Archives for category: Courage

Last Words from the Late Vivian Connell

April 16, 2026 //

I first met Vivian Connell in 2012 at a conference for legislators in Raleigh, North Carolina. She was part of a panel of North Carolina teachers who spoke about the challenges and needs of their classrooms. She was brilliant and articulate. I later learned that she was both a lawyer and a teacher. I was impressed by her candor, her insight, her passion, and her deep connection to her students.

That happened to be the same year that the Network for Public Education was founded.

Four years later, the Network decided to hold its annual conference in North Carolina. The decision was controversial because the state legislature (the General Assembly) had just passed a bathroom bill requiring that everyone must use the bathroom aligned with their assigned gender at birth. HB2 was known as Hate Bill 2. Some thought we should avoid North Carolina, others said we should show up.

We decided to stay in North Carolina (had we canceled at the last minute, we would have gone bankrupt), and our decision was reinforced when our dear friends in the state were able to persuade the Reverend William Barber to be our keynote speaker.

Rev. Barber was indeed eloquent, and we were glad we decided to stand by our original decision to meet in Raleigh. Funnily enough, the major hotel we stayed in had three kinds of bathrooms: women’s, men’s, and gender neutral. I wondered if the General Assembly knew. Had it occurred to them that HB 2 was unenforceable unless they had an inspector at every public bathroom to visually inspect either birth certificates or genitalia.

One prominent North Carolinian was missing from our conference: Vivian Connell.

Vivian lived about an hour away but she couldn’t travel. She had ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, which causes physical degeneration and has no cure.

At the end of the last session, on April 17, 2016, several of us joined Bertis Downs to pay a visit to Vivian. Bertis is from Georgia; Colleen Wood is from Florida; Phyllis Bush, now deceased from cancer, was from Indiana; and I am from New York.

Surrounding Vivian at her home, Mr, Bertis Downs, Colleen Wood and Phylis Bush. Vivian, in her wheelchair, holds a first edition of one of her favorite books.

When we arrived at Vivian’s home, we met her husband Paul, her children Hadley and Hagan, and her aide. Vivian was in a wheelchair. She had no physical mobility and could not speak. She was able to communicate via an amazing device. She “typed” by looking at letters on a computer screen, which then expressed words. A member of our group gave her a first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird, one of her favorite books. Her husband announced that he was taking the kids to see Hamilton, their favorite show (they had memorized the lyrics.)

Soon after she received her diagnosis of ALS, she began writing a blog called “finALS.” When she began, she was still fully mobile. She documented her activities, checking off the items on her bucket list, and describing her deteriorating condition.

What follows is her final blog, which she wrote after we visited. We know that every word was laboriously written in a transfer from her eyes to the machine.

I hope you read it. You wil get a sense of her beautiful soul, which could conquer any obstacle but ALS.

One Last Time

[Prelude: It is June 24th, and I have at last finished my final post for finALS. It is not the masterpiece I dreamed of writing, but I am not a writer, and it is from my heart. This Monday, my medical team, husband and I will explore palliative sedation to manage the terrible choking and gagging that now dominate my waking hours. Some people adapt; some never wake up.

Before I go, I must spotlight my husband, Paul Connell, who has, from the beginning, eschewed any limelight. Never has a spouse been more constant or devoted. And though we each have big personalities that clash, he has never wavered in his devotion or care.

I dedicate all I have accomplished in law school and after my diagnosis to Paul, without whose selflessness, I could have done little.

VRC]

Well, I am back at last.

My doctor has called in hospice and used the phrase “last few months.”

And I have been paralyzed by the composition of this post.

You should all thank my writer friend David Klein that you are not reading my original idea. It involved stories of seeing Ken Burns speak in 2008–a version replete with quotations and commentary, I assure you–of how I wove segments from my beloved TV favorite, Aaron Sorkin’s West Wing, into my teaching (again, with no shortage of inspirational anecdotes) and of how I discovered that the author and star of Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda, shares my love for the show.

But this is not to be an artful feature delineating again the ideals that inspired my teaching or the late-life leap to law school that validated my life’s work and filled the 27 months since I was diagnosed with ALS with wonder and opportunity. And I would love to regale you with the story of my Network for Public Education friends and colleagues visiting my home with both a signed first edition of To Kill a Mockingbird ( I know, right?) and my education policy hero, Diane Ravitch. I want to describe the tears of joy I cried when they left and the tears of joy my family enjoyed when we were gifted tickets to Hamilton! My husband wept because I couldn’t go. I bawled like a baby because they could.

And I want to tell you how my daughter ended up with an older script of Hamilton that Miranda had given to a journalist!

But this is not another post about serendipitous meetings and virtually miraculous joy that have so fully packed my life since I was diagnosed with this heinous, degenerative, and terminal disease.

I have covered my blessings pretty well.

These are to be my final words. Not a lesson from a dying teacher. Not an argument from a dying lawyer.

But one last time to attempt candor and artless honestly about my passions, my regrets, and wishing that this cup could be taken from me.

A LAST LITERARY LESSON

It feels important as well that I not leave anyone thinking too highly of me.

I was blessed to accomplish much I am proud of, mainly because I genuinely bought in to the best ideals of those before me and found the courage to follow my callings–to strive always to do more and do better.

Deepest thanks to my teachers and heroes.

I would be terribly remiss, however, if I failed to share at least a few of my representative fears and failings.

I’ve thought often of Hawthorne’s exhortation in The Scarlet Letter:

“Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!”

While I will not spend this post mimicking the poor guilty minister’s self-flagellation (you’re welcome), I will be sharing some of my less admirable choices. In retrospect, in fact, I am certain that my shame and regret–my failures–motivated me to keep striving to do better.

A loud conscience is a benefit, I think. At long as it brings about striving to do better rather than paralysis via self-loathing.

I diverge from many of my progressive parent friends because I take to heart that a reasonable and loving authority figure is healthy and character building.

I have no regrets about that aspect of my parenting: I think my kids knew that we rode them because we love them.

And I think this model is more effective when I ride myself equally.

And I encourage you not to procrastinate or ignore an urge to change or do better. Following these feelings brought all the most rewarding experiences of my life. And though I am far from done–though I have more public ( political) and private ( personal) battles to wage and improvements to make, I am out of time. And terribly sad about it.

So emulate the best of the heroes in Hamilton, our flawed founding fathers–yes, many of whom were paternalistic slave owners, but–who genuinely wanted to do better. The tireless work of Diane Ravitch, who once embraced the errant ideology of the failed Bush education mandate, No Child Left Behind (newsflash: many of our most vulnerable populations were “left behind”) but who now is standard-bearer for Valerie Strauss of The Washington Post, hundreds of leading education researchers, and hundreds of thousands of teachers and parents who are committed to the civic imperative of excellence and equity in public education.

And maybe even me: a self-absorbed, working-class only child who grew up oblivious to her privilege, pursuing only middle-class self-interest, but who learned through education and experience to change…

… To strive to be better, and in so doing, lived an adult life that makes it much less difficult to face death.

ON FAITH

I know my redeemer lives.

I did not embrace this belief until I was 28. And it is and has been the greatest gift of my life. I thank G-d for making him/herself real to me.

Every worthwhile accomplishment of my life–especially my love for my students and my passion for justice and tolerance–came from my faith.

My worst failings–especially my impatience, a hardness on others to live up to my (unjustified) expectations, and my intolerance for the intolerant–come from my failures to live out my faith.

I am grateful for forgiving friends and a forgiving G-d.

Regrets: Though I raised my children in church and strove to find churches that reflected the love of Jesus of Nazareth rather than the rules of so much organized religion, I never really prioritized participation in my church communities.

We moved several times when my kids were small, and I never fought hard enough to find the right church–a place that worked for social justice and where I could be confident that any person I invited would feel welcomed and loved for who they were.

For a couple of years, I asked my husband for us to tithe on our net, but I worried too much about birthday parties, vacations, activities, and home lifestyle to put giving first.

No Regrets: I did keep trying though, and about a year before leaving Charlotte, I bit the bullet and began shlepping my family to Warehouse 242, a place where I once saw one of my gay/trans high school students visit, and knew I had made the right decision! And when we moved to Chapel Hill, I at last found United Church of Chapel Hill, an open and affirming church community that focuses on serving “the least of these,” is active in the North Carolina Moral Monday movement for social justice, and actively promotes racial equity.

Despite my failures to live out my faith as I would have hoped, I was gifted lifelong friendship with several teens I led in a small group at a church in Charlotte that was much too legalistic for my comfort. I think I won these friendships because I never lied to the girls. I acknowledged the dissonance they perceived between the Jesus they knew or wanted to know and the legalism of our church and /or the politics of their parents.

Somehow I always respectfully challenged those I believe misrepresented the G-d who made himself real to me.

And for that, no regrets.

I do apologize to those with whom I disagreed, but failed to always love or respect. For example, the three arrogant social conservatives who poisoned my law school class: I held my ground against you in public, but I’m afraid I also referred to you surreptitiously as the unholy trinity.

And Andrew Brown, if you wonder why you practically had to rewrite your Law Review piece in which you demonized homosexuals and their rights as adoptive parents, well, that was me spending over twenty hours to eviscerate your pseudo-academic arguments and discredit your sources.

Oh, and Andrew, if you were my student and had used brackets to skew a quote to dishonestly promote your argument, I would have disciplined you to the outer boundaries of academic protocol.

Did you see what I did there?

I showed you that I enjoy kicking over the moneylenders’ tables in the temple a bit too much.

I think I was called to be a fighter, but I don’t think I always fought with love and humility.

May we all seek truth and justice while simultaneously striving to love our enemies as they are loved.

G-d help us all. S/he loves when we try and shows us unlimited forgiveness. This I know, and for this I am grateful.

ON RACE

It’s been a major issue in my life. And one I hate to leave on the table. Along with money in politics, corporate personhood, and the future of public education.

And so I find myself thinking of Greensboro.

The legendary lunch counter sit-ins.

