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Russian Bots Are at It Again, Trying to Sway Our Elections

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2026 //
2

Google posted the following unusual warning. The main sources are The New York Times, a YouTube video posted by Bloomberg News, and stories on MSNOW.

The warning asserted that Russian intelligence is deep into a campaign to sway the midterms in Trump’s favor, acknowledging his special relationship with Russian dictator Putin. That relationship was cemented by Trump’s latest deal to eliminate sanctions on Russian oil, to pour billions into the Russian economy, and to turn his back on Ukraine.

Google sent out the following warning:

Russia is deploying a highly sophisticated “army of bots” and generative AI to flood social media networks with fabricated videos, deepfakes, and targeted propaganda aimed at disrupting the upcoming November 3, 2026, U.S. midterm elections. [1, 2]

According to U.S. intelligence officials and recent independent research, Moscow’s primary goals are to inject chaos, undermine faith in democratic institutions, target Democratic candidates in key swing states, and weaken international support for Ukraine. [1, 2, 3]

Key Tactics and Operations

1. The “Matrioska” Drone Warfare Strategy

  • Automated Bot Swarms: A Russian disinformation network nicknamed Matrioska has been filling platforms like X (formerly Twitter) with fake election content. [1]
  • The Cycle: When researchers identify these accounts, X suspends them—but the network automatically replaces them with new dormant or artificial profiles. Experts describe this persistent replacement loop as the “disinformation equivalent of drone warfare”. [1]
  • Artificial Engagement: These bots rapidly inflate view counts on fabricated posts to make fake stories appear as though they are trending naturally. [1, 2]

2. AI-Generated Deepfakes & Impersonations

  • Celebrity Splice Fakes: Disinformation operators are pushing out AI-fabricated video clips of famous actors and musicians (including Robert De Niro, Julia Roberts, and Cher) appearing to attack political figures under campaigns like #AllDemocratsAreCriminals. [1]
  • Impersonating Major Media: U.S. intelligence reports that Russian covert campaigns are creating highly accurate clones of reputable Western news outlets like CNN, the BBC, and The New York Times to spread fake news articles and targeted character attacks against Senate candidates. [1, 2]
  • Commercial AI Misuse: Adversaries are reportedly utilizing commercial generative AI models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, to efficiently script and map out massive propaganda pipelines at an unprecedented speed. [1]

3. Integration into State Infrastructure

  • Cloud Infrastructure Consolidation: Security officials emphasize that Moscow has successfully integrated its state intelligence agencies with commercial cloud computing assets. This marks a shift from isolated “troll farms” (like the old Internet Research Agency) to a consolidated state digital ecosystem capable of massive scale.
  • Custom Bias Targeting: The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has been linked to programs designed to bypass traditional advertisement blocks by embedding customized, AI-driven propaganda directly into personal communication apps based on an individual voter’s specific biases. [1, 2]

To understand the warning, begin by watching the YouTube video posted by Bloomberg News.

Much of this material was based on a story in The New York Times about Russia’s election interference. This is a gift article. You can read it without a subscription.

Written by veteran intelligence reporters, it begins:

The Russian government has been targeting Americans with covert online disinformation operations seeking to undermine public confidence in November’s midterm elections, using a familiar playbook in an attempt to inject chaos into the voting season, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Classified U.S. intelligence assessments from recent months have determined that the Kremlin has again authorized a digital influence campaign to peddle content across social media in hopes of seeding or amplifying domestic divisions around the election season, the officials said.

The assessments did not find evidence of attempts to take aim at voting machinery in a way that could compromise the actual voting process, the officials added. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss classified information, did not specify the efforts to influence attitudes online. But experts in Russian disinformation have spotted some social media campaigns in recent weeks that use artificial intelligence to create fake videos of Hollywood celebrities talking about key battleground Senate races.

The disinformation campaign appeared to be less extensive or coordinated than at least some of Russia’s prior efforts in American elections, some of the officials said. Since 2016, the Kremlin has initiated online influence operations in every American federal election cycle, according to previously declassified assessments. The officials added that U.S. spy agencies see Moscow as less interested in midterm races than in presidential contests and as distracted by its grinding war with Ukraine.

Still, the push to inflame the electorate comes as President Trump has repeatedly sought to challenge the integrity of American democracy. In July, Mr. Trump gave a televised prime-time address on election security in which he claimed there were severe vulnerabilities in U.S. voting systems and accused American officials of a yearslong “cover-up” to conceal efforts by China and others to influence elections.

He has instructed a task force to declassify documents purporting to support his narratives of rampant voter fraud and foreign tampering, but those files, which were heavily redacted, did not reveal major new weaknesses in the country’s election systems or show that foreign governments had manipulated any votes.

Some of the officials said the main goal of the Russian influence operations appeared to be to sow chaos rather than aid one particular party, though the examples that independent disinformation researchers in recent weeks have attributed to Russia have exclusively attacked Democratic candidates in swing states.

The White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment. Russia has historically denied U.S. allegations of election meddling.

Some intelligence assessments have also found that Iran, too, may engage in influence operations around the November election as well, the officials said, though little activity had been documented in classified channels that traced to Tehran. The country, which has been locked in a war with the United States since February, sought to spread propaganda undermining Mr. Trump in the 2020 and 2024presidential elections, and officials said it was reasonable to expect the regime to do so again….

In 2016, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered a multipronged interference effort that sought to denigrate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, and bolster the electoral prospects of her Republican rival, Mr. Trump, U.S. spy agencies concluded. Multiple audits of those intelligence findings, including a multiyear investigation by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, corroborated those conclusions.

Researchers in Europe and the United States who track Russian disinformation campaigns have seen recent signs of Russian activity. In two separate waves over the past week, a network previously linked to Kremlin trolls posted a series of videos on X and BlueSky that appeared to rely on A.I. to churn out baseless claims against Democrats running for Senate in closely contested races. Elements of the campaign were reported earlier by MS NOW.

The posts attacked the candidates using themes that Mr. Trump and the Republican Party have relied on to disparage Democrats, including accusations of corruption, antisemitism and support for gay and transgender rights.

Please open the article to finish reading this important article.

Categories Disruption, Elections, Fake News, International, Media, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump

No Dictators! No Kings!

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2026 //
4

This is Charlie Chaplin’s “Great Dictator” speech.

Chaplin says that we don’t need a dictator.

After almost two years of Trump’s second term, we know he is not wiser or more efficient than a democratically elected leader. Indeed, he is most assuredly less wise and less efficient than any democratically elected leader.

He repeatedly makes decisions that drive up prices and impoverish American citizens, while cutting taxes for the richest Americans.

He launches vendettas to pursue and punish anyone he dislikes.

He has built tributes to himself and hung giant flags on government buildings to celebrate his face.

