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Can Trump Send the National Guard to Cities or Not?

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2025 //
12

I’m confused. Yesterday afternoon, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Trump could not send the National Guard to Chicago. Okay.

But a few minutes later, he mobilized the Louisiana National Guard and ordered it to New Orleans, where serious crime is declining. Jeff Landry, the Republican Governor of Louisiana, was delighted that Trump was sending in the Guard.

Questions:

If the president can’t send the Guard to Chicago, why can he send it to New Orleans?

If Governor Landry thought that New Orleans needed the National Guard, why didn’t he mobilize them himself? Maybe it’s because the federal government will pay part of the costs. But if the need was urgent, it seems the Governor would have acted without delay.

Answers?

Categories Chicago, Disruption, Louisiana, New Orleans, Trump

What Is “The Streisand Effect”?

By dianeravitch
December 24, 2025 //
7

These past few days, we have seen a perfect illustration of “the Streisand Effect.”

Perhaps you are among the few people in the nation who doesn’t know what that term refers to. I asked around and found friends who had never heard of it.

So as a public service, I’m posting the definition., relying on Wikipedia

In 2003, Barbra Streisand sued an aerial photographer and the company he worked for when she learned that her house in Malibu had been photographed as part of the California Coastal Records Project, to document coastal erosion. Her home was part of a collection of 12,000 photographs. She sued for $50 million for “invasion of property.” Before she sued, the image had been downloaded only six times; after she sued, it was downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. A judge dismissed the case and required her to pay $177,000 to the folks she sued for their legal expenses.

The Streisand effect describes a situation where an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information results in the unintended consequence of the effort instead increasing public awareness of the information.

So here’s the Streisand Effect in action, before our very eyes. Bari Weiss, the new “editor-in-chief” at CBS News, saw the report called “Inside CECOT” that “60 Minutes” planned to air last Sunday. After careful review, the segment was heavily promoted as a coming attraction.

Then Bari Weiss decided to yank it.

Consequently, the story of censorship exploded and got far more attention than if the show had aired as planned. Bootleg copies of “Inside CECOT” are in many corners of the Internet, sent from Canada, where the show played before it was spiked.

If it had aired on schedule, there would have been no mention of it in every major news outlet.

Bari Weiss blew it up into a news story.

The Streisand Effect.

Categories Disruption, History

Andy Spears: “Reformers” Have Indianapolis Public Schools in Their Sights

By dianeravitch
December 23, 2025 //
1

Andy Spears, veteran journalist based in Tennessee, writes about “reformers” plan to undermine and disrupt public schools in Indianapolis.

Indianapolis appears to be the latest front in the ongoing battle to “disrupt” public education so much that it doesn’t exist anymore. 

Ending Public Schools IS The Goal

WFYI reports on a new governing body created to “bridge” the provision of services between Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) and the city’s charter school sector.

In an 8-1 decision Wednesday evening, the Indianapolis Local Education Alliance recommended establishing the nine-member corporation. If approved by state lawmakers, this new agency called the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation, would act as a logistical bridge between the district and charter schools, managing unified busing, enrollment, and facility use.

While the IPS School Board will remain intact, the new agency will have significant authority to manage interactions between the Board and charter schools. 

Some see this as the beginning of creating an unaccountable agency to further advance school privatization in the district. 

During public comment, many spoke out against taking any power away from the IPS Board. Some suggested the board should oversee the transportation needs of charter schools. And others painted the ILEA members’ process as undemocratic.

WFYI explains how charter schools work in Indiana:

Charter schools are tuition-free public schools managed privately by nonprofit boards rather than elected officials. These boards operate under contracts granted by one of several authorizers in the state.

A parent representative on the group that reviewed proposals and recommended the new governing agency expressed skepticism:

The recommendation also drew sharp criticism for lacking specifics. Tina Ahlgren, the appointee representing district-managed school parents, cast the sole vote against it.

“I find my biggest reason to vote no is the level of ambiguity in the plan,” Ahlgren said. “I find these recommendations falling into this bizarre zone of simultaneously feeling both too much and not enough, bold in some areas but overly timid in others, with vague promises that the ecosystem will sort itself out.”

