John Thompson, retired teacher and historian in Oklahoma, listened to a two-part podcast about Oklahoma education by Hanna Rosin of The Atlantic. He reports on what he heard, based on his in-depth knowledge of politics and education in his state.
What’s been happening to American public schools lately is different: more coordinated, more creative, and blanketing the nation. Pressure on what kids learn and read is coming from national parents’ movements, the White House, the Supreme Court.
Rosin further explains that Ryan Walters “has pushed the line further than most.”
Walters recently announced an ideology test for new teachers moving to Oklahoma from “places like California and New York.” And, although the Oklahoma Supreme Court has issued a temporary stay on Walters’ standards, he’s “tried to overhaul the curriculum, adding dozens of references to Christianity and the Bible and making students ‘identify discrepancies in 2020 elections results.’”
The first of two podcasts review how Walters has “already succeeded in helping create a new template for what public schools can be.” Part two will go even deeper into how “Walters and a larger conservative movement seem to be trying to redefine public schools as only for an approved type.” As he said, “If you’re going to come into our state … don’t come in with these blue-state values.”
Rosin starts with Walters’ “Office of Religious Liberty and Patriotism,” and his claim, “For too long in this country, we’ve seen the radical left attack individuals’ religious liberty in our schools. We will not tolerate that in Oklahoma.” He said this in a video sent to school administrators who were supposed to play it for every student and every parent.
This mandate, however, is the opposite of his approach when he was an award-winning “woke” middle school teacher. Rosin interviewed two of Walters students, Shane and Starla, about his “parodies,” that were called, “little roasts.”
Shane, a male conservative, compared Walters’ “little roasts,” such as “Teardrops on My Scantron,” to those of Jimmy Kimmel.
Starla, a lesbian. said of her teacher, “He was woke! (Laughs.) He was a woke teacher.” And she praised his teaching about the civil rights movement.
Rosin reported that today’s Ryan Walters is “unrecognizable” in comparison to the teacher they knew. And, “Shane compared it to how you’d feel about your dad if he remarried a woman you didn’t like.”
In 2022 , when running for State Superintendent, pornography was Walters’ issue. He strongly supported HB 1775, which was a de facto ban on Critical Race Theory. It forbid teaching things like, “an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”
Walters’ top target was a high school teacher, Summer Boismier, who, in response, covered her bookshelves with butcher paper. But she also posted a QR code for a Brooklyn library, which had books that Walters said were pornography. Boismier resigned, but Walters successfully asked the Oklahoma State Board of Education to revoke her teaching certificate. He said, “There is no place for a teacher with a liberal political agenda in the classroom. Ms. Boismier’s providing access to banned and pornographic material to students is unacceptable and we must ensure she doesn’t go to another district and do the same thing.”
After being labeled a pedophile, Boismier started to get serious threats. Then the Libs of TikTok started a campaign against alleged gay teachers who were supposedly “groomers,” prompting bomb threats.
Then, as Rosin explained, “state Democrats called for an impeachment probe, and Walters leaned in harder.” For instance, Walters ramped up his campaign against teachers unions who he called a “terrorist organization.”
Walters also claimed that a “civil war” was being fought in our schools.
Rosin reported on how Walters gained a lot of attention “when he said teachers could cover the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, where white Tulsans slaughtered hundreds of Black people, but they should not, quote, ‘say that the skin color determined it.””
Then, “Walters accused the media of twisting his words. He said that “kids should never be made to feel bad or told they are inferior based on the color of their skin.”
In 2024, Rosin recalled, Walters “directed all Oklahoma public schools to teach the Bible. And in an appearance on Fox News, Walters talked about displaying the Ten Commandments.” He claimed, “What we’ve seen in America are the Democrats, the teachers’ unions have driven God out of schools, and Americans, Oklahomans, President Trump want God back in the classroom.”
Trump responded on Truth Social, “Great job by Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters on FoxNews [sic] last night. Strong, decisive, and knows his ‘stuff.’” And, “I LOVE OKLAHOMA!”
There was pushback when it was learned that “one of the few Bibles that met Walters’ criteria is the “God Bless the USA Bible.” It was “endorsed by Lee Greenwood and President Trump. It sells for $59.99.”
As the first part of the podcast came to an end, it reviewed Walters’ recent setbacks.
The U.S. Supreme Court stopped Oklahoma’s plan for the nation’s first publicly funded religious charter school. The Oklahoma Supreme Court has paused the Bible plan. And the special test by Prager U. for teachers from California, New York, and other “woke” states, faces legal challenges.
And Walters was lambasted after sexually explicit images of naked women were seen on a screen inside his office.
Part two will give Walters a chance to tell his side of the story. Rosin previews his response by quoting him: “Yeah, they’re outrageous liars.”
Patti Vasquez has the story that Trump voters need to hear. Their farms are failing, their property taxes are rising, their schools are closing, their hospitals are going broke…and they need to know why the cost of living is soaring.
