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Nancy MacLean and Lisa Graves: Charles Koch Is Still Funding Divisiveness and Greed

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2023 //
39

Nancy MacLean, professor of history at Duke University, and Lisa Graves, board president of the Center for Media and Democracy, warn readers not to be fooled by billionaire Charles Koch’s efforts to rebrand himself as a nice guy who has mellowed, who no longer wants to fund divisive, hateful organizations. A nice guy.

The media fell for it. The new, nice Charles Koch.

MacLean and Graves write: Don’t believe it. Koch won’t stop until democracy is dead.

They write:

Koch, the single most influential billionaire shaping American political life, never changed course. And the head fake he pulled off in 2020 succeeded in securing for his vast donor network—and the hundreds of organizations they underwrite—the freedom to operate, virtually without scrutiny, over the two years since. In that time, far from ceasing their efforts to divide the country, they have ramped them up. Like a snake shedding its skin as it grows, Koch was merely rebranding—yet again after exposure—and grouping his numerous operations under a sunny new name: Stand Together.

In August, the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reported that Koch-funded organizations spent over $1.1 billion in the 2020 election cycle. At the same time his book claiming to have changed course was in press, Koch spent almost 50 percent more than the record amount the Koch network had raised in the 2016 cycle: $750 million. Koch did not endorse Trump, though his spending buoyed the top of the ticket and helped maintain a GOP Senate majority to secure Koch-backed policies and judicial nominees embraced by Trump.

One of these organizations, Koch’s Americans for Prosperity (AFP), a 501(c)(4) tax-exempt organization, claimed it was involved in more than 270 races in the 2020 election, reaching almost 60 million voters with door-knocking, phone calls, postcards, digital ads, and more. AFP also played heavily in the battle for U.S. Senate seats in Georgia, in January 2021—even as Koch was still getting favorable coverage for his supposed withdrawal from divisive electoral politics. AFP Action, the super PAC arm, alone raised and spent $60 million nationwide in that election cycle.

Meanwhile, other key organizing enterprises, think tanks, litigation outfits, campus centers, and more that were previously backed by the Koch network continue operating today, sometimes under new names, and with expanded funding. These include endeavors we consider unethical, only some of which we have the space to highlight here.

Take, for example, Koch’s longest running quest: enchaining democracy by rigging the rules of governance to free corporations from customary oversight and to prevent the will of the vast majority of Americans from securing federal, state, and local policies to improve their lives. With the connivance of Trump, the generalship of Federalist Society leader Leonard Leo, and the well-funded campaigning of Leo’s Judicial Crisis Network, the arch-right billionaire succeeded in capturing a supermajority in the U.S. Supreme Court. Koch had told his allied billionaire backers that this was one of his top priorities for the Trump Administration—along with the dramatic tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy that he also secured.

Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Democrat from Rhode Island, a climate hero and senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, exposes how they did it in a recently published book, The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court. The long effort to reshape the judicial system, going back to the notorious Lewis Powell Memo of 1971, culminated in the Trump Administration’s appointment of more than 230 “business-friendly” federal judges, including three Supreme Court Justices, in a project overseen by longtime Koch allies Leo and Donald McGahn, who served as Trump’s legal counsel until 2018. The 6-3 stacked court is already delivering bombshell decisions for the coalition that put it in power, from undermining our options for mitigating devastating climate change and limiting the power of agencies to regulate corporations, to revoking people’s Constitutional freedom to decide whether and when to bear children. The current court term with the Koch-backed faction in control is expected to soon overthrow affirmative action and other hard-won reforms.

The Koch-funded American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) also continues its long campaign to shackle democracy on behalf of its corporate backers. Passing voter ID restrictions that make it harder for Americans to exercise their right to vote became a top ALEC priority after the United States elected its first Black President, Barack Obama. That measure was first voted on at an ALEC task force meeting co-chaired by the National Rifle Association in 2009.

ALEC is one of the nation’s leading promoters of charter schools, vouchers, and anti-union legislation. You can learn more about ALEC by reading Gordon Lafer’s The One Percent Solution.

Please open the link and read the article. Learn about the “new” Charles Koch, same as the old one.

If you are looking for a good read, read Nancy MacLean’s Democracy in Chains, which provides the context for understanding the links between the Koch brothers, Milton Friedman, and free-market economics. Suffice it to say that one of their goals was to privatize Social Security. Still working on that.

Categories Accountability, Bias, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Hypocrisy, Koch Brothers, Media

Peter Greene: NC Charter Schools Want Courts to Rule That They Are Not “State Actors”

By dianeravitch
January 9, 2023 //
13

Charter schools have managed to occupy an unusual spot in the spectrum of educational institutions: When it’s time to get public funding, they insist they are “public schools.” But in court cases where charters were fighting to be exempt from state laws governing employment practices or financial accountability, they insist they are not “state actors.” It is logically impossible to be both a public school but not a state actor.

In a current court case, a North Carolina charter chain wants the courts to declare that its schools are not state actors because they enforce policies for girls’ dress that is inconsistent with state and federal law.

Public schools are state actors. In effect, this charter chain wants to be declared “not a public school” even as it continues to be publicly funded. Why? It wants to preserve its right to ignore state and federal laws against discrimination.

Peter Greene explains the background of this case:

In the regularly pro-choice Wall Street Journal, Baker Mitchell and Robert Spencer want to complain about a court decision declaring that their charter schools are, in fact, public schools. This, they warn, “imperils the charter school movement.” Their complaint is a big pile of deep fried baloney.

The case that prompted this whinging

One of the charter schools operated by Roger Bacon Academy was sued by some parents over a dress code requiring girls to wear skirts (or skorts–but none of that pants-wearing stuff, ladies). Such a big deal. Who knew?

“We’re a school of choice. We’re classical in our curriculum and very traditional. I believe that the more of the traditional things you have in place, the more they tend to reinforce each other,” he said in a phone interview. “We want boys to be boys and girls to be girls and have mutual respect for each other. We want boys to carry the umbrella for girls and open doors for them … and we want to start teaching that in grammar school.”

RBA is owned and operated by Baker Mitchell, Jr., one of the titans of charter profiteering. Back in 2014, Marian Wang profiled the “politically-connected businessman who celebrates the power of the free market,” and how he perfected the business of starting nonprofit charter schools and then having those schools lease their buildings, equipment, programs, etc. from for-profit companies owned and operated by Baker Mitchell, Jr. Mitchell (now in his early eighties) thinks the rule is great:

The case bounced up through the various court levels until it landed in front of the full panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which declared that the rule was junk and had to be thrown out. Not a worthwhile call-back to what one dissenting judge called “the age of chivalry” as the majority noted such an age was also the age “when men could assault their spouses” and that chivalry “may not have been a bed of roses for those forced to lie in it.”

Nor did the court accept the argument that girls were still getting good grades. “We cannot excuse discrimination because its victims are resilient enough to persist in the face of such unequal treatment.”

