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What RFK Jr. Has Done to Science in One Year

By dianeravitch
February 18, 2026 //
4

Scientific American reviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s record since he became Secretary of Health and Human Services a year ago. Contrary to his explicit promises at his confirmation hearing, he has cast doubt on the efficacy of vaccines. Not coincidentally, South Carolina is experiencing an outbreak of measles, with nearly 1,000 people, mostly children, affected.

Dan Vergano of Scientific American began with a summary of RFK’s promises:

“At his confirmation hearing weeks earlier, Kennedy made a number of pledges under oath to those U.S. senators:

“I will commit to not firing anybody who’s doing their job.”

“I support vaccines. I support the childhood schedule.”

“My approach to HHS, as I said before…, is radical transparency.”

“I’m pro-good science.”

Health experts say Kennedy has made sweeping reversals on these statements. His HHS tenure has seen the U.S. childhood vaccine program reduce the number of recommended shots to protect against 11 diseases instead of 17, thousands of public servants (many of them scientists) have been fired, standard-setting scientific practices at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health have been replaced with “gold-standard” dictates that scientists call dishonest, and judges have blocked funding cuts as illegal. Kennedy and HHS officials did not respond to requests for comment.…”

The secretary has spoken broadly about his goals this year to Congress and the public. In September, before a Senate panel, he described his “big-picture” mission as “enacting a once-in-a-generation shift from a sick care system to a true health care system that tackles the root causes of chronic disease.” His “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda, now wedded to President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement, puts Kennedy atop a new, unorthodox American political coalition. It unites a partisan distrust of science with a deep-rooted skepticism of medicine and the food industry. Roughly four in 10 parents are supporters of the MAHA movement, according to a KFF survey.

“Who can argue with the foundational goal of ‘Making America Healthier Again’? We want parents to want healthier lives for their children,” says Washington University in St. Louis School of Public Health dean Sandro Galea, author of the book Within Reason: A Liberal Public Health for an Illiberal Time. Many of the goals of the MAHA movement—including increasing stalled U.S. life expectancies, bettering childhood health and addressing overmedicalization—are shared by public health experts.

“It would be great to see MAHA be a force for good,” Galea says. “But some of its ideas, frankly, will end up hurting people.” Notably, Kennedy’s decisions on vaccines will inevitably lead to outbreaks, Galea says, and the return of preventable infectious diseases such as measles. “We really haven’t seen an HHS tenure like this in our lifetimes.”

HHS is largely the national social insurance arm of the U.S., with a sideline in medical research and public health. It oversees the massive Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid programs, as well as the FDA, CDC and NIH. In many ways, the colossal agency today continues to function as normal: Social Security checks, Supplemental Security Income or both still lands in nearly 75 million mailboxes every month, one in five Americans receives Medicaid coverage, and the Affordable Care Act that the department administers still covers more than 24 million people nationwide despite Trump administration cuts to health insurance and food assistance. On February 2 Kennedy announced a $100 million pilot program to fund outreach, medical treatment and other support for homeless people and those with substance use disorders in eight cities—in the kind of bipartisan response to the overdose crisis long sought in the public health world.

Graphic shows a series of monthly calendar grids from January 2025 to February 2026 with turquoise squares highlighting vaccine-related statements, policy changes and associated events and purple squares highlighting statements or actions related to autism. Each square is labeled with the date and annotated with a description of the associated event.
Graphic shows a series of monthly calendar grids from January 2025 to February 2026 with blue squares highlighting statements and policy changes on gender-affirming care and green squares highlighting statements and policy changes on nutrition or wellness. Each square is labeled with the date and annotated with a description of the associated event.
Graphic shows a series of monthly calendar grids from January 2025 to February 2026 with lavender squares highlighting other major public health events. Each square is labeled with the date and annotated with a description of the associated event.

The move, however, came after layoffs at HHS’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the whipsaw cancellation and restoration of $2 billion in funding for its programs in January.

This kind of tumult is now standard fare at HHS. In his first year, Kennedy fired his own handpicked CDC chief, linked Tylenol to autism with little evidence and urged farmers to let bird flu “run through” their flocks (an idea that could blow chicken prices skyward and spur spread of the virus, experts say). All told, the agency lost more than 17,000 civil servants through firings and resignations in 2025—including many scientific leaders at the FDA, CDC and NIH. An HHS spokesperson defended Kennedy’s cuts to “bloated bureaucracies that were long overdue” to ProPublica in August.

In the September Senate hearing, Kennedy accused one critical lawmaker of “crazy talk” and took out his phone and began scrolling through it while another spoke. “We’re denying people vaccine,” said senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, the physician chair of the Senate health committee. “You’re wrong,” Kennedy replied to Cassidy, who provided a crucial Republican vote last February for Kennedy’s confirmation.

Kennedy “comes across as a privileged rich guy with an air of entitlement,” says American Public Health Association executive director Georges Benjamin, whose organization called for Kennedy to resign in April after the mass layoffs at the CDC, FDA and other health agencies. “He’s completely in over his head at this job, has no experience, no training in areas of health he’s affecting and is causing a lot of harm.”

