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Thom Hartmann: In Trump’s America, ICE Can Detain Anyone–Even You–Without Cause or a Hearing

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2025 //
9

As I read this frightening post by Thom Hartmann, I was reminded of the many times in first term that he longed for protestors or suspects to be roughed up. He spoke to police officers in New York and urged them not to be so gentle when they apprehended suspects. He encouraged his audience to beat up troublemakers and send him their legal bills. He has a strange love of violence, though he himself dodged the draft five times.

Hartmann describes the freedom of ICE to arrest and detain anyone without a warrant, without any due process. Where is this going?

It can happen here. It is happening here.

Hartmann writes:

Imagine stepping off a plane in the United States, fully expecting to enter the country without issue, only to be surrounded by armed agents, handcuffed, and thrown into a freezing detention center. No trial. No lawyer. No contact with the outside world.

In Trump’s America, you are no longer guaranteed your rights or freedom—because now, it takes nothing more than an ICE agent’s “suspicion” to make you disappear.

This isn’t a mistake. It’s part of an expanding system of cruelty, where ICE—once an agency tasked with immigration enforcement—is now operating like an unchecked police force, targeting legal residents, visitors, and even US citizens with impunity.

They have become—since the days when Trump sent them here into Portland without ID to kidnap citizens off the streets and torment them in 2020—the Führer’s private police force. His very own “protection squads” or Schutzstaffel.

People who follow every rule, complete all the required paperwork, and obey every regulation are still finding themselves locked away, held in horrific conditions, and stripped of their rights—all based on the whims of an agent who doesn’t even need evidence to justify an arrest.

A U.S. citizen from Chicago was among 22 people recently subjected to unlawful arrests and detention by ICE. The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that during Trump’s first term, immigration authorities asked to hold approximately 600 likely citizens and actually deported about 70 likely citizens.

But now, in part because of the Laken Riley Act, it’s getting worse. Forty-two Democrats in the House and fourteen in the Senate voted to pass this execrable GOP bill last month; it was named after a young woman murdered by an undocumented alien whose story was relentlessly promoted by Fox “News” and other rightwing hate media.

That law, recently signed by Trump, says that ICE now has the authority to detain anybody — anybody — for an indefinite period of time — no time limit whatsoever — if an ICE agent simply says that he or she “suspects” the person is in the country illegally or without documentation.

Did you think, “It can’t happen here”?

Wake up: Trump has already begun putting it into effect, although our media seem curiously silent about its application.

Fabian Schmidt, a German-born engineer, has lived in the United States for nearly two decades, legally working, paying taxes, and contributing to his community. None of that mattered when he returned home from a trip abroad. As soon as he landed at Logan Airport in Boston, ICE agents pulled him aside. His green card renewal was “flagged” for some unknown reason—no explanation, no opportunity to clarify, just a red mark in a government system.

That was all it took. ICE stripped him of his clothes, subjected him to hours of aggressive questioning, and locked him in a detention center. They threw him into an ice-cold shower and left him shivering on the concrete floor, humiliated and terrified.

For days, his mother, Astrid, desperately tried to find him. She called ICE, Customs and Border Protection, and any agency that might give her an answer. They either ignored her or outright lied, claiming they had no record of her son. When she finally learned where he was, Fabian was barely holding himself together. “They treat us like animals,” he told her.

And why was he there? Because of a supposed “bureaucratic error.” ICE used a minor paperwork issue as an excuse to detain a legal resident of the United States without due process, a tactic that’s becoming frighteningly common.

For Jessica Brösche, a German tattoo artist, her visit to the United States was supposed to be brief—just a trip to see friends and enjoy the country. She had a valid passport, a return ticket, and legal permission to enter under the Visa Waiver Program. Yet, ICE decided that she might try to work while visiting, a baseless assumption that required no proof and no justification. 

Just “suspicion.” That was enough to detain her indefinitely.

Once inside, the nightmare deepened. They threw her into a cell with no bed and no access to legal assistance. For eight straight days, they kept her in solitary confinement. The lights never dimmed, and the sounds of other detainees screaming in despair echoed through the walls. She started hallucinating, her grip on reality slipping. Desperate to feel something, anything real, she punched the walls until her knuckles bled.

Meanwhile, her best friend, Amelia, searched frantically for her. ICE refused to confirm her location or even acknowledge that they had detained her. No charges, no trial, no legal recourse—just silence.

Jessica’s case isn’t unique. People who follow all immigration rules are being detained under vague suspicions, often disappearing into a bureaucratic black hole. And once they’re inside the system, their rights mean nothing.

Consider Jasmine Mooney, the actor who starred in the American Pie franchise and a Canadian businesswoman who played by the rules. She secured a job offer, completed all visa paperwork, and followed every U.S. immigration law to the letter. But that didn’t stop ICE from shackling her, chaining her wrists, ankles, and waist as if she were a violent offender.

For days, she was trapped in a brutal private, for-profit detention facility, laying on the bare floor with nothing but a crinkled foil sheet for warmth. Then, in the dead of night, ICE dragged her from her cell, bound her in chains again, and forced her onto a bus with dozens of other women. They drove for hours, denying them food, water, or bathroom breaks. By the time she arrived at another facility, she had been awake for 24 hours and was too weak to stand.

To this day, ICE refuses to explain why she was detained. And why would they? They don’t have to. The agency operates with absolute power, detaining people for as long as they want, answering to no one.

Moody tells her horrifying story to The Guardian, writing:

“I was then placed in a real jail unit: two levels of cells surrounding a common area, just like in the movies. I was put in a tiny cell alone with a bunk bed and a toilet. …

“There were around 140 of us in our unit. Many women had lived and worked in the US legally for years but had overstayed their visas – often after reapplying and being denied. They had all been detained without warning.”

These aren’t isolated cases. ICE has transformed itself into an authoritarian force that detains people indefinitely on suspicion alone. No evidence? No trial? No problem.

And the for-profit prison industry that’s holding many if not most of them has no incentive to help these people; the more they detail and the longer they stay, the more money the prison companies make (which they then share as campaign donations with Republican politicians).

ICE agents don’t need proof. They only need the power to act—and Trump has given it to them.

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Categories Accountability, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Immigration, Injustice, Shame, Trump, Tyranny

Rep. Rosa DeLauro: Trump and Musk Want to Fire Nearly 300,000 Teachers

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2025 //
7

Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut is a stalwart ally of public schools. When Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, she was chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee and she will be again when Democrats regain control of the House. She knows the federal budget.

Check her attachment to see how many teachers will be laid off in YOUR Congressional district. The deep cuts will affect both Republican and democratic districts.

Rep. DeLauro issued a warning about the deep cuts to education that Trump and Musk are planning:

WASHINGTON — Last week, through his unlawful executive order, President Trump took another step in his plan to eliminate the Department of Education. Next, he plans to eliminate Title I grants that help 26 million students learn. House Appropriations Committee and Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education Subcommittee Ranking Member Rosa DeLauro released a new fact sheet detailing the number of teachers in each district that stand to be kicked out of the classroom, leaving millions of students across the country without a teacher.

