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How the Billionaires Manufactured an Education “Crisis”

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2026 //
7

Mike Simpson, known on Twitter as “Big Education Ape,” is known for his brilliant memes and editorial cartoons. Typically, they expose the latest fads and lies that defame teachers and public schools. Every once in a while, he publishes a great post, like this one.

He writes:

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED — HOW 30 YEARS OF BILLIONAIRE-FUNDED “REFORM” MANUFACTURED THE EDUCATION CRISIS IT PROMISED TO FIX

There’s a famous scene in Casablanca where Captain Renault declares he is “shocked, shocked” to find gambling going on — right before a croupier hands him his winnings. That’s essentially the posture of the billionaire reform industrial complex today, clutching its pearls over a Gallup poll showing public satisfaction with American schools has cratered to 32% — an 11-point nosedive in just two years — while quietly pocketing the profits of the crisis they spent three decades engineering.

Shocked. Absolutely shocked.

The Architecture of a Manufactured Crisis

Let’s be precise about the timeline, because precision matters when someone is picking your pocket.

For roughly 30 years, a well-funded constellation of think tanks, philanthropic foundations, hedge fund managers, and tech oligarchs pumped billions of dollars into a single, relentless narrative: public schools are failing. Not “underfunded.” Not “systematically neglected.” Failing — as in, inherently broken, irredeemably incompetent, populated by bad teachers protected by evil unions, and salvageable only by the heroic intervention of the private market.

The messaging was surgical. The money was real. And — surprise! — it worked.

As the Big Education Ape’s deep dive into school funding makes devastatingly clear, the playbook was never subtle:

Starve public schools of adequate funding. Declare them “failing.” Ride in on a white charter bus to “rescue” the children.

The chronic underfunding wasn’t fiscal negligence. In many states, it was a feature, not a bug. Squeeze hard enough, the theory went, and disruption would force innovation. What it actually forced was deferred maintenance, teacher shortages, and a generation of kids learning to read in buildings where the roof leaks and the textbooks predate the iPhone.

Now the poll numbers confirm the narrative took hold — and the reformers are citing those same poll numbers as proof they were right all along. The audacity is, genuinely, breathtaking.

The Numbers That Tell Two Very Different Stories

Here’s what the data actually shows — and what it doesn’t show:

Metric: The Headline. What It Actually Means Gallup Public Satisfaction 32% — record low 30 years of “failing schools” messaging worked exactly as intended.

Parent Satisfaction with Their Own School Historically ~2x the national figure People trust what they experience; they fear what they’re told

Math & Reading Scores Declining, especially bottom quartile Tracks directly with funding inequity and screen-time explosion

Top-tier U.S. Student Performance Still globally competitive. The “crisis” is concentrated where disinvestment is concentrated

The gap between how Americans rate schools in general versus their own child’s school is the smoking gun. It has always been the smoking gun. People who actually walk into a public school building — who meet the teachers, see the classrooms, watch their kids come home — consistently rate those schools dramatically higher than the national “failing” narrative suggests.

That gap is the manufactured crisis. It lives entirely in the space between lived experience and media-amplified fear.

$1.8 Billion Worth of Snake Oil, Served Fresh

And just when you thought the reform carousel might slow down, along comes the Science of Reading — the latest Next Big Thing™ in a long line of Next Big Things™ that have collectively cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and produced reading scores that went, as the Big Education Ape’s withering analysis puts it, precisely nowhere.

Remember Common Core? $15.8 billion. A decade of standardized testing theater. Reading scores: unmoved.

Now we have the Science of Reading, $1.8 billion deep and climbing, with the same cast of vendors, the same philanthropic networks, and the same conspicuous absence of a money-back guarantee.

To be scrupulously fair: phonics works. Explicit decoding instruction works. The underlying research on structured literacy is legitimate. But here’s the thing about legitimate research — it doesn’t require a $1.8 billion vendor ecosystem, mandatory state legislation in 40+ states, and the systematic deskilling of teachers who are told to stop thinking and start following the script. When real science gets packaged into proprietary curricula, sold to districts under legislative mandate, and deployed without the trained human educators needed to implement it well, you don’t get science. You get very expensive phonics worksheets.

The question nobody in the reform complex wants to answer remains the same one it’s always been: Where is the money-back guarantee?

The Other Hand: How Tech Bros Broke Kids’ Brains While Selling the Cure

Here is the part of the story that deserves its own criminal investigation — or at minimum, a very uncomfortable congressional hearing.

The same Silicon Valley billionaires who spent decades pushing EdTech into classrooms as the revolutionary equalizer — screens for every student! –are the identical billionaires whose social media platforms have:

  • Collapsed long-form reading among adolescents at a rate researchers describe as one of the steepest drops in PISA history
  • Engineered algorithmic doom-scrolling that neurologically rewires 15-year-olds away from the sustained attention that math and reading comprehension require
  • Distracted over a quarter of students internationally during core academic instruction, by their own PISA survey data

They sold the disease and the cure. They pushed the screens that fragmented attention spans, then sold the adaptive software to remediate the fragmented attention spans, then pointed at the test scores and said: See? Public schools are failing.

As Big Education Ape’s piece on reading struggles frames it with characteristic bluntness: if you’re struggling to read this, you have some very rich friends to thank.

The Exit Ramp Is Marked “November 3”

None of this is inevitable. None of this is permanent. The No Kings Coalition — the sprawling, nonpartisan civic movement that flooded the streets in March — is now flooding the polls, with a Vote Early Day of Action on October 17 aimed squarely at the November 3, 2026 midterms.

The math is straightforward, even if the billionaires prefer we can’t do it:

  • Elect candidates who will defend public education funding, not divert it into voucher schemes that enrich private operators at public expense
  • Overturn the Supreme Court rulings — from Citizens United forward — that transformed American democracy into a billionaire auction
  • Restore the principle that public money follows public children into public schools, not into the portfolios of private equity firms with a “reform” logo.

The manufactured crisis has a manufactured solution: more billionaire intervention, more privatization, more EdTech, more testing, more disruption. The actual solution is considerably less glamorous and considerably more effective — fund schools equitably, pay teachers competitively, put phones away, and stop letting people who profit from public school failure write public school policy.

The Bottom Line

The 32% satisfaction number is not evidence that public schools have failed. It is evidence that a 30-year, billion-dollar propaganda campaign succeeded. The same people who manufactured the crisis are now selling the cure — at $1.8 billion a pop, no refunds, no guarantees, no accountability.

Meanwhile, the teachers who showed up every day through a pandemic, through chronic underfunding, through a staffing crisis, through the algorithmic dismantling of their students’ attention spans — those people are still in the classroom at 7 AM, doing the work that no EdTech platform, no voucher program, and no think tank white paper has ever actually replaced.