She writes:
Tensions are crazy high right now. Many of us are angry at the chaos, the violence, at watching everything we warned about come true. But the way to turn this around isn’t through matching their hate. It’s through relentlessly showing working Americans what’s actually happening.
Every foreclosed farm is a Trump voter who could be reached. Every parent facing a $372 per student education cut is persuadable. Every suburban Republican watching their property taxes explode while their services disappear is a potential ally against authoritarianism.
Democrats- we need to start talking about the bills people can’t pay. Healthcare costs. Housing prices. Grocery bills. School budgets. Property taxes. These aren’t just economic issues – they’re proof that MAGA governance is a scam that hurts the very people who vote for it.
Red states handed Trump his victory. Now they’re getting destroyed by it.
Across Texas, Florida, Kentucky, and Ohio – the heart of MAGA country – cities are slashing services, gutting education, and watching their budgets implode. Fort Worth is scrambling to close a $17 million deficit. Kentucky depends on federal funds for 30% of its budget – funds Trump is cutting. Florida faces a potential $7 billion shortfall while spending $505 million to enforce Trump’s immigration policies.
The leopards are feasting in Trump country. Unfortunately, we’re all on the menu.
Texas delivered Trump his biggest victory margin. Texas is now delivering the biggest budget disasters. Houston officials are calculating how much of their $6.7 billion budget will vanish under Trump’s spending freeze. San Antonio depends on $325.5 million in federal funds that keep low-income families housed. Dallas has the worst taxpayer burden in Texas at $13,000 per person.
“If confusion and chaos were the goal, mission accomplished,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg said about Trump’s policies.
These are the suburban Republicans who drive $80,000 F-150 Platinums to HOA meetings in master-planned communities. The ones who post Facebook rants about “welfare queens” while their kids attend publicly-funded schools, drive on federally-funded roads, and drink water from government-maintained systems. They genuinely believed economic devastation was reserved for “those people” in blue cities.
Meanwhile, rural America collapses. Farms bankrupted by tariffs, China refusing to buy American soybeans, rural hospitals shuttering after the “big beautiful bill” gutted their funding. They told themselves they were different. They had real jobs. Good insurance. They were insulated.
While MAGA was outraged by drag queens and library books, Trump quietly withheld $6.8 billion in federal education funds Congress had already approved. After-school programs serving 1.4 million children are shutting down. Trump’s proposed budget cuts Department of Education funding by 15% and eliminates all $1.3 billion for English language learners. In Kentucky – deep Trump country – the highest-poverty schools could lose $372 per student.
These are their kids’ schools. They voted to destroy them because they were mad about pronouns. But math is “woke” now, while inspecting children’s genitals for sports is a legislative priority.
MAGA voters never understood that Red states are “taker states.” They receive far more federal money than they send to Washington. Kentucky is among the top five nationally, receiving 30.1% of its budget from federal funding. That’s $4,850 for every person. Indiana gets 25.7%. Ohio takes 21%. Even Florida depends on the federal government for 32% of its budget.
They mock California and call it a liberal hellscape. The sunshine state sends more to Washington than it gets back. It’s subsidizing them.
The “big beautiful bullshit bill” cuts the federal aid keeping their states alive. Medicaid for rural hospitals, education money for schools, infrastructure funds for roads. They voted to kill the very things keeping them afloat.
State Senator Paul Bettencourt insists cities aren’t “starved” because they can just ask voters to raise taxes. Sure, Paul. The same voters who elected officials promising to eliminate taxes will happily vote to raise them.
Austin is asking voters to approve a 20% property tax increase just to maintain basic services. That’s an extra $303 per year before the real cuts hit. When ACA subsidies expire, health insurance premiums will spike between $360 and $1,860 per person annually. Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston are all facing massive tax increases or complete service collapse.
They believed they were voting against taxes. They voted for the biggest property tax increases in history.
While red state cities collapse, Wall Street thrives. JD Vance’s investment fund profits from the economic chaos. When cities sell assets or privatize services, private equity swoops in. When family farms fail, agribusiness giants buy the land at fire-sale prices.
The Penn Wharton Budget Model, Trump’s own “alma mater” – projects his tariffs will reduce GDP by 8% and wages by 7%. A middle-income family faces a $58,000 lifetime loss. That’s not Woke spin, that’s Wharton.
Trump’s “One Big Beautiful (Bullshit) Bill” slashes non-defense discretionary spending by $163 billion. It creates $5 trillion in revenue losses while gutting everything from education to infrastructure. The only thing beautiful about it is if you’re a billionaire getting another tax cut.
MAGA voted to “take back our country.” Private equity took their cities instead.
Texas Republicans who spent decades claiming government is the problem are discovering what happens when government can’t afford to function.
But, we all suffer for their choices.
Blue states will bail them out. Again. Our federal tax dollars will flow to states that voted to destroy themselves.
They voted to hurt all of us. For what? Trans athletes? Immigrants picking strawberries? Masks during a pandemic?