 “We are in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis, and Elon Musk and President Trump are making it worse. President Trump promised to fight for the working class, but instead, he put Elon Musk and billionaires in charge of the government. His plan to eliminate Title I grants that help 26 million students in schools across the country would mean that nearly 300,000 teachers across the United States stand to be kicked out of the classroom. This would leave millions of students without a teacher. President Trump and unchecked billionaire Elon Musk do not care about helping hardworking people build a better life or helping our kids learn. They care only about tax breaks for billionaires and the biggest corporations.”

 A fact sheet on the number of teachers in each district that stand to be kicked out of the classroom is here.

 Ranking Member DeLauro’s previous statements on the unlawful elimination of Education employees can be found here and here.

 Her letter to Secretary McMahon demanding answers to mass firings is here. Her February statement on Elon Musk’s and President Trump’s dismantling of the Department of Education is here.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Musk, Elon, Poverty, Stupid, Teachers, Trump

Refugees in Bangladesh Will Die of Starvation Due to U.S. Budget Cuts in Foreign Aid

By dianeravitch
March 25, 2025 //
7

Mujib Mashal wrote in The New York Times about the desperate starvation facing the Rohingya refugees as a result of the shutdown of U.S. foreign aid. They escaped Myanmar’s “ethnic cleansing” and now live in a United Nations camp, where their survival depends on donations of food from benevolent nations. The U.S., thanks to billionaires Trump and Musk. They should take a tour of the camps and see for themselves why foreign aid is impirtant.

Mashal writes:

More than a million people in the world’s largest refugee camp could soon be left with too little food for survival. 

In the camp in Bangladesh, United Nations officials said, food rations are set to fall in April to about 18 pounds of rice, two pounds of lentils, a liter of cooking oil and a fistful of salt, per person — for the entire month.

The Trump administration’s freeze on aid has overwhelmed humanitarian response at a time when multiple conflicts rage, with aid agencies working feverishly to fill the void left by the U.S. government, their most generous and reliable donor. Many European nations are also cutting humanitarian aid, as they focus on increasing military spending in the face of an emboldened Russia.

The world is left teetering on “the verge of a deep humanitarian crisis,” U.N. Secretary General António Guterres warned on a visit to the Rohingya refugee camp in southeastern Bangladesh on Friday.

“With the announced cuts in financial assistance, we are facing the dramatic risk of having only 40 percent in 2025 of the resources available for humanitarian aid in 2024,” he said, addressing a crowd of tens of thousands of Rohingya refugees. “That would be an unmitigated disaster. People will suffer, and people will die.”

At the refugee camp at Cox’s Bazar, overcrowded warrens of bamboo and tarp huts on mounds of dirt house more than a million Rohingya people driven from their homeland, Myanmar, by a campaign of ethnic cleansing that intensified in 2017.

Fenced off from the rest of Bangladesh, and almost entirely cut off from opportunities to find work or integrate into the country, the Rohingya refugees remain entirely at the mercy of humanitarian aid. The United Nations, with the help of the Bangladeshi government and dozens of aid organizations, looks after the needs of the traumatized people — education, water, sanitation, nutrition, medical care and much more.

The sudden drop in humanitarian aid threatens a wide range of programs and communities around the world, but the plight of the Rohingya is unusual in its scale and severity.

“Cox’s Bazar is ground zero for the impact of budget cuts on people in desperate need,” Mr. Guterres said. “Here it is clear budget reductions are not about numbers on a balance sheet. Funding cuts have dramatic human costs.”

Even at the current food allowance of $12.50 per person, per month, more than 15 percent of the children at the camp are acutely malnourished, according to the United Nations — the highest level recorded since 2017, when hundreds of thousands of refugees arrived after a sharp escalation of violence in Myanmar.

When a funding shortfall slashed the monthly food allowance to $8 in 2023, malnutrition and crime soared. People tried to flee the camp by embarking on dangerous and often fatal boat journeys.

During Mr. Guterres’s visit to the camp, U.N. officials had set up on a table sample food baskets showing what refugees currently get at $12.50 per person, and what that will be slashed to next month if, as they now project, the allotment falls to $6, barring a last-minute rescue.

Pointing to the sparse basket marked “$6,” Dom Scallpelli, the Bangladesh country director for the World Food Program, said, “If you give only this, that is not a survival ration.”

Even the $6 diet expected for the month of April would be made possible only because the United States unfroze its in-kind contribution, agreeing to send shipments of rice, beans, and oil, Mr. Scallpelli said. The cash contributions — the United States provided about $300 million to the Rohingya response last year, a little over half the entire response fund — remain halted.

“If we didn’t even have that, it would have been a total nightmare situation,” Mr. Scallpelli said about the in-kind donations. “At least we are thankful to the U.S. for this.”

Abul Osman, a 23-year-old refugee who arrived at Cox’s Bazar in 2017, said the refugees were already struggling with the bare minimum and the slashing of rations would be devastating for a population with no livelihood options. The Rohingya in Bangladesh are only allowed schooling inside the camp, and are not allowed access to higher education or jobs outside.

Pregnant women and children will suffer the most from dire food shortages, but the resulting mental health crisis will affect everyone, he said.

“It’s a threat to our survival,” he said.

People will die. Many thousands will die. Should we care? Our government claims to be Christian. What is the Christian response to a humanitarian catastrophe?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Health, International, Musk, Elon, Trump

Jay Kuo Explains What Happened When a Federal Judge Slapped Down Musk and DOGE

By dianeravitch
March 23, 2025 //
15

Jay Kuo is a lawyer , blogger, and author who here explains a very important court ruling that finally, at last, challenged the constitutionality of Musk and his DOGE vandals. They have gone through agency after agency, copying personal data, firing employees without any knowledge of their role, and generally wreaking havoc.

Anyone with the barest knowledge of the Constitution knows that the power of the purse belongs to Congress, not the President and certainly not to the President’s biggest campaign donor and his team of young hackers. If they know even more about the Constutution, they know that no one can shut down an agency or Department that was authorized by Congress except Congress itself.

One judge said stop.

Jay Kuo explains the decision and why it is important. The post appeared on Wednesday March 19.

He writes:

There are a lot of lawsuits and a lot of moving parts. But best I can tell, yesterday’s ruling from Judge Theodore Chuang of the federal district of Maryland was the first time any judge has directly addressed the illegality of Musk’s appointment as head of DOGE and then ordered his actions unwound.

Specifically, Judge Chuang, in a 68-page preliminary injunction, blasted the illegal appointment of Musk, ruled the ensuing shutdown of USAID by DOGE illegal, and barred Musk and DOGE from any further work at USAID.

