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A New Declaration of Independence by an Angry Citizen: NO KINGS!

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2026 //
7

Donald Trump’s serial depredations and violations of the law and Constitution inspired a retired educator to write a new Declaration of Indepence, tailored to a new age.

He wrote as follows:

Whereas the people of these United States of America have given their lives in defense of our country, let not the federal usurper attempt to crown himself king and return to the time of George III.

Our populace will rise up and demand a return to the rule of law and civil discourse on issues confronting us. Have no kingly proclamations discourage us from following the traditions and norms of our 249 years. We do not live in the time of the divine right of kings. Our government derives from the will of the people and our rights cannot be dissolved by a false monarch. The strength of our democracy always lies with the hopes of our populace.

In all of our country’s existence we have never faced such an evil. We are not accustomed to a fraud who would besmirch our constitution and attempt to rule with his own pronouncements. He has divided us into many differing camps and beliefs with his lies that he will continue to separate us.

His claims that we are being invaded by groups of nefarious cutthroats that are bent on taking over our country are untrue. He will then be able to declare martial law and use all of the levers of government to suppress all protest activities. Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.

He has not complied with the laws and disregards our judiciary.

He has enriched himself by accepting emoluments from foreign countries, princes and oligarchs.

He has deliberately favored states that voted for him and disavowed those who did not.

He has supported taxes that would enrich the wealthy and deprive the poor.

He has endeavored to make judges bend to his will.

He has plundered our economy and dissolved our relationship with our allies.

He has abducted our people in public places- schools, places of worship, and public buildings.

He has threatened our institutions of higher learning if they did not bend to his will.

He has erected a multitude of new offices in the federal government to dispose of thousands of dedicated public servants.

He has restricted the entry into our country of the brightest young people in the world.

He has aligned himself with our enemies and supports their tyranny.

He has installed a health secretary who is destroying our health system and our capability to do health research.

He has encouraged and pardoned 1500 people who tried to overthrow our government.

His sycophants mock our populace and threaten to jail them if they are not compliant with his wishes.

He is, at this time, transporting armies of masked hoodlums to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty, perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy as the head of a civilized nation.

At every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress of these grievances. We have asked in a most civilized manner. Our petitions have been answered in only the most desultory and vengeful actions. A president whose character is marked by every act which may define a tyrant is not fit to be the leader of our country.

We have been warning our legislative representatives of the danger of these usurpations. They are fearful of his retributions both political and personal. We have entered the justice system in the highest court of the land to create estoppel. Their decisions do not seem to impede the leader’s desire to remake our democracy into an autocracy. The monied interests have formed a choral group for the president. Their support and their largesse have given him impetus to continue his cruelty. No inhabitants of our land are safe from his reach. Children of any age have felt his sting and have been spirited away.

We, therefore, the people of the United States of America, in Assembly, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, and the populace, solemnly publish and declare, that these United States of America are and have a right that our allegiance to the current regime will be absolved if the governing bodies of our federal legislature refuse to restrain the president from his policy of revenge and destruction of our country. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Attest.

Signed by Order and in behalf of the American People

Charles Bryson

                                                                             Jeremiah Foyle

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, History, Resistance, Trump

Bernie Sanders: This is What Oligarchy Looks Like

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2026 //
7

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont posted this message on social media:

@BernieSanders •

One family, the right-wing Trump-aligned Ellisons, will soon control:

TikTok

CBS

CNN

HBO

Discovery Channel

BET

Cartoon Network

Comedy Central

DC Studios

Fandango

Miramax

MTV

Nickelodeon

Paramount

Pluto TV

Showtime

TBS

The CW

TNT

Warner Bros.

And more

This is oligarchy.

•

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Media

International Report: Democracy in the USA is in Jeopardy

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2026 //
2

The Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Gothenburg, Sweden, publishes an annual report on the state of democracy around the world. In the recently published report, the authors made clear that democracy in the world is in retreat. Nowhere has it declined as dramatically as in the United States.

A special section of the report is focused on the United States. Under Trump, democracy in the USA is under attack. The President has centralized power in his office. The Republican-dominated Congress has ceded almost all of its Constitutional powers to Trump. The word “almost” may be an overstatement, as it’s difficult to remember an issue when Congress said no to a Presidential power grab.

The V-DEM report begins its special section about the “autocratization” of power in the United States:

*Under Trump’s presidency, the level of democracy in the USA has fallen back to the same level as in 1965.

Yet the situation is fundamentally different than during the Civil Rights era. In 2025, the derailment of democracy is marked by executive overreach undermining the rule of law, along with far-reaching suppression and intimidation of media and dissenting voices.

*The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.

*Legislative Constraints – the worst affected aspect of democracy – is losing one-third of its value in 2025 and reaching its lowest point in over 100 years.

*Civil Rights and Equality before the Law are also rapidly declining, falling to late 1960s levels.

*Freedom of Expression is now at its lowest level since the end of WWII.