This North Carolina city is now home to the Racial Equity Institute. My principal at Phoenix Academy, the alternative high school, sagely invested in each of his employees by sending us to the two-day introductory seminar of REI. The main reaction of attendees is “life-changing.” No guilting or emotional manipulation in sight, but two days of systematic realities steeped in history and taught by a diverse and largely dispassionate team. They are not crusading, but if you are interested in the statistics–the outcomes for people of color in health care, financial services, law enforcement, education, and other social structures, then they have the facts.

If you are ready and willing to face the not-so-just realities.

And Greensboro is also the home of my former law school classmate and honors writing scholar, Jessica. She married an African-American man, and they have three of the most beautiful biracial children I have ever seen. And though she has been busy with three children under five, she has come to Chapel Hill and fed me and my family on multiple occasions, and today she drove round-trip from Greensboro so that I could meet her two-month-old daughter before she had to pick up her toddler boys … or be charged a dollar a minute.

When I see the videos of those bad apples in law enforcement dragging black teenage girls in swimsuits to the ground or toppling one out of her school desk, or arresting Sandra Bland, I think of Jessica’s daughter. When I see the statistics and remember the stories of everything from violence to injustice to mere humiliation endured by my former students and my friends, I think of all our citizens of color and the ugly truth of Americans who must raise their children in fear.

And I hurt for white America, too many of whom deny the reality of our country’s latent and simmering injustice to so many people of color.

A child of the Deep South born in 1964 to parents raised on farms and in rental shacks around Vidalia, Georgia, I was lucky.

My parents taught me the right words:

Don’t judge people by skin color.
Everyone should be treated equally.
Don’t use the N-word.

But there were no black kids in my Mississippi elementary school and no black families in my neighborhoods… ever.

And the bulk of my south Georgia relatives never got the N-word memo.

By high school, I was passively non-racist but had never had a non-white friend.

Regrets : My worst memories…

When I was a high school sophomore, some popular girls I longed to befriend me asked me to go out after the football game. We got sundaes at the McDonald’s, and one had a hair in it. And so we circled round to request a replacement. Four privileged white girls in nice clothes carrying their generous allowances and riding in a parent’s new sedan. When we returned to the drive-thru, my new friend spoke into the speaker to the African-American girl at the window: “We need another sundae, and this time, hold the ni–er hair.”
I alone didn’t laugh, but I also didn’t speak up or get out of the car. And I still burn with shame at the memory.

No regrets: Junior year University, I brought my roommate home for Thanksgiving. I did not even think to tell my parents she was black. But when my poor mother said that she was afraid of what the neighbors would think, I stood up.

Dr. Anne Sharp, Dr. Albert Somers, Dr. Zach Kelehear and the wonderful English and Education professors unmasked the systematic racism of our education systems and even our very linguistics.

Never in my teaching career could I say “with liberty and justice for all” without adding “someday, if we all work for it.”

I am proud to have passed these lessons to my students and to reap the harvest of watching them work for a more just society. And of course, the root of the problem is not race alone, but the evil human propensity to divide ourselves by skin color, religion, gender, sexual orientation, social class, and myriad other traits. We declare our own group best or righteous, then marginalize and scapegoat “the other.” And in doing so, we undermine the promises of equality in both our Declaration and Constitution. We also fail to love our brothers as ourselves. As shared before, here is the story of my finest hour. Which I pray will counter the all-too-prevalent voices of evil flourishing in our political, and even religious arenas.

I have celebrated the election of our first biracial president only to witness a stunning political backlash and obstruction. I have witnessed racial attacks on President Obama and even his family. I witnessed the police attacks on black men and women, and the overtly racist slaughter in a Charleston church.

And now I have seen the most openly racist candidate become the GOP nominee for the upcoming presidential election. Ken Burns shares my concerns.

But:

I go with hope.

My children mirror my generational progress. My professors at UNC Law and the leaders in my church are standing up… and long have been. And oh, my amazing law school classmates, at so many centers and organizations, working for true equality for all.

I am so grateful to know them all. And to see Ta-Nehisi Coates win a genius grant. And to see Hamilton become the greatest Broadway sensation with a predominantly non-white cast portraying our crusty white founding fathers.

My hope is that America’s majority culture can admit that it is harder to be a person of color here and that this reality does not comport with our ideals.

For soon after that tipping point, this ugly reality will cease to be part of our identity.

“Someday… If we all work for it.”

ON LAW & POLITICS

I am failing fast: my abilities to swallow and breathe are plummeting. I will therefore need to be succinct and, hopefully compelling in this potentially off-putting yet crucial section.

REGRETS:

In 1981 I told my A.P. English teacher that I was apolitical. Though I doubt I knew that term. I’m sure my arrogance was less articulate.

I believe I made this claim because she asked me a question about politics, and I was far too self-involved to watch even the evening news, and so I could not give a knowledgeable answer to her question.

But I remember her upbraiding, partly because she was right, and partly because this truth haunted me and grew in me for decades.

She called bullshit like only a legendary, scholarly, and terrifying old English teacher who has been setting entitled little snots straight for decades can.

She looked me in the eyes and told me not delude myself. For we are all political. She described how almost all of our choices–where we shop, what we buy, where we live, where we educate our children–are all political actions. The only question, she assured me, was whether these choices would be informed decisions or whether I would be too lazy to become informed.

I am loath to admit how slow I was on this curve.

No regrets: During college, life abroad, graduate school, and almost two decades of teaching, I never forgot the clarion truth of Ms. Braswell’s words. I only wish that I had been more informed and much more civically active sooner.

Two tough truths I learned along the way:

“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.”
― Paulo Freire
“Allowing the ratio of time we spend enjoying our freedom, wealth, and justice to materially surpass the time we spend preserving those blessings virtually guarantees they will diminish, or even be lost while we are not looking.” – Vivian Connell

When I came to UNC Law in 2010, North Carolina was a moderate state, considered progressive for the South. The Triangle of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill topped lists of best places to live in America.

But then moderates and progressives busy enjoying this status looked away, and paid a disastrous price when dark money flipped our General Assembly to the radical right. It hadn’t happened in a century, but it happened the moment citizens disengaged from civic attentiveness. We have seen national model education programs dismantled, and our voter suppression laws, gerrymandering, and, most recently HB2,”the Bathroom Bill,” have pitted us against federal authorities and made us a national laughingstock.

Of course, these developments are no joke to the poor without health care, to minorities facing all kinds of discrimination, or to public school teachers and advocates who have seen their resources and rankings plummet.

Here are a few of the fights that must be fought when citizens in a democracy cannot be bothered with the work of politics:

Me, just out of law school in 2013

NPR

The U.S. Department of Justice

It is really this simple: you are political whether you knowingly control the influence you wield or whether you cede your power to others through superficial participation or non-participation.

Informed participation, though. How the hell does one manage it?

Where can one find the truth untainted by special interests?

Obviously, by reading and viewing a variety of sources, some of which do not rely upon special interests for funding.

And if you become frustrated by how “they” have made terrible laws or skewed public policy in a way in which you disapprove, you might want to become one of “them.” I did, and I sought to get to the heart of the democratic process by attending law school.

Now would be a good time to be succinct.

The gravamen of almost every issue demands that we prioritize either our ideals or our economy. And while we need to maintain our economy, there are two essential ways that we have prioritized money to an extent that it is undermining our democracy.

money in politics
quarterly capitalism

Money in politics

Because of a Supreme Court decision called Citizens United–often named along with Dred Scott, Plessy, and Bush v. Gore as the potentially worst Court decision ever–uber-wealthy entities can buy elections.

We must support campaign finance reform so that ideas determine victors. We must find, recruit, and elect representatives who will govern for the greater good. We must recognize and reject empty rhetoric in superficial, soundbite ads.

When one of our most conservative representatives challenged Democratic senator Kay Hagan in 2014, I agreed to act as spokesperson in a $3 million ad buy for the NEA. I loathed the simplistic script because I knew Thom Tillis’s record on education and would have vastly preferred an hour-long, fact-based debate on a website that would not have cost the educators I represented a penny.

But the National Rifle Association outspent the teachers, and Tillis won by roughly a percentage point. I wrote about it for Salon.

I pray that with Citizens United‘s author, Justice Antonin Scalia, deceased and the legion of young Sanders supporters, the coming years will see true campaign finance reform. The reality of special interests and corporations disproportionately deciding ought to horrify anyone who loves this country and the truly democratic ideals for which it stands.

Or consider the words of the inimitable Andy Borowitz.

Quarterly capitalism

My Business Associations class–a course called Corporations at some law schools– enlightened me as to the core legal atrocity that undermines the ability of American companies to contribute to not only our economy but also to the greater good of our society.

Do you wonder why so few corporate officers or companies ever pay for their bad, or virtually fraudulent choices? It’s because our laws protect them from virtually any risk they take. If they can concoct any rationale that their risk was a potential money maker for share holders, then they are protected.

Worst, this singular focus on immediate profit means that corporate leaders face not only disincentive but potential lawsuits should they wish to take a longer and broader view of corporate citizenship. The law prevents them from investing in worker training, more research and development, community betterment, education enhancement, programs to reward and protect their consumer base, or other forward-looking ideas that would enrich all of the corporation’s constituents.

Please listen to this indictment of this system, in which corporate officers decline to consider actions for the long-term benefit of their companies and their constituents–investors, workers, clients, neighbors, and their habitat–if doing so might mean dropping even one penny off their stock price for the quarter.

Thus, we have codified greed and outlawed wisdom.

Our companies should make more than money. They should enrich their communities, workers, business, and society.

Even our Judeo-Christian tradition tells us of a year of jubilee in which debts were forgiven and indentured servants freed. And while I suggest nothing so radical, I insist that we must reform our corporate law AND adhere to financial reforms in Dodd-Frank if we are to retain a robust middle class and remain a society in which business serves people, and not vice versa.

If you can, see Robert Reich’s Inequality for All.

ON EDUCATION

My heart aches. Other than wife and mother, I have predominantly been a public school teacher. It hurts and angers me to see what special interests and the last two administrations, Bush and Obama, have done to this cherished civic responsibility.

