song,” Buttrick said.
Remember that reading should be enjoyable. “I don’t think of reading as a monastic experience that you have to do alone at night in order to grow as a person,” Buttrick said. Lean into what you enjoy.

Make it social. Book clubs are excellent and flourishing. It’s nice to have an accountability partner and others with whom to share perspectives, Buttrick said.
Read unselfconsciously. Reading is for enjoyment. “A lot of times people seem embarrassed about the things that they’ve been reading,” Mar said. But “there’s nothing to be embarrassed about whatever you’re reading.”
Do you have a question about human behavior or neuroscience? Email BrainMatters@washpost.com and we may answer it in a future column.

Richard Sima is a neuroscientist turned award-winning science journalist who writes the “Brain Matters” column about mental health and why we do, think and feel the things we do.

Categories Cerf, Chris, Character, Charter Schools, Education Reform

Mary Trump: Sleepy Donald Lies the Way Other People Breathe

By dianeravitch
October 18, 2026 //
3

Mary L. Trump is Donald Trump’s niece, the daughter of his late older brother. She knows him well. She is a trained psychologist. She has beeen earning the world about him since early in his first term. It’s safe to say that she loathes Uncle Donald.

She wrote today:

Hello, and welcome to this week’s episode of Trump Trolls Trump. It has been 635 interminable days since Inauguration Day, January 20th, 2025. But there’s good news. The midterm elections are just 17 days away. So first up, make sure your voter registration is up to date. And if you can vote early, please do so. As always, we are here to ridicule and mock mercilessly this inept, corrupt, and dangerous regime.

Let’s dive right in with a truism that has become increasingly difficult to deny. Donald lies like most people breathe. In fact, I think in some cases he lies more fluently than I breathe. It’s second nature to him at this point, or maybe it’s just his nature.

Sometimes those lies get us into serious trouble. Earlier we saw Donald promising, as he has done time and time and time again, that he would bring energy prices down by 50 percent. That hasn’t happened. And actually the very opposite has happened because his war on Iran, his war of choice, has helped drive energy prices up across the board.

I think it’s worth remembering that Donald lied about this too, because back in 2024 when he was asking Americans to put him back in the White House, which sadly 78 million of us thought was a good idea, this is what he had to say.

We will expel the war mongers from our government. Look at Trump. Just look at this guy. He’s going to go to war. He’s going to take us. No, no. Look at me. I’m the one that kept us out of war. I’m the only president that didn’t start a war. I didn’t start a war. Started no war. I was the first president in decades who started no new war. There are wars all over. He said, “Bring back Trump. It’ll all end. It all ended. We had no problem. I’m going to keep you out of wars. I kept you out of wars. We had no wars with Donald Trump as your president. Remember when crooked Hillary Clinton used to say, “He’s going to get us into a war. Look at him. Look at his rhetoric.” I said, “No, my rhetoric’s going to keep us out of wars.

Really? Threatening genocide is not going to keep us out of wars. Oh, wait a second. He’s threatening genocide against the country he went to war with, an unprovoked war of choice. No one knows how long this war is going to last because he keeps lying about that too. In fact, he told us it would be a matter of days or a couple of weeks. It’s been over six months.

The truth of the matter is, although we are actively still at war with Iran, a war that is expanding because Donald has completely lost control of it, we lost simply by getting involved. Back in June, Vice President Baby JD Vance told us that a deal with Iran was just around the corner. So it isn’t just Donald who is lying to our faces about how things are going. This is Vance in an interview with Robert Costa on CBS’s Sunday morning recorded on June 9th.

Right now, I feel that we are in a position to get a deal that is good for the United States economically and that really does deal with the Iranian nuclear program, not just now, not just while Donald Trump is president, but for the long term, to where my kids can say when they’re adults, Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon. That’s the goal of the policy, and I think we’re very close to achieving that goal, but we still got some wood to chop and we’re going to keep doing it. You say very close. How soon could the deal happen before the midterm elections? Oh, absolutely. No, I think we’re going to know a lot before the midterm elections. Look, I think that the deal could happen in the next week, but the deal could also happen months from now.

