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French Students Protest Conditions in Schools, Hundreds of Schools Closed

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2026 //
27

France continued to be disrupted by numerous student protests against conditions in the nation’s schools. Labor unions, parents, and teachers joined the protests, in which hundreds of thousands of students complained of poorly maintained, overcrowded and understaffed schools. Hundreds of schools have closed.

France will have a Presidential election next spring, which is currently led by far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. It’s also deep in debt and suffering a major economic crisis. Meanwhile, major ports are blocked by fishemen protesting the high cost of fuel. An analysis of the converging crises concluded: “Whoever prevails after this autumn of discontent, the crisis may force a more basic reckoning: France can no longer afford its social-welfare state.”

Students, however, do not accept the idea that their education must be sacrificed to the nation’s fiscal crisis. In the student protests, some schools have been burned, some students have suffered severe injuries, police have used tear gas to quell the protests.

President Trump feels compelled to comment on everything, so he offered comments that displayed his xenophobia and ignorance. He said on his Truth Social: “…what’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration.”

“This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!”

The student protests have nothing to do with immigration or Islam.

The New York Times reported:

Demonstrations swept across France on Tuesday as labor unions rallied in solidarity with high school students who have spent two weeks blockading schools to protest understaffing, overcrowded classrooms and dilapidated buildings.

Marches were held in more than 40 cities, from Caen in the north to Marseille in the south, as activists, teachers, parents and university students joined swelling protests that had spread to hundreds of schools across the country. Tuesday’s marches drew roughly 256,000 people, according to the Interior Ministry; a major union said the figure was more than twice that many.

Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu signaled that the government had heard the protesters’ demands and was taking them seriously. He also said regular classes would be “completely suspended” on Thursday and Friday so that principals could host sessions with students.

The protests on Tuesday were mostly peaceful, but a fire was started in Lyon and police officers unleashed tear gas in Nantes. The biggest march was in Paris, where the Interior Ministry said there were 56,000 demonstrators.

The demonstrations are a litmus test of the longevity of a protest movement that began late last month in the suburbs of Paris and quickly spread to hundreds of schools across France.

Roughly 6,000 people have been arrested since the unrest began, and Mr. Lecornu told lawmakers on Tuesday that 215 students and 85 school staff members had been injured. He condemned the violence, saying “violent individuals who mingle with the nonviolent high school students” were to blame for any unrest. Others, including a major union of French judges and prosecutors and a prominent human rights group, have accused the police of using disproportionate force against students as young as 14.

Reuters reported:

STRASBOURG/LYON/PARIS, Oct 6 (Reuters) – Police fired tear gas at protesters outside French high schools on Tuesday as students, teachers and parents took to the streets on the biggest day of what Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu described as the most violent school protests in decades.

The protests, in which a teenager lost a hand on Monday, were the latest manifestation of public anger in a country where the far right ‌and far left are surging ahead of a presidential election in the spring.

The government is under pressure to tame public debt amid weak growth, and has struggled with basic tasks such as passing a budget since President Emmanuel Macron’s allies lost their majority in a 2024 parliamentary vote.

Lecornu told lawmakers at least 215 teenagers and 85 school staff had so far been injured in clashes, “the heaviest toll in decades paid by the school system”. His office said more than 700 police officers were also hurt.

Marine Le Pen has promised to cut public spending if she is elected. That won’t resolve students’ concerns.

Categories Budget Cuts, Class size, Disruption, Elections, Failure, Funding, Higher Education, Resistance

What Will the New Federal Voucher Program Mean for Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2026 //
0

In January 2027, the federal government will launch a new voucher program. It’s available to states if the Governor opted to participate. The program was part of what Trump called his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” but which critics called “One Big Ugly Bill,” because it locked in big tax cuts for the wealthiest while cutting benefits for middle-class and poor Americans.

At the recent conference of the Network for Public Education, our board met to discuss whether we would support resistance or collaboration. Although we understand that some schools want to capture any money they can to support their students, we decided to stand strongly for the principle: PUBLIC DOLLARS FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. AND ONLY PUBLIC SCHOOLS. we concluded that if public schools accept vouchers, it will normalize the ideas embedded in the program, that is, that education is a consumer good. We believe it is a civic responsibility.

Leigh Dingerson’s description of this new program was published by In the Public Interest, which reports about the privatization of everything.

Public schools may participate in the program, but only for programs and activities that they do not already provide, like after-school tutoring, transportation, and field trips.

Leigh Dingerson wrote:

The idea that government has an inherent interest in providing a free, public education for every child used to be sacrosanct, except among a small set of radical reformers like Milton Friedman. But a 40-year campaign for “school choice” has quietly gathered steam. Proponents of privatization are now openly acknowledging that their sights are set on eliminating public schools. They want to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education (founded to ensure the civil rights of children in schools) and offer no-strings-attached public dollars to private and religious schools. And now, a lawsuit filed in Nebraska just this month argues that the U.S. system of public schools violates the First Amendment and asks the state to declare public schools unconstitutional.

The first nationwide, federally funded school voucher program is set to begin in January, but it has already become a political football in both red and blue states. Governors are being pressured to allow vouchers to be handed out in their states, and deep-pocketed special interests like the Heritage Foundation and large faith-based networks are spending tens of millions of dollars to build the infrastructure to funnel federal funds into private and religious schools.

There is much we don’t yet know about the program, including the mechanism to collect and dole out the money via Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs). Regulations are being developed by the Department of the Treasury and are expected within weeks. But we do know this: States are not obligated to participate in this program. In fact, governors or other designated agencies must decide annually whether to allow federally funded vouchers to be handed out in their states.  

What Can Be Done?

The implications of almost-universal private school vouchers are enormous. The federal tax credit voucher program signals a massive shift towards a privatized, market-based system with few if any guardrails to serve our most vulnerable students, ensure equity, rein in discrimination, or address educational quality.

What can state advocates and policymakers do?

Encourage your governor to opt out of the program.

  • The governors of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Oregon have publicly announced their intention to decline to participate in the voucher program. Remember that the decision to participate or opt out of participation in the program must be made Governors may simply wait a year to see how the program plays out.

Consider legislation to narrow or guide your state’s participation.

  • Vermont has enacted a law that establishes criteria under which the state will participate in the program. It includes that SGOs have a “core mission of providing educational opportunities to economically underprivileged students” and that neither the SGO nor any school that receives funding under the program may “discriminate against any student” in a variety of categories. It also requires each SGO to report annually to the House and Senate Committees on Education, including data on the use of the voucher funds and the individuals receiving them.
  • In Rhode Island, the legislature has passed legislation which requires that both the legislature and the governor must jointly approve any decision to opt in to the program.