VACCINES

Kennedy has a long history of vaccine opposition. He joined the board of the antivaccine nonprofit Children’s Health Defense in 2015, when it was known as the World Mercury Project (and resigned from his position as chairman in 2024); the organization led numerous lawsuits against vaccine makers. The move from environmental lawyer to antivaccine activist turned out to be well timed for postpandemic politics; attacking COVID vaccines wooed Republican voters. At his confirmation hearing, Kennedy refused to disavow links between vaccines and autism, a favorite theory of outfits spurring vaccine hesitancy among parents, though numerous studies have found no connection. “News reports have claimed that I am antivaccine or anti-industry,” Kennedy said at his confirmation hearing. “I am neither; I am pro-safety.” What Kennedy meant then by safety has since become clear, Benjamin says: his own judgment.

The FDA’s top vaccine official, Peter Marks, resigned in March, writing of Kennedy, “truth and transparency are not desired by the secretary, but rather he wishes subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies.” During the pandemic, Marks had famously withstood political pressure to approve COVID shots without safety testing. Now he is out. An HHS official told NPR that Marks “has no place at FDA” because of his opposition to the secretary “restoring science to its golden standard and promoting radical transparency” at the agency.

In May Kennedy removed COVID vaccines from the list of shots recommended for healthy pregnant adults and children without consulting with CDC safety panel experts. In June he fired those experts and replaced them with people scientists have called unqualified, unvetted vaccine opponents. He next pulled $500 million in funding away from research into mRNA vaccines to combat diseases such as COVID and the flu, falsely claiming they had stopped working as the viruses evolved. He followed that move by firing then CDC chief Susan Monarez, a microbiologist, who wouldn’t rubber-stamp the votes of the panel she called “newly filled with people who have publicly expressed antivaccine rhetoric” in a Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Kennedy later claimed Monarez had told him she wasn’t “trustworthy”; in Senate testimony, she denied doing so. “The question before us is whether we will keep faith with our children and grandchildren—ensuring they remain safe from the diseases we fought so hard to defeat: polio, measles, diphtheria, whooping cough and many others,” Monarez said at the September 17 Senate hearing. “Undoing that progress would not only be reckless—it would betray every family that trusts us to protect their health.”

In December Kennedy’s reconstituted vaccine panel voted to stop recommending that all newborns be vaccinated for hepatitis B, a disease that contributed to the deaths of 1.1 million people worldwide in 2022. HHS next reduced the number of U.S. childhood vaccine shots so that they protected against 11 diseases instead of 17, basing the decision on the rules of Denmark, a country with a relatively small and homogenous population and publicly funded health care for all. Most recently, the chair of the vaccine panel, a cardiologist, told POLITICO that its focus this year will be on examining vaccine side effects rather than on its longstanding mission of gauging vaccine effectiveness.

WELLNESS

“I walk through the airports today…, and I see these kids that are just overburdened with mitochondrial challenges,” Kennedy said in August at a Texas “Make America Healthy Again” state-law-signing ceremony. Ashish Jha, formerly the Biden administration’s pandemic response czar, called this airport diagnosis “wacky, flat-earth voodoo stuff” on X (formerly Twitter).

But for Kennedy’s MAHA followers, it probably sounded familiar. Concern over mitochondria has moved from a nascent area of medical research to staple of the trillion-dollar wellness industry. Alongside exercise and vitamins, the industry embraces the medical “freedom” movement opposed to conventional medicine, including vaccines. The movement’s rhetoric echoes many of RFK, Jr.’s MAHA claims, says Richard Pan, a California physician and former lawmaker, who clashed with Kennedy’s fight against California vaccine laws in 2019. Numerous corners of the wellness world embrace odd longevity cures, unpasteurized milk, unfluoridated water, dubious nutritional supplements and the assertions of influencers such as Casey Means, Trump’s nominee for surgeon general, who argues that many chronic diseases such as diabetes, cancer and Alzheimer’s originate via “mitochondrial dysfunction.” This dysfunction, she claims, is driven by poor sleep, bad food and inactivity. These are all real problems, but they’re ones with uncertain links to sleepy kids in airports.

“I think what we’re seeing is a mutual partnership between RFK, Jr., and what he says he values and the existing MAHA values and ideals,” says Mariah L Wellman of Michigan State University, a wellness industry scholar. Kennedy’s rhetoric reflects a common ground with influencers like Means, she adds. “I absolutely think there are deep ties between how the wellness industry exists [and] is talked about on social media right now and RFK, Jr.’s beliefs.”

In May, at a Senate Finance Committee hearing, Kennedy called for an end to genetic research on the causes of autism, instead suggesting that “environmental toxins” were the source. Kennedy often claims there that there is an autism “epidemic,” but improved diagnosis largely explains the recent rise in cases.

A MAHA commission report released by HHS in September reflected the movement’s signature mixture of concern over real problems, such as rising childhood obesity and illness, with Kennedy’s “pet peeves and half-baked science that doesn’t really get at the root causes of poor health in children,” says Peter Lurie of the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Alongside calls for research on cell-phone-signaleffects on health and vaccine injuries, the report went light on investigating pesticides and the food industry, disappointing some environmental figures.

