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Political Assassinations in Minnesota

By dianeravitch
June 14, 2025 //
6

I’m sick at heart about the targeted assassinations in Minnesota. As everyone surely knows by now, a gunman dressed as a police officer entered the home of Melissa Hortman, a top Democratic legislator, and murdered her and her husband Mark. The same gunman attempted to kill State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette, who are hospitalized.

Both legislators were leaders of their party, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which functions as the Democratic Party. Both houses of the legislature are almost evenly split between Democrats and Republicans. Both legislators championed humane, liberal policies.

Governor Tim Walz asked the people of the state not to attend “No Kings” demonstrations for fear that the gunman might attack them.

This is not normal. Sure, we have a history that includes lots of political violence, including the assassination of Presidents and Presidential candidates and outspoken activists like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Medger Evers, and Malcolm X.

Every time something like this happens, we say “never again,” but then it happens again.

Our politics are hyper partisan, polarized, and inflamed. Almost all gun limits have been stricken down by the zealots on the Supreme Court. We have a President who encourages violence, who failed to call out the national Guard on January 6, 2021, who called the perpetrators of violence against law officers that day “patriots,” and who pardoned all of them, including those who brutally assaulted law officers. Trump has also speculated about pardoning the militia members in Michigan who planned to kidnap and murder Governor Whitmer.

This is one of those days when I fear for the future of our democratic experiment. I can’t think of a silver lining.

Can you?

Categories Democracy, Evil, Minnesota, Trump

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

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2025 //
1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abraham Lincoln statue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Federal Appeals Court Restores Trump’s Control of Ca. National Guard

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2025 //
4

Only hours after a federal district judge ordered Trump to return control of the California National Guard to Governor Gavin Newsom, a three judge federal appeals court blocked the lower court‘s order.

The Orlando Sentinel reported:

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday temporarily blocked a federal judge’s order that directed President Donald Trump to return control of National Guard troops to California after he deployed them there following protests in Los Angeles over immigration raids.

The court said it would hold a hearing on the matter on June 17. The ruling came only hours after a federal judge’s order was to take effect at noon Friday.

Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled the Guard deployment was illegal and both violated the Tenth Amendment and exceeded Trump’s statutory authority. The order applied only to the National Guard troops and not Marines who were also deployed to the LA protests. The judge said he would not rule on the Marines because they were not out on the streets yet.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who had asked the judge for an emergency stop to troops helping carry out immigration raids, had praised the earlier ruling.

“Today was really about a test of democracy, and today we passed the test,” Newsom said in a news conference before the appeals court decision.

The White House had called Breyer’s order “unprecedented” and said it “puts our brave federal officials in danger.”

Categories Accountability, California, Democracy, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Jan Resseger: Trump’s Ugly Budget Bill Defunds Public Schools

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2025 //
1

Jan Resseger is a social justice warrior who fights for the underdog. She describes here how Trump’s budget enacts the fever dreams of evangelicals and billionaires. He would change federal aid from its historic purpose–equitable funding–and turn it into school choice, diverting funds from the poorest children to those with ample resources. Since 1965–for 70 years–federal education funding for public schools has enjoyed bipartisan support. Trump ends it.

She writes:

Earlier this week, Education Week‘s Mark Lieberman released a concise and readable analysis of the likely impact for public education of two pieces of federal funding legislation: the “Big, Beautiful” tax and reconciliation bill currently being debated in the U.S. Senate to shape public school funding beginning right now in FY 2025, and also President Trump’s proposed FY 2026 federal budget for public schooling in the fiscal year that begins October 1st.

Trump’s  FY 2026 budget proposal saves Head Start.

Lieberman shares one important piece of positive news about Trump’s treatment of Head Start in next year’s federal budget: “Some programs survived the cut—including Head Start.” In early May, the Associated Press‘s Moriah Balingit reported: “The Trump administration apparently has backed away from a proposal to eliminate funding for Head Start… Backers of the six-decade-old program, which educates more than half a million children from low-income and homeless families, had been fretting after a leaked Trump administration proposal suggested defunding it… But the budget summary… did not mention Head Start. On a call with reporters, an administration official said there would be ‘no changes’ to it.”