But, maybe their pain is our opportunity to show them exactly who did this to them.
When Trump selected Linda McMahon as U.S. Secretary of Education, she knew that her job was to close down the Department. She has not been able to reach that goal yet, but she has devised means to impose Trumpian policies on the public schools, by threatening to withhold federal funding unless they comply.
ProPublica reports that McMahon has a much larger goal: she has surrounded herself with aides whose goal is clear: to eliminate public schools entirely.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon has been clear about her desire to shut down the agency she runs. She’s laid off half the staff and joked about padlocking the door.
But the department is not behaving like an agency that is simply winding down. Even as McMahon has shrunk the Department of Education, she’s operated in what she calls “a parallel universe” to radically shift how children will learn for years to come. The department’s actions and policies reflect a disdain for public schools and a desire to dismantle that system in favor of a range of other options — private, Christian and virtual schools or homeschooling.
Over just eight months, department officials have opened a $500 million tap for charter schools, a huge outlay for an option that often draws children from traditional public schools. They have repeatedly urged states to spend federal money for poor and at-risk students at private schools and businesses. And they have threatened penalties for public schools that offer programs to address historic inequities for Black or Hispanic students.
McMahon has described her agency moving “at lightning rocket speed,” and the department’s actions in just one week in September reflect that urgency.
The agency publicly blasted four school districts it views as insubordinate for refusing to adopt anti-trans policies and for not eliminating special programs for Black students. It created a pot of funding dedicated to what it calls “patriotic education,” which has been criticized for downplaying some of the country’s most troubling episodes, including slavery. And it formed a coalition with Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, PragerU and dozens of other conservative groups to disseminate patriotic programming.
Officials at the Education Department declined to comment or answer questions from ProPublica for this story.
At times, McMahon has voiced support for public schools. But more often and more emphatically she has portrayed public schools as unsuccessful and unsafe — and has said she is determined to give parents other options.
To carry out her vision, McMahon has brought on at least 20 political appointees from ultraconservative think tanks and advocacy groups eager to de-emphasize public schools, which have educated students for roughly 200 years.
Among them is top adviser Lindsey Burke, a longtime policy director at The Heritage Foundation and the lead author of the education section in Project 2025’s controversial agenda for the Trump administration.
In analyzing dozens of hours of audio and video footage of public and private speaking events for McMahon’s appointees, as well as their writings, ProPublica found that a recurring theme is the desire to enable more families to leave public schools. This includes expanding programs that provide payment — in the form of debit cards, which Burke has likened to an “Amazon gift card” — to parents to cobble together customized educational plans for their children. Instead of relying on public schools, parents would use their allotted tax dollars on a range of costs: private school tuition, online learning, tutors, transportation and music lessons.
More than 8 in 10 elementary and secondary students in the U.S. go to a traditional public school. But Burke expects that public schools will see dramatic enrollment declines fueled by both demographic and policy changes.
Addressing an interviewer in an April podcast, she noted: “We’re going to have a lot of empty school buildings.”
In a 2024 podcast, Noah Pollak, now a senior adviser in the Education Department, bemoaned what he sees as progressive control of schools, which he said has led to lessons he finds unacceptable, such as teaching fourth graders about systemic racism.
“And so the work that I do is trying to come up with creative policy ideas to stop that, to turn back the tide, to figure out ways that conservatives can protect these institutions or build new institutions,” said Pollak, who has been an adviser to conservative groups.
As tax dollars are reallocated from public school districts and families abandon those schools to learn at home or in private settings, the new department officials see little need for oversight. Instead, they would let the marketplace determine what’s working using tools such as Yelp-like reviews from parents. Burke has said she is against “any sort of regulation.”
President Donald Trump himself said in July that the federal government needs only to provide “a little tiny bit of supervision but very little, almost nothing,” over the nation’s education system except to make sure students speak English.
Advocates for public schools consider them fundamental to American democracy. Providing public schools is a requirement in every state constitution.
Families in small and rural communities tend to rely more heavily on public education. They are less likely than families in cities to have private and charter schools nearby. And unlike private schools, public school districts don’t charge tuition. Public schools enroll local students regardless of academic or physical ability, race, gender or family income; private schools can selectively admit students.
Karma Quick-Panwala, a leader at the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund, which advocates for disabled students, said she wants to be optimistic. “But,” she added, “I’m very fearful that we are headed towards a less inclusive, less diverse and more segregated public school setting.”
Allison Rose Socol, a policy expert at EdTrust, an organization focusing on civil rights in schools, decried what she called the “demo crew” in McMahon’s office. Socol described McMahon’s push to help grow private school enrollment through taxpayer-funded vouchers and other means as a “great American heist” that will funnel money away from the public system.
“It’s a strategic theft of the future of our country, our kids and our democracy,” she said.
“Lead as Christians”
Attention on McMahon often focuses on her former role as CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. It was no different on the day of her Senate confirmation hearing, when journalists and social media delighted in noting that seated behind her was her son-in-law, the retired wrestler known as Triple H.