The casino is rigged. Captain Renault is shocked. And the November ballot is the one lever the house can’t control.

Vote like a public school depends on it. Because one does.

🔗 Related Reading from Big Education Ape:

Sources & Links

🔵 Public Satisfaction & Gallup Data

🔵 PISA Performance & International Benchmarks

🔵 School Funding, Privatization & the Manufactured Crisis

🔵 Science of Reading & EdTech Accountability

🔵 Democracy, Elections & the No Kings Coalition

All links verified active as of September 9, 2026. Primary polling data sourced from Gallup/Walton Family Foundation. PISA data sourced from NCES/OECD 2025 release.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hoax, Injustice, Lies, Literacy, Privatization, School Choice, Standardized Testing, State Takeover, Teacher Evaluations, Technology, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

TC in LA: A Week of Looney Tunes

By dianeravitch
September 10, 2026 //
2

One of the best bloggers is TC in LA. In this post, he or she eviscerated the madness of our political scene.

This is one you should read. Consider subscribing.

There are 56 days to the midterms.

My apologies for the late delivery. “Life” got in the way.

Monday morning, as if Sunday’s scheduled daylong Adderall overdose posting memes that could only come from a raving lunatic – one of which resulted in Iceland summoning the U.S. ambassador on Monday after Sundowning Gramps shared a doctored map of the American flag covering Iceland as well as Greenland, Canada, Central America, and the Caribbean in which Iceland’s foreign minister, Thorgerdur Gunnarsdottir, said she demanded answers from Ambassador Billy Long over Trump’s “completely inappropriate” post – wasn’t enough, Doddering Dilbert had his sweet little Natalie post a Lie Anti-Social in which he claimed: “Oil prices will drop precipitously, like everything else is dropping (but more!), when we WIN the war with Iran. Three Dollars a gallon, but ultimately, below Two Dollars a gallon. It will all happen quickly, and Iran will never have a Nuclear Weapon. MAGA!” Interestingly, the shitpost revealed he knows he hasn’t won any part of his war with Iran.

As part of his celebration of Labor Day, Delusional Doddering Dilbert went on Lies Anti-Social to attack a months-old report by the Center for American Progress that found his costly National Guard deployments did not curb crime, going so far as to threaten a lawsuit. He wrote, “The report is just another Radical Left SCAM, as are the people who fund this gaggle of Lunatics.” He went on to name George Soros, Bill and Melinda Gates, Google, Apple, Visa, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Walmart, Toyota, T-Mobile, NBCUniversal, the Embassy of Japan, the Korea Foundation, Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, and even the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates as fellow perpetraors of the CAP’s “lie,” continuing, “The Dumocrats love it, and are against anything ‘TRUMP.’ These people, and others like them, are so bad for our Country. Their stated course is anything to hate or demean ‘TRUMP.’ This will be met with a lawsuit, which is being drawn now. I am also strongly considering adding some of the contributors to this Fake Organization.”

After posting 24 other equally-demented posts between 0950-1045 Monday, he concluded with his official Labor Day message: “Happy Labor Day to all, including the Radical Left Lunatics, Communists, and Dumocrats who will do anything possible to destroy our Country. These Deranged People, after fighting for 10 years, should finally acknowledge that your Favorite President (ME!), knows how to WIN! They should be exhausted by now but, sadly, they’re not. They’re going to give it one last shot at ruining America, but we’re not going to let that happen. We’re going to win the Midterms, BIG, and SAVE AMERICA!”

Yes – He. Is. Delusional.

Among the delusional droppings on Lies Anti-Social yesterday was one in which Doddering Cilbert unveiled a mockup of proposed Space Force uniforms, which he acknowledged are based on ones worn by fictional fascists, saying that the gray and black look was “inspired by the discipline of the Starship Trooper uniform,” while being “modernized for the guardians of the space domain.” Starship Troopers, the 1997 science fiction film, was intended to undermine what Dutch director Paul Verhoeven interpreted as fascist themes in the 1959 novel of the same name by Robert A. Heinlein. Verhoeven told the Guardian in 2018, “I decided to make a movie about fascists who aren’t aware of their fascism.” Nazi-inspired iconography is prevalent throughout the film. Even Jonah Goldberg had a reaction: “I liked the movie, which was very different from the book. My concern is whether these guys understand the point Verhoeven intended in Starship Troopers. The thing is I don’t know what would be worse: whether they got it or didn’t.” Menswear writer Derek Guy added: “this is the kind of design costume designers make to tell you who are the bad guys in a space movie.” Another user responded: “If the costume designer on Star Wars had suggested this for the Empire uniforms George Lucas would have told them to dial back the Nazi.” 

Canada’s retaliatory tariffs against the U.S. went into effect at midnight last night, affecting hundreds of goods, including steel and aluminum, appliances and electronics and wood, pulp and paper products. There are no reports of any negotiations. Maladministration II levied 50 percent tariffs on $27.6 billion worth of Canadian goods two weeks ago, raising tensions between the neighboring countries.On Monday, Trump threatened Canadian aircraft maker Bombardier, posting on Lies Anti-Social that it must start building in the U.S. to access the American market, otherwise he demanded that Bombardier be barred from doing business in the United States altogether, claiming the company’s products “aren’t good enough.” He seemed to have forgotten (assuming he ever knew) that the company has a U.S. headquarters in Wichita, Kansas, where it employs more than 1,000 people. In the meantime, the Canadian Energy Minister said he’s ready to cut off all Canadian electical suply to the U.S. if Doddering Dilbert keeps pushing his crazy trade war.

Bastet

Republican Senator Jerry Moran has represented Kansas since 2011. Trump’s threat to eliminate over 1,000 jobs in the “Air Capital of the World” sent Moran and his team scrambling. He posted to his official social media account that he’d already reached out to the White House to make sure the president understands how significant Bombardier is to Kansas’ economy. In his X post, Moran noted the company’s local workforce includes more than a thousand of his constituents whose skills help the country’s aerospace and defense capabilities. He also promised he’d not only keep working to make sure Bombardier stays in Kansas, but that its presence continues to expand. In its own statement, Bombardier praised its American workers not only in Kansas, but in more than 20 states including Arizona, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois and Texas. Delusional Dilbert’s dumbassed trade war is threatening American jobs, to the point a loyal Republican senator is begging him to call off his attack.

Back in 1911, Canada and the United States had a free trade deal on the table until House Speaker Champ Clark boasted that he hoped to see the American flag flying over every square foot of British North America. Canadian voters heard that, threw out the government that negotiated the deal, and killed reciprocity for decades, which is the lesson Dilbert apparently never learned about telling your neighbor you plan to swallow them whole.