A lot has happened since Musk first took the reins at DOGE, so to understand the impact of this order—specifically what it does and does not do within USAID and how it might have ripple effects in other cases—it’s useful to go back in time to the beginning of February, when Musk and DOGE first started taking a chainsaw to the federal government.

“Fed to the woodchipper”

In early February, DOGE workers arrived at USAID and sought access to the agency’s systems. Because USAID operates in many foreign countries, intelligence reports and assessments are commonly generated around its work. When DOGE members attempted to gain access to classified files, two security officials with the agency attempted to stop them. In response to the officials’ frankly heroic actions, they were placed on leave by the administration.

That was one of the first signs things were going to get very bad, very quickly. Musk even bragged online that over that weekend he and DOGE had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.”

DOGE proceeded to cut off email and computer access to USAID workers. Then, as CBS News summarized, hundreds of USAID officials were placed on administrative leave, the agency’s website went dark, email accounts were deactivated, and USAID’s Washington, D.C., headquarters were occupied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio quickly named himself acting director of USAID and then proceeded to cancel 83 percent of its contracts. This left nonprofits around the world unable to continue their life saving work. The New York Times estimated that USAID’s shutdown would lead to hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of deaths worldwide from disease.

Dozens of USAID staffers sued, arguing that Musk’s and DOGE’s actions were wholly unauthorized because Musk was never appointed and confirmed by the Senate, as required under the Constitution. They further argued that only Congress, not the executive branch, has the authority to shutter an agency established by statute rather than by executive order.

An “end-run around the Appointments Clause”

One of the most important parts of Judge Chuang’s ruling confirms that the administration tried to have it both ways with Musk.

On the one hand, there Musk was, with DOGE members already inside of an agency, bragging about how he had destroyed it in the course of a weekend. Musk made public statements and posts claiming he had firm control over DOGE, and Trump even praised Musk for this in his joint address to Congress.

Per the New York Times,

The judge noted that Mr. Musk, during a cabinet meeting he attended at the White House last month, acknowledged that his team had accidentally slashed funding for Ebola prevention administered [by USAID]. He also cited numerous instances in which Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk have both spoken publicly about their reliance on Mr. Musk’s team to effectuate goals like eliminating billions in federal contracts.

In addition to the “wood chipper” post, Judge Chuang noted that Musk wrote in February that it was time for USAID to “die” and that his team was in the process of shutting the agency down.

On the other hand, the government tried to argue that Musk was only serving in some kind of advisory rather than official role. Government attorneys have argued in many cases that Musk does not have formal authority to make government decisions, and therefore he didn’t need to have been formally appointed by Trump and officially confirmed by the Senate.

When pressed as to who was actually in charge of DOGE then, the White House claimed last month that a woman named Amy Gleason, who worked for DOGE’s predecessor, was its acting administrator.

That’s so very odd, because as Kyle Cheney of Politico noted with a journalistic eagle eye, in a recent court filing in another matter the administration revealed that Gleason was actually hired by Health and Human Services as an “expert/consultant” on March 4. That’s just a few days after the White House insisted she was the acting administrator of DOGE.

The fact is, the government has been DOGE-ing the truth for weeks about who was really in charge. Everyone knew and bragged that it was Elon Musk, but that actually created a legal problem because of the pesky Appointments Clause. So they apparently filed false affidavits with the courts to try and backfill the position with someone who was never in charge of it, and then they got caught.

Judge Chuang wrote this while ruling for the plaintiffs on their Appointments Clause claim:

To deny plaintiffs’ Appointments Clause claim solely on the basis that, on paper, Musk has no formal legal authority relating to the decisions at issue, even if he is actually exercising significant authority on governmental matters, would open the door to an end-run around the Appointments Clause.

If a president could escape Appointments Clause scrutiny by having advisors go beyond the traditional role of White House advisors who communicate the president’s priority to agency heads and instead exercise significant authority throughout the federal government so as to bypass duly appointed officers, the Appointments Clause would be reduced to nothing more than a technical formality.

Judge Chuang further noted that Musk appears to have been involved in the closure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau headquarters and that he and DOGE “have taken other unilateral actions without any apparent authorization from agency officials,” including firing staff at the Department of Agriculture and National Nuclear Security Administration.

“Under these circumstances, the evidence presently favors the conclusion that contrary to defendants’ sweeping claim that Musk acted only as an advisor, Musk made the decisions to shutdown USAID’s headquarters and website even though he ‘lacked the authority to make that decision,’” Chuang wrote, throwing arguments made by the Trump administration right back at them.

Musk’s “unilateral, drastic actions”

Plaintiffs also claimed that the executive branch had acted outside of its authority in seeking to shut down an agency established by congressional statute. Judge Chuang agreed.

“There is no statute that authorizes the Executive Branch to shut down USAID,” Judge Chuang wrote, noting that only Congress has the constitutional authority to eliminate agencies it has created.

“Where Congress has prescribed the existence of USAID in statute pursuant to its legislative powers under Article I, the president’s Article II power to take care that the laws are faithfully executed does not provide authority for the unilateral, drastic actions taken to dismantle the agency,” Chuang wrote.

He concluded, “The public interest is specifically harmed by defendants’ actions, which have usurped the authority of the public’s elected representatives in Congress to make decisions on whether, when and how to eliminate a federal government agency, and of officers of the United States duly appointed under the Constitution to exercise the authority entrusted to them.”

But… he can’t truly undo the damage

The judge was stark in his assessment of the fatal injuries Musk and DOGE have inflicted upon USAID. He noted that because of the firings, the freezing of funds, the locking out of staff access to computers and communications, and the shuttering of the building itself, USAID is no longer capable of performing as required by statute.

“Taken together, these facts support the conclusion that USAID has been effectively eliminated,” Chuang wrote.

And while he ordered DOGE to reinstate email access to all employees and to submit a plan to allow them to reoccupy the building, he acknowledged that it wouldn’t be long before someone with actual authority could allow DOGE back in. That’s because even though something may have been illegal and unauthorized at the time it was done, someone with the proper constitutional and legal authority can in theory come back later and ratify those actions.

That effectively means that Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is Senate-confirmed and now the acting director of USAID, is still free in a couple of weeks to order the permanent closure of the main facility in Washington, as he had planned. And even though another judge has ordered $2 billion in USAID’s frozen foreign aid funds released, and there might even be enough employees now available to make that happen, once that work is done USAID might still functionally cease to exist.

So is this an empty victory?

If USAID employees get to return to the building and access their emails and computer systems, only to be kicked out of it later and likely fired all over again, isn’t this just a hollow win?

The ruling may not save USAID from its fate, especially with an administration so bent on eliminating it entirely and the power to ratify DOGE’s activities after the fact. But thinking ahead a bit, this ruling could still throw significant sand in the gears of DOGE going forward.

