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Timothy Snyder: How to Foil a Coup Attempt

By dianeravitch
April 9, 2026 //
4

The distinguished historian Timothy Snyder is deeply steeped in European history and in the ways of authoritarians, tyrants, dictators, and others who lust for power. He warns us that the possibility of a coup attempt is real, and we must be prepared. How does he know it’s real? Trump tried to stage a coup on January 6, 2021. He failed then, he suffered no consequences for his effort to overturn the election.

Now Trump knows that he’s facing a Democratic wave against his authoritarianism in November. He is unlikely to accept the voters’ decision. What can we do?

Snyder writes:

We are seven months away from the most consequential midterm election in the history of the United States. Meanwhile, we are fighting a war. These are the structural conditions for a coup attempt in which a president tries to nullify elections and take permanent power as a dictator. If we see this, we can stop it, overcome the movement that brought us to this point, and make a turn towards something better.

President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Pete Hegseth are stuck in the logic of escalation, according to which the feeling of defeat today can be reversed by doing the first thing that comes to mind tomorrow. Trump is surrounded by people who are making money from the war; each day of war strengthens a warmongering lobby with personal access to the president. As the war lengthens, the chance that it will be exploited for a coup attempt increases.

Trump tells us that he is chiefly concerned with the permanence of his own comfort and power (think about ballroom and bunker), much of which he will lose when his party is defeated decisively in the midterms. He regularly declares his intention to meddle in the elections. His party backed a bill which would have turned elections into a sham. Trump wants to increase the defense budget by nearly 50% without any review of what the money is for; this is strategic nonsense, and has to be understood as a payoff for the men who, as he imagines, will help him install a dictatorship. Hegseth is meanwhile purging the highest officer ranks of people of principle.

It is up to us to put two and two together: Trump will seek to exploit the war (or the next one) to alter the elections. We bear responsibility for what comes next.

The eventuality can seem frightening, but Trump’s position is weak. The gambit of turning a foreign war into a domestic dictatorship is complicated and difficult. Its success depends on us. If the possibility of such a coup is not anticipated and the variants of the gambit are not called out as they emerge, he can succeed. He has attempted a coup (or, technically, a self-coup) once, in January 2021 — there is no reason to think that he will not try to do so again.

As always, history can help us to imagine the immediate future. History does not repeat, but it does instruct. We know that war offers at least five kinds of opportunities for aspiring dictators. Let us consider the moves that Trump could make, and how they could be stopped. I offer them as five clear types; in practice, of course, they will be mixed and matched from day to day. But if we have the concepts in advance, we can recognize the threat, and turn any sort of coup attempt against Trump.

We are not spectators of this unfolding drama. We are actors inside every scenario. And “we” means journalists who report, judges who follow the law, servicemen and servicewomen who follow the Constitution, and above all citizens who organize, protest and vote. If we know the coup scripts in advance, we know when to take the stage — and where to take the rage.

So here are the scenarios:

1. The Steady Hand. A war is going on, is the claim here, and so we should not change leadership, regardless of what happens in an election. This stance nicely dodges the questions of whether the war was worth starting in the first place, and whether the people in charge are the best qualified to make war (or peace). The steady hand argument has been used countless times; it was the approach that George W. Bush took against John Kerry in the presidential campaign of 2004. But whereas Bush was using such arguments to win an election, Trump will have to use them to overturn the results of an election that his party loses, most likely by huge margins. Given that Trump’s polling on the war is terrible, he is in a weaker position than Bush was, and would have to do much more. It is unclear why a steady hand would rig elections; and, for that matter, Trump’s conduct during this war has made his hand seem (even) less steady. To rig an election, he needs a tight elite consensus around him; he needs allies who are willing to break the law and the Constitution, risking not only prison time but also historical infamy as people who wanted to end the republic. The war is breaking up that consensus and leading to the firing of some of the likely election riggers. The case for a steady hand that should not be hindered by electoral results should be easy to defeat; but we have to see the logic and work to break the ranks of Trump allies who would follow orders to rig elections. They have to know that they will fail and that when they will bear the consequences for the rest of their lives. The one truly steady hand is that of justice.

2. Bonapartism. In this tactic the aspiring dictator says: I know that you would like democracy at home, and so let us prove our ardor together by fighting a war for democracy abroad. This is meant to allow the tyrant to claim the mantle of democracy even while he undoes it at home. This approach was behind the original Napoleonic wars; it was perfected by Napoleon III in the 1850s as “diplomatic nationality.” Trump, however, is not pretending to care about democracy. He prefers dictators; and among dictators, he prefers Putin more then the rest. Trump’s allies though will make the case that war spreads “the American way” or something of the sort. But such arguments can be easily defeated. Whether by insider trading, political bets, arms dealing or (in Putin’s case) higher oil prices and conveniently dropped sanctions, the people around Trump are making money on this war — they are literally warmongers. What is good in America is bled away in this war; as oligarchs foreign and domestic make billions of dollars, as we are asked to sacrifice everything in exchange for nothing. Trump himself ran for office on an anti-Bonapartist platform: no wars abroad for democracy, spend money instead at home. Instead he is proposing to defund basic domestic services in order to the bribe the armed services with a ridiculous funding increase during a senseless war.

3. Bismarckian Unification. Here the ruler no longer pretends to care about democracy (so far so good for Trump), but speaks about bringing the nation together. This was the great success of Otto von Bismarck in central Europe between 1864 and 1871. Germany before Bismarck was a culture but not a unified state; in the age of nationalism the question was who would succeed in bringing numerous German entities together. By winning three wars (against Denmark, the Habsburgs, and France), the Prussian leader was able to create the conditions for the establishment of a new, united German Reich. Because unification was achieved by force of arms rather than by revolution or elections (as many Germans had hoped in 1848), the new state was a militaristic monarchy from the beginning, with an essentially symbolic parliament. Trump would no doubt like this model; but he has the problem of being unable to win one war, let alone three; also, the war that he is fighting do not address an essential national problem. Instead it seems to be about tearing the American republic apart. Trump’s budget proposal, offered during the war, amounts to this: the wealth of working Americans will be transferred to oligarchs and defense contractors, and the government will no longer provide basic services. It uses war to advance the impoverishment and peonization of everyone but a tiny elite.

