The Trump administration used a threat to try to cow leading universities to abandon their independence. The administration called their offer a “Compact,” but in reality it was an offer of protection money. The old way of the Mafia: “Pay us and we will make sure no one breaks your windows or vandalizes your store.”
M.I.T. became the first university to reject an agreement that would trade support for the Trump administration’s higher education agenda in exchange for favorable treatment.
The proposal, called the “Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education,” was sent to nine universities and would require colleges to cap international student enrollment, freeze tuition for five years, adhere to definitions of gender and prohibit anything that would “belittle” conservative ideas.
In a letter on Friday to the Trump administration, M.I.T.’s president, Sally Kornbluth, wrote that the university has already freely met or exceeded many of the standards outlined in the proposal, but that she disagrees with other requirements it demands, including those that would restrict free expression.
“Fundamentally, the premise of the document is inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding should be based on scientific merit alone,” Dr. Kornbluth wrote.
A White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, said in a statement that “any university that refuses this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform higher education isn’t serving its students or their parents — they’re bowing to radical, left-wing bureaucrats.”
“The best science can’t thrive in institutions that have abandoned merit, free inquiry, and the pursuit of truth,” she added. “President Trump encourages universities to join us in restoring academic excellence and common sense policies.”
The White House has said it wants responses from the universities by Oct. 20. The other eight colleges are the University of Arizona, Brown University, Dartmouth College, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Southern California, the University of Texas, Vanderbilt University and the University of Virginia.
The compacts have been deeply unpopular among faculty members, who view them as yet another political intrusion into the affairs of academia. They argue that the Trump administration is threatening the independence of American higher education by cutting hundreds of millions of dollars in research funding to force top universities to adopt its agenda.
In the post at 9 a.m. today, two scholars of racism and equity explained that Trump’s scrubbing of museums, national parks, and other federal facilities is an attempt to capture control of the culture and erase the place of Blacks, women, and anyone else who is not a straight white male.
But, as scholar Julian Vasquez Heilig writes here, Trump and his commissariat cannot control the popular culture. In time, we can hope, his mean-spirited efforts to revise history will become a bad joke, a cruel joke, a stupid joke. He and all those who carry out his orders will become a public laughing stock.
Vasquez Heilig writes on his blog Cloaking Inequity:
The Super Bowl has always been more than football. It is a ritual, a spectacle, a national performance. It’s where America tells the world who it thinks it is, and who it wants to be. Which is why the announcement that Bad Bunny will host the halftime show is far more significant than a musical lineup change. It’s a cultural earthquake.
I remember the first time I heard Bad Bunny. It was December 6, 2019, at La Concha Hotel in San Juan. In the downstairs lounge, the beat of reggaetón was shaking the walls, and I pulled out Shazam to figure out what it was. The song was Vete. The room was electric, filled with Puerto Ricans singing every word in Spanish, unapologetically themselves. That night, it hit me: Bad Bunny was not just making music in San Juan, he was celebrating culture. He wasn’t crossing over into the mainstream by adapting; he was dragging the mainstream toward him. He refused to translate, refused to dilute, and now he is everywhere—on playlists, on charts, SNL, in crowded places from San Juan to New York to Madrid.
That’s why his Super Bowl moment matters so much. It is not just a performance, it is the culmination of a global movement that began in places like that basement lounge in Puerto Rico. What felt local then is now universal. Bad Bunny’s rise shows how culture flows upward, from the margins to the center, from overlooked communities to the biggest stage in the world. For millions of us, this is affirmation. For the right wing, it is destabilization. Because when the halftime show belongs to Bad Bunny, it proves that America is no longer just what they imagine it to be. It is bigger, louder, and more diverse than great again nostalgia can contain.
Jay-Z, Kendrick Lamar, and the New Halftime Era
The NFL’s halftime choices haven’t shifted by accident. When the league came under fire for its treatment of Colin Kaepernick and broader criticisms about racial injustice, it needed credibility. Enter Jay-Z and Roc Nation. The NFL tapped him to advise and help curate halftime shows.
The results have been undeniable. Kendrick Lamar’s halftime performance last year was a watershed moment—unapologetically Black, politically charged, and culturally defining. That performance sparked widespread discussion, and even a blog post I wrote about it entitled “TV Off”: What Kendrick Lamar Was Really Saying at the Super Bowl drew more than 100,000 readers in just a few days. Clearly, the hunger to talk about representation and ownership of the halftime stage is real.
Now with Bad Bunny taking the baton, the NFL is making another cultural statement, whether it fully realizes it or not (I think it does). The league’s biggest platform is no longer reserved for the safe, predictable acts of yesterday. It’s becoming a stage where hip hop, reggaeton, and the voices of communities once marginalized are front and center.
Bad Bunny and the Right’s Panic
For decades, the halftime show was dominated by choices that reinforced a narrow image of America: classic rock icons, country stars, or pop acts who wouldn’t ruffle feathers but had wardrobe malfunctions. Bad Bunny shatters that mold. His performance won’t be a side act, it is the show. Spanish won’t be a novelty; it will be central.
This is exactly why the right wing panics. To them, football Sundays and Super Bowls have long been “their” cultural territory. They’ve wrapped the game in patriotic rituals, military flyovers, and moments of silence for conservative heroes. When someone like Bad Bunny steps into the spotlight, it disrupts their monopoly. It forces a new definition of America—one that is multilingual, multicultural, and undeniably Latino. That’s what makes his halftime role so radical: after focusing on the Black experience with Kendrick, this year signals that Latino identity is no longer peripheral. It’s woven into the fabric of America’s biggest stage.
Why ICE Wants to Loom Over the Moment
It might sound absurd that ICE wants to connect itself to the Super Bowl halftime show, but immigration enforcement has always thrived in the shadows of visibility. When Latino joy and success are celebrated so publicly, ICE apparently feels the need to remind America of its terrorizing power.