So what’s the big deal? (Spoiler alert: that state actor thing)

Mitchell and Spencer are not whining about the loss of their ability to require girls to show their legs. They protest that the policy was created by parents; well, so was the lawsuit, so that hardly seems like a useful point. And it’s not the main concern,

The case hinged on the question of whether or not charter schools are “state actors” aka actual public schools. The court said, “Yes, they are.”

Mitchell and Spencer complain that no court has ever done such a thing and therefor: The Fourth Circuit’s finding appears to have been based on little more than the convention of calling charters “public charter schools” and their being mostly funded by public sources.

This is kind of hilarious, because the “convention” of calling these school public was created entirely, and purposefully, by the charter industry and its supporters. They have insisted loudly and often that charter schools are absolutely public schools, and have engaged in uncountable arguments with anyone who dares to say otherwise. Of course, they have also frequently insisted that they are private businesses when it’s convenient for fending off state scrutiny or grabbing PPP pandemic relief money.

And despite Mitchell and Spencer’s apocalyptic warnings, you know who applauded the court’s ruling?

The National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. The importance of this case could not be overstated, as it was the first time a federal appellate court considered whether public charter school students deserve the same constitutional civil rights protections as district public school students. The en banc court clearly and unequivocally affirmed that charter schools are public schools and, accordingly, must be bound by the US Constitution. Moreover, public charter school students have the same constitutional and civil rights as their district public school peers.

Galen Sherwin, ACLU senior staff attorney, observed that the ruling was important because The court rightly recognizes that ruling otherwise would leave states free to establish parallel, privately operated public school systems in a constitution-free zone, free to implement race segregation, religious discrimination, etc.

So what are they really, really upset about?

The tell comes a little further down the piece.
The ruling comes at a time when the charter-school movement is growing. Oklahoma’s attorney general recently issued a legal opinion stating that religious organizations must be allowed to operate charter schools in the Sooner State. A key aspect of the opinion was a finding that charter schools are not state actors and, therefore, the Constitution’s Establishment Clause doesn’t prohibit the inculcation of religious values, as it does in government-run schools.

If charter schools are state actors, then that might get in the way of expanding religious charters. And sure enough– we find amicus briefs filed by Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Arlington VA, Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Clinic, the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty, and the Religious Freedom Institute. “These experts,” say the writers, confusing advocacy and lobbying with expertise, say the Fourth Circuit’s ruling would undercut charter schools.

Well, no. They would undercut the extension of private religious organizations into a sweet, sweet chance to get their hands on public tax dollars while still enjoying unregulated freedom to indoctrinate some students into their religion while also discriminating against whatever students they choose to discriminate against in a taxpayer-funded Constitution-free zone.

Are we done yet?

Of course not. The school has petitioned the Supreme Court to hear their appeal. It invokes the 14th Amendment and features this kind of flag-waving:


North Carolina charter schools—like many throughout the Nation—build upon a critical insight: Empowering private entities to operate publicly funded schools with minimal government oversight supercharges educational innovation and expands parental choice. The decision below profoundly threatens this model.

“Supercharges innovation.” Sure. Making girls wear skirts is one hell of a supercharged innovation. My usual offer stands–name one educational innovation that has come out of the modern charter school sector.

Mitchell and Spencer want you to know that damn ACLU is behind this case, but they aren’t exactly being represented by a Mom and Pop firm. Aaron Streett is an attorney with Baker Botts, a multinational law firm (where both Amy Coney Barrett and Ted Cruz once worked), and that he’s the chair of their Supreme Court and Constitutional Law Group. Streett says that the majority opinion “contradicts Supreme Court precedent on state action…and limits the ability of parents to choose the best education for their children.”

The argument is simple enough–we are not a public school, so we should get to do whatever the hell we want (and be paid by taxpayer dollars while we do it).

It’s a tough call for the charter biz–if they aren’t public schools, then at this point they really aren’t much different from private voucher schools, so what’s the point of them? But if they want to market themselves as public schools, they can damn well operate under public school rules.

Who knows if SCOTUS will hear this, or what they will decide. But regardless of how things end up, it looks like the charter movement’s days of being able to have things both ways may be coming to an end.

Kevin Welner, who is both a lawyer and a professor of education policy at the University of Colorado at Boulder, wrote about these issues on Valerie Strauss’s Answer Sheet blog last June, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Maine could not exclude two religious schools from state funding when it provided public funding to other private schools, even though the religious schools openly discriminate against LGBT students, families, and staff, as well as non-Christians. The case is called Carson V. Makin.

Welner suggests that the Maine case may erase the line between charter schools and vouchers.

Welner wrote:

If charter schools are state actors, they cannot engage in religious teaching or discrimination. The Peltier litigation did not, however, involve any claim by the school that its sexist dress code arose out of protected religious beliefs. If religious-liberty claims were to be asserted around a comparable policy adopted by a charter school run by a religious organization, the state-action inquiry should be very similar, if not identical, and the charter school should be prohibited from engaging in discrimination.

But as today’s Carson v. Makin decision illustrates, the introduction of free-exercise protections could greatly complicate the overall analysis. If courts side with a church-run charter school, finding that state attempts to restrict religiously infused teachings and practices at the school are an infringement on the church’s free-exercise rights, then the circle is complete: Charter school laws have become voucher laws.

If the Supreme Court hears the Peltier case, if it decides that charter schools are not state actors, if charters may discriminate against girls, LGBT students, and non-Christians, then as Welner says, charters are no different from vouchers. But if they are not state actors, then charter schools are not public schools. But they are free to discriminate against any group, without regard to federal law. And they are free to teach religious doctrine and to close their schools to non-believers. States will then be directly funding schools that teach religious zealotry and openly engage in discrimination.

A loss for American democracy, but a victory for Donald Trump, who appointed three religious extremists to the Supreme Court; Mitch McConnell, who refused to allow President Obama to fill Justice Scalia’s empty seat on the Court after the Justice died in March 2016 (on the absurd grounds that it was too close to a presidential election), as well as his rush to allow Trump to name Amy Coney Barrett to fill Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s seat only weeks before the 2020 election; the far-right wing Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, which selected the judicial candidates for Trump. And while it may be impolitic to say so, I blame Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg for refusing to resign her seat in 2014 or 2015, when Obama would certainly have been able to replace her. She had had four bouts with pancreatic cancer, and good reason to step down and give Obama a chance to replace her. Instead she stayed on and died at age 87, gambling that Hillary Clinton would replace Obama. She lost her bet, and the nation has a Supreme Court that is imposing a deeply reactionary agenda.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, For-Profit, North Carolina, Religion

Heather Cox Richardson on the Republican Debacle

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2023 //
40

Many of us watched the spectacle this week of the Republican Party trying to elect a leader. We watched through 15 ballots, when Kevin McCarthy—Trump sycophant—finally was elected. We knew that behind the scenes he was promising to do whatever his far-far-right Chaos Caucus wanted, to give them whatever power they sought. The whole episode was humiliating for McCarthy and a source of amusement for Democrats, who stayed united behind their leader Hakeem Jeffries.

