Tom Ultican, retired teacher in California, is a dogged researcher of school privatization. He recently examined the origins of the Oakland Public Education Fund” and found that much of its funding comes from Dark Money.

It’s worthwhile to remember that the public schools of Oakland, California, have been a Petri dish for privatizers and corporate reformers for years. Billionaire philanthropists took control of the district and named its superintendents. The charter sector mushroomed. Superintendents came and went, each one hailed as a savior.

Read Tom’s analysis of the Dark Money pursuing privatization in Oakland while posing as avid supporters of public schools.

He writes:

Recently the Oakland Public Education Fund (OPEF) posted, “OUSD Board of Education Renews Long-standing Partnership with The Ed Fund.” OUSD is the Oakland Unified School District and “The Ed Fund” is the latest of many names used to identify OPEF. A quick look at OPEF’s tax forms (TIN: 43-2014630) reveals that they have assets of about $25 million and a yearly income of more than $15 million. The question becomes who is this wealthy group and do their purposes include something more than just good education?

OPEF, formed in 2003 and was originally called “Oakland Autonomous Small Schools Foundation Inc.” EdWeek reported that in 2000 and 2003 the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation provided two grants totaling more than $25 million some of which was designated for small school incubators. It seems likely some of this money was used as seed money to establish OPEF.

The founding executive director of OPEF was Jonathan Klein, a 1997 Yale graduate who became a Teach for America (TFA) fifth grade teacher in the Compton Unified School District. After coming to Oakland in addition to founding OPEF, he went on to become CEO of GO Public Schools, became Bay Area executive director of TFA and chief program officer at the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation. In 2013, he was named Change Agent of the year by New Schools Venture Fund. In other words, he is an education profiteer closely associated with enemies of public schools.

According to the OPEF web-page, the organization relaunched as the Oakland Schools Foundation in 2012 and then relaunched again in 2014 as the Oakland Public Education Fund. Today they refer to themselves as the “The Ed Fund.” In 2016, they put in motion a corporate partnership with Salesforce which provided $2.5 million for middle school computer science and math. This raises concerns that “The Ed Fund” is inappropriately employing wealth to drive public school curriculum using other than democratic means.

Billionaires Finance OPEF

A change in the way data was reported appeared in the OPEF tax forms for 2024. Previously, their reporting on the contributor’s page simply stated “RESTRICTED.” The new report still hides the contributor’s names but provides the amounts given by seven individuals.

In addition to the contributors not listed above, the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation have granted OPEF a total of $785,833 (IN: 65-1202020), the East Bay Community Foundation contributed $557,760 (IN: 94-6070996) and the Silicon Valley Community Fund provided a whopping $8,349,085 (IN: 20-5205488). The Silicon Valley Community Fund is a dark money site where extremely wealthy people can provide money without their name being attached. It is worth noting that the T. Gary and Kathleen Rogers Foundation has granted the East Bay Community Foundation $6,165,000 since its founding in 2003.

Since 2014, OPEF has averaged giving more than $5 million a year to the Oakland Unified School District for a total of $51,885,477. However, their other spending undermines public education and promotes privatization. Educate78 has received significant support from both the Hastings Fund and the City Fund, known enemies of the public school system. GO Public Schools has been a consistent advocate for expanding the charter school movement. TFA has foisted unqualified teachers with 5 weeks of training on classrooms throughout America. The New Teachers Center is a Bill Gates developed center in Santa Cruz.

Anyone working in a public school knows that charter schools directly compete with and undermine public schools.

To continue reading, open the link.

Jack White is a superstar rock musician. He had the temerity to criticize Trump’s vulgar gold-plated redecoration of the Oval Office. The White House press spokesman lashed out at Jack White. He responded with no holds barred. He doesn’t get federal funding.

Thanks to Andrew Tobias for this nugget.

The White House melts down and attacks music legend Jack White after he insults Donald Trump’s “disgusting” and “vulgar” redecoration of the White House

“Jack White is a washed-up, has-been loser posting drivel on social media because he clearly has ample time on his hands due to his stalled career,” claimed White House spokesman Steven Cheung.

“It’s apparent [White]’s been masquerading as a real artist, because he fails to appreciate, and quite frankly disrespects, the splendor and significance of the Oval Office inside of ‘The People’s House.’”