Bad Bunny performing at the Super Bowl is a triumph of belonging. But ICE’s assaults, raids, arrests, kangaroo courts, and deportations are constant reminders that belonging is conditional on politics. While millions watch a Puerto Rican superstar, ICE agents are throwing mothers and journalists to the ground, spraying pepper liquid into the eyes of Americans who dare to ask questions, arresting elected politicians at the behest of Washington politicians after turning off their body cameras, and authorized by the Supreme Court to detain people simply for looking Latino and poor.
The contradiction is sharp: on the world’s stage, Latino identity is being widely celebrated; on America’s streets, it’s criminalized. ICE doesn’t need to show up at the stadium—it already shows up in our daily life. Its existence ensures that even at moments of cultural triumph, there’s a purposeful shadow of fear and terroristic threats.
Danica Patrick’s Tone-Deaf Criticism
And then, inevitably, a silly critic emerges from the sidelines. This time it’s Danica Patrick, who dismissed Bad Bunny’s hosting role. Her comments were more than unhelpful, they were stupid.
Patrick should know better. She carved her own career by getting along in a male-dominated sport, where every step forward was a battle for representation. She knows the symbolic weight of breaking barriers. For her to turn around and mock or diminish Bad Bunny’s presence is hypocritical at best, willfully ignorant at worst.
Bad Bunny isn’t there to tick a diversity box, he’s there because he is one of the most influential artists alive— maybe THE most. The incredible success of his shows that he did for his most recent album this past summer ONLY in Puerto Rico is proof that the center of American culture is shifting. Criticizing that isn’t just a matter of taste. It’s a refusal to accept reality.
The Lions, Charlie Kirk, and Who Gets Tribute
The battle over cultural ownership in America doesn’t stop at the Super Bowl. It plays out every Sunday on the NFL field. When conservative commentator Charlie Kirk was assassinated, the league encouraged teams to hold moments of silence in his honor. Most complied. But the Detroit Lions, along with a few other teams, did not.
That decision matters. It was a quiet but deliberate act of boundary-setting, a refusal to let every NFL broadcast become a political ritual sanctifying right-wing political ideology. By declining the tribute, the Lions reminded us that not every form of patriotism must come prepackaged with conservative allegiance. It wasn’t loud or defiant. It was subtle and deeply symbolic. Sometimes resistance isn’t what you do, it’s what you decline to perform and participate.
The Lions’ restraint connects to the same cultural realignment symbolized by Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl performance. Both moments reject the idea that American culture belongs to a single tribe. They push back against the notion that sports, music, or patriotism must orbit one political pole. They insist, instead, that culture belongs to everyone, not just the loudest or the angriest voices claiming to defend it.
The Double Standard of Protest
Of course, this tension between culture, power, and dissent has long been visible in the NFL. When Colin Kaepernick knelt during the national anthem to protest police brutality, he was branded a traitor by many of the same voices now demanding “respect” for Charlie Kirk. His silent, dignified act of conscience was recast as an attack on America itself.
The outrage was never really about the flag. It was about control. It was about who is allowed to define what counts as “patriotic.” Kaepernick’s kneeling was an act of moral courage, but it exposed how fragile America’s cultural gatekeepers truly are when confronted with truth. They could not tolerate a protest that revealed their own comfort with injustice and brutality.
Meanwhile, state violence continues daily without the same moral outrage from the right-wing. ICE officers violently throw mothers and journalists to the ground without cause. They pepper-spray citizens in their eyeballs for daring to ask questions in a conversation. They arrest and detain American citizens in raids not for crimes but for looking poor, brown, or foreign. These acts have not provoked right-wing primetime outrage or public boycotts. Their hypocrisy is staggering.
A man kneeling quietly for justice was vilified. Agents brutalizing families are ignored. The problem has never been the method of protest, it has always been their morality. Silence in the face of injustice is acceptable; silence against injustice is not. The Lions’ quiet refusal and Kaepernick’s quiet protest share something profound: both disrupted the script of cultural obedience. Both reminded us that resistance isn’t always loud. Sometimes it’s the refusal to play along.
The Supreme Court’s Enabling Role
And looming behind all of this is the judiciary. Recent Supreme Court rulings have expanded law enforcement’s power, narrowing protections under the Fourth Amendment and giving politicians more leeway to persecute immigrants using federal data. Justice Brett Kavanaugh has been the lead in the right-wing judicial majorities that have handed law enforcement broad authority to stop, question, and detain anyone with minimal cause. Its new rulings have created the legal cover that now makes racial profiling essentially legal.
Racial profiling has happen illegally before and the new legal result empowered by the Supreme Court is the same: citizens living under suspicion, families living in fear, communities targeted not for what they’ve done but for how they look. The Supreme Court has enabled ICE brutality in the same way NFL owners enabled the blackballing of dissent, by creating structures that justify exclusion and violence while insisting neutrality.
The Bigger Picture: Who Owns the Stage?
So what do Bad Bunny, Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Danica Patrick, ICE, the Lions, Charlie Kirk, and Brett Kavanaugh all have in common? They are all part of the “fight, fight, fight” (see new Trump $1 coin) over who gets to define American culture.
The right wing has long claimed the NFL as its territory: its rituals, its tributes, its symbols of patriotism. But culture evolves. It cannot be contained. From Detroit to San Juan to Los Angeles, new voices are shaping the narrative. Bad Bunny’s halftime show, Kendrick’s explosive performance, and even the Lions’ silent refusal all tell the same story: football does not belong exclusively to one political ideology. Neither does America.
The real question is whether we are willing to see that America’s identity is bigger than its old rituals. Are we willing to admit that inclusion is not a threat but a fact? Because culture doesn’t wait for permission. It claims the stage. And this year, that stage will belong to Bad Bunny.