*Electoral components of democracy remain stable. Election-specific indicators are re-assessed only in electoral years, and the 2025 scores are based on the quality of the 2024 elections.

The scale and speed of autocratization under the Trump administration are unprecedented in modern times. Within one year, the USA’s LDI score has declined by 24%; its world rank dropped from 20th to 51st place out of 179 nations. The level of democracy on the LDI is dwindling to 1965 level – the year that most regard as the start of a real, modern democracy in the USA.

Yet the deficiencies of American democracy today are fundamentally different from that of the Civil Rights era. As the V-Dem data and other evidence below show, the autocratization now is marked by executive overreach, alongside attacks on the press, academia, civilliberties, and dissenting voices.

The Most Dramatic Decline in American History

In 2023, the USA scored 0.79 on the LDI – shortly before the 2024 election year when first deteriorations were registered. The scores plummeted to 0.57 in 2025 (Figure 22). With such a sharp drop on the LDI, the level of democracy at the end of 2025 is back to the 1965 level. Symbolically, that is the year that most analysts consider the USA began its transition to a real democracy.

Democracy in the USA is now at its worst in 60 years. We are not alone in this assessment. Professor Steven Levitsky at Harvard University says the regime in the USA is now some type of authoritarianism. The Century Foundation argues that “American democracy is already collapsing…”

By magnitude of decline on the LDI, the 2025 plunge is the largest one-year drop in American history going back to 1789 – that is, in the entire period covered by V-Dem data. Only Trump 1.0 compares, when the LDI in the USA fell from 0.85 to 0.73 in four years, bringing the country back to its 1976 level and far below the regional average (Figure 22). American democracy survived Trump 1.0 but did not recover fully.

One notable shift is the transformation of the Republican Party to endorsing a far-right, nationalist, and anti-pluralist agenda. Nationalist, anti-liberal, far-right parties and leaders have largely driven the “third waveof autocratization.” Yet the USA stands out as the only case where such movement seized control over one party in a rigid two-party system.

Please open the link and read the report to review the sources and to understand how dramatically democracy has been undercut during the first year of Trump’s second term.

The Founding Fathers thought they had written a Constitution that would prevent the rise of tyranny. They were wrong.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Environment, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, For-Profit, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, Health, Privatization, Separation of church and state, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: The Republican Crack-Up

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2026 //
4

Jennifer Rubin was a columnist for The Washington Post who departed when publisher Jeff Bezos bent his knee to Trump. Rubin, a journalist and lawyer, knows that Trump is a dangerous demagogue. She says in this piece that Republicans complain privately about Trump but refuse to stand up to him. They will pay for their cowardice in November, as they have in every special election since Trump returned.

Silence is complicity.

Rubin founded The Contrarian, an immensely popular blog, where this article appeared.

She wrote:

Republicans made a calculated bet that by indulging Donald Trump’s ill-conceived and cruel schemes (e.g., unleashing ICE on cities, tariffs, wars with Venezuela and Iran, slashing healthcare to pay for tax cuts for the rich), the country would somehow stumble through. They figured congressional Republicans would share in any successes but somehow avoid any blame when things (inevitably) went haywire. Politics rarely works out that way.

(Credit: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson)

Through Trump’s Iran War, shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, futile effort to pass a Jim Crow-style voter suppression act (the so-called SAVE Act), and inflation-aggravating tariff scheme, Republicans are discovering they are tied at the hip with Trump. Refusing to deviate from his dictates, they will bear the brunt of his serial failures.

Whether the Iran War ends this month or months from now, Republicans cannot escape responsibility for the massive expenditure of taxpayer dollars, loss of life, rise in energy costs, regional instability, and damage to alliances Trump has wrought. Congressional Republicans refused to invoke the War Powers Act — or even to conduct meaningful oversight hearings — and applauded a senseless, unconstitutional war. Now they seem prepared to rubber-stamp a preposterous demand for $200B more in war spending. Republicans will have no place to hide come November when voters come looking for politicians to blame.

The latest CBS/You Gov poll has nothing but horrendous news for the Iran war cheerleaders: 90 percent say the war will make gas prices higher in the short term, 58 percent over the long term; 63 percent predict it will weaken the economy (a plurality assume we will be in a recession); a plurality of 49 percent think the war makes us less safe; and 57 percent say the war is going badly. Some 62 percent disapprove of how Trump is handling the war. Perhaps Republicans should have fulfilled their constitutional obligations rather than contenting themselves with sitting on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, Trump’s web of lies about immigrants and voting fraud have entangled him and Republicans in a political knot. Trump’s lie about mass voting fraud drove him to insist on the unpassable voter suppression SAVE Act. He then made that a precondition for any deal to resume DHS funding. Even to Republicans, this made no sense.

When Senator John Thune (R-SD) initially recommended that Trump agree to Democrats’ proposal to pass a DHS funding bill that would pay for TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard (leaving ICE funding for later negotiations), Trump rebuffed him. By Monday night, however, Trump was considering a deal to do just that, namely to fund the rest of DHS and handle funding for ICE in reconciliation.

