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Trump Moves to Shut Down US Department of Education

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2025 //
11

Trump said he would close the Department of Education, and he’s well on the way to closing a Congressionally-authorized Department without asking Congress for permission.

He and wrestling entrepreneur Linda McMahon have decided that the Department is responsible for stagnant test scores. Nothing could be stupider but what would one expect from people who look with contempt on education. Especially public schools.

I cannot explain their thinking but know this: Trump wants to destroy research into science and medicine. He wants to control the curriculum and to ban teaching about race, ethnicity and gender.

As Forrest Gump’s mother taught him: “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Michael C. Bender of The New York Times wrote:

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday an aggressive plan to continue dismantling the Education Department, ending the agency’s role in supporting academics at elementary and high schools and in expanding access to college.

Those responsibilities will instead be largely taken over by the Labor Department.

Additional changes include moving a child care grant program for college students and foreign medical school accreditation to the Health and Human Services Department, and transferring Fulbright programs and international education grants to the State Department. The Interior Department will take over the Indian Education Office.

Shifting duties away from the Education Department aligns with President Trump’s goal of eventually closing the agency, a move opposed by teachers’ unions and student rights groups and one that can only be accomplished with an act of Congress.

Less clear was how moving programs to other agencies aligned with Mr. Trump’s reason for closing the Education Department, which he has said was to give states more power in shaping school policies. A senior official at the Education Department said the changes would streamline bureaucracy so that “at the end of the day, it means more dollars to the classroom.”

“Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement, adding that the changes were an attempt to “refocus education on students, families and schools.”

The plan drew some immediate blowback from Republicans, including Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who said in a statement that the “department’s core offices are not discretionary functions.”

“They are foundational,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said. “They safeguard civil rights, expand opportunity, and ensure that every child, in every community, has the chance to learn, grow and succeed on equal footing.”

Kevin Carey, the vice president for education and work at New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, said the changes were “wasteful, wrong and illegal.”

“Secretary McMahon is creating a bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine that will waste millions of taxpayer dollars by outsourcing vital programs to other agencies,” Mr. Carey said. “It’s like paying a contractor double to mow your lawn and then claiming you’ve cut the home maintenance budget. It makes no sense.”

Administration officials have pointed to the recent federal shutdown to justify the moves, noting that schools remained open and students continued to be taught despite nearly all of the Education Department’s staff having been furloughed.

The department has posted several social media memes making such a point. In an X post last week, the department announced that federal workers were returning to the office, adding, “But let’s be honest: did you really miss us at all?”

Liz Huston, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration was committed to shrinking the agency “while still ensuring efficient delivery of funds and essential programs.”

“The Democrat shutdown made one thing unmistakably clear: Students and teachers don’t need Washington bureaucrats micromanaging their classrooms,” Ms. Huston said.

Republicans in charge of the House and Senate in Washington have signaled little enthusiasm for voting on a bill to close the department, which was created by an act of Congress in 1979.

Mr. Trump has also shown little interest in collaborating with Congress in his bid to reshape the federal government, and his administration has continued to seek ways to diminish the Education Department.

“We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Mr. Trump said in March after signing an executive orderthat directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to start razing the department.

Ms. McMahon’s first act after joining Mr. Trump’s cabinet this year was to instruct the department’s staff to prepare for its “final mission” of shuttering the agency. The following week, Ms. McMahon fired 1,315 of those workers.

The layoffs decimated the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which was created to enforce Congress’s promise of equal educational opportunity for all students, and eliminated the agency’s research armdedicated to tracking U.S. student achievement, which for many students is at three-decade lows.

In July, after the Supreme Court cleared the way for mass layoffs at the department, the administration moved adult education, family literacy programs and career and technical education to the Labor Department.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Trump’s Shocking Destruction of the Department of Justice

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2025 //
3

The New York Times published a deeply researched article about the Trump administration’s systematic destruction of the U.S. Department of Justice.

This is a gift article, meaning that non-subscribers may open the link.

Traditionally, the Department of Justice is independent of the administration in power.

Trump has broken down all the guardrails that protected the Department from political interference.

Trump selected Pam Bondi as Attorney General to carry out his wishes. He selected his personal defense attorneys as Bondi’s top assistants. Hundreds of career officials were fired. Thousands have left. The ethics officer was fired, because he insisted that the Department abide by ethics rules. The pardons attorney was fired, because Trump wanted to give pardons to friends, like actor Mel Gibson, who wanted his gun rights restored despite his history of domestic violence.

The Justice Department is now completely under the personal control of Trump. It is an instrument of his whims.

