Archives for category: Cruelty

Trump Shows His Fascist Face

June 11, 2025 //

It was inevitable. And now it’s happening. During his first term, Trump repeatedly encouraged violence. He told police officers in New York not to be so nice when they arrest people. He asked “his” generals if they could shoot protestors in the legs. He broadcast fake videos showing him beating up a cartoon character labeled CNN. He urged his crowds at rallies to beat up protestors and said he would pay their legal fees. He wants to seem like a real man, a tough guy. But don’t forget that this tough guy dodged the draft five times with a podiatrist’s note about bone spurs in his feet.

This week, his troubles were mounting. There was the very public split with Musk, who dropped hints about Trump’s name in the still confidential Epstein files. There was Elon’s claim that Trump would have lost the election and control of the House without Elon’s help. What kind of “help”? There was the tariff mess, which was causing a global economic disruption and predictions of inflation. And Trump’s poll numbers were plummeting.

What a perfect time to send in large numbers of ICE agents to immigrant neighborhoods in Los Angeles! Send them to Home Depot, where immigrants cluster in search of work–not the “criminals, rapists, and murderers” he warned us about, but laborers looking for work.

Voila! Their friends, families, and neighbors turned out to protest the ICE raids, and all at once there are crowds and people waving Mexican flags (a big mistake, they should have waved American flags). The situation was volatile but there was no reason to think that local and state police couldn’t handle it.

Trump is shrewd: he saw his chance to distract public attention from his failing policies, and he took it. Without bothering to contact Governor Newsom, Trump mobilized the National Guard. He ordered 2,000 into the troubled neighborhood. Then he sent in another 2,000, plus 700 Marines.

Only the Governor can call up his state’s National Guard, except in the most exceptional situations (the last time it happened was 1965, when President Johnson mobilized the National Guard in Alabama to protect civil rights demonstrators because Governor George Wallace refused to do so).

It is even more unusual for a President to call in the military to oppose ordinary people, which is normally handled by state and local police. There is an act-the Posse Comitatus Act–that specifically forbids the Army and Air Force from acting against civilians on American soil. A different law, 10 U.S. Code 275, forbids Navy and Marine Corps members from the same thing. Trump claims that the anti-ICE protests are an insurrection, which allows him to call in the Marines. Legal scholars disagree, but most think he overreached and that there was no insurrection in Los Angeles.

Indeed, the large show of force drew an even larger crowd to the protests and made it more dangerous. Nonetheless, there seem to be more military at the scene than protestors.

Miraculously, no one has been killed (unlike the genuinely violent insurrection on January 6, 2021, where Trump rioters viciously beat police officers and several people died). He sat back and watched the insurrection on television and is now considering whether to reimburse them for their legal expenses after being imprisoned for engaging in insurrection.

Trump said on national television that “many people” had been killed during the protests (not true) and that if he had not sent in the troops, the city would have been “obliterated.” This is nonsense. The clash between the protesters and the military is contained to a few blocks of a very large city.

Today, there were spontaneous peaceful rallies in many cities to show support for the demonstrators in Los Angeles.

The best response: show up for a “No Kings” rally on Saturday. Check the website http://www.nokings.org to find one or create one where you live. Be peaceable. Sing. Dance. Bring American flags. The Constitution protects the right to assemble peacefully.

Trump is not only diverting attention from his monstrous One Ugly Bill, he is laying the groundwork for martial law and dictatorship.

Categories Accountability, California, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Hoax, Resistance, Trump, Tyranny

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Manufactures a Crisis to Distract from Real Problems

By dianeravitch

June 9, 2025 //

Heather Cox Richardson writes today that Trump eagerly overstepped his authority so as to create a crisis in Los Angeles. Local and state authorities responded appropriately to protests against the aggressive actions of ICE. But Trump insisted that there was an insurrection underway, a statement tweeted by his aide Stephen Miller. He took charge of the state National Guard, which was last done in 1958 when President Eisenhower called in the Arkansas National Guard to restore order in Little Rock during white protests against civil rights enforcement.

HRC suggests two reasons for Trump’s eagerness to call in troops in L.A. First, he wants a pretext to send troops anywhere anytime, in effect, to create a police state. Second, he wants to distract attention from his embarrassing breakup with Elon Musk, the chaos caused by his tariffs, and the controversies surrounding his “One Ugly Bill” and its threat to Medicaid.

A third reason is that he seized on the opportunity to humiliate Democratic Governor Newsom.

A fourth reason is that he loves to play the part of a tough guy.

Question: why did he not send in the National Guard to protect the Capitol on January 6, 2021?

She wrote:

Flatbed train cars carrying thousands of tanks rolled into Washington, D.C., yesterday in preparation for the military parade planned for June 14. On the other side of the country, protesters near Los Angeles filmed officers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) throwing flash-bang grenades into a crowd of protesters. The two images make a disturbing portrait of the United States of America under the Donald J. Trump regime as Trump tries to use the issue of immigration to establish a police state.

In January 2024, Trump pressured Republican lawmakers to kill a bipartisan immigration measure that would have beefed up border security and funding immigration courts because he wanted to campaign on the issue of immigration. During that campaign, Trump made much of the high immigration numbers in the United States after the worst of the coronavirus pandemic, when the booming U.S. economy attracted migrants. He went so far as to claim that migrants were eating people’s pets.

Many Trump supporters apparently believed officials in a Trump administration would only deport violent criminals, although Trump’s team had made it clear in his first term that they considered anyone who had broken immigration laws a criminal. Crackdowns began as soon as Trump took office, sweeping in individuals who had no criminal records in the U.S. and who were in the U.S. legally. The administration worked to define those individuals as criminals and insisted they had no right to the due process guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Anna Giaritelli of the Washington Examiner reported that at a meeting in late May, White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, who appears to be leading the administration’s immigration efforts, “eviscerated” federal immigration officials for numbers of deportations and renditions that, at around 600 people per day, he considered far too low. “Stephen Miller wants everybody arrested,” one of the officials at the meeting told Giaritelli. “‘‘Why aren’t you at Home Depot? Why aren’t you at 7-Eleven?’” Miller said.

After the meeting, Miller told Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity that the administration wanted “a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day, and President Trump is going to keep pushing to get that number up higher each and every single day.” Thomas Homan, Trump’s border czar, took the message to heart. “You’re going to see more work site enforcement than you’ve ever seen in the history of this nation,” he told reporters. “We’re going to flood the zone.”

According to a recent report by Goldman Sachs, undocumented immigrants made up more than 4% of the nation’s workforce in 2023 and are concentrated in landscaping, farm work, and construction work. Sweeps of workplaces where immigrants are concentrated are an easy way to meet quotas.