Heather Cox Richardson wrote about the debacle:

Early this morning, shortly after midnight, Republican Kevin McCarthy of California won enough votes to become speaker of the House of Representatives. Not since 1860, when it took 44 ballots to elect New Jersey’s William Pennington as a compromise candidate, has it taken 15 ballots to elect a speaker.

The spectacle of a majority unable to muster the votes to elect a speaker, while the Democratic opposition stayed united behind House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), raised ridicule across the country. McCarthy tried to put a good spin on it but inadvertently undercut confidence in his leadership when he, now the leader of the House, told reporters: “This is the great part…. Because it took this long, now we learned how to govern.”

But there is no doubt that the concessions he made to extremist Republicans to win their votes mean he has finally grasped the speaker’s gavel from a much weaker position than previous speakers. “He will have to live the entirety of his speakership in a straitjacket constructed by the rules that we’re working on now,” one of the extremist ring leaders, Matt Gaetz (R-FL) told reporters. Gaetz later explained away his willingness to accept McCarthy after vowing never to support McCarthy by saying “I ran out of things I could even imagine to ask for.”

In his acceptance speech, McCarthy first thanked the House clerk, Cheryl Johnson, who presided over the drawn-out fight. Johnson was chosen by Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) when she became speaker in 2018, and has served since 2019. Her work this week was impressive.

McCarthy promised that the Republicans recognized that their responsibility was not to themselves or their conference, but to the country, but then went on to lay out a right-wing wish list for investigations, business deregulation, and enhanced use of fossil fuels, along with attacks on immigration, “woke indoctrination” in public schools, and the 87,000 new IRS agents funded by the Inflation Reduction Act to enforce tax laws. Somewhat oddly, considering the Biden administration’s focus on China and successful start to the repatriation of the hugely important chip industry, McCarthy promised that the Republicans would essentially jump on Biden’s coattails, working to counter communist China and bring jobs home. McCarthy promised that Republicans would “be a check and provide some balance to the President’s policies.”

It was a speech that harked back to the past 40 years of Republican ideology, although he awkwardly invoked Emanuel Leutze’s heroic 1851 painting of Washington crossing the Delaware to suggest that America is a land in which “every individual is equal” and “we let everybody in the boat.” Despite the language of inclusion, just as the Republicans have since 1980, he emphasized that the Republicans would center the “hardworking taxpayer.” The Republican conference repeatedly jumped to its feet to applaud his promises, but it felt rather like listening to a cover band playing yesterday’s hits.

Immediately after his victory, McCarthy thanked the members who stayed with him through all the votes, but told reporters: “I do want to especially thank President Trump. I don’t think anybody should doubt his influence. He was with me from the beginning…. He would call me and he would call others…. Thank you, President Trump.”

Aaron Rupar of Public Notice pointed out that “McCarthy going out of his way to gush over Trump at a time when his influence is clearly diminished & political brand is more toxic to mainstream voters than ever—especially on the anniversary of the insurrection—is notable & indicative of who he’ll be beholden to as speaker.”

I would go a step further and say that embracing Trump after his influence on the Republican Party has made it lose the last three elections suggests that, going forward, the party is planning either to convince more Americans to like the extremism of the MAGA Republicans—which is unlikely—or to restrict the vote so that opposition to that extremism doesn’t matter.

Yesterday, Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, signed into law a series of changes in election law that include requiring a photo ID rather than permitting people to use other government documents or utility bills, shortening the time for returning ballots and fixing errors in them (called “curing”), prohibiting curbside voting, and limiting ballot drop boxes to one per county.

Also yesterday, a panel of three federal judges ruled that South Carolina’s First Congressional District is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. Following the 2020 census, the Republican-dominated legislature moved 62% of the Black voters previously in that district into the Sixth District, turning what had recently been a swing district into a staunchly Republican one that Republican Nancy Mace won in November by 14 percentage points. District Judge Richard M. Gergel said: “If you see a turtle on top of a fence post, you know someone put it there…. This is not a coincidence.”

In contrast to McCarthy stood Minority Leader Jeffries, who used the ceremonial handing over of the speaker’s gavel from the Democrats to the Republicans to give a barn-burning speech. He began by praising “the iconic, the heroic, the legendary” former House speaker Nancy Pelosi as “the greatest speaker of all time,” and offering thanks to her lieutenants Steny Hoyer (D-MD) and Jim Clyburn (D-SC).

He reviewed the laws the Democrats have passed in the past two years—the American Rescue Plan, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, gun safety legislation, the CHIPS & Science Act, and the Inflation Reduction Act, among others. “It was one of the most consequential congresses in American history,” he said, accurately. He called for Democrats to continue the fight for lower costs, better paying jobs, safer communities, democracy, the public interest, economic opportunity for all, and reproductive freedom.

“As Democrats,” he said, “we do believe in a country for everyone…. We believe in a country with liberty and justice for all, equal protection under the law, free and fair elections, and yes, we believe in a country with the peaceful transfer of power.

“We believe that in America our diversity is a strength—it is not a weakness—an economic strength, a competitive strength, a cultural strength…. We are a gorgeous mosaic of people from throughout the world. As John Lewis would sometimes remind us on this floor, we may have come over on different ships but we’re all in the same boat now. We are white. We are Black. We are Latino. We are Asian. We are Native American.

“We are Christian. We are Jewish. We are Muslim. We are Hindu. We are religious. We are secular. We are gay. We are straight. We are young. We are older. We are women. We are men. We are citizens. We are dreamers.

“Out of many, we are one. That’s what makes America a great country, and no matter what kind of haters are trying to divide us, we’re not going to let anyone take that away from us, not now, not ever. This is the United States of America….

“So on this first day, let us commit to the American dream, a dream that promises that if you work hard and play by the rules, you should be able to provide a comfortable living for yourself and for your family, educate your children, purchase a home, and one day retire with grace and dignity.”

In this moment of transition, he said, the American people want to know what direction the Congress will choose. The Democrats offer their hand to Republicans to find common ground, Jeffries said, but “we will never compromise our principles. House Democrats will always put American values over autocracy…

“benevolence over bigotry, the Constitution over the cult, democracy over demagogues, economic opportunity over extremism, freedom over fascism, governing over gaslighting, hopefulness over hatred, inclusion over isolation, justice over judicial overreach, knowledge over kangaroo courts, liberty over limitation, maturity over Mar-a-Lago, normalcy over negativity, opportunity over obstruction, people over politics, quality of life issues over QAnon, reason over racism, substance over slander, triumph over tyranny, understanding over ugliness, voting rights over voter suppression, working families over the well-connected, xenial over xenophobia, ‘yes, we can’ over ‘you can’t do it,’ and zealous representation over zero-sum confrontation. We will always do the right thing by the American people.”