In one example, the Department of Justice sued a prestigious law firm for discriminating against white men, even though the law firm is 97% white. Why? The firm has represented Democrats.

The agency responsible for investigating domestic terrorism has been gutted. Civil rights enforcement has turned to attacking racial inequities and defending aggrieved white men.

The New York Times is the one major newspaper that has not bowed to Trump or capitulated to his threats. We sometimes criticize the Times for its efforts to be “on the one hand, on the other,” but this is not one of those articles.

This is a straightforward demonstration of the politicization and gutting of a bedrock protector of our democracy.

This article documents the early stages of fascism.

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, Justice, Trump

Federal Judge Rules That Trump Regime Cannot Withhold $1.2 Billion from UCLA

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2025 //
2

Federal Judge Rita F. Lin ruled that the federal government cannot withhold $1.2 billion in funding for medical and scientific research as punishment for alleged anti-Senitism. This is an important victory for free speech, academic freedom, and the First Amendment. The Trump administration’s efforts to impose its views on the nation’s institutions of higher education—and U.S. research funding as leverage is unprecedented in American history.

The Los Angeles Times reported the decision.

A federal judge on Friday blocked the Trump administration from imposing a $1.2-billion fine on UCLA along with stipulations for deep campus changes in exchange for being eligible for federal grants.

The decision is a major win for universities that have struggled to resist President Trump’s attempt to discipline “very bad” universities that he claims have mistreated Jewish students, forcing them to pay exorbitant fines and agree to adhere to conservative standards.

A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The preliminary injunction, issued by U.S. District Judge Rita F. Lin of the Northern District of California, rendered moot — for now — nearly every aspect of a more than 7,000-word settlement offer the federal government sent to the University of California in August after suspending $584 million in medical, science and energy research grants to the Los Angeles campus.

The government said it froze the funds after finding UCLA broke the law by using race as a factor in admissions, recognizing transgender people’s gender identities, and not taking antisemitism complaints seriously during pro-Palestinian protests in 2024 — claims that UC has denied.

The settlement proposal outlined extensive changes to push UCLA — and by extension all of UC — ideologically rightward by calling for an end to diversity-related scholarships, restrictions on foreign student enrollment, a declaration that transgender people do not exist, an end to gender-affirming healthcare for minors, the imposition of free speech limits and more.

“The administration and its executive agencies are engaged in a concerted campaign to purge ‘woke,’ ‘left,’ and ‘socialist’ viewpoints from our country’s leading universities,” Lin wrote in her opinion. “Agency officials, as well as the president and vice president, have repeatedly and publicly announced a playbook of initiating civil rights investigations of preeminent universities to justify cutting off federal funding, with the goal of bringing universities to their knees and forcing them to change their ideological tune.

Universities are then presented with agreements to restore federal funding under which they must change what they teach, restrict student anonymity in protests, and endorse the administration’s view of gender, among other things. Defendants submit nothing to refute this….”

Universities including Columbia, Brown and Cornell agreed to pay the government hundreds of millions to atone for alleged violations similar to the ones facing UCLA. The University of Pennsylvania and University of Virginia also reached agreements with the Trump administration that were focused, respectively, on ending recognition of transgender people and halting diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Friday’s decision, for the time being, spares the UC from having to proceed with negotiations that it reluctantly entered with the federal government to avoid further grant cuts and restrictions across the system, which receives $17.5 billion in federal funding each year. UC President James B. Milliken has said that the $1.2-billion fine would “completely devastate” UC and that the system, under fire from the Trump administration, faces “one of the gravest threats in UC’s 157-year history.”

This is not the first time a judge rebuked Trump for his higher education campaign.

Massachusetts-based U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs in September ordered the government to reverse billions in cuts to Harvard. But that case did not wade directly into settlement negotiations.

Those talks have proceeded slowly. In a court hearing last week, a Department of Justice lawyer said “there’s no evidence that any type of deal with the United States is going to be happening in the immediate future.” The lawyer argued that the settlement offer was only an idea that had not received UC approval.
Because of that, he said, a lawsuit was inappropriate. Lin disagreed.

“Plaintiffs’ harm is already very real. With every day that passes, UCLA continues to be denied the chance to win new grants, ratcheting up defendants’ pressure campaign,” she wrote. “And numerous UC faculty and staff have submitted declarations describing how defendants’ actions have already chilled speech throughout the UC system.”

The case was brought by more a dozen faculty and staff unions and associations from across UC’s 10 campuses, who said the federal government was violating their 1st Amendment rights and constitutional right to due process.

UC, which has avoided directly challenging the government in court, was not party to the suit.
“This is not only a historic lawsuit — brought by every labor union and faculty union in the UC — but also an incredible win,” said Veena Dubal, a UC Irvine law professor and general counsel for one of the plaintiffs, the American Assn. of University Professors, which has members across UC campuses.

