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Jay Kuo Reports on Pete Hegseth’s Refusal to Answer Questions at His Hearings

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
3

Jay Kuo, lawyer, humorist and political consultant, watched the confirmation hearings of Pete Hegseth for the position of Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is notoriously unqualified. His Republican defenders treated his lack of experience and knowledge as a plus, a breath of fresh air. To charges of drunkenness, adultery, and womanizing, the Republican attitude was “Yawn. Everyone does it.”

Kuo writes:

Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, weekend Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, is many things: a serial adulterer, an accused rapist, a right-wing crusader and an often out-of-control drunk.

What he is not is qualified in any way to lead the Defense Department.

But apparently none of that posed any bar to the GOP senators on the Armed Services Committee, who appear ready to send Hegseth through to a full floor vote, which is now expected to go his way along a party line or near-party line vote.

Still, even assuming Hegseth’s confirmation is now assured, Democrats did a good job of laying the groundwork for resistance to and criticism of Hegseth’s leadership. They pulled no punches and demonstrated that it still matters to stand firm on the question of job qualifications, obeying the rule of law, and disqualifying questions of character.

No qualifications? Even better!

Republican senators spent much of yesterday’s confirmation hearing twisting Hegseth’s vices into virtues and his negatives into notches. For example, even though Hegseth has never led an organization of more than 200 people or a department with a budget of hundreds of millions let alone billions of dollars, this was somehow a plus.

As the New York Times noted,

Mr. Hegseth and his Republican allies on the panel made the case that his lack of experience compared with previous defense secretaries would be a plus.

Mr. Hegseth said: “As President Trump also told me, we’ve repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly the right credentials, whether they’re retired generals, academics or defense contractor executives. And where has it gotten us?”

His utter inexperience was even “a breath of fresh air” per Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, with Hegseth being an outsider rather than from “the same cocktail parties that permeate Washington.”

In his opening statement, Hegseth even argued that he didn’t have a similar biography to Defense Secretaries of the last 30 years” but that “it’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm.”

This may have made for a good sound bite, but it is disrespectfully false and misleading. It completely whitewashes the fact that his predecessor, Gen. Lloyd Austin, whom Hegseth has implied was a DEI hire, literally ran a war in a desert. Sen. Chuck Hagel, who served as Defense Secretary under President Obama, still has shrapnel in him from his service in Vietnam.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) drove home the point that Hegseth simply isn’t qualified for the job when she asked him to name just one country within ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), yet Hegseth began talking about South Korea, Japan and Australia.

“Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in ASEAN,” responded Sen. Duckworth, who is a combat veteran who lost both legs and mobility in her right arm when her Blackhawk helicopter went down during the Iraq War from hostile fire. “I suggest you do a little homework,” she said.

As reporter Jordan Weissmann remarked, “This might seem like a small, embarrassing gotcha, but ASEAN is an acronym you encounter a lot if you do even very basic reading about the Pentagon’s strategy to counter China.”

The Trump “yes” man

Given that Hegseth’s senate confirmation is more or less in the bag, questions around whether he would be an independent check upon Trump’s excessive executive power have grown in importance.

For example, Sen. Angus King (I-ME) asked Hegseth whether the U.S. would abide by the Geneva Conventions and the prohibitions on torture. Rather than state that we would, Hegseth responded, “What an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield.”

In a similar vein, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) had this exchange with Hegseth that highlighted the danger of having a puppet heading the Pentagon, with loyalty to Trump over the U.S. Constitution:

Sen. Slotkin: “As the Secretary of Defense, you will be the one man standing in the breach should President Trump give an illegal order, right? I’m not saying he will. But if he does, you are going to be the guy that he calls to implement this order. Do you agree that there are some orders that can be given by the Commander-in-Chief that would violate the US Constitution?”

Hegseth: “Senator, thank you for your service, but I reject the premise that President Trump is going to be giving illegal orders.”

Sen. Slotkin then pressed Hegseth on this, giving real-world, not hypothetical, instances where his predecessor, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, apologized for deploying forces in D.C. to put down protests and convinced President Trump not to deploy the 82nd Airborne. Hegseth resisted responding with yes or no answers and refused generally to second-guess or get ahead of conversations that he would have with the president, only grudgingly admitting by the end of the line of questioning that there are “laws and processes under our Constitution that would be followed” (using the passive voice, I should add).

During Sen. Slotkin’s questioning, Hegseth also appeared to confirm that he would use active duty U.S. forces to staff things like detention camps for migrants, which Sen. Slotkin noted the military is not trained to do as it is more of a policing function.

A disqualifying past history

When Democrats had opportunities to question Hegseth about his troublesome history, they scored blows over his alleged sexual assaults, public intoxication, mismanagement of nonprofits and opposition to women in combat.

The most notable exchange occurred between Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Hegseth, when Kaine sought to clarify whether any of the behavior of which Hegseth is accused (including allegations of sexual assault, public drunkenness and spousal abuse) would be disqualifying for a nominee, at least in his opinion, were it proven to be true.