Little attention was paid to the conservative education activists in the front row from Moms for Liberty, which has protested school curricula and orchestrated book bans nationwide; Defending Education (formerly Parents Defending Education), which has sued districts to fight what it calls liberal indoctrination; and the America First Policy Institute, co-founded by McMahon after the first Trump administration.
Now two people who once served at Defending Education have been named to posts in the Education Department, and leaders from Moms for Liberty have joined McMahon for roundtables and other official events. In addition, at least nine people from the America First Policy Institute have been hired in the department.
AFPI’s sweeping education priorities include advocating for school vouchers and embedding biblical principles in schools. It released a policy paper in 2023, titled “Biblical Foundations,” that sets out the organization’s objective to end the separation of church and state and “plant Jesus in every space.”
The paper rejects the idea that society has a collective responsibility to educate all children equally and argues that “the Bible makes it clear that it is parents alone who shoulder the responsibility for their children.” It frames public schooling as failing, with low test scores and “far-left social experiments, such as gender fluidity.”
The first AFPI leader pictured in that report is McMahon.
Linda McMahon testifies at her Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of education. Seated behind her are, from left to right, son Shane McMahon, Defending Education’s Nicole Neily, the former wrestler Paul Levesque (also known as Triple H), daughter Stephanie McMahon, Erika Donalds of the America First Policy Institute, and Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
AFPI and the other two nonprofit groups sprang up only after the 2020 election. Together they drew in tens of millions of dollars through a well-coordinated right-wing network that had spent decades advocating for school choice and injecting Christianity into schools.
Ultrawealthy supporters include right-wing billionaire Richard Uihlein, who, through a super PAC, gave $336,000 to Moms for Liberty’s super PAC from October 2023 through July 2024.
Defending Education and AFPI received backing from some of the same prominent conservative foundations and trusts, including ones linked to libertarian-minded billionaire Charles Koch and to conservative legal activist Leonard Leo, an architect of the effort to strip liberal influence from the courts, politics and schools.
Maurice T. Cunningham, a now-retired associate professor of political science at the University of Massachusetts, studied the origins and connections of parents’ rights groups, finding in 2023 that the funders — a small set of billionaires and Christian nationalists — had similar goals.
The groups want “to undermine teachers unions, protect their wealthy donors from having to contribute their fair share in taxes to strengthen public schools, and provide profit opportunities through school privatization,” he concluded. The groups say they are merely trying to advocate for parents and for school choice. They didn’t discuss their relationship with donors when contacted by ProPublica.
These groups and their supporters now have access to the top levers of government, either through official roles in the agency or through the administration’s adoption of their views.
When the department created an “End DEI” portal to collect tips about diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in schools, it quoted Moms for Liberty co-founder Tiffany Justice in the press release. She encouraged parents to “share the receipts of the betrayal that has happened in our public schools.” Moms for Liberty referred to the portal as the “culmination” of Justice’s work. (Federal judges ruled against some of the administration’s anti-DEI actions and the department took the controversial portal down in May.)
Asked what percentage of children she imagines should be in public schools going forward, Justice, who is now with The Heritage Foundation’s political advocacy arm, told ProPublica: “I hope zero. I hope to get to zero.”
She and others say most public schools don’t teach students to read, are dividing children over race and are secretly helping students to change genders — familiar claims that have been widely challenged by educators.
When Trump signed an executive order in March to dismantle the Education Department, Justice sat in the first row, as she had at McMahon’s confirmation hearing. The president praised her, along with various governors and lawmakers. “She’s been a hard worker,” he said.
Defending Education’s Nicole Neily, who was also at McMahon’s confirmation, stood next to McMahon when the secretary announced an investigation into the Maine Department of Education for keeping records from parents about student gender identity plans. Defending Education has filed civil rights complaints against colleges and school districts and has been successful in having its causes taken up by the Trump administration.
In an email, Neily told ProPublica she is proud of the work that Defending Education has done to challenge schools that have supported DEI in their curricula and have allowed students to hide their gender identity from parents. She singled out teacher unions and “radical education activists” while blaming drops in student achievement on “the education-industrial complex.”
“The sooner this stranglehold is broken, the better,” she wrote.
McMahon’s tenure also has been marked by an embrace of religion in schools. She signaled that priority when she appointed Meg Kilgannon to a top post in her office.
Kilgannon had worked in the department as director of a faith initiative during the first Trump term and once was part of the Family Research Council, an evangelical think tank that opposes abortion and LGBTQ+ rights.
She has encouraged conservative Christians to become involved in what she’s described as “a spiritual war” over children and what they’re being taught in public schools.
Reached by phone, Kilgannon told ProPublica, “I have no comment,” and hung up.
Overhauling “Government Schools”
Betsy DeVos, the Michigan billionaire who was education secretary in Trump’s first term, cheered on July 4 this year when Congress instituted America’s first federal voucher program. It came in the form of a generous tax credit program to encourage voucher expansion at the state level. Families can start accessing the aid beginning Jan. 1, 2027.
