Archives for category: Corruption

Heather Cox Richardson sums up recent chaos in the Trump administration and recognizes that its business as usual. Most egregious is the deference paid to Trump by the reactionary majority on the Supreme Court and the frightened Republicans in Congress. The members of Congress are afraid that Trump will endorse their opponent in the next Republican primary. The Justices have lifetime tenure; they have no excuse for rubber-stamping unconstitutional actions.

Richardson writes:

Without any explanation, the right-wing majority on the Supreme Court yesterday granted a stay on a lower court’s order that the Trump administration could not gut the Department of Education while the issue is in the courts. The majority thus throws the weight of the Supreme Court behind the ability of the Trump administration to get rid of departments established by Congress—a power the Supreme Court denied when President Richard M. Nixon tried it in 1973.

This is a major expansion of presidential power, permitting the president to disregard laws Congress has passed, despite the Constitution’s clear assignment of lawmaking power to Congress alone.

President Donald J. Trump has vowed to eliminate the Department of Education because he claims it pushes “woke” ideology on America’s schoolchildren and that its employees “hate our children.” Running for office, he promised to “return” education to the states. In fact, the Education Department has never set curriculum; it disburses funds for high-poverty schools and educating students with disabilities. It’s also in charge of prohibiting discrimination on the basis of race and sex in schools that get federal funding.

Trump’s secretary of education, professional wrestling promoter Linda McMahon, supports Trump’s plan to dismantle the department. In March the department announced it would lay off 1,378 employees—about half the department. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia sued to stop the layoffs, and Massachusetts federal judge Myong Joun ordered the department to reinstate the fired workers. The Supreme Court has now put that order on hold, permitting the layoffs to go forward.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan concurred in a dissent written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor, noting that Trump has claimed power to destroy the congressionally established department “by executive fiat” and chastising the right-wing majority for enabling him. “When the Executive publicly announces its intent to break the law, and then executes on that promise, it is the Judiciary’s duty to check that lawlessness, not expedite it,” they say.

“The President must take care that the laws are faithfully executed, not set out to dismantle them. That basic rule undergirds our Constitution’s separation of powers. Yet today, the majority rewards clear defiance of that core principle with emergency relief.”

Another Trump power grab is before Congress today as the Senate considers what are called “rescissions.” These are a request from the White House for Congress to approve $9.4 billion in cuts it has made in spending that Congress approved. By law, the president cannot decide not to spend money Congress has appropriated, although officials in the Trump administration did so as soon as they took office. Passing this rescission package would put Congress’s stamp of approval on those cuts, even though they change what Congress originally agreed to.

Those cuts include ending federal support for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps to fund National Public Radio (NPR), the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), and local stations. The Trump administration says NPR and PBS “fuel…partisanship and left-wing propaganda.”

Congress must approve the request by Friday, or the monies will be spent as the laws originally established. The House has already passed the package, but senators are unhappy that the White House has not actually specified what will be cut. Senators will be talking to the director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought—a key architect of Project 2025—today in a closed-door session in hopes of getting more information.

In June, Vought told CNN that this package is just “the first of many rescissions bills” and that if Congress won’t pass them, the administration will hold back funds under what’s called “impoundment,” although Congress explicitly outlawed that process in the 1974 Impoundment Control Act.

“We still are lacking the level of detail that is needed to make the right decisions,” Senator Susan Collins (R-ME), the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, said. “It’s extremely unusual for any senator to not be able to get that kind of detailed information.”

Andrew Goudsward of Reuters reported yesterday that nearly two thirds of the lawyers in the unit of the Department of Justice whose job was to defend Trump administration policies have quit. “Many of these people came to work at Federal Programs to defend aspects of our constitutional system,” one lawyer who left the unit told Goudsward. “How could they participate in the project of tearing it down?”

As the Supreme Court strengthens the office of the presidency without explaining the constitutional basis for its decisions, who is actually running the government is a very real question.

A week ago, Jason Zengerle of the New York Times suggested that the real power in the Oval Office is deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller, who is driving the administration’s focus on attacking immigrants. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem defers to Miller, a Trump advisor told Zengerle. Attorney General Pam Bondi is focused on appearing on the Fox News Channel and so has essentially given Miller control over the Department of Justice. White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is “producing a reality TV show every day” and doesn’t care about policy.

On the same day Zengerle was writing about domestic policy decisions, Tom Nichols of The Atlantic was making a similar observation about international policy. He notes that Trump has only a fleeting interest in foreign policy, abandoning issues he thinks are losing ones for others to handle. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth keeps talking about “lethality” and trans people but doesn’t seem to know policy at all. Secretary of State Marco Rubio—who is also the national security advisor—appears to have little power in the White House.

Apparently, Nichols writes, American defense policy is in the hands of Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, who made the decision to withhold weapons from Ukraine and who ordered a review of the U.S. defense pact with the United Kingdom and Australia in an attempt to put pressure on Australia to spend more on defense.

“In this administration,” Nichols writes, “the principals are either incompetent or detached from most of the policy making, and so decisions are being made at lower levels without much guidance from above.” This is a common system in authoritarian regimes, Nichols notes, “where the top levels of government tackle the one or two big things the leader wants done and everything else tumbles down to other functionaries, who can then drive certain issues according to their own preferences (which seems to be what Colby is doing), or who will do just enough to stay under the boss’s radar and out of trouble (which seems to be what most other Trump appointees are doing). In such a system, no one is really in charge except Trump—which means that on most days, and regarding many issues, no one is in charge.”

Either that chaos or deliberate evil is behind the Trump administration’s recent order to burn nearly 500 metric tons of emergency high-nutrition biscuits that could feed about 1.5 million children for a week. As Hana Kiros reported in The Atlantic, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) spent about $800,000 on the food during the Biden administration for distribution to children in Afghanistan and Pakistan. It was in storage in the United Arab Emirates when the Trump administration gutted USAID. Still, Secretary of State Marco Rubio assured the House Appropriations Committee that the food would get to the children before it spoiled.

But the order to burn the biscuits had already been sent out because, the State Department said, providing food to Afghanistan might benefit terrorists (there was no stated reason for destroying food destined for Pakistan, or suggestion that the food could go to another country). Now the food has passed its safe use date and cannot even be repurposed as animal feed. Destroying it will cost the U.S. taxpayers $130,000.

What the administration does appear to be focused on is regaining control of the political narrative that has slipped away from it. Today, after news broke that inflation is creeping back up as Trump’s tariffs take effect, Trump posted on social media alleging that Senator Adam Schiff (D-CA), who managed one of the impeachment cases against Trump, had committed mortgage fraud and must be brought to justice.

But so far, nothing appears to be working to distract MAGA from the Epstein files. As David Gilbert of Wired noted today, MAGA supporters were angry over a number of things already. Former Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson hated the bombing of Iran; others hated Trump’s accepting a luxury plane from Qatar. Podcaster Ben Shapiro objected to Trump’s tariffs, and podcaster Joe Rogan has turned against Trump over the targeting of migrants who have not been even accused of crimes. Billionaire Elon Musk turned against Trump over the debt incurred under the new budget reconciliation law Trump called the One Big, Beautiful Bill.

The Epstein files appear to be one bridge too many for MAGA to cross. The administration tried to stop discussion of Epstein, and for a while the effort seemed to catch: by noon yesterday, the Fox News Channel had mentioned Epstein zero times but had mentioned former president Joe Biden 46 times. Today all but one Republican House member voted against a Democratic measure to require the release of the Epstein files. But Chicago journalist Marc Jacob noticed this afternoon that while the Fox News website didn’t mention Epstein in its top 100 stories today, “[t]he top 3 stories on the New York Times website, the top 2 stories on the Washington Post site and the top story on the CNN site are about Jeffrey Epstein.”

And then, this afternoon, Dhruv Mehrotra of Wired noted that the video from a camera near Epstein’s prison cell that the Department of Justice released as “raw” footage had approximately 2 minutes and 53 seconds cut out of it.

Journalist Garrett M. Graff, a former editor of Politico, commented: “Okay, I am not generally a conspiracist, but c’mon DOJ, you are making it really hard to believe that you’re releasing the real full evidence on Epstein….”

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Justice, Trump

Jan Resseger: Trump Is Obliterating Civil Rights Laws

By dianeravitch

July 14, 2025 //

Jan Resseger is a social justice warrior who worked for the United Church of Christ. In retirement, she writes lucid, carefully researched articles about social policy and its effect on the nation’s most vulnerable people.