Federal funding for U.S. public schools looks bleak.

Lieberman’s assessment of federal public education funding is not so encouraging.  Overall, “The administration is aiming to eliminate roughly $7 billion in funding for K-12 schools in its budget for fiscal 2026, which starts Oct. 1. Several key programs will be maintained at today’s funding level, without an increase: “Flat funding amounts to a de-facto cut given inflation. The administration is proposing to maintain current funding levels for key programs like Title I-A for low-income students ($18.4 billion), the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Part B for special education ($14.2 billion) and Perkins grants for K-12 and postsecondary career and technical education ($1.4 billion).”

What has been historically a key purpose of federal public education funding—to compensate for vast inequity in the states’ capacity and the states’ willingness to fund public education—is being compromised.  Lieberman explains that much of federal funding, “is currently geared toward supporting special student populations including English learners, migrants, students experiencing homelessness, Native students, and students in rural schools. Longstanding federal programs that support training for the educator workforce; preparing students for postsecondary education; reinforcing key instructional areas like literacy, civics, and the arts… would disappear. A new K-12 grant program would offer a smaller pool of funds to states and let them decide whether and how to invest in those areas. And for the first time, all federal funding for special education would flow to states through a single funding stream…. Experts view Trump’s budget as part of an effort to roll back a half-century of effort by the federal government to help make educational opportunities more consistent and equitable from state to state and district to district.”

The “Educational Choice for Children Act,” an alarming federal school voucher bill, is hidden inside the “Big Beautiful” bill.

Lieberman worries about the enormous tuition tax credit voucher plan embedded deep in the weeds of the “Big, Beautiful” tax and reconciliation bill now being considered in the U. S. Senate: “Separate from the federal budget process, Congress is currently advancing a massive package of tax changes, including a proposal for a new tax-credit scholarship program that fuels up to $10 billion a year in federal subsidies for private K-12 education. Annual spending on that program could approach the amount the Trump administration is proposing to cut from elsewhere in the education budget.”  The voucher proposal is called the Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA).

In a separate analysis of the “Big, Beautiful” bill as the House passed it in late May, Lieberman describes this proposed ECCA tuition-tax-credit voucher program: “House lawmakers narrowly approved a sweeping legislative package with $5 billion in annual tax credits that fuel scholarships and related expenses at K-12 private schools. The federal subsidies would come in the form of dollar-for-dollar tax credits for individuals and corporations that donate to largely unregulated state-level organizations that give out scholarship funds for parents to spend on private educational options of their choosing. Any student—even in states that have resisted expanding private school choice—from a family earning less than 300 percent of the area median gross income would be eligible to benefit from a scholarship paid for with a federally refunded donation.”

Lieberman adds: “No other federal tax credit is as generous. The Internal Revenue Service doesn’t currently supply tax credits worth the full donation amount for any cause, as the private school choice scholarship credit would do. The federal government currently offers tax credits on donations for disaster relief, houses of worship, veterans’ assistance groups, and children’s hospitals at roughly 37 percent of the donated amount.  A $10,000 donation to those causes would yield a tax credit of $3,700.  By contrast, under the proposed legislation, if a taxpayer donates $10,000 to a scholarship (voucher)-granting organization, the IRS would give them a tax credit of $10,000.”

The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy’s Carl Davis explains that because these federal school vouchers are primarily a tax shelter, they might appeal to wealthy people who are not even supporters of school privatization: “The tax plan…  includes a provision granting extraordinarily generous treatment to nonprofits that give out vouchers for free or reduced tuition at private K-12 schools. While the bill significantly cuts charitable giving incentives overall, nonprofits that commit to focusing solely on supporting private K-12 schools would be spared from those cuts and see their donors’ tax incentive almost triple relative to what they receive today. On top of that, the bill goes out of its way to provide school voucher donors who contribute corporate stock with an extra layer of tax subsidy that works as a lucrative tax shelter. Essentially, the bill allows wealthy individuals to avoid paying capital gains tax as a reward for funneling public funds to private schools.” “We estimate the bill would reduce federal tax revenue by $23.2 billion over the next 10 years as currently drafted, or by $67 billion over the next ten years if it is extended beyond its four-year expiration date… As currently drafted, the bill would facilitate $2.2 billion in federal and state capital gains tax avoidance over the next 10 years.”

