Archives for category: Ethics
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

John Thompson: Who Caused the Havoc in Tulsa Schools?

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2025 //
7

John Thompson, historians and retired teacher, keeps us informed about the news from Oklahoma. In this post, he looks at the blame game surrounding the Tulsa public schools.

He writes:

As the Tulsa World recently explained, State Auditor Cindy Byrd issued a “scathing new forensic audit of Tulsa Public Schools” which “laid the blame on the administration of former Superintendent Deborah Gist, who served as Tulsa superintendent for the audited time of 2015-2023.” Byrd “also said multiple school district administrators ‘created and fostered a culture’ of noncompliance and systemic lack of internal controls that ‘potentially placed millions of taxpayer dollars in jeopardy.’”

I’m not qualified to comment on the financial side of the audit, but I strongly agree with the World that Byrd has an impeccable record as a financial auditor.

And as I completed this post, another impeccable institution, The Frontier, discovered, “Deborah Gist and her deputies were quietly arranging an exit plan for the official behind it (Fletcher) — and using secret payments to a private consultant to manage the transition, according to internal district records obtained by The Frontier.” It further explained: 

The newly obtained documents — including auditors’ notes and memos, internal district emails, and procurement records — shed new light on these gaps. They show that Gist and her deputies began planning Fletcher’s departure as early as December 2021, more than six months before the district reported his scheme to the police. 

Moreover:

Gist and former assistant superintendent Paula Shannon hired a New York-based human resources consultant, Talia Shaull, to manage Fletcher’s exit, paying her $175 per hour through the Foundation for Tulsa Schools, emails and contracts show. According to the documents, the arrangement to pay her directly through the foundation was designed “to avoid Board approval, keeping the project confidential” and violated district procurement policy.

Getting back to the history I witnessed, in 2019, a comment by a Tulsa teacher was posted on the Diane Ravitch blog with the title of Tulsa: Broadie Swarm Alert. It began with the teacher’s statement, “Welcome to my Hell in Tulsa.” The introduction explained that a Broadie “is someone ‘trained’ in the top-down management philosophy of Eli Broad at the unaccredited Broad Superintendents Academy. They are known for setting high goals and meeting none of them.”

In other words, their methods foreshadowed those of today’s Elon Musk.

The Broad Center was a “venture philanthropy” committed to everyone being on the same page for test-driven accountability, mass firings of teachers, and charter schools. It had an extensive record of spreading disruption, imposing script-driven instruction, and driving teachers out of the profession, while failing to improve student outcomes.

Byrd’s audit found that during the Gist administration the TPS “received payments totaling $554,772 from the Broad Center.  It “utilized at least 23 different vendors with Broad Academy connections. The majority of these vendors did not have a relationship with [the] TPS prior to the hiring of the Broad related alumni.” Moreover, the “TPS retained 33% of the employees who received the recruitment or retention bonus payments, 40% of these employees did not continue their employment for more than five years, with 25% remaining for less than two years.”

The audit and reporting on the Gist administration are consistent with my experience with Broadies, and their questionable approaches to data. During the first meeting I had with a consultant hired to implement their agenda, I showed him scatter-grams from the TPS web site that showed how difficult (or completely impossible) it would be to take into account the effect of the district’s segregation when trying to measure individual secondary school teachers’ effectiveness. He replied in a scientific manner, “Oh Sh__!” I repeatedly spoke with consultants who, like him and like me, could not get Gist or her Broadies to listen to social and cognitive science, or to teachers.

Similarly, when the OKCPS hired John Q. Porter, a Broadie from an affluent district’s finance department, he would blow off concerns expressed by my students, colleagues, and researchers. He was adamant in demanding frequent surprise visits by administrators and, then, placing a camera in every classroom so he could see if each teacher was teaching the same lessons in the same way according to the same schedule. Porter was forced to resign in less than a year due to seemingly small violations of district policy, but the Washington Post later reported that he had not properly divested from “Spectrum International, the document management company he founded in 1993.”

Finally, I’m not in a position to comment on the Tulsa World’s concern that Cindy Byrd, who is running for lieutenant governor, was being political when investigating diversity, equity and inclusion efforts,  and whether its funds could be “associated with violations of House Bill 1775.” The World acknowledged that Byrd “stops short of saying any law, such as the mean-spirited House Bill 1775 or Gov. Kevin Stitt’s order to report school DEI expenses, was violated.” It properly noted that, “Classifying DEI or HB 1775 programs is subjective, but it’s already being seized upon by anti-TPS and anti-public education critics.”

And that brings me back to the real harm done to Tulsa by the ideology-driven “Billionaires Boys Club” – not DEI. Back when Deborah Gist and her funders were imposing test-and-punish on schools, I found that many or most conservative legislators who I knew were opposed to the campaign to run schools like venture capitalist institutions. I hope they will remember that the real scandals that fostered a destructive culture that the audit documented were linked to corporate school reformers, not DEI or the efforts to defend meaningful teaching and learning in public schools.  

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Oklahoma, Tulsa

Hannah Szabó, a Transgender Woman, Describes Her Choices

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2025 //
7

Most of us have never met a transgender person. The first time I knowingly met a transgender person was 2016, in Los Angeles, where I met Caitlyn Jenner, once celebrated as the Olympic superstar Bruce Jenner. I attended a corporate luncheon, where she was the main draw for an audience of young people (of which I was not one).

Trump and his friends have made a major issue of demonizing trans men and women, although they are a tiny proportion of the population (1%?) and threaten no one. So far as I know, they are not murderers, rapists, or members of violent gangs. What they want is to live their lives in peace, without harassment.