The proposal must now be approved by the Indiana General Assembly.

The Indianapolis move comes at a time when national forces are seeking full privatization of public schools, with some in the Trump Administration’s education leadership suggesting public education should all but end within 5-6 years. 

In states like Tennessee, advocacy groups are launching efforts to disrupt public education so much it is effectively a thing of the past.

·And, Indiana is not without its own challenges in maintaining a functioning system of public schools alongside a range of private options.

Indiana Vouchers: Private School Coupons for Wealthy Families

The Indianapolis Star reports:

Indiana’s Choice Scholarship Programallows families to use state dollars that would have followed their child to a traditional public school to instead pay for a private, parochial or nonreligious school.

The state releases this report annually, and for the 2024-25 school year, it showed that the state spent around $497 million on the program, which is an increase of just over $58 million from the previous school year.

Just a few years ago – in 2017 – the Indiana school voucher scheme cost the state $54 million. Now, the year-over-year increase in voucher expenses exceeds what the entire program cost just 8 years ago.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Indiana, Indianapolis

Trump’s Illegal Demolition of the U.S. Department of Education

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2025 //
3

Senator Maxie K. Hirono of Hawaii conducted a forum on Trump’s illegal demolition of the U.S. Department of Education.

Trump promised to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education but he needs the approval of the U.S. Congress to wipe out a Department authorized by Congress. There are Republicans who would not support this reactionary step, so Trump bypassed Congress and took a different, blatantly illegal path.

Acting through his Secretary of Education, wrestling entrepreneur Linda McMahon, he began laying off employees. Then his DOGE crew closed down whole sections of the Department, including its historic mission, the collection of data and statistics about education, as well as its research arm.

The legal way to achieve his goal was to seek Congressional action. Instead, he broke up the Department and handed its functions to other Departments.

McMahon likes to say that the Department spends lots of money, but test scores haven’t gone up. That’s not the purpose of the Department. it exists to equalize funding to some extent, to add extra funding for students who are low-income, who have disabilities, or who have other needs. It also funds postsecondary education and, though its Office for Civil Rights, protects students against discrimination. OCR is now in the hands of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which is hostile to the traditional definition of civil rights; its highest priority appears to be the protection of the straight white makes.


WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) held a spotlight forum titled, “Dismantling Education: What the Trump Administration’s Illegal Attacks on Federal Programs Mean for Students, Families, and Educators,” highlighting the dangerous consequences of the Trump Administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED) for our nation’s students, families, educators, and schools—among others. During the forum, a panel of witnesses comprised of K-12 education leaders and civil rights experts spoke about how abolishing ED and moving these programs to other federal agencies would harm students across the country, especially those who come from low-income, rural, Native, migrant, and federally-impacted communities.

 

“From Day One, President Trump and his regime have been illegally attacking and undermining the Department of Education, in an attempt to abolish the Department altogether,” said Senator Hirono. “Trump has sown and continues to sow chaos for students across the country: directing the closure of the Department of Education; firing nearly half the Department workforce; slashing, withholding and rescinding funding for federal education programs; and creating a national school voucher program—to name a few things. In the process, he has jeopardized our children’s futures. Today’s forum provided an important opportunity to inform individuals and communities about the destructive actions he has taken so far. Every child in our country deserves access to a quality education, and I will continue working with my colleagues to make sure that is the case.”

 

Specifically, the forum focused on this administration’s recent proposal to illegally move nearly all federal K-12 programs and many higher education programs to other federal agencies that have limited capacity to run these programs and have no experience with dealing with them. ED announced last month that it would partner with the Departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State to conduct the transfer of these programs. This move would essentially fulfill Trump’s promise to eliminate the Department altogether and remove the federal government’s role in helping to ensure that all students have access to a quality education.