He has virtually destroyed the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

He has gilded the austere and elegant Oval Office by covering it with gold doodads.

He speaks at public events with crude and vulgar language that demeans the Presidency.

He has alienated our allies and honored our adversaries with his fawning friendship and obsequious admiration.

He has attacked and insulted the free press.

We do not need a king or a dictator.

We need leaders who honor the Constitution and uphold the rule of law.

This Saturday is “No Kings” day across the nation.

Find a group standing up for democracy and the rule of law and stand with them. March with them. Honor the best in our ideals.

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

Olga Lautman: Trump Sells Out Ukraine to Aid His Friend Putin

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2026 //
6

Trump has demonstrated again and again that laws mean nothing to him; alliances mean nothing to him. All that matters is his inflated ego and the chance to get richer.

A few days ago, he brazenly abandoned the brave Ukrainians who have battled the powerful Russian nation to a standstill.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. has passed stern laws sanctioning any country that does business with Russia. The first sanctions law passed in 2022, not long after Russia’s launching of the first ground was in Europecsince 1945.

The second law imposing sanctions on trade with Russia was passed only a month ago to honor the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who despised Putin and supported Ukraine. Trump now dishonors his good friend Lindsey Graham.

Trump ignored those laws when he announced his intention to buy diesel fuel from Russia. Ukraine and out European allies were shocked by Trump’s brazen reversal of U.S. policy. It’s no secret that Russia will receive billions of dollars from the US, which will help pay for its war against Ukraine. It will also help pay for Russian shipment of weapons to Iran.

Most puzzling is that Trump is getting only enough diesel fuel for a few weeks at most. The first shipment, “300,000 tons,” will satisfy our diesel needs for half a day. The shipment amounts to 2.5 million gallons. American consumption of diesel fuel is 4 million gallons daily.

He assumes he can hoodwink American farmers with his deal with Putin. This might help him in the midterm elections.

Olga Lautman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), describes how quickly Trump switched sides:

Victoria Deineko holds her daughter Mia while standing in front of a multi-story residential building damaged in a Russian missile strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo

It is rare to see a country switch sides so dramatically during a war, but here we are, watching Trump abandon Ukraine as it fights for its survival and instead assist Russia. And as Russia continues bombing Ukrainian cities, homes, and hospitals, killing civilians, Ukrainian officials say they went two nights in a row without the advance warnings they normally receive from the United States before Russian ballistic missile attacks. During the latest wave of Russian attacks, six people were killed and approximately 600,000 Ukrainians were left without electricity.

As if that weren’t bad enough, reports began coming out of Ukraine overnight that Elon Musk’s SpaceX had suddenly restricted Ukraine’s military StarShield satellite service, leaving Ukrainian officials blindsided. StarShield operates under a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, and the sudden 100-mile-per-hour speed limit imposed on military terminals disrupted Ukraine’s ability to intercept Russian drones, carry out reconnaissance, and maintain communications.

Ukrainian troops were also having problems staying connected even when moving below the new speed limit. Drone operators were losing live video feeds or having to slow their drones down, leaving them more vulnerable to Russian attacks. Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps said several missions had to be canceled because of this. Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov confirmed the restrictions and said that he did not believe the timing was a coincidence, considering Trump’s recent threats against Ukraine. Musk later posted on X that StarShield is controlled by the U.S. government and that decisions about restrictions are made by the military and ultimately Trump. By Wednesday evening, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported that the connection was working better, although the speed limit had not been lifted.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski was among the first to react as reports came out about the restrictions, taking aim at Musk. “Hey, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you,” he wrote on X. Poland continues to help pay for Starlink services used by Ukraine since the full-scale invasion.

Sikorski is right to call this out publicly. Why would any country want to spend billions buying American weapons or depend on American technology if the U.S. can decide when and how it can be used? And this is yet another reason America’s allies are paying close attention to what is happening in Ukraine, wondering whether they could be next.

The restrictions come just days after Trump announced a deal with war criminal Putin to ease sanctions on Russian diesel and allow the U.S. to buy Russian fuel, giving Moscow another source of revenue to fund its brutal invasion. As Ukrainians were dealing with the sudden SpaceX restrictions, Putin’s bagman Kirill Dmitriev announced earlier today that the first contracts for Russian diesel sales to the U.S. could be signed within days. Speaking at Russian Energy Week, Dmitriev said that the U.S. and Russia were communicating almost every hour to work out the logistics of resuming shipments.

Trump’s decision to reopen Russian diesel sales has drawn opposition from some in Congress. Twelve U.S. senators, including six Republicans (just six), warned that the deal would provide Putin with more money to finance his invasion. Some lawmakers also questioned whether this deal violates U.S. sanctions laws.

And while Trump is making deals with Putin, he has also lashed out at Zelenskyy, demanded elections in Ukraine, and threatened to cut off intelligence and military assistance unless Kyiv stops striking Russian oil refineries. After two nights without the usual missile warnings and the sudden StarShield restrictions, Ukrainian officials have every reason to question whether they can still trust the United States.

It’s also interesting how Trump keeps demanding elections from Ukraine but has no such demands for Putin, who has ruled Russia for more than 25 years, while jailing and assassinating opponents. And the double standard doesn’t end there, because Russia continues bombing Ukraine’s power plants and other energy infrastructure, while Trump demands that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries.

This is all happening as Russia helps Iran target American forces and interests in the Middle East. According to recent U.S. intelligence assessments, Russia and China have been supplying Iran with satellite imagery for targeting and components for weapons. But Trump dismissed the reports, even though they came from his own intelligence agencies. In a Truth Social post, he called people raising concerns “Radical Left Morons and Lunatics,” claimed that any Russian or Chinese assistance was minimal, and added, “I don’t believe they are at all.” So Trump is dismissing his own intelligence agencies’ findings about Russia helping Iran while easing sanctions on Russian diesel and threatening to cut off intel sharing to Ukraine.

And the blame for what is happening does not stop with Trump. Republicans in Congress who have remained silent or defended his decisions bear full responsibility. There are a handful of Republicans who have objected to Trump’s fealty to Putin, but far too many others have either supported his treatment of Ukraine and his attacks on European allies or refused to challenge him. One man could not carry out such a dramatic reversal of American policy without the backing of his party, which has allowed him to continue making concessions to Russia even as Moscow threatens the security of European allies.