The Trump regime apparently decided to demonstrate its power in Los Angeles, where over the course of the past week, hundreds of undocumented immigrants who went to scheduled check-in appointments with ICE were taken into custody—sometimes with their families—and held in the basement of the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building in downtown L.A.

This was the backdrop when on Friday, June 7, federal officials launched a new phase of the regime’s crackdown on immigration, focusing on L.A. workplaces. Agents in tactical gear sweeping through the city’s garment district met protesters who chanted and threw eggs; agents pepper sprayed the protesters and shot at them with what are known as “less-lethal projectiles” or “non-lethal bullets” because they are made of rubber or plastic. Protesters also gathered around the federal detention center, demanding the release of their relatives; officers in riot gear dispersed the crowd with tear gas.

Officers arrested more than 40 people, including David Huerta, the president of the Service Employees International Union California (SEIU), for impeding a federal officer while protesting. Huerta’s arrest turned union members out to stand against ICE.

At 10:33 a.m. yesterday morning eastern time—so, before anything was going on in Los Angeles—Miller reposted a clip of protesters surrounding the federal detention center in Los Angeles and wrote that these protesters constituted “[a]n insurrection against the laws and sovereignty of the United States.” Miller has appeared eager to invoke the Insurrection Act to use the military against Americans.

On Saturday, in the predominantly Latino city of Paramount about 20 miles south of L.A., Rachel Uranga and Ruben Vives of the Los Angeles Times reported that people spotted a caravan of border patrol agents across the street from the Home Depot. Word spread on social media, and protesters arrived to show that ICE’s arrest of families was not welcome. As about a hundred protesters arrived, the Home Depot closed.

Over the course of the afternoon, protesters shouted at the federal agents, who formed a line and shot tear gas or rounds of flash-bang grenades if anyone threw anything at them or approached them. L.A. County sheriff’s deputies arrived to block off a perimeter, and the border agents departed shortly after, leaving the protesters and the sheriff’s deputies, who shot flash-bang grenades at the crowd. The struggle between the deputies and about 100 protesters continued until midnight.

Almost four million people live in Los Angeles, with more than 12 million in the greater L.A. area, making the protests relatively small. Nonetheless, on Saturday evening, Trump signed an order saying that “[t]o the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States.” Based on that weak finding, he called out at least 2,000 members of the California National Guard to protect ICE and other government personnel, activating a state’s National Guard without a request from its governor for the first time in 50 years.

At 8:25 p.m., his social media account posted: “If Governor Gavin Newscum, of California, and Mayor Karen Bass, of Los Angeles, can’t do their jobs, which everyone knows they can’t, then the Federal Government will step in and solve the problem, RIOTS & LOOTERS, the way it should be solved!!!”

California’s governor Gavin Newsom said Trump’s plan was “purposefully inflammatory.” “LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice,” Newsom said. “We are in close coordination with the city and county, and there is currently no unmet need. The Guard has been admirably serving LA throughout recovery. This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.” Newsom said the administration is trying “not to meet an unmet need, but to manufacture a crisis.”

Trump apparently was not too terribly concerned about the “rebellion”; he was at the UFC fight in Newark, New Jersey, by 10:00 p.m.

At 10:06 p.m., Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who is under investigation over his involvement with a Signal chat that inappropriately included classified information, posted: “The violent mob assaults on ICE and Federal Law Enforcement are designed to prevent the removal of Criminal Illegal Aliens from our soil; a dangerous invasion facilitated by criminal cartels (aka Foreign Terrorist Organizations) and a huge NATIONAL SECURITY RISK.” He added that the Defense Department was mobilizing the National Guard and that “if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized—they are on high alert.”

At 2:41 a.m., Trump’s social media account posted: “Great job by the National Guard in Los Angeles after two days of violence, clashes and unrest. We have an incompetent Governor (Newscum) and Mayor (Bass) who were, as usual…unable to to handle the task. These Radical Left protests, by instigators and often paid troublemakers, will NOT BE TOLERATED…. Again, thank you to the National Guard for a job well done!”

Just an hour later, at 3:22 a.m., Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass posted: “I want to thank LAPD and local law enforcement for their work tonight. I also want to thank [Governor Gavin Newsom] for his support. Just to be clear, the National Guard has not been deployed in the City of Los Angeles.”

National Guard troops arrived in L.A. today, but James Queally, Nathan Solis, Salvador Hernandez, and Hannah Fry of the Los Angeles Times reported that the city’s garment district and Paramount were calm and that incidents of rock throwing were isolated. Law enforcement officers met those incidents with tear gas and less-lethal rounds.

Today, when reporters asked if he planned to send troops to L.A., Trump answered: “We’re gonna have troops everywhere. We’re not going to let this happen to our country. We’re not going to let our country be torn apart like it was under Biden.” Trump appeared to be referring to the divisions during the Biden administration caused by Trump and his loyalists, who falsely claimed that Biden had stolen the 2020 presidential election. (In the defamation trial happening right now in Colorado over those allegations, MyPillow chief executive officer Mike Lindell, who was a fierce advocate of Trump’s lie, will not present evidence that the election was rigged, his lawyers say. They added: “it’s just words. All Mike Lindell did was talk. Mike believed that he was telling the truth.”)

At 5:06 p.m. this evening, Trump’s social media account posted: “A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals. Now violent, insurrectionist mobs are swarming and attacking our Federal Agents to try and stop our deportation operations—But these lawless riots only strengthen our resolve. I am directing Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, and Attorney General Pam Bondi, in coordination with all other relevant Departments and Agencies, to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots. Order will be restored, the Illegals will be expelled, and Los Angeles will be set free.” He followed this statement with that odd closing he has been using lately: “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

Marketplace host Kai Ryssdal answered: “Hello. I live in Los Angeles. The president is lying.”

At 6:27, Governor Newsom posted that he has “formally requested the Trump Administration rescind their unlawful deployment of troops in Los Angeles county and return them to my command. We didn’t have a problem until Trump got involved. This is a serious breach of state sovereignty—inflaming tensions while pulling resources from where they’re actually needed. Rescind the order. Return control to California.” The Democratic governors issued a statement standing with Newsom and calling Trump’s order “ineffective and dangerous.”

At 10:03, Trump posted: Governor Gavin Newscum and “Mayor” Bass should apologize to the people of Los Angeles for the absolutely horrible job that they have done, and this now includes the ongoing L.A. riots. These are not protesters, they are troublemakers and insurrectionists. Remember, NO MASKS!” Four minutes later, he posted: “Paid Insurrectionists!”