In September Kennedy joined Trump in suggesting that Tylenol use during pregnancy causes autism—another belief taken up by the wellness industry—based on weak evidence. Scientists, however, say that if the medicine is linked with autism—a connection that’s not yet clear—it could be the fevers and infections the Tylenol was meant to address, and not the pills themselves, that drives increased autism risk. Nevertheless, HHS started the process for an FDA warning to be added to the pain reliever’s label.

January’s reset of U.S. nutrition guidelines from HHS also borrowed some wellness ideas, calling for people to eat “real food” such as beets, strawberries and beans (foods endorsed by wellness nutritionists as well as, apparently, Mike Tyson, the boxer notorious for biting one of his opponents’ ears, who espoused eating real food in a Super Bowl commercial promoting the changes). The guidelines embrace whole milk and red meat despite more than six decades of research that have found that saturated fat is linked to heart disease.

The recommendations fit a pattern of Kennedy’s, Benjamin says. “I see him as a sort of environmental purist of sorts,” he says, rejecting medicine just as he once opposed pollution as an environmental lawyer. Fatty “real” foods, even if they are linked to heart disease, look less threatening to a worldview shaped by fears of something “artificial” causing harm, even if (unnatural) prescription drugs such as statins actually reduce the risk of heart disease. “He is an advocate, and he sees the world as a place for advocacy, not [for] the balanced perspective of a scientist or physician,” Benjamin says.

Antidepressants and heart disease medications are now in MAHA’s sights. Kennedy has claimed that medications such as these are overprescribed as a result of what he says is corruption that has affected medical studies—a charge that echoes his environmental movement rhetoric.

POLITICS

“Don’t you want a president that is going to make America healthy again?” Kennedy said at an August 23, 2024, campaign rally in Glendale, Ariz., in which he endorsed Trump. At the event, as Trump was introducing Kennedy to his supporters, he announced his intention to release the assassination files of Kennedy’s uncle John F. Kennedy…

“RFK, Jr., certainly has his own goals and ideology that overlap with Trump’s and are also distinct,” says Pamela Herd of the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. “But at the end of the day, it is the Trump administration, and he will be limited to what it is, or isn’t, comfortable with.”

In other words, Kennedy is just one more politician heading a federal agency in the Trump era. In March he kept silent as the EPA rolled back mercury pollution rules, as well as others, despite railing against their proposed cancelation in 2017. (He had also pledged during his campaign to remove toxic chemicals from food.) He has also bent to the administration’s industry alliesby going light on pesticide makers and backing away from initial calls to regulate ultraprocessed foods.

And Kennedy’s big picture goal of reversing chronic disease keeps butting against the current political calculus, Axios noted in April. By taking the axe to research on illness among minorities and the disadvantaged, he cut off help to those most affected by diabetes, heart disease, cancer and COVID. In April Kennedy told ABC News that administration funding cuts at federal agencies were “not affecting science”, but in 2025 more than 3,800 grants ended up killed or frozen at NIH and the National Science Foundation.

At a December campaign rally-style briefing from the first-floor stage of HHS’s headquarters at the Hubert H. Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., Kennedy announced sweeping plans to restrict gender-affirming care for U.S. minors. Kennedy recognized political activists and conservative politicians in his opening remarks. Gender-affirming care has not been a historical preoccupation of Kennedy or the wellness industry but rather one “where the [Republican] party sees an advantage,” POLITICO observed.

“I think the MAHA and MAGA [movements] are intersecting circles in a Venn Diagram,” says political scientist David Lewis of Vanderbilt University. Right now, the two movements form a political coalition held together by Trump, he says.

Overall, the most significant effect of Kennedy’s tenure at HHS, Herd says, is his firing of scientific leaders and replacing expertise with political activism, most notably in upending the childhood vaccine schedule. The politicization genie won’t easily go back in the bottle, she says. “I think this this is a much more kind of radical change and one that’s difficult to pull back.”

MAHA and MAGA are now inextricably linked. In February Kennedy spoke at the right-wing Heritage Foundation’s event “One Year of Making America Healthy Again,” attended by political activists and Senator Tommy Tuberville. There Tony Lyons, president of the political group MAHA Action, described the group’s commitment to backing Republican candidates endorsed by Trump, a sign that the political coalition forged in the 2024 election will hold into the midterms. “It’s a joy to work for [Trump],” Kennedy said onstage. “He lets me do stuff that I don’t think anybody else would ever let me do.”

DAN VERGANO is senior editor, Washington, D.C., at Scientific American. He has previously written for Grid News, BuzzFeed News, National Geographic and USA Today. He ischair of the New Horizons committee for the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing and a journalism award judge for both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

It’s Time to Stand Up for Science

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Categories Accountability, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Medicine, Science, Trump

Remembering Jesse Jackson

By dianeravitch
February 17, 2026 //
12

Jesse Jackson died.

I was not a friend of the Reverend Jesse Jackson. I had a brief, one-day experience with him. It was an important day for me.

Several years ago, I received an invitation to speak at Jesse Jackson’s church.

At first, I was ambivalent because I had a negative feeling about him. I remembered that he had long ago referred to New York City as “hymietown.” That was blatantly anti-Semitic, and it made me think of him as bigoted against Jews.