Well, it’s not like there’s much difference between a week and months from now. Before the midterm elections though, absolutely, which as I mentioned, are only 17 days away. Also, remember the goal of this war is to make sure that Iran doesn’t have nuclear capability. And if that’s really what Donald and his ilk were interested in, then guess what he shouldn’t have done? Rip up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or the Iran nuclear deal, which actually had Iran agreeing not to develop nuclear weapon capability. These guys cannot win for losing.

Speaking of which, back in April, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott appeared on Fox Business with Maria Bartiromo. Remember her? I mean, I know she is much missed and lamented, but Scott’s message was simple. Sure, the war is raging kind of out of control. Sure, prices are rising, but don’t worry your pretty little heads about that. Everything’s on track. And we of course have Donald to thank for all of that. Scott had another message for the American people though, and this is what it was.

Great news, by the way. The fact of the matter is that all of the cylinders are kicking. It is good news. You can even feel in our environment how good things are getting. Gas prices continue to come down, which means that your groceries will come down a little bit as well. We’ve got a lot of good signs in the economy. We just need to continue to execute and have confidence in the choices the American people have made by making President Trump their president and keeping Republican majorities in both the House and the Senate. Let me just say for the average person in the country, President Trump loves you.

Well, I don’t know. Does he? Considering he doesn’t know what love is, I find that highly suspect and untrue. Gas prices are coming down, aren’t they? Well, no, they’re not, because Brent crude oil is now over 105 dollars a barrel, which translates to diesel, the stuff that trucks need to get around, at 6.27 dollars a gallon. So I don’t think Donald loves you. The economy is not doing well.

As I mentioned, with the midterms this close, I can’t wait until I can actually say the midterms are two weeks away. But Donald, he’s not quite taking in what’s happening. How does he think things are doing? How does he think he’s doing? Because really, that’s the only thing he’s concerned about. Well, let me ask you this question. If Donald were asked to grade his own performance on the economy, what grade do you think he would give himself in the midst of economic catastrophe? 

We’re doing an unbelievable job. Costs are coming way down. I inherited very, very high costs and they’re all coming down now. The food, the groceries, it’s all coming down. We’ve done a great job. I think we should be giving an A plus on the economy, but I think it’s coming. People are starting to talk about it.

Interviewer: I do want to talk about the economy, sir, here at home, and I wonder what grade you would give.

A plus, Donald responds.

A plus, the interviewer repeats.

Yeah. A plus, plus, plus, plus, plus, Donald says.

Well, it makes sense that he would give himself a grade that doesn’t exist. Now, Donald is laser focused on the needs of the American people. He’s working day and night to make sure that our lives are improved. I mean, you can tell by the fact that crews are working around the clock to get the ballroom built. That’s not making my life better. He’s making oil deals with Russia to help refill their much depleted coffers to aid them in attacking our ally Ukraine. That’s definitely not making my life better.

Unfortunately though, according to him and his enablers, we’re still dealing with the damage Joe Biden left behind. Donald has a few words for his predecessor. Donald has told us that he is working his considerable ass off. 

He has one ability I don’t have. He sleeps. He can sleep. This guy goes on a beach and he lays down on one of those beach chairs. They weigh six ounces and he can’t lift it, but he has an ability to fall asleep while on camera. He can lie down on one of those things and in minutes, he’s stone cold out. How does he do it? And he’s got cameras because he’s in prison, so they have cameras on him. And then they show him sleeping on the beach. You’ll never see me sleeping in front of camera. I have to tell you, he’s a different guy. He looks different than he used to. He acts different than he used to. He’s even slower than he used to be. And I wouldn’t say he’s at the top of his game. Would you think their message is Sleepy Joe because he’s not all there? Right now, I think I’m sharper than I was 25 years ago, but who the hell does? You’ll never see me sleeping in front of Joe.