If Elon Musk is, as Judge Chuang has ruled, the effective head of DOGE, and his position and consequential actions as an effective agency head requires him to have been formally appointed by Trump and confirmed by the Senate, then this will help other litigants in other cases put an immediate stop to what DOGE is doing currently. That could gum things up for Musk, who would suddenly lack the power to slash and burn the government using just his team of hackers.

Instead, the agencies and departments themselves would have to order all of the cuts, cancellations and terminations. And there may be far more statutory limits and processes governing what they as agencies can do. Further, plaintiffs are likely far more accustomed to challenging a familiar foe like a big government agency than an inter-agency, non-transparent wrecking crew like DOGE.

We will have to wait and see how this plays out. But I imagine Judge Chuang’s decision is going to start showing up as a big red stop sign in every case challenging the authority of DOGE to have done what it did and to keep doing what it’s doing.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Ethics, Failure, Funding, Justice, Musk, Elon, Trump

Family Members of Deported Venezuelans Say They Had No Gang Ties

By dianeravitch
March 22, 2025 //
6

The Miami Herald reports that some of the men who were deported as “dangerous members of a Venezuelan gang” had no gang ties. Since the men were deported without any due process, we have no way of knowing whether they were justly or unjustly arrested and deported.

In the U.S., the law requires due process and a presumption of innocence. The Trump administration bypassed the rule of law so they could create the illusion of a crackdown on dangerous immigrants.

The Miami Herald said:

The day after he was arrested while working at a restaurant in Texas, Mervin Jose Yamarte Fernandez climbed out of a plane in shackles in El Salvador, bound for the largest mega-prison in Latin America. His sister, Jare, recognized him in a video shared on social media. As masked guards shaved detainees’ heads and led them into cells at the maximum-security complex,

Yamarte Fernandez turned his gaze slowly to the camera. “He was asking for help. And that help didn’t come from the lips. It came from the soul,” said Jare, who asked to be identified by her nickname because she fears for her family’s safety and who added her brother has no previous criminal record. “You know when someone has their soul broken.”

Yamarte Fernandez, 29, is among 238 Venezuelans the Trump administration accused of being gang members without providing public evidence and sent over the weekend to El Salvador’s Terrorist Confinement Center, a prison about 45 miles from the capital designed to hold up to 40,000 people as part of a crackdown on gangs. They will be jailed for at least one year, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said in a statement on X, following a deal brokered between the two countries in February.

His sister identified him in a video shared on social media by the Salvadoran government. “He shouldn’t be imprisoned in El Salvador, let alone in a dangerous prison like the one where the Mara Salvatruchas are held,” his sister told the Miami Herald.

“These heinous monsters were extracted and removed to El Salvador where they will no longer be able to pose any threat to the American people,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

But families of three men who appear to have been deported and imprisoned in El Salvador told the Miami Herald that their relatives have no gang affiliation – and two said their relatives had never been charged with a crime in the U.S. or elsewhere. One has been previously accused by the U.S. government of ties to the feared Tren de Aragua gang, but his family denies any connection.

Neither the Department of Homeland Security nor Immigration and Customs Enforcement responded to Miami Herald questions about what criteria was used to select detainees sent to El Salvador, what the plan is for detainees incarcerated abroad, and whether the government had defied a federal judge’s orders to send them there.

Read more at: https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/immigration/article302251339.html#storylink=cpy

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Immigration, Injustice, Trump

ALERT! Teachers College Faculty Opposes Trump Attacks on Higher Education and DEI

By dianeravitch
March 20, 2025 //
4

The following statement was drafted and signed by faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University.

The Trump administration is cynically using the pretext of “fighting anti-Semitism” to attack universities and control them. It has withheld $400 million from Columbia University and demanded changes to its curriculum and other policies.

This is outrageous. It is fascistic. It is an attack on academic freedom. Columbia University is a private university, one of the best in the nation. It should rebuff this repellent effort to strip it of its independence and academic freedom.

A Statement by Teachers College, Columbia University Faculty

The Attack on American Education, from our Perspective as Teachers College Faculty

March 19, 2025

We are a group of Teachers College faculty with expertise in the areas of education, health, and psychology. We write in response to the attacks by the federal government on Columbia University, and education. Teachers College is an independent institution, with its own charter, president, board of trustees, and regulations, yet we are also affiliated with Columbia University and are thus deeply affected by the current moment. We emphasize that this statement is not an official response by Teachers College, and represents only the views of its authors.  

As researchers and teachers, we share with our colleagues in higher education a deep concern about the many ways that higher education is under threat at this moment. But as scholars at a graduate school of education, whose work covers the lifespan, from infants to elders, we have a distinct perspective. We see the attack on Columbia as part of a larger offensive by the Trump administration and the Republican party against education at all levels. An attack on academic freedom and the First Amendment is taking place on multiple fronts, all of which impact the basic human activity of learning in all of its forms and meanings. 

Efforts to dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, erase curricular content that speaks to our nation’s true and difficult past and its ongoing inequities, and intrude into the processes by which educational institutions from local school districts to universities make decisions on what and how to teach: all are connected to a desire to stifle critical thinking and prevent us from actively participating in our democracy. The intention of the Trump administration is clear. By gutting important systems of education, they can shape our thoughts and words, creating a new generation without the skills required to actively participate in our democracy and push back against oppression.

 At Columbia University specifically, the Trump administration has cancelled over $400 million in research and intervention funding and is threatening further action unless the university caves to a series of demands that would radically transform the institution and undermine its fundamental role in a democracy, as our colleagues in the Columbia chapter of the AAUP detail in this letter. Such actions also violate the constitutional law and the substance and process of TItle VI, as detailed by several of our colleagues in the Columbia Law School.

The broad strategies of the administration’s attack on higher education were outlined earlier in Project 2025, but the particular tactics have been shaped by both world and local events since the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel and the Israeli war on Gaza that followed and continues. The accusation that Columbia is unable and unwilling to protect its Jewish students is being used to strip it of funding, especially for research in its medical school, as well as other areas of the institution. Several funded projects in education, health, and psychology at Teachers College have already been cancelled, affecting research and programs ranging from higher education access, graduate training for much-needed school psychologists, social services  for students, and more.

We recognize that Columbia, like many institutions, has much ongoing work to do to ensure campus is a place that can foster and support everyone’s learning, by actively addressing antisemitism, Islamophobia, and all forms of discrimination and hatred. Yet the disproportionate response to anti-war protest on our campus must be acknowledged. We take note of the “Palestine exception,” which blocks discourse by treating Palestine and Palestinians as topics beyond First Amendment and academic freedom protections. Such a pattern has barred necessary speech and difficult dialogues on our campuses, causing division and fear amongst students, staff, and faculty members. To be sure, maintaining space for anti-war protest and other forms of political dissent within a community needs to be done with sensitivity and care, alongside respect for the rights of students to challenge one another and express ideas, including deeply controversial ones.