Watch for efforts to commit state funding to corporate entities vying to help administer the program.

  • A number of corporate entities have been created to “facilitate” and profit from the implementation of this program. For example, in Florida the legislature recently earmarked $2 million in its budget, apparently to contract with LearningSpring, a Denver-based start-up affiliated with the Koch network, to offer an online platform to help administer the federal voucher program.

Understand where your state might have authority to protect public education and ensure the integrity of taxpayer spending in the private market.

  • Familiarize yourself with your state’s private school (and homeschool) regulations and consider legislative language to strengthen them, and understand any state requirements for registered nonprofit organizations and whether they place any restrictions on, or allow oversight of, Scholarship Granting Organizations.

 What’s the matter with vouchers? The research is clear.

School vouchers are not new. We have half-a-century of experience with vouchers. Education Law Center’s Public Funds for Public Schools Project documents the many additional and important down-sides to vouchers. Among them:

 As students return to schools this fall, some have noted that this may be “the last normal year” for American schools.  It’s important for advocates of public education to make sure this critical institution doesn’t crumble.

Leigh Dingerson
Senior Research Fellow

Additional Resources

The following organizations offer additional resources on vouchers and the federal voucher program:

Education Law Center
Public Funds for Public Schools project.
The National Coalition for Public Education
The Network for Public Education

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Privatization, Religion, Resistance, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Robert Hubbell: Republicans Are Out of Touch with the Past and the Future

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2026 //
10

Robert Hubbell is a steady and wise blogger who has a knack for interpreting events as they happen. While Heather Cox Richardson looks at the day’s events from a historical perspective; Hubbell has a keen perspective honed by age and experience.

At a time when the public is skeptical, even fearful, of artificial intelligence, Trump has embraced this powerful technology with fervor, reassuring the tech titans that the federal government won’t regulate them but will trust them to regulate themselves. Simultaneously, Bill Gates was worrying in public that AI had the potential to wipe out a billion people. This is a “don’t worry, be happy” moment for Trump and his circle. They Pooh-pooh the growing number of people who worry about what big data centers will do to their water supply, their electricity bills, their jobs, their lives. Trump doesn’t get it.

Meanwhile, Congressional Republicans have chosen to use the weeks before the mid-term elections rehashing the investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn his electoral loss in 2024. They have chosen this moment to prosecute Jack Smith, who led the investigation of Trump. In their attempt to prove that Trump was unjustly targeted, they are successfully rekindling bad memories of January 6, 2021, when Trump summoned a mob to attack the U.S. Capitol. Five years later, is this a winning hand for them. Hubbell thinks not.

He wrote about yesterday’s events;

Tuesday was a wild news day, but the throughline is this: Republicans are missing this moment in America, only five weeks before the midterms. They are clutching to the transitory retrograde spasm that propelled Trump to the presidency for all it is worth. They have no platform, no values, no principles, and no vision, so they cling tightly to the culture wars they exploited for a decade. But Americans have moved on to new issues, including the threat of uncontrolled artificial intelligence, the growing economic chasm between the haves and have-nots, the crushing burden of medical debt, the unaffordability of higher education, and the imploding economy for those who work for a living.

As the electorate recoils in disgust and fear over the coming onslaught at the hands of AI, Trump posed with nineteen AI oligarchs at the White House (eighteen of whom are men). At that meeting, Trump surrendered control of AI’s future to the handful of billionaires who will most benefit from the reckless development of a technology that will put millions of Americans out of work while polluting their communities and driving up electricity costs. Talk about a lack of self-awareness. See CNN Politics, Trump’s blasé attitude toward AI risks backfiring politically.

Per CNN,

Trump’s answer to voters who worry that AI will take their jobs, or who look askance at data centers’ enormous strains on electrical grids and water supplies, is an optimistic promise that such installations are “going to be very popular” and will make everyone rich.

He’s causing himself an immediate political problem. Some 75% of Americans view the growth of AI with fear and concern, according to a CNN/SSRS poll last week, and 71% want the federal government to do more to regulate it. Higher electricity bills attributed to the immense proliferation of data centers are deepening affordability frustrations among voters — a top midterm election issue.

So, at a time when more than 70% of Americans fear AI and want the government to regulate it,Trump entered into a deal that handed control of AI to the men most likely to profit from its unregulated development. See NBC News, After summit with tech titans, Trump calls for ‘self-regulation’ by AI companies.

When in the history of the world has “self-regulation” by monopolists ever inured to the benefit of the people—as opposed to the generational wealth of the monopolists?

At the luncheon, Trump and the AI oligarchs signed a “White House Accord on Super Intelligence,” Trump’s rebranding of “artificial intelligence.” The term “super intelligence” is insulting to humans. “Artificial intelligence” correctly signals that the technology is a probabilistic prediction model about which words follow other words. Calling it “super intelligence” signals that it is superior to human intelligence—which it is not and never will be. But Trump sees a profit opportunity in convincing people that they are inferior to AI, so he chose the moment five weeks before the midterms to align himself with the AI oligarchs and their dangerous vision of the future.

The “Accord on Super Intelligence” (which has not been made public—another worrisome sign) allegedly commits the AI tech companies to “building robust internal controls and detecting if there are any issues with the technology, coupled with multiple layers of auditing and controls, starting with internal risk review.” See The Guardian, Trump announces vague ‘morally binding’ AI deal among tech CEOs for ‘tremendous self-policing’.

You have got to be kidding, right?

If the AI tech companies are not already “building robust controls” and “detecting issues with the technology” and submitting it to “multiple layers of auditing and risk review,” then those tech companies should be shut down immediately. And if they are already employing those practices, then Trump got nothing in exchange for his agreement to let the AI oligarchs regulate themselves.

But the larger point is that hosting an AI oligarchs’ lovefest at the White House was Trump’s strategy for stopping his freefall in the polls. It was a monumentally stupid idea that was improbably exceeded in its stupidity by Senate Republicans who thought that the best way to distract from inflation, the Iran war, and existential fear of AI was to remind voters that Trump mounted an insurrection in 2021. They did so by bringing former special counsel Jack Smith to the Senate for a hearing.

For the third time, Jack Smith gave a commanding performance, reminding congressional Republicans that he had developed evidence that proved beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump conspired to obstruct the congressional count of electoral votes and unlawfully took national defense documents when he left office. See PBS, WATCH: Jack Smith says he would prosecute Trump again for ‘serious crimes against our nation’.