Dubal called the decision “a turning point in the fight to save free speech and research in the finest public school system in the world.”
Asked about Friday’s outcome, a spokesperson said UC “remains focused on our vital work to drive innovation, advance medical breakthroughs and strengthen the nation’s long-term competitiveness. UC remains committed to protecting the mission, governance, and academic freedom of the university.”

Categories Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Higher Education, Medicine, Research, Science

How Donald Trump Solved Healthcare (in His Brain)

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2025 //
13

The extended shutdown of the Federal government was caused by the Democrats’ efforts to save the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare. Unless Republicans agree, the price of subsidies for these policies will soar. Many who can’t afford the health insurance are likely to drop their policy and have none at all.

Republicans have wanted to kill Obamacare for years. Not because it doesn’t work, but because it does. They want to eliminate any Democratic successes. Trump hates Obama and always has. First, because Obama was more popular than Trump, and second, because Obama is Black and more popular even now than Trump.

The Substack blog called Wonkette reported that Trump claims to have a plan to replace Obamacare. Or a concept of a plan.

Simple: Eliminate Obamacare and let everyone buy their own insurance.

Too simple: Insurance works by creating large pools of the insured, many of whom will never claim insurance.

Trump’s plan will protect those who can afford to buy insurance and leave behind those who can’t.

Read the column. Apparently Republicans are drafting a bill already.

Beware.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Disruption, Extremism, For-Profit, Health, Obama, Republicans, Trump

Andy Spears: New Group in Tennessee Seeks to Eliminate Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2025 //
7

Andy Spears is a veteran education journalist with a Ph.D. in education policy and a specialization in school finance. He lives in Nashville, but covers the national scene.

Spears writes:

In this post, he reports on an ominous development in Tennessee. A new organization in Tennessee has declared its intention to lure nearly 500,000 students out of public schools and into charter schools and voucher schools. The collapse in funding for public schools is likely to end public schools altogether.

Spears writes:

While state leaders consider expanding the state’s private school coupon program, a new nonprofit takes a bolder approach. A group calling itself Tennessee Leads registered with the Secretary of State as a 501(c)(4) issue advocacy organization with the goal of effectively ending public education in Tennessee by 2031.

The group was registered on October 14th and lists a business address of 95 White Bridge Road in Nashville. This is a nondescript business building in West Nashville.

The Registered Agent for Tennessee Leads is listed as “Tennessee Leads.” The group’s website says an IRS nonprofit application is pending.
In short, it is not yet clear who is backing this movement.

However, the group is not shy about its goals.

We support legislation to significantly increase the availability of Education Freedom scholarships, aiming to provide 200,000 scholarships annually by 2031. This initiative is designed to empower parents with more choices for their children’s education.

And:

Our efforts include advocating for the expansion of public charter schools, with a goal to increase student enrollment from 45,000 to 250,000. This initiative seeks to offer diverse educational opportunities and foster innovation in teaching.

If achieved, these two goals combined would take nearly half of all K-12 students in the state out of traditional public schools.

The group doesn’t really say the current model isn’t working – they just say they like “choice.”
The state’s current private school coupon scheme (ESA vouchers) has 20,000 students.

Moving that to 200,000 would cost at least $1.5 billion per year and take significant funds from local public schools.

Other states that rapidly expanded school vouchers saw huge budget hits to both state and local government.

[See Andy Spears’ post about Arizona’s universal school vouchers, which he refers to as “private school coupons for rich families.”]

[See his post on Indiana vouchers, where the costs rose neatly tenfold in less than a decade. The Indiana voucher is also a coupon for the rich to cash in at private schools. He predicts that Tennessee will be shelling out $1.4 billion a year for well-off kids to attend private schools by 2035.]

He writes that vouchers are a mess in Florida, because thousands of students are “double-dipping,” collecting voucher money while attending public schools.

[See his article on double-dipping and the voucher mess in Florida.]

He continues:

Florida relies on two official student counts each year — one in October and another in February — to allocate funding to school districts through the Florida Education Finance Program (FEFP). But after the October 2024 Count, major red flags appeared. Nearly 30,000 students (at an estimated cost of almost $250 million) were identified as both receiving a voucher and attending a public school. In some districts, almost all (more than all in one district) of their state funding had been absorbed by voucher payouts.

So, the Tennessee Leads plan would lead to a rapid decrease in state funds available for public schools – or, a significant increase in local property taxes – possibly, both.