I should post everything she writes but I miss some. Here is Jan on Trump’s Big Ugly Bill and how it will hurt the neediest children and families.

This article about Trump’s assault on civil rights law was posted by the National Education Policy Center.

She writes:

On Wednesday, April 23rd, President Donald Trump released an executive order banning the use of disparate impact when the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights investigates disparities in school discipline under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Under the concept of disparate impact, officials in the Office for Civil Rights have been able to document discrimination by measuring the effects of a school’s or school district’s discipline practice on the mass of the school’s or school district’s students even when there is no proof that staff members intended to punish some students mores severely due their race or ethnicity or sexual orientation. Staff at the Brookings-Brown Center on Education Policy, Rachel Perera and Jon Valant, define “disparate impact”: “Disparate impact is the idea that school discipline policies that disproportionately harm students of color may constitute illegal racial discrimination even if those policies are… applied in an evenhanded way.”

Academic researchers have been examining unjust school discipline policies for decades. In 2014, the Civil Rights Project at UCLA described groundbreaking work to define “the school-to-prison pipeline” as a metaphor for disparate impact in discipline policies across many U.S. public schools. Researchers documented differences in the kind of punishment imposed on students based on their race or ethicity or disability: “The Civil Rights Project has been working on the school discipline issues since 1999, under the leadership of Daniel Losen. Research from CRP’s Center for Civil Rights Remedies… finds that far too many districts suspend students in droves, while many others have little or no racial disparities and adhere to the common sense philosophy that suspensions, expulsions and arrests are strictly measures of last resort.”

In her new book, Original Sins, sociologist Eve Ewing describes how a punitive, prison-like, school culture, including systemic disparate impact, can infuse a school’s treatment of different groups of students because individual teachers and staff just get caught in the system in which they operate every day: “As sociologist Carla Shedd has written, the ‘routines and rituals’ created by carceral logic—everything from interacting with police officers in schools to strict uniform codes of conduct—become integral to the way a school functions, and can ultimately undermine the ostensibly educational purpose of the school building by making students feel unsafe… From within the space of the school, such regimes of discipline can become so routine that they escape notice by those who are accustomed to them.” (Original Sins, pp, 156-157)

For decades, disparate impact in school discipline has been at the heart of many of the complaints filed and consent decrees established between school districts and the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. But on April 23, as the NY Times’ Erica Green reports, “President Trump has ordered federal agencies to abandon the use of a longstanding legal tool used to root out discrimination against minorities, a move that could defang the nation’s bedrock civil rights law. In an expansive executive order, Mr. Trump directed the federal government to curtail the use of ‘disparate-impact liability,’ a core tenet used for decades to enforce the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by determining whether policies disproportionately disadvantage certain groups… ‘This order aims to destroy the foundation of civil rights protections in this country, and it will have a devastating effect on equity for Black people and other communities of color,’ said Dariely Rodriguez, the acting co-chief counsel at the Lawyers Committee For Civil Rights Under Law….”

Green explains: “The disparate-impact test has been crucial to enforcing key portions of the landmark Civil Rights Act, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating based on race, color or national origin. For decades, it has been relied upon by the government and attorneys to root out discrimination in areas of employment, housing, policing, education and more. Civil rights prosecutors say the disparate-impact test is one of their most important tools for uncovering discrimination because it shows how a seemingly neutral policy or law has different outcomes for different demographic groups, revealing inequities… Mr. Trump’s order resurrects a last-ditch effort made in the final days of his first term to repeal disparate-impact regulations through a formal rule-making process… Now the Justice Department’s embattled civil rights division has halted the use of disparate-impact investigations altogether, officials said.”

It is important to note that the Trump administration has not attempted, so far, to change the law itself, but instead to amend the federal guidance and rules that the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has used in its investigations. The Washington Post‘s Kim Bellware explains: “Trump’s order directs federal agencies to ‘deprioritize enforcement’ of statutes and regulations that include disparate-impact liability, which has long enabled courts to stop policies and practices that unfairly exclude people on the basis of protected characteristics such as race, gender, and disability.”

When disparate impact is cited, the disparities are regularly documented with large data studies. For example, back in 2008, in his powerful book, So Much Reform: So Little Change, the University of Chicago’s Charles Payne described national data indicating the widespread disparate impact of discriminatory school discipline: “According to data collected by the U.S. Department of Education for the 2004-2005 school year, African American students nationally are suspended or expelled at nearly three times the rate of white students. In Minnesota, Black students are six times as likely to be suspended as whites, but that seems downright friendly compared to New Jersey, where they are almost 60 times more likely to be expelled. In 21 states, the percentage of Black suspensions is more than double their percentage in the student body. These disproportions affect middle-class as well as working-class Black students and there is no reason to believe that they can be reduced to actual differences in student behavior. At least some of the discrepancy seems to be about teachers interpreting similar behaviors differently when they come from students of different races… We shouldn’t be surprised to learn that African American students perceive school climate less favorably than white students or staff.” (So Much Reform: So Little Change, p. 112)

In 2014, in its own “Dear Colleague Letter,” the Obama administration announced a formal policy affirming the use of “disparate impact” as evidence in school discrimination cases. Here is constitutional law professor, Derek W. Black, in a 2016 book, Ending Zero Tolerance: The Crisis of Absolute School Discipline: “On January 8, 2014, the Departments of Education and Justice went beyond individual enforcement actions and formally announced their policy on school discipline moving forward… The policy guidance distinguished between disparate treatment (treating minority students and whites differently in terms of discipline) and disparate impact (facially neutral policies that result in racially disparate outcomes). It came as no surprise that schools cannot suspend an African American student for fighting and only send his white classmate to study hall. But the (formal policy) guidance on racial disparities was significant.” (Ending Zero Tolerance, p. 84)

In 2018, the first Trump administration tried to end the use of disparate impact as a way to measure civil rights violations by ending Obama’s rules and guidance. Perera and Valant reported: “When the Trump administration rescinded the Obama Dear Colleague Letter in 2018… it dropped any reference to disparate impact theory and defined much narrower conditions (for) OCR investigations.”

Perera and Valant add that the Biden administration did, in another Dear Colleague Letter, try to restore Obam’s rules and guidance, but they write that Biden administration’s “letter lacks a definition of illegal discrimination, information about how the federal government will enforce civil rights law, guidance for school districts on mandated data collection, or suggested practices and policies to prevent discrimination.”

Nevertheless, despite the weak Biden policy statement, President Biden’s Department of Education continued to investigate and enforce civil rights violations in school discipline based on disparate treatment.

Here we are now in 2025 with President Trump’s new executive order that attempts to cancel the use of disparate impact in civil rights enforcement altogether. Fortunately Trump’s new executive order will likely face lawsuits. Erica Green explains why: “Mr. Trump’s executive order, which is likely to face legal challenges, falsely claimed that the disparate-impact test was ‘unlawful’ and violated the Constitution. In fact, the measure was codified by Congress in 1991, upheld by the Supreme Court as recently as 2015 as a tool in the work of protecting civil rights, and cited in a December 2024 dissent by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr.”

In the meantime in late March 2025, a month before Trump’s new executive order banning the use of disparate treatment in civil rights investigations, Trump’s Office for Civil Rights, in a move demonstrating Trump’s view of civil rights enforcement using “disparate impact,” dismissed a consent degree established in the Biden years to address discriminatory school discipline. The Washington Post‘s Laura Meckler describes what happened in Rapid City, South Dakota: “For years, Native American students in the Rapid City, South Dakota, school district were more likely to be disciplined and less likely to enroll in advanced courses than their White peers. In 2010, the Education Department opened an investigation to see if racial discrimination was to blame… The original investigation found that Native American students in the district were twice as likely as White students to be referred for discipline, more than four times as likely to be suspended and more than five times as likely to be referred to law enforcement officials.”

Meckler continues: “The effort lingered until last year, when investigators came to a voluntary agreement with the district. In a 28-page letter signed last May, the federal government outlined its concerns that Native American and White students had been treated differently. The school district, which is the second-largest in South Dakota, agreed to take a number of steps, including staff trainings, better communication with parents and ongoing monitoring.”