Hegseth repeatedly refused to address Kaine’s questions, claiming again and again that the allegations against him were from anonymous sources and that they were false. Kaine caught Hegseth in a bit of a trap, however, when he laid out the series of instances of adultery that included the incident he claimed as a consensual encounter. Even were that true, it still happened, Kaine pointed out, months after the birth of his daughter by the woman who would become his second wife after he had cheated on his first.

Sen. Kaine pointed out that it was Hegseth’s judgment that concerned him. The exchange is worth viewing in its entirety:

Sen. Kaine later went on MSNBC to underscore how evasive Hegseth had been. “Should committing a sexual assault be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. Should spousal abuse be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. Should drunkenness on the job be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. He wouldn’t answer any of them. And that was very telling to me.”

On the question of Hegseth’s alcohol consumption, one GOP committee member, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), rose to defend the nominee. He accused Democrats of hypocrisy, asking whether they had ever demanded senators who showed up drunk to step down from their positions.

This defense was awkward in three respects. First, it seemed to confirm that Hegseth indeed has a drinking problem, just one that is shared by some of Mullin’s Senate colleagues. Second, it completely ignores history because a prior nominee for Secretary of Defense, Sen. John Tower, was denied confirmation precisely because of issues over his excessive drinking and womanizing. And third, as Kaitlan Collins of CNN later pointed out to Mullins during an interview, how is the bad behavior of a senator a defense of someone who wants to run the Pentagon? 

Gaming the system

By the time Hegseth even set foot in the committee room, the game was already rigged in his favor.

The main holdout in the GOP has always been Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who is a sexual assault survivor and a combat veteran. Ernst has brought attention to the plight of female service members and has pressed for changes to how the Pentagon deals with cases of sexual assault. Because she sits on the Armed Services Committee, a no vote from her likely would have doomed Hegseth, whose nomination might never have even gotten out of committee.

Sen. Ernst had been lukewarm to Hegseth before the MAGA bullying began. As the New York Times reported,

Ms. Ernst initially appeared hostile to [Hegseth], telling reporters that he would “have his work cut out for him.” After a private meeting with Mr. Hegseth, she said on Fox News that she was not yet a “yes” on his confirmation.

Her confession prompted an immediate backlash from outside groups affiliated with Mr. Trump, who targeted her with ads and social media posts, while prominent Iowa Republicans threatened to mount primary challenges against her in 2026. 

Within days, Ms. Ernst met with Mr. Hegseth again, and announced that she had been heartened by his promises to audit the Pentagon and appoint a senior official to deter sexual assaults in the military and ensure that female service members would be considered for combat roles if they could meet the requirements.

Sen. Ernst’s political capitulation went beyond merely bowing to GOP pressure. Per reporting by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Sen. Ernst, along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), even declined an offer to meet with Hegseth’s accuser—the woman who filed a complaint with the police claiming Hegseth had raped her after a GOP conference in Monterey, California.

So much for supporting victims of sexual assault.

The FBI background check on Hegseth was already woefully deficient because its investigators interviewed none of Hegseth’s accusers or former spouses. This is contrary to standard protocol, which advises interviews of all current and former spouses of nominees. When the FBI background check finally came back, it came with instructions not to share it with any of the Committee members beyond the chair and the ranking Democratic member.

Finally, to hamstring the vetting process even further, the GOP only permitted only one round of questioning of Hegseth, which completed after just four hours yesterday. Seven minutes for each senator to question the nominee, who largely refused to answer the question asked, produced the desired result: It barely scratched the surface of what the public is entitled to know.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Scandals, Trump

Texas: Moderate Republican Wins as Speaker of the House with Democratic Votes

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
11

The top elected leaders of Texas are far-right extremists–Governor Greg Abbott, Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, and Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Abbott is passionate about school vouchers, despite the fact they would harm rural public schools. He called multiple special sessions of the legislature last year specifically to pass vouchers, but failing each time.

Gov. Abbott got more than $10 million from Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass to oust the moderate Republicans who blocked vouchers. He won most of those races, defeating conservatives who prioritized their constituents over the wishes of the Governor, Jeff Yass, Betsy DeVos and the Texas oil and gas billionaires Wilks and Dunn, devout evangelical supports of vouchers.

A new session of the legislature opened. The hard right backed Rep. David Cook to be Speaker of the House. Rep. Dustin Burrows ran against him. Abbott, Patrick, and Paxton supported Cook. Burrows won. Burrows received more Democratic votes than Republican votes.

The Texas Tribune has the story.

Burrows won the speaker’s race after two rounds of voting, edging out Cook by a vote of 85-55. During the first round, Rep. Ana-María Rodríguez-Ramos, a Richardson Democrat, received 23 votes from fellow Democratic members — enough to keep Burrows and Cook from reaching the majority threshold of 76.

In the ensuing runoff round, twelve Democrats who had voted for Rodríguez-Ramos switched to Burrows. He also netted two more GOP votes from members who defected from Cook. Nine members marked themselves present without voting for either option, and one member, Yvonne Davis of Dallas, was marked as absent.

Burrows’ winning coalition was made up of 49 Democrats and 36 Republicans, drawing instant backlash from hardline members and activists who vowed revenge in next year’s primaries.