The torch has indeed passed to a new generation, at least of Democrats. Between them and the extremists in his own ranks, McCarthy has his work cut out for him.

Please open the link to read her references.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Republicans, Trump

Josh Cowen: The Extremism of the School Privatization Movement

By dianeravitch
January 8, 2023 //
17

Josh Cowen, a professor of education policy at Michigan State University, has engaged in voucher research for two decades. Recently, he realized that the people and groups funding school privatization are the same as those funding other anti-democratic, extremist causes.

He writes:

There’s an old saying that “friends are the family we choose.”

The idea is that none of us played a part in the manner in whichwe were born or raised. We can’t help which city or state or country we grew up in, or whether we had two married parents or parents who divorced, whether one or both of our parents were straight or gay or whether we were only or adopted children. We can’t help which religious tradition—if any—we were raised in although we can decide for ourselves what we believe as adults.

Eventually we come to be known—and to know ourselves—by the company we choose to keep.

I spend a substantial amount of time these days talking to reporters about education policy—not just school privatization but other issues I work on like teacher retention or issues like the dreadful “read or fail” law that Michigan adopted during its Florida-mimicry days. I have a lot of experience trying to explain complicated policy areas to lay readers and writers.

By far and away the most difficult task in that activity has been explaining just how extreme, fringe and even dangerous much of the advocacy around school privatization and school vouchers actually is.

Others have reported at length how artificial the so-called “parents’ rights” groups are, but the drum that needs to be constantly tapped is that the real goal of a voucher system or its latest incarnation of “Education Freedom” is entirely radical.

Let’s walk through it.

First, when we talk about vouchers—or “scholarships” as they’re almost universally euphemized—we’re talking about a policy that’s had catastrophic impacts on student achievement. I’ve written about this here on Diane’s page and in media outlets across the country. You have to look to the COVID-19 pandemic’s impacts on test scores, or to Hurricane Katrina, to find comparable harm to academics. Vouchers are a man-made disaster, and yet the intellectual and political drivers, from Betsy DeVos to Jay Greene, are the same people who were pushing for these policies 25 years ago.

That’s one form of extremism. DeVos herself admitted the Louisiana voucher program—where voucher test score drops were nearly double what COVID did—was “not very well-conceived.” If spending decades and millions of dollars on a policy that did that kind of harm isn’t dangerously radical, I don’t know what is.

But that kind of idolatry-level obsession with a particular public policy begins to make more sense when we look at the other forms of fanatism that voucher activists have linked up with in their organizing.

There’s election denial, for one thing. Voucher activism and research is funded by groups like the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation—a key player in the Big Lie push to undermine confidence in the 2020 presidential outcomes. That foundation’s Board Secretary Cleta Mitchell has a starring role in the recently released January 6th Committee Report.

In a way that’s fitting. Vouchers work for kids like Donald Trump won the 2020 election. You have to suspend reality to believe either.

Next, there’s the extreme level of cruelty that voucher activists are increasingly embracing to push toward their goals. The Right-wing voucher-pushing Heritage Foundation has been pumping out screed after screed on topics ranging from book bans to diversity to transgender health care in its explicit exploitation of culture war divisions, and has all-but-encouraged the framing of public school educators as enemies to parents.

So right there that’s election denialism, anti-transgender, anti-diversity and book-banning marching arm and arm with school vouchers.

Add to that Greg Abbott’s busing of migrants to frigid northern cities on Christmas Eve and Ron DeSantis’s similar human trafficking this summer. Abbott is leading the privatization push in Texas with the help of Betsy DeVos staffers, and under DeSantis’s Don’t Say Gay policies, Florida voucher schools are newly empowered to reject LGBTQ kids and parents on the taxpayer dime.

Add further an opposition to reproductive rights. In Michigan for example, the DeVos-backed voucher initiative was led by the same political operatives running the campaign against our constitutional amendment to enshrine the right to choose, and an amendment against voter rights expansions all at the same time!

None of this is an accident. The push to privatize education isfundamentally an effort to discriminate against vulnerable children and to undermine civic institutions ranging from public schools themselves to democratic elections. It’s that extreme.

But really, none of this is new. Many of the younger reporters I talk to have no idea that the voucher movement actually began as part of the South’s “massive resistance” to integration ordered by the Brown v Board of Education decision.

In that sense, it’s hardly surprising that today’s voucher backers want to expel LGBTQ children and lean into book bans all in the name of “values.” As the author William Faulkner once said, “the past is never dead. It’s not even past.”

One of the tricks that advocates for school vouchers and other forms of privatization have been able to pull over the last two decades is to make the erosion of public education seem moderate—even reasonable.

But whether clinging for decades to a voucher policy failure that’s unprecedented in modern education, clinging in the same spirit to a failed presidential candidate’s baseless claims of an electoral victory, or a steadied push to stoke cruelty toward children as a means to an end, the school privatization movement and with it the Right’s attacks on public education are some of the most extreme forces operating today in American politics.

Extreme, and ultimately very dangerous. Defending public schools is becoming increasingly a movement to defend human rights.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Charter Schools, Corruption, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Privatization, Vouchers

David Frum: No Tears for Kevin McCarthy

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2023 //
28

David Frum was a speechwriter for George W. Bush. He writes for The Atlantic. He reminds us why Kevin McCarthy is as contemptible as the 20 members of the Chaos Caucus blocking his ascent to the Speakership.

The defeat of Kevin McCarthy in his bid for the speakership of the House would be good for Congress. The defeat of Kevin McCarthy would be good for the United States. It might even be good for his own Republican Party.

Because the people attempting to inflict that defeat upon McCarthy include some of the most nihilistic and destructive characters in U.S. politics, McCarthy is collecting misplaced sympathy from people who want a more responsible Congress. But the House will function better under another speaker than it would under McCarthy—even if that other speaker is much more of an ideological extremist than McCarthy himself.

McCarthy is not in political trouble for the reasons he deserves to be in political trouble. Justice is seldom served so exactly. But he does deserve to be in trouble, so justice must be satisfied with the trouble that he’s in.

McCarthy deserves to be in trouble because he refused to protect the institution he now seeks to lead. After the January 6, 2021, insurrection, he told fellow Republicans that he would urge President Donald Trump to resign immediately. When that vow became public, McCarthy denied he had ever made it, until a contemporaneous audio recording exposed his lie.

“I’ve had it with this guy,” McCarthy said after the January 6 attack—then voted in the impeachment proceedings to protect this guy. Eight days after Trump left office, McCarthy flew to Florida for a photo opportunity with the ex-president who had sent a mob to rampage through the Capitol and harm, abduct, or do worse to McCarthy’s own colleagues. Trump then released a statement boasting that he and McCarthy would be working closely together into the future, a statement McCarthy never contradicted.