4. Fascist Sacrifice. The fascist leader kills enough of his own people in a major campaign so that the survivors begin to accept the worldview: that all is struggle, that enemies are everywhere, that the world is a conspiracy against us, etc. Death on a mass scale becomes a source of meaning, uniting the Führer with his Volk. There is an element of this in Putin’s war in Ukraine, but the classic example is the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. The very difficulty of the war after 1941 helped fascist arguments in Germany — Victor Klemperer’s diaries are helpful here — for more than three years. Trump, however, lacks some of the attributes of historical fascism: the historical fascists actually did believe in struggle, which he does not. Trump believes in saying words and then having things handed to him on a silver platter. Fascists always believed in war; Trump converted to war late in life, having become convinced that it was a way to easy “wins” abroad that could be translated into dictatorship at home. Having boasted of winning in Iran dozens of times already, he is in a poor position to call for the large-scale land invasion that would be necessary to trigger huge American casualties and the bloody fascist dialectic of events and sentiments. Even if he did order a land invasion, it would probably not work, either militarily or politically. He has not done any of the ideological spadework; no one, listening to Trump, would think that he believed in a struggle for survival. By 1941, Hitler had already won quick wars in Poland and France, which created a sense among previously doubtful military commanders and civilians that he knew what he was doing, which then opened the way for a second, more ideological, stage of the war. Military commanders are presumably dubious of Trump; in any event, they are being fired by Hegseth at an extraordinary rate during a war. It is in this light, again, that one must understand Trump’s strategically senseless notion that we should increase the military budget right now by nearly 50%: it is meant as a payoff for officers, soldiers, and sailors — people he has openly disrespected his entire life, people whose funerals he treats as an opportunity to sell his own branded merchandise — to assist him in a coup against Americans. That bribe should fail, for many reasons; but it will not fail unless we notice what is happening.

5. Exploitation of Terror. This gambit (or one variant of it) depends on something happening during a war. A foreign enemy carries out an act of terrorist violence against Americans, providing an aspiring dictator with a pretext for a state of emergency and a suspension of elections. Nothing exactly like this has happened in the United States, although we can recall our self-destructive reactions to 9/11. This is Trump’s best hope among all of these scenarios, which is one reason why it might not happen: Iranian leaders must be aware that Trump would seek to exploit such an event. Iranian propaganda certainly involves threats against individual American leaders, but it seems unlikely that they would carry them out. Teheran has more to gain by mocking Pete Hegseth (as in a recent video) than by seeking to assassinate him. (Indeed, given Hegseth’s particular combination of strategic incompetence and Christian nationalism, he must seem like a God-given enemy for the regime in Teheran.)Subscribe

Another possibility is that Iranians do nothing inside US borders, but Trump and his people pretend that they have, or even organize a fake terrorist strike themselves. It is important to understand that such things do happen, and have been done by the people Trump admires the most. Consider the 1999 false flag terrorist attacks in Russia, the bombing of apartment buildings by the Russian secret services, which began a chain of events that allowed Putin to begin his march towards dictatorship. Self-terror is a Putinist strategy, and it worked. This means that it can be presumed to have been considered by Trump, Putin’s client in the White House. Putin is one of the people to whom Trump listens.

But Trump unlike Putin does not come from the secret services, and it is hard to imagine him not botching such an operation (even the Russians had some slips); it is also hard to imagine that Americans ordered to do such a thing would not leak such a plan before it could be realized (it did leak in Russia and was reported before it happened — but it still worked). Even if the false flag attack itself took place, Trump would have to go from self-terror to a state of emergency and some sort of self-invasion to halt the elections. But a self-invasion by whom? ICE is unpopular and untrained. The war has not been run in a way that brings military commanders to trust the president. Again, one has to see Trump’s proposal to increase the defense budget by nearly 50% as a kind of desperate bribe. There are sound strategic reasons why it is a terrible idea, but there is also a political one.

Elements of these scenarios can be mixed together. Some variant of terrorism is Trump’s best bet. And so one should be (preemptively, now) skeptical of Trump’s account of any future terrorist attack; we can be sure that, whatever its true origins and character, Trump will provide a self-serving account meant to serve a coup and a dictatorship. It is utterly predictable that he will attempt to pass responsibility for any act of terror to his domestic political opponents and discredit or undo elections. We have to think through this chain of events now to make sure that we are ready to block it — and to turn any such attempt against him.

The terrorism scenario should not work. We should consider it in advance, and hold Trump responsible for any horror inside the United States brought about by his mad war. None of the other scenarios should work either, in any combination. Indeed, all of them should only hurt him, if we are attentive and active. But there is no neutral position. We cannot do nothing and expect the republic to make it through. Indeed, Trump’s one chance to succeed, in any of these scenarios, is our own silent collaboration. He can only carry out a coup if we decide to obey in advance: to pretend that wartime pretexts for coups are never used, although history instructs us that they are; and then to offer our surprise to Trump as the unique political resource that can transform his weak position into a strong one.

Trump is weak, but weakness only matters if it is treated as vulnerability and pushed towards defeat. He will try to make his weak position strong, which will expose further vulnerabilities that have to be seen and exploited. All of his policies make him vulnerable; the war in particular makes him vulnerable; and any gambit to exploit that war should make him and his party easy to defeat and discredit his authoritarian movement forever.