Apart from the gross error of believing the American people are focused on Jack Smith’s investigation of Trump’s crimes instead of the war, inflation, and the AI threat, GOP Senator Eric Schmitt’s questioning of Jack Smith turned into a debacle for the ages. Senator Schmitt believed he could prove that Jack Smith attended an NBA Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024 to surreptitiously conspire with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

After Jack Smith said he did not attend the game, Senator Schmitt smirked and accused Smith of perjury. Senator Schmitt concluded by calling Jack Smith a “dirt bag.”

When Jack Smith was handed a copy of the texts that allegedly placed him at a men’s professional basketball game featuring the NBA Atlanta Hawks, he said he could explain.

Instead of being at the Atlanta Hawks men’s professional basketball game, Jack Smith was at a women’s college basketball game between Maryland and Iowa. The University of Iowa’s sports teams are known as “the Hawkeyes” (not the Hawks). See C-SPAN, Sen. Schmitt confuses Hawks and Hawkeyes While Accusing Jack Smith of Perjury. The C-SPAN clip is 7 minutes long and contains the gist of the exchange.

Right-wing media was prepared for Senator Schmitt’s planned perjury trap—which failed in a spectacular fashion when it turned out that Senator Schmitt did not know the difference between the NBA Atlanta Hawks and the Iowa Hawkeyes women’s basketball team. 

Several right-wing podcasters and commentators released canned statements saying that Schmitt had trapped Jack Smith in perjury but they later deleted those statements when they realized that Senator Schmitt had committed a face-plant for the ages. See Rolling Stone, Eric Schmitt Gaffe in Jack Smith Hearing Covered as Win by MAGA Media. (“Johnson deleted his post later on Tuesday, after it had been up for hours with a community correction. Sean Hannity also picked up and ran with Schmitt’s story, but deleted his post highlighting the moment soon after.”)

But the more significant point is that Senator Schmitt’s planned perjury trap for Jack Smith was intended as his stealth launch as a vice-presidential candidate in JD Vance’s 2028 presidential campaign. Hours before the Senate hearing, someone planted a story with the ever-obliging Axios that there was “buzz” that Senator Schmitt might be JD Vance’s running mate. See Axios, Sen. Eric Schmitt is drawing buzz as a possible Vance VP in 2028.

Axios reporter Jim VandeHei wrote, “We hear the VP views Schmitt, 51, as trustworthy, intelligent, articulate, and a deft political operator.”

The Axios story was obviously planted by JD Vance or Eric Schmitt. It aged badly in four hours.

More to the point, if JD Vance thinks Eric Schmitt is a good VP candidate, it confirms that Republicans are more out of touch than imagined. Vance exudes arrogance and creepiness— “anti-charisma.” Eric Schmitt would add sneering smugness with a dollop of white nationalism to the ticket. 

The fact that anyone thought to float a trial balloon of Eric Schmitt as a VP candidate shows that the next generation of Republican leaders are missing the moment and failing to anticipate the future direction of the American electorate.

Other examples abound. The backlash against the implementation of Trump’s mass deportation policy has been severe. Rather than deporting the “worst of the worst,” Trump has effectively kidnapped law-abiding, productive members of American society and deported them to troubled countries with which the deportees have no connection. So, for example, the US has agreements to deport people seized in the US to (among others) Liberia, Ghana, Cameroon, Eswatini, Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, South Sudan, the DRC, and the Central African Republic. See Refugees International, Banished by Bargain: Third Country Deportation Watch (2026)

In the face of the backlash, the Trump administration is doubling down on its policy of renditions to third-party countries. On Tuesday, the US Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to continue its policy of deporting immigrants to third-party countries, at least for now. See Supreme Court Allows Trump Administration’s Third-Country Deportations, for Now.

Even if deportations are warranted and lawful, sending deportees to third countries with which they have no connection (and are often violence-prone) is cruel and inhumane. Trump and Stephen Miller appear to derive perverse pleasure from inflicting suffering on immigrants seeking asylum in the US.

And in a development that seems designed to ensure Ken Paxton’s defeat in his senatorial race against James Talarico, federal prosecutors in Texas have charged the Venezuelan DoorDash driver shot in the back by ICE agents with assault. See Man Shot by ICE Agent in Austin Is Charged With Assault – The New York Times

A similar story is playing out in education. On Monday, the Department of Education announced that it was officially removing a Biden administration rule that added LGBTQ protections to Title IX. See Education Week, Ed. Dept. Officially Kills Biden Rule That Added LGBTQ+ Protections to Title IX.

The Trump administration exhibits animus toward LGBTQ+ people in general, and toward transgender people in particular. Although the administration often justifies that animus on the grounds of preventing transgender people from participating in women’s sports, the repeal of the Biden-era rule is an attack on women who are victims of sexual assault on college campuses. As explained in the Education Week article,

The 2020 rules [imposed by Trump] notably had added more due-process protections for students accused of sexual harassment, an issue especially salient at the college level. . . . [¶]

The National Women’s Law Center warned the department’s move “significantly weakens protections against sexual harassment in education.” It pointed to a case of alleged sexual assault of a woman by fraternity members at Cornell University that has been in the news. A state prosecutor has reopened the investigation of the 2024 incident, which Cornell said in a statement that it supports notwithstanding its own Title IX investigation that resulted in a range of sanctions for the accused students.

In other words, at the very moment of national outrage over Cornell’s investigation and punishment of male students accused of a gang rape in 2022, the Trump administration is making it more difficult for victims of sexual assault to hold their attackers accountable. See Human Rights Campaign, You Get No Say: Trump Administration Abandons Rule Protecting LGBTQ+ Kids and Survivors of Sexual Assault in School Settings, Denying Public Any Chance to Weigh In.

As I said in the introduction, Republicans simply do not understand the cross-currents of change that are sweeping the country. Instead, they are running a playbook that ignores the fact that their standard-bearer has become everything that he ran against in 2016.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Politics, Technology, Trump

Kansas: Republican Senator Was a Doctor. He Sued Hundreds of His Patients Who Didn’t Pay Their Bills

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2026 //
5

Republican Senator Roger Marshall is in a close race with Democrat Rev. Adam Hamilton in Kansas. Senator Marshall used to be an obstetrician. Sarah Kliff of The New York Times went through state records and discovered that he has an ugly history. Of course, patients should pay their bills. But is it really necessary to have them arrested?

The Times reported:

It was Easter weekend in 2007 when a police car pulled up to Joe Vasquez’s home in rural Kansas.