What happened between his refusal to relent on funding and his capitulation? Trump trotted out another senseless and entirely performative maneuver: deploying ICE to airports. ICE agents, untrained for any TSA duties, stood around with virtually nothing to do (reminding one of the National Guard deployed to D.C., who largely loiter around metro stations). This underscores Republicans’ responsibility for bollixing up air travel, Trump’s feebleness in resolving messes of his own making, and the dangerous transformation of ICE into a roving street militia Trump deploys to intimidate and harass Americans.

All the ICE/airport stunt accomplished was to trigger a robust blowback from Democrats and civil society groups, demonstrating once again Trump’s talent in supercharging the Resistance. Deploring Trump’s use of ICE as his “personal dystopian police force,” Public Citizen observed: “The confluence of authoritarian overreach of this moment is striking.” The ACLU likewise condemned using ICE at airports “despite their lack of training for airport security and interactions, and their clear track record of abusing their power, including through using excessive force against citizens and immigrants alike.” (Unsurprisingly, this venture, the ACLU noted, was the first time a president “sent armed ICE agents to airports to replace trained security agents and instill fear in families and other travelers.”)

Trump’s compounding calamities have fractured Republicans internally. Cultists demand perfect fidelity to Trump on the war abroad and bullying at home; others fret that a war betrays their America First ideology and the SAVE Act is a legislative cul-de-sac that now compounds the DHS shutdown disaster. (MAGA provocateur Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has become a chief enabler of Trump’s destructive schemes, “sparking a wave of mostly private animosity from GOP colleagues who believe his plan to push through legislation overhauling how federal elections are conducted is ill-conceived and potentially harmful to the party’s chances in the midterms,” Politico reports.)

Republicans fret privately that the Trump reign of chaos, coupled with the highly unpopular war, spells doom for them in November. One is tempted to ask about the private Republican hand-wringing: 

What did Republicans think would happen when they fully empowered a delusional narcissist, one who is so clearly ignorant of government and keen to pursue his own wealth and power, the country be damned?

Some dim-witted MAGA Republicans remain true believers and actually think Trump’s antics will pay off. Others know Trump is nuts and recognize the party is headed for disaster, but lack the courage to say so. They are banking that they will survive the blue wave coming in November to fight another day. Their lack of patriotism may be galling, but their self-preservation strategy looks increasingly daft.

The damage Trump and his flunkies have inflicted on our democracy will reverberate for years to come. American families may take years to recover from the economic hits. It is a small consolation that MAGA lawmakers and right-wing media stooges, who have chosen the route of cowardly compliance over constitutional duty and self-serving propaganda over truth-telling, will shoulder much of the blame. History in the long run and voters in the near term will hold Republicans fully accountable for the blunders they countenanced.

The Contrarian is reader-supported. To receive new posts, enable our work, help with litigation, and keep this opposition movement engaged, please join the fight by becoming a paid subscriber.

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Categories Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans, Shame, Trump

Peter Greene: Voucher Battle in Nebraska Sinks the State Budget

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2026 //
3

Yesterday, I posted Peter Greene’s post about the voucher battle in Nebraska. Republicans in the state legislature really want vouchers. Voters really don’t want vouchers. I no as recent referendum, Nebraska voters overturned the state’s voucher program. That shoukd have been the end of the story, but it wasn’t. The Republican Governor and legislature decided to ignore the voters and participate in Trump’s voucher plan.

But then Peter discovered the battle was not over.

He wrote an update:

As we noted last week, some Nebraska fans of taxpayer-funded vouchers tried–again–to get enact vouchers, this time through the sneaky technique of putting them in the budget. Instead of getting their vouchers, they raised a controversy that sank the entire budget.

State Sen. Rob Clements of Elmwood, Appropriations Committee chair, removed the $3.5 million of voucher money, meant to bridg the gap between the end of the state’s voucher program that was repealed by voters, and the beginning of the federal voucher system that Governor Pillen opted into (the voters get no say on that one). And lots of people were upset, as reported by the Nebraska Examiner.

Arguments for the voucher money were baloney. Sen. Christy Armendariz of Omaha argued that the vouchers were needed to protect poor kids who might be “kicked out” of public school. State Sen. Brad von Gillern of the Elkhorn area expressed frustration toward opponents, calling it hypocritical to oppose the measure when many of the same senators argue the state isn’t doing enough to help the poor.

“Shame on you,” von Gillern said. “If you make a pitch for poor people for any other reason, and you can’t support this, you’re a hypocrite.”

Except that vouchers are used mostly by wealthy, already-in-private-school students, and it’s the private schools that get to pick their students, not vice versa. It is telling that the voucher crowd did not have anecdotes of poor children who had been kicked out of public school and had been rescued by vouchers. The program ran all this year, so those stories, if real, should have been easy enough to locate.

Sen. Myron Dorn of Adams, the only Republican on Appropriations to oppose the $3.5 million in vouchers, criticized focus on this one issue, and also criticized the whole sneaky business of trying to slip this policy into the budget when there is no bill or law behind it. 