There is real weakness behind the regime’s power grab. Trump’s very public blowup with billionaire Elon Musk last week has opened up criticism of the Department of Government Efficiency that Musk controlled. In his fury, Musk suggested to Trump’s loyal followers that the reason the Epstein files detailing sexual assault of children haven’t been released is that Trump is implicated in them. Trump’s promised trade deals have not materialized, and indicators show his policies are hurting the economy.

And the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill” is raising significant opposition. Today Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) complained about the excessive spending in the bill for ICE, prompting Stephen Miller to complain on social media and to claim that “each deportation saves taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars.” But David J. Bier of the libertarian Cato Institute on Friday estimated that the deportation plans in the measure would add almost $1 trillion in costs.

There is no doubt that as their other initiatives have stalled and popular opinion is turning against the administration on every issue, the Trump regime is trying to establish a police state. But in making Los Angeles their flashpoint, they chose a poor place to demonstrate dominance. Unlike a smaller, Republican-dominated city whose people might side with the administration, Los Angeles is a huge, multicultural city that the federal government does not have the personnel to subdue.

Trump stumbled as he climbed the stairs to Air Force One tonight.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Resistance, Trump

Russ Vought Will Keep the DOGS going Without Elon

By dianeravitch

June 9, 2025 //

In case you wondered, I now call DOGE something else. I call it DOGS, although truthfully that’s not fair to dogs. Dogs are wonderful creatures; In my experience, dogs give you unconditional loyalty and love. These DOGS are loyal to one man, Elon Musk. They are shredding the federal government, destroying the careers and lives of tens of thousands of professional civil servants. They have gathered our personal data. They are embedded in high-level positions across the government. They should all be fired and sent back to Elon Musk.

But the bigger risk to our democracy is Russell Vought, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, one of the most powerful positions in the federal government. He is a self-proclaimed Christian nationalist. He is working in opposition to the Founding Fathers, who made clear their intention to keep religion out of government.

Democracy Docket reports on Vought:

Though Elon Musk is leaving the White House, DOGE isn’t going anywhere.

It appears that Russell Vought — Trump’s budget hawk and one of the chief architects of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — is stepping in to become DOGE’s new power broker.

With Vought, a self-described Christian nationalist, at the helm, the slash-and-burn effort against the federal government may be on the cusp of an even darker turn.

In many ways, Vought is what Musk is not. After working at public policy organizations for nearly two decades, he has a far better understanding of how the government works — and how its weaknesses can be exploited. Despite advising Trump for almost 10 years, he’s also kept a fairly low profile, rarely giving interviews or speaking in public.

And Vought appears to be motivated first and foremost by creating a Christian nation controlled by an overtly Christian government.

Last year, Vought told undercover journalists with the Centre for Climate Reporting that he wants “to make sure that we can say we are a Christian nation.”

“And my viewpoint is mostly that I would probably be Christian nation-ism,” Vought said. “That’s pretty close to Christian nationalism because I also believe in nationalism.”

To achieve that, Vought said in the interview he seeks to replace the non-partisan and merit-based federal civil service with a bureaucracy in which employment hinges on allegiance to Trump. He said he also seeks to impound congressionally approved funding, help coordinate mass deportations and find ways to let Trump use the military to put down protesters.

As former Trump adviser Steve Bannon recently told The Atlantic, “Russ has got a vision. He’s not an anarchist. He’s a true believer.”

Federal agencies, in particular the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), have already implemented numerous policies that Vought drafted to achieve those goals.

Earlier this year, OPM proposed new regulations that would formally revive Schedule F, a key tool developed by Vought to gut the federal government and replace career public servants with partisan ideologues.

In another move championed by Vought, the personnel office last week also announced a s0-called “Merit Hiring Plan” that would, if implemented, ask prospective hires for the thousands of DOGE-induced vacancies across the federal government to write short essays explaining their levels of patriotism and support for the president’s policies.

“How would you help advance the President’s Executive Orders and policy priorities in this role? Identify one or two relevant Executive Orders or policy initiatives that are significant to you, and explain how you would help implement them if hired,” reads one of the essay prompts.

Vought, too, has recently taken steps to impound funds.

This week, the White House sent Congress proposed spending cuts — also called a rescission package — that’s been backed by Vought in order to formalize cuts made by DOGE. The $9.4 billion package targets funding for NPR, PBS, the U.S. Agency for International Development and other foreign aid spending.

The rescission process allows a president to avoid spending money on discretionary programs, and since rescission bills only require simple majority approval in the House and Senate, there’s a chance some of the proposed cuts will become law. If they do, they will be the first presidentially proposed rescissions accepted by Congress since 1999.

If Congress doesn’t pass the package, the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, which restricts when and how the president can delay or withhold federal funds, requires Trump to release the funds — that’s assuming that the administration follows the law.

The same day the White House sent Congress the package, Vought threatened that if lawmakers don’t pass the rescissions, the executive branch would find ways to override Congress’ constitutional authority to allocate funding.

“We are dusting off muscle memory that existed for 200 years before President Nixon in the 1970s and Congress acted to try to take away the president’s ability to spend less,” Vought said.

When asked by CNN whether he was attempting to tee up a legal fight to challenge the Impoundment Control Act as unconstitutional, Vought implied he was.

“We’re certainly not taking impoundment off of the table. We’re not in love with the law,” Vought said.

Categories Budget Cuts, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Musk, Elon, Religion, Tyranny

New Hampshire: GOP is “Willfully and Knowingly” Sabotaging Public Education

By dianeravitch

June 9, 2025 //

Gary Rayno is a veteran journalist who writes about politics and government in New Hampshire. He knows more about school finance than most members of the State Legislature.

He wrote recently about the nefarious plan to privatize public funding and undermine public education in the Granite State, even though 90% of the students in the state attend public schools. New Hampshire has an unusual problem with a libertarian party called “Free Staters,” who don’t want government to pay for anything. They are well represented in the legislature.

He wrote:

If you watched the House session Thursday, you had to realize the message the Republican majority is sending on public education.

Republicans quickly passed expanding Education Freedom Accounts, or vouchers, that will cost the state’s taxpayers well over $110 million for the next biennium with most of the money going to higher-income parents who currently send their children to religious and private schools or homeschools.

The expansion to vouchers-for-all has been a goal of the Free State/Libertarian controlled GOP for some time and they are likely to reach this year by daring Gov. Kelly Ayotte to veto the budget package, something she is not likely to do although she wanted the students to actually attend public schools before they join the EFA program with few guardrails and little academic accountability.

Instead much of the debate was over two bills that would significantly change the educational environment in public schools.