At the end of March 2025, reports Meckler, “the Trump administration told the Rapid City Area School District it was terminating the agreement.” But school district personnel in Rapid City did not consider the termination of the consent agreement to be a victory: “The Trump administration letter, sent March 27, came as a shock to the Rapid City Area School District, which did not ask for a change, a district spokeswoman said. She said the district plans to continue to abide by its terms, even though federal officials will not be monitoring to see if it does so. ‘While political priorities may shift, our core educational values remain steadfast,’ Cory Strasser, the district’s acting superintendent said in a statement. ‘Our mission remains to provide a safe, positive, and nondiscriminatory learning environment where all students can achieve their full potential.’ “

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Injustice, Trump

A Message to MAGA

By dianeravitch

July 8, 2025 //

It is sickening to realize that the US, our beloved country, is now aligned with Russia and Putin. It is sickening to realize that when the UN took a vote to condemn Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. voted “no,” allied with Russia, North Korea, and Iran. It is sickening to realize that the U.S. is now in cahoots with the enemies of freedom and democracy.

It is sickening to see the Justice Department turned into a weapon for Trump’s personal revenge. It is sickening to see Trump’s vicious assault on higher education and academic freedom. It is sickening to watch the arrest and detention of immigrants by masked men without ID without a semblance of due process. It is sickening to see the massacre of civilians in Gaza. It is sickening to see the Trump family scoop up billlions in real estate deals, crytocurrency and other ventures. It is sickening to see the Republican Party pass a budget that cancels the health insurance of millions of low-income Americans to pay for tax cuts for the richest Americans.

One man is responsible: Trump. He worries about Putin’s feelings, not about Russian bombs hitting Ukrainian schools, playgrounds, hospitals, homes, and its energy supply. He plays with tariffs as a way to humiliate other countries, carelessly wiping out the life savings of people who trusted him. Was it by accident that he excluded Russia, North Korea, Belarus, and Cuba from his tariff threats? Trump jokes about turning Gaza into a luxury resort instead of demanding an end to the war. The cruel budget that takes from the poor and gives to the rich was his budget. It is his massive ego that has turned the Department of Justice into his personal revenge and retribution machine.

I wish he could watch Charlie Chaplin in this speech from his film The Great Dictator. It is only three minutes. Please watch. These thoughts are needed today more than at any time since 1945.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, History, International, Trump

CBS Sells Out, Capitulates to Trump’s Demand for Payoff

By dianeravitch

July 7, 2025 //

During the 2024 Presidential campaign, “60 Minutes” invited both Trump and Harris to sit for an interview. Harris accepted, Trump declined. The interview took about an hour. As is customary, the editors cut the interview back to 20 minutes, the customary time slot.

CBS used a short response from Harris about the war in Gaza to promote the show. In the show itself, the promotional clip was replaced by a different response. To the editors, it was a distinction without a difference, a routine editorial decision.

Trump, however, saw the switch in the short clip and the longer one as a financial opportunity. He sued “60 Minutes” and CBS for $10 billion (later raised to $20 billion) for portraying Harris in a favorable light, interfering in the election, and damaging his campaign.

Since he won the election, it’s hard to see how he could demonstrate that his campaign was damaged. Most outside observers thought it was a frivolous lawsuit and would be tossed out if it ever went to trial.

But Trump persisted because the owner of CBS and its parent company Paramount, Shari Redstone, needed the FCC’s approval to complete a deal to be purchased by another company. Trump could tell his friend Brendan Carr to approve the deal or to block it. Shari Redstone would be a billionaire if the deal went through.

A veteran producer at “60 Minutes” resigned in anticipation of corporate leaders selling out their premier news program. The president of CBS News followed him out the door.

As expected, corporate caved to Trump. CBS will pay $16 million towards the cost of his Presidential library. He once again humbled the press. He did it to ABC, he did it to META, he did it to The Washington Post.

Will any mainstream media dare to criticize him?

Larry Edelman of The Boston Globe wrote about Trump’s humbling of the most respected news program on network TV:

💵 A sell-out

The show is almost over for National Amusements, the entertainment conglomerate with humble beginnings as a Dedham drive-in movie theater chain.

Unlike most Hollywood endings, this one is a downer.

Shame on Shari Redstone.

Recap: Redstone is the daughter of Sumner Redstone, the larger-than-life dealmaker who transformed the theater company started by his father into the holding company that owns CBS, MTV, Nickelodeon, and the Paramount movie studio.

On Tuesday, Paramount Global, controlled by Shari Redstone, said it agreed to pay $16 million to settle President Trump’s widely criticized lawsuit stemming from the “60 Minutes” interview of Vice President Kamala Harris during last year’s election campaign. The payment, after legal fees, will go to Trump’s presidential library.

Why it matters: It’s impossible not to see this as an unabashed payoff intended to win the Federal Communications Commission’s approval of Redstone’s multibillion-dollar deal to sell Paramount to Skydance Media, the studio behind movies including “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.”

Everyone involved denied the settlement was a quid pro quo. If you believe that, I have some Trump meme coins to sell you.

In a $10 billion lawsuit against CBS last year, Trump alleged that “60 Minutes,” part of CBS News, deceptively edited the Harris interview in order to interfere with the election.

Legal experts said Trump’s chances of winning the case were slim to none given CBS’s First Amendment protections for what was considered routine editing. But his election victory in November gave him enormous leverage over Redstone.

Reaction: “With Paramount folding to Donald Trump at the same time the company needs his administration’s approval for its billion-dollar merger, this could be bribery in plain sight,” Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren said in a statement after the settlement was announced.

“CBS and Paramount Global realized the strength of this historic case and had no choice but to settle,” a spokesperson for Trump’s lawyers said. The president was holding “the fake news accountable,” the spokesperson said.

Of course, the lawsuit was all about putting the news media under the president’s thumb.

“The enemy of the people” — Trump’s words — is a power base Trump wants desperately to neutralize, along with other perceived foes such as elite universities and big law firms.

Columbia University and law firms including Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison have already caved. Harvard University had no choice but to come to the negotiating table, though it also is battling the White House in court.

“The President is using government to intimidate news outlets that publish stories he doesn’t like,” the conservative editorial board of The Wall Street Journal wrote.

For what it’s worth: The two points I’d like to make here may seem obvious but are worth repeating.

First: The ownership of news outlets by big corporations is a double-edged sword.

Yes, they can provide financial shelter from devastation wrought by Google and Meta — and the brewing storm coming from artificial intelligence.

But they also own bigger — and more profitable — businesses that need to maintain at least a civil relationship with the federal government.

That’s why Disney ended Trump’s dubious defamation case against ABC News by agreeing to “donate” $15 million to the presidential library, and why Meta, the parent of Facebook, coughed up $25 million to settle a Trump lawsuit over the company’s suspension of his accounts after the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol.

Second: Private sector extortion — multiple law firms promised $100 million in pro-bono work for causes favored by Trump — dovetails with the president’s use of the power of the office to make money for himself and his family.

Trump’s crypto ventures, including the shameless $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, have added at least $620 million to his fortune in a few months, Bloomberg reported this week. Then there are all those real estate deals in the Middle East, the Qatari jet, and the licensed products, from bibles to a mobile phone service.

Shari Redstone’s $16 million payment is chump change by comparison. And it makes perfect business sense. It smooths the way for National Amusements to salvage at least $1.75 billion from the sale of its stake in Paramount. Sumner Redstone, a consummate dealmaker, would have done the same thing.

Skydance, by the way, was launched by another child of a billionaire, David Ellison.

His father, Larry Ellison, founded software giant Oracle and is worth nearly $250 billion. Oracle is negotiating to take a role in the sale of TikTok by its Chinese owner, a transaction being orchestrated by Trump.

Small world, eh?

Final thought: After nearly 90 years in business, National Amusements, now based in Norwood, is going out with a whimper, not a bang.

The company has struggled with heavy debt, declining cable network profits, and huge costs for building out its streaming business. Paramount’s market value has dropped to $9 billion from $26 billion when Viacom recombined with CBS to form the new company in 2019.

To get the Skydance rescue deal done, Redstone, 71, sold out the journalists at CBS News — the onetime home of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite, and still one of the most respected names in the business.

That’s one bummer of an ending.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Fake News, Freedom of the Press, Hoax, Media, Politics, Trump

Timothy Snyder: Ed Martin is the Loyal Puppet of Putin and Trump

By dianeravitch

July 2, 2025 //

When Trump named Ed Martin as Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, those who know his record (and are not faithful Trumpers) were appalled. He had actively defended the January 6 insurrection and had a long record as a Putin apologist, among other things. A strange choice for a very important role in law enforcement. Fortunately, the Republicans who are a majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected his nomination.