Julian Vasquez Heilig is a professor, writer, and a legit lifelong Detroit Lions fan since 1981. He attended the NFC Championship in San Jose two years ago to support his Cardiac Cats and last year’s playoff loss to the Washington Commanders at Ford Field. He was also at the official Lions partners party during the NFL Draft in Detroit, where he met Robert Porcher and Jason Hanson. Over the years he’s spotted Billy Sims in Times Square, endured the heartbreak of the Lions’ 0–16 season, and treasures his personally autographed Barry Sanders helmet. Beyond education and equity, Julian dabbles in writing about sports, culture, and society.
A reader who uses the name Quickwrit parses the Constitutionnand finds that Trump is doing today exactly what King George did to the colonists.
Quickwrit writes:
WHAT TRUMP IS DOING TODAY is the very same thing that our Declaration of Independence lists as the violations of liberty that triggered our Declaration of Independence. Take a look:
The King used armed forces to control American cities and towns, without first asking permission from the legislatures; quoting the Declaration, it says: “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” Just like King Trump sending armed National Guard units into our cities today.
The King replaced local police with his armed forces. The Declaration says: “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.
The King’s armed forces were protected from killing civilians: “For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.” People die today in ICE custody, and nothing happens.
The King ignores civil courts: “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.”
“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices.”
“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people.”
“He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained.” Today, not only do governors of Red States do nothing without Trump’s approval, neither does Congress.
The Declaration also says that we also declare our independence from the King for his:
“cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world’ (just like Trump’s tariffs);
“depriving us in many cases of the benefit of Trial by Jury” and “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences” (just like Trump deporting people without trial to be imprisoned in foreign nations).
The Declaration says Americans are breaking away because the King has opposed immigration that is vital to America’s economic growth, by “obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.” Already in 1740, laws had been passed to grant “natural born” citizenship status to immigrants who lived there for seven consecutive years.
The King has also been “redistricting” Americans out of their right to representation: “He has refused to pass Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.” Just like the redistricting going on today.
Americans today truly need to read the history of our Revolution and what went into and is actually in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Read the ACTUAL WRITINGS of our Founding Fathers, not just listen to or read the “analyses” of political talking heads on today’s TV and social media.
That kind of reading takes time, and too few Americans today are willing to spend the time.
MSNBC broke the bombshell story: before the 2024 election, undercover FBI agents handed a paper bag with $50,000 cash to Tom Homan. They heard that Homan was soliciting bribes. The meeting was filmed.
The investigation of Homan for corrupt activities was quashed by Trump’s Department of Justice, presumably with the full knowledge of Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.
In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar,accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.
The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January,according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, two of the people said.
It’s unclear what reasons FBI and Justice Department officials gave for shutting down the investigation. But a Trump Justice Department appointee called the case a “deep state” probe in early 2025 and no further investigative steps were taken, the sources say.
On Sept. 20, 2024, with hidden cameras recording the scene at a meeting spot in Texas, Homan accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case and sources.
The federal investigation was launched in western Texas in the summer of 2024 after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case. The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas, working with the FBI, asked the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section to join its ongoing probe “into the Border Czar and former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan and others based on evidence of payment from FBI undercover agents in exchange for facilitating future contracts related to border enforcement.”
Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement early in Trump’s first term, openly claimed during the 2024 campaign that he would play a prominent role in carrying out Trump’s promised mass deportations.
Asked for comment about MSNBC’s exclusive reporting, the White House, the Justice Department and the FBI dismissed the investigation as politically motivated and baseless.
Scott Maxwell is my favorite opinion writer at The Orlando Sentinel. He always makes sense, in a state led by a Governor and Leguslature that make no sense at all.
In this column, he asks a straightforward question: Why is there no accountability for school vouchers? Why are taxpayers shelling out money for substandard schools? Why is money diverted from public schools to pay for schools where the curriculum is based on the Bible, not facts?
Maxwell writes:
Florida recently joined about a dozen states in passing new rules that say participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly known as food stamps, can’t use their vouchers on junk food.
I think that makes sense to most people. This program, after all, is supposed to provide “nutrition” to people in need, most of whom are children, elderly or people with disabilities. Basically, if taxpayers are providing $330 a month for basic food needs, that money shouldn’t be used on Red Bull and Oreos.
So now let’s take that a step further.
Taxpayer money also shouldn’t be used to send students to the junk-food equivalent of school — places that hire “teachers” without degrees, use factually flawed curriculum or that hand out A’s to every kid, regardless of what they actually learn, just to make their parents feel better.
Just like with food stamps, taxpayers have a right to know that the money they’re providing for schools is actually funding a quality education.
Yet in Florida that is not the case. Here, the voucher-school system is the Wild West with a lack of accountability and scary things funded with your tax dollars.
The Orlando Sentinel has documented this mess for years through its “Schools without Rules” investigation that found taxpayer-funded voucher schools where:
• “Teachers” lacked degrees or any kind of basic teaching certification • Finances were so disastrous that schools actually shut down in the middle of the school year, stranding families and students • Science classes taught students that dinosaurs roamed the earth alongside man, and history lessons claimed slavery and segregation weren’t really all that bad
• Administrators refused to admit students with disabilities or who had gay parents • Parents filed complaints that included “Cleaning lady substituting for teacher,” “They don’t provide lunch and they don’t even have a place to eat” and “I don’t see any evidence of academics”
I don’t care how pro-school choice you are, tax dollars shouldn’t fund that kind of nonsense.
Some of these fly-by-night schools set up in strip malls seem to thrive because they tell parents what they want to hear — that their kids who were struggling in public schools magically became straight-A students at voucher schools with little to no standards or legitimate measures of success.
Well, that’s the educational equivalent of junk food. And taxpayers wouldn’t fund that kind of nonsense if the state enacted basic accountability measures.