The Brookings Brown Center on Education Policy’s Jon Valant warns that the vouchers are so deeply buried in the “Big, Beautiful” bill that lots of people would not be aware of the plan’s existence until after it is passed: “The Educational Choice for Children Act (ECCA) continues to move, quietly, towards becoming one of America’s costliest, most significant federal education programs. Now part of the One Big Beautiful Bill, ECCA would create a federal tax-credit scholarship program that’s unprecedented in scope and scale.  It has flown under the radar, though, and remains confusing to many observers…  ECCA’s stealthiness is partly due to the confusing nature of tax-credit scholarship programs. These programs move money in circuitous ways to avoid the legal and political hurdles that confront vouchers.”

Valant explains how tax-credit vouchers work: “Tax-credit scholarship programs like ECCA aren’t quite private school voucher programs, but they’re first cousins. In a voucher program, a government gives money (a voucher) to a family, which the family can use to pay for private school tuition or other approved expenses. With a tax-credit scholarship, it’s not that simple. Governments offer tax credits to individual scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). These SGOs then distribute funds… to families.”

Valant creates a scenario that shows how this tax credit program could help the wealthy and leave out poorer families. A rich donor, Billy, donates $2 million in stock to an SGO: “Billy’s acquaintance, Fred, lives in the same town as Billy, which is one of the wealthiest areas in the United States. In fact, Fred set up the SGO, looking to capture ECCA funds within their shared community… Like Billy, Fred doesn’t particularly care about K-12 public education… It might seem that Fred’s SGO couldn’t distribute funds to families in their ultra-wealthy area, since ECCA has income restrictions for scholarship recipients. That’s not the case. ECCA restricts eligibility to households with an income not greater than 300% their area’s median income. In Fred and Billy’s town, with its soaring household incomes, even multimillionaire families with $500,000 in annual income are eligible… So, Fred is looking to give scholarship money to some wealthy families in his hometown.”

Valant summarizes the result if the “Big, Beautiful” bill is enacted: “This bill would introduce the most significant and costliest new federal education program in decades. It has virtually no quality-control measures, transparency provisions, protections against discrimination, or evidence to suggest that it is likely to improve educational outcomes. It’s very likely to redirect funds from poor (and rural) areas to wealthy areas.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Governor Gavin Newsom: Do Not Give In to a Lawless President

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2025 //
16

Governor Gavin Newsom spoke to the situation in Los Angeles, which Trump is using as a target in his campaign to distract the public from his incompetence. In his hateful way, Trump always refers to Governor Newsom as “Newscum.”

Governor Newsom said, as transcribed by The New York Times:

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California delivered a speech on Tuesday, titled “Democracy at a Crossroads.” The following is a transcript of his remarks as broadcast online and on television channels:

I want to say a few words about the events of the last few days.

This past weekend, federal agents conducted large-scale workplace raids in and around Los Angeles. Those raids continue as I speak.

California is no stranger to immigration enforcement. But instead of focusing on undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records and people with final deportation orders, a strategy both parties have long supported, this administration is pushing mass deportations, indiscriminately targeting hardworking immigrant families, regardless of their roots or risk.

What’s happening right now is very different than anything we’ve seen before. On Saturday morning, when federal agents jumped out of an unmarked van near a Home Depot parking lot, they began grabbing people. A deliberate targeting of a heavily Latino suburb. A similar scene also played out when a clothing company was raided downtown.

In other actions, a U.S. citizen, nine months pregnant, was arrested; a 4-year-old girl, taken; families separated; friends, quite literally, disappearing.

In response, everyday Angelinos came out to exercise their Constitutional right to free speech and assembly, to protest their government’s actions. In turn, the State of California and the City and County of Los Angeles sent our police officers to help keep the peace and, with some exceptions, they were successful.