A doctor had filed a lawsuit against him and his wife over an unpaid $4,561 bill from her emergency hysterectomy three years earlier. They had missed a court date, and the doctor’s lawyers asked the court to issue an arrest warrant.

The police took the couple into custody as their grandchildren prepared for an egg hunt, Mr. Vasquez said. They spent two days in jail before their son could borrow the money to post bond.

“We had no money to pay,” said Mr. Vasquez, now 68. At the time, his wife was working at a manufacturing plant and he was on disability, he said. 

The doctor who sued the couple was Roger Marshall, now a senator from Kansas. Mr. Marshall, a Republican who is seeking re-election this fall, filed lawsuits against more than 700 patients with outstanding bills during his decades-long career as an obstetrician-gynecologist, according to a New York Times analysis of Kansas court records.

Patients were arrested in 81 of those cases for missing court dates, the records show. In an additional 13 lawsuits, Mr. Marshall’s lawyers sought warrants but it is unclear whether an arrest occurred.

They also garnished patients’ paychecks and bank accounts. They routinely charged patients an 18 percent annual interest rate.

The unpaid bills ranged from several thousand dollars to as little as $101. About half the lawsuits were filed under Mr. Marshall’s name and the rest by Heartland Regional OBGYN, the medical practice he solely owned from 1998 to 2012 and then co-owned with another doctor from 2013 to 2019.

Some facing lawsuits were new mothers with outstanding bills from their deliveries. Most lived in Barton County, a rural area with above-average uninsured and poverty rates. Some patients The Times spoke with lacked insurance; others had health coverage but were responsible for part of their bill.

“I had every intention to pay, I was just struggling,” said Kellie Clutts, whom Mr. Marshall sued in 2015 over a $129 bill. Ms. Clutts said the charge was from a postpartum visit shortly after her daughter’s birth.

Mr. Marshall sued Ms. Clutts when her baby was 9 months old and eventually garnished her bank account.

“I was recently divorced, trying to do everything on my own,” said Ms. Clutts, 45. “I told them I could make partial payments, but it seemed like no matter what I said, they wanted the full amount at once….”

Doctors have wide discretion in how to handle unpaid bills. They can decide when to involve a debt collector, file lawsuits or drop the debt entirely if a patient seems unable to pay.

“There is a lot of variation,” said Barak Richman, the co-director of the health law program at George Washington University who has studied medical debt litigation In three states. “There are a lot that do bring lawsuits but also a whole lot that don’t. It’s not because they’re in a different position, they’ve just decided they’re not going to do it.”

Some hospitals and doctors have increasingly relied on litigation as insurance deductibles have risen, leaving patients responsible for a great share of their bills.

Even so, wage garnishments and arrests of patients are “definitely on the extreme side,” Mr. Richman said.

Neale Mahoney, an economist at Stanford University, has conducted research in one state finding that lawsuits against patients are relatively rare, with about 1.7 percent of hospital stays resulting in litigation.

“It’s not surprising there are outliers but this does seem to be an extreme case,” in terms of how far a doctor went to pursue debt, Mr. Mahoney said.

Categories Cruelty, Elections, Ethics, Kansas, Medicine

Robert Reich: Beware Rahm Emanuel, the Worst Canddate for 2028!

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2026 //
23

Robert Reich, who served as Labor Secretary during the Clinton Administration, issued a warning about the 2028 Democratic Primary primaries: Do not support Rahm Emanuel.

He wrote:

I know Emanuel. I worked with him for years in the Clinton administration, and then when he was Obama’s chief of staff.

Rahm Emanuel represents everything that’s been wrong about the Democratic Party for the last 34 years — its dependence on money from big corporations and the wealthy, its reluctance to embrace bold ideas to reverse widening inequalities, and its indifference to the needs of average working people — and Democratic candidates should be warned off him.

I would never support him for one big reason.

When he was Mayor of Chicago, he closed 50 public schools in a single day, throwing the lives of children, parents, communities, and staff into chaos.

He imagined he was doing them a favor but he was harming them. They were assigned to unfamiliar schools, had to walk through gang territory, lost friends, and suffered needless disruption. He boasted about helping them when in fact he treated the children and their families with disrespect.

He was Chicago’s worst mayor on education issues.

Categories Elections, Politics

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s Cruel, Reckless Fantasy World

By dianeravitch
September 25, 2026 //
3

As the midterm elections get nearer, Trump grows ever more desperate in his attempt to prove that he is hugely popular, that the media are liars, and that elections are fraudulent.

We have never seen anything like this. Other candidates, other presidents have faced midterm elections without falling into a pit of craziness and desperation and fraud.

Read what Heather Cox Richardson reports:

After a hearing yesterday about Trump’s Friday ban of CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House campus, very early this morning—I was still awake writing yesterday’s letter—U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly granted the request of the media outlets to stop Trump’s order banning members of their organizations from the White House complex.

Kelly, whom Trump appointed to the bench in 2017, challenged the argument of the White House that it had banned the journalists because they had endangered national security, noting that the stories to which administration lawyers claimed to object were “routine.” In fact, one of the stories the White House claimed endangered national security was based on a press call from the White House itself. According to Oliver Darcy, who writes the media newsletter Status, the anonymous “senior administration official” who provided the quotations on the call was none other than Vice President J.D. Vance.

Kelly ordered the credentials of 78 journalists restored immediately.

This morning, the White House continued to deny reporters from CNN, Politico, and MS NOW access to the White House campus. Their lawyers asked for an emergency hearing because the administration had “already repeatedly violated the Court’s Order,” and soon after the judge ordered the administration to respond, the reporters were once again allowed into the area.

And then tonight, at least CNN and MS NOW were blocked from access to the White House state dinner with Chinese leader Xi Jinping. After Trump posted on social media that CNN and MS NOW (he called it MSDNC) were refusing to cover Xi’s visit “because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’” the White House told CNN it could send only an audio producer and a cameraman to the event, not a reporter or producer. Senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes said: “They again said that we were specifically denied access and that they were not letting in the CNN editorial presence.”

This morning, Trump complained on social media that “[t]he Media is trying to cover up how well things are going before the Midterms, just to help Democrats.”

And that’s the gist of Trump’s attacks on media outlets: MAGA is falling apart, and he either lives in a fantasy world or hopes to stem that collapse by issuing propaganda that will convince voters he is actually winning.

The fantasy world thesis has supporting evidence in an image posted on Trump’s social media account this morning, showing Trump and Xi standing together on a red carpet in front of an airplane apparently labeled Air China. There is a military aircraft flying over a circle of stars with the words “Only Trump” superimposed in a German-style blackletter font. Behind Trump, to his right, is a young woman who looks like Trump’s loyal aide Natalie Harp standing with her hand over her heart.