Sunday, the Alternative fur Deutschland Party (AfD) won 43.8% of the vote, falling three seats short of the majority necessary to form a government by itself. AfD, a party whose regional branch in Saxony-Anhalt is considered a right-wing extremist group by Germany’s domestic intelligence agency, finished well ahead of the other parties in the regional election. It would need partners from other parties to form a governing coalition. That would normally be difficult, as Germany’s mainstream parties have refused to work with AfD as part of a so-called “firewall” to prevent the party from gaining power. But AfD may reach out to the far-left BSW party. The two parties are on opposing sides of the political spectrum, but AfD and BSW both share anti-immigration and Russia-friendly sentiments. Ulrich Siegmund, AfD’s candidate in the race for governor, responded to Elon Musk’s X post in which the Afrikaner Nazi wrote “Gut gemacht,” which translates to “good job” in English, posting: “Thank you, @elonmusk, for your support and for your clear and highly important perspective on the political developments of our time – including here in Germany.”

Rudy Giuliani, the former mayor of New York City who is the son of a Mafia “button man,” and later worked as Trump’s personal lawyer, publicly criticized current Mayor Zohran Mamdani for planning to attend a 9/11 commemoration ceremony at Ground Zero on Friday. In an interview with Newsmax on Sunday, Giuliani – whose decision to locate the city’s emergency responce HQ in the World Trade Center so he could use the bedroom in the facility for his “nooners” – said: “Frankly, whatever he’d like to say, he doesn’t agree that Sept. 11 was an Islamic terrorist attack on the United States of America. Having lost friends there, and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming.” Mamdani has said nothing like that. Most New Yorkers would appreciate it if Giuliani dropped off the face of the earth.

Back in 2023, Ron DeSantis’ short-lived presidential campaign employed Nate Hochman, who was fired that year after posting a video that included the Sonnenrad, a symbol used by neo- Nazis and white supremacists. Before joining the DeSantis campaign, Hochmann worked at the National Review and the Claremont Institute. He eventually lost a journalism fellowship after publicly praising white supremacist Nick Fuentes. Now, the New York Times is reporting Hochman has been hired as deputy director of the State Department’s policy planning office. According to Hochman’s email signature, he’s also serving as Rubio’s chief speechwriter. The policy planning office is a big deal, as it directly advises the Secretary of State on broad strategic priorities. The State Department both confirmed and defended hiring Hochmann, calling him a trusted staffer who has helped advocate for Maladministration II’s foreign policy agenda. It’s amazing how people with a documented history of racist and extreme rhetoric keep getting hired and/or promoted into influential roles in Maladministration II. 

Israeli newspaper Haaretz is reporting In the days leading up to Hamas’ deadly attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 – in which, let us remember, 1,200 people were killed – United Arab Emirates President Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan warned Netanyahu that Hamas’ leader in Gaza was planning the deadly attack. According to Haaretz, Netanyahu failed to inform Israeli security agencies of the impending attack. Netanyahu’s office called the report an “absolute lie” and denied speaking to the UAE. Of course he would – what’s 1,200 of his own dead? It was the perfect excuse to start his long-planned genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza. Israeli opposition leaders demanded Netanyahu’s removal from office. Former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, a candidate in the upcoming vote, said Netanyahu “bears personal and direct responsibility” for the deaths on Oct. 7 and “cannot continue to serve in his position for even one more minute.”

Maladministration II administration must hand over the names of the people who devised the structure of the $1.776 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund that was of the bogus settlement of President Trump lawsuit against the IRS, a federal magistrate judge in the Eastern District of Virginia ruled in a case challenging the slush fund.

Brian Jose Morales Garcia was born in Denver, Colorado. Thispast spring he was installing air conditioners in Texas. On April 3, his boss got pulled over near Fredericksburg over the car’s window tint. Brian was in the passenger seat. Troopers called in local police to translate, because he speaks Spanish. Then they called ICE. Brian’s birth certificate was sitting at his house. His family drove it over, but agents wouldn’t even look at it. Agents told him he’d go to prison if he kept insisting he was American. He signed their papers rather than disappear for months. On April 7 – four days after the traffic stop – they deported him to Mexico. Then Brian hired lawyers who got him a hearing on Judge Robert Pitman’s calendar. Days before that, the government agreed he could walk back in if he presented his birth certificate and a photo ID at the border. The same birth certificate the government refused to look at in April. On August 30, he walked back across the border into Texas. Nobody had to look at his citizenship until a federal judge was about to make them explain. His damages case is ongoing.

Republicans suffered yet another blow in their legal war against mail-in voting, this time in Delaware. A Delaware court has once again upheld the state’s 16-year-old permanent absentee voting law, dealing a fresh defeat to Republican state Sen. Gerald Hocker in his years-long crusade against the program. Hocker, who is running for re-election, as well as fellow Senate candidate Steven Washington, argued Delaware’s Permanent-Absentee Statute unconstitutionally lets voters receive absentee ballots indefinitely, without reaffirming their eligibility each election, violating the state constitution’s specific list of qualifying reasons for absentee voting. Vice Chancellor David disagreed, ruling the law does no such thing. The court found the law only allows a narrower slice of voters, those with qualifying illnesses, disabilities, military service, or caregiving duties, to skip reapplying every cycle, while still requiring them to notify the state the moment their situation changes. If a voter’s reason for needing absentee status stops applying, the state must cancel it immediately. “’Permanent’ is therefore a misnomer,” the court wrote, explaining the label doesn’t mean what plaintiffs claimed.

Missouri’s redistricting war has spiraled into chaos, and observers say the state’s own emergency filing to the U.S. Supreme Court hints that county officials could defy the courts to keep the Republican map alive. In a reply brief to the justices, Attorney General Catherine Hanaway argued that the Missouri Supreme Court “derailed an imminent federal congressional election” when it threw out the GOP’s “Missouri First” map for November. Buried in that same filing is a line that political reporter Mark Maxwell warned should worry anyone who cares about orderly elections. Now, her brief concedes, “local election officials in counties are now left to make individual decisions” on whether to follow the order or stick with the map used in the primary while they wait on a federal court. Maxwell warned that the filing signals officials could defy the state Supreme Court and keep the Republican map anyway, “which would be absolute chaos. The state court explicitly forbade this.” People Not Politicians attorney Chuck Hatfield has called the state’s position “open defiance of the court.” Meanwhile, candidates don’t know which district they are running in, and lawsuits are piling up.

The Talarico campaign in Texas just rolled out one of its most eye-catching endorsements yet . 