My view, as I have often expressed in the comments section, is that it’s not up to me or you or Trump to tell them how to live. The decisions they make are not my business nor anyone else’s aside from their parents and medical professionals. In Caitlyn’s case, she decided to transition at the age of 65, a decade ago. She is a political anomaly, as she supported Trump in the 2024 election, despite the hysteria he promoted about trans people.

Here is a better representative of a trans woman: Hannah Szabó.

Hannah Szabó

A friend sent me a video of Hannah Szabó speaking at Central Synagogue in Manhattan on April 4. She is a senior at Yale. She is editor-in-chief of the Yale Historical Review and has a double major in Computing-&-Linguistics (B.S.) and Comparative Literature (B.A.).

Central Synagogue is a historic reform synagogue. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl is the first and probably the only Korean-American rabbi in the country. Both my sons celebrated their bar mitzvahs in this synagogue almost 50 years ago.

Please watch.

Categories Bigotry, Courage, Ethics, Gender

Joyce Vance: Stand Up and Speak Out for the Rule of Law!

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2025 //
5

Joyce Vance was the U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama. She writes a smart blog called Civil Discourse, in which she writes about court cases and the law, in language accessible to non-lawyers. In this post, she explains how massive protests can change the course of history.

She writes:

This coming Tuesday marks Donald Trump’s 100th day in office, a tenure that has led to a steady decline in the economy. If we use that measure, which many voters said led them to vote for Trump, these first 100 days have been a failure. Even as Trump has successfully seized power from Congress and some organizations have bent the knee to his every request, lawyers are winning in court, and some law firms, businesses, universities, and individuals are standing up to the president who would rather be a king. Trump may not have lost the first 100 days, but he hasn’t exactly won them either. Our democracy has been weakened, but it can still be saved.

Thursday is May Day, May 1st. There will be renewed protest marches across the country, many of them focused on Americans’ increasing awareness that the fundamentals of democracy, which we’ve taken for granted for so long, are in danger. It’s not just due process concerns, although that is an enormous part of it, as the deportations continue. Last week we learned that included some involved American citizen children and children with cancer, with Secretary Rubio offering a sorry rejoinder on Meet the Press this morning, blaming the mothers who took young children back to their countries of origin with them, rather than being forced to abandon them. There are plenty of reasons to march.

This will not be the first time Americans have engaged in mass protests on May Day. In 1971, tens of thousands of people took to the streets in Washington, D.C., to protest the Vietnam War. They began on May 3 and continued for two more days. By the time the protest ended, more than 12,000 protestors had been arrested. The protesters’ goal was to cause a traffic jam that would keep government employees from getting to work; their slogan was “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”

Mass protests that are large and sustained have an impact on even an entrenched presidency. They did with Nixon. The White House Historical Association’s official version of events concludes that “the enormity of the protest pushed Nixon to accelerate the nation’s exit from Vietnam.” 

Even though it’s a different era, protests are bound to get to the thin-skinned president whose staffers, during his first term in office, had to prepare folders of positive stories about Trump for him to review twice each day. Imagine having thousands of people protesting within earshot of the White House. It must be even more galling because these protests are nonviolent and aim to support democracy through a legitimate exercise of First Amendment rights. They make a powerful statement, in contrast to a president who has abandoned the rule of law. 

In 1970, two-thirds of Americans had come to believe U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War was a mistake. We are not quite there yet when it comes to people’s view of the Trump administration. The most recent NBC News Stay Tuned Poll shows only 45% of Americans approve of the job Trump is doing. But, when asked about how strongly they hold their beliefs about the president, “the vehemence of the opposition outweighs the intensity of support from the president’s MAGA base.” Twenty-three percent of Americans said they were “furious” about what Trump is doing.

Thursday is also Law Day, an annual celebration of the rule of law. Although it has been in effect since 1958, it doesn’t usually receive much attention. This year, lawyers across the country have big plans for the day—make sure you look to see what’s going on in your area. President Dwight Eisenhower established Law Day as a day of national dedication to the principles of government under law. State Bar Associations hold essay competitions for school children, and there are state and national dinners most years. In 2025, Law Day takes on special significance as Americans’ concerns about due process come to the forefront. How fitting that the May Day protests sync with the Law Day commemoration. 

I’ve been doing a lot of research and writing about the origins of Law Day for my book (Giving Up Is Unforgivable, due out October 21), so I’ll leave that for another time, but I want to make sure everyone knows about Law Day. This year, many lawyers across the country will retake their oath to show their support for the rule of law. There is no reason the rest of the country can’t participate too!

The president issues a proclamation every year for Law Day. Trump did during his first term in office, too. In 2019, the proclamation began, “On Law Day, we renew our commitment to the rule of law and our Constitution. The rule of law requires that no one be above the obligations of the law or beneath its protections, and it stands as a bulwark against the arbitrary use of government power.” Unfortunately, he never lived up to those sentiments. On Thursday, we can look for the proclamation and point out the inconsistencies between what we expect from our presidents and how this one is behaving. The hypocrisy is always full force, and we shouldn’t shy away from pointing it out.

Due process is the sleeper issue of the second Trump presidency. No one really expected democracy issues, let alone concepts like the rule of law and due process to animate a country’s protests. But it’s increasingly clear that Americans are smart, and when we are well-informed, we have no difficulty assessing what matters and what is true. We see more and more of that as Americans carry signs that say “No Kings” and “Due Process” at local rallies. All of us can be advocates for democracy, not just the lawyers among us.

Here at Civil Discourse, we all understand the importance of this. We need to make sure the rest of the country does too. Until the Trump administration is over, it has to be Law Day every day. 

In 2024, the Law Day theme was “Voices of Democracy,” recognizing that the people are the rulers in a democracy. Americans express their views without fear of retribution because of the First Amendment and vote in elections to select their leaders. It’s up to us to make sure it stays that way.