Jack’s response…

Listen, I’m an artist and not a politician so I’m in no need to give my answer or opinion on anything if I’m not inspired or compelled, but how funny that it wasn’t me calling out trump’s blatant fascist manipulation of government, his gestapo ICE tactics, his racist remarks about Latinos, Native Americans, etc. his ridiculous ‘wall’ construction, his attacks on the disabled, his attempted coup and mob insurrection and destruction of the sacred halls of congress, his disparaging sexist and pedophilic remarks about women, his obvious attempts at distraction about being a close personal friend of Jeffrey Epstein and his inclusion in the Epstein files, his ignorance of the dying children in Sudan, Gaza, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, his lack of empathy for military veterans and those struggling with poverty, his attempts to dismantle healthcare, his obvious wimpy and pathetic kowtowing to the dictators Putin and Kim Jong Un, his nazi like rallies, his attempts to sell merchandise and products like Goya beans through the office of the President, his fake ‘gunshot to the ear’ that he showed no medical records or photographs of, his constant, constant, constant lying to the American people, etc. etc. etc.

No, it wasn’t me calling out any of that, it was the f*cking DECOR OF THE OVAL OFFICE remarks I made that got them to respond with insults.  How petty and pathetic and thin skinned could this administration get? ‘Masquerading as a real artist’?  Thank you for giving me my tombstone engraving!  Well here’s my opinion, trump is masquerading as a human being.

He’s masquerading as a Christian, as a leader, as a person with actual empathy. He’s been masquerading as a businessman for decades as nothing he’s involved in has prospered except by using other people’s money to find loophole after loophole and grift after grift.

His staff of professional liar toadies like Steven Cheung and Karoline Leavitt have been covering up and masking his fascism as patriotism and fomenting hatred and division in this country on a daily basis.  And I have ‘ample time on (my) hands’? That orange grifter has spent more tax payer money cheating at golf than helping ANYONE in the country. Improve. Anything. There is no progress with him, only smoke and mirrors and tax breaks for the ultra wealthy.

So MAGA folk, enjoy your concrete paving over of the rose garden, your 200 million dollar ballroom in the White House, and your gaudy ass gold spray painted trinkets from Home Depot, cause he ain’t spending any money on helping YOU unless you fit into his white supremacist country club rich idiot agenda.

Wow, he hates who you hate….good for you, be proud of yourselves, how Christian of you all.

The only way you can support this conman is because you are a victim of the 2 party system and you ‘defend your guy no matter what he does.’  No intelligent person can defend this low life fascist. This bankruptor of casinos. This failed seller of trump steaks, trump vodka, trump water, etc.

This man and his goon squad have failed upwards for decades and have fleeced the American people over and over.  This professional golf cheat, this grifter who has hundreds of thousands of deaths from his inaction of the pandemic on his hands, this man that the majority of the country somehow were fooled into supporting and voting into office (through the flawed electoral college) and their love of reality television stars.

Being insulted by the actual White House that this particular conman leads is a badge of honor to me, because anyone who trump supports and likes is a villain who gives nothing to their fellow man, only takes what can benefit themselves.

And no I’m not a Democrat either, I’m a human being raised in Detroit, I’m an artist who’s owned his own businesses like his own upholstery shop and recording label since he was 21 years old who has enough street sense to know when a 3 card monte dealer is a cheap grifter and a thief.

I was raised to believe that we defeated fascism in World War II and that we would never allow it again in the world. I don’t always state publicly my political opinions, and like anyone I don’t always know all of the facts, but when it comes to this man and this administration I’m not going to be like one of the silent minority of 1930’s Germany. This man is a danger to not just America but the entire world and that’s not an exaggeration, he’s dismantling democracy and endangering the planet on a daily basis, and we. all. know. it.— JW III

Media critic Dan Froomkin wrote the headline above and attached it to a blistering article about major media’s supine knee-bending to Trump. He does outrageous things, and mainstream media treats his power-hungry or unhinged actions as normal. Trump’s actions and pronouncements are not normal. The media should say so.

Froomkin writes:

The top story of the moment is the one story that our most influential newsrooms won’t touch: That the United State has become an authoritarian state.

At some point, the evidence becomes overwhelming —  and we have reached that point. The frog in the metaphorical pot of water has boiled to death.

Armed soldiers patrol the streets of the nation’s capital, with more cities apparently to come. Immigrants who have done nobody any harm are abducted and disappeared by masked agents. The state is seizing stakes of national companies. Election integrity is under attack. Political opponents are targeted with criminal probes. Federal judges’ orders are ignored. Educational institutions are extorted into obedience. Key functions of the government are politicized and degraded. Expertise and science are devalued. Trump speaks of serving an unconstitutional third term. Media organizations are paying tribute to the ruler.