McCarthy then enabled and supported a purge of every House Republican who had acted with the integrity that he himself had failed to muster. He endorsedthe primary opponent to Liz Cheney. He stripped committee assignments from Republicans who served on the committee to investigate the Capitol riot he had once condemned and now condoned.

For weeks after January 6, McCarthy denied that he’d telephoned Trump that day to blame him for the attack. When then–Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler exposed his denials as false, McCarthy brutally rebuked her.

“You should have come to me! Why did you go to the press? This is no way to thank me!”

“What did you want me to do? Lie?”

Well, yes, obviously. That’s what McCarthy did.

Herrera Beutler then lost the nomination in a primary battle against one of the most reactionary Republicans of the 2022-midterms slate—who then proceeded to lose a seat in rural Washington State to a Democratic newcomer.

There’s more but you have to subscribe to The Atlantic to read it.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Trump

Bob Shepherd: Campaign Slogans for Trump 2024 Campaign

By dianeravitch
January 6, 2023 //
56

Bob Shepherd was looking ahead a few months back and correctly predicted that Trump would run for president again. Little did Bob know that Trump would make his announcement right after the midterm elections, when most of his hand-picked candidates lost.

Bob drafted some campaign slogans for Trump’s race.

Please vote for me. Otherwise, I go to prison.

Why just documents in the toilet? Why not the whole country?

Making America Grate Again

TRUMP 2024: 20 for Obstruction of an Official Proceeding. 24 for Seditious Conspiracy

MAGA: Moscow’s Asset Governing America

The Man with No Plan and the Tan in the Can

Trump, the Relapse

Back to the Future! Way, way, way back!

Trump: For a Whiter House in 2025!

Vote for Trump or He’ll Stamp (or Stomp) His Foot, Hold His Breath, and Throw a Plate of Food

Grab ’em by the Ballot!

Cuckoo Coup Redo

If I Lose Again, Again, It’s Because It Was Rigged, Ha Ha

Because He Doesn’t Give a **** about You

No One Believes Any of This B***S*** I’m Saying, but People Vote for Me Anyway –Donald Trump

Categories Elections, Humor, Trump

Harold Meyerson: The GOP Revolution Eats Its Own

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2023 //
9

Harold Meyerson of The American Prospect reflects on the Republican debacle of the past few days. Kevin McCarthy wants desperately to be Majority Leader of the House of Representatives. He needs a majority of all members present. But he can’t get a majority because 20 members of the far-right “Freedom Caucus” oppose him. He has conceded to all of their demands for power. Yet after nine ballots, they still oppose him. They want to impeach Biden. They want to impeach cabinet members. They want to humiliate Dr. Anthony Fauci. They are the Chaos Caucus, the party of No. They don’t know how to govern. They are obstructionists.

Harold Meyerson wrote today:

Meyerson on TAP

The Revolution Eats Its Own

Like the Jacobins and Stalinists of yore, today’s Republicans have extirpated their moderates and have no one left to execute besides themselves.

Time was when the conservative credo was “That government is best which governs least.” If that needed quantitative metrics, Grover Norquist came along to say that government should be small enough that “it can be drowned in a bathtub.”

But that was oh, so then. Today’s Republicans repudiate those nostrums as way too statist. What they’re making ridiculously clear (and just plain ridiculous) on the floor of the House this week is that their new credo is “That government is best which cannot even convene.”

The process of revolutions growing more radical by bumping off every previous revolutionary cadre is well established. In revolutionary France, the Girondins supplanted the royalists, the Montagnards supplanted and executed the Girondins, the Jacobins supplanted and executed the Montagnards, and having run out of rival factions, the Jacobins executed each other. In revolutionary Russia, the Leninists overthrew and executed the czarists, the Stalinists overthrew and executed the Leninists. And having run out of Leninists, the Stalinists executed each other.

Today’s Republicans seem to have reached that final phase this week, the supplanting and political execution of each other. Here’s a quote from a speech preceding the eighth ballot for Speaker, in which a Republican described the candidate he was nominating:

“He’s not Paul Ryan! He’s not Mitch McConnell! He’s not John Boehner! He’s different!”

That was not, however, from a speech nominating the Gang of 20’s oppositionist de jour. It was the nominating speech for the hapless Kevin McCarthy, who apparently still clings to the forlorn hope that he can win the Speakership by repudiating every Republican leader and tenet to the left of Matt Gaetz and the Proud Boys.

To be sure, that’s a strategy that didn’t play all that well at the polls last November. Arizona Republican gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake made clear that she didn’t want the votes of Republicans who’d supported that squishy John McCain. In that, she succeeded, which was a major reason why she lost. But today’s Republicans are undaunted by anything so ephemeral as electoral results.

Even in comparison with the first two days of McCarthy’s public humiliation, today has been particularly cruel. The news this morning was full of reports that a team from McCarthy’s opposition had spent the night bargaining with McCarthy’s minions and came away with every concession under the sun. McCarthy agreed that a single member of the Republican caucus could call for ousting the Speaker and that would be all that was required to force a vote. McCarthy’s PAC cut a deal with the Club for Growth that it would no longer intervene in open-seat primaries. Hope sprung yet again among the Kevinoids that these concessions would bring perhaps 10 of the 20 malcontents into Kevin’s camp. In fact, however, through today’s seventh and eighth ballots, precisely none of those 20 dissidents, including those in last night’s meetings, came into Kevin’s column. McCarthy’s vote total remained stuck at 201.

There are some reports that the Gang of 20’s negotiators want the agreements in writing. To get his total up to the required 218, however, I suspect McCarthy will have to go beyond that, promising committee chairmanships and seats on the Koch Brothers board of directors to every one of the 20, and that he’ll have to sign this promissory note in his own blood. And a small cut on the finger won’t suffice.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Categories Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Insane, Republicans

The Strange Congruence Between Election Deniers and School Privatizers

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2023 //
14

Many of the same people who promote The Big Lie about the 2020 election also just happen to be promoters of charter schools and vouchers.

Patrick Byrne is one of them. He is the CEO of Overstock.com.

Indiana blogger Steve Hinnefeld writes about him here.

Patrick Byrne has been back in the news. Remember him? If you’ve followed Indiana politics – especially education politics – for the past decade, you very well may.

Byrne, the former CEO of Overstock.com, has as a prominent election denier trying to cast doubt on the fact that Donald Trump lost in 2020. He was part of an “unhinged” White House meeting Dec. 18, 2020, where he and others reportedly urged Trump to fight harder to overturn the results.

Byrne promoted the idea that 65% of all education spending should be in the classroom. A big, simple solution. George Will loved it. So did the governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, and the legislature so they passed a law mandating it.

Byrne has made big contributions to organizations pushing charters and vouchers.

Byrne spent eight years as board chair of EdChoice, the Indianapolis-based pro-voucher organization started by the libertarian economist Milton Friedman. He stepped down in 2019, the same year he left Overstock.com after his affair with a Russian woman who tried to influence U.S. politics became public.