This week will bring more briefings in the Abrego-Garcia case and others. There will be outrages, like the fact that Trump has a website hawking merchandise, literally selling the presidency. It’s not just the $50 price tag on the hat; there’s also the slogan, “Trump 2028,” a reference to Trump’s not-so-subtle hints that he’d like to serve a Constitution-busting third term in office. It’s not a joke. It never is with him.

So, make sure you take some time this week to celebrate Law Day. Invite people over. Go for a walk with friends or neighbors and share your views. Talk with your kids. Democracy is not automatic; it’s a participatory sport we must all play in together, one with critically important outcomes. Democracy is important. Let’s make sure we play for keeps.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Samuel E. Abrams: The Mounting Trouble with Education Savings Accounts

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2025 //
8

Samuel Abrams has deep experience in the study of education privatization; for many years, he directed an institute on that subject at Teachers College, Columbia University. He is now working with the International Partnership for the Study of Educational Privatization.

He is also affiliated with the National Education Policy Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he published a new report on the problems with education savings accounts (aka, vouchers).

Read the report.

Here is his executive summary:

Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) were first enacted in Arizona in 2011 as a particularly deregulated way to offer vouchers for specific students, particularly those with disabilities. As opposed to conventional private school tuition vouchers, ESAs could be used to cover tuition plus a range of other educational services. Soon thereafter, four additional states substantially replicated this new form of funding. But in 2022, Arizona and West Virginia took ESAs to another level, constructing them as universal vouchers, with all students eligible to participate, without regard to family income, prior public school attendance, or student disability. ESAs in these states could be used to cover either tuition at minimally regulated private schools or pods (mini schools with children of likeminded parents); or costs associated with homeschooling, from books and online curricula to field trips and ancillary goods and services deemed essential. Nine states have since followed suit and more appear poised to do the same. These ESAs constitute a dramatic elevation of educational outsourcing, at once fulfilling Milton Friedman’s long-argued libertarian vision for vouchers and comport-ing with the Trump administration’s commitment to downsize government and let the market fill the void.

Because of the unregulated nature of ESAs, accountability issues quickly emerged regarding both spending and pedagogy. Proper monitoring of spending by parents dispersed throughout a given state, for so many different types of goods and services, has swamped the capacity of state offices. The same holds regarding accountability for the quality of instruction in private schools, pods, and homeschools now supported with taxpayer money.

Meanwhile, because ESAs and other voucher programs tend to serve families who have already opted for private schools or homeschooling, two fiscal outcomes have become apparent. First, the programs create a new entitlement burden for taxpayers; rather than merely shifting an existing subsidy from public to private schools, the programs obligate taxpayers to support new groups of students. Second, the new subsidies have incentivized private schools to bump up tuition, on the grounds that families now have extra money to pay the higher tuition.

In addition, ESAs impact public schools. These schools suffer when substantial funding follows students who use ESAs for homeschooling or attendance at private schools or pods. The stubbornness of fixed costs for core operations for public schools often necessitates cuts to staff, from teachers to nurses, and resources, from microscopes to musical instruments. The impact on rural public schools and thus rural civic life may be greatest. Charter schools and conventional vouchers have played little role in rural America, as filling seats in charter or private schools in sparsely populated parts of the country represents a steep challenge. But with ESAs, students may leave public schools for pods or homeschooling. If enough students leave some small rural schools, those schools will have to consolidate with schools in neighboring towns, meaning significant travel for students and the forfeiture of much community life.

As with conventional vouchers, ESAs can lead to inequities and discrimination in student admissions and retention. Few protections exist in private schools, particularly religious schools, against discrimination based on disabilities, religion, or sexual orientation. Participating schools have also been documented to push out low-achieving students, thus adding to the problem of concentrating these students in default neighborhood public schools. For faculty and most staff, participating religious schools also generally afford no protection from dismissal on the grounds of religious affiliation or sexual orientation.

.***************

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Given the damage Education Savings Accounts can do, the following measures are recommended:

State Departments of Education

• Implement stricter oversight of what goods and services may be purchased with ESA funds.

• Strengthen state capacity to monitor ESA-related purchases.

• Require publication of all participating schools, their graduation rates, and their availability to students with disabilities.

State Lawmakers

• Most importantly, legislators should repeal existing programs.

• If ESAs cannot be repealed in states where they have already taken hold:

o Oppose any expansion of these programs to include new groups or cohorts.

o Pass legislation that imposes clear budget and spending limits on ESA programs to rein in cost overruns that have become common with these programs.o Require stricter oversight of what goods and services can be purchased with ESA funds and strengthen state capacity to monitor ESA-related purchases.

o Mandate periodic audits of curriculum and instructional practices in ESA-receiving schools.

o Require ESA-receiving schools to hire certified teachers.

o Require ESA-receiving schools to conduct the same annual academic assessments that public schools are required to administer.

o Require ESA-receiving schools to abide by existing federal and state civil rights and anti-discrimination laws, especially related to students with disabilities and LGBTQ+ students and faculty.

o Require that any effort to create a new ESA program be subject to open public hearings and, if feasible, public referenda.

Local Government Officials

• In states where ESAs exist, document the effects these programs have on students, families, and local public schools.

• In these same states, seek legislation to alleviate negative effects.

• Engage in awareness-raising efforts, such as informing local constituents of the po-

tential harms of ESAs, especially in rural communities, and adopting resolutions opposing ESAs.