DeVos once said she wanted “to advance God’s kingdom” through vouchers for religious schools and has funneled vast amounts of her family fortune into advocating for school choice. She called the passage of the federal measure “the turning point in ending the one-size-fits-all government school monopoly.”
An article in The Federalist, a conservative publication, boiled down the implications into one headline: “How Trump’s Big, Beautiful Bill Will Help Kids Escape Failing Government Schools.”
But school choice isn’t the only tool that Trump’s education leaders are using to target public schools. McMahon has gutted the Education Department’s civil rights division, where lawyers and other federal employees work to ensure all students can access public school, free from discrimination.
The administration rolled back protections for LGBTQ+ students and students of color, prioritized investigating discrimination against white and Jewish students, and launched aggressive investigations of states and districts that it says refused to stop accommodating transgender students.
It has rescinded official guidance that said schools had to provide language help and other services for students who are learning English, contradicting long-established federal law.
And Trump officials have repeatedly cast public schools as dangerous even as the agency canceled about $1 billion in training grants for more school mental health professionals — money that had been authorized by Congress to help prevent school shootings. The administration now says it plans to resume paying out a fraction of that funding, which would be used for school psychologists.
Over and over, the department has used the threat of pulling federal funding to force compliance with new directives and rapid shifts in policy. The department, for instance, threatened to withhold money from schools that did not verify they were ending diversity initiatives, which were designed to address inequitable treatment of Black, Native and Latino students.
In August, the department announced it was withholding millions of dollars in grants from five northern Virginia school districts that had refused the department’s demands to bar transgender students from using restrooms and locker rooms that aligned with their gender identity. The districts argued that complying would mean defying Virginia law and a 2020 federal appeals court ruling.
Nevertheless, the Education Department told the districts that until they acquiesced to the agency’s bathroom rules they would have to pay expenses up front and request reimbursement. McMahon wrote to districts that “Lindsey Burke is available to answer any questions.”
The Fairfax County Public Schools sued and in a legal filing said it faced losing $167 million this school year, money that it was relying on to provide meals to students, support programs for children with disabilities, help English-language learners and enhance teacher training. The federal department has argued that it has discretion to withhold funding and admonished the district for taking the agency to court.
In this atmosphere, public school advocates are particularly concerned about what will happen to funding for Title I grants, which is the federal government’s largest program for schools and is aimed at helping students from low-income families. In early September, House Republicans proposed slashing more than $5 billion from the $18.4 billion earmarked for Title I, putting at risk reading and math teachers, tutors and classroom technology.
At the same time, under McMahon, the Education Department is trying to redefine how states and districts can spend the money.
In three guidance letters so far this year, the agency encouraged states to divert some Title I money away from public school districts. One suggested paying for outside services, such as privatized tutoring. Another urged states to use Title I money to benefit low-achieving students who live within the boundaries of a high-poverty public school but attend private schools.
McMahon is prepared to loosen even more rules on the money. The federal dollars currently are distributed to districts using a formula. Project 2025 calls for Title I to be delivered to states as block grants, or chunks of money with few restrictions. McMahon has encouraged states to ask her to waive rules on spending the money.
Critics of this approach fear that Title I money could eventually be used in ways that undermine public schools — on private school vouchers, for example.
Public school advocates like William Phillis, a former official at the Ohio Department of Education, fear the change would devastate public schools.
“I just know any block grant or any funding that would be left up to state officials on Title I money would be misappropriated in terms of the intent,” Phillis said. “Block grants to Ohio would go to the private sector.”
A spokesperson for the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce did not respond to requests for comment.
Rainey Briggs, chief of operations for Des Moines Public Schools in Iowa, said he supports parental choice but worries that public schools will suffer financially and will not have the resources to stay up to date.
And he fears that right-wing narratives around public schools, the distrust and lack of support for highly trained district leaders — whether from some parents or politicians — could lead accomplished educators to walk away.
“Public education is irreplaceable,” he said, citing its commitment to serve every child regardless of their background or circumstance.
Those influencing Trump’s education agenda disagree.
“If America’s public schools cease to exist tomorrow, America would be a better place,” Justice told ProPublica.
I often see stories online about ICE acting like thugs, brutalizing people; releasing tear gas at a traffic stop in a quiet neighborhood; storming an apartment building at 1 a.m., sending everyone into the street, zip-tying the children together; ICE smashing car windows and dragging out the occupants; ICE agents beating up women, throwing them to the floor; ICE detaining people who then disappear.
This is another example of ICE acting as Trump’s Gestapo. George Reyes is an American citizen and a veteran. He was arrested by ICE and held incommunicado for three days. His story appears on a blog called Home of the Brave.
He wrote:
Credit: George Retes / Institute for Justice
By George Retes
Civil rights in America have always been about one thing: holding power accountable when it strips people of their dignity and freedom. They are not privileges that government agents get to decide whether to honor. What happened to me wasn’t just a mistake—it was a violation of the very protections that our Constitution guarantees.