A coup attempt is not at all unthinkable; Trump has done it before, and he makes it very clear that he is thinking about it now. When we think about it now, about how it might take shape, we make it less likely; indeed, we deter it. Knowledge of history can change the future. If we remember what history shows us is possible, we can prevent a coup from succeeding — and turn any such attempt against its instigator.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Fraud, Trump

Stephen Dyer: Ramaswamy Wants to Cripple Public Higher Education in Ohio

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2026 //
4

Vivek Ramaswamy is running for governor of Ohio.

Stephen Dyer, former legislator, current budget watchdog, warns that Ramaswamy wants to close some of Ohio’s institutions of higher education and make the cost of college even higher for the families of Ohio.

Vivek’s proposal to close public colleges follows years of Republican disinvestment in higher education and public education. Rising costs cause enrollments to decline. Declining enrollments are then an excuse to close colleges.

Why does Ohio want a less-educated public?

Please open the link to his excellent article to read the footnotes.

Dyer writes:

They’re hoping you don’t notice.

Notice that for 30 years, Ohio Republicans have slowly starved higher education funding, which has made the $1 million promise of a college education less attainable for middle-class families.

They’re hoping you fall for the anti-college mythology — they waste money, are giving kids diplomas for basket weaving, are full of hippies. Whatever. They don’t care. Just buy it, already!

They want you to blame anyone but them, even though it’s all their fault.

A personal note. I’m a tuition-paying parent for a public university student.

It’s now more expensive to send my son to Ohio State as an in-state resident than it was for my parents to send me to Tufts University in the 1990s.

Yeah. That’s crazy.

But that cost hike wasn’t because Ohio State is so inefficient or concerned with basket weaving majors that I’m paying through the nose for my son’s education¹. 

Nope.

Ohio Republicans made this happen. They’ve steadily made the unattainably expensive college degree a reality since they started dominating the statehouse and Governor’s mansion in 1994. In fact, it seems the two things they’ve consistently done from a public policy perspective is de-fund both public K-12 education and higher education.

The numbers don’t lie.

So, for example, in 1979, 11.6% of the state budget went to pay for the State Share of Instruction (SSI) — the direct funding portion of the state’s higher education budget that essentially subsidizes in-state tuition (it does more than that, but trying to keep it simple). That was the highest proportion on record.

Next year, it will be 4.7% — the lowest on record. 

If the state committed as much of the state budget to SSI next year as it did in 1979, the state would be providing $3.2 billion more just to SSI. 

How much is that, you ask?

In the 2024-2025 school year, the total tuition collected by all 2-year and 4-year public higher education institutions by all students, in-state and out-of-state, was $3.6 billion. 

That’s right. 

If Ohio had maintained the same commitment to its college students that it did in 1979, we could have tuition free — or essentially free — 2- and 4-year public universities for every Ohio resident … and then some. 

But we don’t even have to go back to 1979. If you went back to the last time the percentage of SSI funding went up under Gov. Ted Strickland in the 2009-2010 school year, you’d have another $1.6 billion. Or if you went back to the first year Republicans had complete governmental control — 1994-1995, you’d have $1.8 billion.

Wanna bet whether Ohio’s public 4-year institutions would be facing an “enrollment crisis” if tuition were reduced this much, Vivek?

Yet for some reason, Ramaswamy seems to want to make closing University of Akron and Kent State University — and the elimination of tens of thousands of jobs — a tentpole of his gubernatorial bid. 

As a former stat legislator who used to represent parts of Summit and Portage counties — where those two universities reside — I’m gonna say that’s certainly a strategy.

A fucking stupid one. 

But it’s a strategy.

This is not rocket science. As state commitment drops, the burden placed on college students and their families increases. The correlation is strong, as my buddy Claude pointed out here²:

Notice there’s a little blip in the percentage during the FY10 and FY11 years. Just as a reminder, those were the only two years of a politically divided legislature and Democratic Governor.

As an aside, you’ll recognize a similar blip on the state share of public K-12 education funding during this same period — the only year on record that more state than local property tax funding paid for Ohio’s public schools. 

By the way, did I mention this all good stuff happened in a budget I helped negotiate during the height of the Great Recession? Please excuse my shameless public policy prowess plug (and alliteration).

Every other year on that chart, Ohio Republicans controlled every lever of power. And the pattern is clear:

  1. Defund the state funding stream that makes college affordable for working families
  2. Make that option far less affordable for those same families
  3. Then when fewer students attend the universities that rely on first-generation students (Kent State and University of Akron come to mind, don’t they Vivek?), blame the universities
  4. Count on everyone both not noticing the steady drain of resources while they get hooked by the “out-of-touch” higher education narrative 
  5. Call on the schools to stop focusing on educating our students and instead become corporations’ training arms
  6. Or, in the case of the Ohio GOP’s billionaire gubernatorial candidate, shut them down

This is all Republicans’ fault. They didn’t have to do this. There wasn’t some crisis that forced them to divest from SSI since they took power. 

In fact, according to the most recent Grapevine report, while student share of higher education cost has gone up since 1980, it’s been by 18 percentage points nationally. 

In Ohio, that increase has jumped 24 points. 

The average Ohio student has to come up with 57 percent of their higher education cost. The national average is 39 percent — still way too high for a country that has to rely on innovation to dominate the world economy. 

But Ohio is 46 percent worse than that. 

In only 10 states do families have to pay a higher share of the higher education freight than Ohioans.

Since 1980, Ohio has cut its appropriations for higher ed overall by 14.8 percent. The national average over that period was a 13 percent increase.

Look. I know Vivek wants to shutter two of the state’s main economic and intellectual engines because they struggle with enrollment. But that struggle isn’t because of what he says — inefficiency, lack of excellence (whatever that is), etc.

I think that spending 30 years dropping the share of the state budget going to subsidize tuition below 5 percent for the first time ever might explain why fewer kids go to college in Ohio than they used to and why enrollment at first-generation universities — whose students typically come from working-class backgrounds — has struggled to grow. 

Yeah. 

That sure as hell seems more likely than whatever the fuck Vivek is imagining under his Jimmy Neutron hair. 