I mean, that’s the reaction to listening to Donald talk about himself because I have never seen a sleepier person. That hypersomnia is not a good thing, but it’s so much nicer when he’s sleeping, isn’t it? Again, as we’ve talked about before, Donald is a master of projection, and clearly when he’s talking about Sleepy Joe Biden, he’s talking about himself because I have never met such a hypersomnolent person in my life. Although to be fair, sleepy Donald is my favorite mode of Donald.

I want to turn now to Donald’s relentless crusade against corruption. Wait a minute, sorry. Is crusade a synonym for embrace? Embrace of corruption? Well, let’s find out.

We know that Baby JD Vance is in charge of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud, which is fabulous. This was established by executive order back in March. The only thing that surprised me about that is that he didn’t ask Elon Musk or Ken Paxton to head that task force, but we’re talking about criminals here, hardened criminals, and Donald, as is his want, is looking at them very strongly, which is a phrase I still cannot make sense of. I do not know what it means to look at something very strongly. I think Superman was able to do that, but he had laser beams coming out of his eyes.

Now, Donald explains exactly what he has done to crack down on criminality. Before you get excited, it does not mean he’s had himself arrested. As I listen to him describe these criminals, I have a lingering question. You may have the same one, here is what he said:

91 percent of the crime in Washington DC, as an example, was caused by 2.1 percent of the population. These are many career criminals, sick people, mental problems.

Okay. I mean, I know DC’s a small town, but I didn’t think it was so small that Donald comprised 2.1 percent of the population. Oh wait, but it’s not just him. He has a lot of co-conspirators out there. If you add in all of his co-conspirators, then maybe yes, those hardened career criminals, the Vances and the Hegseths and the Musks and the Bessents and all of them might indeed make up 2.1 percent of the DC population, and they are absolutely committing over 90 percent of the crime there.

As we approach the midterms, please, please make sure your voter registration is up to date and know where your polling location is. Check both of those things repeatedly because people can get struck off the voter rolls without their knowing it right before the election, and sometimes polling places change. Republicans are going to pull out all the stops, so we need to stay on top of this.

You don’t want any surprises when you go to vote on election day if you vote in person. A lot of states offer early voting, so check your options and if you can vote early, please do so. I am one of those people. I’m old school. I like to go vote on election day, but vote early, vote by mail in states where you still think that’s the safe thing to do.

And when you step into that voting booth, remember how we got here and who brought us to this very dark time in our history. Encourage other people to vote and remind them that Donald himself said he wants us to pretend he’s on the ballot. So that’s very clear. Vote Democratic up and down the ballot.

“I can always say that the next president will get a lot of credit for what I’ve done. Please remember it was me, not them,” Donald says.

Oh, we will remember. We will remember. And as we’re remembering, we are going to tear down everything on the planet that has your name on it.

Thank you so much for joining us for Trump Trolls Trump week 91. Remember, mockery is our superpower, and we will be here every single week to call out the hypocrisy, the ineptitude, and the outright corruption of this incredibly dangerous and misguided regime. 

Go vote. 

Categories Character, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Lies, Trump

Farewell to an Icon: Dolly Parton Reminds Us That There is Goodness in the World

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2026 //
11

The death of Dolly Parton was a blow to millions of people who never met her but loved her for her spirit, her kindness, her humor, and of course, her music.

In a time of meanness, she was steadfastly kind.

She was born into dire poverty, one of 12 children in a one-room house. She was never bitter or angry about her meager beginnings. She marveled at where her talent took her.

Over the course of her long career, she amassed a huge fortune but she did not aspire to be a billionaire. She was a philanthropist. She gave her money away, unlike Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and the Trump family. Is there a hospital or library or public space named for them because of their generosity? None that I know of. People will remember Dolly for her generosity; the others and their ilk will be remembered for their avarice.

She was not political but she spoke up for Black Lives Matter and for LGBT people. When she was interviewed by Johnny Carson in 1977, she spoke up for LGBT people in her straightforward way. She loved drag queens; she knew that they liked to mimic her style, her hair, her dress. She said it was God’s role to judge, not ours. Hers was the voice of love and compassion.