On July 10, I was on my way to work when ICE agents engulfed my car in tear gas, smashed my driver-side window, and pepper-sprayed my face. They dragged me out, threw me to the ground, and even while I was complying, one agent kneeled on my neck and another kneeled on my back as others stood by and watched.
I spent three nights and three days in federal custody. During that time, I was never told what I was charged with, was not allowed to shower despite being covered in tear gas and pepper spray, had no phone call to my family, and no access to an attorney. I was placed on suicide watch and missed my daughter’s third birthday. No explanation. No charges. No apology. One day, I was just told, “you’re free to go.”
For me as a veteran, this is more than just a personal injustice—it’s a constitutional affront. We are taught that America stands apart because of its rule of law and protection of rights. If the government can strip those rights from us without consequence, it undermines the very system we claim makes our country stand apart.
As of now, I have submitted claims under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) to federal agencies related to my wrongful detention by federal officers. These claims describe my unlawful detention, including the officers’ use of excessive force, the denial of a hearing with a judge, the denial of access to legal counsel and any other contact with the outside world, and the denial of basic necessities.
While the claims are under review by the relevant federal authorities, I am continuing to speak out. I do it for two reasons. First, because I believe that Americans of all ideological stripes would agree that the government can’t just make people disappear without any process or explanation. Second, because I want to give the government a chance to admit that they were wrong.
So far the government has not done so. Instead, in response to an op-ed I published in the San Francisco Chronicle, DHS claimed that during the July 10 operation in Camarillo, CA, I “became violent and refused to comply with law enforcement,” blocked their route, and was arrested for assault. They stated that US citizens are not being “wrongfully” arrested by ICE, that their enforcement operations are highly targeted, and that their personnel conduct due diligence to know who they are targeting. DHS also framed criticisms of the operation as “smears” against ICE officers, alleging such claims have contributed to an increase in assaults on law enforcement.
DHS’s statement ignores reality and is designed to demonize and villainize people who don’t let the government trample over their rights, and aren’t afraid to speak the truth. First, I was not violent, I simply asked the officers to let me pass through because I needed to get to work; and I also complied with ICE’s demands by backing up my car. Second, the statement ignores the three days I spent in federal custody with no charges, no phone call to my family, no access to a judge or an attorney, no shower, and no explanation for their actions. It is deeply troubling that a government agency would publicly deny these facts while portraying my experience as a threat or attack on officers. The truth is that I am a US citizen and a veteran, and I will continue to pursue accountability for the rights that were violated that day.
This fight is not just about my case—it’s about ensuring that there is recourse when people are silenced, detained, or dehumanized by the very government meant to protect us. The legal system must allow accountability when government agencies overstep their authority.
Incidents like this are proof that civil rights protections in America are only as strong as our willingness to enforce them. What happens when government agencies act as though the Constitution doesn’t apply to them? Agencies like ICE cannot be allowed to operate in the shadows, unchecked and unaccountable. Civil rights mean nothing if those in power face no consequences for violating them. Accountability is the only way forward.
George Retes is a US citizen and Army veteran who served in Iraq and was jailed by ICE and held for three days without an explanation.
The official publication date is October 20, but books are now in print and available.
My first appearance to talk about the book will be in my home town: Brooklyn, New York, on October 21 at 6 pm at the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library.
I will have a conversation with the brilliant Leonie Haimson, leader of Class Size Matters.
I’m not traveling to promote the book, but I am doing Zooms. I will be speaking to educators in North Carolina on October 22. To learn more about it, contact Yevonne Brannon of Public Schools First NC at ybrannon@gmail.com.
I have been anti-fascist for as long as I can remember.
As a young child during World War II, I remember everyone saying that we–the USA–would defeat fascism, and we did.
All my life, when people promote hatred and violence, I sense fascism. It’s in my bones.
When a bully attacks someone smaller and weaker, I sense fascism.
Fascists always need someone weaker to label as the enemy, someone to hate.
When a government kidnaps people off the streets, takes them away without a warrant, and imprisons them without a trial, that’s fascism.
I believe in freedom of speech, freedom to practice one’s religion or no religion, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, and the right of citizens to petition their government.
When a government decides who is not allowed to speak and censors them or gets them fired for what they say, that’s fascism.
I support the Constitution of the United States.
I believe our elected officials should promote the general welfare and ensure that everyone has good, affordable healthcare and access to decent housing. No one should die because they can’t afford healthcare.
I vote against candidates who encourage hatred for the weak and minorities.
I am anti-fascist.
I have always been anti-fascist.
Prosecute me if you dare.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects five fundamental freedoms: freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and the right to petition the government
I am reposting this because the 10:00 am post was incomplete. That happens. My error.