Like many states, California is no stranger to this sort of unrest. We manage it regularly, and with our own law enforcement. But this, again, was different.

What then ensued was the use of tear gas, flash-bang grenades, rubber bullets, federal agents detaining people and undermining their due process rights.

Donald Trump, without consulting California law enforcement leaders, commandeered 2,000 of our state’s National Guard members to deploy on our streets, illegally and for no reason.

This brazen abuse of power by a sitting president inflamed a combustible situation, putting our people, our officers and even our National Guard at risk.

That’s when the downward spiral began. He doubled down on his dangerous National Guard deployment by fanning the flames even harder. And the president, he did it on purpose. As the news spread throughout L.A., anxiety for family and friends ramped up. Protests started again.

By night, several dozen lawbreakers became violent and destructive. They vandalized property. They tried to assault police officers. Many of you have seen video clips of cars burning on cable news.

If you incite violence — I want to be clear about this — if you incite violence or destroy our communities, you are going to be held to account. That kind of criminal behavior will not be tolerated. Full stop.

Already, more than 220 people have been arrested. And we’re reviewing tapes to build additional cases and people will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

Again, thanks to our law enforcement officers and the majority of Angelenos who protested peacefully, this situation was winding down and was concentrated in just a few square blocks downtown.

But that, that’s not what Donald Trump wanted. He again chose escalation, he chose more force. He chose theatrics over public safety. He federalized another 2,000 Guard members.

He deployed more than 700 active U.S. Marines. These are men and women trained in foreign combat, not domestic law enforcement. We honor their service. We honor their bravery. But we do not want our streets militarized by our own armed forces. Not in L.A. Not in California. Not anywhere.

We’re seeing unmarked cars, unmarked cars in school parking lots. Kids afraid of attending their own graduation. Trump is pulling a military dragnet all across Los Angeles, well beyond his stated intent to just go after violent and serious criminals. His agents are arresting dishwashers, gardeners, day laborers and seamstresses.

That’s just weakness, weakness masquerading as strength. Donald Trump’s government isn’t protecting our communities. They are traumatizing our communities. And that seems to be the entire point.

California will keep fighting. We’ll keep fighting on behalf of our people, all of our people, including in the courts.

Yesterday, we filed a legal challenge to President Trump’s reckless deployment of American troops to a major American city. Today, we sought an emergency court order to stop the use of the American military to engage in law enforcement activities across Los Angeles.

If some of us can be snatched off the streets without a warrant, based only on suspicion or skin color, then none of us are safe. Authoritarian regimes begin by targeting people who are least able to defend themselves. But they do not stop there.

Trump and his loyalists, they thrive on division because it allows them to take more power and exert even more control.

And by the way, Trump, he’s not opposed to lawlessness and violence as long as it serves him. What more evidence do we need than January 6th.

I ask everyone: Take time, reflect on this perilous moment. A president who wants to be bound by no law or constitution, perpetuating a unified assault on American traditions.

This is a president who, in just over 140 days, has fired government watchdogs that could hold him accountable, accountable for corruption and fraud. He’s declared a war, a war on culture, on history, on science, on knowledge itself. Databases quite literally are vanishing.

He’s delegitimizing news organizations and he’s assaulting the First Amendment. And the threat of defunding them. At threat, he’s dictating what universities themselves can teach. He’s targeting law firms and the judicial branch that are the foundations of an orderly and civil society. He’s calling for a sitting governor to be arrested for no other reason than to, in his own words, “for getting elected.”

And we all know, this Saturday, he’s ordering our American heroes, the United States military, and forcing them to put on a vulgar display to celebrate his birthday, just as other failed dictators have done in the past.

Look, this isn’t just about protests here in Los Angeles. When Donald Trump sought blanket authority to commandeer the National Guard. he made that order apply to every state in this nation.

This is about all of us. This is about you. California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Other states are next.

Democracy is next.

Democracy is under assault right before our eyes, this moment we have feared has arrived. He’s taking a wrecking ball, a wrecking ball to our founding fathers’ historic project: three coequal branches of independent government.