Timothy Snyder writes here about the role Ed Martin has played as a mouthpiece for Putin. Another reason not to normalize the Trump regime. Snyder is perhaps the leading scholar of European history, authoritarianism and tyranny. He recently announced that he was leaving Yale University for the University of Toronto.

Snyder writes:

Ed Martin is a major actor in Trump’s attempted regime change to authoritarianism. His particular role is to transform the law into a tool to intimidate Americans. After a stint as interim US Attorney for DC which was marked by unprecedented weaponization of the position, Martin will now continue his work for Trump as the official “weaponization czar.”

This is a new position within the Justice Department, designed by the Trump administration, to punish people who have committed no crimes. Martin was originally placed on the “weaponization working group” seemingly ex officio when he was a US Attorney; he will now continue as its chairman. On Martin’s account, his assignment will be to publicly single out Americans who have not been found guilty of anything, or for that matter even indicted. He says there will be “no limit to the targets.”

Martin’s authoritarian past and loyalties are a matter of public record. He helped build an alternative reality around Trump’s Big Lie and coup attempt, treating the January 6th criminals as heroes deserving of financial support and pardons. As interim US attorney, he described himself as President Trump’s lawyer, and abused his position to send letters to people who displeased the president in some way. He threatened journalists, universities and scientists.

Martin, to use the historical term, is taking an ostentatious part in the ongoing attempt at what the Nazis called a Gleichschaltung of institutions: of dropping the distinction between the law and the leader, and of attempting to force everyone in public life into line with the leader’s latest statements. The reference is not accidental. Martin is on the far right, and an advocate of great replacement theory: the spurious idea that a conspiracy seeks to replace white Americans with immigrants. He had a very supportive relationshipwith a known American Nazi.

The czars, lest we forget, were Russian autocrats. The title “weaponization czar” reminds us that much of happening in the United States under Trump happened first in the home of the czars. In the Russian Federation today, the law is weaponized. Prosecutions follow the whims of Putin and his regime, and that the law will be invoked against them according to the political (and financial) interests of those who hold power. Russian media is full of accusations made by Russian officials that people are criminals or wrongdoers, even before they have been tried or subjected to any judicial procedure.

It is important that we understand that Russian-style authoritarianism is a real possibility in the world, one which Martin not only advocates but represents. Russia is not a comparison for Martin. It is a central part of his career. He has no actual qualifications to serve in the Department of Justice. His role has to do instead with making the law something that it is not supposed to be: a way to protect the powerful and punish the innocent who offend them. He auditioned for this role as a propagandist for Russia’s regime.

The title “weaponization czar” is appropriate because Martin’s most interesting achievements thus far are, in fact, in the service of Russia. He has done more visible work for the Russian state television than for any other institution. Martin, in other words, has already been part of one weaponized legal system for some time. His American career as “weaponization czar” is a natural second step of his Russian career as apologist for both Russian and American weaponizers and authoritarians.

Between 2016 and 2024, Martin was a star of both RT and Sputnik, which are propaganda arms of the Russian state. Putin himself has made this completely clear. One of the central missions of RT and Sputnik is to weaken the standing and power of the United States. Anyone who goes on RT or Sputnik, as Martin did more than a hundred times, knows what he is doing. For eight years, on any issue of the day, Martin was there to spread mendacious propaganda about Americans and to defend Putin and Trump. His Russian work surpassed any media exposure in the United States.

Julia Davis, who does the important work of contextualizing Russian propaganda television available for a global viewership, has made Martin’s appearances visible. With her permission, I am sharing her work in the following paragraph. It provides samples, with video links back to his appearances, of how Ed Martin spreads untruth in the service of Russian and American authoritarians. If you want to take the time to judge more of his appearances than the ones I cite below, here (again thanks to Julia Davis) is a longer compilationof Martin’s appearances on Russian propaganda television.

Trump as American president can do, says Martin on Russian propaganda television, whatever he wants. Martin proposes that we should live in the alternative reality provided by the Russian propaganda he serves, since American media cannot be trusted. He instructs us that American elections are rigged and that the January 6th criminals are political prisoners. (Note that Martin was thereby on Russian propaganda television forecasting his own role in seeking pardons for these people and raising money for them.) Martin denied that Russia interfered in the 2016 US elections, although this was quite blatant — and indeed continuous, right down to the uncontested reports that Russians called in bomb scares to predominantly Democratic precincts in 2024. Martin also quite clear on the American role in the world, which is that the US should serve Putin and his wars. Echoing Russian claims at the time, Martin claimed that US intelligence was wrong about the coming full-scale US invasion of Ukraine, when is in fact it was entirely correct. In his view, the NATOalliance is unnecessary. The United States should be Russia’s ally.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when long service to hostile foreign propaganda networks would have been disqualifying for positions in the federal government. Now, as the head of RT boasts, it seems to be a qualification. Since Trump wants loyalists to him rather than to the United States, willingness to serve foreign countries, at least corrupt dictatorships, would be a useful filter. Repeating Russian propaganda tropes could hardly be offensive to Trump; he does this all the time. Taking part in Putin’s propaganda system would be naturally understood as the right kind of apprenticeship for work on Trump’s own regime change. We know that Trump chooses his people by treating their television appearances as auditions. So why not Russian television appearances? All the better.

No surprisingly, Martin says that his key assignment as weaponization czar will be to punish those who investigated Trump’s very real connections to Russia. This country has paid a huge price for not recognizing Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election for what it was: highly consequential and quite possibly decisive in the moment, and a sign of the coming age of oligarchical cooperation via digital tools to build right-wing regimes. That age is now upon us. There is, unmistakably, something very strange about the Trump’s submissiveness to Russia: appointing its media darlings (the list includes Tulsi Gabbard, who is of all things director of national intelligence); exempting it from tariffs when everyone else was targeted, refusing to pressure Putin to end a war when that is the obvious policy, sending as his envoy to Moscow a man who simply repeats Russian claims and uses Russian translations. Too many of us have allowed ourselves to be intimidated by the fear that Trump will use the word “hoax” when we point to the Russian elements of our present reality: such as, for example, that our “weaponization czar” apprenticed in the role in the service of Russia. With our weaponization of the law and our czars, we have a Russia problem.

Working with Russian institutions will not hurt Martin with Trump’s followers, who have been trained to see Russia not as an actual country with interests but as part of a “hoax,” a conspiracy against Trump. This is the sad convenience of “America First”: it really means “America Only”: no matter how things get, we get to be first, since no other countries exist in our minds. If other countries are meaningless, then MAGA people can rest assured that there is nothing like the complicity of international oligarchs, or the guild of international fascists, or the plans of countries like Russia to destroy the United States from within. If other countries do not matter, then it never seems right to ask: just why is it that Russian propaganda and Trumpian rhetoric so often overlap, to the point that training on one is preparation for mouthing the other? But there are, of course, Republicans who have a notion of the interests of the United States, and of the rule of law. For them, Martin’s services to Russia should matter.

The Russia connection is perhaps most important to opponents of Trump. Speaking of Martin’s connections to Russia is not a way of sloughing off responsibility to another country for our own failings. It is, instead, a way to take responsibility. So long as we see Trump and his loyalists as purely American characters, our American exceptionalism tempts us to normalize what they do. We ask ourselves, over and over again, if this is “really” an attempt to end democracy. But if we take seriously the connections of someone like Martin with a hostile foreign authoritarian power engaged in a genocidal war, we get a sense of where things could be headed. Russia is a real country and, for us, a real possibility. When we recognize that the attempt to make America authoritarian is part of a tawdry global trend, with general patterns that we can recognize, we can better see where we are, and get to work.

Categories Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, International, Lies, Propaganda, Trump

How Republicans Preserve White Supremacy

By dianeravitch

July 1, 2025 //

Michelle H. Davis writes a thoughtful blog on Substack called “Lone Star Left,” where she reports incisively on politics in Texas. This column explains how white supremacists keep Blacks and Hispanic unrepresented and disenfranchised: gerrymandering voting district. What’s happening in Texas is happening in other states, especially the South.