Senate Bill 72, would establish a parental bill of rights in education, and Senate Bill 96 would require mandatory disclosure to parents. And for good measure they added Senate Bill 100 which could cost a teacher his or her teaching credentials if they violate the divisive concepts law and school districts could be fined $2,500 plus attorneys’ fees and court costs.

The second offense is a permanent ban from teaching and school districts would have to pay a $5,000 fine and the penalties for third-party education contractors are even more onerous.

The state is prohibited from enforcing the law because a US District Court judge found the law unconstitutionally vague and the changes in Senate Bill 100 do nothing to change that except encourage more litigation.

These are just the latest attempt to convince the state’s residents that public schools are filled with far left teachers who want to indoctrinate students, to shield LGBTQ+ students from their parents and to encourage deviant behavior.

Nine-nine percent of parents with children in the public schools would tell you that is not true and the other 1 percent are in the New Hampshire legislature or related to someone who is.

Public schools are not perfect but the Free State/Libertarian talking points about public education are not being created in New Hampshire. They are the work of far-right think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Institute and American Legislative Exchange Council, the same groups that generate the wording for these bills.

The legislature has not addressed the real problems facing public schools, but have instead been exacerbated by the GOP controlled legislature. The bills passed this session have created more work for educators and school boards and they divert time and money away from educators’ first responsibility: to educate students and prepare them to survive and compete in today’s world.

The elephant in the room is the lack of state funding for public education at the elementary, secondary and postsecondary levels where the state of New Hampshire, one of the wealthiest per capita in the country, is dead last behind such educational meccas as Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri and West Virginia.

Public schools do not need to spend more money for their educational system that continually ranks near the top nationally, but the state needs to pay its share of the cost which nationally averages a little less than 50 percent.

In New Hampshire local property taxpayers pay 63 percent of the cost of public education, while the state contributes 28.8 percent, leaving a little over 8 percent for the federal government to contribute, the 45th lowest for states.

Property taxes pay about 70 percent of the cost of education when you add in the Statewide Education Property Tax which is included in the state’s share although it all comes out of property owners’ pockets.

This legislature did two things to address the funding issue this session, one would be to bring the Statewide Education Property Tax collection methods in line with a superior court judge’s ruling that requires the property wealthier communities to turn their excess revenue not needed to cover the cost of an adequate education for their students over to the state and to stop the Department of Revenue Administration from approving negative local education property tax rates allowing unincorporated places to avoid paying the statewide property tax.

That action does not require any more state money and in fact increases state revenue by about $30 million.

The Legislature increased spending on special education in the second year of the biennium, but the Senate budget reduced that figure by $27 million.

Just a few years ago, the Education Trust Fund, which pays for state adequacy grants to public and charter schools, special education, building aid and several other educational needs, had a surplus approaching $250 million, but since that time the EFA program has also drawn its money from the same source of funds totally $76 million through this school year.

The additional draw from the EFA program and declining state revenues have combined to substantially change the financial picture. At the end of this fiscal year at the end of the month, the surplus will be around $100 million.

At the end of the upcoming biennium the surplus in the Senate’s budget will be less than $20 million, with the fund in deficit under the House’s budget, and $14 million in the governor’s plan.

All three plans reduce the percentage of state revenues that go into the Education Trust Fund and increase the amount going to the state’s general fund.

Drying up the Education Trust Fund was a plan hatched long ago to have vouchers competing with public schools for state education money. When that happens, if you think your property taxes are too high now, just wait until the money goes to the voucher program first before adequacy grants to school districts.

The Free State/Libertarians have long sought to have public schools house only special education students and kids with disciplinary programs. The rest of the students and their parents will be on their own to find and pay for their education, meaning the rich will do just fine and everyone else will scramble to find an inferior education they can afford.

That is a pathway to retaining the oligarchy.

Another significant issue facing public education is the dearth of teachers as many school districts cannot find certified teachers to hire and instead have to rely on non-credentialed personnel or para educators to fill the gap.

See above and and you could reasonably ask, with these kinds of bills that put teachers between their students and their parents and make schools less than safe spaces for many kids, who in their right mind would want to be an educator.

At last week’s session, Rep. Stephen Woodcock, D-Center Conway, a retired teacher and school principal, said “Parental rights go hand in hand with parental responsibilities. It is not a teacher’s responsibility to do the parents’ job, which is talking with their children.”

And you could argue that public education ought to be more rigorous than it is now, but society has pressured schools to “make every child succeed,” and that translates into lower academic standards.

And that describes the new state education standards recently approved by the State Board of Education in the name of competency-based education.

If this group of legislators continue to control the agenda, it will not be long before public education will be in tatters, which will suit them fine.

But with about 90 percent of the state’s children in the public school system, it is hard to believe that is their parents’ or their desire.

Categories Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, New Hampshire, Vouchers

Glenn Kessler Fact-Checks Marco Rubio’s Claim that No One Died When Foreign Aid Stopped

By dianeravitch

June 6, 2025 //

Glenn Kessler is a professional fact-checker for The Washington Post. He recently reviewed a controversy about the consequences of the Trump administration’s shutdown of USAID. Democrats said that people have died because of the cuts; Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not agree. Kessler reviews the record.

He writes:

Secretary of State Marco Rubio: “No one has died because of USAID —”
Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California): “The people who have died …”
Rubio: “That’s a lie.”

— exchange at a congressional hearing, May 21

“That question about people dying around the world is an unfair one.”
— Rubio, at another congressional hearing later that day

When Rubio testified last week about the State Department budget, Sherman confronted him about numerous anecdotal accounts of people around the world dying because the Trump administration, at the direction of billionaire Elon Musk, dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development and shut down many of its programs.

Sherman used his time mainly to pontificate, and Rubio’s attention must have wandered. He asked Sherman to repeat the question after Sherman said: “We next focus on USAID. Musk gutted it. He said no one died as a result. Do you agree no one had died yet as a result of the chainsawing of USAID? Yes or no.”

Sherman repeated: “Has anyone died in the world because of what Elon Musk did?”

Rubio stumbled a response — “Uh, listen” — and Sherman cut him off. “Yes or no?” he said. “Reclaiming my time. If you won’t answer, that’s a loud answer.”

That’s when Rubio said it was “a lie.” As Sherman’s staff held up photos of people alleged to have died because they stopped receiving services from USAID programs, Rubio denounced the claim as “false.”

Later in the day, at another hearing, Rep. Grace Meng (D-New York) gave Rubio an opportunity to clean up his statement. “Do you stand behind that testimony?” she asked. “And has there been any assessment conducted by the department to this point of how many people have died?”