 

The forum featured testimony from:

  • Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers
  • Rachel Gittleman, President, American Federation of Government Employees Local 252
  • Denise Forte, President and CEO, The Education Trust
  • Dr. Amy Loyd, CEO, All4Ed
  • Chad Rummel, Executive Director, Council for Exceptional Children
  • Angelica Infante-Green, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education, Rhode Island Department of Education

 

At the forum, Senator Hirono was joined by a number of her colleagues, including Senators Peter Welch (D-VT), Jack Reed (D-RI), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Dick Durbin (D-IL).

 

“The Trump Administration has taken a wrecking ball to essential federal education programs like Title I, which ensure first-generation, rural, and lower-income students get an equal opportunity to learn and grow. Despite our taxpayers spending one of the highest rates in the country for our students’ education, Vermont now ranks well below the national average on reading and math scores. Just a decade ago, our students scored the 4th highest in the country,” said Senator Welch. “Instead of trying to dismantle the Department of Education, we should be doing everything in our power to give students the resources they need to succeed.” 

 

“The Trump Administration’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education isn’t about streamlining or efficiency.  It’s whittling down or just completely abandoning critical programs and support for public school students, teachers, and entire communities,” said Senator Reed.  “I’m fighting to ensure our teachers and schools have the support and resources they need to give every child a top-notch education that prepares them for success.  I am grateful for Rhode Island’s Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green and education leaders from across the nation who joined us today to discuss their work protecting and preserving opportunity for our students.”

 

“After a year that included mass firings, cancelling critical grant funds for our local schools, and cutting access to student loans, the Trump Administration is trying to make good on their promise to shutter the Department of Education,” said Senator Van Hollen. “While there are many ways to improve our education system, dismantling the department piece by piece only threatens our longstanding goal of ensuring that every child has access to a quality education. We should be investing more in this objective, not less – for the success of today’s students and the future of our country.”

 

“The Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Education Department are an attack on public education and public schools,” said Senator Warren. “I’m fighting to ensure every kid, no matter their zip code or how much money their family makes, has a shot at a quality education.”

 

“When I was young, my father took me to the doors of the schoolhouse and told me ‘If you walk through those doors and work hard, you can do just about anything because we are fortunate to live in America,’” said Senator Merkley. “I’m grateful that a public school education opened the doors of opportunity for me, but today that dream is harder and harder to achieve as the Trump Administration undermines the tools and resources students need to succeed. We must fight to protect programs like TRIO that expand opportunity for all and strengthen the four foundations working families need to thrive – including health care, housing, good-paying jobs, and education.”

 

“A good education for every American is one of the very best investments we can make in our future as a nation,” said Senator Klobuchar.“That is why I so strongly oppose President Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education and retreat from our commitment to education and our nation’s future. Instead of working with states and school districts to support students, this administration is adding more layers of bureaucracy that will make it even harder for students and schools to succeed.”

 

“The Trump Administration is sabotaging our nation’s future by dismantling the Department of Education,” said Senator Durbin. “So many students rely on the programs and protections provided by the Department, and without that support, the next generation will have less access to the resources they need to thrive.”

 

“No government agency is perfect, and the Department of Education is no exception. Improvements and efficiencies can always be made. But what we are seeing now is not reform—it is abandonment. The administration is walking away from the federal role in education and effectively selling it off for parts,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “Families deserve safe and welcoming public schools that are relevant, engaging, and inclusive. These schools, along with thriving universities, are the bedrock of our children’s future and the nation’s economic, scientific, and medical success. We must strengthen—not abandon—public education. Our economy, our democracy and our children depend on it. Every American deserves nothing less.”

 

“The Trump Administration’s plan to dismantle the Congressionally created U.S. Department of Education is unlawful and an insult to the tens of millions of students who rely on it to protect access to a quality education,” said AFGE 252 President Rachel Gittleman. Splintering the Department’s core responsibilities across agencies that lack the expertise to carry them out creates more red tape for states and communities, not less. After attempting to fire the public servants who do this critical work, the Administration is now pushing those responsibilities onto agencies unequipped to serve students and families—creating confusion, eroding public trust, and leaving students and families to pay the price.”