While this week’s education news has been dominated by Columbia, previous weeks focused on the K-12 landscape. Developments included the appointment of a Secretary of Education with no education expertise, unable even to correctly identify the IDEA (Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) – one of our nation’s largest pieces of federal education and civil rights legislation, which she is charged by Congress to administer. The administration laid off half of the Department of Education’s workforce. The firings have all but shuttered the more than 150 year old National Center for Education Statistics, on which countless areas of education research, including “The Nation’s Report Card” via the National Assessment of Educational Progress and studies that focus on measuring equity, rely. These are the staffpeople who ensure that Congressionally-approved funds for Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (for children living in poverty), the IDEA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act for disabled students, and federal financial aid to higher education make their way to their intended students, families, and communities. Major staff reductions at the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights intentionally impede this division from ensuring equitable treatment of children in our nation’s schools. 

As in higher education, the Trump administration not only seeks to usurp the Congressional power of the purse but does so in the name of false and misleading representations of the state of our educational institutions. Whatever claims to the contrary, American public education is governed chiefly by state constitutions and local school districts. They decide what students learn, how teachers teach, and how student success is measured. When, for example, executive orders seek to disregard that law and tradition, we applaud leaders who, like Maine Governor Janet Mills, respond with “See you in court!”.

As experts on teaching and learning, we know that the most profound moments of learning are usually uncomfortable, as they may lead people to question taken-for-granted assumptions about themselves and the society they inhabit. The goal of good teaching is not to eliminate that discomfort, but to give it a productive use. The barrage of Executive Orders, threats to the Department of Education, and mandates such as the March 13 letter are aimed at restricting discourse and generating fear in teachers and students, especially those most vulnerable: non-US citizens, racially or ethnically minoritized populations, gender and sexually diverse and expansive people, and disabled people. Teaching and learning are much more difficult when one is afraid, and pedagogy can easily turn to rote memorization and repetition in order to avoid controversy.

While the White House accuses elementary and secondary schools as well as higher education of indoctrinating students, against the evidence, what we see is an attack on the capacity for criticism — paving the way for authoritarianism and fascism. The idea that directing criticism at the US or its geopolitical allies is un-American runs counter to much of the history of this nation. As James Baldwin once stated, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.” It is extremely hard, if not impossible, for people of any age to do the difficult work of learning, of understanding multiple perspectives on an issue, of offering counterpoints to commonly assumed views, when people are scared of losing their livelihoods and/or their visas, being arrested or deported, or being deemed enemies of the state by the highest office in the land.

As educators and researchers concerned with justice and equity, we cannot stay silent.  What becomes of the University if it succumbs to the demands of a political party or leader and cedes its rights of free speech, free expression, and free inquiry? What becomes of research if its pursuit of truth is shaped by what faculty are not allowed to say, and the topics they cannot investigate? What becomes of our students if they are only permitted to think, speak, and be in ways that follow the political winds? 

We call on university leaders, on our campus and beyond, to use all of the tools at their disposal, including collective efforts across the sector and litigation, to stand for academic freedom, and for First Amendment rights of free speech, inquiry, and debate, and thus to stand for our democracy.

And we pledge, as faculty members in an institution of higher education, to recognize that the challenges facing us are not unique to our institution or to higher education. They are shared challenges that at this moment link us to all those devoted to education and to learning at all stages across the life span. We celebrate the efforts such as the suit filed by the National Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union to stop Trump administration efforts to curtail diversity, equity, and inclusion in education. We must find ways to work with one another for our students, our communities, and our still-developing democracy. 

Daniel Friedrich, PhD, Associate Professor of Curriculum, Department of Curriculum and Teaching

Ansley Erickson, PhD, Associate Professor of History and Education Policy, Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis

Melanie Brewster, PhD, Professor of Counseling Psychology, Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology

Ezekiel Dixon-Román, PhD, Professor of Critical Race, Media, and Educational Studies Director, Edmund W. Gordon Institute for Advanced Study. 

Kay James, PhD, Associate Professor of Neuroscience & Education, Department of Biobehavioral Sciences

Additional signatures, added at 6pm daily. 

Anonymous (11)

Jennifer Lena, PhD, Associate Professor of Arts Administration, Department of Arts and Humanities

Brandon Velez, PhD, Associate Professor of Counseling Psychology, Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology

Luis A. Huerta, PhD, Professor of Education and Public Policy; Chair, Department of Education Policy and Social Analysis

James Borland, PhD, Professor of Education, Department of Curriculum and Teaching

Nathan Holbert, PhD, Associate Professor of Communication, Media, and Learning Technologies Design

Sonali Rajan, EdD, Professor of Health Promotion and Education, Department of Health Studies and Applied Educational Psychology

Carolyn Riehl, PhD, Associate Professor of Sociology and Education Policy 

Beth Rubin, PhD, Professor of Education, Department of Arts & Humanities

Lucy Calkins, PhD, Robinson Professor of Children’s Literature, Department of Curriculum & Teaching

Gita Steiner-Khamsi, PhD, William H. Kilpatrick Professor of Comparative Education, Department of International and Comparative Education

Mark Anthony Gooden, PhD, Christian Johnson Endeavor Professor of Education Leadership, Department of Organization & Leadership

Sandra Schmidt, PhD, Associate Professor of Social Studies Education, Department of Arts & Humanities  

Haeny Yoon, PhD, Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education, Department of Curriculum and Teaching

Judith Scott-Clayton, PhD, Professor of Economics & Education, Department of Education Policy & Social Analysis

Alex Eble, PhD, Associate Professor of Economics & Education, Department of Education Policy & Social Analysis

Prerna Arora, PhD, Associate Professor of Psychology and Education, Department of Health Studies & Applied Educational Psychology

Megan Laverty, PhD, Professor of Philosophy and Education, Department of Arts and Humanities 

Ioana Literat, PhD, Associate Professor of Communication, Media and Learning Technologies Design, Department of Math, Science, and Technology

Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz, Ph.D, Professor of English Education, Department of Arts and Humanities

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Higher Education, Lies, Trump

Joyce Vance: DOGE Is Gutting the National Weather Service, Which Serves All of Us

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2025 //
16

Joyce Vance is a former federal prosecutor in Alabama who writes a blog called “Civil Discourse.” In this post, she explains the damage that Elon Musk and his DOGE boys are imposing on NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. By making NOAA less effective, they are setting it up to be privatized and available for a fee, not freely available to the public. Their destruction of NOAA will hurt everyone, red and blue states alike.

She writes:

On March 12, there was reporting that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was preparing to lay off more than 1,000 workers as part of the Trump administration’s “reductions in force” directive to federal agencies. Cuts like that call into question whether NOAA will continue to provide the early warnings and predictive modeling that help people prepare for weather emergencies in advance. People who live in hurricane and tornado country keep their “NOAA weather radios” handy, and they are especially important for events that occur, as they frequently do, when most of us are asleep.

In theory, it sounds like one more bad thing to worry about. In practice, it’s much worse. We’ve just had a demonstration of precisely how effective NOAA is and what we stand to lose without it. 