The huge development, which comes as Talarico’s Democratic campaign seeks to be the first to win Texas in over 30 years, was revealed in a brief political ad on Tuesday. The ad said: “This is Ken Paxton, and this is Ken Paxton firing an honest Texas Ranger. David Maxwell spent five decades in law enforcement and was inducted into the Texas Ranger Hall of Fame. The best of the best. Let’s just say he knows a bad guy when he sees one. So when he saw his boss, Ken Paxton, trading favors with a convicted felon, he had to speak up. He reported Ken Paxton to the FBI and Ken Paxton fired him for it. Ranger Maxwell testified in Ken Paxton’s impeachment trial. Ken Paxton was impeached by his own party. But Ranger Maxwell isn’t done speaking up against bad guys.” Ranger Maxwell concludes the commercial:”My name is David Maxwell. Ken Paxton ended my five-decade career because I blew the whistle on his corruption. I am supporting James Talarico for the U.S. Senate … He’s one of the good guys.”

Don’t worry, there will be far more presidential looney toonies to come this week.

Remember, you are not the crazy ones, and we were made for these times. Regardless of what you may feel right now, act as if you believe that and redouble your efforts.

“Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the Government, nor of dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might; and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.” – Abraham Lincoln

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Elon Musk and the Revival of Fascism

By dianeravitch
September 9, 2026 //
2

Heather Cox Richardson sums up the sickening feeling that many of us have about the Trump-Musk alliance and their efforts to torpedo the November midterm elections. Musk has corrupted our politics with the vast amounts of money he spends to elect far-right politicians. Most of his wealth comes from government contracts, and he wants to maintain his friends in office. You have to wonder how a man who celebrated the killing of US AID, leading to the deaths of at least 700,000 people, can sleep at night. Did he enter the U.S. legally?

She writes:

On Sunday, Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (Alternativ für Deutschland, or AfD) party won 43.8% of the vote in a legislative election in the small state of Saxony-Anhalt, formerly part of Soviet-dominated East Germany. The AfD is anti-immigrant and pro-Russia and has won the support of both Vice President J.D. Vance and billionaire Elon Musk.

When Musk posted “Well done!” in German to the co-founder of AfD, Alice Weidel, another AfD leader responded with thanks, posting: “If we take on responsibility here, I would very much welcome the opportunity for strong and constructive cooperation. Germany would then once again be a place worth investing in. Best regards from Saxony-Anhalt!”

Jon Henley of the Guardian noted that right-wing leaders across Europe celebrated the outcome, including ousted Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who called the election results “a huge night for Germany and Europe,” adding: “Buckle up. This is just the beginning.”

Musk was the largest donor to any political committee in the 2024 U.S. elections, putting around $290 million into the 2024 election to help elect President Donald J. Trump and Republicans. On August 28, Andrew Howard, Erin Doherty, and Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported that Musk was planning to meet with House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) as he considered investing at least $100 million to elect Republicans in the midterm elections.

Since that meeting, Musk has plowed money into the Texas Senate race to support Texas attorney general Ken Paxton against Democratic nominee James Talarico. According to Theodore Schleifer of the New York Times, Musk’s investments—many through political action committees—target Senate races in Alaska, Iowa, Maine, Michigan, and Ohio, as well as House races in at least California, Wisconsin, and Washington.

Musk’s open attempt to buy elections for the Republicans should be bigger news, not only because of the political power his money has given to one man, but also because of what his behavior says about the MAGA administration’s ideology and its goals.

After supporting Trump in 2024, Musk appeared to become the head of the Department of Government Efficiency—the administration was coy about who actually held that title—where he worked to slash government spending. On February 3, he posted on his social media: “We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper. Could gone [sic] to some great parties. Did that instead.” Musk called USAID—the United States Agency for International Development—“a criminal organization” and “a viper’s nest of radical left-marxists who hate America.”

In July 2026, Ari Daniel, David Augustine, Kazeem Olawale Nasiru, and Lameck Nyagudi of NPR reported on a study by Boston University infectious disease modeler Brooke Nichols that estimated more than 700,000 people had died from the sudden stop in USAID funding, including more than half a million children in developing countries.

And yet, for all his talk about slashing government expenditures, Musk’s DOGE did not appear to save much. Emilio Perez Ibarguen of Politico reported in August, when DOGE officially ended, that a report by the Government Accountability Office found that the savings it claimed were in large part exaggerated or couldn’t be corroborated.

Meanwhile, government contracts continued to flow to Musk’s businesses. As Desmond Butler, Trisha Thadani, Emmanuel Martinez, Aaron Gregg, Luis Melgar, Jonathan O’Connell, and Dan Keating reported in the Washington Post in February 2025, Musk himself has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of taxpayer dollars in history, taking in at least $38 billion in government contracts, loans, subsidies, and tax credits over the course of more than 20 years. Once he was in power in Trump 2.0, government investigations into those businesses ended.

The very public nature of Musk’s antics has helped to wake the public up to the fact that our current system is skewed toward billionaires. In July, economist Paul Krugman noted a growing backlash against those billionaires. A poll by UMass Amherst found that 58% of Americans think billionaires are a threat to democracy, and 45% of them say the U.S. is an oligarchy, “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” As Krugman noted, only 28% of those polled disagreed.

Krugman pointed out that wealth has been concentrating at the top of the U.S. economy for decades, so the growing wave against that concentration of wealth appears to be driven by those like Musk and Trump himself, who has flaunted his use of taxpayer money for his own interests while dismissing the pain of regular Americans.

This flow of taxpayer dollars to favored businesses rather than to programs that serve the needs of the people seems to be a feature rather than a bug in the Trump administration and reflects its rejection of democracy in favor of the right-wing axis of authoritarianism.

Last night, Tarini Parti, Josh Dawsey, Michelle Hackman, and Summer Said of the Wall Street Journal published a deep investigation into the machinations of Corey Lewandowski when his colleague Kristi Noem was secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. They report that Lewandowski, who was Trump’s campaign manager for part of 2016, appeared to offer aid to foreign countries navigating U.S. bureaucracy in the department for a fee, selling government services for his own gain.

The journalists also report that Lewandowski may have been involved in awarding government contracts improperly, an accusation covered in a November 14, 2025, article by Justin Elliott, Joshua Kaplan, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica. The Wall Street Journal reporters note that Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security an additional $75 billion to spend during Trump’s term on deportations, detention facilities, and technology, providing deep pockets for corruption.

While the administration appears to have sidelined Noem and Lewandowski since Noem resigned under pressure in March, the journalists say Lewandowski “has told people close to him he expects the president would pardon him in the event of a criminal case.”

Lewandowski responded on social media that the story was “just another example of the kind of anonymous-source, politically driven reporting that Americans have seen time and again. We’ve lived through the Russia collusion hoax the fake Birthday card and countless other sensational allegations that ultimately failed to withstand scrutiny. I’m tremendously proud of my work as a volunteer in advancing this administration’s agenda and remain confident that the facts and not anonymous accusations will ultimately speak for themselves.”