It’s also not clear how Tennessee Leads plans to build charter school capacity to house an additional 200,000 students. Unless the plan is to just hand existing public schools over to charter operators – you know, like the failed Achievement School District model.

Oh, and there’s something else.

Tennessee Leads wants all schools to use Direct Instruction at all times for all students.

We advocate for the implementation of Direct Instruction methodologies across all public schools, ensuring that teaching practices are grounded in research and proven to be effective in enhancing student achievement.

Except studies on Direct Instruction suggest the opposite – that it does not improve student learning – in fact, it may be harmful to student academic and social growth.
Here’s more from a dissertation submitted by an ETSU student:

No statistically significant results (p = .05) were found between the year before implementation and the year after implementation with the exception of one grade level. Furthermore, no significant differences were found at any grade level between students participating in Corrective Reading and students not participating in Corrective Reading on the 2003-2004 TCAP Terra Nova test.

To be clear, Direct Instruction is highly-scripted learning – down to the pacing, word choice, and more – the “sage on the stage” delivers rote learning models and students are told exactly how to “do” certain things – the “one best way” approach with little room for student discovery.

More on this:

A remarkable body of research over many years has demonstrated that the sort of teaching in which students are provided with answers or shown the correct way to do something — where they’re basically seen as empty receptacles to be filled with facts or skills — tends to be much less effective than some variant of student-centered learning that involves inquiry or discovery, in which students play an active role in constructing meaning for themselves and with one another.

That is: Scripted learning/Direct Instruction is not evidence-based if the evidence you’re looking for is what actually improves student learning.

It holds true not only in STEM subjects, which account for a disproportionate share of the relevant research, but also in reading instruction, where, as one group of investigators reported, “The more a teacher was coded as telling children information, the less [they] grew in reading achievement.”

It holds true when judged by how long students retain knowledge,7 and the effect is even clearer with more ambitious and important educational goals. The more emphasis one places on long-term outcomes, on deep understanding, on the ability to transfer ideas to new situations, or on fostering and maintaining students’ interest in learning, the more direct instruction (DI) comes up short.8

One wonders who, exactly, wants to advance an extreme privatization agenda while also mandating that those students remaining in traditional public schools are subjected to a learning model proven not only not to work, but also shown as likely harmful in many cases.
Eventually, an IRS determination letter will be issued, or the Registered Agent will be updated on the Secretary of State’s site. Or, perhaps, the “about us” section will offer some insight into the actors who would end public schools in our state.

On the day after this post appeared, Spears learned that a well-known political consulting firm was behind the proposal for Tennessee Leads. The firm had previously worked for the Tennessee Republican Party and for Governor Bill Lee. He wrote a new post.

It’s not at all clear why Governor Lee and his fellow Republicans are so enamored of charters and vouchers. Tennessee was the first state to win Race to the Top funding from the Obama administration. It collected a grand prize of $500 million. With that big infusion of new funding for “reform,” the public schools should be reformed by now. But obviously they are not.

Worse, Tennessee put $100 million into a bold experiment that was supposed to demonstrate the success of charter schools. The state created the Educational Achievement Authority, hired a star of the charter movement to run it, and gathered the state’s lowest-performing public school into a non-contiguous all-charter district. The EAA promised that these low-scoring schools would join the state’s top schools within five years. Five years passed, and the targeted schools remained at the bottom of the state’s rankings.

In time, the legislature gave up and closed the EAA.

Similarly, the evidence is in in vouchers. In every state that had offered them to all students, the vast majority are scooped up by affluent families whose kids never attended public schools. When public school students took vouchers, they fell far behind their public school peers.

Are Republican leaders immune to reading evidence?

Categories Arizona, Disruption, Education Industry, Failure, Florida, Funding, Hoax, Indianapolis, Inequality, Privatization, Republicans, Tennessee, Vouchers

Federal Judge Permanently Blocks Federal Troops in Portland, Oregon

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2025 //
3

Judge Karin Immergut was appointed to the bench by President Trump in 2019. But unlike Trump’s appointees to the U.S. Supreme Court, Judge Immergut puts the Constitution and the law above partisanship.

She had previously issued a temporary injunction against sending federal troops to Portland. Today she turned her order into a permanent injunction. She was not convinced that there was a need for federal troops in that all she saw were relatively small and peaceful demonstrations that could be handled by local law enforcement.

The Trump administration will appeal her decision.

The Department of Homeland Security insisted that troops were needed to quell rioting. Judge Immergut was not persuaded.

The New York Times reported:

President Trump overstepped his authority when he sought to deploy National Guard troops to Portland, Ore., to protect the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office there, a federal judge ruled on Friday, issuing a permanent block on troop deployments to the city in response to anti-ICE demonstrations.