 

“The focus of this Administration has been to deliver on the Great American Heist. The administration’s talk of efficiency and bureaucratic bloat is a cover for stripping students of civil rights, destabilizing millions of student borrowers, and pushing privatization through massive tax credits that subsidize wealthy families’ private and religious schooling,” said Denise Forte, President and CEO of EdTrust. “The federal government should be working with States to improve and strengthen public education for all students, instead of cruel attempts to steal students’ futures.”  

 

“At a time when the U.S. Department of Education faces unprecedented threats—weakening oversight, equity protections, and student supports—every policy decision matters,” said Dr. Amy Loyd, CEO of All4Ed.“The Trump Administration’s attempt to dismantle the Department is illegal, ineffective, and reckless. Rather than one agency coordinating federal education funding, accountability, and oversight, responsibilities are scattered across five departments—Labor, HHS, Interior, State—and a hollowed-out Department of Education. This is not streamlining government; it is fragmenting our national commitment to learners of all ages. I applaud Senator Hirono’s leadership in sounding the alarm and urge Congress to halt these unlawful actions and restore the Department of Education.”

 

“Special education is facing a five-alarm fire,” said Chad Rummel, Council for Exceptional Children Executive Director. “Current actions to close the U.S. Department of Education, fire nearly everyone in the Office of Special Education Programs and deplete the Office for Civil Rights are fracturing the federal education system designed to support all children, and pose a cruel and unnerving threat to the education of children with disabilities.”

 

“As a state education chief, a daughter of immigrants, a lifelong educator, and a mother of two school-aged multilingual children, including one who is on the autism spectrum, I know that a quality education can make all the difference in a child’s life,”said Angelica Infante-Green, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education. “During this critical time for our students, the federal government should be finding ways to better support local school communities rather than providing less and creating chaos and concern by proposing to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Federal support is not optional; it is essential for continued academic recovery and for advancing the success of children in Rhode Island and across the nation.”

 

Video of the full forum can be found here and photos can be found here.  

 

###

Categories Disruption, Extremism, Special Education, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Musk and Trump Have Blood on Their Hands After Canceling US AID

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2025 //
11

At the start of the second Trump administration, Trump unilaterally created a fake “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by Elon Musk. Only Congress can create or eliminate Departments. According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives is responsible for funding and defunding the federal government.

Trump ignored the Constitution and Congress and let Musk and his team ransack the Federal Government, fire thousands of civil servants, and close agencies at will. DOGE decisions were made not by experts but by Musk and his team, most of whom were young men in their 20s, even a teenagers. From their point of view, their greatest accomplishment was to copy massive amounts of personally identifiable data from the Treasury Department and the Social Security Administration.

While DOGE slashed and burned agencies and Departments with abandon, the cruelest cut of all was the near-total elimination of foreign aid. Millions of people in impoverished countries relied on U.S. AID for food, medicine, and medical care. The aid is gone. Hundreds of thousands of people died. If you say it in the active tense, Trump and Musk murdered “hundreds of thousands of people” whose lives depended on US AID. The food aid was more than a humanitarian impulse: American farmers lost at least $2 billion that was used to pay them to supply food for US AID.

Matt Johnson wrote for MS NOW:

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Elon Musk boasted in February, shortly after President Donald Trump gave him permission to hack his way through the federal government. As a “special government employee” with no oversight running the “temporary organization,” the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Musk destroyed the 64-year-old humanitarian agency in a matter of days, abruptly halting deliveries of lifesaving medicine, emergency food aid and many other forms of support to the poorest people on the planet. This was done in the name of DOGE’s mission to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

Musk claimed that DOGE would slash government spending by “at least $2 trillion,” but it ended up saving a microscopic fraction of that figure. Now that DOGE has been disbanded, Musk claims “We were a little bit successful” — but admits that he wouldn’t do it again. 

Musk tried his hand at government, shrugged and moved on. The same can’t be said for the people who are dead and dying thanks to the DOGE-led onslaught on the U.S. Agency for International Development. “No one has died as [a] result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding,” Musk declared in March. According to models created by Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, hundreds of thousands of people have in fact died as a result of eliminated and disrupted aid. 