Rubio said it was “an unfair question.” He tried to reframe the question, arguing that other countries such as Britain and France also have cut back on humanitarian spending, while China has never contributed much.

“The United States is the largest humanitarian provider on the planet,” he said. “I would argue: How many people die because China hasn’t done it? How many people have died because the U.K. has cut back on spending and so has other countries?”

There’s a lot to unpack there.

The facts

At least until the Trump administration, the United States was the largest provider of humanitarian aid in the world — in raw dollars. In the 2023 fiscal year, the most recent with complete data, USAID’s budget was about $42 billion, while the State Department disbursed about $19 billion in additional aid, and other agencies (such as the Treasury Department) did, as well. Now USAID is all but gone, folded into the State Department. Nonetheless, when the dust settles, the United States might still be the biggest aid donor — again, in raw dollars.

When measured as a percentage of a country’s economy, even before the Trump administration, the U.S. was far behind nations such as Britain, Norway, Sweden, Germany and the Netherlands. The United Nations has set a target of contributing 0.7 percent of gross national income in development aid; the U.S. clocks in with less than 0.2 percent, near the bottom of the list of major democracies, according to a 2020 report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. Most economists would say that a percentage of a nation’s economy is a more accurate way to measure the generosity of a country.

Rubio is correct that Britain and France have cut back, and that China has not been much of a foreign-aid donor. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, for instance, said he would pay for increased defense spending by cutting the foreign-aid budget from roughly 0.5 percent of gross national income to 0.3 percent. (That is still higher than the U.S. share before President Donald Trump began his second term.) China’s aid budget is a bit opaque — numbers have not been published since 2018 — but it appears to be an average of just over $3 billion a year, according to the Brookings Institution.

But when it comes to whether people have died as a result of the Trump administration’s cuts, we have to look at how the cuts unfolded. Starmer announced his plans in a pending budget proposal. Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 20 imposing a 90-day freeze on all U.S. foreign aid — and then Musk forced out thousands of employees who worked at USAID, helping to manage and distribute funds. The resulting chaos was devastating, according to numerous news reports.

Sherman’s staff held up a photo of Pe Kha Lau, 71, a refugee from Myanmar with lung problems. On Feb. 7, Reuters quoted her family as saying she died “after she was discharged from a U.S.-funded hospital on the Myanmar-Thai border that was ordered to close” as a result of Trump’s executive order. The International Rescue Committee said it shut down and locked hospitals in several refugee camps in late January after receiving a “stop-work” order from the State Department.

Another photo held up as Rubio said the death claims were false was of 5-year-old Evan Anzoo. He was featured in a March article by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof titled: “Musk Said No One Has Died Since Aid Was Cut. That Isn’t True.” Kristof focused on South Sudan and the impact that a suspension of HIV drugs — under a George W. Bush program called PEPFAR — had on the poor country ravaged by civil conflict. PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is regarded as a singular success, saving an estimated 26 million lives since it was created in 2003. Kristof focused on individual stories of people who died after they lost access to medicines because of Trump’s order.

“Another household kept alive by American aid was that of Jennifer Inyaa, a 35-year-old single mom, and her 5-year-old son, Evan Anzoo, both of them H.I.V.-positive,” Kristof wrote. “Last month, after the aid shutdown, Inyaa became sick and died, and a week later Evan died as well, according to David Iraa Simon, a community health worker who assisted them. Decisions by billionaires in Washington quickly cost the lives of a mother and her son.”

Anecdotal reports can go only so far. It’s clear that people are dying because U.S. aid was suspended and then reduced. But it’s difficult to come up with a precise death toll that can be tied directly to Trump administration policies. The death certificates, after all, aren’t marked “Due to lack of funding by U.S. government.”

Kristof cited a study by the Center for Global Development that estimated how many lives are saved each year by American dollars: about 1.7 million HIV/AIDS deaths averted; 550,000 saved because of other humanitarian assistance; 300,000 tuberculosis deaths prevented; and nearly 300,000 malaria deaths forestalled. But that shows the positive impact of U.S. assistance, not what happens when it is withdrawn.

Brooke Nichols, a Boston University infectious-disease mathematical modeler and health economist, has developed a tracker that attempts to fill this gap. As of Monday, the model shows, about 96,000 adults and 200,000 children have died because of the administration’s cutbacks to funding for aid groups and support organizations. The overall death count grows by 103 people an hour.

With any calculation like this, a lot depends on the assumptions. The methodology uses a straight-line estimate of program terminations based on 2024 data and published mortality data to estimate the impact of loss of treatment. Nichols said that because it is not entirely clear what aid has been restored, she has not updated the tracker to account for that. But she noted that Rubio claimed on Capitol Hill that “85 percent of recipients are now receiving PEPFAR services.”

“For HIV, the total mortality estimates reflect either a 3-month complete cessation of PEPFAR, or 12 months of PEPFAR reduced by 25 percent (the total results are the same),” Nichols said in an email. “If what Rubio says is true … and 85 percent of PEPFAR is back up and running, then the numbers here are still very accurate.”
In a statement to The Fact Checker, the State Department put it differently from Rubio: “85 percent of PEPFAR-funded programs that deliver HIV care and treatment are operational.” We asked for documentation for the “85 percent” figure, because the phrasing might not include funding for drugs that prevent HIV infection. We did not receive a response.

Nichols acknowledged that the tracker was not adjusted for double counting — a child counted as dying from malnutrition and diarrhea — though she didn’t think it would affect the overall results much. Some of the estimates are based on country-specific information; others are not. Data limitations required her to assume an equal distribution between children treated for pneumonia and diarrhea through USAID.

“The biggest uncertainties in all of these estimates are: 1) the extent to which countries and organizations have pivoted to mitigate this disaster (likely highly variable), and 2) which programs are actually still funded with funding actually flowing — and which aren’t,” Nichols said.

A key source document for the tracker is an internal memo written on March 3 by Nicholas Enrich, then USAID’s acting assistant administrator for global health, estimating the impact of the funding freeze on global health (including how such diseases might spill over into the United States). Enrich, a civil servant who served under four administrations over 15 years, estimated that a permanent halt in aid would result in at least 12.5 million cases of malaria, with an additional 71,000 to 166,000 deaths annually, a 28 percent to 32 percent increase in tuberculosis globally and an additional 200,000 paralytic polio cases a year.

As a result of writing the memo — and others — he was placed on administrative leave.