Judge Karin J. Immergut of U.S. District Court, who was nominated to the bench by Mr. Trump, had previously issued a preliminary injunction blocking the president’s order federalizing National Guard soldiers in Oregon in a lawsuit that was brought by the States of Oregon and California and the City of Portland.

In her final 106-page ruling, Judge Immergut rejected arguments from government lawyers that protests at the ICE building made it impossible for federal officers to carry out immigration enforcement, represented a rebellion or raised the threat of rebellion. She also found that the attempt to use National Guard soldiers in Oregon had violated the U.S. Constitution’s 10th Amendment, which gives states any powers not expressly assigned to the federal government.

“The evidence demonstrates that these deployments, which were objected to by Oregon’s governor and not requested by the federal officials in charge of protection of the ICE building, exceeded the president’s authority,” she wrote.

Never a dull moment when Trump is in office.

Categories Disruption, Justice, Oregon, Portland, Trump

Why I Voted For Zohran Mamdani

By dianeravitch
November 5, 2025 //
35

I decided after Zohran Mamdani won the Democratic primary that I would vote for him. I was concerned about his lack of managerial experience, but impressed by his energy, his enthusiasm, his ever-present smile, and his willingness to try bold policies on behalf of working-class and low-income New Yorkers. I was repulsed by the billionaire-funded hate campaign against him as a Muslim.

But at some point before the general election, I wavered. I read article after article about his hard-and-fast views on Israel, the BDS movement, and other third-rail topics. I am not a Zionist but I believe that Israel should not have to justify its right to exist. And I condemn the rightwing cabal in Israel that has supported the genocidal war in Gaza, as well as settler terrorism against Palestinians who live on the West Bank.

I decided not to vote, which I have never done. Voting is a precious right, which I have always exercised.

Then I read this article in the New York Times, in which David Leonhardt interviewed Senator Bernie Sanders, and it resolved all my doubt and hesitation. After reading this, I went to my polling place and very happily voted for Zohran Mamdani.

Of course, I was thrilled to see a Democratic sweep in Virginia, New Jersey, Pennsylvania (where the state GOP proposed to remove three Democratic judges from the state’s Supreme Court), and California, where Prop. 50 passed easily, allowing a redistricting intended to produce an additional 5 Democratic seats in Congress. Prop 50 was a response to the Texas GOP’s redistricting that will eliminate 5 Democratic seats. Joke of the day: California Republicans are suing to block the Prop 50 gerrymandering because it favors one race over another. I didn’t hear similar concerns about gerrymanders by Republicans in Texas, Missouri, and other states that are creating new Republican seats, eliminating Black representation.

The article linked above is a gift article, so you can read it in full without a subscription.

Here is a sample:

David Leonhardt: Senator Bernie Sanders started talking about income inequality nearly 40 years ago.

Archived clip of Bernie Sanders in 1988:In our nation today, we have extreme disparity between the rich and the poor, that elections are bought and sold by people who have huge sums of money.

He railed against oligarchs before Elon Musk made his first million.

Archived clip of Sanders in 1991: To a very great extent, the United States of America today is increasingly becoming an oligarchy.

Sanders started out as a political oddity. But his focus on inequality has made him one of the most influential politicians in America. I wanted to know where he thinks we’re headed next. So I asked him to join me for “America’s Next Story,” a Times Opinion series about the ideas that once held our country together, and those that might do so again.

Senator Bernie Sanders, thank you for being here.

Bernie Sanders: My pleasure….

Leonhardt: OK, let’s get into it. I want to go back to the pre-Trump era and think about the fact that a lot of Democrats during that time — I’m thinking about the Clintons and Obama — felt more positively toward the market economy than you did.

They were positive toward trade. They didn’t worry that much about corporate power. They didn’t pay that much attention to labor unions. And if I’m being totally honest, a lot of people outside of the Democratic Party, like New York Times columnists, had many of those same attitudes.

Sanders: Yes, I recall that. Vaguely, yes. Some of them actually weren’t supportive of my candidacy for president.

Leonhardt: That is fair. I assume you would agree that the consensus has shifted in your direction over the last decade or so?

Sanders: I think that’s fair to say.

Leonhardt: And I’m curious: Why do you think those other Democrats and progressives missed what you saw?

Sanders: In the 1970s — the early ’70s — some of the leaders in the Democratic Party had this brilliant idea. They said: Hey, Republicans are getting all of this money from the wealthy and the corporations. Why don’t we hitch a ride, as well? And they started doing that. Throughout the history of this country — certainly the modern history of this country, from F.D.R. to Truman to Kennedy, even — the Democratic Party was the party of the working class. Period. That’s all your working class. Most people were Democrats.