The Abbott wing of the party–more MAGA than Trump–is furious.

The question is: Does this mean that Abbott’s voucher plan will lose again?

A time for watchful waiting.

Categories Billionaires, Democrats, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Republicans, Texas, Vouchers

“Democracy”: Billionaire Bezos Abjectly Kisses Trump’s Ring

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
14

Our reader who calls him/herself “Democracy” writes here about Jeff Bezos’ shameless betrayal of the founding principles of The Washington Post, as well as its recent motto “Democracy dies in darkness.” He not only canceled the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris (to avoid taking sides), but he (or David Shipley, editor of the editorial page), canceled a cartoon critical of billionaires (including Bezos) who rushed to pay court to the new, felonious president.

Why would a titan with assets of more than $200 billion bend his knee and kiss the ring of a convicted felon? Why would Mark Zuckerberg, also with assets of more than $200 billion, immediately made his peace with Trump by eliminating content moderation from Facebook, welcoming the return to FB of Nazis, conspiracy theorists, racists, and other malefactors. Are they fearful of losing a few billions? Are they worried about being left out of dinners at Mar-a-Lago?

Bear in mind that The Washington Post led the way in discrediting Joseph McCarthy (those who were alive then will never forget Herblock’s cartoons, portraying him as a thug) and exposing the Watergate Scandal, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Bezos’s cowardice is causing the loss of excellent journalists, readership, revenue–and most important–reputation.

“Democracy” wrote, as a comment on this blog:

When Eugene Meyer bought The Washington Post in 1933 he established seven “guiding principles” for the newspaper. At the very top was this:

“The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained.”

Some of the other principles were these:

*  “The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.”

*  “The Newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it.”

*  “In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.”

*  “The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs.”

Given what has happened to The Post in the last couple of years under Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in the world, Eugene Meyer must be spinning in his grave.

Prior to the election, The Fiscal Times reported this:

“23 Nobel Prize-winning economists expressed support for the policies proposed by Kamala Harris, warning that the policies of her opponent would be ‘counterproductive.’…The 23 Nobel laureates — more than half of all living recipients of the economics award — said that the Harris agenda focused on the middle class and entrepreneurship would ‘improve our nation’s health, investment, sustainability, resilience, employment opportunities, and fairness.’…By comparison, Trump’s agenda of high tariffs and regressive tax cuts would ‘lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.’ In addition, in their view Trump represents a threat to the rule of law and political stability, necessary components of a thriving economy.”

The New York Times reported this:

“More than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president…The letter praises Ms. Harris for understanding that ‘the enormous increases in living standards and life expectancies over the past two centuries are largely the result of advances in science and technology.’ Former President Donald Trump, by contrast, would ‘jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology and impede our responses to climate change,’ the letter said.”

And yet, Jeff Bezos SPIKED a Post endorsement of Harris, and then lied about it in a column that was shameful, dishonest, and disreputable to The Post and the quality journalists who work there, or who used to, because a number of them have already quit or are planning on exiting.

Bezos had a relatively simple choice.

Honor The Post’s masthead logo — “Democracy Dies in Darkness — AND the principles established by Eugene Meyer, OR not.

Bezos chose racism and misogyny and sedition, and fascism.

The Atlantic published a piece three days ago by historian Timothy Ryback on Adolf Hitler.Here’s an overview:

“Monday, he swore an oath to uphold the constitution, went across the street for lunch, then returned to the Reich Chancellery and outlined his plans for expunging key government officials and filling their positions with loyalists and  turned to his main agenda: an empowering law that would give him the authority to make good on his promises to revive the economy…withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners, and exact revenge on political opponents. ‘Heads will roll,’ Hitler vowed…

“When Hitler wondered whether the army could be used to crush any public unrest, Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg dismissed the idea out of hand, observing ‘that a soldier was trained to see an external enemy as his only potential opponent.’…Blomberg could not imagine German soldiers being ordered to shoot German citizens on German streets in defense of Hitler’s government…Hitler had campaigned on the promise of draining the “parliamentarian swamp”—den parlamentarischen Sumpf—only to find himself now foundering in a quagmire of partisan politics and banging up against constitutional guardrails. He responded as he invariably did when confronted with dissenting opinions or inconvenient truths: He ignored them and doubled down.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/

Sound familiar? 

You’d think that Jeff Bezos might be aware of all of this. He likely is. But he’s chosen to collude with Trump, presumably because it helps his bank account – as if he needs that. Bezos gave $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund, which presumably Trump will pocket, and he coughed up $40 million to produce a “documentary”on Melania Trump, set to air later this year. A. Documentary. On. Melania. Trump.

Honestly, given her “accomplishments,” couldn’t a suitable “documentary” be produced for about $40?

As someone who used to deliver The Post, and who has been a reader for more than 50 years, I think it only appropriate to tell Jeff Bezos from the bottom of my heart that he can Kiss My Ass.

The American democratic republic deserves better.

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Hypocrisy, Media, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Media Discovers that Bidenomics Works!

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
16

This was one of Jennifer Rubin’s last columns for The Washington Post. She resigned on January 13 to start The Contrarian, to be free of the whims of billionaire Jeff Bezos. Bezos wants to be Trump’s ally. Rubin wants to be an independent journalist.