Categories Budget Cuts, Elections, Extremism, Funding, Higher Education, Ohio

A Must-Watch Interview: Heather Cox Richardson and Timothy Snyder

By dianeravitch
March 30, 2026 //
2

This is a very important interview, a thoughtful discussion between two remarkable people.

Two historians talk about Trump tyranny, the rule of oligarchs, and the power of the fossil fuel industry.

Snyder reminds us of the importance of the November elections. It’s our chance to put limits on the oligarchs and authoritarians.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Censorship, Corruption, Courage, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Trump

The Trump Regime is a “Criminal Enterprise” and Must Be Held Accountable

By dianeravitch
March 29, 2026 //
10

I subscribe to Marc Elias’ blog called “Democracy Docket.” Marc is a veteran prosecutor who is actively pursing lawsuits against the crimes of the Trump administration and winning many of them.

On his blog today is a fascinating conversation with another veteran prosecutor Glenn Kirschner.

Together they discuss how the Trump regime has corrupted the rule of law; how grand juries have usually stood firm in defending it; why Trump and his cronies must be held accountable for their efforts to destroy our democracy; why Merrick Garland was weak but Jack Smith was strong; why the Department of Justice must always be apolitical and hold members of both parties accountable; how Pam Bondi has repeatedly broken the law; and why the Epstein Files will eventually reveal a massive coverup.

All that is to say that I found the discussion to be enlightening and informative. These two—Elias and Kirschner–are truly experts, not just someone fulminating at the latest outage.

Since the content of the blog is for subscribers only, I can’t post it in full. It is definitely worth your while to subscribe.

Here is Marc Elias’ introduction to the dialogue:

For decades, the American justice system has operated on a “presumption of regularity” — the idea that the government acts in good faith. But as we enter the second year of this administration, that presumption has become a dangerous fantasy. Glenn Kirschner spent 30 years as a federal prosecutor, and he knows that when the rule of law is hanging by a thread, there’s no such thing as “business as usual.” 

Glenn joined me to explain why we need a “scorched earth” mission to investigate the criminal enterprise currently occupying the White House. We also dive deep into the Epstein files cover-up and discuss what it takes to hold the Trump administration accountable when we take back the White House in 2029. 

And here is a brief snippet from Kirschner’s remarks:

Glenn: I think accountability doesn’t look like “you’ve got to throw them all in prison, they all need to be in orange jumpsuits.” That’s not accountability. My version of accountability, my definition of accountability, is if we fairly, impartially, aggressively — and I mean scorched earth — investigate in an apolitical fashion every crime that we see with our own eyes. The President and his cabinet, basically this is a criminal enterprise. I prosecuted lengthy RICO cases in federal district court in Washington, D.C. I don’t say that flippantly. This is a criminal enterprise.

So what we need to do is make sure every crime gets fully investigated through an apolitical investigation whereby we give all of the evidence to the grand jury and we let them serve as the first check on our instincts with respect to who should be prosecuted. Do we have enough evidence to make out, one, probable cause, and two, beyond that, do we prosecutors believe we have a reasonable likelihood of success on the merits, which looks like a conviction at trial? That’s some of the language taken from the U.S. Attorney’s Manual. That is our procedural Bible at the Department of Justice. Once we secure indictments against everybody who has been victimizing the American people and violating our nation’s laws, then we move into the courtroom. We try the case as best we can. We deliver it to the jury and they begin to deliberate.

Accountability is done at that point. That may sound counterintuitive coming from a prosecutor who liked winning convictions. I enjoyed holding perpetrators accountable, vindicating the rights of victims, and protecting the community. But the result is not as important as the process. Justice is a process. And once we deliver it to the second check on our instincts—the trial jury sitting as the conscience of the community, just as grand jurors do—we live with the result, win, lose, or draw: conviction, acquittal, or mistrial because it’s a hung jury where the jurors couldn’t agree unanimously on a verdict. That’s what accountability looks like: putting everybody fairly and apolitically through the criminal justice system and let first the grand jurors decide and then we let the trial jurors decide.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Trump

Peter Greene: Nebraska GOP Wants Vouchers, Even After Voters Rejected Them

By dianeravitch
March 24, 2026 //
1

Peter Greene retired after 39 years of teaching, and now is the best-informed and most prolific writer about misguided and sometimes malicious efforts to “reform” public schools.

Peter has his own blog–Curmudgucation–and also writes a column about reform frauds for FORBES.

In this post, he tells the remarkable and unsavory story of vouchers in Nebraska. Nebraska is a solid red state, but its voters don’t want vouchers. Rural legislators–even Republicans–know it’s a waste of money and are sure to defund their public schools.

But the voucher-pushers keep looking for clever ways to bypass the voters, who have made it clear that they don’t want vouchers.

Peter Greene writes:

Nebraska’s voucher fans are bound and determined, like legislators in many states, to get around the voters so they can get vouchers installed.

In May of 2023, Nebraska’s Governor Jim Pillen signed into law LB 753, creating tax credit vouchers for subsidizing private schools.

The concept has been floated in Nebraska before, notably turning up more than once in 2022’s session. In 2023, it finally progressed through the legislature. But NSEA political action director Brian Nikkelson told the Nebraska Examiner that the public did not support the vouchers, and if the bill was passed, there would be a petition drive to force the bill to go on the ballot for voters to decide.

And so there was. It was a heck of a battle, with the pro-voucher forces have attracting a mountain of money, some of it from outside the state. Paul Hammel at the Nebraska Examiner reported that big money contributors include C.L. Werner, an Omaha-based trucking company executive ($100,000), Tom Peed and his son Shawn of a Lincoln publishing company ($75,000 each), and former Nebraska governor U.S. Senator Pete Ricketts ($25,000). Governor Pillen himself has contributed $100,000 to the campaign to save vouchers from a vote.

At the same time, Hammel reported, the American Federation for Children, the school choice advocacy group founded by Betsy DeVos, has contributed $103,000 in in-kind services and $583,000 in cash to the campaign.