It’s impossible to calculate the ultimate human toll of shuttering USAID. The U.S. was responsible for 40% of the total foreign aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024, and much of the infrastructure that delivered this aid has now been destroyed. Beyond the frozen payments for active aid projects, partner organizations have closed, supply chains for medicine and food deliveries have been severed and staff who administered and monitored programs have been fired. Early warning systems for starvation and infectious diseases have shut down. 

The individual stories are harrowing. A South Sudanese child with HIV died from pneumonia because he didn’t receive the medication necessary to sustain his immune system. People participating in studies were abandonedwith experimental drugs in their systems and medical devices in their bodies. Cases of acute malnutrition at refugee camps have surged. 

In the MAGAverse, none of this is true because USAID was never an aid organization to begin with. Mike Benz, a right-wing influencer who has accused the agency of being a terror organization and subverting governments around the world, was a big influence on Musk’s assault on USAID, which Benz called the “Terror Titanic.” Like Musk before him, Benz has now been appointed as a special government employee to investigate his allegations that USAID was a massive covert influence operation and front for the CIA. 

Benz’s campaign is just the latest example of MAGA propaganda using USAID as a convenient political scapegoat. DOGE viewed the takeover of USAID as an opportunity to find instances of “viral waste,” which could be broadcast to the American people as a justification for its other cost-cutting efforts. One example cited by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was the “50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.” Trump later declared that the money had been “sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.” 

There was just one problem: The money was actually for family planning in a province of Mozambique called Gaza….

This is not the full article. Open the link to read the rest.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Data, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Funding, Injustice, International, Musk, Elon, Trump

Why Indiana Refused to Redistrict to Help GOP Control the House in 2026

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2025 //
17

It’s typical in American politics that the party that wins the Presidency usually loses the mid-term elections two years later. The other party picks up seats, sometimes enough seats to dominate one or both Houses, enough to stymie the President’s agenda and enough to hold investigations that embarrass the President.

With Trump’s low standing in the polls, the rising cost of living, the backlash against tariffs, and the evident cruelty of ICE, Republicans have worried about an electoral wipeout in November 2026.

Some clever Republican strategist devised a plan to protect the Republican dominance in the House of Representatives. Simple. Persuade red states to redistrict (gerrymander) their Congressional maps, creating more Republican seats while eliminating Democratic seats. This was out of the ordinary, because states usually redistrict every ten years, after the latest census.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a loyal MAGAT, was first to act. He pushed through a new map that split up Democratic districts and created five new Republican seats. The U.S. Supreme Court supported the Trump goal, as usual, and approved the Texas gerrymander.

Governor Gavin Newsom of California was quick to respond. He called a referendum that would redistrict the state and produce five new Democratic seats. Newsom’s new map is being changed in the Supreme Court, but it’s difficult to see the Court approving the Texas gerrymander while rejecting California’s.

The administration began pressuring other red state governors to follow the lead of Texas. Some Democratic states set about redrawing their maps.

And then there was Indiana. NBC News tells the fascinating inside story of how the Trump team alienated key Republicans in that state.

Indiana is a deep-red state with a Republican supermajority in both houses of the legislature. Republicans hold seven Congressional districts, Democrats only two. Trump wanted those two seats.

The Trump operatives thought the state leaders would quickly fall in line. When they didn’t, the Trump operatives decided to unleash their usual tools: bullying, pressure, threats, intimidation, even death threats. At least 14 Republican state senators received death threats.

Jane C. Timm of NBC News wrote the story:

INDIANAPOLIS — As the redistricting battle began to pick up steam in Indiana last month, state Sen. Jean Leising’s grandchildren were receiving odd text messages.

Ads from little-known outside groups had spliced the longtime Republican lawmaker’s image next to prominent Democrats like New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Some of the messaging was sloppy, referring to Leising as “him.”

A conservative and supporter of President Donald Trump, Leising, 76, was furious. Following months of conversations with her constituents, she felt they were generally opposed to redrawing Indiana’s congressional map ahead of the 2026 midterm elections — even though such an effort would favor her party and was backed by her president. So in mid-November, she fired off a statement making it official: She wouldn’t support it.