Beginning on Friday, violent, long-track tornadoes with damaging winds of up to 80 mph and large hail materialized across the Midwest and South. This was the news Friday night. NOAA’s early warning system, transmitted on social media, radio, television, and by word of mouth, kept it from being much worse.

Saturday was even worse. Here in Birmingham, the alerts started midday.

At 12:27 pm, I got the first alert through the UA campus system, telling me that in light of what was expected, I should seek shelter now instead of waiting for an actual tornado warning. The system sends alerts after the National Weather Service makes the call about what to expect. The National Weather Service (NWS) is a component of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

We’ve grown accustomed to getting this level of detail. NOAA’s information gets pushed out ahead of these events, causing people to plan in advance. Hard helmets were in short supply here yesterday as people prepared for the storms.

We were relatively lucky in Birmingham. But other places were far less fortunate. By Saturday morning, ABC News reported 36 people were dead in the wake of the storms. This was what the devastation looked like in Tylertown, Mississippi. As I’m writing this, the storm is heading east into Georgia.

How much worse would it have been without the accurate forecasting that let our local news people and local emergency systems warn folks in the storms’ paths sufficiently in advance to get to their safe places? As much as I don’t like to think about it, if Trump and DOGE stay on their current path, we are going to be forced to. Mother Nature doesn’t care who you voted for. If there’s a tornado headed your direction, you need access to early warning systems. Gutting NOAA means you won’t have that.

An example of the tornado warnings issued by National Weather Services offices in Alabama throughout the day Saturday, permitting people to find shelter and take cover in advance.

At 8:52 p.m., local television in central Alabama pushed out a message from the National Weather Service: Talladega, take cover now. It was a tornado on the ground near the famous Superspeedway. Alerts meant people were able to stay safe, which is a good thing—this photo of a bus that ended up on the roof of a nearby high school makes it clear that these early warning systems are critically important. What happens if the National Weather Service is no longer there to do that?

Image

Apparently, the Trump administration is not concerned with that. ABC is reporting that NOAA is down about 2,000 employees since January “as a result of the first round of the Trump administration’s cuts.” California Congressman Jared Huffman, who chairs one of the relevant House subcommittees, said, “There is no way to absorb cuts of this magnitude without cutting into these core missions. This is not about efficiency and it’s certainly not about waste, fraud and abuse. This is taking programs that people depend on to save lives and emasculating them.”

Cuts that sound like a good idea to Elon Musk and Donald Trump have real impacts on the rest of us. That is only just beginning to dawn on people, who I’m sure you’re hearing, like I am, saying, “But I didn’t vote for this.” Trump 2.0, as I’ve written previously, isn’t a pick-your-own-adventure experience. You go to the carnival, you get all of the rides.

We were fortunate last night. Everyone in our house (chickens included) is okay, we just have a little cleanup to do. But so many people weren’t that lucky. They lost houses and lives. They will need support from FEMA and other federal services. If DOGE continues its romp through essential federal work that we, as taxpayers, fund and rely on, it’s only going to get worse. 

When will Republicans wake up? Will their Senators and members of Congress protest what DOGE is doing? Will they even fight for their own backyards? If they continue to bend the knee on this, then instead of demanding that government work for their constituents, they are permitting it to work for the financial interests of the powerful. 

We know what to do about this. With this piece, and the one Friday night about an Idaho Fair Housing Council that I hope you’ll go back and readif you missed it, we’re putting a face on the people DOGE hurts. It’s not about waste and fraud; it’s about people. People who need their government to work for them. Here’s the phone number for the House switchboard: (202) 224-3121. Here’s that number for the Senate: (202) 224-3121. Make sure your representatives know how you feel.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Categories Disruption, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Musk, Elon, Privatization, Stupid, Trump

Federal Judge Orders Halt to Dismantling of USAID by DOGE

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2025 //
7

I have stopped reporting on court orders because there are so many of them, sometimes different judges give conflicting opinions, and sometimes one opinion supersedes another.

But this one was too good to pass up. The issues will ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. But this is the first to challenge directly the authority of Elon Musk and DOGE.

The Washington Post reported:

A federal judge in Maryland on Tuesday temporarily blocked billionaire Elon Musk and the U.S. DOGE Service from taking further actions to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development and ordered that steps be taken to allow the agency to reoccupy its headquarters inside the Ronald Reagan building in Washington, D.C., should the plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging Musk’s actions win their case.

The judge also ordered DOGE to restore email and other access to thousands of employees who have been cut off from the agency, including those stationed in dangerous areas with their jobs in limbo. He prohibited DOGE from disclosing USAID employees’ personal information outside the agency and said any other action relating to USAID must be made with the “express authorization of a USAID official with legal authority.”

The preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang in a federal court in Maryland, though it leaves a door open for the Trump administration to continue its elimination of USAID, marks another blow to the administration’s efforts to dramatically reduce the size of the government after other federal court orders to reinstate thousands of fired federal workers. Chuang’s ruling remains in effect until a further court order, which could come at another point in the lawsuit or after a trial.

On Monday, the Trump administration moved to reinstate thousands of probationary workers after another judge in Maryland ruled that those firings had been conducted illegally, a decision that is now before a federal appeals court.

The lawsuit was brought by the State Democracy Defenders Fund on behalf of more than two dozen USAID workers named only as plaintiffs J. Does 1-26. They allege that Musk’s assumption of vast authority over federal agencies is “unprecedented in U.S. history” and, under the Constitution, could be exercised only by someone who has been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate as an “Officer of the United States.” The lawsuit also asserts that DOGE’s moves to eliminate USAID violate the Constitution, because the agency was created by Congress and only Congress can do away with it.

In a 68-page legal opinion accompanying the injunction, Chuang agreed that the Trump administration has acted to effectively dismantle USAID and concluded that the plaintiffs are likely to succeed in their claim that those actions violate the Constitution’s separation of powers doctrine.

“Where Congress has prescribed the existence of USAID in statute pursuant to its legislative powers under Article I, the President’s Article II power to take care that the laws are faithfully executed does not provide authority for the unilateral, drastic actions taken to dismantle the agency,” Chuang wrote.

The judge’s order, however, applies only to Musk and DOGE — not to USAID officials themselves. Chuang specified that although the dismantling of USAID — even by USAID officials — “likely violates” the Constitution, USAID officials are not parties to the case and not subject to his order. Justice Department lawyers have argued that it is USAID officials, not Musk or DOGE, who have conducted the mass personnel and contract terminations.

Though the lawsuit is not over, the State Democracy Defenders Fund heralded the judge’s ruling while the White House and Musk attacked Chuang.

“Today’s decision is an important victory against Elon Musk and his DOGE attack on USAID, the U.S. government and the Constitution,” said Norm Eisen, executive chair of State Democracy Defenders Fund, in a statement Tuesday. “They are performing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel, harming not just the people USAID serves but the majority of Americans who count on the stability of our government. This case is a milestone in pushing back on Musk and DOGE’s illegality.”