It is funny–not “ha-ha” funny, of course–that I wanted this to be the richest section, a big finale, but it is likely to be the most truncated. I am sleeping more each day and struggling to swallow and breathe during the hours I am awake. And as much as I might write about various policy initiatives, like charter schools, vouchers, merit pay, and especially the insidious philosophy of market-based reform (that would have us apply profit-making principles to the complex, subtle, and sacred art of educating our populace), I want to get to the core.

REGRETS:

I have spent over three hours this morning working with my hospice nurse, my saint of a caregiver husband, my tireless and loyal assistant, to clear my secretions and stop this horrific gagging and choking, so I regret leaving this section for last!

But seriously, folks…

I regret failing to integrate the promotion of civic engagement during the early years of my teaching. It certainly distinguished the final years of my career, and I am grateful to have lived to see so many of my students become teachers, lawyers and activists.

No Regrets:

The hundred-plus emails and messages from students, the tens of visits ( most from Charlotte to Chapel Hill) made by students and even a couple of parents who helped unpack from my move (Jodi Brown) and even execute a plethora of retirement and insurance documents to assure our children’s trust would be the beneficiary (Hallie Hawkins) are major blessings. A couple of weeks ago, two young women visited– including one who feels a profound connection with my daughter, for which I am so delighted – – and when we had a nurse cancel, they cared for me like I was their own mother.

I hope this means that they know I really loved them.

Even when overworked, underpaid, underappreciated, and demeaned by many who genuinely believe that “those who can’t, teach, ” I regret not even one day I spent in the classroom.

Closing comments about education policy:

First, in lieu of embarking upon a treatise on education policy, I’ll let a passionate young history teacher who just marched to Raleigh to practice civil disobedience tell the story in a much more engaging manner.

And if You wish to remain informed about public education and align yourself with one of the most important social movements of the age, follow Diane Ravitch and support The Network for Public Education. They will be on the right side of history.

I am most concerned with all schemes to create “for-profit” charters for K-12 education. A quick Google search of charter school and fraud yields over 1 million results. Which makes sense: as you will remember from our discussion of quarterly capitalism, businesses exist to serve their owners. (If anyone wants to read my rather prescient Law Review note eviscerating corruption in for-profit higher education.

Can any first-rate, moral country exist and thrive without providing its citizenry with quality education?

I want my final commentary to address the purpose of education, a topic which ought be at the heart of every education debate yet which too often parents, businessmen, and the general populace presume to be settled.

But is the goal of education to produce a workforce or enlightenment? Should it indoctrinate children to sustain and succeed within the status quo or to challenge what is and strive ever for progress, even if change is painful?

As a country born of revolution and the Enlightenment, our answer must be the latter. Every educated citizen should have a working understanding of our government, as well as a belief that their civic engagement is essential to maintaining our democracy and that they can make a profound difference in their worlds.

Children in our best schools already come away with this understanding. Unfortunately, many of today’s education reformers are powerful business entities and politicians who would defund the liberal arts.

North Carolina governor Pat McCrory made the following telling remark: Liberal arts Programs, he said, ought to continue, but not receive government subsidies.

Let me translate: If you are wealthy enough to attend a prestigious private university, then you may study whatever you like: anthropology, minority Literature, developing political systems, gender studies, dance. But if not, you ought to be required to study subjects that promote the economic interests of those in power–business, technology, and skill majors. The goal of the education haves can be enrichment; the education have-nots will be herded into a compliant labor force.

Governor McCrory did not mention that his undergraduate degree from a private school is in philosophy.

Or that the majority of U.S. senators majored in the liberal arts. So did the majority of lawyers.

The study of history, Literature and the arts inspires and empowers, and it must remain accessible to all. And all of our public schools must equitably prepare every child to pursue his or her calling, whatever it may be.

And as long as there exist schools in our communities that are not considered good enough for some children, yet which remain the only option for other kids, we must acknowledge that the playing field of the American dream is not level.

And that until it is, we continue to fall short of justice for all.

Finally, most of you will have heard of “the achievement gap”–the disparity in educational outcomes between the predominantly successful students and those who fail to thrive or become functional members of society. Researchers have long (and largely accurately) identified poverty as the key demographic of “failing schools.”

But about a year ago, a Gallup poll found a more specific predictor of academic success: hope. And the miracle of Tangelo Park has born out the truth of this finding.

These poor minority students–kids many middle-class and affluent parents don’t want their kids to have to go to school with–suddenly began graduating at over 95 percent, one of the best in the country. Why?

Because they knew that if they got into college, they could go. It would be paid for. They were given the power to win in a system stacked against them.

They were given hope.

And none of us should rest until every American child has that hope.

GOODBYE

I have arrived at the end time of this disease, and it is horrific as they say. As I struggle not to choke and gag, I do wish that I had fewer regrets. Of course, these wishes that I had been a better wife, mother, and friend are tempered by all the love and mercy with which I have been blessed.

I want to thank the many amazing and generous people who have helped us in too many ways to innumerate. And thank the thousands of you who have read and shared my blog ; I am deeply honored that anyone has found value, comfort, or inspiration in my words.

May G-d bless and keep you all.

As I often told my students, few of us will be a Mother Teresa or a Hitler, but we will each make the world a little better or worse.

May we all strive to make it better. May we engage responsibly in the miraculous gift of our democracy and support public-interest lawyers and entities working for social justice. It feels so much better than following thoughtlessly in consumerism and self-interest.

History has its eyes on us all.

And as for death, I will quote Grandpa Blakeslee from Olive AnnBurns’s novel, Cold Sassy Tree: “Hit’s what you get for living.”

And though ALS is one of the worst demises imaginable, I’ll take the trade.

Love,

Vivian

P. S. I will be listening to the beautiful Gilead, the Harry Potter audio books as well as all my favorite playlists. (As Dumbledore says, “Ah music. A magic beyond all we do.”) My whole family will be listening to Hamilton–and how lucky I was to be alive right now. And I made it through The West Wing and The Newsroom again. Bless all of you who listened and watched with me, especially my patient and loving husband and my wonderful and Sorkin-savvy children! Thanks also kids for sharing Doctor Who. I would not have missed it for the world.

Categories Character, Courage, Creativity, Ethics, Health, Love, Racism, Religion

A Must-Watch Interview: Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder

By dianeravitch

March 30, 2026 //

This is a very important interview, a thoughtful discussion between two remarkable people.

Two historians talk about Trump tyranny, the rule of oligarchs, and the power of the fossil fuel industry.

Snyder reminds us of the importance of the November elections. It’s our chance to put limits on the oligarchs and authoritarians.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Censorship, Corruption, Courage, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Trump

Paul Krugman: Day 1461 of Putin’s Three-Day War

By dianeravitch

February 24, 2026 //

On this day in 2022, Vladimir Putin launched an unprovoked invasion of the sovereign state of Ukraine. He expected to encounter token resistance, but the Ukrainians fought back fiercely. For four years, the brave Ukrainians have held back the Russian onslaught.

Russia aimed its barrage of missiles and drones at apartment buildings, schools, hospitals, train stations, shopping centers, power plants–all civilian targets. The Russian onslaught conquered territory but at a high price in Russian men (about one million) and vast amounts of tanks, airplanes, weapons, and supplies.

Writing on Substack, Marius Didziokas disparaged the view that Russia is winning:

Imagine that, four years after invading Poland, Hitler’s troops were bogged down fighting over unnamed villages 80 kilometres from the border. The Bismarck and half of the German navy would be lying at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. Polish drones and missiles would be raining down on Berlin’s refineries and weapons factories throughout the Reich. This is Russia today.

Some victory!

Paul Krugman is also skeptical about Russia’s “success.” As he notes, Biden made a terrible miscalculation in limiting Ukraine only to defensive measures, not permitting them to strike back at Russian targets. Putin’s threats of nuclear retaliation were a bluff.

Krugman writes:

Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2002. Putin expected a quick Russian triumph — reports are that he expected the Ukrainians to fold in days. He never said “three days,” but this meme has become shorthand for his belief that it would be a walkover. Western military analysts who had bought into propaganda about Russia’s military strength shared his assessment.

U.S. right-wingers were especially enthralled with what they perceived as the toughness, masculinity, and anti-wokeness of Russian soldiers.

But Putin’s dream of a short, victorious war has turned — as such dreams usually do — into a long nightmare of blood, destruction and humiliation. Ukrainian courage and Russian incompetence — combined with the effectiveness of British and American man-portable weapons — ensured that the attempt to seize Kyiv became an epic debacle. The three-day war is about to enter its fifth year.

I am not a military expert. But I pay attention to those who are — especially Phillips O’Brien, who has been far more right about this war than anyone else I know. Furthermore, the future of the war will depend greatly on an issue I do know something about, Europe’s ability to provide Ukraine with the support it needs. So I thought I would use the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the war to talk about where we are right now.

First, about the military situation. The maps at the top of this post show how the area of Ukraine under Russian control — shaded pink — has changed over the past year. You may ask, whatchange? Exactly. The Ukraine war isn’t like World War II, in which breakthroughs could be exploited by armored columns sweeping into the enemy’s rear. It’s a war in which the battlefield is swarming with drones, where there isn’t even a well-defined front line, and the “kill zone” within which even armored vehicles are basically death traps is many kilometers wide.

Some observers still don’t understand how the reality of war has changed. Thus there have been breathless reports about the danger Ukraine would face after Russia seized the “strategic city” of Pokrovsk since July 2024. Russian forces finally entered Pokrovsk late last year and may now occupy most of the rubble. But it made no difference.

This reality shows how idiotic it is for the U.S. Department of Defense — sorry, Department of War — to decide that its mission is to embrace a “warrior ethos.” Bulging biceps and macho posturing won’t help you prevail in modern war, while bombastic stupidity is a good way to get many soldiers killed.