It didn’t matter. Support Our Schools needed 60,000 signatures to force a referendum. They ended up with about twice that number (that’s roughly 10% of all eligible voters in the state). So this November, the voters of Nebraska were supposed to have their say. So you’d expect that voucher fans, who keep telling us how much everyone loves vouchers, would just sit back, secure in the knowledge that their program would win the referendum handily.

Well, no.

Instead, legislators cooked up LB 1402. This bill proposed to repeal the Opportunity Scholarships that were created under LB 753, and then to replace them with a new version of Opportunity Scholarships. This version would have been an education savings account (ESA) style super-voucher that hands over taxpayer money to send a student to a private or parochial school. It was more sketchy than last year’s bill because it appropriates state funds (rather than tax-credited contributions) to pay for the vouchers.

But mostly what it did it render the petition drive moot, because it repealed the version of vouchers that the public was going to vote on. “Ha,” they apparently thought. “That’ll stop those damned voters.”

In 67 days, the coalition of opponents gathered the necessary signatures—again. That repeal passed in November 2024, with 45 out of 49 legislative districts voting to repeal, and Nebraska’s voucher law was toast. The voters had sent a clear and unequivocal message.

Surely the state’s leaders would say, “Well, the voters have spoken, so that’s that.”

Fat chance.

Voucherphiles were back with a new proposal in January 2025. “I’m not dissuaded by the fact that it was defeated at the ballot box,” said freshman State Sen. Tony Sorrentino of Omaha.

To nobody’s surprise, Governor Jim Pillen was first to jump on the as-yet-rule-free federal school voucher proposal. Okay, it was a small surprise, because Nebraska is not known for grabbing federal dollars, but hey– this is Free Federal Money for private schools. In fact, U.S. Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Neb., helped Congress usher the tax credits provision onto President Donald Trump’s desk, even though his home district was among those shooting down vouchers in 2024.

Pillen’s new idea is to sell vouchers for the “gap” year, the year between the time when Nebraska’s vouchers are required to end and the time when the federal vouchers are supposed to kick in. The proposal is being sent through the state’s Labor Department rather than the Department of Education because that would skirt the requirement for any sort of hearing or debate, probably because voucherphiles have a pretty good idea of how that would go.

Nebraska is one of those states where rural Republicans have opposed all attempts at vouchers, and they aren’t sounding any friendlier about this one. Zach Wendling at Nebraska Examiner talked to State Sen. Tom Brandt of Plymouth, a Republican who opposed Linehan’s previous proposals; he said he is opposed to using any public money for private school choice. He’s still waiting to see how the federal tax credit program includes public schools (because, remember, there are no actual rules yet attached to the federal voucher program).

“The referendum simply eliminated that. Period, end of story,” he continued on the state policy. “There’s no other interpretation you can draw from that.”

The gap funding would cost about $5 million for around 2,500 students. Of course, with no rules in place, it’s possible that not all of Nebraska’s current voucher students would qualify for federal vouchers. Nor can we predict what slice of the federal money pie Nebraska would be entitled to. If it comes to that, we could expect voucherphiles to argue that more gap funding is needed to cover new gaps, or maybe to expand above and beyond the federal offerings.

Nebraska voucher fans are making a lot of “think of the children” noises, but families have plenty of time to look for new arrangements (i.e. finding the student a new school or going back to paying the full tuition with their own money).

This is the same story we’ve seen over and over again. Vouchers never win when voters have a chance to be heard. Every single taxpayer-funded voucher program in this country has been created without giving the taxpayers a say or ignoring the say they had already said. Taxpayer-funded vouchers are all the result of legislators backed by deep-pocketed voucher fans deciding they are going to inflict these on the taxpayers. Nebraska’s taxpayers just happen to have a few more tools to fight back with, but Nebraska’s voucherphiles just keep looking for a way to avoid that whole pesky democracy thing.

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Education Industry, Elections, Extremism, Nebraska, Privatization, Rural Schools, School Choice, Vouchers

The Very Important Texas Primaries: What’s Next?

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2026 //
7

As many of you know, I was born and raised in Texas. I grew up in Houston, third of eight children. I went to public schools, then to college in Massachusetts. I have never stopped being a Texan. I live in Brooklyn now but a part of my heart will always be in Texas. So I keep a close watch over developments in my home state.

The victories of James Talarico for Senate and Gina Hinojosa for Governor put Texas Democrats in a good position to turn Texas blue.

Gina Hinojosa coasted to victory in the Democratic primary over seven opponents. Soon after the polls closed, she had 61% of the vote. She will face incumbent Greg Abbot in November.

Talarico won the primary by 52.8% to Crockett’s 45.9%.

(Full disclosure: I contributed to all three campaigns.)

Talarico was a member of the state legislature. He has studied theology and is working towards a Master of Divinity at the Austin Presbyterian Seminary. He hopes to win independents and Trump voters with his deep religious faith and his rhetoric of love and reconciliation.

Under Governor Greg Abbot–now seeking his fourth term–Texas became an extreme MAGA state. Abbot echoes whatever Trump says , or says it first. Abbot is mean and has a stone heart.

Gina Hinojosa swept the Democratic primary for Governor. She is smart, articulate, beautiful, and Hispanic. One of the reasons that Democrats have not won a statewide office since 1994 is low turnout and growing Hispanic support for Trump. Gina was a featured speaker at the last conference of the Network for Public Education in Columbus, Ohio, and she was wonderful! As she explains in her PBS interview, strengthening neighborhood public schools is her top priority.

The Republicans running for Senate will compete in a May run-off. Jon Cornyn, the incumbent, is a reliable vote for Trump but not really MAGA. He seems like a moderate Republican who votes with Trump to protect his hide. Cornyn is running for his fifth term.