A White House spokeswoman responded to Chuang’s order by saying he is among “Rogue judges” who are “subverting the will of the American people in their attempts to stop President Trump from carrying out his agenda.”
“If these Judges want to force their partisan ideologies across the government, they should run for office themselves,” said Anna Kelly, deputy press secretary for the White House, in a statement. “The Trump Administration will appeal this miscarriage of justice and fight back against all activist judges intruding on the separation of powers.”

The Trump administration seems to believe that federal courts may not overturn Presidential decisions. That matter was resolved in a case called Marbury v. Madison in 1803.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Extremism, Funding, Musk, Elon, Trump

Sherrilyn Ifill: Do Not Be Silent!

By dianeravitch
March 18, 2025 //
3

Sherrilyn Ifill is a law professor at Howard University and former president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. She writes a blog called Sherrilyn’s Newsletter, where this post appeared. Open the link to see her footnotes.

“There is never time in the future in which we will work out our salvation. The challenge is in the moment. The time is always now.”

-James Baldwin

Illustration by Nick Liu

The past week has shown us in stark terms what it means to fight – to actually fight – to protect against the rise of authoritarians. This week we also saw that somehow, despite years of preparation, some of the leaders of our most powerful institutions seem unprepared for the particular nature of this fight. Others appear just…. unwilling to engage.

Last week the Trump Administration took its most bold actions yet. Through the actions of either Trump himself, Elon Musk or members of Trump’s cabinet, this Administration has:

· Unleashed an unprecedented attack on higher education, the centerpiece of which was a targeted attack on Columbia University. In a letter sent to the University, the Administration[i]demanded that university essentially turn over its decision-making to the Trump Administration, insisting that the University close the Middle Eastern Studies Dept, ban mask-wearing, expel students involved in pro-Palestine protests, and announced the withholding of $400 million in federal dollars until the University accedes to Trump’s demands, unless the University took these actions to address “antisemitism on campus.” The Administration underscored its intentions by entering student dormitories and arresting a Palestinian student who is a legal permanent resident of the U.S. As his 8-month-pregnant wife looked on helplessly, ICE officers arrested Mr. Khalil and then disappeared him, moving him from facility to facility, and offering only vague and unsubstantiated justifications for his arrest. His central “crime” appears to be “advancing positions that are contrary to the foreign policy of this Administration,”[ii]– a concept so staggeringly outrageous it can scarcely be absorbed.

· Fired half the staff of the Department of Education[iii] – as a down-payment on the Administration’s vow to close the agency.

· Indicated its intention to “eliminate Social Security;”[iv]

· Continued firing government workers and removing funding from government agencies including NIH[v] and shuttering offices like the Voice of America.

· Intensified tariffs against Canada and rhetoric suggesting that the sovereign nation of Canada should be annexed to the U.S.;[vi] declared that the European Union was created to “screw the U.S.”; declared that the South African Ambassador to the United States is no longer welcome,[vii] continuing the Administration’s Musk-inspired determination to recognize racist white settlers as victims of Black rule.

· Issued Executive Orders targeting law firms who have litigated cases against Trump in the classified documents cases and who provided pro bono counsel to Special Counsel Jack Smith, removing security clearances and blocking government connected work.

· Argued in court that transgender soldiers should be removed from the military.[viii]

· Removed information about Black, Asian American and women military heroes from the Arlington National cemetery website,[ix]disappearing the accomplishments of people of color and women from official recognition.

And that’s just part of it.

But the resistance to Trump’s authoritarian rule has been busy as well:

· Protests across the country have demanded the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian student taken into custody.[x]

· “Tesla Take Down” protests at Tesla dealerships across the country in protest against Elon Musk’s takeover of our government have been so effective in tanking the brand and its stock price,[xi] that President Trump turned the White House into a car lot and personally embodied the used car salesman he was destined to be (if not for his father’s money) in an attempt to gin up Tesla sales.

· Protests nationwide continue to demand an end to government worker firings.

· Voters have shown up at town halls across the country to express anger about proposed plans to cut Medicaid/Medicare and Social Security[xii].

· Lawsuits filed by parents,[xiii] and by a score of states[xiv] have challenged the closing of the Education Department.

· Perkins Coie, the law firm targeted by Trump boldly challenged the Trump administration’s effort to blackball the firm and imperil its business;[xv]

· Federal courts have required Trump to rehire thousands of federal employees fired by DOGE[xvi]

· Federal courts have enjoined Trump’s efforts to freeze spending on governments grants and other funding.[xvii]

· Federal courts enjoined the Administration from removing migrants targeted under Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act – a decision the Trump Administration has defied.[xviii]

But the big stories last week were less about those who have protested and sued, and more about those among the most powerful institutional actors who appear to have lost the plot. Political scientists Steve Levitsky and Ryan Enos offered a blistering and spot-on condemnation of universities that have remained silent in the face of Trump’s authoritarian challenge to the freedom of universities.[xix]Calling out Harvard University specifically (where both scholars teach) for its silence in the face of the hideous attacks on Columbia University, Levitsky and Enos condemned the inaction of universities that have chosen a strategy of “lying low, avoiding public debate (and sometimes cooperating with the administration) in the hope of mitigating the coming assault.”[xx]

Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has faced a wave of outrage and demands for resignation after his decision to vote in favor of cloture to avert a government shutdown. To be sure, the Democrats have few options for stopping the Republicans, who are firmly in the majority in the House and Senate from torching our government. But as many of us have been reminded ad nauseum during the years when Democrats controlled the Senate, the filibuster is one of the few procedural rules the party in the minority in the Senate has to counter being overrun by the majority.

But frustratingly, although Democrats were unwilling to abolish the filibuster in 2022 to advance their agenda, last week they were unwilling to use the filibuster to defy the Republican power grab. Heads the Republicans win. Tails the Democrats lose.

It was hard to understand the point of Democrats affixing their signature to a continuing resolution to fund a government that is being cut to the bone every day by Elon Musk – an unelected billionaire with no official government position – who has been permitted to usurp the appropriation power of Congress. When Trump and Musk lawlessly gut agencies and fire government workers, and Speaker Mike Johnson and his caucus cede the power of Congress to the President, we are in a constitutional crisis.

Trump and Musk’s anti-constitutional usurpation of congressional power with the complicity of the Republicans in Congress is an emergency. It demands an emergency response. Minority Leader Schumer and 7 other Democratic Senators (and I suspect more who were covered by the Leader’s unpopular action) were unprepared to meet the moment in a way that would have upped the stakes. Sometimes when the game is fixed, you have to overturn the tables.