Categories Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Privatization, Research, Vouchers

Thom Hartmann: Why Pam Bondi Arrested Judge Dugan in Milwaukee

By dianeravitch
April 28, 2025 //
9

Thom Hartmann is a brilliant journalist who is fast to figure out the stories behind the headlines. Here, he explains why Attorney General Pam Bondi had Milwaukee County Jusge Hannah Dugan arrested and paraded her out of her courthouse in handcuffs. FBI Director Kash Patel tweeted pictures of the judge in handcuffs.

Hartmann writes that the goal was a warning to other judges:

The audience for Pam Bondi‘s performance yesterday — when federal agents swarm-raided a county judge — was not the general public. They don’t care if the story vanishes six or 12 or 24 hours into the news cycle, so long as vanishes. The real audience for their action was a very small number of people: the nation’s judges. They’ve pacified the Article I branch of government, Congress, and now they are in the process of pacifying the article III Judiciary branch. That will leave only the president in charge of the entire country under all circumstances in all ways. That is called dictatorship. Real dictatorship. Vladimir Putin style dictatorship. In fact it appears more and more every day that Putin is Trump’s mentor. If not his handler. And Trump is doing everything he can, with help from a South African billionaire, to destroy the traditional American infrastructure and nation and turn us into the newest member of the dictators club, joining Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Belarus, Hungary, and the rest of the fascist and authoritarian world. And to get there, now that they have pacified Congress, they only have to seize control of the Judiciary and then nothing except we the people will stand in their way. And they know it. First, terrorize Congress. Second, terrorize the media. Third, terrorize the judges and lawyers. (the final step in that process for them will be the Supreme Court, and if they can first terrorize the entire federal judiciary it will be much easier to terrorize the Court). And finally begin terrorizing the individual citizens until the process is complete and we are fully Russia and all dissent is suppressed. And they know that time is running out because elections are coming and their popularity is already crashing. They are at maximum power right now and it is beginning to decline. This is another reason why they are pushing so hard to frighten judges. If Trump can do this as quickly as Hitler or Putin did, it could happen very quickly, possibly even in the next few weeks. Buckle up…

Hartmann also wrote about Trump’s habit of lying:

Busted: Trump stuns Time Magazine with outlandish lies to cover up his trade deal collapse. Donald Trump has lied his entire life, but China’s President Xi is committed to not letting him get away with lying about his trade negotiations with that country. On Tuesday, Trump sat down with two TIME Magazine reporters and repeatedly lied to them, saying that he was negotiating with China and that he’d already cut “over 200” deals with other nations to resolve the trade war he declared roughly a month ago. In fact, as the reporters pointed out, he’s not inked even one single deal so far and, to make things far worse for him, China is actively using social media to tell the world that they’re not even bothering to talk with his people, must less President Xi calling Trump himself. We’ve had some terrible presidents throughout our history and some have done some terrible things; John Adams imprisoning newspaper editors, Andrew Jackson and the Trail of Tears, both Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan conspiring with foreign countries to steal American elections. But lying to the press and the people on such a routine basis — over 30,000 documented lies in his first term, and daily lies now — is something new in the American experience. Democracy can’t work when a nation can’t trust its leaders to tell them the truth on issues of consequence, which appears to be exactly Trump’s (and Putin’s) goal: the destruction of our republic from the inside, just as Khrushchev predicted.

Then Hartmann wondered why some of Trump’s Wall Street pals are getting stock tips:

Are Wall Street insiders getting stock tips from Trump? And why is Apple moving their production to India instead of the US? Fox’s senior business correspondent Charles Gasparino told his viewers on Thursday that “senior Wall Street execs with ties to the White House” had informed him that they were getting tips from the Trump administration on trade talks that could (and do) swing markets. When Gasparino approached Treasury Secretary and billionaire Scott Bessent’s press team, they refused to deny the reports. Remember when Martha Stewart went to prison for six months because a doctor friend told her about the results from clinical trials of a new drug and she passed that info along to her stockbroker? Hypocrisy doesn’t begin to describe the astonishing level of corruption across this administration. Of course, they have a hell of a role model to emulate in Donald Trump. Meanwhile, Apple reports they’re considering moving their iPhone production out of China in response to Trump’s tariff threats. But are they bringing it to Texas or Kentucky? Not a chance. India is the new destination, according to news reports. So much for Eisenhower’s “patriotic American companies”; that was so 1950s. The entire concept of doing good by the country that made you rich is long dead, the victim of the Reagan Revolution’s embrace of neoliberal free trade and doctrine of putting profits above people and patriotism.

As you read here, Michael Tomasky said that Trump was taking in millions from suckers by selling his meme coins, a for-profit deal that would have shocked the nation if it had been done by Biden or any other president.

Hartmann warns about the grifting, which the Mainstream Media doesn’t seem to care much about:

While America is burning (both economically and from climate change), professional grifter Trump is making out like a bandit. Are Americans paying attention yet? Can you imagine how Republicans would have responded if President Biden had announced that he and his son Hunter were going to start selling autographed pictures of himself for a few thousand dollars each and would be running the business out of the White House? And that the top purchasers — even if they were foreign nationals — would be having a private dinner with him and get a tour of the White House? They’d be fainting in the streets, screaming in front of the cameras, and convening investigations, grand juries, and criminal prosecutions faster than a weasel in a henhouse. But when Trump announced this week that he was selling his meme coins — which are just serial-numbered digital images of Trump or his wife with no intrinsic value — and the top 220 “investors” would have dinner with him, not even one elected Republican stood up to object. This is how far the party has fallen; they’re all in on the grift, and many are looking for ways to cash in on it as apparently Marjorie Taylor Greene did when it was reported it looked like she was buying and selling stocks based on insider information. 