Journalist Aaron Rupar of Public Notice noted that the image was a digitally altered photo in which the image of the chief officer of protocol of the United States, Monica Crowley, had been replaced by an image that appears to be Harp.

Convincing voters he is winning is an even harder sell.

The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration is its signature policy, and last week a federal appeals court stopped the Trump administration from sending migrants to third countries, finding that the short timeline for those renditions stripped deportees of their right to due process. The administration appears to have continued the renditions, arguing that the court had not officially notified a lower court of its decision and thus it was not yet in effect, prompting an appeals court to clarify that the flights must stop.

Today Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the Supreme Court to step in to permit those renditions to third countries. He said that disruption of the administration’s “plans…imposes massive costs on the government and invariably requires new rounds of diplomatic engagement with countries who may be all the more skeptical of our removal efforts given the disruption.”

Also today, U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan criticized Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for ignoring his previous orders and continuing to hold people in “inhumane and unconstitutional” conditions at Manhattan’s 26 Federal Plaza, depriving detainees of “sleep, sanitary living conditions, basic personal hygiene needs, sufficient food and water, and adequate medical care.” Although, as Josephine Walker of Axios points out, the administration likely sees the appalling conditions of its prisons as a way to induce migrants to leave, the judge required ICE to provide adequate space and humane conditions for detainees.

Meanwhile, as Ryan J. Foley of the Associated Press reported today, a report from the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that ICE had no strategic plan for spending the unprecedented $45 billion Congress gave it in Trump’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year, and has wasted tens of millions of taxpayer dollars on slapdash plans for mass detention.

It spent nearly $3 million for tents at Guantanamo Bay that were never used, $20 million for maintaining warehouses that were never used to house detainees and are now being sold, and excessive rates to lock people up. Foley reports that the Department of Homeland Security told the GAO that it would have a plan for spending its windfall by August 31, 2027, nearly a year from now.

After Trump announced the U.S. would accept meat from other countries in order to lower food prices, on September 22 the Department of Agriculture announced the recall of more than 167,000 pounds (75,750 kg) of raw pork, beef, and goat. The items were produced without federal inspection but carried false marks claiming they had been inspected by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The agency said the food “should be considered misbranded and unsafe to eat.”

Trump’s insistence that the country suffers from voter fraud isn’t going well, either.

In California, Republican sheriff Chad Bianco and the Riverside County sheriff’s department confiscated more than 650,000 ballots after California voters agreed to redistrict the state to offset the Republican mid-decade redistricting of Texas. The state’s Democratic attorney general immediately ordered him to return the ballots, saying he had no authority to confiscate them and that the seizure was intended to make people distrust elections.

As Uwa Ede-Osifo of the Guardian reported, the California Supreme Court today ordered Blanco to return the ballots, saying that it was Blanco, rather than voters, who was endangering elections: “Allowing law enforcement unfettered access to ballots, or the ability to handle and count them in secret, based on unregulated protocols, itself creates a substantial risk to election integrity,” it said.

On Saturday, California governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes it a felony to seize ballots from a county elections office.

Trump’s own claims of voter fraud also took a hit this week. As Nick Corasaniti of the New York Times reported today, in July, Trump and Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin claimed they had found more than 270,000 noncitizens on voter rolls in California, Nevada, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Mullin stated that there were as many as 15,903 noncitizens on the voter rolls in Nevada.

But when officials from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) met with Nevada election officials in August, they admitted Mullin’s number was inflated. After the meeting, one wrote to say that the department had confirmed just 185 people on the voter rolls were not citizens. They sent Nevada officials a list of those 185 names.

On Tuesday, Nevada told the federal government that the 185 people on the government’s list are all citizens. “Our records do not support DHS’s claims, and DHS has still not provided evidence to change that,” said Francisco Aguilar, Nevada’s Democratic secretary of state. “Instead, DHS officials continue their attempts to intimidate election officials into compliance and deter voters with huge claims of fraud with no evidence. Repeating unsupported claims does not make them true.”

Trump’s job approval rating continues to drop. Fifty Plus One aggregated new polls today and found that only 34.7% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the presidency, while 62.1% disapprove.

Meridith McGraw, Maggie Severns, and Suzanne Vranica of the Wall Street Journal reported today that an ad airing in major U.S. markets shows Trump promising to “defeat communism, Marxism in America once and for all,” before showing images of Trump at White House events as a choir sings “Love Me.” At the end of the ad, the screen reads: “Paid for by the U.S. government.”

Former campaign finance official Daniel Weiner called the ad “an astonishing misuse of public resources in the campaign context, one of the most blatant I’ve ever seen.” Democratic lawmakers wrote to the White House demanding the ad be taken down, calling it “government propaganda” more fitting for North Korea than the U.S. and “an egregious and illegal misuse of Americans’ hard-earned tax dollars.”

According to the Wall Street Journal reporters, the White House says the ad is a “public service announcement,” “reminding Americans to love their country and understand what makes it worth defending, at home, at our borders, and abroad.”

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Lies, Trump

Joyce Vance: A Week of Political Craziness

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2026 //
6

Joyce Vance is a former federal prosecutor who writes a terrific blog called Civil Discourse. In this post, she summarizes the major political events of the past week.

She writes:

What happened:

After a hearing Tuesday morning, Judge Christopher Cooper blocked the Kennedy Center’s Board of Trustees from returning Trump’s name to the building. “Simply put, Defendants cannot install memorials for President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy Center without Congress’s blessing.” That includes proposals to add “renovated and restored by Donald J. Trump” on the main building or renaming the campus the “President Donald J. Trump Plaza.”

You can read Judge Cooper’s full opinion here.

Why it matters:

The administration has acted in bad faith on this one, stretching the court’s patience thin. In today’s order, the Judge noted that “the drama at the Kennedy Center continues.” The administration flirted with defying a court order when it delayed the removal of Trump’s name after the first court order. It then draped the front of the building in an apparent childish move akin to Trump announcing that if his name couldn’t be there, no one else’s would be visible. But there was absolutely no justification for Trump’s more recent efforts to get the Board to return his name to the front of the Center after the Judge had already entered an injunction. Had the administration moved forward, it would have been flagrant defiance of a court order. 