But, of course, every official investigation into the 2016 election, including the one conducted by the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee and unanimously adopted, agreed that Russia did work to get Trump elected in 2016. And while Trump claims he did not create the birthday card to child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein apparently bearing Trump’s signature on a drawing of a nude girl that was produced by the Epstein estate, the story was convincing enough that it helped to push Congress to pass the Epstein Files Transparency Act and the first case he brought against the Wall Street Journal for publishing the story was dismissed. A second case is pending.

There is, in fact, increasing pushback against the world Musk and Trump are trying to put into place instead of liberal democracy. In the U.S., the growing opposition to data centers, which seems to represent anger at the very wealthy tech bros who want to call the shots, is perhaps a sign of the direction the wind in the U.S. is blowing.

Whether that popular pressure can withstand the extraordinary amounts of money Musk and other right-wing billionaires are pouring into the midterms is unclear. Judd Legum of Popular Information reported today that Musk is funding an advertising campaign encouraging people in swing states to check their voting registration status at a different website than the one run by the Election Assistance Commission, which is an independent agency of the U.S. government.

Instead, Musk’s campaign urges people to go to “votesafe . org,” which collects their full name, home address, date of birth, email address, cell phone number, IP address and location (which identifies city and zip code), every link clicked, every page looked at, and voter registration status, among other information.

Legum reports that the privacy policy of the website “allows [Musk’s super PAC] America PAC to ‘share’ or ‘sell’ personal information ‘with our business partners,’” including “whether you are registered to vote” and “how you submit your vote… where permitted by law.” America PAC can also sell “inferences” it makes about a user, including “psychological trends, predispositions, behavior, attitudes, intelligence, abilities and aptitude.”

A new documentary about Musk by filmmaker Alex Gibney argues, as Steven Zeitchik of the Hollywood Reporter put it, that Musk is “a dangerous huckster [who] is stealthily aggregating power to exploit us, primarily by centralizing and controlling massive amounts of data.” The documentary, called Musk, notes that, under Musk, DOGE had access to federal IT systems and, as Zeitchik recalls, a whistleblower warned that members of DOGE accessed and shared sensitive data from the Social Security Administration.

Zeitchik reports on the onscreen comments of Nobel Prize-winning scientist Geoffrey Hinton, known as “the godfather of AI,” who said: “It’s fairly clear to me that Trump is hell-bent on corrupting the midterm elections,” he says onscreen. “If you wanted to corrupt those midterm elections and you wanted to use AI, all you needed to do was get detailed information on U.S. citizens. And what DOGE did looked like just what you would do.”

In Europe, in the wake of the rise of the AfD, German defense minister Boris Pistorius said today that Germany will send missiles to Ukraine to help it fight off a winter incursion from Russia.

—

Notes:

https://apnews.com/article/germany-afd-saxony-anhalt-election-e9c2b1bb69a9dab1778b80866ffa4c4f

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/berlin-says-vance-should-not-interfere-german-politics-2025-02-14/

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/germany-afd-won-saxony-anhalt-election-alarm-for-centrist-politics/

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/far-right-afd-courts-conservative-support-after-historic-german-state-election-2026-09-07/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/sep/07/first-thing-elon-musk-german-far-right-afd-election-win-russia

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/07/afd-thanks-elon-musk-german-state-elections-2026-win

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/09/02/elon-musk-spending-key-races-midterms-01063146

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/28/mike-johnson-plans-meeting-elon-musk-midterms-01054083

https://www.forbes.com/sites/saradorn/2026/07/30/musk-reportedly-spending-up-to-120-million-helping-gop-in-midterms-after-saying-he-got-a-little-too-involved-in-politics/

https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2026/sep/01/how-misconceptions-and-woeful-pr-allowed-musk-to-shred-usaid-so-easily

https://www.npr.org/2026/07/17/g-s1-133651/usaid-elon-musk-rubio-deaths

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/06/doge-savings-overstated-watchdog-report-01027797

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/elon-musk/elon-musks-regulatory-issues-begun-melt-away-trumps-second-term-rcna202848

https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/13/business/musk-trillionaire-government-tesla-spacex

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/elon-musk-business-government-contracts-funding/

Firm Tied to Kristi Noem Secretly Got Money From $220 Million DHS Ad Contracts

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/corey-lewandowski-influence-dhs-43d3fe03?mod=hp_lista_pos1

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Musk, Elon, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: The Plot to Disenfranchise Millions of Voters This Fall

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2026 //
3

Trump is obsessed with stopping mail-in Voting, although he votes by mail. He has spent his time in office sowing doubt in our elections, which are the basis of our democracy. The very fact that this crooked con man was returned to the Presidency makes me doubt the security of our elections.

Nonetheless, a whistleblower at the United States Postal Service leaked a complaint claiming that the USPS is planning to take measures that will throw the midterms into chaos, thus giving Trump a reason to discredit the expected Blue Wave, which will sweep away Republican majorities in the House and possibly the Senate. In brief, Trump intends to use the USPS to determine which votes count. Bear in mind that the Cinstututuin explicitly assigns responsibility to the states, not the federal government.

The actions Trump is taking to discredit the midterm elections are unprecedented. But then so was his demolition of the East Wing of the White House, so are his efforts to control the media, universities, and law firms. So are his efforts to overturn civil rights laws. So is his defunding of medical and scientific research. So are his attacks on freedom of the press. So are his efforts to control the curriculum of the nation’s schools.

Heather Cox Richardson explains:

Yesterday, by a vote of 5–4, the United States Supreme Court allowed Trump to continue to build his ballroom. The five right-wing justices concluded that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which had sued to stop the construction of the ballroom, did not have legal standing to sue and that national security considerations came down on the side of construction.

The majority said it was not resolving the issue of whether the project is legal.

It was Chief Justice John Roberts who covered that aspect of the controversy. He wrote in dissent that the project is “likely unlawful.” “The White House is an iconic American building whose symbolism and history are wrapped up in its architecture,” Roberts wrote. He wrote that it is critical to “ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.”

Nonetheless, as Josh Gerstein of Politico reported, the project will likely be completed before the question of its legality is resolved.

Trump’s behavior in his second term is a logical outcome of the theory of the “unitary executive.” Under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, those eager to stop Congress from passing legislation that benefited the American people at the expense of businessmen began to argue for the idea that because the president was the head of one of the three branches of the U.S. government, he could not be checked by either of the other two branches: the legislative branch (Congress) or the judicial branch (the courts).

On July 1, 2024, the United States Supreme Court, stacked with Trump’s appointees, took this theory to a conclusion that overturned the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law.

It decided that the president of the United States has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well, unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take “bold and unhesitating action” and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president ever asserted that he was above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts’s decision didn’t focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law.

This permission structure appears to have convinced Trump he can do whatever he wishes, including rigging elections so he cannot lose.

Yesterday Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, who is the top-ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, exposed what appears to be a plot to steal the 2026 midterm elections.