Categories Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Justice, Lies, Trump, Tyranny

Jamelle Bouie: Trump Has No Interest in Governing

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2025 //
13

Jamelle Bouie, one of the most insightful columnists for The New York Times, observes that Trump has no interest in governing. He is interested in ruling. He thinks he has a mandate, even though he did not win 50% of the popular vote. He thinks his will is as powerful as law. He does not share power with Congress, and he’s testing how far he can go to diminish the courts.

Bouie reflects on Trump’s indifference to the other branches of Govenment in this newsletter:

I think it’s obvious that neither President Trump nor his coterie of agents and apparatchiks has any practical interest in governing the nation. It’s one reason (among many) they are so eager to destroy the federal bureaucracy; in their minds, you don’t have to worry about something, like monitoring the nation’s dairy supply for disease and infection, if the capacity for doing so no longer exists.

But there is another, less obvious way in which this observation is true. American governance is a collaborative venture. At minimum, to successfully govern the United States, a president must work with Congress, heed the courts and respect the authority of the states, whose Constitutions are also imbued with the sovereignty of the people. And in this arrangement, the president can’t claim rank. He’s not the boss of Congress or the courts or the states; he’s an equal.

The president is also not the boss of the American people. He cannot order them to embrace his priorities, nor is he supposed to punish them for disagreement with him. His powers are largely rhetorical, and even the most skilled presidents cannot shape an unwilling public.

Trump rejects all of this. He rejects the equal status of Congress and the courts. He rejects the authority of the states. He does not see himself as a representative working with others to lead the nation; he sees himself as a boss, whose will ought to be law. And in turn, he sees the American people as employees, each of us obligated to obey his commands.

Trump is not interested in governing a republic of equal citizens. To the extent that he’s even dimly aware of the traditions of American democracy, he holds them in contempt. What Trump wants is to lord over a country whose people have no choice but to show fealty and pledge allegiance not to the nation but to him.

What was it Trump said about Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, during his first term in office? “Hey, he’s the head of a country. And I mean he is the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different,” Trump said in 2018. “He speaks, and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”

He wants his people to do the same.

Ad

Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, History, Ignorance, Justice, Stupid, Trump

The Arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan Undermines the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2025 //
20

Trump’s FBI and ICE agents arrested Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Duggan in her courtroom and led her away in handcuffs because she sent a defendant out a back door. Trump officials said the judge was helping the defendant evade arrest, and they demonstrated that “no one is above the law” ( except Donald Trump). Critics said that Trump’s Department of Justice made a mockery of the law by arresting a judge.

See the comments of this Wisconsin Appeals Court judge who told CNN the Trump administration was sending a message to judges everywhere to bend to the will of the Trump administration. He was “appalled” that Judge Dugan was publicly humiliated, and that the director of the FBI Kash Patel posted a tweet of her being led away.

Judge Dugan told the agents that they should return with the correct warrant. One agent rode in the same elevator with the man sought by the Feds, but made no attempt to arrest him.

The New York Daily News editorial board said:

The FBI arrest of a Milwaukee local judge on felony counts related to immigration enforcement is an unwarranted and dangerous escalation by the Trump administration.

For the FBI to arrest someone at their workplace, they usually have to have been charged with something especially dire. For Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, this offense was allegedly refusing to hand defendant Eduardo Flores Ruiz, who had just had a hearing before the judge, over to an ICE task force that showed up in her courtroom. Dugan was charged with two federal felonies and taken into custody, which FBI Director Kash Patel gloated about on social media.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, for whom advancing the MAGA movement’s political agenda supersedes ensuring the equal and fair administration of justice, went on TV to say: “no one is above the law.” Aside from the dissonance of serving under a president who was only able to evade extremely serious federal charges by being elected to the White House, Bondi either doesn’t realize or doesn’t care that Dugan was in fact attempting to ensure the integrity of the legal process.

Flores may have been guilty of his misdemeanor charges, or he may not. The point of the proceedings before Dugan was to establish that and, if appropriate, what his punishment should be. Because of ICE’s detention, that won’t happen, which is bad for Flores, bad for any alleged victims — who won’t see justice — and bad for the larger community as immigrants and their families begin to see the courthouse as a dangerous place to be.

Having ICE at the courthouse means immigrants won’t report crimes, assist law enforcement, or show up for their own court hearings, which makes everyone less safe, not to mention completely undercuts the baseline American ideal of due process, not something that Bondi and her cadre seem to hold in very high esteem.

It’s ironic that Dugan was charged with “obstructing a proceeding” when the only people obstructing an official proceeding here were the task force that showed up to take Flores into custody. This task force, per the government’s own criminal complaint, consisted of just one ICE agent plus one Customs and Border Protection agent, two FBI agents and two DEA agents.

We wonder if six federal agents, four of whom are not in immigration-focused agencies, could have found a better use of their time than detaining a single person at a courthouse. Now, more federal resources will be wasted on this fiasco as the government tries to move forward with a prosecution of a sitting judge whose alleged crime was simply letting a defendant walk through a different hallway.

Patel, Bondi and Trump are overplaying their hand, especially as the president’s immigration policy approval keeps dropping amid public outrage over authoritarian assaults on due process and separation of powers. Going to war with the judiciary is not going to end well, especially given the volume of federal judges, including Trump-appointed and conservative judges and the Supreme Court’s own conservative majority, that are questioning the administration’s power grab.

Federal judges aren’t likely to look favorably on this flagrant assertion of power in arresting a popular county-level counterpart just for not letting her courtroom become an ICE staging ground.

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, Trump

Thomas Friedman: “I Have Never Been More Afraid for My Country’s Future”

By dianeravitch
April 23, 2025 //
6

Thomas Friedman is not an alarmist. He has been writing about foreign policy for The New York Times for many years. He has written about crisis after crisis. But now we are an unprecedented point in our history. An unhinged ignorant man is President. Probably he is being manipulated by others. And at times, he acts on whims and grievances.