So if modern technology has turned war on the ground into a bloody stalemate — much bloodier for Russia than for Ukraine, but still indecisive — what will determine victory and defeat? The answer, which has been true in most wars, is that it will come down to resources and logistics.

If this were purely a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the Ukrainians, for all their heroism, would be doomed. Russia, after all, has four times Ukraine’s population and ten times its GDP.

But Ukraine has powerful friends.

For the first three years of the war, the United States was the most important of these friends. Indeed, Ukraine wouldn’t have been able to resist Russia without U.S. aid.

Unfortunately, top Biden officials were too cautious. They didn’t want Putin to win, but they clearly lost their nerve at the prospect of outright Russian defeat. So they slow-walked aid and kept putting restrictions on the use of U.S. weapons. Without those restrictions, Ukraine would have been able to hammer Russian rear areas, and this war might well have ended in its first year.

As it was, Ukraine was able to hang on but not triumph. And now we have a U.S. president who clearly wants to see a Russian victory. He’s unwilling or unable to openly throw America’s weight behind Putin, but he has effectively cut off all U.S. aid to Ukraine. That’s not hyperbole. Here are the numbers:

A graph of different colored bars

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: Kiel Institute

This is a betrayal of everything America used to stand for. We’re witnessing a war between freedom and tyranny, between an imperfect but decent government and a monstrous mass murderer — and the U.S. government is de facto backing the tyrannical monster.

Yet despite Trump’s pro-Putin policy, Ukraine is still standing, while Russia’s year-long offensive has been a bloody failure. While Trump may have thought that he could discreetly hand Ukraine over to Putin, it turns out that he didn’t have the cards.

Crucially, as you can see from the chart above, Europe has for the most part stepped up to the plate, replacing most of the lost aid from the United States. True, some of the military aid takes the form of U.S. weapons purchased by European nations and transferred to Ukraine. In particular, there is still no good alternative to Patriot air defense systems. And the Trump administration has been stalling some military deliveries even though Europe is paying.

But European — and, increasingly, Ukrainian — arms production has been ramping up. One indicator of European potential for arms manufacturing is that U.S. officials have gone ballistic over proposed buy-European provisions in Europe’s ongoing military buildup and threatened retaliation. This is quite rich: America in effect reserves the right to use its control over weapon systems to hobble other countries’ military efforts — on behalf of dictators the president likes — but is furious at any attempt to reduce dependence on those systems.

But does Europe have the resources to ensure Ukrainian victory without the United States? Mark Rutte, a Dutch politician who is currently secretary-general of NATO, made waves last month when he told people who believe that Europe can defend itself against Russia without the United States to “keep on dreaming.” One sees similar declarations of helplessness from some other Europeans. But it’s really difficult to see where this defeatism is coming from. Combined, the economies of the European nations that have strongly supported Ukraine are vastly larger than Russia’s:

A graph of a bar chart

AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Source: International Monetary Fund

It’s true that Europe has in the past had great difficulty acting like the superpower it is. But that may be changing.

So, how will this war end? Russia’s strategy now appears to be to terror-bomb Ukraine into submission, but as far as I know that has never worked. The more likely outcome is that European aid and Ukraine’s own growing prowess in arms production will gradually shift the military balance in Ukraine’s favor, and that Russia’s war effort will eventually collapse.

I hope that’s how it turns out. But even if it does, shame on America, for betraying a valiant ally.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, International, Resistance, Trump

The Context of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

By dianeravitch

January 19, 2026 //

Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was written in April 1963. Dr. King wrote in response to a public statement by Birmingham religious leaders who called on Dr. King to be patient and not to engage in demonstrations that would provoke resistance.

This context in which he wrote the letter appears on the website of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama’s existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city’s segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham’s merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year. As ACMHR founder Fred Shuttlesworth stated in the group’s “Birmingham Manifesto,” the campaign was “a moral witness to give our community a chance to survive” (ACMHR, 3 April 1963).

The campaign was originally scheduled to begin in early March 1963, but was postponed until 2 April when the relatively moderate Albert Boutwell defeated Birmingham’s segregationist commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, in a run-off mayoral election. On 3 April the desegregation campaign was launched with a series of mass meetings, direct actions, lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall, and a boycott of downtown merchants. King spoke to black citizens about the philosophy of nonviolence and its methods, and extended appeals for volunteers at the end of the mass meetings. With the number of volunteers increasing daily, actions soon expanded to kneel-ins at churches, sit-ins at the library, and a march on the county building to register voters. Hundreds were arrested.

On 10 April the city government obtained a state circuit court injunction against the protests. After heavy debate, campaign leaders decided to disobey the court order. King declared: “We cannot in all good conscience obey such an injunction which is an unjust, undemocratic and unconstitutional misuse of the legal process” (ACMHR, 11 April 1963). Plans to continue to submit to arrest were threatened, however, because the money available for cash bonds was depleted, so leaders could no longer guarantee that arrested protesters would be released. King contemplated whether he and Ralph Abernathy should be arrested. Given the lack of bail funds, King’s services as a fundraiser were desperately needed, but King also worried that his failure to submit to arrests might undermine his credibility. King concluded that he must risk going to jail in Birmingham. He told his colleagues: “I don’t know what will happen; I don’t know where the money will come from. But I have to make a faith act” (King, 73).

On Good Friday, 12 April, King was arrested in Birmingham after violating the anti-protest injunction and was kept in solitary confinement. During this time King penned the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on the margins of the Birmingham News, in reaction to a statement published in that newspaper by eight Birmingham clergymen condemning the protests. King’s request to call his wife, Coretta Scott King, who was at home in Atlanta recovering from the birth of their fourth child, was denied. After she communicated her concern to the Kennedy administration, Birmingham officials permitted King to call home. Bail money was made available, and he was released on 20 April 1963.

In order to sustain the campaign, SCLC organizer James Bevel proposed using young children in demonstrations. Bevel’s rationale for the Children’s Crusade was that young people represented an untapped source of freedom fighters without the prohibitive responsibilities of older activists. On 2 May more than 1,000 African American students attempted to march into downtown Birmingham, and hundreds were arrested. When hundreds more gathered the following day, Commissioner Connor directed local police and fire departments to use force to halt the demonstrations. During the next few days images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, clubbed by police officers, and attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers, triggering international outrage. While leading a group of child marchers, Shuttlesworth himself was hit with the full force of a fire hose and had to be hospitalized. King offered encouragement to parents of the young protesters: “Don’t worry about your children, they’re going to be alright. Don’t hold them back if they want to go to jail. For they are doing a job for not only themselves, but for all of America and for all mankind” (King, 6 May 1963).

In the meantime, the white business structure was weakening under adverse publicity and the unexpected decline in business due to the boycott, but many business owners and city officials were reluctant to negotiate with the protesters. With national pressure on the White House also mounting, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent Burke Marshall, his chief civil rights assistant, to facilitate negotiations between prominent black citizens and representatives of Birmingham’s Senior Citizen’s Council, the city’s business leadership.

The Senior Citizen’s Council sought a moratorium on street protests as an act of good faith before any final settlement was declared, and Marshall encouraged campaign leaders to halt demonstrations, accept an interim compromise that would provide partial success, and negotiate the rest of their demands afterward. Some black negotiators were open to the idea, and although the hospitalized Shuttlesworth was not present at the negotiations, on 8 May King told the negotiators he would accept the compromise and call the demonstrations to a halt.

When Shuttlesworth learned that King intended to announce a moratorium he was furious—about both the decision to ease pressure off white business owners and the fact that he, as the acknowledged leader of the local movement, had not been consulted. Feeling betrayed, Shuttlesworth reminded King that he could not legitimately speak for the black population of Birmingham on his own: “Go ahead and call it off … When I see it on TV, that you have called it off, I will get up out of this, my sickbed, with what little ounce of strength I have, and lead them back into the street. And your name’ll be Mud” (Hampton and Fayer, 136). King made the announcement anyway, but indicated that demonstrations might be resumed if negotiations did not resolve the situation shortly.

By 10 May negotiators had reached an agreement, and despite his falling out with King, Shuttlesworth joined him and Abernathy to read the prepared statement that detailed the compromise: the removal of “Whites Only” and “Blacks Only” signs in restrooms and on drinking fountains, a plan to desegregate lunch counters, an ongoing “program of upgrading Negro employment,” the formation of a biracial committee to monitor the progress of the agreement, and the release of jailed protesters on bond (“The Birmingham Truce Agreement,” 10 May 1963).

Birmingham segregationists responded to the agreement with a series of violent attacks. That night an explosive went off near the Gaston Motel room where King and SCLC leaders had previously stayed, and the next day the home of King’s brother Alfred Daniel King was bombed. President John F. Kennedy responded by ordering 3,000 federal troops into position near Birmingham and making preparations to federalize the Alabama National Guard. Four months later, on 15 September, Ku Klux Klan members bombed Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls. King delivered the eulogy at the 18 September joint funeral of three of the victims, preaching that the girls were “the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity” (King, “Eulogy for the Martyred Children,” 18 September 1963).

Footnotes

“The Birmingham Truce Agreement,” 10 May 1963, in Eyes on the Prize, ed. Carson et al., 1991.

Douglas Brinkley, “The Man Who Kept King’s Secrets,” Vanity Fair (April 2006): 156–171.

Eskew, But for Birmingham, 1997.

Hampton and Fayer, with Flynn, Voices of Freedom, 1990.

King, Address delivered at mass meeting, 6 May 1963, FRC-DSI-FC.

King, Eulogy for the Martyred Children, 18 September 1963, in A Call to Conscience, ed. Carson and Shepard, 2001.

King, Shuttlesworth, and Abernathy, Statement, “For engaging in peaceful desegregation demonstrations,” 11 April 1963, BWOF-AB.

King, Why We Can’t Wait, 1964.

Shuttlesworth and N. H. Smith, “Birmingham Manifesto,” 3 April 1963, MLKJP-GAMK. Back to Top

Stanford

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

Categories Alabama, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Freedom, History, Injustice

Heather Cox Richardson: How Fascists Gain Power

By dianeravitch

January 14, 2026 //

Heather Cox Richardson obtained a pamphlet written during World War II for our troops overseas. Its purpose was to explain the tactics of fascists: how they gain power, how they lie to distort reality, how they use hatred to divide and conquer.