It’s hard to remember that Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Davis writes:

In the early 1960s, Black residents in Leflore County, Mississippi, comprised two-thirds of the population. Despite that, they had no political representation. In 1962, when voter registration of Black voters increased, the all-white Board of Supervisors (similar to a Commissioners’ Court in Texas) cut off federal surplus food aid, a lifeline for over 20,000 poor Black sharecroppers and farmworkers. This move came to be known as the Greenwood Food Blockade.

This move by the white Board of Supervisors exacerbated widespread poverty-induced hunger and malnutrition among Mississippi Delta sharecroppers. This laid the groundwork for long-term food insecurity, economic marginalization, and ongoing inequality in Mississippi that persists to this day.

This pattern is not new. Every time Black Americans have taken even a step toward political power, white supremacy has moved to snatch it back. In Greenwood, it meant starving families to stop them from voting. In Tarrant County today, it means redrawing district lines to erase Black representation, again, by a white-majority governing body.

What happened in Mississippi in 1962 wasn’t just about food. It was about control. And what happened in Tarrant County today isn’t just about maps. It’s about the same thing.

Today, the Tarrant County Commissioners Court voted to approve a redistricting map that effectively eliminates the seat of Commissioner Alisa Simmons, the only Black woman on the court.

It’s not a coincidence. It’s not neutral. It’s not “routine.” It is the calculated removal of a voice that dared to speak up for all of us.

Commissioner Simmons has stood firmly against the racist agenda pushed by Judge Tim O’Hare and the Republican Commissioners on the court. She spoke out against the rise in jail deaths under their watch. She called out the cruelty of defunding Girls Inc., a nonprofit that empowers young women of color. She opposed the elimination of free rides to the polls, which made it harder for working-class people, especially Black and brown voters, to cast a ballot.

And now, she’s being punished for it.

Commissioner Simmons wasn’t just a name on a ballot. She is my commissioner. I voted for her. I campaigned for her. And like thousands of others in Precinct 2, I saw her as a voice for the voiceless, a woman unafraid to shine a light on white supremacy, even when it came dressed in a suit and tie.

That light scared them. So they tried to snuff it out.

What we witnessed today was retaliation. It was white supremacy striking back at a Black woman who told the truth. And just like in Greenwood in 1962, they’re using the tools of power, maps, votes, and bureaucratic language, to do what they couldn’t do in public: silence her.

But we see it. We name it. And we will fight it.

The new map that the County Commissioners voted on today.

The Republican Commissioners and their defenders kept repeating the same excuse over and over again, “This wasn’t about race. It was just about politics.”

They said the map was designed to secure a Republican majority, not to silence Black voters. As if those two things aren’t deeply intertwined.

It’s the same argument Greg Abbott’s lawyers made in Shannon Perez v. Abbott, when Texas was caught racially gerrymandering districts. Their defense?

A direct quote from Greg Abbott:

“It is not our intent to discriminate against minorities. It is our intent to discriminate against Democrats. If minorities happen to vote Democrat, that is their fault, not ours.”

That’s not a denial. That’s a confession….

Let’s stop pretending this distinction between race and party means anything in Texas. In Tarrant County, in Harris County, across the South, voter suppression by “party” is voter suppression by race. When you target the communities who dare to elect Black women, working-class progressives, young organizers, and civil rights leaders, you are targeting those communities on purpose.

They can say it’s about partisanship all they want. But we know what it’s really about.

Because when Conservatives talk about “conserving” something, they mean it.

They want to conserve white supremacy.

They want to conserve inequality, corporate power, and police brutality.

They want to conserve a system where jails are full, books are banned, teachers are silenced, and women don’t have autonomy.

They want to conserve a Texas where your zip code decides your worth, and where Black and brown voices are only welcome if they stay quiet.

And when people like Alisa Simmons refuse to stay quiet, they get erased.

But erasing her seat won’t erase her power, or ours….

And just when we thought we might get a win, it vanished as quickly as it came.

Yesterday, far-right extremist Tony Tinderholt (R-HD94) announced he would not seek reelection to the Texas House. For a brief moment, there was celebration across Arlington. A man who built his career on cruelty, censorship, and conspiracy was finally stepping aside. But the celebration didn’t last.

Because today, just minutes after the Tarrant County Commissioners voted to dismantle Precinct 2, Tinderholt announced he would run for that very seat, Alisa Simmons’ newly gutted district.

And he didn’t come alone.

Cheryl Bean, another far-right extremist and ally of Tinderholt, announced her run for the now-open HD94 seat. A seat that was, conveniently, made safer for someone like her under the new maps.

Bean doesn’t even live in the district. She changed her voter registration to a new address inside it—an address she doesn’t own, according to the Tarrant Appraisal District. Her real home? Still outside the district lines. But facts don’t matter when the plan is to bulldoze through communities with precision and arrogance.

This wasn’t a coincidence. It was a coordinated political hit job, plain and simple.

A rigged map. A choreographed retirement. A handoff. A handpicked replacement. All timed to disempower the voices of Black and brown voters in Tarrant County. All orchestrated by Tim O’Hare and the extremist wing of the Republican Party.

They knew Simmons couldn’t be beaten fairly.

So they changed the lines.

They cleared the field.

And then they tried to rewrite the future.

But we see them.

We know the playbook.

And we’re not going to let this go unanswered.

This is part of a broader, coordinated strategy across Texas to suppress the political power of Black and brown communities under the guise of partisan politics…..

To read the post in full, open the link.

Categories Bigotry, Character, Cheating, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, History, Racism, Republicans, Texas

The Philosopher Crackpot Who Hates Democracy and Influences Powerful Tech Bros

By dianeravitch

June 25, 2025 //

If you haven’t heard of Curtis Yarvin, you should learn about him now. Yarvin does not believe in democracy. He believes in a society commanded by a king or autocrat. He was a prodigy as a child and now considers himself to be a political genius. Powerful men in the tech industry and politics pay him court and admire him, men like the billionaires Peter Thiel and Marc Andreessen, and Vice-President JD Vance.

Curtis Yarvin, advisor to Peter Thiel, Donald Trump

This article in The New Yorker by Ava Kolman paints a biographical portrait of Yarvin, summarizes his major ideas and describes his international standing as a philosopher of far-right leaders of the tech industry.

Kolman writes about Yarvin’s extensive range of contacts among the Trump administration and his influence on them, as well as his contact with royalists in other countries..

Kolman begins:

In the spring and summer of 2008, when Donald Trump was still a registered Democrat, an anonymous blogger known as Mencius Moldbug posted a serial manifesto under the heading “An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives.” Written with the sneering disaffection of an ex-believer, the hundred-and-twenty-thousand-word letter argued that egalitarianism, far from improving the world, was actually responsible for most of its ills. That his bien-pensant readers thought otherwise, Moldbug contended, was due to the influence of the media and the academy, which worked together, however unwittingly, to perpetuate a left-liberal consensus. To this nefarious alliance he gave the name the Cathedral. Moldbug called for nothing less than its destruction and a total “reboot” of the social order. He proposed “the liquidation of democracy, the Constitution, and the rule of law,” and the eventual transfer of power to a C.E.O.-in-chief (someone like Steve Jobs or Marc Andreessen, he suggested), who would transform the government into “a heavily-armed, ultra-profitable corporation.” This new regime would sell off public schools, destroy universities, abolish the press, and imprison “decivilized populations.” It would also fire civil servants en masse (a policy Moldbug later called rage—Retire All Government Employees) and discontinue international relations, including “security guarantees, foreign aid, and mass immigration.”

Does anything on his wish-list sound familiar to you?

It should. Trump has loaded up his administration with people who imbibe Yarvin.

A decade on, with the Trumpian right embracing strongman rule, Yarvin’s links to élites in Silicon Valley and Washington are no longer a secret. In a 2021 appearance on a far-right podcast, Vice-President J. D. Vance, a former employee of one of Thiel’s venture-capital firms, cited Yarvin when suggesting that a future Trump Administration “fire every single mid-level bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people,” and ignore the courts if they objected. Marc Andreessen, one of the heads of Andreessen Horowitz and an informal adviser to the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (doge), has started quoting his “good friend” Yarvin about the need for a founder-like figure to take charge of our “out of control” bureaucracy. Andrew Kloster, the new general counsel at the government’s Office of Personnel Management, has said that replacing civil servants with loyalists could help Trump defeat “the Cathedral.”