None of us should be surprised, of course. We have watched Trump worship Putin and defend Russia for more than a decade, even siding with Moscow over American intelligence agencies. But watching him ease sanctions on Russia, threaten to cut off military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine, and oversee new restrictions on StarShield while Russia continues bombing Ukrainian cities is infuriating. This is no longer just about Trump abandoning Ukraine or pressuring Zelenskyy into a peace deal. He has put the U.S. in the position of assisting and funding Russia’s genocidal war while actively undermining Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. Trump has picked a side, and it’s Russia.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, International, Trump

The Sordid Voucher Scam Cheats Everyone But Billionaires

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2026 //
2

I have written about the devastating consequences of vouchers for years and the fact that they are promoted by billionaires and rejected whenever they are put to a statewide vote. So it is very satisfying that The New York Times, the newspaper of record, published this sharp opinion piece by Jessica Grose, a regular contributor. No both sides here; vouchers are a scam that billionaires love and that most public school parents loathe.

Jessica Grose wrote:

“I’ve been voting Republican my whole life. I’m superconservative,” the Pine Tree superintendent, Steve Clugston, tells the camera in an Instagram reel. “I’m going to tell you what: When Greg Abbott sold us out to the billionaires and sold out our schools, I’m done with his leadership.” In the Texas governor’s race, Clugston is voting for Abbott’s Democratic opponent, State Representative Gina Hinojosa.

The Pine Tree public school district is in the bright red small city of Longview in East Texas, between the big cities of Dallas and Shreveport, La. A majority of its 4,400 students are economically disadvantaged. When I caught up with Clugston on Friday, hours before the Pine Tree football team trounced its opponents under the lights, he was at his farm. “My wife’s a teacher. My daughter’s a teacher. My son-in-law’s a teacher. Both my sisters are teachers. My brother-in-law’s a retired superintendent. So I’d say education’s kind of in our blood,” he told me over the phone.

Clugston told me he’s sick of his fellow Texas conservatives straying from their principles of fiscal common sense and straight talk; he even attempted a run for the Texas State Senate as an independent conservative. He is particularly appalled by Texas’ voucher program, known as Texas Education Freedom Accounts, which went into effect this year. This program puts state money in accounts for Texas families to use outside the public school system: up to nearly $10,500 for children enrolling in private school, up to $30,000 for children with disabilities and up to $2,000 for those who are home-schooled.

The State of Texas has no say over the curriculum taught at the institutions that accept vouchers, and participating schools can discriminate against applicants for any number of reasons, including religion and disability status. Texas’ vouchers are universal, which means anyone can apply for them, regardless of financial means, though poorer students have been prioritized.

Around 70 percent of this year’s voucher recipients already were enrolled in private schools or were home-schooled. Vouchers are costing the state about a billion dollars this year alone and could ultimately cost $4.4 billion annually. While funding for vouchers comes from a budget that is separate from the public school pot, the state’s funding for public schools has not kept up with inflation.

Texas public schools are projected to lose $227 million just this year as they shed head count, according to The Houston Chronicle. More public schools may close as a result of vouchers siphoning that money away from them. In Clugston’s opinion, vouchers are “abillion-dollar giveaway program for the rich, and we’re going to have no accountability in it. Zero.”

Hinojosa has made saving public education central to her campaign for governor, and it is what got her started in politics. Her child’s school was on the brink of closure, and she describes her political trajectory as concerned parent to local school board member to Texas House member. If elected, Hinojosa has vowed to “end the voucher scam.”

I have long been frustrated at the way both parties barely talk about K-12 public education, despite plunging test scores and post-Covid woes. But the reason politicians don’t talk more about education is that votersdon’t care about it. What makes Hinojosa’s message on schools effective beyond irate public school parents and educators is that she ties the passage of vouchers to larger themes plaguing Republicans in the age of President Trump: corruption and the outsize power of billionaires.

Vouchers failed in the Texas Legislature multiple times, with rural Republicans tending to side with Democrats to block the measures. In rural areas “school choice,” even with vouchers, tends to be a mirage. There are few private schools, and public schools are often the biggest local employers and the heart of small-town life; nearly every Texan I spoke to for this newsletter said the reverence for “Friday Night Lights” is real.

When Abbott couldn’t get vouchers passed the honorable way, he decided to primary Republican state legislators who opposed the policy. He took $12 million from Jeff Yass, a pro-voucher Pennsylvania billionaire, got most of his preferred candidates into office and got vouchers passed in 2025, as The Washington Post noted.

The outcomes for students participating in voucher programs in other states have been decidedly mixed, but Yass doesn’t give a rip. “If the mother or the parent wants the kid to go from one school to another, who the hell is anyone to tell them not to?” he told The Post. “I don’t care what the studies say.”

Yass isn’t the only billionaire who meddled in vouchers in the Lone Star State. The religious Texas billionaires Tim Dunn and Farris and Dan Wilks have also poured money into pro-voucher candidates over the years. As The Texas Tribune explains, “Dunn is also the founder of Midland Classical Academy, a private school that offers its approximately 600 K-12 students a ‘classical education from a biblical worldview,’ according to its website.” (It’s worth noting that many of the elite, popular and highly ranked private schools in Texas refused to accept vouchers this year.)

Some voucher proponents claim that Texas offers more choice to underprivileged children in underperforming schools. But the data we have on other states with universal voucher programs, like Arizona, suggest that they are redistributing money to the highest income and most educated ZIP codes in cities and suburbs. An Arizona ABC station found that parents were spending their voucher money on everything from trampoline parks to ski tickets.

In Iowa, which has a universal voucher program for private schools that’s similar to Texas’, the Democratic candidate for governor and the current auditor, Rob Sand, has made a similar connection among vouchers, special interests and corruption. “The current school voucher program is an open invitation to waste, fraud and abuse of taxpayer dollars,” he explains on his campaign website.

Sand lists his voucher stance under the headline Accountability for All, where he also talks about protections for whistle-blowers and banning stock trading by politicians. By doing so, he is saying that you don’t have to care about what’s going on in the classroom to be outraged that a New York-based company called Odyssey, which manages his state’s voucher program, allegedly got a sweetheart deal for the work. As auditor, Sand found that the company “more than doubled its rate less than a month after signing their no-bid contract, costing taxpayers an additional $2.7 million.” (Odyssey, which has ties to Yass, also administers the voucher system in Texas.)

Whatever you think about public schools, it is difficult not to seethe at the fundamental unfairness of voucher programs that give money to schools that don’t have to educate all students. The Texas Observer found that of 291 private schools approved for voucher funds from the state, over 90 percent were religious or faith-based schools, “more than 100 of those schools require or prioritize for admission students of the same faith and more than 60 have a written policy that discriminates against L.G.B.T.Q.+ students, the schools’ own data shows.”

Though the Texas vouchers prioritize students with disabilities, The Observer also noted that most of the private Texas schools they analyzed lack special education services. A Dallas Morning News analysis found that thousands of students with disabilities returned state money, in part because private schools rejected them or didn’t even respond to their applications.

Some educators I spoke to in Texas and Iowa told me that they’d already seen students ricocheting back to public schools because their private or home-school experience wasn’t all it was chalked up to be. Another outrageous part of this legislation is that Texas public schools are still required to do the disability testing for families that choose vouchers, and it’s straining their limited resources.