Most significantly, perhaps, there are no guardrails anymore. No one inside the executive branch will tell Trump no. No one in in the ruling party in Congress will tell him no. The right-wing majority of the Supreme Court won’t tell him no.

And our dominant media institutions won’t call him out.

Rather, they obscure reality under a haze of incremental stories, each one presented as if what is going on is fairly normal. As if it’s just politics.

Every outrage is just one more thing Trump has done, rather than the ever-mounting evidence of a corrupt dictatorship.

The coverage is a play-by-play as the burners click upward, rather than a check to see if the frog is still alive, which it is not.

The closest the New York Times newsroom will come to telling readers the truth, for instance, is to say that Trump is “promoting an aura of authoritarian nationalism,” or that certain actions “increasingly remind scholars of the way authoritarian leaders in other countries” behave.

The Washington Post will quote critics accusing Trump of “authoritarian overreach,” and protesters calling him “fascist,” but leaves even the most obvious conclusions to the readers to make themselves.

The Associated Press sometimes levels with its audience. It has published some exemplary articles recently, including “Trump moves to use the levers of presidential power to help his party in the 2026 midterms” and “Trump ran on a promise of revenge. He’s making good on it.” But the day-to-day coverage gives no indication of the breakdown of democracy.

Outside these newsrooms, the cries of “authoritarian” and “fascist” have been numerous, some dating back to 2016. But now the chorus of voices is growing louder and more mainstream.

Historian Garrett Graff called it… He wrote in his “Doomsday Scenario” newsletter:

The United States, just months before its 250^th birthday as the world’s leading democracy, has tipped over the edge into authoritarianism and fascism. In the end, faster than I imagined possible, it did happen here. The precise moment when and where in recent weeks America crossed that invisible line from democracy into authoritarianism can and will be debated by future historians, but it’s clear that the line itself has been crossed.….

Everything else from here on out is just a matter of degree and wondering how bad it will get and how far it will go? Do we end up “merely” like Hungary or do we go all the way toward an “American Reich”? So far, after years of studying World War II, I fear that America’s trajectory feels more like Berlin circa 1933 than it does Budapest circa 2015.

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow called it on August 4:

We have crossed a line. We are in a place we did not want to be, but we are there. The thing we were all warning about for the last few years is not coming. It is here. We are in it…

We have a consolidating dictatorship in our country. And it sounds melodramatic to say it, I know, but just go with that for a minute, right? Think — think in melodramatic terms. Think in cinematic terms. Imagine the cartoon level caricature of what you think a dictatorship looks like.

I mean, it’s secret police, right? A massive anonymous unbadged, literally masked, totally unaccountable internal police force ….

You would expect, right, that you’d have a scapegoated minority group blamed for all things, in our case, immigrants, right?….

In a cartoon caricature of an authoritarian country, displays of military might are not just for the country’s external enemies. They’re for the country’s own people, right? Because in an authoritarian country, you turn military force inward toward the people of that country.

She had much more to say. It’s worth watching.

MSNBC’s Ali Velshi called it on Sunday, opening his show with a powerful monologue about the collapse of democracy:

Each new abuse is justified as temporary, necessary, even an emergency. Until one day it’s not temporary at all. Until one day the justifications stop altogether because once power is absolute it no longer feels the need to explain itself. At best, each assault may seem like an outlier until the day you wake up and realize the system itself has become unrecognizable. Well that’s where we are — right now. It’s not where we’re headed. It’s where we are

The tragedy of what’s unfolding and the danger of what’s ahead will be compounded if American citizens an masse – all of us – do not recognize this moment for what it is.

Here’s a transcript.

The question is when — if ever – our newsroom leaders will reach their tipping point.

For now, they will say that it’s not their job to be the opposition – that’s the job of the opposing party. And therefore, if leading Democrats aren’t calling it authoritarianism, then they certainly won’t.

But that excuse is becoming moot. Top Democrats are in fact becoming increasingly blunt – including the Democratic National Committee chair this morning, at the DNC’s summer meeting in Minneapolis. “This is not politics as usual. This is authoritarianism. It’s fascism dressed in a red tie,” Ken Martin said. He also called Trump the “dictator-in-chief.”