But from the ’70s on, for a variety of reasons — like the attraction of big money — the party began to pay more attention to the needs of the corporate world and the wealthy rather than working-class people. And I think, in my view, that has been a total disaster, not only politically, but for our country as a whole.

Leonhardt: I agree, certainly, that corporate money played a role within the party. But I also think a lot of people genuinely believed things like trade would help workers. When I think about —

Sanders: Hmm, no.

Leonhardt: You think it’s all about money?

Sanders: No. What I think is, if you talked to working-class people during that period, as I did, if you talked to the union movement during that period, as I did, you said: Guys, do you think it’s a great idea that we have a free-trade agreement with China? No worker in America thought that was a good idea. The corporate world thought it was a good idea. The Washington Post thought it was a great idea. I don’t know what The New York Times thought.

But every one of us who talked to unions, who talked to workers, understood that the result of that would be the collapse of manufacturing in America and the loss of millions of good-paying jobs. Because corporations understood: If I could pay people 30 cents an hour in China, why the hell am I going to pay a worker in America a living wage? We understood that.

Leonhardt: I think that’s fair. I guess I’m interested in why you think that members of the Democratic Party — not workers, but members — and other progressives ignored workers back then but have come more closely to listen to workers. I mean, if you look at the Biden administration’s policy, if you look at the way Senator Schumer talks about his own views shifting, I do think there’s been this meaningful shift in the Democratic Party toward your views. Not all the way.

Sanders: Well, what we will have to see is to what degree people are just seeing where the wind is blowing as to whether or not they mean it.

In my view, working-class Americans did not vote for Donald Trump because they wanted to see the top 1 percent get a trillion dollars in tax breaks. They did not want to see 15 million people, including many of them, being thrown off the health care they had or their health care premiums double, etc. They voted for Trump because he said: I am going to do something. The system is broken. I’m going to do something.

What did the Democrats say? Well, in 13 years, if you’re making $40,000, $48,000, we may be able to help your kid get to college. But if you’re making a penny more, we can’t quite do that. The system is OK — we’re going to nibble around the edges. Trump smashed the system. Of course, everything he’s doing is disastrous. Democrats? Eh, system is OK — let’s nibble around the edges.

Democrats lost the election. All right? They abdicated. They came up with no alternative. Because you know what? They, even today, don’t acknowledge the economic crises facing the working class of this country. Now you tell me, how many Democrats are going around saying: You know what? We have a health care system that is broken, completely. We are the only major country on Earth not to guarantee health care to all people I’ve introduced Medicare for All. You know how many Democrats in the Senate I have on board?

Leonhardt: How many?

Sanders: Fifteen — out of a caucus of 47.

Leonhardt: And you think Medicare for All is both good policy and good politics?

Sanders: Of course, it’s good policy! Health care is a human right! I feel very strongly about that. And I think the function of our health care system should not make the drug companies and the insurance companies phenomenally rich. We guarantee health care to all people — that’s what most Americans think. Where’s the leader?

I think that at a time when we have more income and wealth inequality, you know what the American people think? Maybe we really levy some heavy duty taxes on the billionaire class. I believe that. I think most Americans, including a number of Republicans, believe that. Hmm, not quite so sure where the Democrats are. I believe that you don’t keep funding a war criminal like Netanyahu to starve the children of Gaza. That’s what I believe. It’s what most Americans believe. An overwhelming majority in the Democratic world believes it. Hmm, Democratic leadership, maybe not quite so much.

The point is that, right now, 60 percent of our people have been paycheck to paycheck. I don’t know that the Democratic leadership understands that there are good, decent people out there working as hard as they can, having a hard time paying their rent. Because the cost of housing is off the charts, health care is off the charts, child care is off the charts. The campaign finance system is completely broken. When Musk can spend $270 million to elect Trump, you’ve got a broken system. Our job is to create an economy and a political system that works for working people, not just billionaires.

PLEASE OPEN THE LINK AND READ THE REST OF THIS AMAZING INTERVIEW.

Categories Democrats, Disruption, Elections, Inequality, Injustice, Republicans

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Repeatedly Ignores and Defies the Law

By dianeravitch
November 3, 2025 //
6

Heather Cox Richardson reviews Trump’s flagrant indifference to the law.

She writes:

Yesterday I wrote that President Donald J. Trump’s celebration of his new marble bathroom in the White House was so tone deaf at a time when federal employees are working without pay, furloughed workers are taking out bank loans to pay their bills, healthcare premiums are skyrocketing, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits are at risk, that it seemed likely to make the history books as a symbol of this administration.