On any day, he comes up with some dangerous idea. He is ruining most people’s life savings. Eliminating or disabling federal agencies. Attacking academic freedom; extorting major law firms and universities. Trampling on the rule of law and the Constitutuon. There is no rationale or ending to his madness.

Friedman admits he is fearful for the future of our country. So am I. Trump is demolishing all established relationships, antagonizing allies, aligning us with Putin’s goals, and breaking whatever he can. Why? Either he is crazy or stupid or acting on Putin’s behalf. I believe it’s all of the above.

Friedman writes:

So much crazy happens with the Trump administration every day that some downright weird but incredibly telling stuff gets lost in the noise. A recent example was the scene on April 8 at the White House where, in the middle of his raging trade war, our president decided it was the perfect time to sign an executive order to bolster coal mining.

“We’re bringing back an industry that was abandoned,” said President Trump, surrounded by coal miners in hard hats, members of a work force that has declined to about 40,000 from 70,000 over the last decade, according to Reuters. “We’re going to put the miners back to work.” For good measure, Trump added about these miners: “You could give them a penthouse on Fifth Avenue and a different kind of a job and they’d be unhappy. They want to mine coal; that’s what they love to do.”

It’s commendable that the president honors men and women who work with their hands. But when he singles out coal miners for praise while he tries to zero out development of clean-tech jobs from his budget — in 2023, the U.S. wind energy industry employed approximately 130,000 workers, while the solar industry employed 280,000 — it suggests that Trump is trapped in a right-wing woke ideology that doesn’t recognize green manufacturing jobs as “real” jobs. How is that going to make us stronger?

This whole Trump II administration is a cruel farce. Trump ran for another term not because he had any clue how to transform America for the 21st century. He ran in order to stay out of jail and to get revenge on those who, with real evidence, had tried to hold him accountable to the law. I doubt he has ever spent five minutes studying the work force of the future.

He then returned to the White House, his head still filled with ideas out of the 1970s. There he launched a trade war with no allies and no serious preparation — which is why he changes his tariffs almost every day —and no understanding of how much the global economy is now a complex ecosystem in which products are assembled from components from multiple countries. And then he has this war carried out by a commerce secretary who thinks millions of Americans are dying to replace Chinese workers “screwing in little screws to make iPhones.”

But this farce is about to touch every American. By attacking our closest allies — Canada, Mexico, Japan, South Korea and the European Union — and our biggest rival, China, at the same time he makes clear he favors Russia over Ukraine and prefers climate-destroying energy industries over future-oriented ones, the planet be damned. Trump is triggering a serious loss of global confidence in America.

The world is now seeing Trump’s America for exactly what it is becoming: a rogue state led by an impulsive strongman disconnected from the rule of law and other constitutional American principles and values.

And do you know what our democratic allies do with rogue states? Let’s connect some dots.

First, they don’t buy Treasury bills as much as they used to. So America has to offer them higher rates of interest to do so — which will ripple through our entire economy, from car payments to home mortgages to the cost of servicing our national debt at the expense of everything else.

“Are President Trump’s herky-jerky decision-making and border taxes causing the world’s investors to shy away from the dollar and U.S. Treasuries?” asked The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page on Sunday under the headline, “Is There a New U.S. Risk Premium?” Too soon to say, but not too soon to ask, as bond yields keep spiking and the dollar keeps weakening — classic signs of a loss of confidence that does not have to be large to have a large impact on our whole economy.

The second thing is that our allies lose faith in our institutions. The Financial Times reported Monday that the European Union’s governing “commission is issuing burner phones and basic laptops to some U.S.-bound staff to avoid the risk of espionage, a measure traditionally reserved for trips to China.” It doesn’t trust the rule of law in America anymore.

The third thing people overseas do is tell themselves and their children — and I heard this repeatedly in China a few weeks ago — that maybe it’s not a good idea any longer to study in America. The reason: They don’t know when their kids might be arbitrarily arrested, when their family members might get deported to Salvadoran prisons.

Is this irreversible? All I know for sure today is that somewhere out there, as you read this, is someone like Steve Jobs’s Syrian birth father, who came to our shores in the 1950s to get a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, someone who was planning to study in America but is now looking to go to Canada or Europe instead.

You shrink all those things — our ability to attract the world’s most energetic and entrepreneurial immigrants, which allowed us to be the world’s center for innovation; our power to draw in a disproportionate share of the world’s savings, which allowed us to live beyond our means for decades; and our reputation for upholding the rule of law — and over time you end up with an America that will be less prosperous, less respected and increasingly isolated.

Wait, wait, you say, but isn’t China also still digging coal? Yes, it is, but with a long-term plan to phase it out and to use robots to do the dangerous and health-sapping work of miners.

And that’s the point. While Trump is doing his “weave” — rambling about whatever strikes him at the moment as good policy — China is weaving long-term plans.

In 2015, a year before Trump became president, China’s prime minister at the time, Li Keqiang, unveiled a forward-looking growth plan called “Made in China 2025.” It began by asking, what will be the growth engine for the 21st century? Beijing then made huge investments in the elements of that engine’s components so Chinese companies could dominate them at home and abroad. We’re talking clean energy, batteries, electric vehicles and autonomous cars, robots, new materials, machine tools, drones, quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

The most recent Nature Index shows that China has become “the leading country globally for research output in the database in chemistry, earth and environmental sciences and physical sciences, and is second for biological sciences and health sciences.”