When put to a public vote, school vouchers have been unpopular; they’re perennial losers on the ballot. It’s maddening that ideologically motivated billionaires, who probably never sent their own children to public schools, have been able to push this policy through.

According to the latest New York Times/Siena University polling, Hinojosa was up by four points, and Sand was up by 11. Texas is obviously the tougher battle, but after spending the week talking to parents there, I’m cautiously optimistic. Rebekah Baus, who described herself as a conservative Christian and lives in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with her husband and two kids, told me she is so upset about the state of public school policy that she doesn’t know which way she is voting.

The State of Texas, Baus said, is trying to pretend “our public school system is failing, but in the reality, we’re failing our public school system by not funding them properly.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Closing schools, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Funding, Iowa, Privatization, School Choice, Support for public schools, Texas, Vouchers

French Students Protest Conditions in Schools, Hundreds of Schools Closed

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2026 //
27

France continued to be disrupted by numerous student protests against conditions in the nation’s schools. Labor unions, parents, and teachers joined the protests, in which hundreds of thousands of students complained of poorly maintained, overcrowded and understaffed schools. Hundreds of schools have closed.

France will have a Presidential election next spring, which is currently led by far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. It’s also deep in debt and suffering a major economic crisis. Meanwhile, major ports are blocked by fishemen protesting the high cost of fuel. An analysis of the converging crises concluded: “Whoever prevails after this autumn of discontent, the crisis may force a more basic reckoning: France can no longer afford its social-welfare state.”

Students, however, do not accept the idea that their education must be sacrificed to the nation’s fiscal crisis. In the student protests, some schools have been burned, some students have suffered severe injuries, police have used tear gas to quell the protests.

President Trump feels compelled to comment on everything, so he offered comments that displayed his xenophobia and ignorance. He said on his Truth Social: “…what’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration.”

“This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!”

The student protests have nothing to do with immigration or Islam.

The New York Times reported:

Demonstrations swept across France on Tuesday as labor unions rallied in solidarity with high school students who have spent two weeks blockading schools to protest understaffing, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings.

Marches were held in more than 40 cities, from Caen in the north to Marseille in the south, as activists, teachers, parents and university students joined swelling protests that had spread to hundreds of schools across the country. Tuesday’s marches drew roughly 256,000 people, according to the Interior Ministry; a major union said the figure was more than twice that many.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu signaled that the government had heard the protesters’ demands and was taking them seriously. He also said regular classes would be “completely suspended” on Thursday and Friday so that principals could host sessions with students.

The protests on Tuesday were mostly peaceful, but a fire was started in Lyon and police officers unleashed tear gas in Nantes. The biggest march was in Paris, where the Interior Ministry said there were 56,000 demonstrators.

The demonstrations are a litmus test of the longevity of a protest movement that began late last month in the suburbs of Paris and quickly spread to hundreds of schools across France.

Roughly 6,000 people have been arrested since the unrest began, and Mr. Lecornu told lawmakers on Tuesday that 215 students and 85 school staff members had been injured. He condemned the violence, saying “violent individuals who mingle with the nonviolent high school students” were to blame for any unrest. Others, including a major union of French judges and prosecutors and a prominent human rights group, have accused the police of using disproportionate force against students as young as 14.

Reuters reported:

STRASBOURG/LYON/PARIS, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Police fired tear gas at protesters outside French high schools on Tuesday as students, teachers and parents took to the streets on the biggest day of what Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu described as the most violent school protests in decades.

The protests, in which a teenager lost a hand on Monday, were the latest manifestation of public anger in a country where the far right ‌and far left are surging ahead of a presidential election in the spring.

The government is under pressure to tame public debt amid weak growth, and has struggled with basic tasks such as passing a budget since President Emmanuel Macron’s allies lost their majority in a 2024 parliamentary vote.

Lecornu told lawmakers at least 215 teenagers and 85 school staff had so far been injured in clashes, “the heaviest toll in decades paid by the school system”. His office said more than 700 police officers were also hurt.

Marine Le Pen has promised to cut public spending if she is elected. That won’t resolve students’ concerns.

Categories Budget Cuts, Class size, Disruption, Elections, Failure, Funding, Higher Education, Resistance

Network for Public Education Urges States Not to Opt in to Federal Voucher Program!

By dianeravitch
October 5, 2026 //
6

The Network for Public Education is dedicated to the preservation and improvement of public schools. Public schools are a foundation stone of our democracy. Nearly 90% of American students are enrolled in public schools.

We urge concerned citizens to write to their Governor and tell them NOT to participate in the federal voucher program!

Every community needs high-quality public schools but diverting public money to private alternatives weakens public schools.

Public money should be spent in public schools.

The Trump administration does not like public schools. It encourages public funding for religious schools, vouchers, charter schools, for-profit schools, and home schools. Research and experience teach that these alternatives choose their students and they discriminate. And they get worse academic results than public schools.

Voucher schools are free to reject students with disabilities. Unlike public schools, students in special education have no rights.

Do not fall for the machinations of the Trump regime against public schools. Their intentions are not good. They loathe public schools, the schools that educated 90% of all Americans and created the greatest nation in the world.

From NPE executive director Carol Burris:

October 2, 2026

The Network for Public Education Urges Governors Not to Opt-in to the Federal Voucher Program

On October 1, the U.S. Treasury Department released regulations for the federal tax creditvoucher program that was slipped into the One Big Beautiful Bill Act and pushed through reconciliation.

The rules confirm that this program will advantage sending public dollars to private and religious schools, including schools that freely discriminate. Governors must decide whether to opt-in by January 1.

We make our recommendation that states not opt-in based on the following:

Opting in allows federal tax dollars to fund discrimination against children.

When a state opts in, federal tax dollars can flow to private and religious schools and other providers that discriminate against students based on disability, academic challenges, LGBTQ status, or religion. States are expressly forbidden from adding protections of their own.

Opting in pushes cash-strapped public schools toward “pay to play.”

The regulations allow scholarships for public school students to cover services such as tutoring or extra special education services. However, nothing in the regulations stops public schools from turning programs they now fund into paid services that would require families to scramble to cover with scholarships.

A struggling district could convert elementary band, middle school art, or high school SAT prep into programs paid for with these vouchers. Here is the catch: to do that, the district must first charge parents. Some students will get a voucher. Others will not. Children whose parents cannot pay will be shut out.

This moves us one step closer to libertarian Milton Friedman’s vision, in which parents pay to educate their children and public education disappears. Make no mistake. This has been the far right’s goal for decades.

Opting in now creates a blind commitment to a program designed by those who actively undermine public schools.