Nichols said the death toll would not be so high had the administration pursued a deliberate policy to phase out funding over a 12-month period, which would have permitted contingency planning. “It’s true that other countries are cutting back on humanitarian spending. But what makes the U.S. approach so harmful is how the cuts were made: abruptly, without warning, and without a plan for continuity,” she said. “It leads to interruptions in care, broken supply chains, and ultimately, preventable deaths. Also, exactly because the U.S. is the largest provider of humanitarian aid, it makes the approach catastrophic.”

When we asked the State Department about Rubio’s dismissal of the idea that anyone had died as a result of the suspension of aid — and that it was clearly wrong — we received this statement: “America is the most generous nation in the world, and we urge other nations to dramatically increase their humanitarian efforts.”

The Pinocchio Test

Given numerous news reports about people dying because they stopped getting American aid, you would think Rubio’s staff would have prepared him with a better answer than “lie” and “false.” His cleanup response wasn’t much better. The issue is not that other nations are reducing funding — but how the United States suddenly pulled the plug, making it more likely that people would die.
There is no dispute that people have died because the Trump administration abruptly suspended foreign aid. One might quibble over whether tens of thousands — or hundreds of thousands — have died. But you can’t call it a lie. Rubio earns Four Pinocchios.

Four Pinocchios

The Fact Checker is a verified signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network code of principles

Glenn Kessler has reported on domestic and foreign policy for more than four decades. Send him statements to fact check by emailing him or sending a DM on Twitter.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, International, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: GOP Budget Bill Is Packed with Deadly Cuts and Lies

By dianeravitch

June 5, 2025 //

Heather Cox Richardson warns about the Republicans’ “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” which cuts Medicaid and other vital services while increasing the deficit. Republicans cover up the cruel cuts to vital services by lying about them.

She writes:

The Republicans’ giant budget reconciliation bill has focused attention on the drastic cuts the Trump administration is making to the American government. On Friday, when a constituent at a town hall shouted that the Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid, the federal healthcare program for low-income Americans, meant that “people will die,” Senator Joni Ernst (R-IA) replied, “Well, we are all going to die.”

The next day, Ernst released a video purporting to be an apology. It made things worse. “I made an incorrect assumption that everyone in the auditorium understood that, yes, we are all going to perish from this Earth. So, I apologize. And I’m really, really glad that I did not have to bring up the subject of the tooth fairy as well. But for those that would like to see eternal and everlasting life, I encourage you to embrace my lord and savior, Jesus Christ,” she said.

Ernst blamed the “hysteria that’s out there coming from the left” for the outcry over her comments. Like other Republicans, she claims that the proposed cuts of more than $700 billion in Medicaid funding over the next ten years is designed only to get rid of the waste and fraud in the program. Thus, they say, they are actually strengthening Medicaid for those who need it.

But, as Linda Qiu noted in the New York Timestoday, most of the bill’s provisions have little to do with the “waste, fraud, and abuse” Republicans talk about. They target Medicaid expansion, cut the ability of states to finance Medicaid, force states to drop coverage, and limit access to care. And the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says the cuts mean more than 10.3 million Americans will lose health care coverage.

House speaker Mike Johnson has claimed that those losing coverage will be 1.4 million unauthorized immigrants, but this is false. As Qiu notes, although 14 states use their own funds to provide health insurance for undocumented immigrant children, and seven of those states provide some coverage for undocumented pregnant women, in fact, “unauthorized immigrants are not eligible for federally funded Medicaid, except in emergency situations.” Instead, the bill pressures those fourteen states to drop undocumented coverage by reducing their federal Medicaid funding.

MAGA Republicans claim their “One Big, Beautiful Bill”—that’s its official name—dramatically reduces the deficit, but that, too, is a lie.

On Thursday, May 29, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed the measure would carry out “the largest deficit reduction in nearly 30 years with $1.6 trillion in mandatory savings.” She echoed forty years of Republican claims that the economic growth unleashed by the measure would lead to higher tax revenues, a claim that hasn’t been true since Ronald Reagan made it in the 1980s.

In fact, the CBO estimates that the tax cuts and additional spending in the measure mean “[a]n increase in the federal deficit of $3.8 trillion.” As G. Elliott Morris of Strength in Numbers notes, the CBO has been historically very reliable, but Leavitt and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) tried to discount its scoring by claiming, as Johnson said: “They are historically totally unreliable. It’s run by Democrats.”

The director of the CBO, economist Philip Swagel, worked as chief of staff and senior economist at the Council of Economic Advisors during the George W. Bush administration. He was appointed in 2019 with the support of Senate Budget Committee chair Michael Enzi (R-WY) and House Budget Committee chair John Yarmuth (D-KY). He was reappointed in 2023 with bipartisan support.

Republican cuts to government programs are a dramatic reworking of America’s traditional evidence-based government that works to improve the lives of a majority of Americans. They are replacing that government with an ideologically driven system that concentrates wealth and power in a few hands and denies that the government has a role to play in protecting Americans.

And yet, those who get their news by watching the Fox News Channel are likely unaware of the Republicans’ planned changes to Medicaid. As Aaron Rupar noted, on this morning’s Fox and Friends, the hosts mentioned Medicaid just once. They mentioned former president Joe Biden 39 times.

That change shows dramatically in cuts to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). NOAA is an agency in the Commerce Department, established under Republican president Richard Nixon in 1970, that monitors weather conditions, storms, and ocean currents. The National Weather Service (NWS), which provides weather, wind, and ocean forecasts, is part of NOAA.

NWS forecasts annually provide the U.S. with an estimated $31.5 billion in benefits as they enable farmers, fishermen, businesspeople, schools, and individuals to plan around weather events.

As soon as he took office, Trump imposed an across-the-board hiring freeze, and billionaire Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” fired probationary employees and impounded funds Congress had appropriated. Now, as hurricane season begins, experts in storms and disasters are worried that the NOAA will be unable to function adequately.

Cuts to the NWS have already meant fewer weather balloons and thus less data, leaving gaps in information for a March ice storm in Northern Michigan and for storms and floods in Oklahoma in April. Oliver Milman of The Guardianreported today that 15 NWS offices on the Gulf of Mexico, a region vulnerable to hurricanes, are understaffed after losing more than 600 employees. Miami’s National Hurricane Center is short five specialists. Thirty of the 122 NWS stations no longer have a meteorologist in charge, and as of June 1, seven of those 122 stations will not have enough staff to operate around the clock.

On May 5, the five living former NWS leaders, who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents, wrote a letter to the American people warning that the cuts threaten to bring “needless loss of life.” They urged Americans to “raise your voice” against the cuts.