It matters when a court tells this particular litigant that it meant what it said and that compliance isn’t optional. “To obtain relief enforcing a prior order, a plaintiff must demonstrate that ‘a defendant has not complied with a judgment entered against it,’” Judge Cooper wrote. Then he ordered the relief the plaintiff requested—enforcing the injunction that the President refuses to comply with and sending a message that he had no intention of letting Trump get away with the semantic gymnastics when he’d attempted to put his name back up with President Kennedy’s.

What comes next:

Of course there will be an appeal. But the oxygen has been sucked out of the room. Trump cannot put his name back on President Kennedy’s memorial. The distraction value of this case is over. 

This decision, like so many others, was a no-brainer legally. The case has so little merit that one wouldn’t even expect a neutral Supreme Court to touch it on certiorari; they’d just let the Court of Appeals decision stand. Unless the Supreme Court wants to wake up one morning to discover they have been rebranded as the “Donald J. Trump-Improved Supreme Court” they would do well to follow Judge Cooper’s lead. 

But there’s still a cautionary tale: the destruction of the East Wing. We know how Trump operates. The lawyers may need to go back to court to seek an injunction to prevent him from tearing the Kennedy Center down. Today he told the press, “For me to go and fix it and subsidize it, I think the Trump administration should have recognition. If we don’t do that, it’s going to close and get ripped down.” It doesn’t get much more clear than that.

Tuesday, after the Court’s decision, Trump posted on Truth Social, making it sound like the Kennedy Center is falling apart. It is an older building, and it always needs some work. Just because Trump happens to be in the White House when repairs are done doesn’t mean his name belongs on it. Adam Klasfeld nailed it when he wrote: “Congress appropriated $250M+ in taxpayer money last year for Trump’s wish-list renovations for the Kennedy Center, inserting no language about holding the whole thing hostage if it’s not a shrine to Trump.”

But you get the tenor of how irrational Trump is about this whole affair in a lengthy Tuesday Truth Social post:

Shockingly, a Judge appointed by Barack Hussein Obama, Christopher Cooper, ruled that The Kennedy Center, which was going to close in early July for largescale renovations and construction due to years of neglect, decay, and poor maintenance, and which was to be transformed by the Trump Administration into the Finest Facility of its kind, anywhere in the World, is not allowed to close for these renovations, which would not be possible to properly do without such a closure. Additionally, Judge Cooper ruled that the 36 Member Board of Trustees, which unanimously voted to add the name “TRUMP” onto the former Kennedy Center, making it The Trump Kennedy Center, did not have the right to do such an addition, and the name, “TRUMP,” must be removed.

…

Judge Cooper and the Radical Left would rather see it DIE than have President Trump transform it into something that everyone could be proud of, much as I have done, in many cases, throughout my life, and recently, with all of the construction, renovations, and ‘fix ups’ that we have completed.” He concludes in vintage Trump fashion: “There has never been a President of the United States who has been treated so unfairly by the Courts as I but, that’s OK, I will continue to do, what is considered to be, a great job for the wonderful people of our Country.

You may not have had a constitutional crisis over the naming of the Kennedy Center on your bingo card for this year, but here we are. Any of the actions Trump seems to be contemplating here would run afoul of the court’s order.

Also Worth Noting Today:

Oral argument took place yesterday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in a case involving whether Lindsey Halligan, a Trump attorney with no experience as a prosecutor, was properly put in place as his US Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. (Halligan was appointed after the incumbent in that position was forced out in the debacle over the first—and now dismissed—indictment of Jim Comey.) The lower court’s ruling that Halligan was appointed illegally also led to the dismissal of federal charges against New York AG Letitia James. At least two of the judges on the panel seemed inclined to believe that the administration had broken the rules and the lower court’s decision should stand. 

In other news, Laura Weiss at Punchbowl reported on Kash Patel’s Tuesday outing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, noting that it became “incredibly tense – not just between Patel and Dems.” Senators Grassley and Booker tussled after Patel insulted Vermont Senator Peter Welch, calling him “a complete and total fraud” during questioning. Patel accused Democrats of “attacking him for campaign ads.” But it got worse for Patel, who all but begged Grassley to end the hearing during questioning from Senator Adam Schiff. That line of questioning recalled Schiff’s time as a federal prosecutor—he knows how to handle a difficult witness. Schiff grilled Patel about firing every agent who worked on the Mar-a-Lago investigation (reminder: agents don’t get a choice which matters they work on; they’re assigned). 

Schiff to Patel: “I will remind you, director, because you probably need reminding, that while this Congress is not going to investigate the wrongful termination of potentially hundreds of agents, the next Congress will. And you have an obligation as FBI director to ensure that none of the [documents] are destroyed.” Patel, who reportedly tried to pack up his things and leave, appealed to Grassley for help: “I would appreciate it if you concluded this hearing.”

Although Patel’s exchange with Louisiana Senator John Kennedy over bestiality and FBI hiring garnered the most media attention, the more important exchange was the one with Welch, who accused Patel of being “more than willing” to use the FBI to advance Trump’s personal grievances over election losses, saying, “My concern is that this means what you are willing to do for the president in this year’s midterm elections that the president is already saying are going to be rigged if he loses.” He asked Patel about sending agents to the polls and whether he would promise to “not in any way interfere in the will of the American people when they go to the polls in November.” Patel responded, “I have pledged unequivocally that I will not participate in your charade of lies.” That’s not exactly a no.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump seems to have found more crazy. Frantic for a new distraction, he is accusing the Biden administration of mishandling the investigation into one of the assassination attempts on him in Pennsylvania. You’ve just got to read this one to believe it.

This is what we can expect between now and the midterms, and likely beyond, especially if Trump is perceived as the cause of Democratic gains. It’s Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with sh*t.” Remember that they want you to feel overloaded and incapable of coping. Take some time for yourself, and then remember we have work to do. There will be another “No Kings” event on October 17 to help us get out the vote, and we will be okay because we have each other.

I’m grateful you’re here with me at Civil Discourse. If you’re already a paid subscriber, thank you! If you’re not, today is a great day to become one and support a community that believes well-informed citizens can save a democracy.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Categories Democracy, Deregulation, Discipline, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Stupid, Trump

John Thompson: Republicans in Oklahoma are Worried About the Election

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2026 //
2

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, keeps us up to date about the political winds in his state.

He writes:

My Congresswoman, Stephanie Bice (R-OK), has been getting national attention since the Bulwark revealed an audio of Bice telling Republican students “that President Donald Trump’s unpopularity and freewheeling executive actions were hurting the party and even endangering seemingly safe seats like hers.”

Rep. Bice was quoted as saying:

“The challenge that we have is that we have to get over the narrative that ‘I don’t like this guy, so I’m going to vote for the Democrat,’” said Rep. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.), according to audio obtained by The Bulwark. “Because I’m telling you right now, I’m hearing it already.”