Namely, all voucher-eligible schools should be required to:
• Publish graduation rates and nationally accepted test scores • Hire teachers who are certified or at least have a college degree • Disclose all the curriculum being taught • Ban discrimination
Most good schools already do this. Think about it: what kind of reputable school wouldn’t agree to hire qualified teachers? Or wouldn’t want the public to see what kind of test scores their students produce?
If you want to send your kid to a school that’s unwilling to clear those ground-level hurdles, you shouldn’t expect taxpayers to fund it. Similarly, if you want to run a school that refuses to serve kids in wheelchairs or who are gay, you shouldn’t fund your discrimination with money that belongs to the people against whom you’re discriminating.
In Florida, some of the worst voucher schools are faith-based. But so are some of the best. Parents and taxpayers deserve to see the difference — the test scores that show whether students are actually learning.
Many faith-based schools embrace science and history. But some try to replace proven facts with their own beliefs or opinions, using “biology” books that claim evolution data is false and “history” books that try to put sunny spins on slavery and segregation.
The people who defend — and profit off — Florida’s unregulated voucher system usually cite “freedom” and “parental rights” as a justification for unfettered choice. But you know good and well that virtually every other taxpayer-funded system has sensible guardrails.
You can’t take Medicaid money to a witch doctor or a psychic “healer.” And just like we don’t give parents the “choice” to use SNAP vouchers to buy their kids Snicker bars, they don’t deserve the “freedom” to take money meant to provide a quality education to a school that can prove it’s providing one.
Basic transparency and accountability measures are needed for any program to be effective. So whenever you hear anyone protesting them, you have to wonder what it is they don’t want you to see.
Michelle H. Davis writes a blog called “Lone Star Left,” where she chronicles the usually corrupt politics of Texas. In this post, she eviscerates Governor Abbott, who loves to brag about the economic success of his state. She calls him out for ignoring the people who are nott part of the state’s prosperity.
She writes:
Today, our feckless leader gave a State-of-the-State Address at the Baylor Club in Waco. Now, if you didn’t know, the Baylor Club is a prestigious private social club nestled within McLane Stadium, offering floor-to-ceiling panoramic views of the stadium, downtown Waco, and the Brazos River.
While many Texans are choosing between groceries and insulin, Abbott delivers big promises from an elite club perched over McLane Stadium. That should tell you all you need to know.
It was about an hour long, so I watched it for you. Below, I’ve broken down everything he said and what he conveniently left out.
He began the speech by bragging about having dinner with Governor Glenn Youngkin and then told him that Texas’ budget for building roads was $146 billion. He claimed Youngkin dropped his spoon, saying it was bigger than Virginia’s entire budget. He went on to say that Texas had the “largest road building fund in America.”
It’s only partly true. According to TXDOT’s 10-year plan, we have allocated about $101.6 billion for projects and $45 billion for maintenance. But this road-building bonanza feels stupid without high-speed trains. Seriously, what are we doing?
Trains would alleviate traffic, carbon emissions, congestion, and get us from Dallas to Houston in just 90 minutes. It’s faster and greener than driving, but we’re investing all our money in roads?
Modern marvel, or not, no one likes this shit:
But Republicans do it all for the fossil fuel industry.
And that’s the optics, right there. While Abbott spoke from his panoramic perch, over half of Waco’s Black children struggle to make ends meet. This is the story of what Texas has become under Republican control.
It wouldn’t be a boastful Abbott speech if he didn’t brag about Texas’ economy.
They wine and dine behind glass walls and chandeliers, as Abbott brags to the wealthy. The Baylor Club is a fortress of privilege where the powerful toast each other on gold plates, high above the city streets.
Down below, children go to bed hungry, their bellies gnawing at them while Abbott gloats about GDP. Senior citizens, the same ones who built this state with their hands and backs, are being taxed out of their homes, cast onto the streets, the newest members of the unsheltered community.
How could you hear that and not burn with anger?…
Then, Abbott told the biggest, most monstrous lie of them all.
I had to clip this 30-second video for you to see it. Otherwise, you might not believe a whopper this big.
Abbott claimed that since the 2021 storm (Uri), they have bolstered the Texas electric grid, and it has remained perfect. He went on to say that since 2021, no Texan has lost power due to a deficiency in the grid.
This is flat-out false. This is such a fucking stupid lie, do I even need to fact-check it?
Ask the 2.3 million CenterPoint customers in Houston who lost power for over a week after Hurricane Beryl in July 2024. Or the nearly 1 million Texans left in the dark by the Houston derecho just two months earlier in May 2024. Families sweltered in the heat, elderly neighbors died waiting for oxygen refills, and Abbott wants to call that a “perfect” grid?
What he’s really doing is splitting hairs. ERCOT didn’t order rolling blackouts in those disasters. The distribution system collapsed. In other words, the wires and poles failed instead of the generators. But tell that to the family sitting in the dark with spoiled food and no air conditioning. To everyday Texans, it doesn’t matter whether it’s ERCOT or CenterPoint. The lights are off, the fridge is warm, and the Governor is lying.
This isn’t a story of resilience. It’s a story of deregulation, neglect, and profit over people.
Abbott claimed the Legislature made a “generational investment” in water.
Voters will decide in November whether or not we make that investment, which will not be nearly enough money to cover the extent of Texas’ water problems, but it’s a start.
Abbott claimed that they prioritized small businesses with the new “DOGE law.” A spin if there ever was one. It’s a new bureaucratic agency added to the Governor’s office, which will look for “ways to make regulations more effective, streamline the regulatory process, reduce department costs, and increase public access to regulatory information.”
If you followed along with Lone Star Left during the weeks where we watched the Texas budget hearings, you may remember that every Texas agency is running on outdated computer systems (if they aren’t still using paper), they are all understaffed, they are in buildings that are falling apart, and most government employees aren’t even making a livable wage.