The pamphlet is insightful, incisive, and remarkably relevant to the world we live in now.

What we are learning is that “It can happen here.” We must arm ourselves with knowledge to preserve our democracy.

She writes:

Beginning in 1943, the War Department published a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II. Titled Army Talks, the series was designed “to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”

On March 24, 1945, the topic for the week was “FASCISM!”

“You are away from home, separated from your families, no longer at a civilian job or at school and many of you are risking your very lives,” the pamphlet explained, “because of a thing called fascism.” But, the publication asked, what is fascism? “Fascism is not the easiest thing to identify and analyze,” it said, “nor, once in power, is it easy to destroy. It is important for our future and that of the world that as many of us as possible understand the causes and practices of fascism, in order to combat it.”

Fascism, the U.S. government document explained, “is government by the few and for the few. The objective is seizure and control of the economic, political, social, and cultural life of the state.” “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.”

“The basic principles of democracy stand in the way of their desires; hence—democracy must go! Anyone who is not a member of their inner gang has to do what he’s told. They permit no civil liberties, no equality before the law.” “Fascism treats women as mere breeders. ‘Children, kitchen, and the church,’ was the Nazi slogan for women,” the pamphlet said.

Fascists “make their own rules and change them when they choose…. They maintain themselves in power by use of force combined with propaganda based on primitive ideas of ‘blood’ and ‘race,’ by skillful manipulation of fear and hate, and by false promise of security. The propaganda glorifies war and insists it is smart and ‘realistic’ to be pitiless and violent.”

Fascists understood that “the fundamental principle of democracy—faith in the common sense of the common people—was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few,” it explained, “[s]o they fought democracy…. They played political, religious, social, and economic groups against each other and seized power while these groups struggled.”

Americans should not be fooled into thinking that fascism could not come to America, the pamphlet warned; after all, “[w]e once laughed Hitler off as a harmless little clown with a funny mustache.” And indeed, the U.S. had experienced “sorry instances of mob sadism, lynchings, vigilantism, terror, and suppression of civil liberties. We have had our hooded gangs, Black Legions, Silver Shirts, and racial and religious bigots. All of them, in the name of Americanism, have used undemocratic methods and doctrines which…can be properly identified as ‘fascist.’”

The War Department thought it was important for Americans to understand the tactics fascists would use to take power in the United States. They would try to gain power “under the guise of ‘super-patriotism’ and ‘super-Americanism.’” And they would use three techniques:

First, they would pit religious, racial, and economic groups against one another to break down national unity. Part of that effort to divide and conquer would be a “well-planned ‘hate campaign’ against minority races, religions, and other groups.”

Second, they would deny any need for international cooperation, because that would fly in the face of their insistence that their supporters were better than everyone else. “In place of international cooperation, the fascists seek to substitute a perverted sort of ultra-nationalism which tells their people that they are the only people in the world who count. With this goes hatred and suspicion toward the people of all other nations.”

Third, fascists would insist that “the world has but two choices—either fascism or communism, and they label as ‘communists’ everyone who refuses to support them.”

It is “vitally important” to learn to spot native fascists, the government said, “even though they adopt names and slogans with popular appeal, drape themselves with the American flag, and attempt to carry out their program in the name of the democracy they are trying to destroy.”

The only way to stop the rise of fascism in the United States, the document said, “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” In the midst of the insecurity of the modern world, the hatred at the root of fascism “fulfills a triple mission.” By dividing people, it weakens democracy. “By getting men to hate rather than to think,” it prevents them “from seeking the real cause and a democratic solution to the problem.” By falsely promising prosperity, it lures people to embrace its security.

“Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”

—

Notes:

https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/serial?id=armytalks

War Department, “Army Talk 64: FASCISM!” March 24, 1945, at https://archive.org/details/ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism/mode/2up

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, History

David French: Why the Laws of War Matter

By dianeravitch

December 12, 2025 //

David French was hired by The New York Times to be a conservative opinion writer. He is a lawyer who practiced commercial law, then joined the military during the war in Iraq and served there as a lawyer. After deployment, he was a writer for the conservative National Review.

His explanation of the “laws of war” and the “rules of engagement” was very helpful to my understanding of current events, which is why I share it now.

He wrote:

In their military campaign in South America, Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth aren’t just defying the Constitution and breaking the law. They are attacking the very character and identity of the American military.

To make this case, I have to begin in the most boring way possible — by quoting a legal manual. Bear with me.

Specifically, it’s the most recent edition of the Department of Defense Law of War Manual. Tucked away on page 1,088 are two sentences that illustrate the gravity of the crisis in the Pentagon: “The requirement to refuse to comply with orders to commit law of war violations applies to orders to perform conduct that is clearly illegal or orders that the subordinate knows, in fact, are illegal. For example, orders to fire upon the shipwrecked would be clearly illegal.”

Here’s another key line: “It is forbidden to declare that no quarter will be given.” A no quarter order is an order directing soldiers to kill every combatant, including prisoners, the sick and the wounded. The manual continues, “Moreover, it is also prohibited to conduct hostilities on the basis that there shall be no survivors, or to threaten the adversary with the denial of quarter.”

Before we go any further, it’s important to define our terms. This newsletter is going to focus on the laws of war, not a related concept called rules of engagement. The laws of war reflect the mandatory, minimum level of lawful conduct, and all soldiers are legally obligated to obey them at all times and in all conflicts.

Rules of engagement are rules devised by commanders that are often more restrictive than the laws of war. For example, when I was in Iraq, our rules of engagement sometimes kept us from attacking lawful targets, in part because we wanted to be particularly careful not to inflict civilian casualties.

In my service, we were often frustrated by the rules of engagement. We did not, however, question the laws of war.

There are now good reasons to believe that the U.S. military, under the command of President Trump and Hegseth, his secretary of defense, has blatantly violated the laws of war. On Nov. 28, The Washington Postreported that Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everybody” the day that the United States launched its military campaign against suspected drug traffickers.

According to The Post, the first strike on the targeted speedboat left two people alive in the water. The commander of the operation then ordered a second strike to kill the shipwrecked survivors, apparently — according to The Post — “because they could theoretically call other traffickers to retrieve them and their cargo.” If that reporting is correct, then we have clear evidence of unequivocal war crimes — a no quarter order and a strike on the incapacitated crew of a burning boat.

And if it’s true, those war crimes are the fault not of hotheaded recruits who are fighting for their lives in the terrifying fog and fury of ground combat but rather of two of the highest-ranking people in the American government, Hegseth and Adm. Frank M. Bradley, the head of Special Operations Command — the man the administration has identified as the person who gave the order for the second strike.

My colleagues in the newsroom followed on Monday with a report of their own, one that largely mirrored The Post’s reporting, though it presented more evidence of Hegseth’s and Bradley’s potential defenses. Hegseth, our sources said, did not order the second strike, and the second strike might have been designed to sink the boat, not kill survivors.

But if that’s the explanation, why wasn’t the full video released? The administration released limited video footage of the first strike, which created the impression of the instant, total destruction of the boat and its inhabitants. Now we know there was much more to see.

At the same time, Hegseth and the Pentagon have offered a series of puzzling and contradictory statements. Sean Parnell, the Pentagon spokesman, told The Post that its “entire narrative was false.”

Hegseth weighed in with a classic version of what you might call a nondenial denial. In a social media post, he said the Post report was “fabricated, inflammatory and derogatory,” but rather than explain what actually happened (and make no mistake, he knows exactly what happened), he followed up with an extraordinary paragraph:

As we’ve said from the beginning, and in every statement, these highly effective strikes are specifically intended to be “lethal, kinetic strikes.” The declared intent is to stop lethal drugs, destroy narco-boats, and kill the narco-terrorists who are poisoning the American people. Every trafficker we kill is affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.

“Biden coddled terrorists,” Hegseth wrote later in the same post. “We kill them.”

We shouldn’t forget that this incident occurred against the backdrop of Hegseth’s obvious disdain for military lawyers. He has called them “jagoffs” and — along with Trump — fired the senior military lawyers in the Navy and Air Force.

We also know that the commander of Southern Command, which is responsible for operations in Central and South America, Adm. Alvin Holsey, announced that he was stepping down after holding the position for less than a year. As our newsroom reported, two sources “said that Admiral Holsey had raised concerns about the mission and the attacks on the alleged drug boats.”

He announced his departure in October, weeks after the September strike.

Unlike many wartime incidents, airstrike incidents can be rather easy to investigate. Unless an airstrike is in response to an immediate battlefield emergency, the intelligence justifying the strike and the orders authorizing it are frequently preserved in writing, and the video and audio of the strikes are typically recorded. If this Pentagon, which proudly calls itself the “most transparent” in history, were to release the full attack video and audio, it would help answer many questions.

It’s a mistake, however, to limit our focus to the legality of this specific strike — or even to the important question of the legality of the Caribbean strikes in general. We live in an era in which our nation’s first principles require constant defense.

In other words, as we dig into incidents like this one, we cannot presume that Americans are operating from a shared set of moral and constitutional values or even a basic operating knowledge of history. We will have to teach the basic elements of American character anew, to a population that is losing its grasp on our national ideals.

The laws of war aren’t woke. They’re not virtue signaling. And they’re not a sign that the West has forgotten how to fight. Instead, they provide the American military with a number of concrete benefits.

First, complying with the laws of war can provide a battlefield advantage. This year I read Antony Beevor’s classic history of the end of Nazi Germany, “The Fall of Berlin 1945.” I was struck by a fascinating reality: Hitler’s troops fought fanatically against the Soviets not simply to preserve Hitler’s rule (most knew the cause was lost) but also to slow the Red Army down, to buy more time for civilians and soldiers to escape to American, British and French lines.

In short, because of our humanity and decency, Germans surrendered when they would have fought. The contrast with the brutality of the Soviets saved American lives.