“The negative campaigning just put me over the top,” she said in an interview with 13WTHR in Indianapolis, an NBC News affiliate, at the time. “He may wonder why Indiana is struggling to get on board. Well, it’s probably the antics they used.”

It was a sign of things to come. Ultimately, the months of pressure applied by Trump and his supporters from outside of Indiana to pass a redrawn map that would split up the state’s two Democratic districts backfired. On Thursday, Leising joined a majority of Republicans in the state Senate in voting to sink the map in the face of potential future primary challenges, a flurry of online attacks — and in some cases, violent threats. 

The result was one of the biggest rejections that Trump, who has otherwise largely ruled over the GOP with an iron fist, has faced since returning to office, and it could cost the party in its bid to preserve its narrow House majority….

“You have to know Hoosiers. We can’t be bullied, we don’t like it,” GOP state Sen. Sue Glick said after voting against the map.

Despite intense lobbying by Trump, JD Vance, and Mike Johnston, Republican leaders in the state were not enthusiastic. They resented the pressure.

When Rodric Bray, the leading Republican in the State Senate, warned that there were not enough votes to pass the new map, Trump lashed out at him. He threatened to run an opponent to Bray, but Bray didn’t tremble because he’s not up for re-election until 2028.

Trump wrote on Truth Social:

“In the entire United States of America, Republican or Democrat, only Indiana ‘Republican’ State Senator Rod Bray, a Complete and Total RINO, is opposed to redistricting for purposes of gaining additional Seats in Congress,” Trump wrote in one Truth Social post of the well-liked Republican leader in the Senate. “The Rod Brays of Politics are WEAK and PATHETIC.”

The map passed the Indiana House by The map passed the state House last Friday by a 57-41 vote, with 12 Republicans voting against it.

When the vote shifted to the State Senate, the map was resoundingly defeated, 19-31, with 21 Republicans voting against it.

Trump lost the vote of one State Senator when he called Tim Walz “retards.” The State Senator has a child with Down Syndrome. Others said they would not be bullied.

Categories Democrats, Disruption, Elections, Indiana, Politics, Republicans, Texas, Trump

Carol Burris Interviews Me About My New Book

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2025 //
2

The Network for Public Education sponsored a conversation between me and Carol Burris about my new book: AN EDUCATION: HOW I CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT SCHOOLS AND ALMOST EVERYTHING ELSE.

I think you will enjoy it!

https://vimeo.com/1137499967

https://share.google/OUhluBgNodmED08UF

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Education Industry, Education Reform, Personal, Privatization, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Steve Schmidt: The Hegseth Ethos

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2025 //
7

Steve Schmidt is a veteran political strategist who worked for Republicans, most recently for John McCain in 2008. When Trump was elected, Schmidt was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. In 2020, he registered as a Democrat. He currently writes a blog at Substack.

This one is brilliant. Pete Hegseth is the embodiment of the moral and spiritual and intellectual rot at the core of the Republican Party today.

Schmidt writes:

There is no “Secretary of War” or “War Department” in the United States of America under US law.

Each time a news organization uses Pete Hegseth’s concocted title, and submits to his “War Department” fantasy, it is an act of corruption.

It is a direct and specific choice that immolates journalistic ethics by embracing fantasy at the demand of power.

Journalism confronts power.

Journalism doesn’t obey it, heed it, submit to it, appease it, or accept the premise that make-believe is real if the leader believes it so, regardless of reality.

This was posted by a man in the chain of command for the release of nuclear weapons after the commission of a war crime on his orders, which was followed by evasions, deflections of responsibility, and an attempt to stab a US Navy admiral in the back:

[Diane’s note: This is juvenile and not funny.]

When General of the Army George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Army Secretary of State and Defense died, President Harry Truman said the following in remembrance of his titanic life. He made an unfortunate reference to the traitorous Robert E. Lee, who was exceeded in every way by Ulysses Grant, a man who bested him, yet was smeared into oblivion over 100 years time by the the same type of white nationalists and Christian Taliban who slither around Mar-a-Lago. That is, until one day, the truth escaped its dungeon and a foremost savior of the Union was seen clearly again.