Republicans have already run every inch of this state into the ground, and the idea that they are going to use a new government agency to run it into the ground even further is ludicrous.
Running our state agencies in such an inefficient, broken-down way doesn’t save money. It raises costs. Outdated systems, paper records, and skeleton crews result in Texans waiting longer for services, errors piling up, and agencies paying more in overtime and contract work to keep the lights on.
Republicans are really bad at governing.
The human toll is brutal. Employment turnover in some state agencies runs as high as 50%. Think about that, half the workforce gone, year after year. When you’re constantly training new people instead of keeping experienced staff, services collapse. And nowhere is this clearer than in our Health and Human Services agencies.
These are the people who process Medicaid applications, SNAP benefits, and health services for children and seniors. Understaffed offices and burned-out employees mean months-long backlogs. Families in crisis are told to wait for food assistance. Elderly Texans often lack home health care due to a shortage of caseworkers. Disabled children get lost in the system while Abbott’s donors laugh from the Baylor Club balcony.
This is intentional sabotage. Republicans have hollowed out the very agencies that keep Texans alive. Then they use the dysfunction as an excuse to privatize more, deregulate more, and funnel more contracts to their cronies. The suffering of everyday Texans is the plan.
Governor Abbott said the Texas Legislature fully funded public schools.
But when your audience is a bunch of wealthy CEOs who paid $2,000 a plate to get in to hear you speak, lies like that don’t matter. Surely all of those CEOs are sending their kids to private school, on the taxpayer’s dime, with the shiny new vouchers Mr. Let-Them-Eat-Cake got for all his wealthy donors.
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to vote this motherfucker out.
Every year he lies a little bigger, every year he sells us out a little deeper, and every year the gap between those sipping cocktails at the Baylor Club and those wondering how to feed their kids grows wider.
The truth is, the wealth inequality in Texas right now is more drastic than the wealth inequality in France shortly before their revolution. You know what happened then.
And I’ll leave you with this, from Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
“When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”
So let’s be ready. Let’s be angry. And let’s be organized. Because November 2026 is coming, and it’s time to flip this state.
Free cash!! Free cash!! Open the Church of Satan K-12 Academy and watch the dollars roll in. No one cares how many students are enrolled or even if the list of students is a fake. Governor Abbott trusts you!
Governor Abbott knows that most of the vouchers will be claimed by students who are already enrolled in private schools. He doesn’t care. He knows that kids who leave public schools to attend a private school fall behind. He doesn’t care.
He wants the state to pay the tuition of all children, regardless of whether they attend a snake-charming religious school or the most elite private school in Dallas or Houston.
Governor Abbott wants YOU to step right up and claim your Free cash!!
ProPublica wrote this:
For about eight years, a Houston private school has followed a unique pattern when appointing members to its governing board: It has selected only married couples.
Over 200 miles away, two private schools in Dallas have awarded more than $7 million in combined contracts to their board members.
And at least seven private schools across Texas have issued personal loans, often reaching $100,000 or more, to their school leaders under terms that are often hidden from public view.
Such practices would typically violate laws governing public and charter schools. But private schools operate largely outside those rules because they haven’t historically received direct taxpayer dollars. Now, as the state moves to spend at least $1 billion over the next two years on private education, lawmakers have imposed almost none of the accountability measures required of the public school system.
If held to the same standards, 27 private schools identified by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune through tax filings likely would have violated state law. The news organizations found, and three education law experts confirmed, more than 60 business transactions, board appointments and hiring decisions by those schools that would have run afoul of the state rules meant to prevent self-dealing and conflicts of interest if they were public.
“It’s frankly astonishing to me that anyone would propose the massive sort of spending that we’re talking about in these school voucher programs with, at best, minimal accountability,” said Mark Weber, a public school finance lecturer at New Jersey’s Rutgers University who opposes vouchers. “If I were a taxpayer in Texas, I’d be asking, who’s going to be looking out for me?”
Texas has long stood as a holdout in the national push for voucher programs, even as other conservative states embraced them. Gov. Greg Abbott gave school voucher proponents a major win this year, signing into law one of the largest and costliest programs in the country. In doing so, Abbott’s office has argued that the state has “strict financial requirements,” saying that “Texas taxpayers expect their money to be spent efficiently and effectively on their behalf, both in private and traditional public schools.”
The law, however, imposes no restrictions to prevent the kinds of entanglements that the newsrooms found.
The contrast is sharp. Public or charter school officials who violate these rules could be subject to removal from office, fines or even state jail felony charges.
Private schools face none of those consequences.
Supporters of the voucher program argue that oversight of private schools should come not from the state, but from their boards and the marketplace.
“If you transform the private schools into public schools by applying the same rules and regulations and procedural requirements on them, then you take the private out of the private school,” said Patrick Wolf, an education policy professor at the University of Arkansas. Wolf, who supports vouchers, said that if parents are unhappy with the schools, they will hold them accountable by leaving and taking their tuition dollars with them.
Typically, neither parents nor the state’s taxpayers have access to information that shows precisely how private schools spend money. Only those that are organized as nonprofits are required to file public tax forms that offer limited information. Of the state’s more than 1,000 accredited private schools, many are exempt from submitting such filings because they are religious or for-profit institutions, leaving their business conduct opaque. It is unclear if private schools that participate in Texas’ voucher-like program will have to detail publicly how they use taxpayer dollars.
“The public system is not always perfect, but when it’s not perfect, we see it,” said Joy Baskin, associate executive director for policy and legal services at the Texas Association of School Boards, which represents public districts across the state. “That kind of transparency doesn’t exist in private schools.”