There are no longer any checks and balances. Congress is nowhere to be found. Speaker Johnson has completely abdicated that responsibility.

The rule of law has increasingly been given way to the rule of Don.

The founding fathers didn’t live and die to see this kind of moment. It’s time for all of us to stand up. Justice Brandeis, he said it best. In a democracy, the most important office — with all due respect, Mr. President — is not the presidency, and it’s certainly not governor. The most important office is office of citizen.

At this moment, at this moment, we all need to stand up and be held to account, a higher level of accountability. If you exercise your First Amendment rights, please, please do it peacefully.

I know many of you are feeling deep anxiety, stress, and fear. But I want you to know that you are the antidote to that fear and that anxiety. What Donald Trump wants most is your fealty, your silence, to be complicit in this moment.

Do not give into him.

Categories Bigotry, California, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Immigration, Justice, Trump

Trump Shows His Fascist Face

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2025 //
6

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2025 //
16

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

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

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

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

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

She wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Trump Is Trying to Seize Control of Public Broadcasting, But Judge Blocks Him, for Now

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2025 //
2

Trump is determined to defund NPR and PBS. He claims they are radical, far-left media outlets. The federal funding these media receive is funneled through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

In his effort to control CPB, Trump told three members of the board of CPB that they were fired. Trump intends to control every outlet of public information, either by threatening their funding or (if private) suing to intimidate them. This is fascism.

The CPB board sued and said that it was created by Congress to be independent of political direction.

A federal district judge in DC, appointed by Obama, issued a decision that caused both sides to claim victory. The decision said that the board members would not suffer irreparable harm if removed, but that CPB is an independent agency. The judge declined to block the firings but CPB treated the ruling as a victory for its independence.

Brian Stelter of CNN described the decision:

Yesterday a federal judge declined to immediately intervene in Trump’s attempt to remove three Corporation for Public Broadcasting board members, “ruling the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate a strong likelihood the firings were unlawful or that they would suffer irreparable harm,” The Hill’s Sarah Fortinsky reports.

“But CPB officials celebrated the ruling as a win, pointing to part of the ruling that acknowledges that ‘Congress intended to preclude the President (or any subordinate officials acting at his direction) from directing, supervising, or controlling the Corporation.'” The entity’s statement on the matter is titled “Court Recognizes CPB’s Independence.”

The bottom line: CPB is keeping its board members in place and continuing to fight. 

Categories Censorship, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Funding, Trump

Russ Vought Will Keep the DOGS going Without Elon

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2025 //
8

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

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

Democracy Docket reports on Vought:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Heather Cox Richardson: History Matters. Truth Matters. Here is a Plan.

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2025 //
10

Heather Cox Richardson is a historian so naturally she recoils at the daily misuse and distortion of history by Trump and his appointees. They don’t know much about history, and they want to distort it for partisan purposes.

She has a plan to set the record straight, based on evidence and facts. Read on.

She writes:

In April, John Phelan, the U.S. Secretary of the Navy under President Donald J. Trump, posted that he visited the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial “to pay my respects to the service members and civilians we lost at Pearl Harbor on the fateful day of June 7, 1941.”

The Secretary of the Navy is the civilian head of the U.S. Navy, overseeing the readiness and well-being of almost one million Navy personnel. Phelan never served in the military; he was nominated for his post because he was a large donor to Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. He told the Senate his experience overseeing and running large companies made him an ideal candidate for leading the Navy.

The U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, is famous in U.S. history as the site of a surprise attack by 353 Japanese aircraft that destroyed or damaged more than 300 aircraft, three destroyers, and all eight of the U.S. battleships in the harbor. Four of those battleships sank, including the U.S.S. Arizona, which remains at the bottom of the harbor as a memorial to the more than 2,400 people who died in the attack, including the 1,177 who died on the Arizona itself.

The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered World War II.

Pearl Harbor Day is a landmark in U.S. history. It is observed annually and known by the name President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called it: “a date which will live in infamy.”