Election denialism and school privatization: two big, simple ideas that are wrong.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Indiana, Lies, Trump

New York City: Hasidic Schools Reap a Windfall from Special Ed Payments

By dianeravitch
January 5, 2023 //
14

The Hasidic bloc of voters wields unusual political power in New York City and New York state, because the community tends to vote as a bloc. Rare is the elected official willing to challenge their large stream of public funding for their orthodox religious private schools. The New York Times has written previously about the significant flow of public money to their private schools (more than $1 billion over the past four years), and about the abysmal performance of students in those schools on the rare occasion when they take state tests. Many such schools do not teach in English and do not teach secular subjects, in blatant violation of state law.

The New York Times recently wrote in detail about the misuse of public money collected for special education services in Hasidic schools.

Less than a decade ago, New York City drastically changed the way it provided special education to thousands of children with disabilities.

State law requires cities to deliver those services to students in private schools, even if the government has to pay outside companies to do it. But for years, when parents asked, New York City officials resisted and called many of the requests unnecessary.

In 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio changed course. Responding to complaints, especially from Orthodox Jewish organizations, he ordered the city to start fast-tracking approvals.

The policy has made it easier for some children with disabilities to get specialized instruction, therapy and counseling. But in Orthodox Jewish religious schools, particularly in parts of the Hasidic community, the shift has also led to a windfall of government money for services that are sometimes not needed, or even provided, an examination by The New York Times has found.

In 2014, New York made it easier for private school students to receive city-funded special education. More than half of legal requests for aid last school year (as of March 14) came from areas with large Hasidic and Orthodox populations.

Dozens of schools in the Orthodox community have pushed parents to get their children diagnosed with disabilities, records and interviews show. At least two schools have sent out mass emails urging families to apply for aid. A third school provided parents with a sample prescription to give their children’s doctors, saying a diagnosis would bring more resources for the school.

Today, at Hasidic and Orthodox schools, which are called yeshivas, higher percentages of students are classified as needing special education than at other public and private schools in New York City, a Times analysis of government data found.

In the fervently religious Hasidic community, where Yiddish is the dominant language, schools focus on teaching Jewish law and prayer, while often providing little secular education in English. The Times found that at 25 of the city’s approximately 160 Hasidic yeshivas, more than half of the students are classified as needing special education. Records show the classifications are routinely justified by citing the students’ struggles with English.

Across all city schools, one in five students is classified as having a disability. There is little research into whether disabilities occur more frequently in the Hasidic community than in others.

With money more easily available, entrepreneurs with few qualifications have made millions providing services in yeshivas. More than two dozen different companies have opened in the past eight years, records show. Some of them now bill more than $200 an hour per student — five times the government’s standard rate — for what is essentially tutoring.

Some companies have been allowed to collect more than $100,000 a year for providing part-time tutoring services to a single student with mild learning challenges, The Times found.

At least 17 companies have employed people with questionable credentials to provide services, often paying them a fraction of the hourly rate that the firms collect from the city. While some companies provide quality services, others rely on programs that quickly churn out graduates with master’s degrees, some of whom are as young as 18.

“There are a lot of kids in the ultra-Orthodox community who have disabilities. The problem is that the community is not serving the students,” said Elana Sigall, a former top city special education official, who now visits yeshivas as a consultant. “They’re accessing tremendous amounts of city resources, but they’re not actually providing special education.”

One of the firms that opened soon after Mr. de Blasio changed the rules, Yes I Can Services, founded by a husband and wife who had scant education experience, now collects tens of millions of dollars a year.

By law, families who want the government to pay a private company to provide services must make their case against the city in a legal proceeding overseen by an impartial hearing officer. But as requests have increased, officials say they have stopped policing them. Families filed nearly 18,000 requests last year — with more than half coming from neighborhoods with large Hasidic and Orthodox populations — but officials waved through most of them.

In all, more than $350 million a year now goes to private companies that provide services in Hasidic and Orthodox schools, The Times found…

“Cases involving nonpublic schools have ballooned so wildly that they have engulfed and hobbled the entire system,” said John Farago, a longtime hearing officer who has overseen thousands of requests. “It’s affected the access to justice of all, and swamped the cases of children who attend public schools.”

Categories Accountability, Elections, Funding, New York City, Religion, Special Education

Memories of Four Years of Trump

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2022 //
27

A friend sent this list of some of the curiosities of the Trump administration in this article at Huffington Post. Just in case you forgot. I don’t know who compiled it.

I expect that a complete list would contain thousands of items. I, for one, will never forget the COVID briefing when he urged the public to drink bleach and speculated that the virus could be killed by some kind of rays or radiation. Most amusing to watch Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx flinching in the background. I can never forgive him for calling the free press “an enemy of the people,” echoing Stalinist rhetoric. Or his reception of the tortured body of young Otto Warmbier, followed by his exchange of “love letters” with the North Korean dictator responsible for killing Otto.

The worst sin of Trump, to me, was his demand for constant attention. It was impossible to close him out. What crazy thing would he say or do today? I spent four years living in a state of heightened anxiety because of him, worrying about what he would do or say next. COVFEFE.

The good news about Biden. He’s a normal person. He does not tweet several times a day. He doesn’t do or say crazy things. Days go by when I don’t think of him at all. What a relief.