Said Tim Royers, president of Nebraska State Education Association–

This standoff is exactly why you don’t try and pass policy through the budget, especially when that policy is to extend an incredibly unpopular program that was repealed by voters in the most recent election. … We hope enough can come together and negotiate a path forward that keeps vouchers out of the budget.

So Nebraska voucherphiles managed to sink the state budget over a program that voters had already voted down. That’s a bold stance to take and one can hope that Nebraska voters will deliver the reward they so richly deserve. It’s yet another reminder, in a backhand way, that no matter how hard voucherphiles insist to the contrary, supporting taxpayer-funded school vouchers is not actually a winning political issue.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Education Industry, Nebraska, Privatization, Vouchers

Underground Railroad Museum Sues Trump Administration for Canceling Grant

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2026 //
1

The Trump administration began in its earliest days to try to erase what it calls DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), which, in practice, means eliminating federal grants that acknowledge the existence of race, ethnicity, or gender, except for straight white men. Straight white women are usually okay, but recognizing the history, struggles and achievements of others is unacceptable in the Age of Trump.

Trump’s concept of “Make America Great Again” apparently means erasing those who deviate from his white straight ideal of the best days of America (think John Wayne).

One grant recipient is fighting back.

NBC reported:

An Underground Railroad museum in upstate New York alleged in a lawsuit Friday that the Trump administration unlawfully terminated its federal grant on the basis of race, pointing to President Donald Trump’s efforts to dismantle diversity-focused initiatives.

The Underground Railroad Education Center in Albany, New York, alleges that the National Endowment for the Humanities’ cancelation of a $250,000 grant amounted to viewpoint and racial discrimination, violating the First and Fifth Amendments, respectively.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of New York, calls for the funds to be reinstated.

The suit cited Trump’s January 2025 executive orderthat required federal agencies to eliminate any operations supporting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives within 60 days. The 40-page brief outlined 1,400 grants that were terminated in early April 2025 “for their conflict with President Trump’s EOs and the new agency priorities adopted in their wake.” 

Nina Loewenstein, a lawyer for the museum, told NBC News that there is “just no legitimate basis” for the grant’s cancellation, adding that it is “just explicitly erasing things associated with the Black race.”

Loewenstein and the team of lawyers volunteering on the case through Lawyers for Good Government, an organization that provides free legal services for civil and human rights cases, argued that the Underground Railroad Education Center is just one of thousands of organizations that have been unlawfully targeted by the Trump administration.

To finish reading, open the link.

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Equity, Ethics, Freedom, Freedom to Learn, Funding, Race, Racism, Trump

Peter Greene: Nebraska GOP Wants Vouchers, Even After Voters Rejected Them

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2026 //
1

Peter Greene retired after 39 years of teaching, and now is the best-informed and most prolific writer about misguided and sometimes malicious efforts to “reform” public schools.

Peter has his own blog–Curmudgucation–and also writes a column about reform frauds for FORBES.

In this post, he tells the remarkable and unsavory story of vouchers in Nebraska. Nebraska is a solid red state, but its voters don’t want vouchers. Rural legislators–even Republicans–know it’s a waste of money and are sure to defund their public schools.

But the voucher-pushers keep looking for clever ways to bypass the voters, who have made it clear that they don’t want vouchers.

Peter Greene writes:

Nebraska’s voucher fans are bound and determined, like legislators in many states, to get around the voters so they can get vouchers installed.

In May of 2023, Nebraska’s Governor Jim Pillen signed into law LB 753, creating tax credit vouchers for subsidizing private schools.

The concept has been floated in Nebraska before, notably turning up more than once in 2022’s session. In 2023, it finally progressed through the legislature. But NSEA political action director Brian Nikkelson told the Nebraska Examiner that the public did not support the vouchers, and if the bill was passed, there would be a petition drive to force the bill to go on the ballot for voters to decide.

And so there was. It was a heck of a battle, with the pro-voucher forces have attracting a mountain of money, some of it from outside the state. Paul Hammel at the Nebraska Examiner reported that big money contributors include C.L. Werner, an Omaha-based trucking company executive ($100,000), Tom Peed and his son Shawn of a Lincoln publishing company ($75,000 each), and former Nebraska governor U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts ($25,000). Governor Pillen himself has contributed $100,000 to the campaign to save vouchers from a vote.

At the same time, Hammel reported, the American Federation for Children, the school choice advocacy group founded by Betsy DeVos, has contributed $103,000 in in-kind services and $583,000 in cash to the campaign.

It didn’t matter. Support Our Schools needed 60,000 signatures to force a referendum. They ended up with about twice that number (that’s roughly 10% of all eligible voters in the state). So this November, the voters of Nebraska were supposed to have their say. So you’d expect that voucher fans, who keep telling us how much everyone loves vouchers, would just sit back, secure in the knowledge that their program would win the referendum handily.

Well, no.