But I was interested in meeting him so I accepted the invitation.

When I arrived at his church in Chicago, the congregants were engaged in prayer.

An assistant brought me to meet Rev. Jackson, and he greeted me enthusiastically and warmly.

About 30 minutes later, he invited me to the pulpit to speak. I spoke for about 30 minutes and talked about the threat to privatize public schools and the importance of public schools. His congregation listened intently and applauded the message.

Then Rev. Jackson took me under his wing. He walked me around, introduced me to people, walked me to the meal in the churchyard, filled my plate, and sat to talk with me.

I felt enveloped in his warmth and kindness.

That night, he took me to dinner at a celebrated Chicago steakhouse along with some of his associates and one of his sons. In the hubbub of the restaurant, I strained to hear what he was saying. He spoke so low that I didn’t understand most of what he said. What pearls of wisdom was I missing, I wondered. I would never find out.

But by the time I left, I felt a genuine love for this man.

He was kind, thoughtful, generous, and warm. The people around him basked in his warmth. Briefly, so did I.

Categories Character, Civil Rights, Ethics, Love

Jeffrey Epstein’s Ranch in New Mexico Was Bought by Trump Ally

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2026 //
3

A blogger who calls himself “This Will Hold” wrote a startling post about Jeffrey Epstein’s Zorro Ranch in New Mexico. The sprawling ranch was bought by a Trump ally. Unlike Epstein’s other properties, Zorro Ranch was never searched by the FBI. Why not?

The blogger wrote:

In 2023, four years after Jeffrey Epstein suspiciously died in federal custody, one of the most controversial properties in modern criminal history quietly changed hands.

Zorro Ranch, Epstein’s sprawling New Mexico estate in southern Santa Fe County, was sold to San Rafael Ranch LLC, a limited liability company created just one month before the purchase. The final sale price has not been publicly disclosed. The property was originally listed for $27.5 million before the price was reduced to $18 million.

Public records have revealed that San Rafael Ranch LLC is tied to the family of Don Huffines, a Trump-aligned former Texas state senator and current candidate for Texas Comptroller. Tax protest filings obtained through a public records request list Huffines’ wife as an owner of the ranch and son Colin Huffines, as manager.

According to the Santa Fe New Mexican, in those filings the family sought to reduce the property’s taxable valuation to approximately $13.4 million, citing the “notoriety” of the estate as a factor affecting its value.

There is also a direct line into Trump’s current political ecosystem: Russell Huffines, Don Huffines’ son, serves as Associate Director of Agency Outreach in the Trump administration.

Those facts are documented.

What remains less clear is why Zorro Ranch—unlike Epstein’s other properties—was never subjected to a federal search.

The Allegations That Should Have Triggered an Excavation

In November 2019, months after Epstein’s arrest and death, the U.S. Department of Justice documented an email that, if credible, should have required immediate forensic action.

The email, included in newly released DOJ files, was sent from an encrypted ProtonMail account by someone identifying themselves as “a former staff at the Zorro.” The sender attached six videos of sexual abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and alleged that “two foreign girls were buried on orders of Jeffrey and Madam G” in the hills outside Zorro Ranch.

The email claimed the girls “died by strangulation during rough, fetish sex.”

“Madam G” is widely understood to refer to Ghislaine Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year federal sentence for sex trafficking. It’s noted that one of the videos is a suicide attempt confession from a girl in the Bay Area.

A note on another of the videos: 7 mins 31 secs underage girl (Matthew Mellon video). 

Matthew Mellon, yet another billionaire in the Epstein class, dined with Donald Trump in March of 2018 before flying to Mexico in April to check into a rehabilitation clinic. But the 54-year-old banking heir never made it to the treatment facility—according to one report, Mellon was experimenting with ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drink, and died from a heart attack after taking it.

Matthew Mellon isn’t the first member of the Mellon family to appear in the Epstein files. As we previously reported, Paul Mellon showed up on Epstein’s flight logs—and Timothy Mellon, his son, donated $126 million to Trump’s 2024 campaign. Perhaps to protect the family name?

The allegations in the email—involving sex crimes against minors and claims that girls were buried on the property—remain unsubstantiated, which is not surprising given that the ranch was never subjected to a forensic search.

How Thoroughly the Other Properties Were Searched

The absence becomes more striking when compared to the aggressive and highly visible searches conducted elsewhere.

The contrast is stark.

Across nearly two decades—from the original Palm Beach investigation through the 2019 federal case—Epstein’s other properties were searched extensively.

Palm Beach Mansion 

Epstein’s waterfront Palm Beach estate was the epicenter of the original criminal investigation that began in 2005.

Palm Beach Police conducted a months-long investigation that included:

  • Execution of search warrants
  • Collection of massage tables and physical evidence
  • Statements of multiple survivors
  • Review of phone records and financial documents
  • Noted that computers were missing and that he was “tipped off”

The investigation ultimately led to Epstein’s controversial 2008 plea agreement.

Manhattan Townhouse

In July 2019, shortly after Epstein’s arrest, federal agents executed a sweeping search warrant at his Upper East Side brownstone.