But that date was not June 7, eighty-four years ago today.

It was December 7, 1941.

The Trump administration claims to be deeply concerned about American history. In March, Trump issued an executive order calling for “restoring truth and sanity to American history.” It complained, as Trump did in his first term, that there has been “a concerted and widespread effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth. This revisionist movement seeks to undermine the remarkable achievements of the United States by casting its founding principles and historical milestones in a negative light.”

The document ordered the secretary of the interior to reinstate any “monuments, memorials, statues, markers, or similar properties” that had been “removed or changed to perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology.” It spelled out that the administration wanted only “solemn and uplifting public monuments that remind Americans of our extraordinary heritage, consistent progress toward becoming a more perfect Union, and unmatched record of advancing liberty, prosperity, and human flourishing.”

To that end, Trump has called for building 250 statues in a $34 million “National Garden of American Heroes” sculpture garden in order to create an “abiding love of country and lasting patriotism” in time for the nation’s 250th birthday on July 4, 2026. On May 31, Michael Schaffer of Politico reported that artists and curators say the plan is “completely unworkable.” U.S. sculptors tend to work in abstraction or modernism, which the call for proposals forbids in favor of realism; moreover, there aren’t enough U.S. foundries to do the work that quickly.

Trump is using false history to make his followers believe they are fighting a war for the soul of America. “[W]e will never cave to the left wing and the left-wing intolerance,” he told a crowd in 2020. “They hate our history, they hate our values, and they hate everything we prize as Americans,” he said. Like authoritarians before him, Trump promised to return the country to divinely inspired rules that would create disaster if ignored but if followed would “make America great again.” At a 2020 rally, Trump said: “The left-wing mob is trying to demolish our heritage, so they can replace it with a new oppressive regime that they alone control. This is a battle to save the Heritage, History, and Greatness of our Country.”

Trump’s enthusiasm for using history to cement his power has little to do with actual history. History is the study of how and why societies change. To understand that change, historians use evidence—letters, newspapers, photographs, songs, art, objects, records, and so on—to figure out what levers moved society. In that study, accuracy is crucial. You cannot understand what creates change in a society unless you look carefully at all the evidence. An inaccurate picture will produce a poor understanding of what creates change, and people who absorb that understanding will make poor decisions about their future.

Those who cannot remember the past accurately are condemned to repeat its worst moments.

The hard lessons of history seem to be repeating themselves in the U.S. these days, and with the nation’s 250th anniversary approaching, some friends and I got to talking about how we could make our real history more accessible.

After a lot of brainstorming and a lot of help—and an incredibly well timed message from a former student who has become a videographer—we have come up with Journey to American Democracy: a series of short videos about American history that we will release on my YouTube channel, Facebook, and Instagram. They will be either short explainers about something in the news or what we are releasing tonight: a set of videos that can be viewed individually or can be watched together to simulate a survey course about an important event or issue in American history.

Journey to American Democracy explores how democracy has always required blood and sweat and inspiration to overcome the efforts of those who would deny equality to their neighbors. It examines how, for more than two centuries, ordinary people have worked to make the principles the founders articulated in the Declaration of Independence the law of the land.

Those principles establish that we have a right to be treated equally before the law, to have a say in our government, and to have equal access to resources.

In late April, in an interview with Terry Moran of ABC News, Trump showed Moran that he had had a copy of the Declaration of Independence hung in the Oval Office. The interview had been thorny, and Moran used Trump’s calling attention to the Declaration to ask a softball question. He asked Trump what the document that he had gone out of his way to hang in the Oval Office meant to him.

Trump answered: “Well, it means exactly what it says, it’s a declaration. A declaration of unity and love and respect, and it means a lot. And it’s something very special to our country.”

The Declaration of Independence is indeed very special to our country. But it is not a declaration of love and unity. It is the radical declaration of Americans that human beings have the right to throw off a king in order to govern themselves. That story is here, in the first video series of Journey to American Democracy called “Ten Steps to Revolution.”

I hope you enjoy it.

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Categories Democracy, Extremism, History, Ignorance, Stupid, Trump
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