The Chinese Baptist Church in Houston, where Trinity Classical School has a campus (Danielle Villasana for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune)
“Just Isn’t Right”
Conflicts of interest in education were on the minds of legislators this spring. At an education committee hearing in March, Texas state Rep. Ryan Guillen, a Republican from Rio Grande City, along the southern border with Mexico, introduced a bill that would bar businesses with close ties to board members from applying for school district contracts. Such deals were previously permitted as long as school leaders publicly disclosed conflicts and abstained from voting.
But Guillen, who did not respond to requests for comment, argued those rules were abused, pointing to recent scandals in two districts that led to state investigationsand, in one case, resulted in federal charges.
He described his bill as a “commonsense” proposal that would ensure “no one in a position of power can exploit the system for financial benefit.” The Legislature passed the bill, which was signed into law by Abbott.
Notably, the measure excluded private schools. In public testimony, no one brought them up, and there was no debate about them even as lawmakers advanced a proposal that would direct state money to them.
The newsrooms found at least six private schools that awarded contracts to companies with ties to their board members.
Cristo Rey Dallas College Prep, a Catholic high school serving primarily low-income students of color, awarded more than $5 million to a construction firm owned by one of its board members for “interior finish” work between 2017 and 2021, tax filings show. The school did not respond to questions about the payments. Raul Estrada, who was on the school board when his firm received the payments, said he recused himself from any votes or decisions related to the contract. He added that the company’s work provided “substantial savings” to the school but did not provide specific figures.
Just 30 miles north, board members at the Shelton School, which specializes in teaching students with learning differences such as attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder and dyslexia, have received hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments over the last decade. Tax records show one trustee was awarded over $465,000 for landscaping, and another collected more than $1.2 million for “printed education material.” The board members whose firms received the contracts did not respond to requests for comment. Suzanne Stell, the school’s executive director, said the board members who received contracts were not involved in the decisions. Stell also said that the contract for printed material included training for educators.
Our investigation also found dozens of instances of nepotism or relatives serving on boards together at private schools, some of which were started and are led by families.
Trinity Classical School in Houston, for example, has long maintained a family-led chain of governance on its school board exclusive to married couples, appointing a new pair each time one cycled off. The board deviated from that pattern only once, when it selected Neil Anderson, the school’s leader, according to tax filings. None of the current board members responded to interview requests, nor did Anderson or the school.
Such arrangements have been prohibited since 2012 in charter schools, which are restricted from appointing more than one family member to serve as a trustee at the same time. Anderson’s appointment would also not be allowed in traditional public schools, where employees are barred from serving on their school’s governing board.
At the elite Greenhill School in the Dallas area, where tuition can exceed $40,000 a year, the previous leader, Scott Griggs, hired his son to coach the boys’ volleyball team and teach middle school math. While allowed in private schools, state nepotism laws prevent public and charter schools from hiring close relatives of superintendents and trustees, with few exceptions. Griggs told the newsrooms that he’d already announced his retirement when he asked the board in 2017 to approve hiring his son, who did not respond to requests for comment.
The following year, the college prep academy provided a personal loan of nearly $100,000 to its current head of school, Lee Hark, for a down payment on a home. The school did not disclose the terms of the agreement in its tax filings, including whether it charged interest or what would happen should Hark default. Hark declined to comment.
Private schools are generally free to use money as they choose, but a 150-year-old provision of the Texas Constitution bars public schools from lending taxpayer dollars. The state does not require private schools to publicly disclose whether taxpayer money would be used for such arrangements under the voucher program.
In a written statement, a Greenhill spokesperson said the school operates with “sound financial principles” that meet or exceed “all standards of accountability for independent schools.” She said the school charged interest on the loan and it has since been paid off, but did not provide records.
Many of the private schools examined by the news organizations, including Greenhill, said that they are still deciding whether to participate in the voluntary voucher program.
The lack of accountability for private schools has sparked concern from public school parents like Sarah Powell, a mother of two near Dallas. She was among thousands who urged lawmakers to reject voucher legislation earlier this year.
“You’re either part of the system or you’re not,” Powell later told the newsrooms. “You can’t have the resources and not any of the regulations. It just isn’t right.”
The Greenhill School, where tuition can surpass $40,000 per student, in Addison, just outside of Dallas (Shelby Tauber for ProPublica and The Texas Tribune)
Repeating History
State funds flowing to public and charter schools are monitored by the Texas Education Agency, which requires annual independent audits and assigns ratings that gauge each school’s fiscal health. Districts that repeatedly underperform risk sanctions, including forced closure.
“Looking back on it today, I think it was necessary,” Bob Schulman, a longtime education attorney, said about many of the reforms.
Even as oversight of charter schools has been strengthened, gaps remain. Earlier this year, a ProPublica and Tribune investigation found that a charter network with 1,000 students was paying its superintendent nearly $900,000 annually, making him among the highest-paid public school leaders in the nation. Yet the school did not disclose the superintendent’s full compensation to the state and later rebuffed calls to lower his salary from lawmakers and the advocacy group representing charters. The school board defended Cavazos’ salary, saying it was merited because of his duties and experience.
The state, however, will not directly regulate private schools under the new voucher program, which will begin next year. Instead, supervision will largely fall to one of 20 private organizations, which schools must pay to obtain and maintain the accreditation required to receive public funds.
A review by the newsrooms of these organizations’ standards found they are generally far less rigorous than the state’s. Most do not require annual financial audits, which some accreditation organizations say can be too costly and time-consuming, and many do not mandate policies to prevent nepotism and conflicts of interest.
If a private school loses accreditation from one group, it can simply apply to another.