1. he incited an insurrection against the government,
2. mismanaged a pandemic that killed a million Americans,
3. separated children from their families, lost those children in the bureaucracy,
4. tear-gassed peaceful protesters on Lafayette Square so he could hold a photo op holding a Bible in front of a church,
5. tried to block all Muslims from entering the country,
6. got impeached,
7. got impeached again,
8. had the worst jobs record of any president in modern history,
9. pressured Ukraine to dig dirt on Joe Biden,
10. fired the FBI director for investigating his ties to Russia,
11. bragged about firing the FBI director on TV,
12. took Vladimir Putin’s word over the US intelligence community,
13. diverted military funding to build his wall,
14. caused the longest government shutdown in US history,
15. called Black Lives Matter a “symbol of hate,”
16. lied nearly 30,000 times,
17. banned transgender people from serving in the military,
18. ejected reporters from the White House briefing room who asked tough questions,
19. vetoed the defense funding bill because it renamed military bases named for Confederate soldiers,
20. refused to release his tax returns,
21. increased the national debt by nearly $8 TRILLION,
22. had three of the highest annual trade deficits in U.S. history,
23. called veterans and soldiers who died in combat losers and suckers,
24. coddled the leader of Saudi Arabia after he ordered the execution and dismembering of a US-based journalist,
25. refused to concede the 2020 election,
26. hired his unqualified daughter and son-in-law to work in the White House,
27. walked out of an interview with Lesley Stahl,
28. called neo-Nazis “very fine people,”
29. suggested that people should inject bleach into their bodies to fight COVID,
30. abandoned our allies the Kurds to Turkey,
31. pushed through massive tax cuts for the wealthiest but balked at helping working Americans,
32. incited anti-lockdown protestors in several states at the height of the pandemic,
33. withdrew the US from the Paris climate accords,
34. withdrew the US from the Iranian nuclear deal,
35. withdrew the US from the Trans Pacific Partnership which was designed to block China’s advances,
36. insulted his own Cabinet members on Twitter,
37. pushed the leader of Montenegro out of the way during a photo op,
38. failed to reiterate US commitment to defending NATO allies,
39. called Haiti and African nations “shithole” countries,
40. called the city of Baltimore the “worst in the nation,”
41. claimed that he single handedly brought back the phrase “Merry Christmas” even though it hadn’t gone anywhere,
42. forced his Cabinet members to praise him publicly like some cult leader,
43. believed he should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,
44. berated and belittled his hand-picked Attorney General when he recused himself from the Russia probe,
45. suggested the US should buy Greenland,
46. colluded with Mitch McConnell to push through federal judges and two Supreme Court justices after supporting efforts to prevent his predecessor from appointing judges,
47. repeatedly called the media “enemies of the people,”
48. claimed that if we tested fewer people for COVID we’d have fewer cases,
49. violated the emoluments clause,
50. thought that Nambia was a country,
51. told Bob Woodward in private that the coronavirus was a big deal but then downplayed it in public,
52. called his exceedingly faithful vice president a “p—y” for following the Constitution,
53. nearly got us into a war with Iran after threatening them by tweet,
54. nominated a corrupt head of the EPA,
55. nominated a corrupt head of HHS,
56. nominated a corrupt head of the Interior Department,
57. nominated a corrupt head of the USDA,
58. praised dictators and authoritarians around the world while criticizing allies,
59. refused to allow the presidential transition to begin,
60. insulted war hero John McCain – even after his death,
61. spent an obscene amount of time playing golf after criticizing Barack Obama for playing (far less) golf while president,
62. falsely claimed that he won the 2016 popular vote,
63. called the Muslim mayor of London a “stone cold loser,”
64. falsely claimed that he turned down being Time’s Man of the Year,
65. considered firing special counsel Robert Mueller on several occasions,
66. mocked wearing face masks to guard against transmitting COVID,
67. locked Congress out of its constitutional duty to confirm Cabinet officials by hiring acting ones,
68. used a racist dog whistle by calling COVID the “China virus,”
69. hired and associated with numerous shady figures that were eventually convicted of federal offenses including his campaign manager and national security adviser,
70. pardoned several of his shady associates,
71. gave the Presidential Medal of Freedom to two congressmen who amplified his batshit crazy conspiracy theories,
72. got into telephone fight with the leader of Australia(!),
73. had a Secretary of State who called him a moron,
74. forced his press secretary to claim without merit that his was the largest inauguration crowd in history,
75. botched the COVID vaccine rollout,
76. tweeted so much dangerous propaganda that Twitter eventually banned him,
77. charged the Secret Service jacked-up rates at his properties,
78. constantly interrupted Joe Biden in their first presidential debate,
79. claimed that COVID would “magically” disappear,
80. called a U.S. Senator “Pocahontas,”
81. used his Twitter account to blast Nordstrom when it stopped selling Ivanka’s merchandise,
82. opened up millions of pristine federal lands to development and drilling,
83. got into a losing tariff war with China that forced US taxpayers to bail out farmers,
84. claimed that his losing tariff war was a win for the US,
85. ignored or didn’t even take part in daily intelligence briefings,
86. blew off honoring American war dead in France because it was raining,
87. redesigned Air Force One to look like the Trump Shuttle,
88. got played by Kim Jung Un and his “love letters,”
89. threatened to go after social media companies in clear violation of the Constitution,
90. botched the response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico,
91. threw paper towels at Puerto Ricans when he finally visited them,
92. pressured the governor and secretary of state of Georgia to “find” him votes,
93. thought that the Virgin islands had a President,
94. drew on a map with a Sharpie to justify his inaccurate tweet that Alabama was threatened by a hurricane,
95. allowed White House staff to use personal email accounts for official businesses after blasting Hillary Clinton for doing the same thing,
96. rolled back regulations that protected the public from mercury and asbestos,
97. pushed regulators to waste time studying snake-oil remedies for COVID,
98. rolled back regulations that stopped coal companies from dumping waste into rivers,
99. held blatant campaign rallies at the White House,
100. tried to take away millions of Americans’ health insurance because the law was named for a Black man,
101. refused to attend his successors’ inauguration,
102. nominated the worst Education Secretary in history,
103. threatened judges who didn’t do what he wanted,
104. attacked Dr. Anthony Fauci,
105. promised that Mexico would pay for the wall (it didn’t),
106. allowed political hacks to overrule government scientists on major reports on climate change and other issues,
107. struggled navigating a ramp after claiming his opponent was feeble,
108. called an African-American Congresswoman “low IQ,”
109. threatened to withhold federal aid from states and cities with Democratic leaders,
110. went ahead with rallies filled with maskless supporters in the middle of a pandemic,
111. claimed that legitimate investigations of his wrongdoing were “witch hunts,”
112. seemed to demonstrate a belief that there were airports during the American Revolution,
113. demanded “total loyalty” from the FBI director,
114. praised a conspiracy theory that Democrats are Satanic pedophiles,
115. completely gutted the Voice of America,
116. placed a political hack in charge of the Postal Service,
117. claimed without evidence that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower,
118. suggested that the US should allow more people from places like Norway into the country,
119. suggested that COVID wasn’t that bad because he recovered with the help of top government doctors and treatments not available to the public,
120. overturned energy conservation standards that even industry supported,
121. reduced the number of refugees the US accepts,
122. insulted various members of Congress and the media with infantile nicknames,
123. gave Rush Limbaugh a Presidential medal of Freedom at the State of the Union address,
124. named as head of federal personnel a 29-year old who’d previously been fired from the White House for allegations of financial improprieties,
125. eliminated the White House office of pandemic response,
126. used soldiers as campaign props,
127. fired any advisor who made the mistake of disagreeing with him,
128. demanded the Pentagon throw him a Soviet-style military parade,