Instead, legislators cooked up LB 1402. This bill proposed to repeal the Opportunity Scholarships that were created under LB 753, and then to replace them with a new version of Opportunity Scholarships. This version would have been an education savings account (ESA) style super-voucher that hands over taxpayer money to send a student to a private or parochial school. It was more sketchy than last year’s bill because it appropriates state funds (rather than tax-credited contributions) to pay for the vouchers.

But mostly what it did it render the petition drive moot, because it repealed the version of vouchers that the public was going to vote on. “Ha,” they apparently thought. “That’ll stop those damned voters.”

In 67 days, the coalition of opponents gathered the necessary signatures—again. That repeal passed in November 2024, with 45 out of 49 legislative districts voting to repeal, and Nebraska’s voucher law was toast. The voters had sent a clear and unequivocal message.

Surely the state’s leaders would say, “Well, the voters have spoken, so that’s that.”

Fat chance.

Voucherphiles were back with a new proposal in January 2025. “I’m not dissuaded by the fact that it was defeated at the ballot box,” said freshman State Sen. Tony Sorrentino of Omaha.

To nobody’s surprise, Governor Jim Pillen was first to jump on the as-yet-rule-free federal school voucher proposal. Okay, it was a small surprise, because Nebraska is not known for grabbing federal dollars, but hey– this is Free Federal Money for private schools. In fact, U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., helped Congress usher the tax credits provision onto President Donald Trump’s desk, even though his home district was among those shooting down vouchers in 2024.

Pillen’s new idea is to sell vouchers for the “gap” year, the year between the time when Nebraska’s vouchers are required to end and the time when the federal vouchers are supposed to kick in. The proposal is being sent through the state’s Labor Department rather than the Department of Education because that would skirt the requirement for any sort of hearing or debate, probably because voucherphiles have a pretty good idea of how that would go.

Nebraska is one of those states where rural Republicans have opposed all attempts at vouchers, and they aren’t sounding any friendlier about this one. Zach Wendling at Nebraska Examiner talked to State Sen. Tom Brandt of Plymouth, a Republican who opposed Linehan’s previous proposals; he said he is opposed to using any public money for private school choice. He’s still waiting to see how the federal tax credit program includes public schools (because, remember, there are no actual rules yet attached to the federal voucher program).

“The referendum simply eliminated that. Period, end of story,” he continued on the state policy. “There’s no other interpretation you can draw from that.”

The gap funding would cost about $5 million for around 2,500 students. Of course, with no rules in place, it’s possible that not all of Nebraska’s current voucher students would qualify for federal vouchers. Nor can we predict what slice of the federal money pie Nebraska would be entitled to. If it comes to that, we could expect voucherphiles to argue that more gap funding is needed to cover new gaps, or maybe to expand above and beyond the federal offerings.

Nebraska voucher fans are making a lot of “think of the children” noises, but families have plenty of time to look for new arrangements (i.e. finding the student a new school or going back to paying the full tuition with their own money).

This is the same story we’ve seen over and over again. Vouchers never win when voters have a chance to be heard. Every single taxpayer-funded voucher program in this country has been created without giving the taxpayers a say or ignoring the say they had already said. Taxpayer-funded vouchers are all the result of legislators backed by deep-pocketed voucher fans deciding they are going to inflict these on the taxpayers. Nebraska’s taxpayers just happen to have a few more tools to fight back with, but Nebraska’s voucherphiles just keep looking for a way to avoid that whole pesky democracy thing.

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Nebraska, Privatization, Rural Schools, School Choice, Vouchers

Brian Stelter: Pete Hegseth Will Appeal Court Ruling that Favors Freedom of the Press

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2026 //
3

Brian Stelter of CNN is one of the very best reporters about the state of journalism. In his newsletter “Reliable Sources,” he reported Sunday morning that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth will appeal a ruling by a federal judge that prevents him from excluding mainstream journalists from covering the Pentagon. Hegeth wants to limit or ignore freedom of the press. He wants the Defense Department to be covered only by rightwing journalists.

Stelter writes at CNN:

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been taking steps to thwart news coverage of the Pentagon for more than a year. Now he has finally met some resistance.

Friday’s ruling by a federal judge striking down Pentagon press limits was cheered by the news organization that sued over the policy, The New York Times, and by a wide range of First Amendment advocates.

“This is a great day for freedom of the press in the United States,” the Pentagon Press Association, which represents scores of journalists who regularly cover the military, said. “It is also hopefully a learning opportunity for Pentagon leadership, which took extreme steps to limit press access to information in wartime.”

Some beat reporters who were pushed out of the Pentagon complex last fall are now discussing how to get their credentials reinstated.

But Hegseth’s press office says, “We disagree with the decision and are pursuing an immediate appeal,” signaling that he will continue to pick fights with the news media.

At recent press briefings about the war in Iran, Hegseth has mirrored President Trump’s hyperbolic language about the media and made plainly false claims about news coverage.

More alarmingly, from the perspective of Pentagon correspondents, he has also hindered the free flow of information about the US military, in part through the restrictive press pass rules that The Times challenged in court.