Blumenthal released a letter he had written to Postmaster General David Steiner calling attention to an official whistleblower report, which he attached to the letter.

It’s eye-popping.

The whistleblower warns that there are “potentially catastrophic problems in the development of the United States Postal Service’s…new system for handling federal election ballot mail.” According to the whistleblower, the “process for the creation and implementation of an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” for delivering ballots to voters for the midterm election has been “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed.”

The whistleblower says “the administration has hidden the high likelihood that the new ballot mail verification processes will result in major disruptions in mail ballots ever getting delivered to voters. As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state—effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters.”

The complaint continues: “Even under ordinary circumstances this would be problematic because of predictable errors in any barcode scanning process.” But the rushed IT development of the new system means it “will almost certainly have significant operating problems when released to the public.” The whistleblower notes that multiple officials from the USPS have described the development process for the system as “a sh*t show.”

The whistleblower said that work on the “USPS election ballot mail IT project” began in June 2026 and has continued despite an injunction from a federal court ordering work on it to stop. Normally, it would take “nine months to a year or more” to roll out a project “of this complexity, magnitude, and importance.” Considering the rush and the consequences, the whistleblower wondered “whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug.”

The complaint says: “The apparently sloppy and rushed manner in which the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and supporting IT systems are being built poses significant risk. Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all.”

Blumenthal noted that the USPS has a restrained role as a mail carrier. It has never before played a gatekeeping function and yet is now building an entirely new system to put itself “in a position to refuse to mail ballots that state election officials have determined should be sent out.” He called for Postmaster General Steiner to “to abandon this ill-conceived, unconscionable plan and ensure that all Americans can exercise their constitutional right to vote, including by mail, without interference by USPS.”

Blumenthal demanded Steiner answer no later than Friday whether the USPS has stopped work on the project as ordered by the courts, as well as provide the names of those who worked on the project and the dates they were active. By September 8, he wants to see all records about the project.

Blumenthal told reporters: “The main takeaway for me is that the Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans. One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail, and the USPS puts all of their votes at risk.”

The administration’s attack on elections is especially concerning considering the recent suggestions that Trump is spending most of his time on his legacy projects like the ballroom, leaving him largely unaware of what is going on in the administration. Nancy A. Youssef, Missy Ryan, and Michael Scherer of The Atlantic reported yesterday that when Army Secretary Dan Driscoll went directly to Trump with his concerns about what Hegseth is doing to the Army, Trump was surprised to learn “how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth” and “expressed concern about the deep cuts to the Army’s senior leadership.”

Driscoll resigned yesterday.

As for the plan to sabotage mail-in voting? Representative Joe Morelle (D-NY), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Committee on House Administration, which oversees the administration of federal elections, posted: “These whistleblower allegations are extraordinary. If Trump Administration officials knowingly built a system designed to prevent Americans from receiving their ballots, that is not election security. It is a betrayal of our Constitution and the American people.”

—

Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/31/supreme-court-white-house-ballroom-john-roberts-dissent-01057685

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/

Categories Cheating, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Fascism, Fraud, Lies, Republicans, Scandal, Trump

Jamelle Bouie: Trump’s Plan to Subvert the 2026 Election and the Constitution

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2026 //
3

It’s a well-known fact that Donald Trump hates voting by mail, even though he votes by mail. He is trying to suppress the vote or at the very least persuade Americans that our elections are riddled with fraud and are decided by the votes of non-citizens. His efforts to produce evidence for these claims have turned out to be frauds, but nonetheless he will assert that Democratic wins were tainted.

If you are like me, you may be befuddled by the confluence of lawsuits, court cases, and the role of the United States Postal Service. As usual, Trump is sowing chaos, to keep us from understanding what he is up to.

The Constitution is clear: the states control elections. The President has no role in elections.

So what’s really going on?

Jamelle Bouie, my favorite columnist at The New York Times, explains Trump’s nefarious, evil plan to destroy our democracy:

So far, the president’s plot to subvert the integrity of the midterm elections looks like this.

Issue a rule requiring states to give lists of mail-in voters to the Postal Service if their citizens hope to receive mail-in ballots. Knowing that this is a blatantly unconstitutional seizure of the states’ prerogative to run their own elections, count on a federal court to block the rule. Then challenge the injunction, arguing — under the Supreme Court’s “Purcell principle” — that it is too late to make any adjustments to voting procedures, and that the new rules should be treated as the status quo. Then hope that the Supreme Court accepts the argument that the new rules are the status quo and therefore can’t be blocked.

This would leave states that rely on mail-in voting scrambling to accommodate the new rules, leading to the kind of chaos that might keep voters from casting a ballot in the first place. And in states that reject the rules, the administration can tar the results as fraudulent. None of this would stop the public from electing a Democratic majority, but it could give that majority the taint of illegitimacy — and even tee up a situation where new members are challenged in the next session.

It is important to say that there is no way to know, at this point, if any of this will actually work in the end. But it clearly is the plan.

To wit, earlier this week the Supreme Court paused a lower court injunction on the proposed ballot rule, writing that it had not been formally issued yet by the U.S.P.S., so the states that sued could not demonstrate harm. Since then, the Postal Service has issued its rule and a Federal District Court has issued a temporary restraining order, blocking implementation. The administration has appealed this decision, and the Supreme Court is set to hear the case on the merits in a number of weeks, if not days.

From there, the court will have to decide whether it will follow the Constitution — which clearly leaves election administration to the states, unless Congress intervenes — or contrive again to contort the law and give the president a win, allowing him to pursue his irrational crusade against mail-in voting and giving him the tools — if not to sabotage the midterms outright — then to create chaos and disruption.

I would not put much faith in the Supreme Court, but we’ll see what happens.

The details of what is happening here are important — that’s why I laid them out — but it’s also important to step back and make a more fundamental point: the president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people, which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself. And this is part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the most fanatical of his allies, like Stephen Miller, to end the American republic and supplant it with an authoritarian regime in which President Trump holds sovereign authority over the whole nation.

It is important to say, as well, that this is all out in the open, as plain as day.

Life under Trump during his second term is defined by the aggressive use of unaccountable executive power, from illegal taxes — in the form of tariffs — and wars to the military occupation of American cities and a roaming deportation force used to terrorize entire communities. Thousands of people have been kidnapped in the street and whisked away to squalid detention centers, where dozens have died. Many thousands more, including some American citizens, have been deported, sometimes to countries they’ve never seen or visited in their lives.

The president has wielded his power against colleges and universities in a concerted effort to destroy the nation’s capacity for scientific research and weaken any institution capable of generating independent knowledge.

The administration continues to assault the First Amendment: both the freedom of assembly and the freedom of the press. Not a single member of this White House appears to believe in the public’s First Amendment rights or in its right to choose its own political leadership.