Peter Greene wrote about Dolly here:

I wrote this four years ago when the twins aged out of her Imagination Library, one of the best things any wealthy person ever did. How cramped and meager some of our leaders look in comparison.

After five great years, the Board of Directors has aged out of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library.
I have been plugging this program for years (my first post was in 2014, back before the Board of Directors was even a sparkle in our eyes). Parton has engineered putting a book a month into the hands of families all across the country–we’re talking (currently) 184 million books in millions of households meeting no requirement other than they have a child between the ages of born and five. It costs the family nothing.

The quality of the books is great. Over the years we have received classics, newer books, books featuring every sort of family, every sort of kid. They are filled with wonder, kindness, beauty, excitement. This is one of the best examples of thoughtful, useful, not-trying-to-take-over-a-government function philanthropy you’ll find.

The program launched in 1995 in Sevier County, and it grew quickly. By 2006, when the Washington Post wrote about it, the program had spread to 471 communities in 41 states. In 2011 it launched in Scotland, and it can now be found in the UK, Australia, and Canada. The site says that 706,468 US kids are currently signed up. It’s still fairly simple. Some combination of sponsors (some private, some government, depending on the locale) help with the financing (the cost is roughly $27 per child per year) and the Foundation delivers the books, each in its own poly bag with the child’s name on it (consider the power of a child, even a small one, receiving a book that is theirs, addressed to them, by name).

I am not, I’ll confess, a huge fan of Parton’s music, but she is the very best example of what good a person can do with their giant pile of money you can find. Not trying to shape the world to her own requirements, not trying to buy a good name, not trying to make herself the unelected boss of whatever. And the little PR that Imagination Library does is to get itself out into the hands of students, not to raise Parton’s profile. She doesn’t pay people to promote it, and it has spread largely through word of mouth or through the local organizations that co-sponsor it and help make the connections to local families.

Once a month, the boys received a book, addressed to them personally. We love books in this house, and the arrival of the monthly “book from Dolly” was an event. We will miss it.

The last book to arrive is Kindergarten, Here I Come, and the first page inside the front cover is a letter from Parton, that I’ll quote in part:

My, how time flies. It seems only yesterday when your family and friends read you your first story. You were just a baby. Now you’re five years old and about to go to school. How exciting!

This may be your last book from my Imagination Library but you have to promise me you will keep on reading…Every book is a treasure and every time you open one you will meet new friends and take wonderful journeys to magical places.

I hope you have a great time in school. I bet your school will even have a library where you can check out books. You and all your friends are very special. There is no limit to what you can do or how far you can go.

The board of directors examines a position paper

Her signature, a simple Dolly, is at the end. The first time we read the message together I was apparently having a bad allergy day.

None of the rich amateurs who want to change the face of education are doing anything of this value on this scale–both intensely personal and yet broadly across the globe. I mean, imagine if Bill Gates had said, “I want to give every child a book” instead of “I want to give every child a test.”

And if there is a tiny human in your life, and they aren’t signed up, go to the program website and see if it’s operating in your neighborhood, and if so, then sign up that child.

What a fabulous, generous, powerful program. God bless Dolly Parton. We are going to miss here at this house.

Categories Character, Creativity, Ethics, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Goodness, Joy, Love

Katie Miller Betrays Her Friend, Dr. Anthony Fauci

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2026 //
3

Andrew Eggers of The Bulwark writes here about the close connection between Katie Miller, wife of Trump confidant Steven Miller, and Dr. Anthony Fauci. They worked together closely during the pandemic. They were friends. But it is longer wise for Katie to befriend Dr. Fauci. In MAGAland, he is the Devil incarnate.

Eggers writes,

By now you’ve probably read plenty about congressional Republicans’ latest struggle session against Anthony Fauci—the mean-spirited publication of his COVID-era diary, the barrage of ridiculous and misleading questions at his Senate hearing, the crude spectacle of HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tweeting a photoshopped image of himself clapping the doctor in handcuffs.

Yesterday, though, my attention was captured by a far smaller, sadder side plot in the Fauci affair spotlighted by NOTUS—one involving Katie Miller.