The rules had the effect of replacing major news outlets like The Times and CNN with a handpicked group of relatively small and explicitly right-wing outlets.

But the rules veered into unconstitutional territory, senior US District Judge Paul Friedman wrote in Friday’s ruling.

The policy is “viewpoint discrimination,” Friedman wrote, “not based on political viewpoint but rather based on editorial viewpoint — that is, whether the individual or organization is willing to publish only stories that are favorable to or spoon-fed by department leadership.”

Tightening control over coverage

Governments routinely try to encourage favorable coverage, but Hegseth has gone much further since leaving Fox News for the Defense Department, which he has rebranded as the Department of War.

One of his first moves was to boot some news outlets, including CNN, from long-established media workspaces inside the Pentagon complex.

It was billed as a temporary “media rotation program,” boosting pro-Trump media outlets that never had a presence at the Pentagon before. For one year, Breitbart was meant to replace NPR, One America News Network to replace NBC News, and so forth.

But any argument about media diversity was undermined by the department’s inaccessibility.

Hegseth’s spokespeople declined to hold regular press conferences, effectively closed the Pentagon press briefing room, and made key parts of the Pentagon complex off-limits to journalists without an official escort.

By May 2025, the Pentagon Press Association was calling the restrictions “a direct attack on the freedom of the press and America’s right to know what its military is doing.”

It was apparent to many beat reporters that Hegseth wanted to prop up propagandistic outlets while punishing traditional media outlets.

He promoted himself on Fox, for instance, and gave access to right-wing content creators, while bashing what he called the biased “hoax press.”

In September, his press office circulated a new policy controlling the press credentials that grant physical access to the Pentagon complex.

The policy challenged the ability of reporters to freely gather information, for instance, through leaks from sources inside the military, by enabling the Pentagon to suspend or revoke credentials due to reporting.

Media lawyers said the revised rules criminalized routine reporting. So, rather than abide by the new policy, journalists from virtually every major American news outlet turned in their press passes en masse last October.

The Pentagon gave credentials to what it called “the next generation of the Pentagon press corps,” made up of staples of the MAGA media diet that are barely known to the rest of America.

Those media outlets were welcomed into the building’s workspaces, though the cubicles and offices are said to be largely empty nowadays. Before long, some of those outlets also began to complain about a lack of transparency from the Pentagon.

A handpicked ‘press corps’

When the US and Israel began strikes in Iran, and the Pentagon resumed somewhat regular press briefings, Hegseth called almost exclusively on MAGA-aligned outlets that were given front-row seats in the briefing room.

Representatives of bigger news outlets with decades of experience covering the US military — who were granted temporary access to the building — were seated in the back and generally ignored.

Furthermore, The Washington Post reported that the Pentagon “barred press photographers” from some briefings after the photographers published photos of Hegseth “that his staff deemed ‘unflattering.’”

Those photographers were allowed back inside for the most recent briefing on March 19.

But Hegseth added a new anti-media talking point to his repertoire that day, claiming that the “dishonest and anti-Trump press will stop at nothing — we know this, at this point — to downplay progress, amplify every cost, and call into question every step.”

He diagnosed them with “TDS,” short for Trump Derangement Syndrome, a favorite insult of MAGA loyalists.

Hegseth also said Iran wants “to put out fake AI-generated images, which, by the way, sometimes our press happens to fall for, like the Abraham Lincoln on fire.”

His assertion that the American press has fallen for the fake imagery is itself fake. As CNN’s Daniel Dale reported, “There is no evidence that mainstream US media outlets promoted fake videos of the Lincoln on fire.” In fact, several US outlets, including The Times, debunked the videos.

When it filed suit against the Defense Department last December, The Times said the press pass restrictions were “an attempt to exert control over reporting the government dislikes.”

When Friedman ruled in agreement on Friday, The Times treated it as front-page news, and a spokesperson said the ruling “enforces the constitutionally protected rights for the free press in this country.”

“Americans deserve visibility into how their government is being run, and the actions the military is taking in their name and with their tax dollars,” The Times said.

Julian Barnes, the Times reporter named as a plaintiff in the lawsuit, wrote on X, “This is a big win for the press, the public and the United States military, which fights better when observed by a robust press corps.”

Journalists at other news outlets are also monitoring the case closely. A CNN spokesperson said of the ruling, “This is an encouraging development and we are evaluating next steps and what this means for CNN.”

All the while, most original journalism about military matters has still been produced by the traditional outlets that lost access to the Pentagon complex last fall.

While Hegseth and his deputies have adopted a hostile approach toward the press corps, rank-and-file military officials have not.

When the ruling was handed down, beat reporters who had previously worked inside the Pentagon received messages from military personnel saying things like: “Does this mean we’ll see you Monday?”

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Freedom of the Press

Treasury Department Expects to Make Two Coins with Trump’s Face on Them

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2026 //
1

Republicans are eager to put Trump’s name and face wherever possible, both to please him and to acknowledge him as the Sun God of their party.