129. hired a shit ton of white nationalists,
130. politicized the civil service,
131. did absolutely nothing after Russia hacked the U.S. government,
132. falsely said the Boy Scouts called him to say his bizarre Jamboree speech was the best speech ever given to the Scouts,
133. claimed that Black people would overrun the suburbs if Biden won,
134. insulted reporters of color,
135. insulted women reporters,
136. insulted women reporters of color,
137. suggested he was fine with China’s oppression of the Uighurs,
138. attacked the Supreme Court when it ruled against him,
139. summoned Pennsylvania state legislative leaders to the White House to pressure them to overturn the election,
140. spent countless hours every day watching Fox News,
141. refused to allow his administration to comply with Congressional subpoenas,
142. hired Rudy Giuliani as his lawyer,
143. tried to punish Amazon because the Jeff Bezos-owned Washington Post wrote negative stories about him,
144. acted as if the Attorney General of the United States was his personal attorney,
145. attempted to get the federal government to defend him in a libel lawsuit from a prominent lady who accused him of sexual assault,
146. held private meetings with Vladimir Putin without staff present,
147. didn’t disclose his private meetings with Vladimir Putin so that the US had to find out via Russian media,
148. stopped holding press briefings for months at a time,
149. “ordered” US companies to leave China even though he has no such power,
150. led a political party that couldn’t even be bothered to draft a policy platform,
151. claimed preposterously that Article II of the Constitution gave him absolute powers,
152. tried to pressure the U.K. to hold the British Open at his golf course,
153. suggested that the government nuke hurricanes,
154. suggested that wind turbines cause cancer,
155. said that he had a special aptitude for science,
156. fired the head of election cyber security after he said that the 2020 election was secure,
157. blurted out classified information to Russian officials,
158. tried to force the G7 to hold their meeting at his failing golf resort in Florida,
159. fired the acting attorney general when she refused to go along with his unconstitutional Muslim travel ban,
160. hired notorious racist Stephen Miller,
161. openly discussed national security issues in the dining room at Mar-a-Lago where everyone could hear them,
162. interfered with plans to relocate the FBI because a new development there might compete with his hotel,
163. abandoned Iraqi refugees who’d helped the U.S. during the war,
164. tried to get Russia back into the G7,
165. held a COVID super spreader event in the Rose Garden,
166. seemed to believe that Frederick Douglass is still alive,
167. lost 60 election fraud cases in court including before judges he had nominated,
168. falsely claimed that factories were reopening when they weren’t,
169. shamelessly exploited terror attacks in Europe to justify his anti-immigrant policies,
170. still hasn’t come up with a healthcare plan,
171. still hasn’t come up with an infrastructure plan despite repeated “Infrastructure Weeks,”
172. forced Secret Service agents to drive him around Walter Reed while contagious with COVID,
173. told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”
174. fucked up the Census,
175. withdrew the U.S. from the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic,
176. did so few of his duties that his press staff were forced to state on his daily schedule “President Trump will work from early in the morning until late in the evening. He will make many calls and have many meetings,”
177. allowed his staff to repeatedly violate the Hatch Act,
178. seemed not to know that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican,
179. stood before sacred CIA wall of heroes and bragged about his election win,
180. constantly claimed he was treated worse than any president which presumably includes four that were assassinated and his predecessor whose legitimacy and birthplace were challenged by a racist reality TV show star named Donald Trump,
181. claimed Andrew Jackson could’ve stopped the Civil War even though he died 16 years before it happened,
182. said that any opinion poll showing him behind was fake,
183. claimed that other countries laughed at us before he became president when several world leaders were literally laughing at him,
184. claimed that the military was out of ammunition before he became President,
185. created a commission to whitewash American history,
186. retweeted anti-Islam videos from one of the most racist people in Britain,
187. claimed ludicrously that the Pulse nightclub shooting wouldn’t have happened if someone there had a gun even though there was an armed security guard there,
188. hired a senior staffer who cited the non-existent Bowling Green Massacre as a reason to ban Muslims,
189. had a press secretary who claimed that Nazi Germany never used chemical weapons even though every sane human being knows they used gas to kill millions of Jews and others,
190. bilked the Secret Service for higher than market rates when they had to stay at Trump properties,
191. apparently sold pardons on his way out of the White House,
192. stripped protective status from 59,000 Haitians,
193. falsely claimed Biden wanted to defund the police,
194. said that the head of the CDC didn’t know what he was talking about,
195. tried to rescind protection from DREAMers,
196. gave himself an A+ for his handling of the pandemic,
197. tried to start a boycott of Goodyear tires due to an Internet hoax,
198. said U.S. rates of COVID would be lower if you didn’t count blue states,
199. deported U.S. veterans who served their country but were undocumented,
200. claimed he did more for African Americans than any president since Lincoln,
201. touted a “super-duper” secret “hydrosonic” missile which may or may not be a new “hypersonic” missile or may not exist at all,
202. retweeted a gif calling Biden a pedophile,
203. forced through security clearances for his family,
204. suggested that police officers should rough up suspects,
205. suggested that Biden was on performance-enhancing drugs,
206. tried to stop transgender students from being able to use school bathrooms in line with their gender,
207. suggested the US not accept COVID patients from a cruise ship because it would make US numbers look higher,
208. nominated a climate change sceptic to chair the committee advising the White House on environmental policy,
209. retweeted a video doctored to look like Biden
210. had played a song called “Fuck tha Police” at a campaign event,
211. hugged a disturbingly large number of U.S. flags,
212. accused Democrats of “treason” for not applauding his State of the Union address,
213. claimed that the FBI failed to capture the Parkland school shooter because they were “spending too much time” on Russia,
214. mocked the testimony of Dr Christine Blasey Ford when she accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault,
215. obsessed over low-flow toilets,
216. ordered the rerelease of more COVID vaccines when there weren’t any to release,
217. called for the construction of a bizarre garden of heroes with statutes of famous dead Americans as well as at least one Canadian (Alex Trebek),
218. hijacked Washington’s July 4thcelebrations to give a partisan speech,
219. took advice from the MyPillow guy,
220. claimed that migrants seeking a better life in the US were dangerous caravans of drug dealers and rapists,
221. said nothing when Vladimir Putin poisoned a leading opposition figure,
222. never seemed to heed the advice of his wife’s “Be Best” campaign,
223. falsely claimed that mail-in voting is fraudulent,
224. announced a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Syria which not only handed Russia and ISIS a win but also prompted his defense secretary to resign in protest,
225. insulted the leader of Canada,
226. insulted the leader of France,
227. insulted the leader of Britain,
228. insulted the leader of Germany,
229. insulted the leader of Sweden (Sweden!!),
230. falsely claimed credit for getting NATO members to increase their share of dues,
231. blew off two Asia summits even though they were held virtually,
232. continued lying about spending lots of time at Ground Zero with 9/11 responders,
233. said that the Japanese would sit back and watch their “Sony televisions” if the US were ever attacked,
234. left a NATO summit early in a huff,
235. stared directly into an eclipse even though everyone over the age of 5 knows not to do that,
236. called himself a very stable genius despite significant evidence to the contrary,
237. refused to commit to a peaceful transfer of power and kept his promise.
238. Don’t forget that he took many classified & top secret documents with him when he left the White House, many of which have not been recovered & may have been compromised.
None of the above comes close to whatever is on Hunter Biden’s laptop, of course.
But other than that he wasn’t so bad…

Categories Elections, Ethics, Lies, Trump
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