Leonie Haimson, leader of Class Size Matters, reviews the NYC mayoral race. Last weekend, Mayor Eric Adams dropped out of the race (he was polling under 10%). Time will tell if Trump gives him an ambassadorship, which was dangled as an inducement to Adams to leave the race. Trump wants Cuomo to beat Mamdani, who is a progressive and a democratic Socialist. The top plutocrats in NYC have gotten behind Cuomo because they fear Mamdani.
Mamdani is a dynamic young socialist who frightens the 1%. He has made many bold promises but is unlikely to be able to implement higher taxes on the richest New Yorkers or free bus rides. Most of the big decisions are made in the State Capitol, not City Hall.
Mamdani is no admirer of mayoral control or closing schools or charter schools. He wants a better public school system.
There is going to be a mayoral election in a little more than a month. Since Eric Adams pulled out today, there are now three major candidates.
Andrew Cuomo, running as an Independent, has an education agenda focused on renewing Mayoral control, closing low-performing schools, expanding charter schools and gifted programs, and refusing to lower class size unless the state provides more funding specifically to implement the class size law. Here is a Power Point with more details on his positions on these and other education issues.
Curtis Sliwa, the Republican in the race, also wants to continue Mayoral control and expand charters, while continuing to co-locate charter schools in public school buildings. His website education page doesn’t mention class size.
The proposals of both men are extremely reminiscent of the education policies during the twelve years of the Bloomberg administration.
On many of these issues, they are diametrically opposed to Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, who wants to amend Mayoral control to allow for more parent and community input, lower class size, and keep the number of charter schools as is, while auditing their practices to ensure more accountability. Here are his detailed responses on these and other education issues on the NYC Kids PAC survey.
Last Thursday, Cuomo answered questions via Zoom from NYC PLACE parent leaders, whose positions on most of these questions are aligned with his. There is a YouTube video of this forum here.
During the session, he seemed most passionate about the need to retain Mayoral control as is, several time saying it is “essential” and that “rolling back mayoral control is absurd”. He argued the union is the biggest opponent to continuing the system unchanged, and he would need parents fighting with him to ensure that there are no governance changes when this comes to a vote in Albany.
While expressing support to fund all the programs that PLACE supports, including more gifted programs and selective schools, he was insistent that he strongly opposes lowering class size, unless the state specifically provides more funding for that purpose.
No mention was made of the fact that the state is providing nearly $2 billion per year in additional Foundation Aid annually in part for this purpose, as a result of the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit, or that Cuomo himself refused to fund the CFE settlement and for years denied NYC schools full funding while he was Governor.
Though Alex Zimmerman of Chalkbeat reported that during the session Cuomo asserted that he would not cap enrollment at lower levels at “desirable” schools to reduce class size as a page on his website says — a special priority of PLACE — his answer to this question during the forum was actually somewhat different.
He repeated that he would exempt all schools from having to lower class size unless the city received more funding for that purpose and didn’t make any distinction for so-called “desirable” schools. Even after being pressed on this matter, he said, “Either they have to give you the money or they have to give you an exemption.”
Cuomo also said he would expand the police force and the number of School Safety Agents in schools. Strangely, he wrongly claimed School Safety Agents were currently under the control of DOE rather than police.
Perhaps the biggest news from the night was that he said he would consult with PLACE leaders before selecting a new Chancellor. For those who would rather not watch the entire video, a transcript of his remarks is here.
Success Academy of New York City helped to write new charter legislation in Florida that made it worth their while to expand their corporate brand to Florida. The big change in the new law is that it allows charter schools to co-locate inside existing public schools with all their operating expenses covered by public funds.
Kate Payne of the AP has the story:
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — A charter school network backed by a billionaire hedge fund manager announced Thursday that it is expanding in Miami, after they successfully lobbied Florida’s GOP-controlled Legislature to pass a new state law easing restrictions on the privately run schools and freeing up more state subsidies for the operators.
Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has overseen a major expansion in state funding for school choice, presided over Thursday’s announcement in Miami alongside Success Academy Charter Schools CEO Eva Moskowitz and Citadel investment firm founder Ken Griffin, a GOP megadonor who has pledged $50 million toward the charter school network’s Florida expansion.
“I think Miami’s just the beginning,” DeSantis said Thursday.
Success Academy, a major charter network in New York City, and Griffin’s firm pushed for the new state law, which Florida legislators slipped into a budget package on the 105th and final day of what was supposed to be a 60-day session.
The measure clears the way for charter schools known as “schools of hope” to “co-locate” inside traditional public schools and qualify for millions of dollars in additional state funding.
Lawmakers created the schools of hope program in 2017 to encourage more publicly funded, privately run schools to open in areas where traditional public schools had been failing for years, giving students and families in those neighborhoods a way to bail out of a struggling school.
This year’s law loosens restrictions on where schools of hope can operate, allowing them to set up within the walls of a public school — even a high-performing one — if the campus has underused or vacant facilities.
Traditional schools across the state are struggling with declining enrollments, including in some of Florida’s largest metro areas, where school districts manage sprawling real estate holdings in prime locations.