I saw this reality in Iraq. By the end of my deployment in 2008, insurgents started surrendering to us, often without a fight. In one memorable incident, a terrorist walked up to the front gate of our base and turned himself in. But had we treated our prisoners the way that prisoners were treated at Abu Ghraib, I doubt we would have seen the same response.

Men will choose death over torture and humiliation, but many of those men will choose decent treatment in prison over probable death in battle.

Second, the laws of war make war less savage and true peace possible. One of the reasons the war in the Pacific was so unrelentingly grim was that the Japanese military never made the slightest pretense of complying with the laws of war. They would shoot shipwrecked survivors. They would torture prisoners. They would fight to the death even when there was no longer any military point to resistance.

We were hardly perfect, but part of our own fury was directly related to relentless Japanese violations of the laws of war. We became convinced that the Japanese would not surrender until they faced the possibility of total destruction. And when both sides abandon any commitment to decency and humanity, then the object of war changes — from victory to annihilation.

Even if only one side upholds the law of war, it not only makes war less brutal; it preserves the possibility of peace and reconciliation. That’s exactly what happened at the end of World War II. For all of our faults, we never became like the Soviets and thus have a very different relationship with our former foes.

Finally, the laws of war help preserve a soldier’s soul. We are a nation built around the notion of human dignity. Our Declaration of Independence highlights the worth of every person. Our Bill of Rights stands as one of the world’s great statements of human dignity. It is contrary to the notion of virtuous American citizenship to dehumanize people, to brutalize and oppress them.

We are also a quite religious society, and all of the great faiths that are central to American life teach that human beings possess incalculable worth.

If we order soldiers to contradict those values, we can inflict a profound moral injury on them — a moral injury that can last a lifetime. I still think about a 2015 article in The Atlantic by Maggie Puniewska. She described soldiers haunted by the experience of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“Some of these soldiers describe experiences in which they, or someone close to them, violated their moral code,” she wrote, “hurting a civilian who turned out to be unarmed, shooting at a child wearing explosives, or losing trust in a commander who became more concerned with collecting decorative pins than protecting the safety of his troops.” Others, she said, citing a clinical psychologist who worked with service members who recently returned from deployments, “are haunted by their own inaction, traumatized by something they witnessed and failed to prevent.”

There are moral injuries that are unavoidable. I’m still haunted by decisions I made in Iraq, even though each one complied with the laws of war. Armed conflict is horrific, and your spirit rebels against the experience. But I can’t imagine the guilt of criminal conduct, of deliberately killing the people I’m supposed to protect.

In fact, when I first read the Washington Post story, I thought of the terrified pair, struggling helplessly in the water before the next missile ended their lives. But I also thought of the men or women who fired those missiles. How does their conscience speak to them now? How will it speak to them in 10 years?

I want to close with two stories — one from Iraq and one from Ukraine. There was a moment in my deployment when our forces were in hot pursuit of a known terrorist. We had caught him attempting to fire mortar rounds into an American outpost. Just when we had him in our sights, he scooped up what looked like a toddler and started running with the kid in his arms.

No one had to give the order to hold fire. There wasn’t one soldier who wanted to shoot and risk the toddler’s life. So we followed him until the combination of heat and exhaustion made him put the child down. Even then we didn’t kill him. We were able to capture him without using lethal force.

I’ll never forget that day — and the unspoken agreement that we would save that child.

Now, let’s contrast that moment of decency with the stories I heard in the town of Bucha, just northwest of Kyiv. It was the site of some of the most intense fighting in the first phases of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As I walked in part of the battlefield, I heard the stories of Russian soldiers looting and murdering their way across northern Ukraine.

One woman told me that the Russians shot a neighbor, a civilian, in his front yard and then threatened his wife when she tried to leave her home to retrieve his body. So he just lay there, day after day, until the Russians were finally driven back. That’s the character of the Russian military, and it’s been the character of the Russian military for generations.

Something else happened when I first read the Washington Post story; I instinctively rejected it. The account was completely at odds with my experience. There is not an officer I served with who would issue a no quarter order. There is not an officer I served with who would have given the order to kill survivors struggling in the water.

But I also knew that Hegseth is trying to transform the military. As The Wall Street Journal reported, he has been on a “decades-long quest” to rid the military of “stupid rules of engagement” — even to the point of becoming a champion of soldiers convicted of war crimes. In one of his books, he wrote that he told soldiers who served under his command in Iraq to disregard legal adviceabout the use of lethal force.

I don’t think that all of our rules of engagement are wise. I have expressed profound doubts about many of the rules that were imposed in Iraq and Afghanistan that went far beyond the requirements of the laws of war. Not every soldier accused of crimes is guilty of crimes.

But there is a difference between reforming the rules and abandoning the law — or, even worse, viewing the law as fundamentally hostile to the military mission. There is a difference between defending soldiers against false accusations and rationalizing and excusing serious crimes.

The pride of an American soldier isn’t just rooted in our lethality. It’s rooted in our sense of honor. It’s rooted in our compassion. We believe ourselves to be different because we so often behave differently.

Hegseth, however, has a different vision, one of unrestrained violence divorced from congressional and legal accountability. If that vision becomes reality, he won’t reform the military; he’ll wreck it. And he’ll wreck it in the worst way possible, by destroying its integrity, by stripping its honor and by rejecting the hard-earned lessons and vital values that have made the American military one of the most-trusted institutions in the United States.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Discipline, Ethics, Failure, History, Justice

Steve Schmidt: The Hegseth Ethos

By dianeravitch

December 10, 2025 //

Steve Schmidt is a veteran political strategist who worked for Republicans, most recently for John McCain in 2008. When Trump was elected, Schmidt was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. In 2020, he registered as a Democrat. He currently writes a blog at Substack.

This one is brilliant. Pete Hegseth is the embodiment of the moral and spiritual and intellectual rot at the core of the Republican Party today.

Schmidt writes:

There is no “Secretary of War” or “War Department” in the United States of America under US law.

Each time a news organization uses Pete Hegseth’s concocted title, and submits to his “War Department” fantasy, it is an act of corruption.

It is a direct and specific choice that immolates journalistic ethics by embracing fantasy at the demand of power.

Journalism confronts power.

Journalism doesn’t obey it, heed it, submit to it, appease it, or accept the premise that make-believe is real if the leader believes it so, regardless of reality.

This was posted by a man in the chain of command for the release of nuclear weapons after the commission of a war crime on his orders, which was followed by evasions, deflections of responsibility, and an attempt to stab a US Navy admiral in the back:

[Diane’s note: This is juvenile and not funny.]

When General of the Army George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Army Secretary of State and Defense died, President Harry Truman said the following in remembrance of his titanic life. He made an unfortunate reference to the traitorous Robert E. Lee, who was exceeded in every way by Ulysses Grant, a man who bested him, yet was smeared into oblivion over 100 years time by the the same type of white nationalists and Christian Taliban who slither around Mar-a-Lago. That is, until one day, the truth escaped its dungeon and a foremost savior of the Union was seen clearly again.

[Truman said:]

General Marshall was an honorable man, a truthful man, a man of ability.

Honor has no modifying adjectives — a man has it, or he hasn’t. General Marshall had it.

Truth has no qualifying words to be attached to it. A man either tells the truth, or he doesn’t. General Marshall was the exemplification of the man of truth.

Ability can be qualified. Some of us have little of it, some may have moderate ability, and some men have it to the extreme.

General Marshall was a man of the greatest ability.

He was the greatest general since Robert E. Lee.

He was the greatest administrator since Thomas Jefferson.

He was the man of honor, the man of truth, the man of greatest ability.

He was the greatest of the great in our time.

I sincerely hope that when it comes my time to cross the great river that General Marshall will place me on his staff, so that I may try to do for him what he did for me.

*******************

Perhaps one reason that Pete Hegseth fetishizes the “War Department” is that, when it existed, it commanded a segregated force. The Defense Department has always commanded a desegregated force.

Before the US Army was desegregated a young Army Lieutenant named Jackie Robinson faced trumped up charges at a kangaroo court martial.
Here is Jackie Robinson’s legacy perfectly preserved for all time in the magnificent eulogy he received from Reverend Jesse Jackson, to whom I hope we can all send good wishes and prayers this holiday season, as he struggles through the ravages of the burdens handed him with dignity and grace:

[Jackie Robinson’s eulogy by Reverend Jesse Jackson.]

Powerful men have a long tradition of sending powerless young men to die in unworthy causes in far away lands.

There should be an extremely low tolerance for such men in 2025 America, but they are not only tolerated, but indulged.

The hypocrisy of the US Congress on the matter of Pete “Kill them all!” Hegseth is bottomless and dangerous. Their faithlessness to the American soldier, sailor, airmen and marine is obscene.

The man who jumped up on a table screaming, “Kill all Muslims!” was exactly who the Congress was warned about. Yet, the warnings were unheeded because the Congress cared more about pleasing Trump than the institutions of the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps that predate the independence of the United States. They cared more about sating a stirred-up Fox News mob than a 19-year-old private.

Shameful doesn’t begin to describe it.

It is a dereliction of duty, and the most profound type of moral betrayal.

The 119th MAGA Congress is an abomination, led by a religious nutter and weakling who is neither bright, decent, funny, nor wise.

In other words, he is a perfect MAGA puppet who thinks he is a ventriloquist. In truth, the hand inserted into his most sacred space, the one he hides his bespectacled head within, is smeared with orange hand paint.

Faithless, treacherous and disloyal are the Hegseth ethos. They are a perfect mirror of the only reflection of equal rottenness in America: the crazed MAGA Congress, filled from bottom to top with corrupt loons, belligerent liars, sexual deviants, conspiracists, fraudsters, women beaters, and insider traders, who worship Trump together.