During Trump’s first term, Miller was a senior aide to Vice President Mike Pence, and therefore a close colleague of Fauci’s on the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force, which Pence chaired.

From his journal entries, it’s clear that Fauci quickly took a liking to Miller, whom he viewed as a bright young colleague and for whom he developed an almost grandfatherly affection. “Katie Miller is great (tough, smart, but great),” he wrote in March 2020. “Katie Miller and I laugh at each other in the Sit Room,” he wrote two months later.

The work of grappling with a brand new, barely understood pandemic was stressful, both professionally and personally—after all, the task force could get the virus too. At several points, Miller leaned on Fauci for medical advice. “I am calling Katie frequently to check on her couple times per day,” Fauci wrote after Miller tested positive for COVID in May 2020. “She is very anxious about getting very ill since she is 10 weeks pregnant. Tonight she had an anxiety reaction. I calmed her over the phone.”

This was still awfully early days in the pandemic, when little was yet known about the relative risks COVID presented to various groups. Think of how genuinely terror-stricken Miller must have been. Think of how reassuring it must have been to have America’s top infectious-disease expert on hand not just to advise her, but to show personal concern for her physical and mental health. Miller, NOTUS reports, went back to Fauci repeatedly for medical advice throughout the pandemic: later that year when her husband tested positive for COVID, and again when their newborn experienced an unrelated medical episode. In the latter instance, Fauci records, he called the baby’s doctors directly to ensure she was getting good care.

Miller purports to feel differently now. “Dr. Fauci was neither my friend nor my doctor, but a work colleague who weaponized my pregnancy and child for his gain to aggrandize himself,” she wrote on X yesterday. “As they say, keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I can say with certainty after witnessing his con close up this man should be in prison. Justice for the American People.”

Miller’s claim here—that she was only relying on Fauci’s pro bono medical advice to “keep her enemies closer”—beggars belief. Nor does her explanation of his behavior make a bit of sense: Apparently, he “weaponized [her] pregnancy and child” to “aggrandize himself” by . . . showing concern for her well-being and going out of his way to help her out from time to time. And he kept it all private even as the Millers and the rest of the Trump movement turned him into a bogeyman. Sinister!

Share this story with someone who opposes MAGA, or just likes a good character drama.

Still, it’s easy to see why Miller is twisting herself in these sorts of knots. Fauci has become one of the MAGAsphere’s chief villains, while she’s become one of its influencers, with hundreds of thousands of followers and an odd soft-focus podcast aimed at MAGA moms. The ecosystem she’s chosen to live in is one dominated by political paranoia and intramural accusations of secret disloyalty. Fauci’s diary drop must have been a nasty shock. What if some clout-chasing rabble-rouser used it to try to expose her as some sort of Deep State plant? Better to get ahead of the accusations by cooking up some ridiculous “cover story” for associating with Fauci—and to call for his jailing too, just to be on the safe side.

Now, of course, Miller does a lot of things that I personally find a little difficult to wrap my head around. This, after all, is a woman who has tried to get the FBI to criminally investigate her neighbors. This is a woman who once lost her cool in a TV debate and started threatening her interlocutor with deportation. This is a woman who married Stephen Miller.

Still, it’s interesting to see a human side of Miller emerge in Fauci’s diary entries—and incredibly depressing to see her treat that human side as a four-alarm PR fire. What a bummer way to make a living, swimming in this revolting internet ecosystem. Hard to imagine she’s having a lot of fun.

Categories Character, Cruelty, Ethics, Health, Medicine, Science

Steve Schmidt on the Passing of Lindsey Graham

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2026 //
3

Steve Schmidt is a political strategist who worked for the campaigns of Republicans such as George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and John McCain.

Disgusted by Trump, he was one of the founders of the Lincoln project, an organization of anti-Trump Republicans. He left the Republican Party in 2018. In December 2020, he switched his party registration to Democratic. He writes one of the most popular blogs on Substack.

He wrote about Lindsey Graham on his Substack blog The Warning:

Lindsey Graham was a lonely and unprincipled man who betrayed his country for power and his decency for attention.