I will concede a serious point Schumer later offered that got lost in the Comms disaster of his Wednesday night statement that suggested there would be a shutdown, and then his Thursday morning announcement that he would vote to avert one. If the government shutdown happened, there would be little chance of obtaining judicial orders enjoining decisions by Trump/Musk to eliminate programs, because legally during a government closure, the President enjoys unfettered power to determine which functions of government are “essential” – standard to which the courts would likely defer. By contrast, with the government open, challenges to DOGE firings and closures continue to do fairly well in the courts and have slowed down the force of Musk’s chainsaw.

In any case, Schumer’s decision and perhaps moreso the clumsy comms that accompanied it have resulted in boiling outrage within the base of the party, including calls for him to step down from leadership.

Of course, none of this compares to the perfidy of the Republican Party. We must never forget the unconscionable and dastardly conduct of Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republicans in the House and Senate – men and women who have abdicated their allegiance to this country and to democracy itself. Their cowardice and complicity in the destruction of this country must never be forgotten or whitewashed. Their betrayal is singular and historic. 

But there’s another group that is failing to meet this moment. America’s corporate leadership has been nearly silent during one of the most volatile economic periods in years. Last week the stock market took a nosedive – entering “correction” status as a result of Trump’s manic and unhinged tariff announcements. [xxi] Trump’s erratic tariffs – up one day, down the next, up again two weeks later – are lunacy. Every rational business leader knows that.[xxii] The predictable market response to Trump’s irrationality threatens the retirement plans of older Americans hoping to retire and the American economy. America’s leadership in the world has been compromised by Trump’s saber-rattling, and his insistence on imperialist moves towards Canada, the Panama Canal and Greenland, is destabilizing the integrity of perception of American stability. Combined with the massive government lawyers, Trump’s policies are bad for America and bad for business.

As Trump literally tanks the American economy and the trust of the international business community, where are the voices of America’s business leaders? Are they all hoping that Trump will do a commercial on the White House lawn hawking their products too? Are the leaders of the Business Roundtable (200 CEOs of the nation’s leading corporations) agnostic about the President’s stubborn insistence on policies that are wrecking the U.S. economy and our standing in the world?

These same business leaders enabled the lie that Trump is a “successful businessperson” – knowing full well that Trump does not seem to know what he’s talking about when he wades into economics, knowing of his six bankruptcies, knowing of his refusal to pay contractors, his false representations, and knowing that no responsible Fortune 500 CEO would ever have gone into business with Trump before he was elected President, or even after. Being wealthy is not the same as being a successful businessperson and they all know it. 

In an interview on CNBC, even host Maria Bartiromo – a Trump sycophant – felt compelled to remind Trump that successful business leaders need predictability to make coherent decisions about investments, infrastructure, expansion, and product development for markets. She noted that the up-and-down tariff mania undermines predictability. Trump responded, “well they say that. It sounds good to say.” Really? Is that it? Or is it a fundamental tenet of business that even a first year MBA student would know? At other times last week he has repeated with “we’re gonna have so much money from the tariffs” with a desperate insistence that suggested mental instability.

American corporations have either tried to placate Trump by paying tribute,[xxiii] or have “crawled into a protective shell” like the university officials called out by Levitsky and Enos. In either case, it is utterly irresponsible. Their voices and influence – presented collectively and forcefully – are critical to protecting the economic interests of this country, and our democracy. Their failure to act is a betrayal of their responsibility as citizens.

Media owners have shamed themselves – whitewashing their teams,[xxiv] surrendering the independence and diversity of their editorial pages,[xxv] and taking a knee before Trump’s demands rather than standing firm in the face of the challenge to our democracy.[xxvi]

In the week ahead, there will be many additional opportunities for leaders from our most powerful democratic institutions to meet this moment. Already it appears that the Trump Administration has defied a federal court order to turn around planes taking Venezuelan migrants accused of being to El Salvador.[xxvii] The Administration announced that the first 250 migrants arrived in El Salvador.[xxviii] What does that mean? Two hundred-fifty Venezuelan nationals have been disappeared into the one of the world’s most notoriously abusive prisons in El Salvador, without judicially approved trials or due process. 

What will judges do as Trump appears to defy judicial orders? This week will test the readiness of our judiciary to defend the rule of law.

Meanwhile ordinary people have been showing tremendous leadership, protesting, launching and participating in boycotts, conducting teach-ins, calling their elected representatives every week, sometimes several times a week, visiting district offices, participating in “die-ins,” writing letters and petitions, and building support for opposition candidates in special elections. A “mass march” has been announced by the organization Hands/Off for April 5th, although information is still spotty [please drop info in the comments]. Black churches have launched a 40-day Lenten boycott of Target for its obsequious abandonment of its DEI commitments.[xxix]

Every day we are called upon to meet the moment. As we see our neighbors seized by plainclothes agents without judicial warrants, and see our workplaces “obey in advance” – removing from websites, official policies and even mission statements expressing their commitment to equality and to inclusion, and as we see law firms crouch before this Administration’s threats, and media outlets silence voices that write the truth about this Administration, we have to decide how we will respond.

All over America ordinary people are looking into their toolboxes of non-violent actions and determining which ones they will use. It’s been beautiful to see.

But we must not absolve the leaders of our most powerful institutions – those who have the money and power, and influence to insulate themselves from the worst consequences of this Administration’s excesses – from their obligation to act and to meet the moment.

To those who are business leaders, captains of industry, university leaders, and media owners, decide who you will be at this moment. If we fully lose democracy in this country, it will be because the most privileged among us refused to accept the responsibility to speak out, to say “no more,” and to lead. History will not kindly remember those who left it to Americans with considerably less power and protection, to do the hard work of saving this country. Your tax cuts will not be large enough to cover your shame. And we will remember.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Corruption, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Lies, Musk, Elon, Racism, Resistance, Trump

Trump Shutters “Voice of America”

By dianeravitch
March 17, 2025 //
25

Trump has closed down the Voice of America, the government-run radio service that has brought news to 420 million listeners around the world since 1942, during World War II. Although he appointed Kari Lake, a Trump ally and election-denier who lost races for Governor of Arizona and the U.S. Senate, to take charge of Voice of America, her assignment just disappeared.

The Washington Post reported (with an emphasis on Kari Lake’s tough luck):

During his first term, Donald Trump accused Voice of America of speaking “for America’s adversaries — not its citizens.” Over the weekend, he essentially dismantled it.
Late Friday, Trump issued an executive order that directed VOA and an array of federal offices to “be eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.” About 1,000 journalists were placed on indefinite leave. Those who showed up to work to broadcast their programs were locked out of the building…

Voice of America delivers news coverage to countries around the world where a free press is threatened or nonexistent. At its start, VOA told stories about democracy to people in Nazi Germany. VOA and affiliates such as Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia are designed as a form of soft diplomacy, a way to tout the United States’ free-press values in countries where antidemocratic forces prevail.

Who benefits by closing the VOA?

Russia. China. North Korea. Iran. And every other authoritarian regime.

Tough luck for Lake but good news for repressive dictatorships.

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Extremism, Media, Trump
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