“There are figures who channel a Zeitgeist—Nietzsche calls them timely men—and Curtis is definitely a timely man,” a State Department official who has been reading Yarvin since the Moldbug era told me. Back in 2011, Yarvin said that Trump was one of two figures who seemed “biologically suited” to be an American monarch. (The other was Chris Christie.) In 2022, he recommended that Trump, if reëlected, appoint Elon Musk to run the executive branch. On a podcast with his friend Michael Anton, now the director of policy planning at the State Department, Yarvin argued that the institutions of civil society, such as Harvard, would need to be shut down. “The idea that you’re going to be a Caesar . . . with someone else’s Department of Reality in operation is just manifestly absurd,” he said.

Yatvin’s ideas are quirky, inhumane, and extreme, to say the least:

On his blog, he once joked about converting San Francisco’s underclasses into biodiesel to power the city’s buses. Then he suggested another idea: putting them in solitary confinement, hooked up to a virtual-reality interface. Whatever the exact solution, he has written, it is crucial to find “a humane alternative to genocide,” an outcome that “achieves the same result as mass murder (the removal of undesirable elements from society) but without any of the moral stigma.”

Yarvin’s call for an American strongman is often treated as an eccentric provocation. In fact, he considers it the only answer to a world in which most people are unfit for democracy….

Yarvin’s influence on Trump’s inner circle is noticeable:

Last month, an anonymous doge adviser told the Washington Post that it was “an open secret that everyone in policymaking roles has read Yarvin.” Stephen Miller, the President’s deputy chief of staff, recently quote-tweeted him. Vance has called for the U.S. to retrench from Europe, a longtime Yarvin desideratum. Last spring, Yarvin proposed expelling all Palestinians from the Gaza Strip and turning it into a luxury resort. “Did I hear someone say ‘beachfront?’ ” he wrote on Substack. “The new Gaza—developed, of course, by Jared Kushner—is the LA of the Mediterranean, an entirely new charter city on humanity’s oldest ocean, sublime real estate with an absolutely perfect, Apple-quality government.” This February, during a joint press conference with Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, Trump surprised his advisers when he made a nearly identical proposal, describing his redeveloped Gaza as “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

Trump, who doesn’t like to read, is unlikely to have read Yarvin’s philosophical treatises about the proper functioning of a modern society–without benefit of a popular vote–but certainly Trump’s view of the unlimited, imperial powers of the Presidency are similar to those of Yarvin.

Read the article if you can access it. Make yourself aware of the man who wields an outsize influence on Trump right now.

To learn more about Yarvin’s influence among rightwing billionaires, read:

https://theconversation.com/an-antidemocratic-philosophy-called-neoreaction-is-creeping-into-gop-politics-182581

Categories Billionaires, Corruption, Cruelty, Data and Data Mining, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Gender, History, Politics, Racism, Trump, Tyranny

Heather Cox Richardson: Under Our Mafia Boss, Everything Is For Sale

By dianeravitch

June 19, 2025 //

Heather Cox Richardson describes the legal corruption that is now out in the open.

Yesterday at the meeting of the leaders of the Group of Seven (G7), a forum of democracies with advanced economies, President Donald Trump told reporters: “The UK is very well protected. You know why? Because I like them, that’s why. That’s the ultimate protection.”

Commenters often note that Trump talks like a mob boss, but rarely has his organized-crime style of governance been clearer than in yesterday’s statement.

Also yesterday, Ana Swanson and Lauren Hirsch of the New York Times reported that Trump has taken unprecedented control over U.S. Steel. Japan’s Nippon Steel has been trying to take over U.S. Steel since 2023, but the Biden administration blocked the deal for security reasons. In order to move it forward, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick demanded an agreement that gives to the president and his successors, or a person the president designates, a single share of preferred stock, known as class G, or “gold.” The deal gives the president permanent veto power over nearly a dozen actions the company might want to take, as well as power over its board of directors.

Swanson and Hirsch note that the U.S. government historically takes a stake in companies only when they are in financial trouble or when they play a significant role in the economy. “We have a golden share, which I control, or the president controls,” Mr. Trump told reporters on Thursday. “Now I’m a little concerned whoever the president might be, but that gives you total control.”

This kind of deal echoes those of the authoritarians Trump appears to admire. His ongoing support for Russian president Vladimir Putin was on display at the G7, when he echoed Russian talking points that blamed European countries and the United States for Putin’s war against Ukraine, rather than acknowledging that it was Russia that attacked Ukraine after giving assurances that it would respect Ukrainian sovereignty in exchange for Ukraine’s giving up the Soviet nuclear weapons stored there.

Also yesterday, Rene Marsh and Ella Nilsen of CNN reported that officials from the Environmental Protection Agency under Trump have been telling staff in the Midwest—which the authors note has a legacy of industrial pollution—to “stop enforcing violations against fossil fuel companies.” At the same time, the Department of Justice has cut its environmental division significantly, leaving “no one to do the work.”

Trump vowed that if he were reelected he would slash the oil and gas regulations he claims are “burdensome.” Now, one EPA enforcement staffer told Marsh and Nilsen, “The companies are scoffing at the cops. EPA enforcement doesn’t have the leverage they once had.”

Also yesterday, outdoor journalist Wes Siler reported in Wes Siler’s Newsletter that while language inserted in the Republicans’ budget reconciliation bill requires the sale of up to 3.3 million acres of publicly owned land, an amendment authorizes the sale of 258 million acres more over the next five years. The amendment comes from the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and was written by Senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Steve Daines (R-MT).

It includes Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service lands in 11 states: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. As Siler notes, while the measure does not currently include national monument lands, the Department of Justice under Trump is arguing that the president can revoke national monument protections. If it did so, that would make another 13.5 million acres available for purchase.

Siler notes the process for selling those lands calls for an enormous rush on sales, “all without hearings, debate, or public input opportunities.”

Today, Eliot Brown of the Wall Street Journal reported that Mukesh Ambani, the richest man in India, is now one of the many wealthy foreign real estate developers “pouring money” into the Trump Organization. Brown noted that the Trump family is aggressively developing its businesses while Trump is in the White House, reaching past real estate into cryptocurrency and other sectors.

The growing power of international oligarchs to use the resources of the government for their own benefit recalls a speech Robert Mueller, then director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, gave in New York City in 2011. In it, he explained that globalization and modern technology had changed the nature of organized crime. No longer regional networks with a clear structure, he said, organized crime had become international, fluid, and sophisticated, with multibillion-dollar stakes. Its operators were cross-pollinating across countries, religions, and political affiliations, sharing only their greed. They did not care about ideology; they cared about money. They would do anything for a price.

These criminals “may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military,” he said. “They are capitalists and entrepreneurs. But they are also master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies.”

These criminal enterprises, he noted, were working to corner the market on oil, gas, and precious metals. And to do so, Mueller explained, they “may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called ‘iron triangles’ of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat.”

The FBI’s increasing focus on organized crime and national security is what prompted its interest in the connections between the Trump campaign and Russia in 2016.

The willingness of Republicans to enable Trump’s behavior is especially striking today, since June 17 is the anniversary of the 1972 Watergate break-in. On that day, operatives associated with President Richard M. Nixon’s team tried to tap the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee in Washington’s Watergate complex. Early in the morning of June 17, 1972, Frank Wills, a 24-year-old security guard, noticed that a door lock had been taped open. He ripped off the tape and closed the door, but on his next round, he found the door taped open again. He called the police, who found five burglars in the Democratic National Committee headquarters located in the building.

The story played out over the next two years with Nixon insisting he was not involved in the affair, but in early August 1974 a tape recorded just days after the break-in revealed Nixon and an aide plotting to invoke national security to protect the president. Republican senators who had not wanted to convict their president of the charges of impeachment being considered in the House knew the game was over. A delegation of them went to the White House to tell Nixon they would vote to convict him.

On August 9, 1974, Nixon became the first president in U.S. history to resign.

Chris Geidner of LawDork notes that despite the lawmakers in our own era who are unwilling to stop Trump, “the pushback…is very real.” Geidner notes not just the No Kings Day protests of the weekend, but also a lawsuit by the American Bar Association (ABA) suing Trump for his attacks on law firms and lawyers, calling Trump’s actions “unprecedented and uniquely dangerous to the rule of law.”

Geidner also notes that lower court judges are upholding the Constitution, and he points especially to U.S. District Judge William Young, an appointee of Republican president Ronald Reagan. In a hearing yesterday, Young insisted on holding the government accountable “for both Trump’s actions and the follow-up actions from those Trump has empowered to act.”