Let it be known for all time that he knew exactly what Donald Trump was from the very beginning, and chose him over his country:

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed … and we will deserve it.”

“I believe Donald Trump would be an absolute, utter disaster for the Republican Party, destroy conservatism as we know it.”

“We would get wiped out and it would take generations to overcome a Trump candidacy.”

“Donald Trump is not going to be the nominee of the Republican party. If he is, that’s the end of the Republican Party.”

“Trump is an interloper and a demagogue of the greatest proportion.”

When Donald Trump attacked America, and tried to burn down the republic built by Washington, saved by Lincoln and redeemed by King, he was aided by Lindsey Graham who supported the lies, dismissed the insanity and sought personal gain from it all.

Lindsey Graham was a pathetic man, a true cynic and a faithless servant of the Constitution.

He was a simple man to understand and a tragic one. He lacked a moral core and any sense of right and wrong. The great empty spaces of his life were filled with an insatiable need for “relevance.” He found it as a cast member in the most malignant reality show ever made.

Let there be no confusion about what Lindsey Graham was. There was no complexity to the man, nor much in the way to plumb and analyze about his journey to the bottom of the Trump sewer.

Lindsey Graham lived his life as a pilot fish, a parasitic sucker fish hovering about larger predators. He was a sidekick and the hollowest of hollow men. Here is what I once shared with Rolling Stone:

“People try to analyze Lindsey through the prism of the manifest inconsistencies that exist between things that he used to believe and what he’s doing now. The way to understand him is to look at what’s consistent. And essentially what he is in American politics is what, in the aquatic world, would be a pilot fish: a smaller fish that hovers about a larger predator, like a shark, living off of its detritus. That’s Lindsey. And when he swam around the McCain shark, broadly viewed as a virtuous and good shark, Lindsey took on the patina of virtue. But wherever the apex shark is, you find the Lindsey fish hovering about, and Trump’s the newest shark in the sea. Lindsey has a real draw to power — but he’s found it unattainable on his own merits.”

Let there never be any confusion over the choice Lindsey Graham made.

He chose Trump over his friend.

He chose Trump over his country.

He chose Trump over his duty.

He chose Trump over his oath.

Now he’s dead, and Trump is his rotten legacy — and in that, he won’t be alone.

In the end he made an adjudicated rapist laugh and played a lot of golf with him.

He was a warmonger and the architect of a lost war against Iran.

Lindsey Graham helped Trump divide America and break our alliances, ideals and traditions.

He was no patriot.

Lindsey Graham made his choice.

The high court of history will pass a brutal judgement about a man who knew better, but chose worse.

I won’t mourn Lindsey Graham’s death, but rather the country he helped break.

He was a most contemptible man.

Categories Character

Andy Borowitz on the Passing of Lindsey Graham

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2026 //
3

Andy Borowitz is one of the nation’s most notable humorists. For years, he wrote for The New Yorker. Now, he writes on Substack, where this commentary was posted.

I remember when Senator Graham was Senator John McCain’s best friend. John McCain was a true war hero. He was shot down over Hanoi, and he spent five years as a prisoner of war. He was offered the chance to get an early release, but he said he wouldn’t leave until the other POWs were freed. Graham adored him until he was dead, then attached himself to Trump. Trump mocked McCain, and said McCain was not a hero because he got captured. This from a man who dodged the draft because of “bone spurs.” And Graham forgot his friend.

A Fact-based Lindsey Graham Obituary

Like many Americans, I mourn the sudden passing of Lindsey Graham. I had hoped he would live long enough to be tried for treason.

Let me define my terms. A true traitor collaborates with the enemy despite knowing better. For that reason, someone like Sen. Tommy Tuberville could never be considered a traitor, because he knows nothing.

And then there’s Lindsey.

For the better part of a decade, the senior senator from South Carolina was enmeshed in an on-again, off-again—but mainly on-again—bromance with Donald J. Trump.

It began when both men were running for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. At the time, Graham had some pretty harsh words for his GOP rival.