At this point, the regulations are not final nor has Treasury released its Guidance regarding what expenses will be eligible under the program. That Guidance is expected “by the end of the year,”according to Kevin Salinger at Treasury. Without the Department’s Guidance for what qualifies as an eligible expense, a governor may opt-in, only to find out that virtually any spending that makes its way to public schools or districts has been disallowed. And then they’re stuck, because it’s clear that once in, states cannot back out until the following year.

Opting in fuels the growth of schools without rules.

As privatization has expanded, NPE has documented the fraud, abuse, and chaos that charter and voucher programs have produced. Dangling more tax dollars with few restrictions will draw more bad actors into education, opening low-cost, experimental schools that mislead parents and shortchange children.

States cannot block money from flowing to schools with poor fiscal or academic records. They cannot require public reporting on how funds are used or which students are served. They cannot add safeguards against waste and fraud.

Opting in adds to an unsustainable federal deficit.

Treasury projects that by 2030 the program could cost $26 billion a year in lost federal revenue.

That is more than Title I or IDEA, the largest federal programs supporting public schools.

Opting in will drain donations from charities American families depend on.

Large, respected charities like St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and smaller ones that fund suicide prevention centers and domestic violence shelters, will now compete with a program that offers a dollar-for-dollar tax credit instead of a deduction. In an affordability crisis, donors will be drawn to giving that returns their entire contribution.

We encourage friends of public education to act today. Write your governor with a simple message: Do not opt our state into the federal voucher program. Then urge your members of Congress to repeal it. Join the millions of Americans who treasure public education and recognize this voucher program for what it is—a stealth attempt to destroy our beloved public schools.

Categories Bigotry, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Equity, For-Profit, Funding, Home Schooling, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Research, Resistance, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Support for public schools, Virtual Charter Schools, Vouchers

Robert Hubbell: Republicans Are Out of Touch with the Past and the Future

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2026 //
10

Robert Hubbell is a steady and wise blogger who has a knack for interpreting events as they happen. While Heather Cox Richardson looks at the day’s events from a historical perspective; Hubbell has a keen perspective honed by age and experience.

At a time when the public is skeptical, even fearful, of artificial intelligence, Trump has embraced this powerful technology with fervor, reassuring the tech titans that the federal government won’t regulate them but will trust them to regulate themselves. Simultaneously, Bill Gates was worrying in public that AI had the potential to wipe out a billion people. This is a “don’t worry, be happy” moment for Trump and his circle. They Pooh-pooh the growing number of people who worry about what big data centers will do to their water supply, their electricity bills, their jobs, their lives. Trump doesn’t get it.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans have chosen to use the weeks before the mid-term elections rehashing the investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn his electoral loss in 2024. They have chosen this moment to prosecute Jack Smith, who led the investigation of Trump. In their attempt to prove that Trump was unjustly targeted, they are successfully rekindling bad memories of January 6, 2021, when Trump summoned a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. Five years later, is this a winning hand for them. Hubbell thinks not.

He wrote about yesterday’s events;

Tuesday was a wild news day, but the throughline is this: Republicans are missing this moment in America, only five weeks before the midterms. They are clutching to the transitory retrograde spasm that propelled Trump to the presidency for all it is worth. They have no platform, no values, no principles, and no vision, so they cling tightly to the culture wars they exploited for a decade. But Americans have moved on to new issues, including the threat of uncontrolled artificial intelligence, the growing economic chasm between the haves and have-nots, the crushing burden of medical debt, the unaffordability of higher education, and the imploding economy for those who work for a living.

As the electorate recoils in disgust and fear over the coming onslaught at the hands of AI, Trump posed with nineteen AI oligarchs at the White House (eighteen of whom are men). At that meeting, Trump surrendered control of AI’s future to the handful of billionaires who will most benefit from the reckless development of a technology that will put millions of Americans out of work while polluting their communities and driving up electricity costs. Talk about a lack of self-awareness. See CNN Politics, Trump’s blasé attitude toward AI risks backfiring politically.

Per CNN,

Trump’s answer to voters who worry that AI will take their jobs, or who look askance at data centers’ enormous strains on electrical grids and water supplies, is an optimistic promise that such installations are “going to be very popular” and will make everyone rich.

He’s causing himself an immediate political problem. Some 75% of Americans view the growth of AI with fear and concern, according to a CNN/SSRS poll last week, and 71% want the federal government to do more to regulate it. Higher electricity bills attributed to the immense proliferation of data centers are deepening affordability frustrations among voters — a top midterm election issue.

So, at a time when more than 70% of Americans fear AI and want the government to regulate it,Trump entered into a deal that handed control of AI to the men most likely to profit from its unregulated development. See NBC News, After summit with tech titans, Trump calls for ‘self-regulation’ by AI companies.

When in the history of the world has “self-regulation” by monopolists ever inured to the benefit of the people—as opposed to the generational wealth of the monopolists?

At the luncheon, Trump and the AI oligarchs signed a “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” Trump’s rebranding of “artificial intelligence.” The term “super intelligence” is insulting to humans. “Artificial intelligence” correctly signals that the technology is a probabilistic prediction model about which words follow other words. Calling it “super intelligence” signals that it is superior to human intelligence—which it is not and never will be. But Trump sees a profit opportunity in convincing people that they are inferior to AI, so he chose the moment five weeks before the midterms to align himself with the AI oligarchs and their dangerous vision of the future.

The “Accord on Super Intelligence” (which has not been made public—another worrisome sign) allegedly commits the AI tech companies to “building robust internal controls and detecting if there are any issues with the technology, coupled with multiple layers of auditing and controls, starting with internal risk review.” See The Guardian, Trump announces vague ‘morally binding’ AI deal among tech CEOs for ‘tremendous self-policing’.

You have got to be kidding, right?

If the AI tech companies are not already “building robust controls” and “detecting issues with the technology” and submitting it to “multiple layers of auditing and risk review,” then those tech companies should be shut down immediately. And if they are already employing those practices, then Trump got nothing in exchange for his agreement to let the AI oligarchs regulate themselves.

But the larger point is that hosting an AI oligarchs’ lovefest at the White House was Trump’s strategy for stopping his freefall in the polls. It was a monumentally stupid idea that was improbably exceeded in its stupidity by Senate Republicans who thought that the best way to distract from inflation, the Iran war, and existential fear of AI was to remind voters that Trump mounted an insurrection in 2021. They did so by bringing former special counsel Jack Smith to the Senate for a hearing.

For the third time, Jack Smith gave a commanding performance, reminding congressional Republicans that he had developed evidence that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump conspired to obstruct the congressional count of electoral votes and unlawfully took national defense documents when he left office. See PBS, WATCH: Jack Smith says he would prosecute Trump again for ‘serious crimes against our nation’.