Young called cuts to funding for National Institutes of Health research grants “illegal” and “void” and ordered the NIH to restore the funds immediately. “I am hesitant to draw this conclusion—but I have an unflinching obligation to draw it—that this represents racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community. That’s what this is. I would be blind not to call it out. My duty is to call it out.”

“I’ve never seen a record where racial discrimination was so palpable,” Young said during the hearing. “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.” He added: “You are bearing down on people of color because of their color. The Constitution will not permit that.… Have we fallen so low? Have we no shame?”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Character, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Economy, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Trump

John Thompson: MAGA Republicans in Oklahoma Are Hurting the People Who Elected Them

By dianeravitch

June 18, 2025 //

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, probes the divide in the state Republican Party, which is currently in the hands of MAGA extremists.

He writes:

Oklahoma seems to be a case study in MAGA-ism and, now, it may be foreshadowing the chaos that President Donald Trump is creating with his fights with allies.

As the Oklahoma Observer’s Arnold Hamilton explained, the massive Republican majority in the Oklahoma legislature had been “bullied by Gov. Kevin Stitt all session long, until they became “chihuahuas [who] abruptly morphed into pit bulls.” Hamilton then asked, “Was this a one-off, final-hours temper tantrum by legislators fed up with the governor? Or a sign they are embracing their constitutional authority as a co-equal branch of government?”

On the other hand, the Oklahoma Voice’s Janelle Steckleinwrote that the “Stitt Show” shouldn’t distract from the fact that most of his agenda became law, and the people were the big losers.

I suspect that this is another case of Democrats and adult Republicans minimizing the damage that would be done by the passage of the DOGE/Ok agenda. And that is necessary before real progress can be made. I also suspect that the answers as to who won the 2025 session will mostly depend on the courts.

Oklahoma ranks in the bottom five of the nation in child-welfare, and 48^th in education. Also, Oklahoma’s poverty rate increased from 38^th to 45^th in the nation since Stitt took office, and we are 45^th in bridge infrastructure. We are in the nation’s top five in men killing women; in the worst women’s health care access; in teen pregnancy; and in the world’s incarceration rates; as one Oklahoman commits suicide every 19 hours.

As the Oklahoma Policy Institute explains, “Oklahoma’s housing crisis is worsening. Moreover, the Trump administration’s “deep cuts to housing programs” are “leaving states to fill the gap in funding.” State lawmakers “punted” on nearly all of their “multiple opportunities to reduce evictions, update the Landlord-Tenant Act, and increase Oklahoma’s supply of housing stock.” And, Stitt “vetoed the only bill to combat the housing crisis the legislature managed to pass, a measure that would have extended the eviction timeline and given families a better shot at staying housed.”

And, as early as 2017, there were warnings that the failure to increase funding for the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services (ODMHSAA) would “decimate” the system. It was nearly $750 million of federal funds since 2020 that rescued it, but by March 2025, the state only received $13,362,703 of the allocated funds for 2025.

After the legislature gave the governor unprecedented power to control state agencies and Stitt appointed Commissioner Allie Friesen as the head of the ODMHSAA, the legislature had to pass a nearly $30 million emergency bill to keep the agency open until July, and it fired Friesen.

Stitt responded by making personal attacks on fellow Republicans. Senate Pro-Tem Lonnie Paxton the “called Friesen’s appointment by Stitt part of a “pattern” of failure.” Moreover:

“The executive branch continues to produce multimillion-dollar disasters that are routinely dumped in the Legislature’s lap to clean up,” Paxton wrote. “The legislature entrusted this governor with more control of this agency, and he has wrecked it in record time.”

Oklahoma’s extreme mental health crisis isn’t the only extreme challenge, as the Trump administration is ramping up major cuts to health-care funding. As the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy (O.I.C.A.) reports, 59% of the state’s medical facilities are at risk for closing. And the Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that 174,000 Oklahomans are likely to lose benefits from SoonerCare, Oklahoma’s version of Medicaid. The Urban Institute estimates that “Oklahoma would have to raise taxes or cut other parts of its budget by $2 billion over ten years to maintain SoonerCare” due to federal Medicaid cuts.

This comes at a time when the legislature will likely have $300 million less to appropriate next year. And it will happen as state agencies say they’ll need $921 million more in funding.

But Stitt, who brags about previously cutting taxes by a billion dollars, then cut income taxes by about $350 million a year, on his “path to zero,” meaning he would eliminate this progressive tax.

And that gets us to what I consider the other most destructive, anti-democracy victory achieved by Stitt and his fellow Republicans, SB 1027. Over the last nine years, voters in our populist state have used the initiative petition to pass state questions on criminal justice reform, medical marijuana legalization and Medicaid expansion. Also, a vote to raise the minimum wage is scheduled. And an effort to end legislative gerrymandering may be coming. Apparently, the biggest reason why the Republicans set out to remove our constitutional right is to prevent SQ 836, a petition for open primaries.”

So, the Republicans have passed SB 1027 which “caps the number of petition signatures that can be gathered in each county and imposes several procedural changes.” By capping the number of votes that can be counted in Oklahoma and Tulsa Counties, they “would effectively end initiative petitions in Oklahoma.”

SB 1027 will be challenged in court.

Rep. Jay Steagall, R-Yukon defended his vote by suggesting “direct democracy as exemplified by initiative petitions invites mob rule.” And, Republican House Speaker Kyle Hilbert defended their refusal to take a stand for democracy, saying, “The founding fathers did have concerns about the tyranny of democracy.”

And that gets back to the question as to whether the integrity of Oklahoma’s judicial system will be maintained.

Until the early 1960s, Oklahoma’s Supreme Court was completely corrupt. In a bipartisan response, our state created an exemplary, honest judicial system. However, Gov. Stitt has repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, tried to turn back the clock to the decades when Oklahoma was one of the most corrupt places in America by repealing the Justice Nominating Commission.

This year, however, he achieved a major goal by creating a Business Court, which could be a tool for enhancing corporate powers. Stitt sees it a tool for building a “more business-friendly state.”

And that brings us to the Oklahoma American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) review of the 2025 session. It listed more than 50 attempts to reverse legal reforms; 15 attempts to attack immigrant rights; 25+ attempts to reverse LGBTQ+ rights; 10+ bills attacking free speech; and 20+ bills attacking voting rights.

Most of these bills were so extreme that they were defeated. For instance, this week, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Oklahoma’s HB 4156, known as the “impermissible occupation” bill, which “criminalizes certain behaviors of undocumented immigrants, allowing state law enforcement to detain and prosecute them.”

But, there remains work to be done to prevent implementing the Education Department’s (OSDE) demand that immigration data regarding schools be turned over to the state. Also, the ban, aimed at trans-gender persons, on “obscene” performance in public property and certain public places must be challenged, as well as the banning DEI in Higher Education.

So, I conclude that Gov. Stitt has been humiliating himself, but he succeeded in passing the laws that inflict the worst harm on Oklahomans. The civil war between Republican extremists gives more hope that more of the silliest bills can be stopped, giving more power to adults Republicans and Democrats. However, it will take years to build the foundations that are necessary before we can create meaningful pathways to a state with a 21^st century political and social systems that serve the people.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Oklahoma

Timothy Snyder: Trump’s Fascist Speech to the Troops at Fort Bragg

By dianeravitch

June 13, 2025 //

Tomorrow is “No Kings” Day. Join a group and protest Trump’s attempt to make himself our king, our permanent dictator.

Timothy Snyder, noted historian, analyzed Trump’s speech to the troops at Fort Bragg and determined that it was not only self-aggrandizing but also an appeal to disunity, division, and hatred. He honored traitors and oath-breakers, like those who participated in an actual insurrection on January 6, 2021, and leaders of the Confederacy.

Please read and take action to oppose Trump’s tyranny:

Earlier this week Donald Trump called for a second civil war at a US military base. This scenario can be resisted and prevented, if we have the courage to listen, interpret, and act. And this Saturday we will have the occasion to act.

The listening is important. The speech was given at the base now known again as Ft. Bragg. The fort was named for a confederate general. It was renamed Ft. Liberty. Under this administration, it was renamed Fort Bragg, now ostensibly to honor another American serviceman, not the confederate general. It is a dishonest pretense that dishonors everyone. The fort is now named again after a confederate general, as Trump made clear. The tradition that is now in fact being honored, that of oathbreakers and traitors.