According to court filings and contemporaneous reporting, agents:

  • Seized hard drives, computers, CDs, and other digital storage devices
  • Collected binders containing labeled photographs of young women
  • Removed large quantities of cash
  • Catalogued thousands of pieces of evidence
  • Sawed into the safe and searched multiple floors room by room

The Manhattan search was methodical and exhaustive, forming the backbone of the federal prosecution.

Little St. James, U.S. Virgin Islands

On Epstein’s private island, Little St. James, federal authorities also conducted a search.

Aerial footage and court records show:

  • Forensic teams on site
  • Structures photographed and documented
  • Computer equipment and records seized
  • Controlled access to the island during evidence collection
  • Excavation equipment brought in to examine areas of interest

The island became a focal point of the trafficking investigation.

Paris Apartment and Associated Business

French authorities executed search warrants at Epstein’s Paris apartment and the offices of MC2 Model Management—the modeling agency operated by Jean-Luc Brunel, a longtime Epstein associate later charged with rape and procuring minors before his death in custody.

Computers and records were seized as part of international cooperation efforts. The federal investigative net extended across state lines and international borders.

And stopped at the state lines of New Mexico.

The Property at the Center of the Silence

The estate spans nearly 8,000 acres of high desert terrain, plus an additional 1,200 acres leased from the State of New Mexico. It includes:

  • A private airstrip
  • Multiple residences and guest houses
  • Remote hills and open desert land
  • Secure entry structures

DOJ files include photographs labeled “Zorro Aug 2002,” showing unidentified young women with their faces redacted at the ranch. Flight logs show hundreds of trips to the ranch over two decades and survivor testimony places abuse there.

In August 2019, multiple survivors addressed the court during a hearing against Jeffrey Epstein before the case was dismissed following his death.

Chauntae Davies testified that she was flown to Zorro Ranch both on a commercial flight and on Epstein’s private plane on at least two occasions. She stated that she was raped both times.

Virginia Roberts Giuffre alleged in a lawsuit—later settled—that she was trafficked to the ranch as a minor. In her memoir, she recalled that Epstein brought in “foreign girls who couldn’t communicate in English,” and that “Epstein laughed about the fact they couldn’t really communicate, saying that they are the ‘easiest’ girls to get along with.”

As scrutiny of Epstein intensified, the ranch itself drew attention. In August 2018, Zorro Ranch was burglarized. A gun safe reportedly containing 30–40 firearms was removed.

According to reports at the time, the perimeter fence had been cut, and the intruders appeared to know the precise location of the safe. In addition to the weapons, a small number of antique lamps were also taken.

Several structures can be seen in aerial photo and video of the property, including what appears to be an industrial-grade landfill. In 2019 an FBI tip from a retired New Mexico State Police officer who lived near the ranch reported a newly constructed “suspicious barn” with what appeared to be a “sally port” (double-door entry system used in prisons) and a chimney. 

He was “concerned the property could potentially have an incinerator concealed within the barn.”

A crematorium?

Individually, each detail might have explanation—but collectively, they form a series of investigative leads.

None resulted in a forensic search.

Political Proximity

Epstein purchased Zorro Ranch in 1993 from former New Mexico Governor Bruce King. His son, Gary King, later served as New Mexico’s Attorney General.

The late Governor Bill Richardson appears on Epstein flight logs, in victim depositions, and in DOJ communications referencing the ranch. And internal DOJ emails show Epstein’s continued communication with Richardson following his 2008 Florida conviction.

Virginia Giuffre, who sued Maxwell for defamation, provided photos of herself at the ranch in a 2015 court document. Giuffre said that Epstein trafficked her to powerful men at the ranch, including the late Bill Richardson, who served as New Mexico governor from 2003 to 2011.

After his 2008 conviction, Epstein was not required to register as a sex offender in New Mexico and the state continued leasing him public land attached to the ranch.

These are documented facts.

Does Epstein’s proximity to political elites explain the absence of a federal search?

When federal authorities brought excavation equipment to Little St. James and catalogued evidence floor by floor in Manhattan, why was nearly 8,000 acres of New Mexico desert left untouched?

If nothing is there, a search would settle it.

If something is there, the land holds the answer.

For now, Zorro Ranch remains the only major Epstein property tied to survivor testimony that has never been publicly examined with the same rigor.

And that distinction continues to raise questions.

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Evil, Scandals, Trump

Jamie Raskin Visits an ICE Facility

By dianeravitch
February 13, 2026 //
29

Last night Rep. Jamie Raskin posted a comment on Twitter about his visit to a nearby ICE facility:

I just exercised my right as a Member of Congress to conduct an unannounced oversight visit of the ICE field facility in Baltimore. The staff I met with respected my right to visit, but what I saw was disgraceful. Kristi Noem has a budget of $75 billion she could use to ensure humane conditions, but we saw 60 men packed into a room shoulder-to-shoulder, 24-hours-a-day, with a single toilet in the room and no shower facilities. They sleep like sardines with aluminum foil blankets. Whether it’s for three days or seven days, nobody would want a member of their family warehoused there. The room set aside for dangerous criminals and violent offenders was empty. We’re demanding immediate answers and action.