Success Academy prides itself on high-performing schools that boost test scores and college preparedness among its students, many of whom come from low-income communities of color. But it has also been plagued by allegations of cherry-picking the families it admits and pushing out hard-to-serve students, according to reporting by the New York Times and others.
At Thursday’s announcement, DeSantis touted the school choice “ecosystem” created by the legislation he signed, which he predicted would open the door for the charter network to open new campuses across Florida and move into traditional schools in some of the state’s largest public districts, including those serving Ft. Lauderdale, Orlando and West Palm Beach.
“We also, with schools of hope, do have an ability when some perform poorly, where that can basically be taken over by a charter operator,” DeSantis added.
Moskowitz thanked the governor, saying she is expanding her schools in Florida because of the new legislation her network helped shape, a move she said will help some of the state’s neediest students.
“I’m not used to being welcomed. I’m not used to people liking high standards,” Moskowitz said, referring to the more adversarial environment for charter schools in New York City.
By contrast, under Florida’s new law, public school districts now have to provide the same facilities-related services to schools of hope as they do their own campuses, including custodial work, maintenance, school safety, food service, nursing and student transportation — “without limitation” and “at no cost” to the charters.
Mina Hosseini, executive director of the Miami public education advocacy group P.S. 305, called the move a “corporate takeover.”
“Miami’s public schools are community lifelines, not corporate assets,” she said in a statement.
___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
I was very sad to learn, via a note posted on Facebook by Gene V. Glass that David C. Berliner has died.
David was one of the most honored research psychologists in the nation. You can open his resume online and see the many times he has received awards or served in prestigious positions. I won’t recite his bio.
Instead I want to praise him as a wise and insightful friend. I learned from him and was very happy that we forged a strong bond in the past few years.
David was an acerbic critic of the past two+ decades of what was called “education reform.” David laughed at the nonsensical but heavily funded plans to “reform” education by imposing behaviorist strategies on teachers, as if they were robots or simpletons.
David had no patience with the shallow critics of America’s public schools. He respected the nation’s teachers and understood as few of the critics did, just how valuable and under-appreciated they were.
But he did have patience with me. He appreciated my change of views and offered encouragement. Knowing that he had my back made me fearless.
I will miss my friend. So will everyone else who cares about the future of American education, not as a business venture, but as our most important civic responsibility. .
You may have read about Josh Cowen . He’s a professor of Education Policy at Michigan State University. For twenty years, he worked on voucher research, hoping to find definitive evidence that vouchers helped the neediest kids–or didn’t.
About two years ago, he concluded that the answer was clear: vouchers do not help the neediest kids. Most are claimed by kids who never attended public schools. In other words, they are subsidies for families who already pay for private schools. When low-income kids use vouchers, the academic results are abysmal. He concluded that the best way to improve the schooling of American students is to invest in public schools.
Josh did his best to stop the billionaire-funded voucher drive. He published a book about the evidence, called The Privateers. He wrote articles in newspapers across the nation. He testified before legislative committees.
He concluded that the most important thing he could do is to run for Congress. He’s doing that and needs our help. I’ve contributed twice. Please give whatever you can.
Public schools need a champion in Congress.
Josh writes:
Hey everyone. You may have heard that I’m running for Congress in my home district in Michigan. It’s one of the most important seats to flip next year for Democrats to retake the US House. I’m hoping you’d consider chipping in today to help us meet a big deadline by 9/30.
I’m probably the most prominent congressional candidate in the country running in part on the idea that we need to stand up for and renew our public schools.
I took on Betsy DeVos and the Koch operation all over the country, trying to stop school voucher schemes. I’m a union member and work closely with labor—check out my book excerpt about vouchers in AFT’s New Educator right now!—and I was just given NEA’s highest honor, the Friend of Education award. Diane herself won a few years back—I’m truly honored.
But the DeVoses and a MAGA Texas billionaire are going to spend big here to hold Congress and defund schools. Former MI GOP Governor Rick Snyder is planning to raise $30 million to make 2026 the “education election” for Republicans in Michigan. This is the same guy at the helm when kids were poisoned in Flint. And the same guy responsible for the disastrous EAA charter school fiasco.
My GOP opponent is the Koch’s bagman in Michigan. This is a guy who eked out a win in our district just last year when Elissa Slotkin had to give up her seat to run for Senate. So it’s a very winnable race. But we need help.
Last month just for starters: 14 statewide and local school and community leaders in Michigan endorsed us. Last week, UNITE HERE!, the big hospitality workers union, endorsed our campaign. And just this week, Dr. Jill Underly, the statewide elected chief of Wisconsin public schools, announced her support. You may remember that Dr. Underly beat back Elon Musk’s plan to buy the off-year elections just this spring in her state. She showed how a strong, positive message of standing up for public schools and standing up to billionaires can win a swing state election.
We can do that too. So I’m asking for your help to close this month strong.
Diane Ravitch's blog 