In Trump’s speech, the existence of the United States is placed in doubt. We are not a country but a divided society in which some of us deserve punishment by others. He made no mention of the world today, nor of any common American interest that might necessitate national defense. There was no concern about threats from China or Russia. Middle Eastern dictatorships, the only countries that Trump singled out, garnered great praise because their leaders gave Trump money. There was no mention of any wars that are actually underway, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Trump invoked battlefields across the decades to create a sense of individual heroism, in which of course the history the the US Army is very rich. But that individual heroism is usually cited by commanders in chief as evidence of a nation that is worthy of defense. No such America figured in Trump’s speech. America did not exist Trump’s speech, except as a cult to him personally.

In the actual history of the United States, one war is central: the Civil War. Trump, who has never seen the point of the Union Army defending the republic, now seems now to have moved on to the position that the Confederacy should have won. He promised to rename Fort Gregg-Adams, the first base named for African-Americans, to Fort Robert E. Lee. The base in question hasn’t been known by the full name of the confederate commander since 1950. Lee was a traitor, an oathbreaker, a defender of slavery and the commander of a force whose mission was to break up the United States of America.

In his speech, Trump claimed that seizing undocumented migrants in 2025 shows the same courage as fighting in the Revolutionary War, or the First World War, or the Second World War, or Korea or Vietnam. It would have been news to the soldiers at the time that charging a trench or jumping from a plane is no different than ganging up on a graduate student or bullying a middle-aged seamstress.

But here we see the magic of Trump’s rhetoric: he seeks to transform the courage of the past into the cowardice of the future. He is preparing American soldiers to see themselves as heroes when they undertake operations inside the United States against unarmed people, including their fellow citizens.

All of this, of course, trivializes actual US military achievements. The actual battles of our history just become a “show,” to use one of Trump’s keywords. They are deeds performed for the pleasure of a Leader who then invokes them to justify his own permanent power. Denuded of all context, military glory becomes a spectacle into which any meaning can be injected. And he who injects the meaning is he who rules. That is the fascist principle that Trump understands. There is no politics except struggle, and he who can define the enemy in the struggle can stay in power. But whereas historical fascists had an enemy without and an enemy within, Trump only has an enemy within. The world is too much for him. The army is just for dominating Americans.

In his speech, Trump was trying to transform a legacy of battlefield victory around the world into a future willingness to take illegal orders regarding his own policy on the territory of the United States. The defiance of the law was clear. Trump cannot, for example, legally just rename those bases. The forts were named by an act of Congress. And he cannot legally deploy the Marines to Los Angeles. He has no authority to do so. The president is expressly forbidden by law from using the armed forces to implement domestic policies.

Trump defined himself not as a president but as a permanent Leader. In repeatedly mocking his predecessor, he was summoning soldiers to defy the fundamental idea that their service is to the Constitution and not to a given person. “You think this crowd would have showed up for Biden?” Whether or not it is unprecedented, as I believe it is, such mockery certainly dangerous. It suggests that something besides an election, something like individual charisma, some personal right to rule, is what matters. That soldiers should follow Trump because he is Trump, and not for any other reason.

In general, we imagine that the US Army is here to defend us, not to attack us. But summoning soldiers to heckle their fellow Americans is a sign of something quite different. Trump seized the occasion to summon soldiers to join him in mocking the press. Reporters, of course, as the Founders understood, are a critical check on tyranny. They, like protestors, are protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Trump was teaching soldiers that society does not matter, and that law does not matter. He “loves” soldiers. He is personally responsible for the pay raises: “I gave you so much money for four years it was crazy.” “We’re giving you an across-the-board raise” This is the way a dictator speaks to a palace guard, or a fascist to a paramilitary.

Trump is putting himself above the army and the army above the country: “we only have a country because we first had an army, the army was first.” That ridiculous: the Continental Army was formed in 1775 from the people, for the very specific and time-limited purpose of ending colonial oppression. Trump wants the armed force to be the end in itself, and freedom to be its enemy. Generally, presidents who speak to soldiers of military glory have had in mind the defense of American freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press and the freedom to assemble. Trump said nothing about freedom, except as a “flame” or a “shield.” He said nothing about rights. There was not a word about democracy.

We are witnessing an attempt at regime change, rife in perversities. It has a historical component: we are to celebrate the oathbreakers and the traitors. It has a fascist component: we are to embrace the present moment as an exception, in which all things are permitted to the Leader. And of course it has an institutional component: soldiers are meant to be the avant-garde of the end of democracy. Instead of treating the army as defenders or freedom, Trump presented soldiers as his personal armed servants, whose job it was to oppress his chosen enemies — inside the United States. Trump was trying to instruct soldiers that their mission was to crush fellow Americans who dared to exercise their rights, such as the right to protest.

Referring to migration as an “invasion,” as Trump did during the speech, is meant to blur the distinction between his immigration policy and a foreign war. But it is also meant to transform the mission of the US Army. The meaningful border here is that between reality and fantasy. If soldiers and others are willing to accept that migration is an “invasion,” then they enter into an alternative reality. Inside that alternative reality, they will see those who do not accept the invasion fantasy as enemies. And this is exactly what Trump called for when he portrayed elected officials in California as collaborators in “an occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”

The US Army, like other American institutions, includes people of various backgrounds. It depends heavily on African-Americans and non-citizens. One can try to transform the army into a cult of the Confederacy and a tool to persecute migrants, but this will cause, at a minimum, great friction. Beyond this, using the Army to enforce domestic policy risks ruining its reputation. Deploying the armed forces in cities risks US soldiers killing US civilians. It also risks that provocateurs, including foreign ones, including allies of Trump, will try to kill an American soldier to provoke a disaster. (Trump’s birthday parade seems practically designed for such an incident, by the way.)

Trump will welcome and exploit such situations, of course. He doesn’t have the courage to say things clearly or start conflict directly, but instead sets up others for situations in which they suffer and he profits. The question is whether civil war is the future Army officers and soldiers want. When Trump promises to celebrate Robert E. Lee, he is telling the Army that oath-breakers and traitors will be celebrated in the future. This is not in his gift. Officers who bring the US armed forces to battle American civilians will be remembered by the heirs of a broken republic and as the people who started a second American civil war.

It is clear what Trump is trying to do. He wants to turn everything around. He wants an army that is not a legal institution but a personal paramilitary. He wants it not to defend Americans but to oppress them. He wishes the shame of our national history to become our pride. He wants to transform a republic into a fascist regime by transforming a history of courage into a future of cowardice.

This can only succeed if it goes unchallenged. All of us can think about his words and their implications. Officers and soldiers can remember that not all orders are legal orders. Those in the media can interpret Trump’s speeches clearly rather than just repeating them or seeing them as one side in a partisan dispute. Our courts can name the limits of his authority. And even a Republican Congress can recognize when its powers are being usurped in a way that risks the end of our country.

Though he did not mention the Civil War, Trump did refer to “the sacred soil of Gettysburg.” It is worth recalling Lincoln’s very different sense of the sacrifice of American soldiers in his Gettysburg Address:

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

In the end, and in the beginning, and at all moments of strife, a government of the people, by the people, for the people depends upon the awareness and the actions of all of us. A democracy only exists if a people exist, and a people only exists in individuals’ awareness of one another of itself and of their need to act together. This weekend Trump plans a celebration of American military power as a celebration of himself on his birthday — military dictatorship nonsense. This is a further step towards a different kind of regime. It can be called out, and it can be overwhelmed.

Thousands of Americans across the land, many veterans among them, have worked hard to organize protests this Saturday — against tyranny, for freedom, for government of the people, by the people, for the people. Join them if you can. No Kings Day is June 14th.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, History, Inequity, Injustice, Lies, Racism, Trump, Tyranny

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Timothy Snyder: Trump’s Fascist Speech to the Troops at Fort Bragg

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💵 A sell-out

Today, the Tarrant County Commissioners Court voted to approve a redistricting map that effectively eliminates the seat of Commissioner Alisa Simmons, the only Black woman on the court.

The Republican Commissioners and their defenders kept repeating the same excuse over and over again, “This wasn’t about race. It was just about politics.”

And just when we thought we might get a win, it vanished as quickly as it came.

This is part of a broader, coordinated strategy across Texas to suppress the political power of Black and brown communities under the guise of partisan politics…..

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