She also said:

“And what happens is that’ll impact me because . . . two things will either happen,” Bice added. “They’re going to vote for the Democrat and they may split [the] ticket and vote for me and a few others, or—this is my bigger fear right now—people don’t go vote.”

The Bulwark reported that Bice provided a “rare glimpse into the gloom some elected Republicans feel about the impending midterms.” And, she explained, “I was at a board meeting yesterday with a group, and one of the execs said to me, ‘I’m a Republican, I’ve been a Republican for a long time, but I have Trump fatigue.'”  

Bice later argued that she was just “relaying a comment made by someone else and discussing the importance of Republicans turning out and voting for the entire ticket. Any suggestion otherwise takes her comments out of context.” 

In fact, after quoting the Republican who complained about “Trump fatigue,” Bice said, “It’s a fair statement, you know?” 

She also said, “We’re not helping ourselves when we decide to rename Lake Ontario Lake America. This does not help the case.” 

Most polls predict Bice will be reelected. But, the national news regarding Bice only reported a third of the story. There are a couple more narratives that make the case that Republicans will likely lose this seat, and many other seats.

First, the national news is also full of coverage of other conservative, Republican incumbents who are falling behind Democrat challengers. 

And perhaps the most positive part of the story is how and why a poll  found the charismatic Democrat, Jena Nelson, Oklahoma’s 2020 Teacher of the Year,  leading by 4 points. 

The 5th Congressional previously elected a Democrat congresswoman, Kendra Horn. Yes, Horn was defeated in 2020 by less than five points. Because Oklahoma City was growing more progressive, it’s hard to believe that Bice would have won in 2022 if the district had not been dramatically gerrymandered. 

And, as Nelson explained in 2026, “It’s been almost five years since her [Bice’s] last in-person town hall on August 25, 2021.” 

And, in a recent discussion, Bice didn’t seem to have taken a clear enough stand to win over the “61 percent of respondents who said that data centers are a threat to local resources or wanted a full ban on the facilities. An additional 20 percent said they wanted more regulations on the centers.” 

Similarly, if Bice listened to Oklahomans, why would she justify her opposition to raising the minimum wage above $7.25 per hour, by claiming it would provide “a broad range of benefits with no regard for the actual level of need of those on the receiving end of funding.” 

As the Oklahoma City part of the 5th District has continued to become more progressive, Jena Nelson, has also invested months of time, introducing herself, and listening to people in the conservative rural areas. 

At the same time, Bice has done herself no favors by giving muddled answers as to why, for instance, she voted for Trump’s issues like his cutting 1 billion dollars of hospital reinbursements in her district. 

Nelson’s polling reveals that in July 2026, 50% viewed Trump very unfavorably and 4% somewhat unfavorably, while 31% viewed Trump very favorably and 10% somewhat favorably. That means that, “His overall favorability is underwater by 13 points.” 

Moreover, “Voters respond positively to Nelson’s biography (61-12), while Bice’s profile produces a net-negative response (40-42). And, Bice “also gains 13 points among self-identified independents, reaching 65%. Among Moderate Republicans, she rises 13 points to 26%.” 

And, I would add that when watching Nelson interact with crowds, it is easy to understand why she was selected Teacher of the Year. Her ability to listen, her empathy, her enthusiasm are combined with her knowledge and intellect. Her audiences not only see the damage that Bice helped Trump impose, but they see and feel the principles and the solutions that Jena is committed to.

Epilogue: There seems to be no evidence that Bice attended Trump’s Midterm convention, or that she has made a statement about it.  

Categories Elections, Oklahoma, Politics

Why the U.S. Supreme Court Blocked Trump’s Efforts to Stop Mail-in Voting

By dianeravitch
September 16, 2026 //
11

For some of us, it is a delightful surprise when the U.S. Supreme Court rules against a request by the Trump administration. We were stunned when Justice Brett Kavanaugh rejected Missouri’s mid-term gerrymander and was backed by SCOTUS.

But nonetheless we worried about how SCOTUS would respond to Trump’s attempt to give the Postal Service control of voting. The Constitution is clear about the power of the states to regulate their elections. The Trump lawyers treated this radical shift of power as a minor regulatory adjustment. It was not. It was a power grab.

Ian Millhiser, senior correspondent for Vox, wrote:

On Monday evening, the Supreme Court handed down its long-awaited decision in United States Postal Service v. California — the case involving President Donald Trump’s attempt to sabotage voting by mail in the United States.

If Trump’s attack on mailed ballots had succeeded, it would have given a significant advantage to Republicans in the upcoming midterms because Democrats were much more likely to vote by mail than Republicans in the last several US election cycles.

The decision is a rout. Trump didn’t just lose; the Court’s brief order slips in a line indicating that Trump exceeded his authority and cannot implement such an attack on voting by mail under any circumstances. Not one member of the Court, including the dissenting justices, argues that Trump had the power to shut down voting by mail in the way he attempted to. Trump, in other words, found a line that even this Supreme Court would not let him cross.

The decision in USPS is also the second Supreme Court decision in less than a week that shuts down a Republican Party effort to skew the 2026 midterms in its favor. Last week, the Court ruled that the state of Missouri must use the same congressional maps it used in 2024 (which elected two Democrats), instead of new maps that were expected to elect seven Republicans and only one Democrat.

All of this, from a Court where Republicans hold six of nine seats, and where that Republican majority is often unafraid to go out on a limb to benefit the GOP and its leaders. This is, after all, the same Court that held that Trump is allowed to use the powers of the presidency to commit crimes.

So what’s going on?

The short answer is that, as the Court moves rightward, the mix of cases that reaches the Supreme Court also changes. Liberals and Democrats — or, at least, savvy liberals and Democrats — stop bringing lawsuits that rest on legal theories that right-leaning judges are unlikely to accept. Republicans, meanwhile, grow more brazen and start bringing cases that would be summarily rejected by a less friendly bench. And red-state lawmakers decide to roll the dice on laws that would be immediately declared unconstitutional if the federal courts were less Republican.

As Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan wrote after the Court (despite its Republican majority) had an unusually liberal term in 2015, “the court’s recent decisions may reflect a change in the cases being considered by the court rather than a shift in the preferences of the justices.”

Eventually, however, lawyers and policymakers who raise dubious legal theories or who enact clearly illegal policies will do something that is so beyond the pale that the justices will start to push back, and that’s what happened in USPS. Republican lawyers and policymakers will undoubtedly make more attempts to skew the midterms in the coming weeks. At the very least, the USPS decision shows that there are some limits to what this Court will tolerate.