It is past time for our most consequential news organizations to recognize that Trump is leading an authoritarian regime.

The article continues. Open the link to finish it.

Jan Resseger summarizes the judicial counterattack to the Trump administration’s efforts to criminalize DEI policies. It’s obvious that the Trump goal is to censor common practices that teach history, warts and all, as well as to kill programs that try to help Black and Hispanic students to succeed.

But the lower federal courts are getting their way. It remains to be seen whether the Trump-dominated U.S. Supreme Court will reverse the lower courts and allow Trump to restore his vision of a white-male dominated society.

Resseger writes:

Earlier this month, the Associated Press’s Collin Binkley broke a story that brought relief and satisfaction to the school superintendents and members of elected school boards across the nation’s 13,000 public school districts: “A federal judge… struck down two Trump administration actions aimed at diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the nation’s schools and universities.”

When she reported the story a few minutes later, the NY Times‘ Dana Goldstein highlighted its importance: “A federal judge dealt a sweeping setback on Thursday to President Trump’s education agenda, declaring that the administration cannot move forward with its plans to cut off federal funding from schools and colleges with diversity and equity programs.” But Goldstein cautions: “The legal back and forth is not likely to end any time soon… Eventually, it may be up to the Supreme Court to decide whether the president can interpret civil rights law to end racial equity efforts in schools.”

The new ruling is so important, however, that we must all pay attention. Binkley explains: “U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland found that the Education Department violated the law when it threatened to cut federal funding from educational institutions that continued with DEI initiatives. The guidance has been on hold since April when three federal judges blocked various portions of the Education Department’s anti-DEI measures.” Judge Gallagher’s decision followed a motion for summary judgment from two of the challengers to federal policy—the American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association.  Judge Gallagher is a Trump appointee.

Judge Gallagher’s decision will block the implementation of the February 14 “Dear Colleague” letter that Craig Trainor, assistant secretary in the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, sent to public school, colleges, and universities, in which he tried to expand the meaning of a narrow 2023 U.S. Supreme Court affirmative action decision, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, as also banning any public school programs or policies designed to achieve diversity, equity and inclusion.

Thursday’s decision will also block the enforcement of the Trump administration’s April 3, 2025 demand that state education agencies and every one of the nation’s 13,000 public school districts sign a certificate promising they had eliminated all programs and policies aimed at achieving DEI.  On April 3rd, the Department of Education threatened to halt federal funding, including Title I funding for public schools serving concentrations of poor children, for schools that refused to follow its order to eliminate DEI.

Goldstein adds that the new decision, “will not lead to immediate changes for schools or colleges, because the administration’s anti-D.E.I. efforts had already been temporarily paused by Judge Gallagher and two other federal judges in April.”  The new decision will, however, ease fear among thousands of public school leaders who have been wrestling with what has seemed a looming threat from the federal government.  Some school districts have already submitted to the federal government’s threats by cancelling programs aimed at reaching students who have historically been left out or left behind.

Binkley and Goldstein both do an excellent job of exploring what the Trump administration seems to mean but never explicitly defines when it condemns its own twisted redefinition of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” While most educators and citizens would like public schools to welcome all students inclusively, to treat students equitably, and to ensure that no children are excluded, the Trump administration has instead tried to turn programs based on these principles into crimes.

Binkley explains that the federal guidance, “amounted to a full-scale reframing of the government’s approach to civil rights in education. It took aim at policies that were created to address longstanding racial disparities, saying those practices were their own form of discrimination.”

Goldstein writes: “While there is no single definition of D.E.I., the Trump administration has indicated that it considers many common K-12 racial equity efforts to fall under the category and to be illegal. Those include directing tutoring toward struggling students of specific races, such as Black boys; teaching lessons on concepts such as white privilege; and trying to recruit a more racially diverse set of teachers. The administration has also warned colleges that they may not establish scholarship programs or prizes that are intended for students of specific races, or require students to participate in ‘racially charged’ orientation programs… The administration had also argued that because the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action in college admissions in 2023, all racially conscious education programs are illegal.”  Goldstein concludes: “But those legal interpretations were novel and untested. Judge Gallagher rejected them, writing that the (2023) anti-affirmative action ruling ‘certainly does not proscribe any particular classroom speech or relate at all to curricular choices.’ ”

In her decision on Thursday, Judge Gallagher declared the Trump administration’s ban on “diversity, equity and inclusion” an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment’s protection of  free speech.  Goldstein reports: “In a strongly worded ruling, Judge Stephanie Gallagher… wrote that the administration had not followed proper administrative procedure, and said that its plan was unconstitutional, in part because it risked constraining educators’ free speech rights in the classroom.”

Soon after the Trump administration’s April 3rd letter threatening public school funding including Title I dollars, constitutional law professor Derek Black explained that the April 3rd letter clearly violates the First Amendment protection of free speech, as decided in a landmark, 1943 decision, West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette. The case involved a widespread requirement in the 1940s that public schools punish or expel students who refused to say “The Pledge of Allegiance.”

Here is how Yale Law School Professor Justin Driver describes the significance of that case in his book, The School-House Gate: Public Education, The Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind:

“Barnette stands out for making three primary substantive innovations that appear at the intersection of constitutional law and education law. First, as a matter of constitutional doctrine, Justice (Robert) Jackson dramatically reconceptualized the requirement (that all students recite the “Pledge”) as raising a question not about the First Amendment’s freedom of religion but about the First Amendment’s freedom of speech… whether people of all backgrounds have an interest in avoiding government-compelled speech…. Jackson suggested that tolerating nonconformity, and even dissidence, was essential to enabling this unusually diverse nation to function.”

Driver quotes Justice Robert Jackson’s decision in the Barnette case: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or any other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein.” (Justin Driver, The School-House Gate, pp. 65-66)

This is a press release from the White House titled “President Trump is Right About the Smithsonian.” It describes some of the works and exhibits he wants to censor because they don’t show a positive portrayal of the U.S.

• The National Museum of African American History and Culture debuted a series to educate people on “a society that privileges white people and whiteness” — defining so-called “white dominant culture“ as “ways white people and their traditions, attitudes, and ways of life have been normalized over time” and portraying “the nuclear family,” “work ethic,” and “intellect” as white qualities rooted in racism.
  • The campaign featured content from hardcore woke activist Ibram X. Kendi.

• As part of its campaign to stop being “wealthy, pale, and male,” the National Portrait Gallery featured a choreographed “modern dance performance“ detailing the “ramifications“ of the southern border wall and commissioned an entire series to examine “American portraiture and institutional history… through the lens of historical exclusion.”
• The American History Museum prominently displays the “Intersex-Inclusive Progress Pride flag” at its entrance, which was also flown alongside the American flag at multiple Smithsonian campuses.

• The National Portrait Gallery features art commemorating the act of illegally crossing the “inclusive and exclusionary” southern border — even making it a finalist for one of its awards.

• The National Museum of African Art displayed an exhibit on “works of speculative fiction that bring to life an immersive, feminist and sacred aquatopia inspired by the legend of Drexciya,” an “underwater kingdom populated by the children of pregnant women who had been thrown overboard or jumped into the ocean during the Middle Passage.”
• The American History Museum’s “LGBTQ+ History” exhibit seeks to “understand evolving and overlapping identities such as lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender, queer, transsexual, transvestite, mahu, homosexual, fluid, invert, urning, third sex, two sex, gender-bender, sapphist, hijra, friend of Dorothy, drag queen/king, and many other experiences,” and includes articles on “LGBTQ+ inclusion and skateboarding“ and “the rise of drag ball culture in the 1920s.”
• The National Museum of the American Latino features programming highlighting “animated Latinos and Latinas with disabilities” — with content from “a disabled, plus-sized actress” and an “ambulatory wheelchair user” who “educates on their identity being Latinx, LGBTQ+, and disabled.”

• The National Museum of the American Latino characterizes the Texas Revolution as a “massive defense of slavery waged by ‘white Anglo Saxon’ settlers against anti-slavery Mexicans fighting for freedom, not a Texan war of independence from Mexico,” and frames the Mexican-American War as “the North American invasion” that was “unprovoked and motivated by pro-slavery politicians.”

There is more. Open the link to see it.

Amos Schocken is the publisher of Haaretz, an Israeli publication founded by his grandfather, who was a publisher and founder of a chain of department stores in Germany who left for Palestine in 1934. His father edited Haaretz for 50 years and served in the Knesset.

He wrote the following editorial, which was titled “A Palestinian State Would Rescue Israel. It Would Not Be a Reward for Hamas.”

He began:

The Netanyahu government is already perpetrating a Nakba against the Palestinians of the West Bank, and is planning to inflict another on the Palestinians of Gaza. It’s time to end the disaster that the settlement movement has inflicted on Israel, end the war and establish a Palestinian state.

It’s now clear what plan Benjamin Netanyahu, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir are following: A Nakba for all the Gaza Strip’s Palestinian residents. The Netanyahu government seeks to throw all the Palestinians out of their homes and pack them into a section of southern Gaza in inhumane conditions. It’s also looking for countries willing to take them in.

The government is already perpetrating a Nakba against the Palestinian residents of the occupied territory in the West Bank, via the settlers and the army. They’re throwing Palestinians out of their homes, perhaps with the goal of concentrating them all in Area A, the part of the West Bank that the Oslo Accords assigned to full Palestinian control.

The flip side of these Nakbas is annexing the territory and building Israeli settlements in all the areas cleared of Palestinians. This violates international law and the United Nations Charter, which states that territory may not be acquired through war, even a victorious war. It’s hard to see how, once the government’s plan is implemented, it will be possible to live in Israel.

Normal life in Israel can only exist if the 100-year war with the Palestinians ends. And today, it’s accepted around the world, including in the Arab world, that this war should end with the establishment of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. The New York Declaration – the concluding statement of last month’s conference at UN headquarters in New York, led by France and Saudi Arabia with many other countries taking part – is the basis for ending the conflict.

The declaration states that the participants “agreed to take collective action to end the war in Gaza, to achieve a just, peaceful and lasting settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict based on the effective implementation of the two-state solution, and to build a better future for Palestinians, Israelis and all peoples of the region.

It adds: “Recent developments have highlighted, once again, and more than ever, the terrifying human toll and the grave implications for regional and international peace and security of the persistence of the Middle East conflict. Absent decisive measures towards the two-state solution and robust international guarantees, the conflict will deepen and regional peace will remain elusive.”

Turkey’s representative at the conference said that given Israel’s conduct over decades, Palestinian militant organizations will not give up their arms without the establishment of an independent, sovereign, contiguous Palestinian state in the 1967 boundaries with East Jerusalem as its capital, or pursuant to the provisions of a peace treaty.

The final statement was approved by France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Brazil, Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Jordan, Mexico, Norway, Qatar, Senegal, Spain, Britain, the European Union and the Arab League.

The declaration calls for an immediate end to Israel’s war in Gaza and backs the efforts by Egypt, Qatar and the United States to mediate a cease-fire deal between the parties. It stresses the need for a cease-fire, the return of all the hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. After the cease-fire, a temporary committee will be set up to run Gaza under the auspices of the Palestinian Authority.

The declaration says Gaza is an integral part of the Palestinian state and must be united with the West Bank. It adds that governance, law enforcement and security throughout this state will rest exclusively with the Palestinian Authority, backed by international support. It welcomes the PA’s call for “one state, one government, one law, one gun” and pledges to support this.

The declaration also adopts the conference participants’ proposals for full cooperation with the cases against Israel being conducted at international courts.

Israel’s leaders claim that recognizing a Palestinian state would reward Hamas for its attack on southern Israel on October 7, 2023. But this wouldn’t be a reward for Hamas, because Hamas is like Smotrich but in reverse: It opposes the existence of a Jewish state in the region.

If anything, a Palestinian state would be a reward for Israel, which would be freed of the brutal apartheid regime over the Palestinians that Israeli governments, always serving the interests of the Gush Emunim settlement movement, have carried out in the occupied territories for 58 years now. Palestinian terror is the result of the situation that Israeli settlements created in the territories. And despite an occupying power’s obligation to enable residents of occupied territory to live normal lives, Israel has done the opposite, heaping abuse on the Palestinians.

Fourteen years ago, in November 2011, I published an op-ed in Haaretz, “The Necessary Elimination of Israeli Democracy.” I quoted a speech to the Knesset by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in January 1993.

“Our assessment is that Iran today has the appropriate manpower and sufficient resources to acquire nuclear arms within 10 years,” Rabin said. “Together with others in the international community, we are monitoring Iran’s nuclear activity. They are not concealing the fact that the possibility that Iran will possess nuclear weapons is worrisome, and this is one of the reasons that we must take advantage of the window of opportunity and advance toward peace.”

With a state, security cooperation with the PA will only grow stronger, and there will be no reason for terrorism. 

I said that Israel had adopted a political strategy whose implementation began with the Oslo Accords. This included ending the preferences given the settlement movement and improving the treatment of Israel’s Arab citizens. And if things had developed differently, I wrote, the Iran situation might look different today. But this strategy clashed with a stronger ideology – that of Gush Emunim.

That ideology saw the Six-Day War as a continuation of the War of Independence. It held that the borders acquired in the 1967 war are the right ones for Israel, and it imposed a hard-line policy on the Palestinians in the occupied territories based on depriving them of rights, installing apartheid and encouraging them to leave.

This is an ideology driven by religious rather than political concerns, and it assumes that the Land of Israel belongs exclusively to the Jews. Because of this, Israel’s Arab citizens are also exposed to discrimination and the risk of being stripped of their citizenship. This ideology has no problem with criminal acts because it rests on what it deems a higher law that lacks a connection to either Israeli or international law. That’s how it led to Rabin’s murder.

I said in that piece that since 1967, no group in Israel has had as much ideological power as Gush Emunim, which has also gained American support and influenced the legislation aimed at undermining the Supreme Court and human rights groups. I warned that this unstable, dangerous situation prevents Israel from realizing its full potential and could lead to the collapse of the peace agreement with Egypt, a third intifada and Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, just as Rabin warned.

Today, the time has come to finally end the disaster that Gush Emunim and the settlement movement have brought down on Israel by denying it the possibility of agreeing to a Palestinian state and requiring it to fight the Palestinians, who, just like the Jews, still want sovereignty, independence and responsibility for their own fate and national honor.

One argument made against establishing a Palestinian state is that it will threaten Israel’s security. For instance, Gilad Erdan, Israel’s previous UN ambassador, considers such a state an immediate existential threat to Israel. “Any area in the hills of Judea and Samaria that is handed over could be used tomorrow morning as a zero-distance base for launching missiles and ground invasions that would threaten the heart of the country,” he wrote in the Israel Hayom daily on June 29. 

But this is a ludicrous claim. The Palestinian state will be demilitarized, the existing security cooperation between the PA and Israel will only grow stronger, and when the Palestinians become citizens of their own country – and we have to assume that the connection with Israel will give them certain advantages – there will be no reason for terrorism, only for good relations.

If Netanyahu understood the blow that October 7 was to his policy, he would opt for a state led by the PA, which Hamas hates. 

Netanyahu has consistently opposed any involvement by the PA in resolving the situation in Gaza, contrary to the New York Declaration, which views such involvement favorably. He has two arguments. One is that the PA supports terror – a false claim, since Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said explicitly at his inauguration that he opposes violence and will pursue diplomacy only. The second argument is that the PA education system promotes hostility to Israel.

The PA is convenient for Israel’s government because if Israel were responsible for the 3 million Palestinians in the West Bank, it would need an enormous budget. And Netanyahu’s complaints about the PA education system are utterly hypocritical.

First, he never sought a meeting with Abbas in an effort to fix the things he doesn’t like about the PA. And have you ever heard Netanyahu talk about the education of the “hilltop youth” or other settlers who abuse Palestinians in the service of the government’s interests? Haaretz has reported on their violent actions nonstop, but that doesn’t interest Netanyahu.

Or have you ever heard him urge his Knesset colleagues to do what should be obvious in any democracy? That is, leave prominent Arab Israeli lawmaker Ayman Odeh alone, because his presence in the Knesset is important to Israel. No, Netanyahu hasn’t done that either. So he has no grounds to complain about the Palestinians’ education.

How did we get here? The answer is clear: Netanyahu is spearheading a policy that is dangerous to Israel’s future and to its citizens, who are the victims of the ongoing Palestinian terror and are now loathed by many people around the world. His policy is also dangerous to the Jewish people, who are suffering from rising antisemitism due to the death and destruction in Gaza. The policy he has implemented throughout his terms as prime minister completely ignores the Palestinians’ aspirations for self-determination and political independence.

Netanyahu has supported the ultra-Orthodox and the settlers, who continue to do as they please with the country. No decent person would dare form a government with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir, extremist settlers who hate Arabs. But Netanyahu’s government guidelines with them say that only Jews have rights throughout the Land of Israel. In this way, too, he invited the October 7 attack. Nor would any decent person facing charges in court dare assault the legal system the way he has.

Netanyahu shamelessly continues to postpone any discussion of postwar arrangements. If he were smart and understood that October 7 was a decisive blow to his policy of ignoring Palestinian interests, he would have decided on his own to establish a Palestinian state led by the PA – which Hamas hates – enshrined in suitable agreements. If he had decided on this quickly, it would have spared the lives of many Palestinians and Israeli soldiers.

In January 2024, I published an op-ed in Haaretz saying that Israel would win if it got all the hostages back – even in exchange for Palestinian prisoners – and agreed to then-U.S. President Joe Biden’s stance favoring the establishment of a Palestinian state. A month later, I reiterated this in an op-ed whose headline called for a return of the hostages and the establishment of a Palestinian state.

In response to Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations in September 2024, Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi held a press conference at the UN with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan, Egyptian Foreign Minister Badr Abdelatty and Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Mustafa. Safadi said that “all of us in the Arab world here, we want a peace in which Israel lives in peace and security … in the context of ending the occupation, withdrawing from Arab territory, allowing for the emergence of an independent, sovereign Palestinian state on the June 4, 1967 lines. … That’s our narrative.”

He continued: “After 30 years of efforts to convince people that peace is possible, this Israeli government killed it. … We want peace, and we have laid out a plan for peace. Ask any Israeli official, what is their plan for peace? You will get nothing because they are only thinking of the first step – we are going to go and destroy Gaza, inflame the West Bank, destroy Lebanon. … We have no partner for peace in Israel.”

The past 30 years have largely been Netanyahu’s watch. And he has brought disaster down on Israel.

Trump’s One Big Ugly Bill codified a budget that included devastating cuts to the National Institutes of Health. Chalkbeat Colorado recounted the damage that cuts to the National Institutes of Health will do to the local economy and medical research in Colorado.

Chalkbeat reported:

Federally funded research grants have paved the way to life-saving treatments and contribute millions to local economies.

But, according to a new study, the 2026 Trump administration budget cuts could halt that research, result in job losses, and hurt the economy in every U.S. congressional district.

These estimates from the Science and Community Impacts Mapping Project say slashing National Institutes of Health grants, which are just 1% of the federal budget, by $18 billion within Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” would result in $46 billion in lost economic revenue and over 200,000 jobs lost nationwide.

The mapping project researchers compared active grants within the 2020-24 budget years to the projected 2026 budget changes.

In Colorado, budget cuts are estimated to amount to $657 million in economic losses and 2,800 jobs in the state’s eight congressional districts. Much of this research is conducted by universities across the state, with the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus expected to lose the most funding.

Advocates for the grants have said that federally funded scientific and medical research improves public health, helps spur innovation, creates jobs, and boosts the economy.

The report says the White House budget cuts research to life-saving diagnostics, therapeutics, and potential cures. That includes a 39% cut to the National Cancer Institute, a 38% cut to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and a 42% cut to the National Institute on Aging.

The report adds that NIH grants “contributed to more than 99% of the 300-plus drugs approved by the FDA from 2010-2019, including drugs to treat metastatic breast cancer, reduce birth defects caused by viruses, and novel antibiotics to treat multidrug resistant ‘superbugs.’”

This is a sickening video of Trump’s last Cabinet meeting. The members of the Cabinet competed to see who could be the most obsequious to Dear Leader.

This is a new twist on the voucher scam. In South Carolina, a state audit revealed that about one-third of the vouchers awarded by the state went to students who returned to their local public school or never left it.

Zack Koeske of The State reported:

More than a third of the nearly 3,000 South Carolina students awarded taxpayer-funded school vouchers last year later withdrew or were removed from the program due to eligibility concerns, S.C. Department of Education data shows.

The department suspended the accounts of 1,229 voucher recipients last school year after they were flagged during enrollment checks conducted to verify that participants had left their zoned school districts, an education department spokesman said.

To be eligible for a voucher last year, a student could not be enrolled full-time in their local district.

About 1 in 5 of the suspended accounts were reinstated after further review confirmed their eligibility. The remaining 1,005 suspended participants, all of whom had already received at least one $1,500 scholarship payment, left the program.

All of the recipients who were removed from the program due to enrollment verification had been enrolled at their zoned public schools, S.C. Department of Education spokesman Jason Raven wrote in an emailed statement.

The department recovered all unused funds that remained in the scholarship accounts of former participants, but did not attempt to recover any scholarship money those participants had already spent…

Launched last year, South Carolina’s school voucher program publicly subsidizes low- and middle-income families that send their K-12 children to private schools or public schools outside their residence area.

Families making no more than twice the federal poverty level, or $62,400 for a family of four, were eligible for $6,000 vouchers last school year.