Trump’s proposed 2026 budget calls for “terminating a variety of climate-dominated research, data, and grant programs” and cutting about 25% more out of NOAA’s funding.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has also suffered dramatic cuts as Trump has said he intends to push disaster recovery to the states. The lack of expertise is taking a toll there, too. Today staff members there said they were baffled after David Richardson, the head of the agency, said he did not know the United States has a hurricane season. (It does, and it stretches from June 1 to the end of November.) Richardson had no experience with disaster response before taking charge of FEMA.

Trump’s proposed cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are even more draconian. On Friday, in a more detailed budget than the administration published in early May, the administration called for cuts of 43% to the NIH, about $20 billion a year. That includes cuts of nearly 40% to the National Cancer Institute. At the same time, the administration is threatening to end virtually all biomedical research at universities.

On Friday, May 23, the White House issued an executive order called “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” The order cites the COVID-19 guidance about school reopenings from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to claim that the federal government under President Joe Biden “used or promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner.” (Schools closed in March 2020 under Trump.) The document orders that “[e]mployees shall not engage in scientific misconduct” and, scientists Colette Delawalla, Victor Ambros, Carl Bergstrom, Carol Greider, Michael Mann, and Brian Nosek explain in The Guardian, gives political appointees the power to silence any research they oppose “based on their own ‘judgment.’” They also have the power to punish those scientists whose work they find objectionable.

The Guardian authors note that science is “the most important long-term investment for humanity.” They recall the story of Soviet biologist Trofim Lysenko, who is a prime example of the terrible danger of replacing fact-based reality with ideology.

As Sam Kean of The Atlantic noted in 2017, Lysenko opposed science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century in favor of the pseudo-scientific idea that the environment alone shapes plants and animals. This idea reflected communist political thought, and Lysenko gained the favor of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Lysenko claimed that his own agricultural techniques, which included transforming one species into another, would dramatically increase crop yields. Government leaders declared that Lysenko’s ideas were the only correct ones, and anyone who disagreed with him was denounced. About 3,000 biologists whose work contradicted his were fired or sent to jail. Some were executed. Scientific research was effectively banned.

In the 1930s, Soviet leaders set out to “modernize” Soviet agriculture, and when their new state-run farming collectives failed, they turned to Lysenko to fix the problem with his new techniques. Almost everything planted according to his demands died or rotted. In the USSR and in China, which adopted his methods in the 1950s, at least 30 million people died of starvation.

“[W]hen the doctrines of science and the doctrines of communism clashed, he always chose the latter—confident that biology would conform to ideology in the end,” Kean said of Lysenko. He concludes: “It never did.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Health, Lies, Republicans, Science, Trump

Jan Resseger: Trump Guts Civil Rights Laws

By dianeravitch

June 5, 2025 //

Jan Resseger reviews Trump’s vigorous crusade to eliminate civil rights laws by inverting their meaning. These laws were passed to break the monopoly held by white men in hiring and promotions. But now, any program that favors women and nonwhites is treated as a crime. Universities and corporations that once featured their efforts to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion are now warned by the federal government that these efforts discriminate against white men and must be abolished.

Resseger writes:

When it comes to President Trump’s threatened tariffs and his foreign policy demands, we have all been reading about the phrase coined by a Financial Times reporter: “Trump always chickens out—TACO.” But when it comes to Trump’s attack on civil rights and racial justice in the nation’s public schools, the President has been doggedly persistent.

On May 22nd, The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser mused about the President’s Oval Office ambush of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa as capturing how things are going in “Washington a hundred and twenty-one days into Trump’s second term: a manufactured scene of outrage about a nonexistent ‘white genocide’ ” and “a reminder of how explicitly Trump has, in his second term, defined the goal of his Presidency as a sort of racial-justice quest for white people.” Glasser describes “a President who has terminated affirmative-action decrees that have been in place for the federal government since the nineteen-sixties, unleashed a wave of arrests and deportations aimed at illegal migrants of color, gutted federal civil-right-enforcement offices, and blamed D.E.I. for just about every evil at home and abroad.”

New York Times reporter Erica Green summarizes the Trump administration’s consistent work since the winter to attack racial justice and twist the meaning of the protection of civil rights: “In his drive to purge diversity efforts in the federal government and beyond, President Trump has expressed outright hostility to civil rights protections. He ordered federal agencies to abandon some of the core tenets of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, on the basis that they represented a ‘pernicious’ attempt to make decisions based on diversity rather than merit. But in recent weeks, Mr. Trump has turned to those same measures—not to help groups that have historically been discriminated against, but to remedy what he sees as the disenfranchisement of white men. The pattern fits into a broader trend… as Trump officials pick and choose which civil rights protections they want to enforce and for whom. Across the government, agencies that have historically worked to fight discrimination against Black people, women and other groups have pivoted to investigating institutions accused of favoring them.”

Beginning on Valentines Day, when Trump’s Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR), Craig Trainor sent all public school officials a “Dear Colleague” letter threatening their federal funding if they did not remove all diversity, equity, and inclusion from their schools, the Trump Administration turned its sights on U.S. public schools. In March, the administration closed seven of the nation’s twelve regional Office for Civil Rights locations that have traditionally investigated complaints filed by parents and families. At the same time the Office for Civil Rights abandoned its traditional practice of carefully investigating complaints and working with school districts to end discriminatory practices. Trump’s OCR turned to directed investigations aimed at punishing school districts failing to comply with the administration’s priorities and threatening loss of federal funding. In early April, the Department of Education threatened K-12 public school districts’ Title I funding unless school leaders (and statewide officials) signed a certificate that they were in full compliance with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act as well as in compliance with the administration’s broad, and many believe mistaken, interpretation of the 2023 Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which specifically banned affirmation in college admissions. The Trump administration has declared that the Students for Fair Admissions decision instead bans all DEI programming and policy.

School districts and state departments of education, along with teachers unions and civil rights organizations like the NAACP and the ACLU, have put the consequences of almost all of these threats on hold by filing injunctions, which have yielded temporary stays in most of these cases, but Education Secretary, Linda McMahon and her Department of Education keep on persisting by conducting more investigations and threatening punitive consequences for school districts persisting in efforts to help particular groups of students.

In mid-May, by executive order, President Trump banned the use of disparate impact as a standard for investigating Civil Rights investigations. For ProPublica, Jennifer Smith Richards and Judi Cohen reported: “Remaking the Office of Civil Rights isn’t just about increasing caseloads and reordering political priorities. The Trump administration now is taking steps to roll back OCR’s previous civil rights work. Last month, Trump issued an executive order that directs all federal agencies, including the Education Department, to stop enforcing cases involving policies that disproportionately affect certain groups—for example when Black students are disciplined more harshly than white students for the same infractions or when students with disabilities are suspended more than any other group even though they represent a small percentage of student enrollment.”