Two plans are under discussion. One, which appears likely to go into distribution, is to mint a $1 coin, whose image of Trump was approved by him, a handsome profile.

The other is a 24 karat gold coin that would be minted to mark the 250th anniversary of the nation. It would be sold for thousands of dollars and would be super-sized, as much as 3″ across.

However, the gold coin is controversial. It is supposed to be approved by two commissions. The first one rejected the idea because putting the face of a living President on a coin seemed to them akin to a king, not appropriate for a democracy.

The second commission, stocked with Trump allies, is enthisisstic about the gold coin.

Dan Diamond of The Washington Post wrote:

A federal arts commission on Thursday voted to approve a commemorative U.S. gold coin featuring Donald Trump, the administration’s latest effort to celebrate the president, even as Democrats and members of another federal committee say the idea is deeply inappropriate and potentially illegal.

The proposal calls for a 24-karat gold coin depicting Trump leaning on a desk with clenched fists, based on a photograph taken by his chief White House photographer and now displayed in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery. Such gold coins from the U.S. Mint typically sell for several thousand dollars. A Mint official told the panel that Trump had personally approved the design.

Members of the Commission of Fine Arts — composed entirely of Trump appointees, including a 26-year-old executive assistant whose only listed credential for the post was managing Trump’s portrait project — spent several minutes discussing potential changes to the coin, including how big to make it, before officially endorsing it.

“I think the larger the better, and the largest of that circulation, I think, would be his preference,” said Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s executive assistant. Harris also said that the image captured Trump looking “very strong and very tough” and that it would be “fitting” to have him on a coin to mark the nation’s 250th anniversary.

James McCrery II, who served as Trump’s first architect on his planned ballroom before wrangling with the president over its size, encouraged Treasury officials to make the coin “as large as possible, all the way to three inches in diameter” as he led the vote to approve it.

But new coin designs are supposed to receive approval from two panels — and that second panel, the bipartisan Citizens Coinage Advisory Committee, refused last month to consider the proposed gold coin. In interviews, members opposed putting a sitting president on currency, saying it would break with democratic norms and reek of subservience to royalty.

“It’s wrong. It goes against American culture and the traditions that drive what we put on our coinage,” said Michael Moran, a Republican coin collector who then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) recommended for appointment. “I didn’t sign up for this.”

Several members of the coin committee said the Trump administration could seek to mint the coin without their panel’s approval but would probably face legal challenges.

The coin committee is composed of numismatists, or experts in coin collecting, as well as a historian and an artist who specializes in medallic arts. Its most famous former member — retired basketball star Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a longtime coin collector — said he was disheartened because he believed well-designed coins could inform and inspire. He cited as examples a 1998 silver dollar that honored Crispus Attucks, who was enslaved, escaped and was killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770, and a 2017 gold coin that depicted Lady Liberty as an African American woman.

“I’m not enthusiastic about memorializing Mr. Trump on a coin because he has done so much damage to our country,” said Abdul-Jabbar, who served on the committee a decade ago. “It takes a huge consensus to get agreement on something like this, and I’m not inclined to be supportive of the president’s request.”

The White House did not respond to questions about the commemorative coin and whether it was appropriate to commission it. The Treasury Department, which oversees the Mint, said the commemorative coin was appropriate for this year’s anniversary.

“As we approach our 250th birthday, we are thrilled to prepare coins that represent the enduring spirit of our country and democracy, and there is no profile more emblematic for the front of such coins than that of our serving President, Donald J. Trump,” U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach said in a statement.

Only one past president — Calvin Coolidge — was featured on a U.S. coin in his lifetime. Coolidge’s portrait appeared on a commemorative coin to mark the nation’s sesquicentennial in 1926, a year when he was president, with an image of George Washington overlaid. Coolidge’s inclusion sparked controversy, and most of the coins were later melted.

The Trump-themed gold coin marks the administration’s latest effort to shape U.S. currency. Officials last year proposed a separate $1 coin design featuring the president’s likeness, intended to honor the sesquicentennial and enter circulation, but the coin committee balked at taking up the proposal. Mint officials argue that because the committee declined to consider the coin, the administration is not bound by its review — a claim that current committee members dispute.

Meanwhile, the arts commission in January approved the Trump-themed $1 coin. The Treasury Department has not yet specified whether or when that coin will enter circulation.

A photograph of President Donald Trump, featured at the National Portrait Gallery, inspired the image used for the planned gold coin. (Maxine Wallace/The Washington Post)
Democrats have bristled at efforts to recognize Trump on currency and attempted to stop it. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nevada), one of several Democrats who introduced legislation last year intended to block any living or sitting president from being featured on U.S. currency, told The Washington Post that the Trump-themed gold coin was “embarrassing” and against the nation’s values.

“Monarchs and dictators put their faces on coins, not leaders of a democracy,” added Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon). Lawmakers and congressional staff have also cited past laws they say should constrain the administration, such as a 2005 law that restricted some $1 coins to honoring deceased presidents.