[Truman said:]

General Marshall was an honorable man, a truthful man, a man of ability.

Honor has no modifying adjectives — a man has it, or he hasn’t. General Marshall had it.

Truth has no qualifying words to be attached to it. A man either tells the truth, or he doesn’t. General Marshall was the exemplification of the man of truth.

Ability can be qualified. Some of us have little of it, some may have moderate ability, and some men have it to the extreme.

General Marshall was a man of the greatest ability.

He was the greatest general since Robert E. Lee.

He was the greatest administrator since Thomas Jefferson.

He was the man of honor, the man of truth, the man of greatest ability.

He was the greatest of the great in our time.

I sincerely hope that when it comes my time to cross the great river that General Marshall will place me on his staff, so that I may try to do for him what he did for me.

*******************

Perhaps one reason that Pete Hegseth fetishizes the “War Department” is that, when it existed, it commanded a segregated force. The Defense Department has always commanded a desegregated force.

Before the US Army was desegregated a young Army Lieutenant named Jackie Robinson faced trumped up charges at a kangaroo court martial.
Here is Jackie Robinson’s legacy perfectly preserved for all time in the magnificent eulogy he received from Reverend Jesse Jackson, to whom I hope we can all send good wishes and prayers this holiday season, as he struggles through the ravages of the burdens handed him with dignity and grace: 

[Jackie Robinson’s eulogy by Reverend Jesse Jackson.]

Powerful men have a long tradition of sending powerless young men to die in unworthy causes in far away lands.

There should be an extremely low tolerance for such men in 2025 America, but they are not only tolerated, but indulged.  

The hypocrisy of the US Congress on the matter of Pete “Kill them all!” Hegseth is bottomless and dangerous. Their faithlessness to the American soldier, sailor, airmen and marine is obscene.

The man who jumped up on a table screaming, “Kill all Muslims!” was exactly who the Congress was warned about. Yet, the warnings were unheeded because the Congress cared more about pleasing Trump than the institutions of the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps that predate the independence of the United States. They cared more about sating a stirred-up Fox News mob than a 19-year-old private.

Shameful doesn’t begin to describe it.

It is a dereliction of duty, and the most profound type of moral betrayal.

The 119th MAGA Congress is an abomination, led by a religious nutter and weakling who is neither bright, decent, funny, nor wise.

In other words, he is a perfect MAGA puppet who thinks he is a ventriloquist. In truth, the hand inserted into his most sacred space, the one he hides his bespectacled head within, is smeared with orange hand paint.

Faithless, treacherous and disloyal are the Hegseth ethos. They are a perfect mirror of the only reflection of equal rottenness in America: the crazed MAGA Congress, filled from bottom to top with corrupt loons, belligerent liars, sexual deviants, conspiracists, fraudsters, women beaters, and insider traders, who worship Trump together.

Pete Hegseth is the leader of a military that is unready and unprepared to fight a necessary war. He is a performance artist, a late-stage mid-tier Fox News star who is a herald of disaster to a population filled with indifference. It is about to find out the hard way how much damage a small group of evil men and women can do to a nation.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, History, Ignorance, Republicans, Scandals, Shame, Trump, Wall of Shame

NPE Releases a New Report on Charter Schools and Their Lack of Accountability

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2025 //
5

I was present in the very beginnings of the charter school movement. I advocated on their behalf. I and many others said that charter schools would be better than public schools because they would be more successful (because they would be free of bureaucracy), they would be more accountable (because their charter would be revoked if they weren’t successful), they would “save” the neediest students, and they would save money (because they wouldn’t have all that administrative bloat).

That was the mid-1980s. Now, more than 35 years later, we know that none of those promises were kept. The charter lobby has fought to avoid accountability; charters pay their administrators more than public schools; charters demand the same funding as public schools; the most successful charters avoid the neediest students; and–aside from charters that choose their students with care–charters are not more successful than public schools, and many are far worse. Charters open and close like day lilies.