Trump lost, badly

Trump’s attack on voting by mail wasn’t just illegal; it also imposed such heavy burdens on state election officials so close to the 2026 election that it likely would have been impossible for many states to comply with Trump’s new policy.

USPS concerned a wide range of new restrictions on mailed ballots that the Trump administration announced in late August, just weeks before states needed to start mailing those ballots to voters. Among other things, the new rules required states to mail ballots in envelopes that include several federally mandated design features. These envelopes were to be preapproved by a federal official, and the Postal Service would refuse to deliver ballots that do not comply.

The new rules also required state officials to enter certain voter data into an online platform that doesn’t actually exist yet, but that the Trump administration has insisted will be available anytime now.

Many of the new rules appeared designed to make it impossible for states to distribute ballots by mail. One new requirement, for example, was that mail ballot envelopes must be individually scanned in a process that the Trump administration claimed will take “less than a minute per mailpiece.”

But, as several states that sued to block the rules pointed out in their complaint, the state of California alone needs to mail 23 million ballots to voters. So that adds up to as much as “23 million minutes…or more than 43 years” that state officials would need to spend just to comply with one small part of the new regulations.

Trump had claimed that vague statutes that permit the Postal Service to adopt rules governing the “collection, handling, transportation, delivery, forwarding, returning, and holding of mail” or to make rules “as may be necessary in the execution of its functions” allow him to effectively shut down voting by mail throughout the United States.

Broadly speaking, the Court could have blocked these new requirements in two ways. They could have either concluded, as several lower courts already have, that the Trump administration lacks the legal authority to issue the new rules. Alternatively, the Court could have concluded that it would not be “equitable” to allow the new rules to go into effect during the 2026 election, given the high likelihood that states could not comply with them.

A majority of the justices, however, decided to go with both options. Though the Court’s order is brief — only three sentences long — it states both that Trump is “unlikely to succeed on the merits” of his claim that the new rules are legal, and also that “the equitable factors applicable for obtaining emergency relief from this Court do not favor” Trump.

Translated from the legalese, that means that most of the justices concluded both that the new rules cannot be implemented in 2026, but also that they most likely cannot be used in any election because the Trump administration lacks the authority to implement them.

Justice Samuel Alito is the Court’s most reliable Republican Party partisan, and so he did write a dissent, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, that would allow Trump’s attack on mailed ballots to take effect. But it’s notable that even Alito doesn’t try to argue that Trump’s rule is legal. Instead, Alito makes a convoluted procedural argument that, he claims, allows Trump to dodge judicial review of his new rules — at least for now.

Briefly, Alito argues that federal law makes it relatively easy for plaintiffs to challenge Postal Service rules governing “the mailability of matter,” but much harder to challenge rules that do not concern what can be mailed. He also claims that Trump’s new rules do not count as restrictions on “mailability,” even though those rules would forbid the Postal Service from delivering ballots that do not comply with a labyrinth of new restrictions.

Alito, in other words, is clearly much more willing to excuse weak arguments from the leader of his own political party than are many of his colleagues. But the biggest takeaway from the USPS decision is that not all of the Court’s Republicans are incapable of shame.

The Court’s Republican majority is extraordinarily tolerant of Trump’s antics. They gave him the right to commit crimes. They ruled that Trump may order the Justice Department to bring “sham” investigations and prosecutions against his perceived enemies. They’ve largely immunized ICE officers from the law, and blessed “Kavanaugh stops” that target suspected immigrants because of their race.

But there is apparently still a line that most of the Republican justices will not allow Trump to cross. And shutting down voting by mail a couple of months before an election crosses that line.

Categories Elections, Trump

Andrew Tobias: We’ll Give You $10,000 to Vote for OUR Party!

By dianeravitch
September 12, 2026 //
3

Andrew Tobias is a writer and a financial whiz whose insights about politics are worth reading.

He wrote today:

Seriously!*  

Because if it’s a good idea to hand everybody a check for $5,000, isn’t it twice as good an idea to hand everybody $10,000?

That’s what all our candidates should promise to do if we win the House and Senate!

If Trump thinks $10,000 is too much, he can simply promise to veto or pare it back when we pass it.  Stingy Don.

When the press asks where we plan to get all that money to give away, we can say:

“The same place Trump got the money to give everybody the $2,000 checks he promised the last time.”

And when the press pushes back, noting that he never did give anyone those promised $2,000 checks, we can say, “Well . . . duh!”

Or we can say, “Don’t worry, we have the concept of a plan.”

Or we can say, “We’re going to get every penny of it by raising tax rates on corporations and billionaires and by closing tax loopholes that only benefit the rich.”  (Which would be the only defensible way to get it.)

Or we can say, “Look.  Obviously, we’re no more serious about this than Trump is.  He just dangles it out there as a bribe, as he dangled giving everyone “terrific health care at a tiny fraction of the cost.”  Or dangled “lower prices on Day One.”  Or promised to cherish his first wife “until death did them part.”  And his second.  And his third.

Once he gets what he wants, what does he care?  He breaks his promises on virtually everything, every time.  (He did close the border; but is he really deporting just the worst of the worst?)

On the remote chance he’s serious about the $5,000, where would he get it?

Clearly not from taxing billionaires or corporations.  

He’d just add it to the National Debt.  Because if Republicans have proved anything since Reagan began ballooning it, it’s that they are the “borrow and spend”party.  Forty trillion?  Fifty trillion?  Who cares, so long as they can cut taxes on the wealthy donors who keep them in power.  

His other reason for dangling this phony bribe is to deflect attention.  

From the Epstein files.  From groceries and gas.  From the millions about to lose health insurance.  From the rural hospitals soon to close.  From his staggering corruption.  From his disastrous war.  

Tobias also noted that the Democrat running for Senate in Kansas was endorsed not only by its Democratic governor but by a former Republican governor.

Kansas’s two-term Democratic governor has endorsed Hamilton — obviously — but get this:  Former two-term Republican Governor Bill Graves just endorsed him, too. 

For the last six years, Sen. Roger Marshall has turned his back on Kansas. In contrast, Adam Hamilton stands as a bulwark of kindness, humility and service to others. It is for those reasons, and many more, that I believe Kansas should send Adam Hamilton to the U.S. Senate, and I am proud to endorse him. . . .

As an ob-gyn, Senator Marshall sued 300 patients and 81 were arrested.

What a cruel, heartless man.

Categories Elections, Ethics, Lies, Politics, Trump
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