Pete Hegseth is the leader of a military that is unready and unprepared to fight a necessary war. He is a performance artist, a late-stage mid-tier Fox News star who is a herald of disaster to a population filled with indifference. It is about to find out the hard way how much damage a small group of evil men and women can do to a nation.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, History, Ignorance, Republicans, Scandals, Shame, Trump, Wall of Shame

Heather Cox Richardson on Pearl Harbor and Its Message for Today

By dianeravitch

December 8, 2025 //

Yesterday, December 7, was the 84th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it was a day that will live in infamy. After the passage of so much time, Heather Cox Richardson sees that Pearl Harbor shines a light on our current political morass.

She writes:

On the sunny Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, Messman Doris Miller had served breakfast aboard the USS West Virginia, stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and was collecting laundry when the first of nine Japanese torpedoes hit the ship.

In the deadly confusion, Miller reported to an officer, who told him to help move the ship’s mortally wounded captain off the bridge. Unable to move him far, Miller pulled the captain to shelter. Then another officer ordered Miller to pass ammunition to him as he started up one of the two abandoned anti-aircraft guns in front of the conning tower.

Miller had not been trained to use the weapons because, as a Black man in the U.S. Navy, he was assigned to serve the white officers. But while the officer was distracted, Miller began to fire one of the guns. He fired it until he ran out of ammunition. Then he helped to move injured sailors to safety before he and the other survivors abandoned the West Virginia, which sank to the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

The next day, the United States declared war on Japan. Japan declared war on America, and on December 11, 1941, both Italy and Germany declared war on America. “The powers of the steel pact, Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany, ever closely linked, participate from today on the side of heroic Japan against the United States of America,” Italian leader Benito Mussolini said. “We shall win.” Of course they would. Mussolini and Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, believed the Americans had been corrupted by Jews and Black Americans and could never conquer their own organized military machine.

The steel pact, as Mussolini called it, was the vanguard of his new political ideology. That ideology was called fascism, and he and Hitler thought it would destroy democracy once and for all.

Mussolini had been a socialist as a young man and had grown terribly frustrated at how hard it was to organize people. No matter how hard socialists tried, they seemed unable to convince ordinary people that they must rise up and take over the country’s means of production.

The efficiency of World War I inspired Mussolini. He gave up on socialism and developed a new political theory that rejected the equality that defined democracy. He came to believe that a few leaders must take a nation toward progress by directing the actions of the rest. These men must organize the people as they had been organized during wartime, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that businessmen and politicians worked together. And, logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers into an efficient machine, they demonized opponents into an “other” that their followers could hate.

Italy adopted fascism, and Mussolini inspired others, notably Germany’s Hitler. Those leaders came to believe that their system was the ideology of the future, and they set out to destroy the messy, inefficient democracy that stood in their way.

America fought World War II to defend democracy from fascism. And while fascism preserved hierarchies in society, democracy called on all men as equals. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in the war, more than 1.2 million were Black American men and women, 500,000 were Latinos, and more than 550,000 Jews were part of the military. Among the many ethnic groups who fought, Indigenous Americans served at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group—more than a third of able-bodied Indigenous men between the ages of 18 and 50 joined the service—and among those 25,000 soldiers were the men who developed the famous “Code Talk,” based in tribal languages, that codebreakers never cracked.

The American president at the time, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hammered home that the war was about the survival of democracy. Fascists insisted that they were moving their country forward fast and efficiently—claiming the trains ran on time, for example, although in reality they didn’t—but FDR constantly noted that the people in Italy and Germany were begging for food and shelter from the soldiers of democratic countries.

Ultimately, the struggle between fascism and democracy was the question of equality. Were all men really created equal as the Declaration of Independence said, or were some born to lead the rest, whom they held subservient to their will?

Democracy, FDR reminded Americans again and again, was the best possible government. Thanks to armies made up of men and women from all races and ethnicities, the Allies won the war against fascism, and it seemed that democracy would dominate the world forever.

But as the impulse of WWII pushed Americans toward a more just and inclusive society after it, those determined not to share power warned their supporters that including people of color and women as equals in society would threaten their own liberty. Those reactionary leaders rode that fear into control of our government, and gradually they chipped away the laws that protected equality. Now, once again, democracy is under attack by those who believe some people are better than others.

President Donald J. Trump and his cronies have abandoned the principles of democracy and openly embraced the hierarchical society the U.S. fought against in World War II. They have fired women, Black Americans, people of color, and LGBTQ+ Americans from positions in the government and the military and erased them from official histories. They have seized, incarcerated and deported immigrants— or rendered them to third countries to be tortured— and have sent federal agents and federal troops into Democratic-led cities to terrorize the people living there.

They have traded the rule of law for the rule of Trump, weaponizing the Department of Justice against those they perceive as enemies, pardoning loyalists convicted of crimes, and now, executing those they declare are members of drug cartels without evidence, charges, or trials. They have openly rejected the world based on shared values of equality and democracy for which Americans fought in World War II. In its place, they are building a world dominated by a small group of elites close to Trump, who are raking in vast amounts of money from their machinations.

Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?

When America came under attack before, people like Doris Miller refused to let that happen. For all that American democracy still discriminated against him, it gave him room to stand up for the concept of human equality—and he laid down his life for it. Promoted to cook after the Navy sent him on a publicity tour, Miller was assigned to a new ship, the USS Liscome Bay, which was struck by a Japanese torpedo on November 24, 1943. It sank within minutes, taking two thirds of the crew, including Miller, with it.

We hear a lot these days about how American democracy is doomed and the radical right will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is that it gives us people like Doris Miller.

Even better, it makes us people like Doris Miller.

Categories Courage, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, History

Lisa Gonzalez: Generations of War and Bigotry

By dianeravitch

November 25, 2025 //

I discovered Lisa Gonzalez’s blog on Substack recently. It is called “Eleanor’s Squad.” I read this post, which originally appeared on November 11, Memorial Day, as a tribute to members of her family and other people of Hispanic origin who served our country with their heart and soul.

The big surprise in reading her post was learning that about 20% of our population is Hispanic. Most have citizenship, some don’t. ICE is arresting people because they have brown skin. Many are citizens and must suffer days of detention before they are released. Very likely, some are unjustly deported. No way that Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem will deport 20%. Not to mention the many other Americans who do not have white skins,

Gonzalez writes:

“For those that will fight for it… freedom has a flavor the protected shall never know.”
— Tim Craft, U.S. Marine Corps

I was born on the Fourth of July — fireworks overhead, and a tornado tearing through the edges of town. Maybe that’s why I carry the American spirit of both celebration and storm. And although I was born on the day this nation celebrates its freedom, my uncles and my cousin taught me what the word freedom really costs.

Four men—two Army soldiers, two Marines—each the sons or grandsons of a Puerto Rican foundry worker who came home every night with grease on his hands and pride in his posture. My grandfather never finished high school, but he was proud of his country and raised sons who served—earning medals, scars, and degrees without anyone handing them a thing. They served in Vietnam, in Germany, in Bosnia, in Iraq. They carried radios, rifles, and the weight of a flag that didn’t always claim them back.

One of them was shot up in the jungles of Vietnam and learned he had a newborn niece—me—from a telegram delivered as he was being flown to a hospital. He still carries the shrapnel, and the leukemia that came later from Agent Orange. The medals came too, but no medal will ever heal what he saw. They are proof that he bled when his country asked him to.

And yet, every one of them could be stopped for being brown or speaking Spanish and asked to prove their citizenship. That’s what it means to be a veteran of both war and bigotry: to have risked your life for a nation that still questions whether you belong in it.

And while their loyalty has never been in question on the battlefield, it’s still doubted in the streets and at the ballot box. That’s not only insulting—it’s mathematically absurd.

For the first time in American history, one in five people living in the United States identify as Latino. According to a 2024 study by the University of California, Los Angeles and California Lutheran University, our population has passed 68 million—two million more than just a year before. Latino labor now includes more than thirty-five million workers, growing more than seven times faster than the non-Latino labor force.

Together, our labor produces a $4.1 trillion GDP—large enough to rank as the world’s fifth-largest economy, larger than India’s. And yet, men like my uncles—who bled for this country—can still be told to “show their papers.”

What kind of nation demands proof from the very people who sustain it? What kind of nation questions the citizenship of those who keep it alive? What kind of patriotism forgets the hands that built the bridges fought its wars, and believed in its promise long after it stopped believing in them?

Economist Matthew Fienup, executive director of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at California Lutheran University, put it plainly: “Time and time again, we find that hard work, self-sufficiency, optimism, and perseverance are the characteristics that underlie the strength and resilience of U.S. Latinos.”

Because resilience is in our DNA.

What we have can’t be taught.

My family didn’t inherit America; they helped make it. And now the numbers finally tell the stories they always knew—and Stephen Miller wants you to forget: that Latino service, labor, and love of country are not exceptions—they are the backbone of the republic.

For at least three decades, the U.S. Census published the most popular surnames in America. The last list, released in 2010, showed us the truth they’re trying to bury:
Garcia. Rodriguez. Martinez. Hernandez. Lopez. Gonzalez.

Thirty percent of the nation’s top twenty surnames trace back to families who crossed oceans, borders, and language lines to build this country. And that’s just from 2010—because, for some reason, they decided not to publish the most popular surnames from 2020. That’s how truth gets contained so the lies are easier to spread (see author’s note).

And that last surname—Gonzalez—is ours.
It’s the name sewn onto uniforms and stitched into birth certificates; the name called out on roll calls and whispered in hospital rooms. It’s the name that’s been saluted, misspelled, profiled, and still carried with pride.

They’ve never needed to prove their loyalty. They’ve already lived the truth of a Marine’s words I once saw hanging on my uncle’s wall: “For those that will fight for it…freedom has a flavor the protected shall never know.”

That’s what my family understands—what so many Latino families understand—that freedom isn’t a speech; it’s a promise you keep even when the country doesn’t keep it for you.

They’ve paid for that promise in ways the record books don’t list. As boys, they learned what doors were for—sometimes to open, sometimes to close. White families smiled until the invitations reached their daughters; then the air shifted, polite and poisonous. They learned early that courtesy was armor, and excellence the stealthy weapon that left those who tried to thwart their progress in the dust.