That total, however, is likely an undercount even within the sample of schools the newsrooms reviewed. Reporters identified dozens more conflicts listed in tax forms, for example, but the schools provided sparse information about what they were. Because of that, there is no way to determine if the conduct would have violated state laws if it had occurred at a public or charter school. The newsrooms reached out to each school about the missing information, but none answered questions.ġ
Texas lawmakers laid the groundwork for publicly funded schools with limited state oversight when they authorized charter schools in the 1990s as an alternative to traditional public education. At the time, they exempted charter schools from many regulations, betting that greater flexibility would lead to innovation and stronger academic performance.
But over the past three decades, the state has steadily increased restrictions on charter schools in response to concerns about financial mismanagement and academic performance. Charter schools, for example, were initially exempt from the state’s nepotism and conflict-of-interest laws, but lawmakers gradually changed that after reports exposed leaders enriching themselves and their families. The state implemented another round of stricter rules after newspapers uncovered lavish spending on perks such as Spurs tickets and lucrative land deals.
Schulman, who has represented Texas charter schools for decades, said that some leaders abused the limited state oversight for years, making it more concerning that lawmakers launched a voucher program with even fewer regulations.
“I’m very disturbed,” Schulman said. “But I’m hopeful that it will be a quicker turnaround than it was for the charters.”
How We Reported This Story
For this story, reporters reviewed nonprofit tax filings for 90 of the 200 highest-enrollment private schools listed in the Texas Private Schools Accreditation Commission database. Those filings were not available for the other 110 schools, as for-profit schools or those tied to houses of worship are not typically required to make tax documents public. For the schools that filed these records, reporters reviewed available annual reports dating back to at least 2015.
Reporters identified more than 60 instances involving conflicts of interest, nepotism and financial transactions with related parties at 27 schools. Three education lawyers confirmed our findings.
Ukraine has been bravely resisting the Russian invaders for more than three years. Its cities and towns have been devastated by Russian bombardment. Ukraine wants to align with the West. Putin is determined to bring Ukraine back into the Soviet orbit, even if it requires murdering its people, destroying its historic monuments, obliterating its cultural centers, wiping out hospitals, schools, and homes.
Trump held a meeting with Putin, the aggressor, to discuss next steps. Trump pointedly excluded Zelensky and representatives of the European Union.
When Zelensky visited the White House, Trump and Vance humiliated him for his “lack of gratitude” to Trump. But when Putin–the international pariah– met Putin in Alaska, he rolled out a red carpet. He admires this thug, this mass murderer, this ruthless dictator.
Trump gave Putin all he wanted: no ceasefire, bombs away! “Peace” talks on Putin’s terms. Keep on killing innocent civilians. Keep raining drones on hospitals, shopping malls, apartment buildings, power grids, and schools.
We had no reason to expect a different outcome. Putin is a highly experienced KGB agent who has controlled Russia for many years, and Trump is a television personality. Trump has a schoolboy crush on Putin. When he sees Putin, he is starstruck. I suppose we should be glad that Trump didn’t offer to give Alaska back to Russia as a munificent gift.
Trump stabbed the people of Ukraine in the back. Also in the front. He betrayed our European allies.
What a disgrace is this miserable man. What an embarrassment to our nation.
Richard Haass, who was chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations for 20 years, is a seasoned diplomat. Since he now speaks for himself, not an organization, he lays out his concerns about the trap that Trump has set for himself when he meets with Putin in Alaska. Putin is not allowed to travel in Europe, where he has been declared a war criminal, both for his invasion of Ukraine and for the systematic kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children.
The big story this week is the highly anticipated meeting… between Presidents Trump and Putin in Alaska. That Friday’s meeting is taking place on U.S. soil is in itself a big win for Vladimir Putin, who has not set foot in this country since 2007. The invitation undermines international efforts to isolate him on account of Russian aggression and war crimes in Ukraine. That this meeting is with him alone and does not include Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also to Putin’s advantage. As they say, you’re either at the table or you’re on it.
The run-up to the meeting has been less than reassuring. The president and his envoy-to-everywhere Steve Witkoff have been talking about land swaps. There are several problems with them. Any swap that gives Russia anything rewards it for aggression. Second, land swaps might leave Ukraine worse off militarily if Putin (as is likely) treats any ceasefire as a pause rather than a prelude to a lasting treaty. This risk grows exponentially if swaps are not tied to meaningful security assurances to Ukraine. More generally, territory is the sort of issue that should be held in reserve for final status talks associated with a permanent peace. They are contentious and may be needed to craft a larger package. The focus now should be on bringing about a ceasefire, the simpler the better.
The vice president didn’t help matters by declaring that “We’re done with funding the Ukraine war business.” Only by continuing to do so is there an actual chance that Putin will conclude (however reluctantly) that more war will not deliver more of what he wants. Other pressure could come from imposing new sanctions on Russia and announcing U.S. support for giving Ukraine access to the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets. It is unclear whether the administration will exercise these options. I have my doubts.
My nightmare scenario as we approach Alaska is that President Trump and his envoy, who appear to be conducting diplomacy unencumbered by much in the way of either expertise or experts, will largely side with the Russian president, present a joint proposal to the Ukrainian president, and, when said proposal is rejected as it invariably would be, Trump will blame Zelenskyy for bursting his diplomatic bubble and cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine in response.
As much as I would like to see real progress toward a fair ceasefire and the United States doing all in its power to stand against territorial acquisition by force, I would think the best outcome at Alaska is no agreement, with Trump having learned (again) that his good friend Vlad places a higher priority on undermining Ukraine’s standing as an independent sovereign country than winning hearts and minds in this White House. It is thus somewhat reassuring that the White House spokesperson is walking back expectations, now casting the meeting as a “listening exercise.” If so, the president will have escaped from a trap of his own making, which would be a good thing. No deal is better than a bad one.