But that image got overtaken just hours later by pictures from a Great Gatsby–themed party Trump threw at Mar-a-Lago last night hours before SNAP benefits ended. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby skewered the immoral and meaningless lives of the very wealthy during the Jazz Age who spent their time throwing extravagant parties and laying waste to the lives of the people around them.

Although two federal judges yesterday found that the administration’s refusal to use reserves Congress provided to fund SNAP in an emergency was likely illegal and one ordered the government to use that money, the administration did not immediately do as the judge ordered.

Trump posted on social media that “[o]ur Government lawyers do not think we have the legal authority to pay SNAP,” so he has “instructed our lawyers to ask the Court to clarify how we can legally fund SNAP as soon as possible.” Blaming the Democrats for the shutdown, Trump added that “even if we get immediate guidance, it will unfortunately be delayed while States get the money out.” His post provided the phone number for Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer’s office, telling people: “If you use SNAP benefits, call the Senate Democrats, and tell them to reopen the Government, NOW!”

“They were careless people,” Fitzgerald wrote, “they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

This afternoon, Ellen Nakashima and Noah Robertson of the Washington Post reported that the administration is claiming it does not have to consult Congress to continue its attacks on Venezuela. The 1973 War Powers Act says it does.

In 1973, after President Richard M. Nixon ordered secret bombings of Cambodia during the Vietnam War, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution to reassert its power over foreign wars. “It is the purpose of this joint resolution to fulfill the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities, or into situations where imminent involvement in hostilities is clearly indicated by the circumstances, and to the continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations,” it read.

On September 4, 2025, Trump notified Congress of a strike against a vessel in the Caribbean that he said “was assessed to be affiliated with a designated terrorist organization and to be engaged in illicit drug trafficking activities.” The letter added: “I am providing this report as part of my efforts to keep the Congress fully informed, consistent with the War Powers Resolution.”

Monday will mark 60 days from that announcement, but the administration does not appear to be planning to ask for Congress’s approval. It has been reluctant to share information about the strikes, first excluding senior Senate Democrats from a Senate briefing, then offering House members a briefing that did not include lawyers and failed to answer basic questions. The top two leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Jack Reed (D-RI), have both said the administration has not produced documents, attack orders, and a list of targets required by law.

Representative Gregory W. Meeks (D-NY), the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told Nakashima and Robertson: “The administration is, I believe, doing an illegal act and anything that it can to avoid Congress.”

T. Elliot Gaiser, who leads the Office of Legal Counsel under Trump, told a group of lawmakers this week that the administration is taking the position that the strikes on unnamed people in small boats do not meet the definition of hostilities because they are not putting U.S. military personnel in harm’s way. It says the strikes, which have killed more than 60 people, have been conducted primarily by drones launched off naval vessels.

Brian Finucane, who was the War Powers Resolution lawyer at the State Department under President Barack Obama and during Trump’s first term, explained: “What they’re saying is anytime the president uses drones or any standoff weapon against someone who cannot shoot back, it’s not hostilities. It’s a wild claim of executive authority.”

If the administration proceeds without acknowledging the Monday deadline for congressional approval, Finucane said, “it is usurping Congress’s authority over the use of military force.”

—

Notes:

https://www.cnn.com/2025/10/31/politics/snap-benefits-november-judge-ruling

https://www.nixonlibrary.gov/news/war-powers-resolution-1973

https://assets.ctfassets.net/6hn51hpulw83/iOdLcVg6XVHorL4Rv5rWr/9a116b4c89cb06efee02dcd6df96bba1/20250904-Trump.pdf?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/all-the-u-s-military-strikes-against-alleged-drug-boats

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/01/trump-venezuela-war-drugs-law/

Bluesky:

onestpress.onestnetwork.com/post/3m4ldvvz7322u

meidastouch.com/post/3m4jy6x5iks2y

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Trump

Trump Chaos as Usual

By dianeravitch
October 21, 2025 //
5

The Meidas+ blog summarized the daily drama of the Trump administration:

Donald Trump woke up to a flurry of bad headlines and poll numbers that tell a story of political collapse and economic mismanagement. The latest Gallup poll found that Americans now trust Democrats over Republicans to “keep the country prosperous,” by a margin of 47% to 43%. Just a year ago, Republicans led that same question by 13 points. That’s a 17-point swing, a direct reflection of Trump’s disastrous leadership.

At the same time, the Wall Street Journal reported that the Treasury Department has quietly instructed its employees not to share photos of the ongoing “ballroom construction” at the White House, a project that has already led to the demolition of parts of the East Wing. Treasury officials, whose building sits adjacent to the White House, reportedly have a front-row view of what can only be described as desecration.