The attitude of the president and his advisers is that the 2024 election was an enabling act for a constitutional revolution, in which rule by the people was replaced by the Führerprinzip.

That the intent is clear does not mean it is the reality on the ground. I believe Trump has failed to accomplish authoritarian consolidation. But he has ripped an enormously damaging Trump-size hole in the constitutional order, and a future president with autocratic designs will have every tool he needs to push the envelope even further.

That’s why, should Democrats capture a majority, they must make the reconstruction of the American political order their first priority. That includes an impeachment trial against President Trump, if only to emphasize the gravity of his conspiracy against the Constitution.

Americans hate the idea of looking back. But we have to if we want any hope of moving forward.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Fraud, Trump

The Billionaires Who Are Trying to Buy Our Elections

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2026 //
2

The New York Times published a deeply disturbing article about the e billionaires who are pumping huge sums into the 2026 midterm elections and about dark money vehicles some use to hide their influence.

I am giving you free access to the articles: no pay walls.

This one shows who they are: “Meet the Megadonors.” Most are Republicans, tech entrepreneurs, and crypto kings.

This one focuses on the dark money that is pouring into state elections to support issues and candidates.

It wasn’t always like this.

In 2002, Senator John McCain of Arizona (R) and Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin (D) sponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, commonly called the McCain–Feingold Act.

Its central purpose was to reduce the influence of large, unregulated political contributions.

It banned national political parties from raising or spending unlimited “soft money.” It restricted corporations and labor unions from financing certain broadcast political advertisements immediately before elections.it I ncreased disclosure requirements, and it raised some limits on direct contributions to candidates. 

McCain-Feingold passed the Senate 60-40 and was signed into law by President George W. Bush.

The Supreme Court initially upheld most of it.

In 2003, McConnell v. FEC, the Supreme Court upheld the central provisions—including the restrictions on soft money and electioneering communications. 

Then the Court gradually dismantled important parts.

In 2007, in FEC v. Wisconsin Right to Life, the Supreme Court restricted the government’s ability to regulate certain issue advertisements.

In 2008, the Supreme Court (in Davis v. FEC) struck down the so-called “Millionaire’s Amendment,” which raised the limits of campaign funding for individuals running against a wealthy, self-financing candidate. That attempt to level the financial playing field was eliminated by the Court.

And then came the big decision that ripped the teeth out of campaign finance reform: Citizens United.

In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that corporations and unions have First Amendment protection to spend unlimited amounts independently to influence elections. This invalidated a major part of McCain–Feingold. 

Citizens United, together with subsequent cases, helped produce the modern system of unlimited independent expenditures and Super PACs.

We are now in the era of Citizens United, the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that negated most limits on political spending.

Why did the U.S. Supreme Court swerve sharply against campaign finance reform?

John Roberts was appointed to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court in 2005 by President George W. Bush. He formed a 5-4 majority with Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito,

Categories Billionaires, Corruption, Dark Money, Democracy, Elections, Politics

The Transgender Conundrum 

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2026 //
14

As a matter of principle, I believe in the “live and let live” way of life. So long as people aren’t hurting anyone else, their choices about how to live should be tolerated at least and respected at best. 

Governor Tim Walz used a memorable phrase that captures the same idea. “It’s none of your damn business!” 

That’s my response when Republicans whip up the public to hate or fear transgender people. 

Why do they do it? It’s a sure fire winner. It appeals to base instincts. (“How dare they flaunt society’s norms?”) They made it a big issue during the 2024 Presidential campaign.

But it’s overdone.

According to the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, about 1% of the population over the age of 13 identifies as transgender. Or, 2.8 million people. 

I understand the outrage about biological males competing in women’s sports, most especially, sports where men have a physical advantage, like swimming or track and field.

But I do not understand why Trump and Hegseth have expelled members of the military who are transgender. Many of those who have been booted from the military are decorated veterans who have served their nation with courage and distinction. Some are high-ranking officers with medals and multiple commendations. 

I truly don’t understand why the military would expel officers or enlisted personnel who want to serve their nation and who are willing to risk their lives for our protection.

What does their sexual identity have to do with their ability to perform their duties? Does it give them an unfair advantage? I have not heard a convincing argument from Trump or Hegseth to justify their purge of transgender personnel from the military.

It seems to me that this is an open and shut case of bigotry, no different from discrimination based on religion, race, or gender. The transgender members of the military have been discharged because of who they are, not because of any dereliction of duty.

The Republican Party seems intent on banning the very existence of transgender people. In the states, Republican legislatures have passed laws mandating that there are only two biological genders, and you are whatever your birth certificate says. No matter what laws they pass or what executive orders Trump signs, transgender people are not going to disappear. But these official actions can make them miserable and ruin their lives.

A recent article by M. Gessen in The New York Times described the unnecessary harassment of transgender people in Kansas. There, transgender people must have their birth gender on their driver’s license. Why? What governmental purpose does this serve? None. 

For 1% of the population, this bifurcation is not true. A tiny percentage of people born male live as females. A tiny percentage of people born female live as males. This is who they are. 

Why not let them live the life they want? 

Categories Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Education Reform, Gender, Republicans, Trump

To Understand Putin’s Plan to Destroy NATO and the European Union, Read This

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2026 //
1

Today, The New York Times published an astonishing article about Putin’s attempt to destabilize NATO and the EU by driving tiny Moldova back into Russia’s orbit.

Moldova shares a border with Ukraine. Putin hopes to thwart the West by persuading Moldova to oust its pro-Western government.

Putin created an elaborate pro-Russian organization inside Moldova, spending millions of dollars to pay collaborators, agitators, and priests.

The Times‘ articleis a gift article with no pay wall. It begins:

It resembled in many ways a summer camp. Barbecues and beach volleyball games were on offer. A wellness spa was called “Relax and Have Fun.”

The men and women who attended the program at a resort complex in a remote part of Serbia also took part in more sinister activities, like learning to break through police cordons and set buildings on fire. They donned flak jackets and trained with assault rifles.

Their counselors, it turned out, were operatives with ties to Russia’s military intelligence service, known as the GRU. Their purpose, according to intelligence officials from three countries who described the activities, was to build a cadre of disciplined shock troops trained in election interference.

The target was tiny Moldova, a country of about three million people that carries outsize importance for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The Kremlin’s campaign included methods familiar elsewhere in the West, like hacking and disinformation. But in Moldova, its intervention went further than perhaps anywhere else outside Ukraine, and stands as one of the most extensive and audacious plots to date in Mr. Putin’s effort to destabilize the West, the three Western intelligence officials say.