Donald Scarinci, a Democrat whom Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) recommended to the coin committee, said that gold coins presented a “loophole” because the Treasury Department has the independent power, without congressional authority, to mint them.

“They can definitely make the coin without our review. But it would be an illegal coin,” Scarinci said. “It’s not about Donald Trump. It’s about whoever the president is. It’s not something done in a democracy.”

Trump has also sought to remake White House grounds, proposing a visitor screening center also under consideration Thursday and demolishing the White House’s East Wing to build his long-desired ballroom. His projects extend into Washington, with plans to construct a 250-foot triumphal arch along with other projects that would leave a physical imprint on the city.

The wrangling over the coin comes amid a bigger fight over how Trump and his allies are seeking to memorialize the 79-year-old president, with nearly three years remaining in his term. Trump’s deputies have put his name on buildings, such as the Kennedy Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace, drawing complaints from lawmakers and lawyers who say that only Congress can rename the facilities, and GOP lawmakers have proposed renaming Dulles International Airport after him.

Those efforts are generally unpopular, surveys have found. About two-thirds of Americans said they opposed efforts to rename Dulles Airport and the Kennedy Center after Trump, with about 15 percent in favor, according to an Economist/YouGov poll conducted last month. Majorities of Americans also said they opposed demolishing the East Wing to build the ballroom and erecting the triumphal arch, according to the poll.

Trump officials last year also scrapped designs for commemorative quarters that were approved in 2024 by the arts commission and coin committee, months before Trump took office, and would have honored Black Americans and notable women. Coin committee members said they were unhappy about the administration’s decision to instead issue quarters honoring the Mayflower Compact, Revolutionary War and the Gettysburg Address, calling the process flawed and the new designs lacking.

“The designs, the themes that they came up with for the quarters — that could have been done by a fifth-grade class on American history,” Moran said.

Coin committee members said they will continue to balk at considering currency with Trump’s face on it.

“I think all of us feel the weight of responsibility here,” Scarinci said. He noted that Trump fired holdovers on the arts commission and that the administration could do the same with the coin committee, whose members are appointed by the Treasury Department.

“They may fire us all,” Scarinci added. “They may replace us all to make this coin … but there’s a very high caliber of people on this committee, they know numismatics, and they know history, and they know this is wrong.”

Arts commissioners in January, at the first meeting of the reconstituted board, showed little compunction of their counterparts on the coin committee as they weighed the $1 coin and discussed Trump’s own preferences.

Two of the proposed designs “both remind me a little bit of that portrait that was done of the president, which he did not like,” said Roger Kimball, a critic that Trump named to the panel. But he praised another version that had “a statesmanlike quality, to the coif of the hair.”
The commission ultimately recommended that version.

Officials last year proposed a separate $1 coin design featuring the president’s likeness. The arts commission recommended this version in January. (U.S. Treasury)

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Trump

Russia: Putin Defender Turns Against Him

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2026 //
30

Former KGB agent Vladimir Putin was hand-picked by Boris Yeltsin as his successor. Yeltsin was a drunk, and he miscalculated badly in picking Putin. Instead of building democratic norms and institutions, Putin embarked on a long-term plan to restore the USSR. After serving as president of Russia from 2000-2008, he was succeeded by a puppet (Dimitri Medvedev), then resumed the presidency in 2012. The national legislature extended his term to 2036. Anyone who seriously threatens him ends up in prison or dead.

In a startling development, one of Putin’s most strident sycophants abruptly turned against him. Ilya Remeslo, a lawyer, was known as a reliable lapdog for Putin. He regularly testified in trials against Alexei Navalny.

Pjotr Sauer wrote in The Guardian:

For years, Ilya Remeslo was a reliable pro-Kremlin operator, going after critics of the regime and smearing independent journalists, bloggers and opposition politicians.

Then the 42-year-old lawyer abruptly turned on the country’s most powerful man. Late on Tuesday, Remeslo posted a manifesto to his 90,000 Telegram followers titled: “Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin.”

In it, he accused the “illegitimate” Russian president of waging a “failing war” in Ukraine that had caused millions of casualties and wrecked the economy, and argued that Putin’s more than two decades in power illustrated how “absolute power corrupts”, calling on him to step aside….

Doubling down on his earlier remarks, he told the Guardian on Wednesday from his flat in St Petersburg: “Vladimir Putin should resign and be put on trial as a war criminal. His personalised, corrupt system is doomed to collapse, as we’re seeing now with the war in Ukraine and elsewhere.

“The army isn’t advancing in Ukraine, and the war is going nowhere. There are massive losses. We are fighting over tiny territories that will ultimately give Russia nothing.”

He went on to criticise Putin’s authoritarian rule, the state of the economy and Moscow’s recent push to shut down internet access. “This man [Putin] has destroyed everything he could lay his hands on. The country is literally falling apart,” Remeslo said.

Please open the link and finish reading this fascinating article.

Categories Corruption, Democracy, Evil, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, International
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