Then there’s the economy. Small businesses across the country are sounding the alarm over Trump’s tariffs, which economists have called “a massive warning for the economy.” The Chamber of Commerce has even sued the Trump administration over a new $100,000 H-1B visa fee, another policy that is crippling American companies while pretending to protect them. A coalition of businesses is also urging the Supreme Court to strike down Trump’s global tariffs, calling them an “illegal $3 trillion tax” on American industry.

Bloomberg published yet another damning report, this one declaring: “The U.S. has no China policy, no strategy, and no clue.” The analysis described the Trump administration’s foreign policy as “strategic schizophrenia.” I would remove the word “strategic.” It’s just schizophrenia. And it’s emblematic of why Trump bankrupted so many businesses before he ever entered politics.

Meanwhile, as the fragile ceasefire between Hamas and Israel unravels, Trump posted a rambling and incoherent statement on social media, boasting that “numerous of our now great allies in the Middle East… have explicitly and strongly with great enthusiasm” agreed to his plan to “straighten our Hamas” (yes, his post included that typo). The sentence barely makes grammatical sense, but it’s clear he’s once again playing geopolitical pyromaniac, praising autocrats, confusing facts, and stoking instability for his own image.

Even Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, couldn’t hide the corruption when asked about the ceasefire. “Well, Jared’s the investor,” Vance replied. Excuse me? That’s a stunning admission that Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has personal financial stakes in the region. Just as we’ve been saying.

The chaos doesn’t stop there. While China builds the world’s largest solar farms, Trump has canceled approval for a 6.2-gigawatt clean energy project in Nevada, gutting American leadership in the global renewable market. The New York Times reported that Chinese companies now produce 60% of the world’s wind turbines and 80% of its solar panels — a direct result of Trump’s assault on climate policy.

And back in Washington, MAGA Republicans continue to hold the government hostage, refusing to fund healthcare subsidies for 20 million Americans. “We don’t have a strategy,” Speaker Mike Johnson admitted during a press conference. When confronted about the health care crisis, he even blamed the Affordable Care Act for existing, rather than the Republican sabotage that is threatening to bankrupt working families.

As if the day couldn’t get darker, news broke that a pardoned January 6 rioter, Christopher Moynihan, was arrested for threatening to assassinate House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Trump personally pardoned him.

Yet amid this chaos, Trump has found time to announce $40 billion in U.S. funds to Argentina, a move that has already failed to stabilize that country’s currency, enriching Trump-aligned investors while Americans struggle to pay rent and afford groceries.

And now, he’s calling for the U.S. to import beef from Argentina, abandoning American cattle ranchers just as he’s betrayed soybean farmers.

This is what happens when corruption replaces competence. When narcissism replaces governance. When a con man mistakes the Oval Office for a casino floor.

Categories Disruption, Trump

Join a “NO KINGS” Rally Tomorrow

By dianeravitch
October 17, 2025 //
18

Tomorrow, millions of people will join #NO KINGS rallies across the country to protest the egregious actions of the Trump administration.

Find your nearest rally here.

The Trump administration, enabled by complicit Republicans in Congress, has betrayed our Constitution repeatedly.

Such as, sending troops to peaceful cities, against the wishes of their elected officials.

Allowing masked ICE agents to snatch people from their homes, their workplaces, and the streets without a warrant.

Allowing ICE agents to use unnecessary force.

Taking “the power of the purse” away from Congress, whose Republican majority has willingly abandoned its Constitutional role.

Establishing tariffs based on Trump’s whims, not only disrupting the global economic order, but hurting American farmers and increasing inflation for all Americans.

Enriching himself and his family by making real estate deals with foreign powers, selling crypto to receive tribute of billions of dollars, selling Trump merchandise, and accepting a gift of a $400 million jet plane from a foreign power (an act forbidden as an emolument by the Constitution).

Politicizing the Justice Departnent as a personal Trump vendetta campaign against those his enemies.

Purging veteran career civil servants who won’t bend their knee to Trump.

Twisting civil rights enforcement to be the opposite of the law’s intent. Instead of protecting people of color and other minorities who have suffered from generations of discrimination, civil rights protection now applies to whites, who allegedly suffer whenever any institution tries to help minorities advance (DEI).

Firing any government lawyers who were assigned to investigate his criminal activities.

The list goes on and on.

Trump acts as if he is a king. The U.S. Supreme Court, dominated by six conservatives, have granted him “absolute immunity” from prosecution for anything he does as President. Nothing in the U.S. Constitution allows this grant of royal power.

And that is why we must show to express the wishes of the people: NO KINGS!

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump
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