Apart from the gross error of believing the American people are focused on Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s crimes instead of the war, inflation, and the AI threat, GOP Senator Eric Schmitt’s questioning of Jack Smith turned into a debacle for the ages. Senator Schmitt believed he could prove that Jack Smith attended an NBA Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024 to surreptitiously conspire with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

After Jack Smith said he did not attend the game, Senator Schmitt smirked and accused Smith of perjury. Senator Schmitt concluded by calling Jack Smith a “dirt bag.”

When Jack Smith was handed a copy of the texts that allegedly placed him at a men’s professional basketball game featuring the NBA Atlanta Hawks, he said he could explain.

Instead of being at the Atlanta Hawks men’s professional basketball game, Jack Smith was at a women’s college basketball game between Maryland and Iowa. The University of Iowa’s sports teams are known as “the Hawkeyes” (not the Hawks). See C-SPAN, Sen. Schmitt confuses Hawks and Hawkeyes While Accusing Jack Smith of Perjury. The C-SPAN clip is 7 minutes long and contains the gist of the exchange.

Right-wing media was prepared for Senator Schmitt’s planned perjury trap—which failed in a spectacular fashion when it turned out that Senator Schmitt did not know the difference between the NBA Atlanta Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team. 

Several right-wing podcasters and commentators released canned statements saying that Schmitt had trapped Jack Smith in perjury but they later deleted those statements when they realized that Senator Schmitt had committed a face-plant for the ages. See Rolling Stone, Eric Schmitt Gaffe in Jack Smith Hearing Covered as Win by MAGA Media. (“Johnson deleted his post later on Tuesday, after it had been up for hours with a community correction. Sean Hannity also picked up and ran with Schmitt’s story, but deleted his post highlighting the moment soon after.”)

But the more significant point is that Senator Schmitt’s planned perjury trap for Jack Smith was intended as his stealth launch as a vice-presidential candidate in JD Vance’s 2028 presidential campaign. Hours before the Senate hearing, someone planted a story with the ever-obliging Axios that there was “buzz” that Senator Schmitt might be JD Vance’s running mate. See Axios, Sen. Eric Schmitt is drawing buzz as a possible Vance VP in 2028.

Axios reporter Jim VandeHei wrote, “We hear the VP views Schmitt, 51, as trustworthy, intelligent, articulate, and a deft political operator.”

The Axios story was obviously planted by JD Vance or Eric Schmitt. It aged badly in four hours.

More to the point, if JD Vance thinks Eric Schmitt is a good VP candidate, it confirms that Republicans are more out of touch than imagined. Vance exudes arrogance and creepiness— “anti-charisma.” Eric Schmitt would add sneering smugness with a dollop of white nationalism to the ticket. 

The fact that anyone thought to float a trial balloon of Eric Schmitt as a VP candidate shows that the next generation of Republican leaders are missing the moment and failing to anticipate the future direction of the American electorate.

Other examples abound. The backlash against the implementation of Trump’s mass deportation policy has been severe. Rather than deporting the “worst of the worst,” Trump has effectively kidnapped law-abiding, productive members of American society and deported them to troubled countries with which the deportees have no connection. So, for example, the US has agreements to deport people seized in the US to (among others) Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, South Sudan, the DRC, and the Central African Republic. See Refugees International, Banished by Bargain: Third Country Deportation Watch (2026)

In the face of the backlash, the Trump administration is doubling down on its policy of renditions to third-party countries. On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue its policy of deporting immigrants to third-party countries, at least for now. See Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration’s Third-Country Deportations, for Now.

Even if deportations are warranted and lawful, sending deportees to third countries with which they have no connection (and are often violence-prone) is cruel and inhumane. Trump and Stephen Miller appear to derive perverse pleasure from inflicting suffering on immigrants seeking asylum in the US.

And in a development that seems designed to ensure Ken Paxton’s defeat in his senatorial race against James Talarico, federal prosecutors in Texas have charged the Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot in the back by ICE agents with assault. See Man Shot by ICE Agent in Austin Is Charged With Assault – The New York Times

A similar story is playing out in education. On Monday, the Department of Education announced that it was officially removing a Biden administration rule that added LGBTQ protections to Title IX. See Education Week, Ed. Dept. Officially Kills Biden Rule That Added LGBTQ+ Protections to Title IX.

The Trump administration exhibits animus toward LGBTQ+ people in general, and toward transgender people in particular. Although the administration often justifies that animus on the grounds of preventing transgender people from participating in women’s sports, the repeal of the Biden-era rule is an attack on women who are victims of sexual assault on college campuses. As explained in the Education Week article,

The 2020 rules [imposed by Trump] notably had added more due-process protections for students accused of sexual harassment, an issue especially salient at the college level. . . . [¶]

The National Women’s Law Center warned the department’s move “significantly weakens protections against sexual harassment in education.” It pointed to a case of alleged sexual assault of a woman by fraternity members at Cornell University that has been in the news. A state prosecutor has reopened the investigation of the 2024 incident, which Cornell said in a statement that it supports notwithstanding its own Title IX investigation that resulted in a range of sanctions for the accused students.

In other words, at the very moment of national outrage over Cornell’s investigation and punishment of male students accused of a gang rape in 2022, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for victims of sexual assault to hold their attackers accountable. See Human Rights Campaign, You Get No Say: Trump Administration Abandons Rule Protecting LGBTQ+ Kids and Survivors of Sexual Assault in School Settings, Denying Public Any Chance to Weigh In.

As I said in the introduction, Republicans simply do not understand the cross-currents of change that are sweeping the country. Instead, they are running a playbook that ignores the fact that their standard-bearer has become everything that he ran against in 2016.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Politics, Technology, Trump

Will the Trump Administration Build a Baseball Stadium in a National Park?

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2026 //
13

Will the Trump administration permit a Major League Baseball team to build a park in the Grand Tetons National Park?

The idea sounds crazy until you remember that Trump built an Ultimate fighting arena on the White House lawn so he could see several matches without having to travel.

The Washington Post reported:

Major League Baseball has approached the Trump administration about hosting a game at a national park, officials from the White House and MLB confirmed Saturday.

The administration has scouted locations in Grand Teton National Park to build a baseball park to host an MLB game, according to two other people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Grand Teton is the country’s eighth-most visited national park and is famous for its breathtaking views of the Teton Range of the Rocky Mountains. National parks are among the country’s most protected federal lands, and constructing a sports facility at Grand Teton could set a new precedent for the use of vast national park land in the Western United States.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Fake, Fake News, Insane, International, Iowa

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s Cruel, Reckless Fantasy World

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2026 //
3

As the midterm elections get nearer, Trump grows ever more desperate in his attempt to prove that he is hugely popular, that the media are liars, and that elections are fraudulent.

We have never seen anything like this. Other candidates, other presidents have faced midterm elections without falling into a pit of craziness and desperation and fraud.