Smith Richards and Cohen examine how the Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) has reduced its capacity to process complaints and changed its procedures in ways that bias investigations to reflect the Trump administration’s priorities: “The OCR, historically one of the government’s largest enforcers of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, has been known for being a neutral fact-finder. Its investigators followed a process to determine whether complaints from the public met legal criteria for a civil rights claim, then carried out investigations methodically. The vast majority of investigations were based on discrimination complaints from students and families, and a large share of those were related to disability discrimination… Investigations being publicized now have largely bypassed the agency’s civil rights attorneys… McMahon and OCR head, Craig Trainor created what amounts to a shadow division. The Trump administration has ordered more than a dozen investigations in the past three months on its own, not initiated by an outside complainant. These ‘directed investigations’ are typically rare; there were none during President Joseph Biden’s administration. The investigations have targeted schools with transgender athletes, gender-neutral bathrooms and initiatives that the administration views as discriminatory to white students.”

The ProPublica reporters spoke with OCR attorneys who anonymously describe what they believe are serious violations of departmental protocol: “McMahon and Trainor created ways to divert complaints and investigations away from the OCR’s legal experts entirely. The administration made an ‘End DEI’ portal that bypasses the traditional online complaint system and seeks only grievances about diversity, equity and inclusion in schools. Unlike the regular complaint system, the diversity portal submissions are not routed to OCR staff. ‘We have no idea where that portal goes, who it goes to, how they review the cases… said the attorney who said he struggles with being unable to help families.” In other instances, “Conservative groups with complaints about diversity or transgender students have been able to file complaints directly with Trainor and get quick results… America First Legal, a group founded by Trump deputy chief of staff, Steven Miller… emailed Trainor a few days after Trump’s… executive order… (that) directs schools to stop teaching about or supporting diversity, equity, and gender identity. ‘AFL respectfully requests that the Department of Education open investigations into the following public school districts in Northern Virginia for continuing violations of Title IX,’ the letter read, listing five districts that have policies welcoming to transgender students. Senior leadership in Washington opened the cases the following week. America First issued a press release headlined ‘VICTORY!’ “

Education Week‘s Brooke Schultz reports: “The U.S. Department of Education has announced or confirmed at least 100 investigations into school districts, colleges, and universities, and other entities as it emerges as a prime enforcer of President Donald Trump’s social agenda.” Here are some of Schultz’s examples: “(F)our school districts have drawn investigations from the department over a Black student success plan in Chicago, a students of color summit in New York, racial affinity groups in Illinois, and a selective Virginia high school’s admissions policy that the education Department says appears to be racially discriminatory… The first investigation Trump’s Education Department announced was a probe into the Denver district over a high school’s all-gender bathroom, which the agency suggested was a violation of Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination in schools that receive federal funds.”

Last Friday, in “Trump Administration Gives New York 10 Days to End Its Ban on Native American Mascots,” Education Week‘s Brooke Schultz reported on a Department of Education demand that clearly represents the Trump administration’s twisting and tangling the purpose and meaning of civil rights protection in public schools: an attack by the Trump Department of Education on a New York law banning Native American mascots in public schools. “The (U.S.) Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights argues that the state’s mascot policy, enacted in 2022, violates Title VI because it prohibits the use of Native American imagery but ‘allowed names, mascots, and logos that appear to have been derived from other racial or ethnic groups, such as the ‘Dutchmen’ and the ‘Huguenots.”… McMahon said in a statement Friday that the department would ‘not stand idly by as state leaders attempt to eliminate the history and culture of Native American tribes.”

Although McMahon seems to believe that the logo New York has banned in the Massapecqua School District connects with the history of American Indians in the region of the school district on Long Island, J.P. O’Hare of the New York Department of Education explained that neither the logo nor the term ‘Chief,’ was used by Native Americans in the area.

Schultz lets the president of the National Congress of American Indians, “the largest nonprofit representing Native nations which has long tracked and challenged the use of Native American mascots, Mark Macarro” correct Education Secretary McMahon’s bizarre misconception of racial justice and civil rights law: “Native people are not mascots… We have our own languages, cultures, and governments—our identities are not anyone’s mascot or costume. No political endorsement or misguided notion of ‘honoring’ us will change the fact that these mascots demean our people, diminish the enduring vibrancy of our unique cultures, and have no place in our country.”

Schultz adds: “Research has found that, for Native students, exposure to Native American mascots reduces self-esteem, their ability to imagine future accomplishments, and their belief that Native American communities can make a difference. For non-Native people, research shows that mascots are associated with negative thoughts and stereotypes about Native Americans… The portrayals are often outdated, whitewashed stereotypes, and aren’t grounded in realistic portrayals of Native people.”

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Reform, Evil, Extremism, Gender, Race, Racism, Trump

The Insane Killing of Medical Research by Trump

By dianeravitch

June 5, 2025 //

It’s hard to say what is the very worst thing Trump has done in the first few months of his second term.

Here’s my candidate: the cancellation of vast numbers of grants for medical research. There is simply no rationale for the way he has laid waste to scientific research–to those seeking the causes and cures for deadly diseases that afflict the lives of millions of people.

The New York Times provided a public service by creating a database of the medical research that has been terminated.

This link is a gift article, so you should be able to open it.

It contains interactive features that I cannot duplicate.

Thousands of grants have been canceled or put in indefinite hold. They include research about effective vaccines. The search for cures for different types of cancer.

In his first months in office, President Trump has slashed funding for medical research, threatening a longstanding alliance between the federal government and universities that helped make the United States the world leader in medical science.

Some changes have been starkly visible, but the country’s medical grant-making machinery has also radically transformed outside the public eye, a New York Times analysis found. To understand the cuts, The Times trawled through detailed grant data from the National Institutes of Health, interviewed dozens of affected researchers and spoke to agency insiders who said that their government jobs have become unrecognizable.

In all, the N.I.H., the world’s premier public funder of medical research, has ended 1,389 awards and delayed sending funding to more than 1,000 additional projects, The Times found. From the day Mr. Trump was inaugurated through April, the agency awarded $1.6 billion less compared with the same period last year, a reduction of one-fifth. (N.I.H. records for May are not yet comparable.)

The impacts extend far beyond studies on politically disfavored topics and Ivy League universities like Columbia or Harvard. The disruptions are affecting research on Alzheimer’s, cancer and substance use, to name just a few, and studies at public institutions across the country, including in red states that backed Mr. Trump.

Why? What is the rationale? Whose interest does this serve?

Did the voters give Trump a mandate to destroy medical research?