Besides the camp in Serbia, Russian agents ran training programs in Bosnia and Moscow that were designed to turn pro-Russian Moldovans into foot soldiers. Moscow paid hundreds of Orthodox Moldovan priests to recruit voters and to push Russian narratives from the pulpit. And it spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a sophisticated vote-buying scheme financed by a Moldovan billionaire in exile and conceived and operated from Skolkovo, the Kremlin’s knockoff Silicon Valley outside Moscow.

Moscow’s campaign has not stopped. This spring, Russian missiles targeted energy infrastructure that provided service to Moldova, polluting waterways and disrupting electricity flows.

This article is based on interviews with activists who took part in the Russian effort; senior Moldovan law enforcement and security officials; and more than half a dozen European and American intelligence officials. The New York Times also reviewed thousands of documents related to Russia’s attempts to interfere in Moldova’s elections.

Many of those interviewed insisted on speaking anonymously, either to discuss sensitive security operations or because they feared retribution.

Details about Russian efforts in Moldova have emerged in court cases and local reporting, but the scope and extent of the campaign, including the vote-buying scheme and role of Russia’s intelligence services, has not been previously reported.

Publicly, Russian officials have denied interfering in Moldova’s affairs, and have dismissed accusations that Moscow is trying to undermine the West. Last December, Mr. Putin, in an address to military commanders, castigated European leaders for “stoking hysteria” over the threat from Russia.

Soon afterward, though, he gathered the leaders for a secret briefing to deliver the exact opposite message, according to officials from two countries with knowledge of the episode. Their goal for 2026, Mr. Putin told them, is “the collapse of NATO and the E.U. from within,” the people said.

Ms. Sandu, wearing a blue outfit, walks toward a lectern, with flags in the background.
The pro-Western government of President Maia Sandu has set European Union membership as a priority, making it a Kremlin target.Credit…Daniel Mihailescu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Categories Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, International

Indiana: Republicans Have Systematically Undermined Public Schools, Where 87% of Students Are Enrolled

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2026 //
2

Indiana once took pride in its public schools. Not any more. Since the Republican Party took charge of state government, public schools have been neglected and underfunded.

Veteran educator Vernon Smith was elected to the state legislature after his retirement. He wrote this article, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

He wrote:

Sixteen years ago, Republicans assumed full control of Indiana’s state government, holding the governor’s office and winning majorities in the House and the Senate. Since achieving this trifecta, the Republican supermajority has systematically cut funding and programs that made this state work for the people who live here.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than the state’s complete neglect of public schools for nearly two decades. Since taking power, the Republican supermajority has done everything in its power to undermine public education, and Indiana’s children are worse off for it.

Let me explain where years of Republican education policy have gotten us. Last month, the Network for Public Education released a report revealing Indiana ranks 45th out of 50 states in support of public education. Last year, only 31.2% of students showed proficiency on both the math and ELA sections of the ILEARN test. More than half of fourth graders can’t read proficiently, and nearly seven-in-ten eighth graders aren’t proficient in math.

A record number of school districts across the state — nearly 40 — have turned to ballot referenda to secure the money they need this year because the state won’t properly fund them and has cut their local funding sources. These are the results of Republicans chipping away at Indiana’s public school funding for years.

Consider where their priorities lie. More than 87% of Hoosier children attend traditional public schools. Yet year after year, the supermajority pours its energy and political capital into expanding charter schools and private school vouchers for the children of families who were, in most cases, never going to need the state’s help in the first place. The legislature has made it clear: they have no issue abandoning working-class Hoosiers in favor of giving an extra leg up to the most fortunate among us.

When Indiana first opened the door to charter schools and voucher programs, lawmakers sold it as a lifeline for children of color and children in poverty whose assigned schools were failing them. But once the door was propped open, my Republican colleagues expanded it year after year, extending vouchers to families making well over six figures. If this were truly about rescuing kids who’d been failed by the system, it would have stayed targeted at the kids who needed rescuing. Instead, it grew into a subsidy for everyone but the working-class families the program was designed to serve.

None of this is by accident. The supermajority was warned by Democrats, education professionals and concerned Hoosiers of the consequences that their policies would inflict on our schools. It is the direct, foreseeable and self-inflicted result of almost two decades of choices made by men and women who have mistaken their own supermajority for a mandate to neglect the children they were elected to serve.

Districts across the state are being forced to ask voters to approve referenda to raise their own local property taxes just so schools can keep the lights on and pay their teachers. Let’s not pretend this educational belt-tightening is born of necessity. Indiana has nearly $4 billion in surplus and reserve funds, which is more than enough to return to our previous, robust support of public education. Our schools and the children attending them are being asked to make do with less while the state sits on more money than it knows what to do with.

null

I do not say this lightly, and I do not say it out of partisan loyalty. I say it as a man who spent nearly 20 years as a school principal and six years as a teacher before I ever spent a day in the Statehouse. I have seen firsthand what happens when a school has what it needs, and I have seen what happens when it doesn’t.

I am telling you, plainly: Indiana’s Republican supermajority has had 16 years to prove it knows the difference too. It does not. If it did, we would not rank 45th in the nation for public school support. We would not be watching our children fall further behind their peers in other states while the people entrusted with fixing it offer nothing but superficial, special-interest-backed policies that don’t address the underlying issues.

This is where years of unchecked Republican domination have gotten us: two decades of failure and of backs turned on the generation that makes up the future of this state, this nation and the world beyond.

For 16 years, they have stood before us and promised that this would finally be the year public education in Indiana gets fixed. And for 16 years, they have failed to deliver on that promise. The only question left is how much longer Hoosiers are willing to take their word for it and allow more children to fail academically

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Indiana, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers

Join NPE in Houston–September 26-27 for an Exciting Exchange of Ideas

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2026 //
0

I will be in Conroe, Texas, just outside Houston, for the convening of the Network for Public Education from September 25-26.

Please join us.

The Network for Public Education (NPE) and NPE Action National Conference will take place from September 26 to September 27, 2026, at the Hyatt Regency Conroe in the Greater Houston area (Conroe, Texas). The theme for this year’s event is “Public Schools Build Democracy”. 

Event Details

  • Dates: Saturday, September 26 (8:00 AM) – Sunday, September 27, 2026 (3:00 PM)
  • Location: Hyatt Regency Conroe, 1001 Grand Central Pkwy, Conroe, TX 77304
  • Registration Cost: $199 per ticket (includes meals)

Featured Keynotes & Highlights

  • Keynote Speakers: Author/journalist Katherine Stewart, Dean Emerita/Professor Leslie Fenwick, and Texas AFT President Zeph Capo.
  • Core Panels: Discussions covering student-led public school advocacy movements, fighting back against school closures, and union/alternative educator preparation partnerships. 

For the agenda and registration, open this link:

https://networkforpubliceducation.org/2026-national-conference/

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Reform, Network for Public Education, Networkfor Public Education Action Fund
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