What kind of a person treats other human beings this way?

Is cruelty its own reward?

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Funding, Justice, Maryland

Peter Greene: Charter Operators Ask Federal Government for Another Handout

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2026 //
3

Back in the late 1980s, when charter schools were a brand new idea, advocates said that charter schools would be more accountable, cost less, and would get better results.

It was also speculative, since no charter schools existed then. I believed it would turn out that way, as did other proponents of charter schools.

But none of those beliefs/hopes panned out.

We now know that charter lobbyists oppose accountability in state legislatures.

We now know that charter schools do not get better results than public schools, unless they exclude the kids who get low test scores.

We now know that charter schools do not cost less. Many of their leaders are paid more than public school leaders (some are paid $1 million a year). They lobby legislatures to give them the same funding as public schools. In some states, charters have won the power to locate rent-free in public school buildings.

Peter Greene here explains that the charter industry is seeking federal legislation to underwrite the cost of charter school facilities. The federal Charter School Program already provides $500 million a year to start new charter schools or expand existing ones. This grand gift, which the Trump administration increased, ignores the fact that demand for charter schools has declined while charters continue to close because of falling enrollments.

Peter Greene explains the latest grift here:

Among the various bills thrown at Congress is one that finds new ways to throw public money at charter schools.

HB 7086, the “Equitable Access to School Facilities Act,” proposes to send money to charter operators, via the state, to buy and build facilities for schools.

The cost of coming up with a building to put charter schools in might seem like part of the cost of being in the charter school business, but charter operators don’t much care for having to fork over the money. In some states, legislators have solved the problem by just allowing charter schools to just take public property. Florida is rolling out a law that lets charters take public school real estate in whole or in part just by saying, “Hey, we want that.” It’s an extraordinary law, sort of like the opposite of eminent domain, in which the facilities that taxpayers have bought and paid for suddenly belong to a private business.

HB 7086 wants to propose a similar federal solution, delivering grants to any states that come up with clever ways to gift taxpayer dollars to charters that want to build or buy some facilities, or want to come up with fun ways for charters to grab taxpayer-funded buildings.

The bill comes courtesy of Rep. Juan Ciscomani, an Arizona Republican, who just wants to make sure that every school is a great school. In a press release, he explains:

Sadly, access to appropriate and affordable school buildings for charter schools continues to be one of the biggest barriers to growth. Unlike district schools, charter schools aren’t guaranteed access to school buildings or traditional access to facilities funding sources like local property tax dollars.

Yeah, I was going to open a restaurant, but access to food and cooking supplies was a big barrier to growth, so maybe the taxpayers would like to buy that stuff for me?

Or maybe when you decide to go into a business, you do it with a plan that takes into account the cost of being in that business. Certainly the notion that building and financing facilities is easy peasy for public school systems is disconnected from reality. When West Egg Schools want a new building, they have to convince the taxpayers or else that school board will find themselves voted out of office.

If you want to get into the charter school biz, you need a plan about how you’ll manage the cost of getting into the charter school biz. “Well, get the feds to drain taxpayers to fund it for us,” is not such a plan.

Also delighted by the bill is BASIS Educational Ventures, the big honking charter chain that may have the occasional financial issues, but gets a pass on having to display financial transparency.

The bill does display one of the lies of the charter movement– that we can finance multiple school systems with the same money that wasn’t enough to fund one. Not that I expect any choicers to say so out loud. But no school district (or any other business) responds to tough money times by saying, “I know– let’s build more facilities.” The inevitable side effect of choice systems is that taxpayers end up financing redundant facilities and vast amounts of excess capacity, which means taxpayers have to be hit for even more money. Legislators continue to find creative ways to A) ignore the issue and B) legislate more paths by which taxpayer money can be funneled to choice schools.

This bill hasn’t died yet. Tell your Congressperson to drive a stake through its heart.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Funding

Nancy Bailey: Will School Choice Kill School Sports?

By dianeravitch
February 10, 2026 //
5

Nancy Bailey is a retired educator and a dedicated ally of public schools. She understands the importance of public schools as the heart of communities, which bring parents together and teach citizenship.

In many communities, Friday night lights are an important civic ritual. Why should they be dimmed?

In this post, she voices a concern that many parents and educators share: Will school choice kill school sports?

Bailey writes:

Americans love sports, but what happens to athletic programs when democratic public schools close? Privatizing public education, so-called school choice, means drastic changes, as school officials grapple with the effects of school choice legislation.

Communities rally behind high school football in the fall, basketball during the winter, and track and field in the spring. Public schools might offer swimming, soccer, and other sports, critical for helping young people obtain college scholarships. Even though they aren’t easy to obtain, about 180,000 NCAA D1 and D2 student-athletes earn athletic scholarships each year.

School choice, including charter schools, vouchers, homeschooling, and open enrollment, alters who plays sports and undermines community pride in public schools. Defunding public schools ruins sports programs. Which students get access? Will only the wealthiest private schools get sports?