“There’s only one way to make America great again,” he said. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”

Snap! But Lindsey was just warming up. He’d go on to call Trump “crazy,” “a jackass,” and “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot” who “shouldn’t be commander-in-chief.”

“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” he said, “and we will deserve it.” Why was he so sure that Trump would lose? “Donald Trump is the most unelectable Republican I’ve seen in my lifetime,” he said.

As for Trump’s mental health, Lindsey offered this succinct diagnosis: “I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy.”

Just one year later, when the crazy xenophobic jackass was chain-slurping Diet Cokes in the Oval Office, Graham decided to revise that assessment somewhat.

“What concerns me about the American press is this endless, endless attempt to label the guy as some kind of kook not fit to be president,” he told CNN.

This sort of flip-flop worked so much better before the invention of Google. But Lindsey seemed to hope that by piling praise on the man he once wished would go to hell, we’d forget about all that mean stuff he’d said before. By 2018, Graham was bizarrely claiming that Trump “deserves the Nobel Peace Prize and then some.”

In his quest to suck up to Trump as strenuously as possible, Graham hurled himself into self-abasement as if it were an extreme sport. When Trump relentlessly insulted the memory of John McCain—purportedly Graham’s best friend when they were Senate colleagues—Lindsey responded with astonishing nonchalance.

“I don’t like what he says about John McCain,” Graham told Bloomberg. “But when we play golf, it’s fun.”

Yes, Lindsey apparently lost his moral compass somewhere in the sand trap of the Trump National Golf Club. That’s why it was so striking when he seemed to express genuine outrage on the floor of the Senate after Trump incited the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

“Trump and I… we’ve had a hell of a journey,” he said. “I hate it to end this way. Oh my god, I hate it… but today, all I can say is ‘Count me out. Enough is enough.’”

Alas, Lindsey’s appearance on the right side of history turned out to be a head-fake, as his hell of a journey with the insurrectionist-in-chief was far from over. Like his fellow quisling, Mitch McConnell, Graham voted to acquit Trump in his second impeachment trial. And once it became clear that launching a coup against the US government wasn’t a deal-breaker for 99 percent of the GOP, Lindsey was hitting the links with the wannabe junta leader once more.

“I’m trying to keep a relationship with him after the riot,” he told Axios two months after January 6. “I still consider him a friend. What happened was a dark day in American history. And we’re going to move forward.”

Lindsey just couldn’t quit him.

All of the events I’ve recounted thus far are sufficient to qualify Graham as a traitor. His defenders, though, might raise a mitigating factor: his hawkish stance against the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin.

In this regard, Graham was always on the same page as his Senate pal McCain. Responding to George W. Bush’s gullible assessment of the murderous Russian (”I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straightforward and trustworthy. We had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul; a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country.”), McCain quipped, “I looked in Mr. Putin’s eyes and I saw three letters—a K, a G and B.”

But Graham might have topped McCain in his detestation of Putin. Calling him a “war criminal” and “not a legitimate leader,” in 2022 he proposed assassination as the swiftest way to end the war in Ukraine: “I just want him to go…I wish somebody had taken Hitler out in the ‘30s.”

When the International Criminal Court, in a somewhat less draconian measure, issued an arrest warrant for Putin in 2023, Lindsey hailed the decision: “To forgive and forget Putin’s war crimes—that are occurring on an industrial scale—would irrevocably damage the Rule of Law-based world order established at the end World War II.”

That “Rule of Law-based world order” was shredded in the Oval Office last year when Trump and JD Vance disgracefully ganged up on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for having the audacity to suggest that Putin might not be a trustworthy fellow. Aware of Graham’s longstanding hatred of the man he called a war criminal, I eagerly awaited his rousing statement of support for Zelenskyy.

Instead, Lindsey told reporters, “What I saw in the Oval Office was disrespectful, and I don’t know if we could ever do business with Zelensky again… I have never been more proud of the president. I was very proud of JD Vance standing up for our country.”

That kind of statement made many people wish Lindsey would go to hell. Done.

Categories Accountability, Character, Democracy, Elections, Ethics
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