Read what Heather Cox Richardson reports:

After a hearing yesterday about Trump’s Friday ban of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House campus, very early this morning—I was still awake writing yesterday’s letter—U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted the request of the media outlets to stop Trump’s order banning members of their organizations from the White House complex.

Kelly, whom Trump appointed to the bench in 2017, challenged the argument of the White House that it had banned the journalists because they had endangered national security, noting that the stories to which administration lawyers claimed to object were “routine.” In fact, one of the stories the White House claimed endangered national security was based on a press call from the White House itself. According to Oliver Darcy, who writes the media newsletter Status, the anonymous “senior administration official” who provided the quotations on the call was none other than Vice President J.D. Vance.

Kelly ordered the credentials of 78 journalists restored immediately.

This morning, the White House continued to deny reporters from CNN, Politico, and MS NOW access to the White House campus. Their lawyers asked for an emergency hearing because the administration had “already repeatedly violated the Court’s Order,” and soon after the judge ordered the administration to respond, the reporters were once again allowed into the area.

And then tonight, at least CNN and MS NOW were blocked from access to the White House state dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. After Trump posted on social media that CNN and MS NOW (he called it MSDNC) were refusing to cover Xi’s visit “because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’” the White House told CNN it could send only an audio producer and a cameraman to the event, not a reporter or producer. Senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said: “They again said that we were specifically denied access and that they were not letting in the CNN editorial presence.”

This morning, Trump complained on social media that “[t]he Media is trying to cover up how well things are going before the Midterms, just to help Democrats.”

And that’s the gist of Trump’s attacks on media outlets: MAGA is falling apart, and he either lives in a fantasy world or hopes to stem that collapse by issuing propaganda that will convince voters he is actually winning.

The fantasy world thesis has supporting evidence in an image posted on Trump’s social media account this morning, showing Trump and Xi standing together on a red carpet in front of an airplane apparently labeled Air China. There is a military aircraft flying over a circle of stars with the words “Only Trump” superimposed in a German-style blackletter font. Behind Trump, to his right, is a young woman who looks like Trump’s loyal aide Natalie Harp standing with her hand over her heart.

Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice noted that the image was a digitally altered photo in which the image of the chief officer of protocol of the United States, Monica Crowley, had been replaced by an image that appears to be Harp.

Convincing voters he is winning is an even harder sell.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is its signature policy, and last week a federal appeals court stopped the Trump administration from sending migrants to third countries, finding that the short timeline for those renditions stripped deportees of their right to due process. The administration appears to have continued the renditions, arguing that the court had not officially notified a lower court of its decision and thus it was not yet in effect, prompting an appeals court to clarify that the flights must stop.

Today Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to step in to permit those renditions to third countries. He said that disruption of the administration’s “plans…imposes massive costs on the government and invariably requires new rounds of diplomatic engagement with countries who may be all the more skeptical of our removal efforts given the disruption.”

Also today, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for ignoring his previous orders and continuing to hold people in “inhumane and unconstitutional” conditions at Manhattan’s 26 Federal Plaza, depriving detainees of “sleep, sanitary living conditions, basic personal hygiene needs, sufficient food and water, and adequate medical care.” Although, as Josephine Walker of Axios points out, the administration likely sees the appalling conditions of its prisons as a way to induce migrants to leave, the judge required ICE to provide adequate space and humane conditions for detainees.

Meanwhile, as Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press reported today, a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that ICE had no strategic plan for spending the unprecedented $45 billion Congress gave it in Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, and has wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on slapdash plans for mass detention.

It spent nearly $3 million for tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million for maintaining warehouses that were never used to house detainees and are now being sold, and excessive rates to lock people up. Foley reports that the Department of Homeland Security told the GAO that it would have a plan for spending its windfall by August 31, 2027, nearly a year from now.

After Trump announced the U.S. would accept meat from other countries in order to lower food prices, on September 22 the Department of Agriculture announced the recall of more than 167,000 pounds (75,750 kg) of raw pork, beef, and goat. The items were produced without federal inspection but carried false marks claiming they had been inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency said the food “should be considered misbranded and unsafe to eat.”

Trump’s insistence that the country suffers from voter fraud isn’t going well, either.

In California, Republican sheriff Chad Bianco and the Riverside County sheriff’s department confiscated more than 650,000 ballots after California voters agreed to redistrict the state to offset the Republican mid-decade redistricting of Texas. The state’s Democratic attorney general immediately ordered him to return the ballots, saying he had no authority to confiscate them and that the seizure was intended to make people distrust elections.

As Uwa Ede-Osifo of the Guardian reported, the California Supreme Court today ordered Blanco to return the ballots, saying that it was Blanco, rather than voters, who was endangering elections: “Allowing law enforcement unfettered access to ballots, or the ability to handle and count them in secret, based on unregulated protocols, itself creates a substantial risk to election integrity,” it said.

On Saturday, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes it a felony to seize ballots from a county elections office.

Trump’s own claims of voter fraud also took a hit this week. As Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times reported today, in July, Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin claimed they had found more than 270,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Mullin stated that there were as many as 15,903 noncitizens on the voter rolls in Nevada.

But when officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) met with Nevada election officials in August, they admitted Mullin’s number was inflated. After the meeting, one wrote to say that the department had confirmed just 185 people on the voter rolls were not citizens. They sent Nevada officials a list of those 185 names.

On Tuesday, Nevada told the federal government that the 185 people on the government’s list are all citizens. “Our records do not support DHS’s claims, and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that,” said Francisco Aguilar, Nevada’s Democratic secretary of state. “Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence. Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true.”

Trump’s job approval rating continues to drop. Fifty Plus One aggregated new polls today and found that only 34.7% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the presidency, while 62.1% disapprove.

Meridith McGraw, Maggie Severns, and Suzanne Vranica of the Wall Street Journal reported today that an ad airing in major U.S. markets shows Trump promising to “defeat communism, Marxism in America once and for all,” before showing images of Trump at White House events as a choir sings “Love Me.” At the end of the ad, the screen reads: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

Former campaign finance official Daniel Weiner called the ad “an astonishing misuse of public resources in the campaign context, one of the most blatant I’ve ever seen.” Democratic lawmakers wrote to the White House demanding the ad be taken down, calling it “government propaganda” more fitting for North Korea than the U.S. and “an egregious and illegal misuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars.”

According to the Wall Street Journal reporters, the White House says the ad is a “public service announcement,” “reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad.”

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Lies, Trump

Joyce Vance: A Week of Political Craziness

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2026 //
6

Joyce Vance is a former federal prosecutor who writes a terrific blog called Civil Discourse. In this post, she summarizes the major political events of the past week.