His opponent Ken Paxton is Attorney General of Texas, and it’s fair to say that he’s been scarred by scandals. His wife is a state senator. He cheated on her. Some of his staff blew the whistle on him and said he took payoffs from men he was investigating. The Republican House impeached him; the Republican Senate cleared him, thanks to generous donations by hard-right MAGA billionaires.

Paxton and Cornyn will have a runoff in May.

Talarico will be a strong candidate for the Senate. Hinojosa will be a strong candidate against Abbot, if Texans are sufficiently sick of pay-to-play politics.

The outcome will depend on turnout. Right now, Texas is run by a handful of oil billionaires. They want low taxes and minimal public services. They are Christian nationalists who love money and power.

If Talarico can attract the support of non-MAGA Republicans and if Gina can bring Hispanic voters to the polls, Texas will flip blue.

To learn why Gina Hinojosa ran for governor and what she wants to do, watch this excellent interview.

Watch Gina Hinojosa explain why “we don’t want handouts,” we want the services we paid for.

See Gina Hinojosa speaking at the Network for Public Education conference in April 2025, before the Republican-dominated Texas legislature passed vouchers. The passage of vouchers happened only after Governor Abbot primaried anti-voucher Republicans with the millions given him by billionaire Jeff Yass, the richest man in Pennsylvania.

To see Talarico in action, watch him talk on the power of love.

See Talarico on how the worst people quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on MLK Day and then violate his teachings every other day of the year.

Talarico on Christian nationalists, who–he says–are “more committed to the love of power than to the power of love.”

I love these two and will support them both. There will be a tidal wave of money pouring into Texas Republican coffers from other states to try to stop these two exciting Democrats!

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democrats, Elections, Extremism, Love, Politics, Religion, Republicans, Texas, Vouchers

Jess Piper: Missouri Republicans Won’t Speak to the People They “Represent”

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2026 //
10

Jess Piper lives in a rural part of Missouri. She is under the impression that the people elected in her district should listen to her grievances. She tried to speak to her representative and almost got arrested.

Here is her story.

I am not an investigative journalist. I am a storyteller, but the story I am about to tell you has me feeling a little like Erin Brockovich. It keeps getting bigger. I keep taking notes. I keep hearing from others who are experiencing the same thing. 

Something stinks in Missouri, and the stench is spreading fast — like a feed lot in July.

Republican Congressional Representatives are up to something nasty, and I think it is coordinated.

On January 30th, a few local Kansas City groups decided to go to one of our Congressman’s regional offices. He has five offices, and his constituents pay the rent for each. 

My Congressman is Sam Graves. He has been in office for 24 years. He wins by a landslide every two years. He hasn’t held a town hall since 2012, and last fall, when I asked him to his face when he would hold a town hall, he told me, “I don’t do those.”

Many folks in his district have grievances with his policies and his fealty to the regime, so several of us went to his Kansas City office to voice our concerns to his staffers. The event was publicized and drew over 200 people.

When I arrived at the building that houses Sam’s office, I noticed a “No Trespassing” sign. I thought it was odd. The building is large, but it houses constituent offices for both Sam Graves and Senator Eric Schmitt.

Sam Graves’s KC Office, North Ambassador Drive, Kansas City, Missouri. 1/30/26.

As I pulled into the parking lot, I found the visitor’s parking space and parked. As I opened my back door to grab my protest sign, a woman in an unmarked police car told me I couldn’t park in the visitor’s lot, while a man in the passenger seat of the car filmed me with his phone.

I told her to take it up with someone else. I had every right to park in that spot.

She told me the building’s owner didn’t want us there. I told her I parked in the correct spot to speak with my Congressman in the office I paid for.

She told me to move my car, or I would be towed, because I was on private property.

I told her to do whatever she needed to do, but they’d have to tow dozens of vehicles. I grabbed my sign and walked toward the crowd gathering on the sidewalk. 

I walked to the building to find Sam’s constituent office, and a man inside the building opened the door for me. I smiled at his courtesy, and I was about to pass through the open door when he stepped in front of me. 

I looked up at his quick movement, and he asked me if he could help me.

I told him I was going in to speak to my Congressman’s staff. He told me there were no appointments that day. I stated I didn’t need an appointment…I had a sticky note to deliver. He said I couldn’t come in, and he would deliver anything I had to Sam’s staff. 

And that was it. I was met by a guard at my Congressman’s door and not allowed in the building. I was denied my First Amendment right to petition my government for a redress of grievances. 

I thought this was where the story would end, but what happened to me and others in Kansas City that day is happening all over the state. Missouri constituents are being met with hostility and locked doors and threats of citations and even arrest for showing up at our own Representative’s offices…

Remember when my Congressman told me he doesn’t do” town halls? He meant it. He is adamant. No contact with constituents and no questions answered and no relief delivered. He is a man beholden to his donors, not his voters.

And this applies to Ann Wagner and Eric Schmitt and Eric Burlison. They don’t care.

Petitioning our government is our First Amendment right. A right that exists even under this regime. Even under a Missouri GOP supermajority. 

Someday, I hope the rest of Missouri will wake up to this fact. 

These Representatives don’t care about you. Stop voting for them.

~Jess

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Missouri

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump’s Ego Drives His Behavior

By dianeravitch
February 20, 2026 //
23

This is an excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s latest dispatch. The beginning, which I skipped, is about other countries’ holding important men accountable: former Prince Andrew, for his association with Jeffrey Epstein; and the former President of South Korea, who was sentenced to life in prison, for leading an insurrection to take control of the government.

There’s an implicit lesson here about accountability and lack thereof. None of the powerful men who are named in the Epstein Files have been prosecuted in this country. The Department of Justice redacted many or most of their names to be sure they would not be held to account. Those who led the insurrection of 2021 were never held accountable. Its foot soldiers were tried and convicted, but have since been pardoned by the leader of the insurrection.

The part that I thought you would find interesting are the latest examples of Trump’s vaingloriouness.

She writes:

Today Trump’s Commission of Fine Arts swore in two new members, including Chamberlain Harris, Trump’s 26-year-old executive assistant, who has no experience in the arts. Then the commission, now entirely made up of Trump appointees, approved Trump’s plans for a ballroom where the East Wing of the White House used to stand, although the chair did note that public comments about the project were over 99% negative.

According to CNN’s Sunlen Serfaty, Harris said the White House is the “greatest house in [the] world. We want this to be the greatest ballroom in the world.” Trump says the ballroom is being funded by private donations through the Trust for the National Mall, which is not required to disclose its donors.

Today workers hung a banner with a giant portrait of Trump on the Department of Justice building.

On Air Force One as Trump traveled to Georgia this afternoon for a speech on the economy, Peter Doocy of the Fox News Channel asked Trump about the arrest of Mountbatten-Windsor. “Do you think people in this country at some point, associates of Jeffrey Epstein, will wind up in handcuffs, too?”

Trump answered: “Well, you know I’m the expert in a way, because I’ve been totally exonerated. It’s very nice, I can actually speak about it very nicely. I think it’s a shame. I think it’s very sad. I think it’s so bad for the royal family. It’s very, very sad to me. It’s a very sad thing. When I see that, it’s a very sad thing. To see it, and to see what’s going on with his brother, who’s obviously coming to our country very soon and he’s a fantastic man. King. So I think it’s a very sad thing. It’s really interesting ‘cause nobody used to speak about Epstein when he was alive, but now they speak. But I’m the one that can talk about it because I’ve been totally exonerated. I did nothing. In fact, the opposite—he was against me. He was fighting me in the election, which I just found out from the last three million pages of documents.”

In fact, Trump has not been exonerated.

When he got to Georgia, Trump’s economic message was that “I’ve won affordability.” More to the point was his focus on his Big Lie that he won the 2020 election and that Congress must pass the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) America Act to secure elections. In fact, in solving a nonexistent problem, the law dramatically restricts voting. Republicans in the House have already passed it. If the Senate passes it, Trump told an audience in Rome, Georgia, “We’ll never lose a race. For 50 years, we won’t lose a race.”

Why did she say he was not exonerated? She may have been referring to this case or to the many photos of Epstein and Trump together, in some photos with young girls.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Ethics, Trump

GOP Begins Rigging the Vote in 2026 and 2028

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2026 //
7

Greg Palast and Thom Hartmann write together about the Trump administration’s early steps to rig the vote in 2026 and 2028.

The Republican-sponsored SAVES act has been passed by the House but not the Senate. It would cancel online registration. It requires voters to present a birth certificate or a passport. Millions of American citizens do not have either. Women, in particular, would be disadvantaged because the name on their birth certificates do not match their married names. .

Like me, you probably read that the FBI raided the office of the Fulton County voting headquarters in an effort to prove that the 2020 election was rigged. Just another evidence of Trump’s paranoia.

No, say the authors. That’s a cover story. The truth, they say, is that the raid was intended to rig the elections of 2026 and 2028. It was part of the GOP’s long-running effort to cancel the votes of Blacks and students, groups that favor Democrats.

Palast and Hartmann write:

For god’s sake, let’s get to the REAL agenda behind Wednesday’s-FBI raid on the Fulton County elections office. IT’S NOT ABOUT THE 2020 ELECTION. The warrant says the FBI wants the envelopes from the 2020 election to hunt for crimes. But that’s just the legal excuse for the storm trooping.

This is NOT, as the media seems to think, about Trump’s attempt to prove he won the 2020 race, as if he’s some political Captain Ahab was trying to chase the Moby Dick of 2020 revenge.

This is all about 2026 and 2028. Look at a map. Fulton County is the heart of “Blacklanta.” And Atlanta is the electoral heart of Georgia. And Georgia is the swingiest of swing states. If Republicans don’t cut down the Black vote in Atlanta, they lose the crucial seat now held by Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. And in 2028, the GOP, if they don’t suppress the vote in Fulton, they lose the White House. Fulton was the fulcrum of Trump’s loss in 2020 and could spell doomsday for Republicans in 2028.

So, how exactly do you stop Fulton County Black folk (and the LGBTQ community and the hipsters who left rural Georgia because they hate their parents) from voting? The answer is in one word: DROP-BOX.

Surveillance footage of a drop box in Atlanta, used in the film 2000 Mules as evidence of a “mule” whom filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza claimed was paid to stuff this and 26 other ballot boxes. According to D’Souza, this was “the smoking gun! O.J. Simpson…leaving the scene of a crime!” But it doesn’t show anything more than a Black man voting.

Follow me on this.

First, let me explain to my White readers a fact about African-Americans: In the majority, they vote early, having suffered the cruel absurdity of six-hour lines on Election Day. (And remember, it’s a FELONY crime in Georgia to give an elderly voter standing in line, thirsty a bottle of water). From long, sad experience, Black voters have learned to use early voting opportunities, especially mail-in ballots that can be placed in a drop-box.

For example, in the election run-off following the 2020 vote, which put two Georgia Democrats into the US Senate, over a million mail-in ballots (1,084,021) were cast, mainly in drop-boxes, mostly in Fulton/Atlanta.

Republicans took note. So, in a bill signed by GOP Governor Brian Kemp, the infamous SB202, the state declared all-out war on early voting, especially early votes placed in secure drop-boxes.

First, the state slashed the number of drop-boxes allowed in Atlanta and Savannah the two big cities with the urban Black population, by 77%.

Early voting days, when you can use the drop box, were cut from 60 to just seven (!). And drop boxes — meant to serve voters who can only vote when they get off work at night — were sealed up at night in state office buildings.

The result, not reported by a single US outlet (except, God bless him, Thom Hartmann) was that the number of mail-in ballots cast dropped by 83% — 83%! — from over a million to 0.2 million (191,286) by the run-off of 2022.

Why? It goes back to what Donald Trump calls, correctly, one of the most influential documentaries of all time: 2000 Mules. The film, premiered by Trump at Mar-a-Lago, accused 2000 Black men of taking $10 from George Soros, Mark Zuckerberg and Stacey Abrams to stuff drop-boxes with tens of thousands of fraudulent ballots, especially in Fulton County. It was the perfect Sturm for the right, a stimulating concoction of racism and anti-Semitism.

There wasn’t a bit of evidence, of course, but it looked convincing to MAGA-nauts. Every single drop-box in Georgia has a video camera over it to prevent fraud, and the videos are public. So, the Trump front called True the Vote, showed videos of Black men “stuffing” the drop boxes with extra ballots.

Except it wasn’t true. The “star” criminal was a Black man accused of “running from the scene of crime like OJ Simpson.” In fact, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, which is Republican controlled, ran all over the state to arrest each Black alleged ballot stuffer (a felony crime) — but found that every one, EVERY ONE, was a legal voter. The man accused of thievery was Mark Andrews, who is a Verizon executive who legally dropped his family’s ballots in the drop box. But, as LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter says, “He was seen guilty of a crime because he was Black.” That, literally, was the only “evidence” of the crime.

Note: I want you to see Mark Andrews, supposed Black “criminal” supposedly caught in the act of VWB, Voting While Black. Next Thursday, February 5, at 6:30pm Central time (4:30pm Pacific), chapters of Indivisible will host a special online showing of my film, Vigilantes Inc., America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen, which rips Trump’s True the Vote a new one. If you’re in the Chicago area, you can attend the live showing with Q&A to follow.

Early voting, mail-in voting and casting an early vote in a drop were the keys to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020, key to a huge surge in minority and student votes nationwide.

And massive suppression of early, mail-in and drop-box votes were key to Trump’s triumphant return. (Did anyone note that, seen from the Oval, the demolition of the East Wing only leaves the Right Wing.)

Following the 2020 election, over 20 Red States passed laws eliminating or restricting drop-boxes. And in every single case, legislators cited the bullshit “evidence” of 2000 Mules. Fact check: The state of Georgia recounted and reviewed every single Fulton County drop-box and mail in ballot and didn’t find one single forged ballot. Every vote had an identified, verified vote. Not ONE ballot.

White Democrats don’t seem to understand how important early drop-off votes mean to Black and student communities. But the Republicans understand it completely. In fact, GOP Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said that, had he not gone to court and stopped Houston from mailing out absentee ballots to all voter, “Donald Trump would have lost Texas.” Texas! (Note: Houston has the largest number of Black voters of any city in America.

By seeking every envelope from drop-box and absentee voters, Attorney General Pam Blondi is saving her job by saving the GOP from the voters’ wrath. The game is to force a state (i.e. Republican) takeover of Fulton County voting (possible under SB 202). And you can’t separate the invasion of Atlanta voting offices from the Purge’n General Blondi’s demand that Minnesota hand over its voter rolls.

The underlying purpose of Blondi’s seizure of Minnesota’s voter files is the restoration of two other racially poisonous vote suppression tricks. One is the return of the “Interstate Crosscheck” purge program and its sister, the purge of “aliens” from the rolls. Interstate Crosscheck cost nearly one million voters their registrations in 2016, key to Trump’s first election. Crosscheck was ruled illegal through a grassroots campaign led by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sen. Bernie Sanders and litigation brought by PUSH, the NAACP and the ACLU based, I’m proud to say, on the evidence presented to the courts by the Palast Investigative Fund. But. now, Crosscheck is BAAAACK! Want to know about Crosscheck. Read my investigation for Rolling Stone.

And there’s the canard of allegedly MILLIONS of alien voters swimming the Rio Grande just to vote for Democrats. When Florida used the ICE lists to purge 187,000 (!) voters from the rolls, mostly Hispanics, it turns out only ONE was an illegal alien: A Republican from Austria.

But that’s a story for another day — and for our film, Vigilantes Inc. Grab some popcorn and save America.

The Palast team is preparing to launch a full-scale, national investigation of vote suppression in coordination with PUSH, Black Voters Matter Fund, the NAACP and the Transformative Justice Coalition. But dammit, we can’t do it without funding. We don’t need a lot, but if you don’t stand up and help, who will?

Greg Palast Investigates is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Originally posted on

Greg Palast Investigates

Greg Palast

Investigative journalist and author of the NY Times bestsellers Armed Madhouse + The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. See my latest film at: https://WatchVigilantesInc.com

Categories Atlanta, Cheating, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Georgia

Margaret Hoover Interviews Elliot Abrams About Trump’s Errors in Invading Venezuela

By dianeravitch
January 13, 2026 //
22

Margaret Hoover is host of a weekly program about public affairs every Friday night on PBS. It’s called “Firing Line,” the same title as William Buckley’s talk show of decades back.

Margaret, a direct descendant of Herbert Hoover, is a Republican but is not especially conservative.

On this program, she interviews Elliot Abrams.

Elliot Abrams is an expert on foreign affairs and national security. He worked for President Reagan, President George H.W. Bush, and President Trump, in his first term. Abrams is known as a hawk.

What’s fascinating about the conversation is that Abrams is highly critical of Trump’s invasion.

He acknowledges that Maduro was a ruthless, brutal dictator who ran the Venezuelan economy into the ground and caused millions of Venezuelans to flee the country. Some of maduro’s top leaders have hidden bank accounts in which they have stowed hundreds of millions of dollars.

He asks why Trump failed to consult Congress.

He wonders why Trump ordered the arrest of Maduro and his wife but not the others who were indicted and are now running the country.

He wonders why Trump left the leaders of this corrupt regime in place. He assumes they will wait Trump out and continue to reap the rewards of their corruption. Given the cost and difficulty of reviving Venezuela’s oil industry, he doubts that any of the major American oil companies will risk doing so.

It’s a fascinating conversation. I urge you to watch.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, International, Trump
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