In 2023, West Virginia headlined How lawmakers helped ruin high school football in West Virginia reflecting on game “blowouts” in that state. When private schools corral all the best players, it changes the competition. It also makes for boring games. Brooke High Coach Mac McLean, whose team always struggled in the AAA class, said it’s only going to get worse: The rich will get richer and the poor will get poorer.

School choice crusaders seem not to have thought through what happens with sports. Olivia Nutter recently wrote in Athletics Directors 411:

Proponents of school choice argue that parents should be free to choose what’s best for their children, including athletic opportunities. But that freedom raises difficult questions about fairness and competitive balance. If top talent continually migrates to a handful of programs, the very structure of high school sports could change, creating a system where access to success depends less on effort and more on ZIP code flexibility.

Consider that between 2010–11 and 2021–22, 4,000+ public secondary schools closed due to declining enrollment, unaffordable housing, lower birth rates, and an overall defunding of public education by school privatizers seeking to create schools for profit.

Parental school choice is also deceptive. Private schools, not parents, ultimately choose students. Gifted athletes will likely be welcome at a private school that prioritizes sports. Wealthy private school teams will compete with other private schools, but what about students who never got swept up in the choice program, never got identified in their poor charter schools, or in their homeschools?

Undiscovered students who haven’t yet shown their prowess in sports may not have the opportunity to do so, relegated to a fledgling public school that has lost its resources, a charter school, or homeschool, where they remain unrecognized. What if they never get the opportunity to practice sports under the eyes of a good coach?

Charter schools often lack the budget or incentive to offer quality sports programs. Sports facilities, football fields, tracks, or access to swimming pools is costly. Some may rent facilities or partner with community organizations for practice, but this can be expensive.

States like Florida allow charter school and homeschool students (7.d) to participate in traditional public school sports, but this is controversial. It dismisses the community school pride factor, a significant all-American feature of school sports. If parents don’t want their child at that public school, take tax dollars elsewhere; why get the advantage of a public school sports program? What happens when the school ultimately closes?

Missouri is another state that permits homeschool students to participate in public education sports.

Students might also leave public school sports programs for sports clubs, which have become synonymous with college recruitment across areas, though in football, they appear less so.

Athletic organizations see the problems with school choice. Both the Oklahoma Secondary School Activities Association (OSSAA) and the Alabama High School Athletic Association (AHSAA) ran into difficulties with their states choice programs.

As one parent puts it:

Private schools often have access to resources that public schools do not – such as better facilities, more experienced coaches or even the ability to attract top talent through scholarships. This creates an uneven playing field during playoff competitions. According to a study by The Atlantic (2013), private high school students are over twice as likely as public school students to reach Division I college sports.

Some private schools are small and also lack resources, but will be expected to compete against wealthier private schools.

School board members in Hamilton, Tennessee, voiced concern that the state’s Education Freedom Scholarship, allowing students to attend private schools, siphons desirable athletes from public schools. They worry about a drop in public school attendance, likely related to the school choice program. Sports success skews toward wealthier super schools, leaving fewer high school teams for competition.

Texas exemplifies the problems school choice creates for sports. At 2.22 on the video below they discuss how football, basketball, and track, public school sports programs beloved in that state, could be affected. It might mean laying off school coaching staff.

Cultural overemphasis and concernsabout sports injuries leave critics to advocate for the end of school sports altogether. But athletics are an ingrained American tradition, and it’s hard to see public schools successfully survive without vibrant sports and extracurricular programs.

Sports aren’t only about making future successful athletes, of course. Students benefit physically and mentally, and team sports promote positive socialization and all around good health. Students learn how to win gracefully, build confidence, but also how to lose and accept defeat without always quitting.

But if public education is fully privatized, once unimaginable, public school sports could end. Most Americans are not on board for school choice and want to see better and more support of public schooling. The loss of sports might be added in as a reason to reject school choice. It may be time for pushback and Americans rallying around their democratic public schools. Could it be?

Consider Mississippi where football in small towns is called “the fabric of the community.” Parents worried about their public schools, and the Mississippi legislature recently killed the school choice bill which would have sent public school funding to private schools.

Maybe there’s hope, not only for school sports, team building, but for democratic public schools. Perhaps we’ll soon see a public school renaissance and a great refocus on the greatness of our country and its children and their schools, not only with sports but learning. Now that’s truly a winning idea!

Categories Accountability, Charters, Ethics, Home Schooling, Parents, Students, Vouchers

Federal Appeals Court Endorses Trump’s Harsh Immigration Policy

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2026 //
36

The Fifth Circuit Court of Apoeals ruled in favor of Trump’s deportation policy, even for immigrants who had committed no crimes and lived in this country for decades. In a split decision, 2-1, the Court gave Trump a victory in his efforts to remove immigrants.

Politico wrote:

A federal appeals court Friday night backed the Trump administration’s policy to lock up the vast majority of people it is seeking to deport without offering a chance for bond, even if they have no criminal records and have resided in the country for decades.

A divided three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals concluded that the administration’s view — a reversal of every administration’s position for the last 30 years — is the correct interpretation of the federal government’s power to detain people targeted for deportation.

“That prior Administrations decided to use less than their full enforcement authority … does not mean they lacked the authority to do more,” Judge Edith Jones, a Reagan appointee, wrote for the 2-1 majority.