This week, the National Center of Charter School Accountability, a project of NPE, published Charter School Reckoning: Part II Disillusionment, written by Carol Burris. This is the second part in a three-part comprehensive report on charter schools entitled Charter School Reckoning: Decline, Dissolution, and Cost.

Its central argument is that a once-promising idea—charter schools as laboratories of innovation—has been steadily weakened by state laws that prioritize rapid expansion and less regulation over school quality and necessary oversight. Those policy and legislative shifts have produced predictable results: fraud, mismanagement, profiteering, abrupt closures, and significant charter churn. The report connects the above instances with the weaknesses in state charter laws and regulations that enable both bad practices and criminal activity. 

As part of the investigation, the NPE team scanned news reports and government investigative audits published between September 2023 and September 2025 and identified $858,000,000 in tax dollars lost due to theft, fraud, and/or gross mismanagement.

The report contrasts the original aspirations of the charter movement with today’s reality, shaped in large part by the intense lobbying of powerful corporate charter chains and trade organizations. It also examines areas that have received far too little attention, including the role of authorizers and the structure and accountability of charter-school governing boards.

It concludes with ten recommendations that, taken together, would bring democratic governance to the schools, open schools based on need and community input, and restore the founding vision of charter schools as nimble, community-driven, teacher-led laboratories grounded in equity and public purpose.

This new report can be found here.

Part I of Charter Reckoning: Decline can be found here.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Innovation

Trump Celebrates Himself: Me! Me!

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2025 //
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When Trump allowed his buddy Elon Musk to run a so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency, Musk sent his mentees into every department with a license to terrorize civil servants and destroy their work. Agencies were literally ransacked, employees with deep experience were peremptorily fired by young men in their late teens and early 20s. Foreign aid programs were shuttered, and their employees given orders to return home.

The only certain result of the DOGE incursion was that the kids vacuumed up the personal data of every person, purpose unknown.

One casualty of DOGE in those early days was the Institute of Peace. The Institute was established by Congress and signed into law by President Reagan in 1984. Its goal was to train peacemakers and be the equivalent of military academies. It had a bipartisan board. It trained thousands of professionals in conflict resolution.

In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order to begin dissolving the IP. He fired most of its Board of Directors. The brazen DOGE pests forced their way into the building and took it over. The IP went to court to fight for survival.

The issue is still in court but Trump realized he had a use for the attractive building that previously housed the IP. He invited representatives of Rwanda and the Congo to come to Washington to accept a peace agreement for their decades-long war. This was intended to add luster to Trump’s ongoing campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize. President Obama got one, and that really bothers Trump, who is obsessively jealous of both Obama and Biden.

Days before the big meeting, workmen attached Trump’s name to two sides of the building. It is now officially the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. The words “Institute of Peace” are chiselled into the stone. The Trump name was attached in large silver letters. When he’s gone, they can easily be removed.

Foreign leaders now understand well that the key to Trump’s heart is his ego. So they compete to give him a gold crown, a solid bar of gold, and whatever extravagant symbols of royalty they can dream up.

FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, awarded its first gold “peace prize” to Trump to compensate for his loss of the Nobel peace prize. Trump said, “This is truly one of the great honors of my life.” The event was held at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where Trump fired the entire board, packed the board with his lackeys, and named himself president of the board. He has been thinking of naming the concert hall of the Kennedy Center for Melania. Don’t be surprised if sometime in the next four years, the facility is renamed the Trump Center for the Performing Arts.

And why shouldn’t the Washington Monument be retitled the Trump Monument?

Nothing is too small to be overlooked. Until now, visitors to national parks got free entry on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, both of which are national holidays. However, the Trump administration has removed those two days. The only free day will be the birthday of Donald J. Trump. Will it soon be declared a national holiday?

Republicans have discussed placing his name and face on a coin–nickel, dime, or quarter–but they better act quickly before the 2026 midterm elections.

Governor Gavin Newsom was quick to respond:

Shortly after Trump won the first FIFA Peace Prize (FIFA is the world soccer federation), retail giant Kohl’s bestowed its first Kohl’s Peace Prize on Governor Gavin Newsom! Governor Newsom said he was honored.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Trump
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