Trump and Putin are meeting Friday in Alaska to discuss Ukraine. Ukrainian leader Zelensky was not invited, nor were any representatives of Europe. Trump will hear Putin’s grievances and claims. He will hear no other. After Russia intensified its drone bombing of Ukrainian civilian targets, Trump demanded a ceasefire. Putin ignored him. He gave his a deadline of 50 days (!) to stop the attacks. Putin intensified the attacks. Then Trump said the deadline was 10-12 days. That was two weeks ago. Putin got a face-to-face meeting with Trump on American soil, and his war against Ukraine goes on.
Timothy Snyder is one of the nation’s pre-eminent historians of Europe. He taught at Yale University for many years, but decided to accept an offer to teach at the University of Toronto after Trump was re-elected in 2024. He is the author of many books, including the national bestseller On Tyranny.
In the ancient world, people spoke of “Ultima Thule,” a mythical land in the extreme north, the end of the earth.
By venturing north to Alaska to meet Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump reaches his own Ultima Thula, the arctic endpoint of a foreign policy dreamworld.
The premise of Trump’s foreign relations is that foreign leaders can be dealt with like Americans, with fantastic promises and obnoxious bullying.
The fantasies do not function beyond America’s borders. The empty offer of a “beautiful” future does move dictators who commit crimes for their own visions, or affect people who are defending their families from a criminal invasion.
Ukraine has been resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion for three and a half years. Ukrainians fight because Russians invade their land, steal their wealth, kidnap their children and raise them as Russians, torture civilians in basements, murder people with any sort of association with politics or civil society, and destroy their sovereignty.
Putin, for that matter, has his own vision of a beautiful future, and no reason to prefer Trump’s to his own. Putin’s utopia is one of a Ukraine with no government, with a population cowed by torture, with children stolen and brainwashed, with patriots murdered and buried in mass graves, with resources in Russian hands.
Like Trump’s fantasizing, Trump’s bullying also does not work abroad. To be sure, many Americans are afraid of Trump. He has purged his own political party through stochastic violence. He is deploying the US military as a police force, first in California and then in Washington DC.
But foreign enemies apprehend these intimidation tactics differently. In Moscow, deployments of soldiers inside the United States look like weakness. Trump is signalling that he sees the task of the US military as to oppress unarmed Americans. The very move that shocks Americans delights America’s foes.
The tough talk may resonate in America, where we confuse words with actions. But for Russian leaders it covers a weak foreign policy. Trump has made extraordinary concessions to Russia in exchange for nothing at all. Russia has repaid him by continuing the war and seeking to win it — and by laughing at Trump on state-controlled television.
What are those concessions? Just by meeting Putin in Alaska, Trump gives the Russian dictator a chance to spread his own story of his invasion of Ukraine, both to the Americans around Trump and to the American press. By shaking hands with an indicted war criminal, Trump signals that the killings, the tortures, the kidnapings do not matter.
Even the choice of Alaska is a concession, and an odd one. Russians, including major figures in state media, routinely claim Alaska for Russia. As one of Putin’s special envoys put it, Putin’s journey to Alaska is a “domestic flight.”
Inviting people who claim your territory inside your main military base on that territory to discuss a war of aggression they started without any participation of the country they invaded — well, that is just about as far as a certain logic of fantasy can go. It is Ultima Thule.
It is Ultima Thule, the very end, because Trump has already conceded the more fundamental issues. He does not speak of the need for justice for Russian war criminals, or of the need for Russia to pay reparations. The Trump administration grants that Russia can determine Ukraine’s and America’s foreign policy on the crucial point of NATO membership. They have accepted that Russia’s invasions should lead not only to de facto but also de jure changes in sovereign control over territory.
It would take a longer essay to explain how senseless these concessions are. Accepting that invasion can legally change borders undoes the world order. Granting Russia the right to decide the foreign policy of others encourages further aggression by Russia. Dropping the obvious legal and historical responses to criminal wars of aggression — reparations and trials — encourages war in general.
Trump speaks loudly and carries a small stick. The notion that words alone can do the trick has led Trump to the position that Putin’s words matter, and so he must go to Alaska for a “listening exercise.” Trump’s career has been full of listening to Putin, and then repeating what Putin says.
Trump and Putin are moved by the future perception of their greatness. Putin believes that this can be achieved by war, and an element of this war is the manipulation of the American president. Trump believes that this can achieved by being associated with peace, which, so long as he is unwilling to make policy himself, puts him in the power of the warmaker.
Putin is not moved to end the war when his own propaganda is repeated by the president of the United States. He cannot be enticed by a vague vision of a better world, since he has in mind his own very specific atrocity.
In Alaska, Trump reaches his personal Ultima Thula, the limits of his own personal world of magical talk.
He faces a very simple issue: will Putin accept an unconditional ceasefire or not.
Putin has refused any such thing. The Russians propose an obviously ridiculous and provocative counter: that Ukraine should now formally concede to Russia territory that Russia does not even occupy, lands on which Ukraine has built its defenses. And then Russia can of course attack again, from a far better position.
Putin knows that Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize. And so Putin’s obvious move is to suggest to Trump that war will end someday, and Trump will get the credit, if the two of them just keep talking (and while Russia keeps bombing).
If Trump leaves Alaska without Putin having agreed to an unconditional ceasefire, there are two paths that Trump can take. He can continue the fantasy, though it will become ever more obvious, even to his friends and supporters, that the fantasy is Putin’s.
Or Trump can make the policy that will make the war harder for Putin, and thereby bring its end closer.
The United States has not formalized its outlandish concessions to Russia, and could take them back in one press conference. The United States has the policy instruments to change the direction of the war in Ukraine, and could employ them.
Trump has threatened “serious consequences” if Putin does not accept an unconditional ceasefire. Those are words, and thus far the consequences of Trump’s words, for Russia, have been more words. This all becomes clear now, at Ultima Thule, clear to everyone.
When Trump reaches the border of his fantasy world, what is his next step? Where will he go after Ultima Thule?
Diane Ravitch's blog 