The matter could soon be headed for Supreme Court consideration.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement adopted a new view of the law in July, prompting an explosion of arrests and detentions — and a flood of lawsuits from detainees who argued that they were illegally locked up without due process.

The vast majority of judges across the country have rejected the administration’s approach. A POLITICO review of thousands of ICE detention cases found that at least 360 judges rejected the expanded detention strategy — in more than 3,000 cases — while just 27 backed it in about 130 cases.

Jones was joined in the decision by Judge Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee. Judge Dana Douglas, a Biden appointee, said in a dissent that the panel’s view would require the detention of as many as 2 million immigrants residing in the United States without bond — “some of them the spouses, mothers, fathers, and grandparents of American citizens.”

So, it seems that the brutal tactics of ICE have won approval by the Fifth Circuit Court of Apoeals. The masked men may continue to break into homes, smash car window, and handcuff their prey, without due process, even though most of those they arrest have not committed crimes, and some are American citizens. It’s not the “worst of the worst” that Trump is deporting but people who are gainfully employed, who contribute to their communities, and who are good neighbors. Their “crime” is that they have not been able to master the maze of attaining citizenship.

Several years back, I employed a handyman who was very responsible and efficient. He was from Guatemala. He was very active in the local Catholic Church. He was a good worker on construction jobs, and his employer paid him $25 an hour. He did not have papers. I called an immigration lawyer and asked if I could help Jose get papers. He said “the only way you can help him get papers is to marry him. There is no other way.”

The problem was that I was married already, and so was Jose. Two years ago, Jose went home to Guatemala. His timing was excellent.

Categories Ethics, Immigration, Trump

After 40 Years as a Subscriber to The Washington Post, I Canceled My Subscription

By dianeravitch
February 6, 2026 //
17

I thought of canceling my subscription to The Washington Post when Jeff Bezos blocked the editorial board from endorsing Kamala Harris for President in 2024.

But I didn’t because there were so many writers whose work I appreciated, both opinion writers and news reporters. .

I have a special connection to The Washington Post.

I worked as a copyboy for The Post in the summer between my junior and senior years in college. It was a menial job but I loved it. It was a badge of honor (in my mind) to work there.

When my book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Chiice Are Undermining Education was published, Valerie Strauss of The Post decided to give the book maximum exposure. First, she interviewed me for Book TV, then she wrote a glowing review.

I read The Post everyday and enjoyed the reporting, the editorials, and the opinions.

But now, it is impossible to remain a subscriber after Jeff Bezos cut the heart out of the paper. Since he realized how vengeful Trump is, he became Trump’s sycophant. He hired a Murdoch guy as publisher. He hired a conservative as editor. He fired 1/3 of the news writers. He laid off bureau chiefs all over the world. His focus now is politics and national security.

As one ex-staffer put it, he murdered The Post. What was once was a great liberal (but not leftwing) newspaper is now a conservative paper. No more investigative reporting if the kind that toppled Nixon. No more deeply researched reporting from other nations.

He cut the heart out of the newspaper I loved to read for decades.

Jeff Bezos left a loyal reader like me no alternative. I canceled. There are so many other sources of news today that I don’t need to read a newspaper that sold out its principles.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Ethics, Media, Trump

Thom Hartmann on Trump’s New Grift

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2026 //
28

Donald Trump has learned one big lesson from his time in business and politics. Business is risky, politics is a sure thing.

As a businessman, Trump failed repeatedly. He filed for bankruptcy many times. His casinos failed; Trump Airlines failed; Trump steaks failed; Trump wines failed; Trump University failed. Whatever he started lost money. But then he played the part of a tycoon on “The Apprentice” and used that fame to launch his rub for the Presidency.

After he became President, the money came in like a gusher. Kings and potentates booked suites in the Trump Hotel close to the White House. They curried favor by spending at Trump properties. His second term is even more lucrative. He sued and won damages from ABC and CBS. Middle East leaders have made deals with the Trump Organization. Crypto is a bonanza. Meanwhile he sells a whole line of merch.

And now, as a private person, he and his two sons –Don Jr. and Eric–are suing the IRS and the Treasury Department for $10 billion because a contractor released his tax returns and embarrassed him, causing him grievous reputations harm.

But wait, the contractor leaked the truth, not a false and malicious lie. He leaked that Trump paid minuscule taxes in 2016 and 2017. In one year, $750; in the other, $0.

Trump and his sons claim that this truth was so embarrassing to them that the taxpayers should pay them $10 billion.

Do you think that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will fight his boss in court?

Thom Hartmann wrote about this stunning norm-breaker:

— Trump’s New Grift: A $10 Billion Demand for “Reputational Harm” After his Income Tax Avoidance Was Exposed. Seriously. A man is now serving a 5-year prison sentence for leaking Trump’s tax returns to the press in 2018, and he wasn’t even a federal employee; he worked for a contractor. But Trump still thinks his embarrassment when we learned he’s been a tax cheat most of his life is, Trump says, so severe that the American government must give him and his two oldest boys a massive pile of cash. This family never saw a grift it couldn’t embrace…

Categories Ethics, Evil, 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.

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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
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