She writes:

What happened:

After a hearing Tuesday morning, Judge Christopher Cooper blocked the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees from returning Trump’s name to the building. “Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing.” That includes proposals to add “renovated and restored by Donald J. Trump” on the main building or renaming the campus the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”

You can read Judge Cooper’s full opinion here.

Why it matters:

The administration has acted in bad faith on this one, stretching the court’s patience thin. In today’s order, the Judge noted that “the drama at the Kennedy Center continues.” The administration flirted with defying a court order when it delayed the removal of Trump’s name after the first court order. It then draped the front of the building in an apparent childish move akin to Trump announcing that if his name couldn’t be there, no one else’s would be visible. But there was absolutely no justification for Trump’s more recent efforts to get the Board to return his name to the front of the Center after the Judge had already entered an injunction. Had the administration moved forward, it would have been flagrant defiance of a court order. 

It matters when a court tells this particular litigant that it meant what it said and that compliance isn’t optional. “To obtain relief enforcing a prior order, a plaintiff must demonstrate that ‘a defendant has not complied with a judgment entered against it,’” Judge Cooper wrote. Then he ordered the relief the plaintiff requested—enforcing the injunction that the President refuses to comply with and sending a message that he had no intention of letting Trump get away with the semantic gymnastics when he’d attempted to put his name back up with President Kennedy’s.

What comes next:

Of course there will be an appeal. But the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. Trump cannot put his name back on President Kennedy’s memorial. The distraction value of this case is over. 

This decision, like so many others, was a no-brainer legally. The case has so little merit that one wouldn’t even expect a neutral Supreme Court to touch it on certiorari; they’d just let the Court of Appeals decision stand. Unless the Supreme Court wants to wake up one morning to discover they have been rebranded as the “Donald J. Trump-Improved Supreme Court” they would do well to follow Judge Cooper’s lead. 

But there’s still a cautionary tale: the destruction of the East Wing. We know how Trump operates. The lawyers may need to go back to court to seek an injunction to prevent him from tearing the Kennedy Center down. Today he told the press, “For me to go and fix it and subsidize it, I think the Trump administration should have recognition. If we don’t do that, it’s going to close and get ripped down.” It doesn’t get much more clear than that.

Tuesday, after the Court’s decision, Trump posted on Truth Social, making it sound like the Kennedy Center is falling apart. It is an older building, and it always needs some work. Just because Trump happens to be in the White House when repairs are done doesn’t mean his name belongs on it. Adam Klasfeld nailed it when he wrote: “Congress appropriated $250M+ in taxpayer money last year for Trump’s wish-list renovations for the Kennedy Center, inserting no language about holding the whole thing hostage if it’s not a shrine to Trump.”

But you get the tenor of how irrational Trump is about this whole affair in a lengthy Tuesday Truth Social post:

Shockingly, a Judge appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, Christopher Cooper, ruled that The Kennedy Center, which was going to close in early July for largescale renovations and construction due to years of neglect, decay, and poor maintenance, and which was to be transformed by the Trump Administration into the Finest Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World, is not allowed to close for these renovations, which would not be possible to properly do without such a closure. Additionally, Judge Cooper ruled that the 36 Member Board of Trustees, which unanimously voted to add the name “TRUMP” onto the former Kennedy Center, making it The Trump Kennedy Center, did not have the right to do such an addition, and the name, “TRUMP,” must be removed.

…

Judge Cooper and the Radical Left would rather see it DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of, much as I have done, in many cases, throughout my life, and recently, with all of the construction, renovations, and ‘fix ups’ that we have completed.” He concludes in vintage Trump fashion: “There has never been a President of the United States who has been treated so unfairly by the Courts as I but, that’s OK, I will continue to do, what is considered to be, a great job for the wonderful people of our Country.

You may not have had a constitutional crisis over the naming of the Kennedy Center on your bingo card for this year, but here we are. Any of the actions Trump seems to be contemplating here would run afoul of the court’s order.

Also Worth Noting Today:

Oral argument took place yesterday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in a case involving whether Lindsey Halligan, a Trump attorney with no experience as a prosecutor, was properly put in place as his US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. (Halligan was appointed after the incumbent in that position was forced out in the debacle over the first—and now dismissed—indictment of Jim Comey.) The lower court’s ruling that Halligan was appointed illegally also led to the dismissal of federal charges against New York AG Letitia James. At least two of the judges on the panel seemed inclined to believe that the administration had broken the rules and the lower court’s decision should stand. 

In other news, Laura Weiss at Punchbowl reported on Kash Patel’s Tuesday outing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, noting that it became “incredibly tense – not just between Patel and Dems.” Senators Grassley and Booker tussled after Patel insulted Vermont Senator Peter Welch, calling him “a complete and total fraud” during questioning. Patel accused Democrats of “attacking him for campaign ads.” But it got worse for Patel, who all but begged Grassley to end the hearing during questioning from Senator Adam Schiff. That line of questioning recalled Schiff’s time as a federal prosecutor—he knows how to handle a difficult witness. Schiff grilled Patel about firing every agent who worked on the Mar-a-Lago investigation (reminder: agents don’t get a choice which matters they work on; they’re assigned). 

Schiff to Patel: “I will remind you, director, because you probably need reminding, that while this Congress is not going to investigate the wrongful termination of potentially hundreds of agents, the next Congress will. And you have an obligation as FBI director to ensure that none of the [documents] are destroyed.” Patel, who reportedly tried to pack up his things and leave, appealed to Grassley for help: “I would appreciate it if you concluded this hearing.”

Although Patel’s exchange with Louisiana Senator John Kennedy over bestiality and FBI hiring garnered the most media attention, the more important exchange was the one with Welch, who accused Patel of being “more than willing” to use the FBI to advance Trump’s personal grievances over election losses, saying, “My concern is that this means what you are willing to do for the president in this year’s midterm elections that the president is already saying are going to be rigged if he loses.” He asked Patel about sending agents to the polls and whether he would promise to “not in any way interfere in the will of the American people when they go to the polls in November.” Patel responded, “I have pledged unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies.” That’s not exactly a no.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump seems to have found more crazy. Frantic for a new distraction, he is accusing the Biden administration of mishandling the investigation into one of the assassination attempts on him in Pennsylvania. You’ve just got to read this one to believe it.

This is what we can expect between now and the midterms, and likely beyond, especially if Trump is perceived as the cause of Democratic gains. It’s Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with sh*t.” Remember that they want you to feel overloaded and incapable of coping. Take some time for yourself, and then remember we have work to do. There will be another “No Kings” event on October 17 to help us get out the vote, and we will be okay because we have each other.

I’m grateful you’re here with me at Civil Discourse. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! If you’re not, today is a great day to become one and support a community that believes well-informed citizens can save a democracy.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Categories Democracy, Deregulation, Discipline, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Stupid, Trump
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