Does that mean China will leave us in the dust? No. Beijing is making a huge mistake if it thinks the rest of the world is going to let China indefinitely suppress its domestic demand for goods and services so the government can go on subsidizing export industries and try to make everything for everyone, leaving other countries hollowed out and dependent. Beijing needs to rebalance its economy, and Trump is right to pressure it to do so.

But Trump’s constant bluster and his wild on-and-off imposition of tariffs are not a strategy — not when you are taking on China on the 10th anniversary of Made in China 2025. If Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent really believes what he foolishly said, that Beijing is just “playing with a pair of twos,” then somebody please let me know when it’s poker night at the White House, because I want to buy in. China has built an economic engine that gives it options.

The question for Beijing — and the rest of the world — is: How will China use all the surpluses it has generated? Will it invest them in making a more menacing military? Will it invest them in more high-speed rail lines and six-lane highways to cities that don’t need them? Or will it invest in more domestic consumption and services while offering to build the next generation of Chinese factories and supply lines in America and Europe with 50-50 ownership structures? We need to encourage China to make the right choices. But at least China has choices.

Compare that with the choices Trump is making. He is undermining our sacred rule of law, he is tossing away our allies, he is undermining the value of the dollar and he is shredding any hope of national unity. He’s even got Canadians now boycotting Las Vegas because they don’t like to be told we will soon own them.

So, you tell me who’s playing with a pair of twos.

If Trump doesn’t stop his rogue behavior, he’s going to destroy all the things that made America strong, respected and prosperous.

I have never been more afraid for America’s future in my life.

Categories Democracy, Economy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Stupid, Trump, Tyranny

Will Ron DeSantis Outrun This Scandal?

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2025 //
11

Jason Garcia is an investigative reporter in Florida who has had plenty to investigate during the regime of Ron DeSantis. His blog is called “Seeking Rents.” This is a post you should not miss.

The governor acts like a dictator, and the Republican-dominated legislature doesn’t stop him. Remember the takeover of New College? It was the only innovative, free-thinking public institution of higher education in the state. It was tiny, only 700 students. But DeSantis took control of the college’s board, hired a new president (a crony) and set about destroying everything that made it unique. He issued one executive order after another for the entire state to crush DEI and assure the only permissible thought mirrored his own. He attacked drag queens and threatened to punish bars and hotels that allowed them to perform. He created a private army, subject only to his control. He selected politicians to run major universities. He imposed thought control on the state. Fascism thrives in Florida.

Thus far, he has gotten away with his gambits. But Garcia doesn’t think he will get away with this one.

He writes:

A simmering scandal erupted Friday afternoon when the Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald and Politico Florida revealed that the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated a $10 million payment last fall to a charity founded by the governor’s wife — which then turned around and gave the money to groups that helped finance the governor’s campaign against a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana in Florida.

In a nutshell: The DeSantis administration pressured a major state contractor to make a $10 million donation to the Hope Florida Foundation, the controversial charity spearheaded by First Lady Casey DeSantis. It was part of a settlement negotiated with Centene Corp., after the state’s largest Medicaid contractor overbilled the state by at least $67 million.

Days later, Hope Florida transferred that $10 million to a pair of dark-money nonprofits. The state-backed charity gave $5 million each to “Save Our Society From Drugs,” an anti-marijuana group founded by a late Republican megadonor, and “Secure Florida’s Future,” a political vehicle controlled by executives at the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Big Business lobbying group.

And days after that, Save Our Society From Drugs and Secure Florida’s Future gave a combined $8.5 million to “Keep Florida Clean,” a political committee — chaired by Ron DeSantis’ then-chief of staff — created to oppose Amendment 3, the amendment on last year’s ballot that would have allowed Floridians to use marijuana recreationally rather than solely for medicinal reasons.

It’s a daisy chain that may have transformed $10 million of public money — money meant to pay for health insurance for poor, elderly and disabled Floridians — into funding for anti-marijuana campaign ads.

DeSantis, of course, has repeatedly insisted that he did nothing wrong while also lashing out in increasingly vitriolic ways at everyone from the Republican speaker of the state House to the newspaper reporters digging into the story.

But at least one prominent GOP lawmaker — Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican who has been presiding over hearings into Hope Florida — told the Times and Herald that the transaction chain “looks like criminal fraud by some of those involved.”

Clearly, this looks very bad. But it is also by no means an isolated incident. 

In fact, this is part of a larger pattern of potential abuses that Ron DeSantis committed last fall when he chose to turn the power of state government against two citizen-led constitutional amendments that appeared on the November ballot: Amendment 3 and Amendment 4, which would have ended Florida’s statewide abortion ban.

Consider what we already know about how DeSantis financed his campaigns against the two amendments using public money taken from taxpayers — and private money taken from donors who got public favors from the governor.

  • Five state agencies directly funded television commercials meant to weaken support for the marijuana and abortion-rights ballot measures. We still don’t know the full extent of their spending, although Seeking Rents has estimated the total taxpayer tab at nearly $20 million. We also know that the DeSantis administration commandeered money for anti-marijuana advertising from Florida’s share of a nationwide legal settlement with the opioid industry — money that was supposed to be spent combatting the opioid addiction crisis.
  • At the same time, another nonprofit funded by Florida taxpayers poured at least $5 million into television ads attempting to soften Florida’s image on women’s healthcare at a time when Florida’s near-total abortion was under intense attack. It was the Florida Pregnancy Care Networks’ first-ever TV ad campaign. And its commercials, which were overseen by DeSantis administration staffers, complemented the state agency ads against the abortion-rights amendment — right down to using the same slogan.
  • Last June, after DeSantis vetoed legislation that would have strictly regulated the state’s hemp industry, CBS News Miami revealedthat industry executives and lobbyists promised to raise $5 million in exchange for the veto for the governor to spend on his campaign against Amendment 3. “Our lobby team made promises to rally some serious funding to stand with him on this,” a hemp industry representative wrote in one message that included a bank routing number for the Republican Party of Florida. “We have to pay $5 million to keep our end of the veto,” a hemp executive wrote in another message.
  • In the closing weeks of the campaign, records show that the Big Tobacco giant Philip Morris International gave $500,000 to DeSantis’ personal political committee — which was also chaired by the governor’s then-chief of staff and which DeSantis was using to campaign against both Amendment 3 and Amendment 4. Shortly after the election, the DeSantis administration handed Philip Morris a lucrative tax break, ruling that the company could sell a new line of electronically heated tobacco sticks free of state tobacco taxes.