She writes here about the mainstream media’s newfound appreciation for Biden’s economic policies. The latest jobs report showed a healthy increase of 256,000 new jobs, which stunned economists. During the Biden administration, new jobs were created in every quarter for four years. This is an enviable record.

Currently, Trump and Vance are saying on social media that they are inheriting “a dumpster fire.” It won’t take long until they claim credit for the vibrant economy they are inheriting from Joe Biden.

She writes:

The New York Times wrote a few days ago, “President Biden is bequeathing his successor a nation that by many measures is in good shape, even if voters remain unconvinced.” Just how good are things? Here’s how the Times described the state of the economy:

For the first time since that transition 24 years ago, there will be no American troops at war overseas on Inauguration Day. New data reported in the past few days indicate that murders are way down, illegal immigration at the southern border has fallen even below where it was when Mr. Trump left office and roaring stock markets finished their best two years in a quarter-century.

The Financial Times reported last week on “why America’s economy is soaring ahead of its rivals.” Time published an essay in November that said, “President-elect [Donald] Trump is receiving the strongest economy in modern history which is the envy of the world.”

Gosh, you are not alone if you are wondering where such upbeat reporting has been for the past few years. After all, “The economy had a strong 2024: robust growth, low unemployment and inflation descending to 3%,” former car czar Steve Rattner told us. Moreover, he has said, “All told, Biden has added 693,000 factory jobs while Trump added just 425,000 before Covid hit.7 … The rate of grocery inflation — particularly troubling for everyday Americans ­— has subsided to less than 1.6%.” Real median incomes are higher than when Trump left office, border crossings are lower.

Overall, the Biden record is impressive, especially in light of the recession and pandemic he inherited. Researchers at the University of Chicago told us: “Under the Biden administration, real GDP rose 12.6 percent, rightly cheered … as ‘a historically robust expansion’ that repeatedly defied forecasts. Since the pandemic, economic growth in the US has far outpaced that of our peer nations. Business investment is up; unemployment is low.”

There are several explanations for why we did not have coverage commensurate with the success President Joe Biden enjoyed. The news media’s fixation on polls showing what voters thought about the state of the economy and its negative news bias (which I have written about) that refused to give proper weight to Biden’s successes failed to give voters an accurate picture of Biden’s achievements. And yet now, somehow, with the election over, the media widely acknowledges that Biden’s record is strong, something they downplayed during the election.

We should not discount the disproportionate impact of rising costs (again, echoed without sufficient context in political coverage) on the public perception of the economy (which in turn got amplified to the exclusion of “good news” by the media). “Inflation in the United States reached 9% in 2022, meaning that the average cost of goods and services went up by that amount,” Johns Hopkins University’s David Steinberg explained. “That is the highest rate of inflation that this country has experienced in over 40 years.” While inflation has now dropped close to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent benchmark, “the price level today is more than 20% higher than it was four years ago. As a result, many Americans cannot afford to buy as many things as they otherwise would.”

There is something else at work as well. Utilizing 89 years’ worth of data, University of Chicago researchers found, very simply, “It is not enough to say that a strong economy favors the incumbent. … A strong economy favors Republicans, and a weak economy favors Democrats, regardless of the incumbent.” They postulate that “when the economy is weak, Americans become more risk averse, and that’s why they favor the party that promises redistribution and social insurance — Democrats. During booms, by contrast, voters are more willing to take risks and therefore more likely to elect Republicans, who favor lower taxes.”

Democrats, including Biden and former president Barack Obama, like to point out that Democrats routinely inherit recessions from Republicans, clean up the mess and yet get no credit for it. (“In finance, there’s a phenomenon known as the ‘presidential puzzle’ — stock returns have been higher under Democratic administrations than Republican ones,” the research showed. “Between 1927 and 2015, the period analyzed in our study, the average excess market return was nearly 11 percent per year higher under Democrats than Republicans.”)

And yet this does not explain why, after inheriting great economies, Republicans manage to mess things up, ushering in the conditions for Democrats to return. Let me suggest the most simple explanation: The sugar-high from the only consistent economic policy Republicans favor (supply-side economics) quickly wears off, leaving the country with higher debt, more economic inequality and underinvestment in critical areas (e.g., education, infrastructure). Coupled with reckless deregulation that often results in financial crisis (as in 2008), Republicans’ policies leave Americans reeling, ready to bring back the only party of responsible governance: the Democratic Party.

Democrats should extract several lessons from this pattern. First, the media cannot be relied on to tell the success story. Republicans have a reliable propaganda machine in right-wing media; Democrats enjoy no such luxury. (One need only look at the economic coverage during Biden’s term to see this is true.) Second, it follows that Democrats must do a much better job touting their own successes and communicating with low- and no-information voters. Biden joked he should have put his name on the stimulus checks; he was right.

And finally, before Democrats change their philosophy or dump capable leaders, they might simply run a 24/7 hard-hitting critique of the Trump economic agenda. That will set the stage for the midterms.

We already have hints what Trump will do: run up big deficits, cut taxes for the super rich, slash entitlements, enact inflationary tariffs that provoke trade wars, undertake mass deportations that prove economically disastrous and do corporation’s bidding in enacting reckless deregulation.

Voters may not have long memories (amnesia about Trump’s first term pervaded the campaign) but, fortunately for Democrats, Trump’s failures and scandals will be fresh in the minds of voters when they go to the polls in 2026

Categories Accountability, Biden, Democracy, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Fake News, Lies, Media

Guess Who Will Attend Trump’s Inauguration and Sit on the Platform?

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
7

Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg will not only attend Trump’s Inauguration, they will be seated together on the platform.

Trump will show them off like house pets. Which they are. Trump brought out Musk’s inner Nazi. He intimidated Zuckerberg by threatening to put him in jail. He humbled Bezos, leading him to censor his journalists, who are fleeing the Washington Post.

Will they heel, sit and stay on command?

Sad.

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Elections, Ethics, Fraud, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Will Purge Those Who Are Not Loyal to Him

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2025 //
16

Heather Cox Richardson reports on the preparations for Trump’s return to the White House. At the top of the priority list is removing all those officials who are not loyal to Trump. Forget the fact that those who took an oath of office pledged their loyalty to the Constitution. The higher loyalty in 2025 is to Trump personally.

She writes:

The incoming Trump administration is working to put its agenda into place.

Ranking member of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA) warned that the loyalty purge “threatens our national security and our ability to respond quickly and effectively to the ongoing and very real global threats in a dangerous world.”

Although experts on the National Security Council usually carry over from one administration to the next, Aamer Madhani and Zeke Miller of the Associated Press today reported that incoming officials for the Trump administration are interviewing career senior officials on the National Security Council about their political contributions, how they voted in 2024, and whether they are loyal to Trump. Most of them are on loan from the State Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Central Intelligence Agency and, understanding that they are about to be fired, have packed up their desks to head back to their home agencies.

The National Security Council is the main forum for the president to hash out decisions in national security and foreign policy, and the people on it are picked for their expertise. But Trump’s expected pick to become his national security advisor—his primary advisor on all national security issues—Representative Mike Waltz (R-FL) told right-wing Breitbart News that he wants to staff the NSC with people who are “100 percent aligned with the president’s agenda.”

But during Trump’s first term, it was Alexander Vindman, who was detailed to the NSC, and his twin Eugene Vindman, who was serving the NSC as an ethics lawyer, who reported concerns about Trump’s July 2019 call to Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky to their superiors. This launched the investigation that became Trump’s first impeachment, and Trump appears anxious to make sure future NSC members will be fiercely loyal to him.

With extraordinarily slim majorities in the House and Senate, Republicans are talking about pushing through their entire agenda through Congress as a single bill in the process known as budget reconciliation. Budget reconciliation, which deals with matters related to spending, revenue, and the debt limit, is one of the few things that cannot be filibustered, meaning that Republicans could get a reconciliation bill through the Senate with just 50 votes. If they can hold their conference together, they could get the package through despite Democratic opposition.

House speaker Mike Johnson and Republican leaders have said that the House intends to pass a reconciliation bill that covers border security, defense spending, the extension of Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, spending cuts to social welfare programs, energy deregulation, and an increase in the national debt limit.

But Li Zhou of Vox points out that it’s not quite as simple as it sounds to get everything at once, because budget reconciliation measures are not supposed to include anything that doesn’t relate to the budget, and the Senate parliamentarian will advise stripping those things out. In addition, the budget cuts Republicans are circulating include cuts to popular programs like Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act (more commonly known as Obamacare), the Inflation Reduction Act’s investment in combating climate change, and the supplemental nutrition programs formerly known as food stamps.

Still, a lot can be done under budget reconciliation. Democrats under Biden passed the 2021 American Rescue Plan and the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act under reconciliation, and Republicans under Trump passed the 2017 Trump tax cuts the same way.

A wrinkle in those plans is the Republicans’ hope to raise the national debt limit. As soon as they take control of Congress and the White House, Republicans will have to deal immediately with the treasury running up against the debt limit, a holdover from World War I that sets a limit on how much the country can borrow. Although he has complained bitterly about spending under Biden, Trump has demanded that Congress either raise or abandon the debt ceiling because the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the tax cuts he wants to extend will add $4.6 trillion to the deficit over the next ten years, and cost estimates for his deportation plans range from $88 billion to $315 billion a year.

Republicans are backing away from adding a debt increase to the budget reconciliation package out of concern that members of the far-right Freedom Caucus will kill the entire bill if they do. Those members want no part of raising the national debt and have demanded $2 trillion in budget cuts before they will consider it. Tonight, Senate majority leader John Thune (R-SD) told Jordain Carney of Politico that Senate Republicans expect the debt limit to be stripped out of the budget reconciliation measure.

So Republicans are currently exploring the idea of leveraging aid to California for the deadly fires in order to get Democrats to sign on to raising the debt ceiling. Meredith Lee Hill of Politico reported that Trump met with a group of influential House Republicans over dinner Sunday night at Mar-a-Lago to discuss tying aid for the wildfires to raising the debt ceiling. Today, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) confirmed to reporter Hill that this plan is under discussion.

Indeed, Republicans have been in the media suggesting that disaster aid to Democratic states should be tied to their adopting Republican policies. The Los Angeles fires have now claimed at least 24 lives. More than 15,000 firefighters are working to extinguish the wildfires, which have been driven by Santa Ana winds of up to 98 miles (158 km) an hour over ground scorched by high temperatures and low rainfall since last May, conditions caused by climate change.

On the Fox News Channel today, Representative Zach Nunn (R-IA) said: “We will certainly help those thousands of homes and families who have been devastated, but we also expect you to change bad behavior. We should look at the same for these blue states who have run away with a broken tax policy…. Those governors need to change their tune now.” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) blamed Democrats for the fires and said of federal disaster relief: “I certainly wouldn’t vote for anything unless we see a dramatic change in how they’re gonna be handling these things in the future.”

Aside from the morality of demanding concessions for disaster aid after President Joe Biden responded with full and unconditional support for regions hit by Hurricane Helene (although Tennessee governor Bill Lee is still lying that Biden delayed aid to his state, when in fact he delayed in asking for it, as required by law), there is a financial problem with this argument. As economist Paul Krugman noted today in his Krugman Wonks Out, California “is literally subsidizing the rest of the United States, red states in particular, through the federal budget.”

In 2022, the most recent year for which information is available, California paid $83 billion more to the federal government than it got back. Washington state also subsidized the rest of the country, as did most of the Northeast. That money flowed to Republican-dominated states, which contributed far less to the federal government than they received in return.

Krugman noted that “if West Virginia were a country, it would in effect be receiving foreign aid equal to more than 20 percent of its G[ross] D[omestic] P[roduct].” Krugman refers to the federal government as “an insurance company with an army,” and he notes that there is “nothing either the city or the state could have done to prevent” the wildfires. “If the United States of America doesn’t take care of its own citizens, wherever they live and whatever their politics, we should drop “United” from our name,” he writes. “As it happens, however, California—a major driver of U.S. prosperity and power—definitely has earned the right to receive help during a crisis.”

Today, Biden announced student loan forgiveness for another 150,000 borrowers, bringing the total number of people relieved of student debt to more than 5 million borrowers, who have received $183.6 billion in relief. This has been achieved through making sure existing debt relief programs were followed, as they had not been in the past.

Establishment Republicans continue to fight MAGA Republicans, and MAGA fights among itself: former Trump ally Steve Bannon yesterday called Trump’s sidekick Elon Musk “truly evil” and vowed to “take this guy down.” But even as their enablers in the legacy media are normalizing Republican behavior, a reality-based media is stepping up to counter the disinformation.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Trump

Jan Resseger: Voucher Leader in Ohio Legislature Says Public Schools Cost Too Much

By dianeravitch
January 14, 2025 //
9

Jan Resseger writes today about Matt Huffman, Speaker of the House in Ohio and his determination to undermine the funding of the state’s public schools. If you read the previous post about the voucher movement in Ohio, you will recall that Huffman led the battle to enact vouchers for all families, including affluent families.

He is Catholic, he graduated from Catholic schools, and he has long been determined to get public funds to subsidize religious school tuition.

After the state was ordered to enact a plan to fund its schools fairly, relying less on property taxes, the legislature enacted the Cupp-Patterson Fair School Funding Plan in 2021, which was supposed to be phased in over six years. Huffman recently declared that the plan was “unsustainable.”

Ohio has 1.75 million students in public schools. There are 173,156 students in the state’s non-public schools.

Using public dollars to pay the tuition of rich students who were already enrolled in private and religious schools is “sustainable” for the religious zealots in the legislature.

Ohio’s commitment to fair funding for public schools has been undermined by two Republican priorities:

  1. The universal voucher program now costs $1 billion a year.
  2. Republicans are determined to cut taxes and to reduce funding for public schools.

Those are Matt Huffman’s priorities, not adequate and fair funding for public schools.

Categories Accountability, Catholic Schools, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Ohio, Religion, Separation of church and state, Vouchers

Jennifer Rubin: Why We Started The Contrarian

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2025 //
25

Jennifer Rubin posted her first editorial as editor-in-chief of The Contrarian.

The Contrarian will be a central hub for unvarnished, unbowed, and uncompromising reported opinion and analysis that exists in opposition to the authoritarian threat. Our pre-election warnings that Donald Trump posed an unprecedented threat to our democracy were often treated as alarmist. However, the election of an openly authoritarian figure who traffics in conspiracies, lies, unconstitutional schemes and un-American notions, has moved the United States to an inflection point. The future of our democracy, and what Lincoln called “the last best hope of earth” hangs in the balance. And yet corporate and billionaire media and too many in the political establishment persist in downplaying the threat and seeking to accommodate Trump and his radical agenda. We refuse to follow the herd.

Unlike most corporate or billionaire media, The Contrarian will not offer Trump the benefit of the doubt. We will not normalize him. We will not engage in false equivalence. We will not excuse enablers in the media, government or business. We will not infantilize his supporters nor treat them as victims; we will confront them with the consequences of their presidential pick.

Trump is no ordinary politician and will be no ordinary president so the response must be extraordinary. His insane pronouncements—be it a premature and utterly false declaration that the New Orleans terrorist had just come over the border or a threat to annex the Panama Canal and Greenland—cannot be ignored or treated as hyperbole. They reveal a warped mind and dangerous agenda that would take America down the road of other authoritarian states such as Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.

We will not be distracted by shiny objects or phony scandals. Instead, we will call out Trump and his fellow bad actors’ dangerous, unconstitutional and immoral actions and vile rhetoric. We will put them in the context of American history and international authoritarian movements. We will call on a range of experts from psychology, sociology, political science, international relations and other fields to inform the discussion and analysis.

We do not call Trump a dictator—yet. That is because a conscientious pro-democracy movement determined to expose, denounce and counteract Trump’s authoritarian impulses has time to act, to preserve our pluralistic democracy. The Contrarian seeks to be in the vanguard of that effort. To that end, we will summon the opponents of authoritarianism from all walks of life—the media, the arts, government, academia, business, sports, culture, labor and civil society—to join a grand coalition, a national front for freedom, decency, democracy, justice, self-determination, and diversity.

The urgency of the task before us cannot be overstated. We have already entered the era of oligarchy—rule by a narrow clique of powerful men (almost exclusively men). We have little doubt that billionaires will dominate the Trump regime, shape policy, engage in massive self-dealing, and seek to quash dissent and competition in government and the private sector. As believers in free markets subject to reasonable regulation and economic opportunity for all, we recognize this is a threat not only to our democracy but to our dynamic, vibrant economy that remains the envy of the world.

Although the task before us is deadly serious, we emphatically believe that joy, humor, and most of all community are essential to preserving a free people. We will offer all three. We also realize the danger of preaching to the choir and failing to reach outside our bubble. We will offer a platform that includes multi-generational, fresh voices from whatever venue or field who can contribute to our endeavor. We are building a community of passionate defenders of democracy who are fed up with equivocation, timidity, and resignation.

We could not be more excited to begin this journey. Our irreverence, candor and refusal to pull punches may offend establishment politicians, campaign insiders, and complicit media. We hope so. Throughout all our work, we pledge to live up to our credo: Not Owned by Anybody.

Categories Censorship, Courage, Creativity, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: Why I Resigned from The Washington Post

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2025 //
11

Jennifer Rubin explains why she gave up her column at The Washington Post, previously one of the most prestigious positions in American journalism. Billionaire Jeff Bezos, one of the richest men in the world, with assets exceeding $200 billion, has bent his knee to kiss the ring of Trump. To stay in Trump’s good graces, he has censored the editorial board, even an editorial cartoonist. The Post is hemorrhaging great journalists. Bezos bought one of the nation’s greatest newspapers and is destroying it.

She writes today:

Corporate and billionaire owners of major media outlets have betrayed their audiences’ loyalty and sabotaged journalism’s sacred mission — defending, protecting and advancing democracy.

The Washington Post’s billionaire owner and enlisted management are among the offenders. They have undercut the values central to The Post’s mission and that of all journalism: integrity, courage, and independence. I cannot justify remaining at The Post. Jeff Bezos and his fellow billionaires accommodate and enable the most acute threat to American democracy—Donald Trump—at a time when a vibrant free press is more essential than ever to our democracy’s survival and capacity to thrive.

I therefore have resigned from The Post, effective today. In doing so, I join a throng of veteran journalists so distressed over The Post’s management they felt compelled to resign.

The decay and compromised principles of corporate and billionaire-owned media underscore the urgent need for alternatives. Americans are eager for innovative and independent journalism that offers lively, unflinching coverage free from cant, conflicts of interest and moral equivocation.

Which is why I am so thrilled to simultaneously announce this new outlet, The Contrarian: Not Owned by Anybody. The Contrarian will offer daily columns, weekly features, podcasts and social media from me and fellow pro-democracy contrarians, many of whom have decamped from corporate media, others who were never a part of it. I am launching this endeavor with my cofounder, Norm Eisen. Founding contributors will include Joyce Vance, Andy Borowitz, Laurence Tribe, Katie Phang, George Conway, Olivia Julianna, Harry Litman (who recently resigned from the LA Times for reasons similar to mine for leaving the Post), and Asha Rangappa, among many other brilliant voices. We will provide fearless and distinctive reported opinion and cultural commentary without phony balance, euphemisms or gamified political punditry.

The need for upstart outlets has never been more acute. The contradiction between, on the one hand, the journalistic obligation to hold the powerful accountable and, on the other, the financial interests of billionaire moguls and corporate conglomerates could not be starker.

The Post’s own headline last month warned: “Trump signals plans to use all levers of power against the media; Press freedom advocates say they fear that the second Trump administration will ramp up pressure on journalists, in keeping with the president-elect’s combative rhetoric.” And yet The Post’s owner quashed a presidential endorsement for Trump’s opponent, forked over $1M for Trump’s inauguration through Amazon, and publicly lauded Trump’s agenda.

None of us could imagine Katharine Graham sending LBJ or Nixon a $1M check. It would have been, as it is now, a fundamental betrayal of a great American newspaper. Defense of the First Amendment is incompatible with funding or cheerleading for the very person who seeks to “drastically undermine the institutions tasked with reporting on his coming administration.”

The Post’s downfall is hardly unique. ABC, Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta and corporate-owned cable TV networks (which have scrambled to enlist Trump-friendly voices) are catering to powerful interests, and have profound corporate conflicts. Instead of guarding their independence, they join financial leaders, politicians and other public figures currying favor with Trump and his orbit.

Through classic anticipatory obedience—a dangerous but all too familiar pattern—they normalize the authoritarian menace. If Trump has taken “attacks on the press to an entirely new level, softening the ground for an erosion of robust press freedom,” as The Post reported, it is because he finds insufficient resistance. Instead, owners whose outlets he targets quite literally rewarded him.

In closing, I want to reiterate that I have been honored to work for over fourteen years alongside the finest writers and editors in journalism. Above all, I was blessed to work for The Post under the Graham Family ownership and Fred Hiatt’s leadership of the editorial section. My admiration for their collective integrity, dedication to craft, courage, patriotism, and decency is boundless. But when new leaders sully the reputation of institutions entrusted to them and the fate of democracy is in the balance, we all must reevaluate our careers and our obligations to the world’s most essential nation.

History calls us all.

I treasure the readers who have stuck with me over the years. I invite them and all those interested in defeating authoritarianism as well as writers and content creators to join this exciting new venture in defense of democracy. Forward!

Categories Billionaires, Censorship, Character, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Media

Karen Francisco: The Roots of the Charter School Grift in Indiana

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2025 //
8

Karen Francisco retired as editorial page editor of the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. She grew up in Muncie and graduated from Ball State University. She is a fearless advocate for public schools. I invited her to write about what happened in Indiana to turn Republicans against public schools.

She wrote this article for the blog.

The corporate-controlled American Legislative Exchange Council in 2011 rolled out a set of model bills designed to weaken one of its primary targets: public schools. “The Indiana Education Reform Package” was patterned after the destructive legislation pushed through by Indiana’s Republican legislative supermajority and then-Gov. Mitch Daniels.

Indiana has been setting the bar for public-school carnage ever since, quietly advancing a near-universal voucher program and advancing education privatization efforts. But the newly introduced House Bill 1136 is designed to serve as a death blow for public education in Indiana. It would immediately dissolve five school districts, including Indianapolis Public Schools, and effectively set every other district in the state on a path to elimination.

The bill requires the dissolution of districts that have lost more than 50% of students within the district’s boundaries to other schools. The districts’ schools would be converted to charter schools by July 1, 2028. The first schools converted would be those with the lowest test scores.

The legislation cleverly builds on those “education reform” measures designed to cripple public school districts. Ever-changing assessment standards kept the schools chasing arbitrary benchmarks. Sky-high income limits allowed wealthy families to abandon neighborhood schools for parochial and private schools. Inadequate funding and legislation favoring charter schools left districts without the resources needed to serve the at-risk students who are not welcome at voucher or charter schools.

Indianapolis Public Schools, in particular, has been hammered by Republican lawmakers and the city’s Democratic mayors. From an enrollment of nearly 40,000 in 2005, IPS now serves only 21,055 students, having lost thousands of students  to voucher schools, charters and poor-performing “innovation schools.”

Why is Indiana, known for its conservatism, such fertile ground for radical education policy? Blame it on a perfect storm of anti-democratic forces. Out-of-state billionaires like Netflix founder Reed Hastings and the heirs to the Walmart fortune have poured millions of dollars into the state to destroy teacher unions. Powerful Republican lawmakers have built careers off education privatization. Indiana’s strong evangelical community, including its newly elected lieutenant governor, has recognized the potential of expanding Christian Nationalist  influence with taxpayer-supported schools. 

The bigger mystery is why Indiana voters have allowed the continuing destruction of their public schools, electing and re-electing representatives actively working against the voters’ best interests.

I would like to believe House Bill 1136 is the proverbial bridge too far. But 40 years of newspaper experience in Indiana tells me most Hoosiers will show little interest in the imminent threat to two urban school districts and three small rural school corporations. Sadly, race and class play heavenly into opinions about Indiana public schools, and too many Hoosiers will dismiss the danger as “not my problem.”

Elected school boards are the last piece of control Indiana voters exercise over education. Republican lawmakers eliminated the constitutional position of state superintendent of public instruction, and Indiana has always had an unelected state board of education.

House Bill 1136 starts the process of disbanding locally elected school boards, replacing them with boards filled by the governor, local officials and the director of the partisan Indiana Charter School Board.  It’s only a matter of time before every elected school board in the state is eliminated.

Look for the American Legislative Exchange Council to update its 2011 “Indiana Education Reform Package” with this crowning piece of anti-democratic legislation and for ALEC’s disciples to carry it across the nation.

Categories Accountability, ALEC, Billionaires, Charter Schools, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fraud, Funding, Indiana, Indianapolis, Privatization
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