Decades later, after wars and degrees and decorations, they have worked twice as hard to be called qualified. Men who have led troops into fire get reduced to talking points while those who cosplay as soldiers that never saw battle call themselves patriots and wrap themselves in excuses instead of service. They call veterans like my uncles DEI hires, as if discipline, intellect, and courage were diversity quotas. Their ignorance speaks volumes about who’s truly afraid of real merit.

And yet my family will keep showing up, still believing in a country that too often forgets them. Their endurance is not compliance; it’s faith in the possibility that the nation will one day live up to the flag they salute.

The uncle who came home from Vietnam carrying shrapnel and a telegram that said he had a niece was eventually blessed with a beautiful granddaughter—two firecrackers born decades apart who share the same birthday—they all share granddaughters joined by the same Spanish name, carrying the same pride and promise of what this country was meant to be.

They are proof that our story doesn’t end with propaganda, lies, or hatred. The promise lives on in the next generation—in children who instinctively understand that freedom and fairness mean the same thing. Now they carry our family name into classrooms and playgrounds where they will learn what it means to be both proud and careful. They may not know the weight of the history yet, but they feel its rhythm—the music of stubborn belonging that refuses to be silenced.

On Veterans Day, we hang flags and post photos, but the real observance happens in the quiet—in the lives still shaped by service and by the contradictions it exposes. It lives in the way my uncles still stand a little straighter when they hear the anthem, even as the country they defended still asks them to prove they belong. It lives in the children and grandchildren who bear their names and inherit both the pride and the vigilance that freedom demands.

Freedom isn’t fireworks; it’s endurance—the decision to keep showing up, to keep believing, to keep building the country that was promised. So on this Veterans Day, I honor them all: the men and women who valiantly served and fought the wars abroad, the children and grandchildren who carry their names forward, and the families who love this nation enough to tell the truth.
Freedom’s flavor runs in our blood now—salt, sweat, and faith—and with every July Fourth candle we blow out, we’re still making good on the promise they fought to defend.

Author’s Note

On November 11, 2025, while finalizing this piece, I personally watched two official U.S. Census Bureau pages vanish in real time—the main genealogy index for the 2010 “Frequently Occurring Surnames” report and its linked sub-page, as well as those for 2000, and 1990. One moment they were live; but after refreshing, they both returned a 404 error. As of this writing, the surname dataset no longer appears in the Census archive, and the 2020 update has never been released.

Before the links went dark, I saved the files and screenshots that show what those pages contained: the 2010 table listing Garcia, Rodriguez, Martinez, Hernandez, Lopez, and Gonzalez among America’s twenty most common surnames—each more than 90 percent Hispanic in origin.

Below is my downloaded copy of that list, saved before the disappearance. Here is the link that used to list them:

Original URL (now 404): https://www.census.gov/topics/population/genealogy/data/2010_surnames.html

Some truths deserve a backup—and screenshots.

Categories Character, Courage, Democracy, Freedom, Immigration

Jan Resseger: How the Trump Administration Undermines the Rights of Students and Teachers, Part 2.

By dianeravitch

November 21, 2025 //

Jan Resseger is a determined and purposeful writer.

On Tuesday, Part 1 of this post explored the Trump Administration’s seizure of the Congressional “power of the purse” as part of a strategy to accomplish the President’s goal of shutting down the U.S. Department of Education by firing hundreds of the Department’s staff who administer and oversee enormous grant programs like Title I and special education programs funded by the 1975 Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, along with many other essential programs that protect students’ rights and fulfill the Department’s mission of ensuring that children across all the states can equitably have a quality public school education. Part 1 also examined how the U.S. Supreme Court has shunted many of the legal challenges filed against Trump administration onto a “shadow docket” of temporary decisions with a long wait for a hearing on their merits and a final ruling by the Supreme Court on their legality.

Today, Part 2 will examine three primary examples of what appear to be the Trump administration’s shameless violation of the core Constitutional principles we have long valued for protecting the rights of children and their teachers in our nation’s system of K-12 public schools.

The First Amendment Protection of Freedom of Speech — Beginning in February and continuing through the year, the Trump administration has been pressuring colleges and universities and K-12 public schools to adopt its own interpretation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the administration’s idiosyncratic interpretation of a 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard. While most experts believe that Students for Fair Admissions was a narrowly tailored decision to eliminate affirmative in college admissions, the Trump administration has alleged it also bans all “diversity, equity, and inclusion” programming and policy in K-12 public schools and in higher education.

In August, the NY Times Dana Goldstein ideology the Trump administration has been trying to impose on educational institutions and teachers: “While there is no single definition of D.E.I., the Trump administration has indicated that it considers many common K-12 racial equity efforts to fall under the category and to be illegal. Those include directing tutoring toward struggling students of specific races, such as Black boys; teaching lessons on concepts such as white privilege; and trying to recruit a more racially diverse set of teachers. The administration has also warned colleges that they may not establish scholarship programs or prizes that are intended for students of specific races, or require students to participate in ‘racially charged’ orientation programs… The administration has also argued that because the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in college admissions in 2023, all racially conscious education programs are illegal.”

Can the Trump administration impose its ideology on educational institutions and get teachers punished or fired if they cover unpleasant parts of our nation’s history? Many experts call this a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech. To define how the First Amendment protects the freedom of speech in educational institutions, Yale Law School professor Justin Driver quotes the words of Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson in the 1943 Supreme Court decision in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or any other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” (Justin Driver, The Schoolhouse Gate, pp. 65-66)

The Vagueness Doctrine — In addition to the violation of the right to freedom of speech, there is another serious legal problem in the Trump administration’s efforts to scrub “diversity, equity, and inclusion” from K-12 public schools and from the policies of the nation’s universities. Writing for the NY Times, Matthew Purdy explored how the Trump administration’s vague rules, mandates and executive orders are designed to frighten people into complying:

“Federal District Court judges across the country and across the political spectrum… (have faulted) the administration for using broadly cast executive orders and policies to justify ‘arbitrary and capricious’ actions. Many of these judges have explicitly invoked something called the vagueness doctrine, a concept that for centuries has been foundational to American law. The notion is simple: Unless laws are clearly stated, citizens cannot know precisely what is and is not permitted, handing authorities the power to arbitrarily decide who is in violation of a law or rule. Vagueness has long been seen as a clear divide between democracies run by laws and autocracies run by strongmen….”

The Cornell Law School Legal Information Institute explains how the vagueness doctrine protects due process of law: “Vagueness doctrine rests on the due process clauses of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments of the U.S. Constitution. The Supreme Court stated in Winters v New York, that U.S. citizens should not have to speculate the meaning of a law due to its vagueness, the law should be clear on its face.”

Purdy adds that many of Trump’s educational executive orders and the rules being imposed by Linda McMahon’s Department of Education ought to be declared void for vagueness. Without being sure precisely what steps are required, universities have settled with the administration by making financial deals to protect their research funding; public school administrators have changed bathroom policies for trans students; and teachers have felt afraid to teach honestly about our nation’s history. Purdy describes “Valerie Wolfson, the 2024 New Hampshire history teacher of the year… whose post-Civil War curriculum includes Reconstruction, the rise of the K.K.K. and the Jim Crow era. ‘I do not know how I could discuss them without creating a risk of being accused of presenting a narrative of the United States as racist,’ she says… None of Donald Trump’s edicts have deployed vagueness as effectively as his attack on D.E.I. … The line between what is and isn’t allowed may be vague, but the penalty for crossing it is certain. The version cooked up by the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is a textbook case… The message—and the threat—from the Department of Education was received loud and clear across the country.” (This blog covered Purdy’s article in more detail.)

Birthright Citizenship — One of President Trump’s executive orders stands out in its utter contradiction of the language of the Fourteenth Amendment. In an executive order last January, the President ended birthright citizenship. Birthright citizenship does not, thank goodness, deny any child’s right to public education because a 1982 Supreme Court decision in Plyler v. Doe does protect the right for every child residing in the United States to a free public education. However without the protection of birthright citizenship, children in this country are denied the protection of virtually all other rights.

In February a Federal District Court judge temporarily stayed Trump’s executive order banning birthright citizenship; the case was appealed; and later on June 27, the U.S. Supreme Court released a final decision. However the Supreme Court Justices twisted the meaning of the case without addressing the core issue of birthright citizenship itself. Instead the justices turned the decision into a ruling on procedure—declaring that local Federal District Courts cannot block the imposition of federal policy nationwide.

For Scotus Blog, Amy Howe explains how today’s Supreme Court abrogated its responsibility by ignoring the core issue in the birthright citizenship case: “(O)n July 23, a divided panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit (had) ruled that the executive order ‘is invalid because it contradicts the plain language of the Fourteenth Amendment’s grant of citizenship to ‘all persons born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof ‘.”

Responding to the decision of the appeals court, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer failed to ask the justices to fast-track its petition, urging the Supreme Court to review the ruling. Howe adds: “Although Sauer had the option to ask the court to fast-track its petition, he chose not to. Accordingly, if the justices decide to take the case… it will likely schedule oral arguments for sometime in 2026 and reach a decision at the end of the… term—most likely in late June or early July.”

All three of these serious Constitutional principles remain at issue today in Trump’s attempt to deny the rights of educators and undermine the protection of students’ rights.

Disciplining ourselves to name and and understand what appear to be troubling legal violations by the Trump administration is an important step toward building the political will for reform.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Courage, Democracy, Education Reform

Last Words from the Late Vivian Connell

One Last Time

A Must-Watch Interview: Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder

Paul Krugman: Day 1461 of Putin’s Three-Day War

The Context of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

Footnotes

Heather Cox Richardson: How Fascists Gain Power

David French: Why the Laws of War Matter

Steve Schmidt: The Hegseth Ethos

Heather Cox Richardson on Pearl Harbor and Its Message for Today

Lisa Gonzalez: Generations of War and Bigotry

Jan Resseger: How the Trump Administration Undermines the Rights of Students and Teachers, Part 2.

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