There were other abuses of power, too. DeSantis and his team threatened to criminally prosecute television stations that aired ads supporting Amendment 4. They sent state police to the homes of Florida voters who signed Amendment 4 petitions. And they hijacked the ballot-writing process for Amendment 4.

There’s a reason why the DeSantis administration made sure to extract a promise of legal immunityfrom the organization that sponsored Amendment 4 as part of a legal settlement negotiated after the election.

DeSantis’ tactics worked. Though Amendments 3 and 4 each won majority support from Florida voters — 55.9 percent for recreational marijuana, 57.2 percent for abortion rights — both fell short of the 60 percent support needed to amend the state constitution.

But, suddenly, it looks like this may not be over — at least not for Ron DeSantis.

House Republicans are seeking troves of records from the DeSantis administration, including text messages and emails related to Hope Florida. The chamber has also scheduled another hearing on the Casey DeSantis charity next week.

What’s more, the House also unveiled a sweeping ethics reform package last week that would, among other things, explicitly expose senior government officials to criminal penalties if they interfere with elections.

That particular legislation would also prohibit state employees from soliciting money for political campaigns — an idea that emerged after DeSantis aides got caught squeezing lobbyistsfor more donations to their boss’ political committee ahead of a possible Casey DeSantis campaign for governor….

Ron DeSantis bet his political future on beating the marijuana and abortion-rights amendments. And he won both of those battles.

But it may turn out that he ultimately lost the war.

Wishful thinking? I hope not.

To give you an idea of how far/right the legislature is, Garcia lists some of the bills that are currently moving through the legislative process:

  • House Bill 549: Requires all new public school textbooks to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Passed the Senate by a 28-9 vote. (See votes) Previously passed the House of Representatives by a 78-29 vote. (See votes) Goes to the governor.
  • House Bill 575: Replaces Gulf of Mexico with “Gulf of America” in state law. Passed the Senate by a 28-9 vote. (See votes) Previously passed the House of Representatives by a 78-27 vote. (See votes) Goes to the governor….
  • House Bill 1517: Allows someone to file a wrongful death lawsuit seeking lost wages on behalf of an embryo or fetus. Passed the House of Representatives by a 79-32 vote. (See votes)…
  • House Bill 7031: Cuts the state sales tax rate from 6 percent to 5.25 percent. Passed the House of Representatives by a 112-0 vote. (See votes)
  • House Bill 123: Allows a traditional public school to be converted into a charter school without the consent of the teachers who work at the school. Passed the House Education & Employment Committee by an 11-4 vote. (See votes)

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read

Politico: MAGA Loyalist Describes a Month of Chaos at the Pentagon

By dianeravitch
April 21, 2025 //
11

A Trump loyalist wrote an article in Politico blaming Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth for chaos and dysfunction at the Defense Department.

Before he was confirmed by the Senate, critics warned that the FOX News host had minimal administrative experience and was completely unqualified to lead one of the nation’s largest bureaucracies. He had run two small veterans’ groups into the ground and was fired from both.

In addition, the media reported that Hegseth conducted yet another Signal chat about bombing targets that included unauthorized people, including his wife, his brother, his personal lawyer, and a dozen other friends.

In the following article, John Pullyer predicts that Trump will replace Hegseth swiftly.

John Ullyot is former chief Pentagon spokesman and led communications at the National Security Council and the Department of Veterans Affairs in President Donald Trump’s first term. He resigned from the Pentagon last week. He was a senior communications adviser on Trump’s 2016 campaign.

It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president — who deserves better from his senior leadership.President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his top officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth remaining in his role for much longer.

The latest flashpoint is a near collapse inside the Pentagon’s top ranks. On Friday, Hegseth fired three of his most loyal senior staffers — senior adviser Dan Caldwell, deputy chief of staff Darin Selnick and Colin Carroll, chief of staff to the deputy secretary of Defense. In the aftermath, Defense Department officials working for Hegseth tried to smear the aides anonymously to reporters, claiming they were fired for leaking sensitive information as part of an investigation ordered earlier this month.

Yet none of this is true. While the department said that it would conduct polygraph tests as part of the probe, not one of the three has been given a lie detector test. In fact, at least one of them has told former colleagues that investigators advised him he was about to be cleared officially of any wrongdoing. Unfortunately, Hegseth’s team has developed a habit of spreading flat-out, easily debunked falsehoods anonymously about their colleagues on their way out the door.

On Friday, POLITICO reported that Hegseth’s chief of staff, Joe Kasper, was leaving his role. Kasper had requested the investigation into the Pentagon leaks, which reportedly included military operational plans for the Panama Canal and a pause in the collection of intelligence for Ukraine.

Hegseth is now presiding over a strange and baffling purge that will leave him without his two closest advisers of over a decade — Caldwell and Selnick — and without chiefs of staff for him and his deputy. More firings may be coming, according to rumors in the building.

In short, the building is in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership.

Categories Accountability, Character, Disruption, Ethics, Failure, Trump
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »