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Jamelle Bouie on the Real Natalie Harp Scandal

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2026 //
2

For several days, a relatively unknown White House aide became a very well-known White House aide. Until recently, few people knew the name Natalie Harp. Now she is front-page news across the country.

While some writers have speculated about the relationship between the aging Trump and his attractive young assistant, New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie says that salacious speculation misses the real scandal. Harp filters the news that Trump gets. She gives him good news. She posts items on his social media. She even communicates with foreign powers on his behalf. She is one of the most powerful people in the government. CNN reported that she posted scores of tweets supporting Trump on January 6, 2021, urging readers to fight for him and overturn “the steal.” Those tweets have since been deleted.

This is not normal, unless you hearken back to the time when Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke, and his wife acted on his behalf.

Bouie writes:

Last month, after a warning that there might be an Iran-sponsored attempt on his life, President Trump secretly left Air Force One for a military jet when he was leaving the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey. His Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his key deputy, Stephen Miller were left to fly on Air Force One.

Who did Trump bring on his emergency departure plane? There was Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth; a White House aide, Dan Scavino; and Natalie Harp, the president’s executive assistant.

Harp was in the news this week after Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia mentioned her in a stump speech, as an aside to an attack on Trump. “And while the sailors on the Lincoln fight his war, while he fruitlessly drains our munitions and oil reserves, the president sleeps through his meetings,” Ossoff said. “See, he doesn’t want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar.”

The White House pounced, attacking Ossoff in crude, juvenile terms. But rather than change the subject, the ferocity of the response drove new questions about Harp’s role and relationship to the president. On MSNOW, my Times newsroom colleague Maggie Haberman referred to Harp as the president’s “comfort blanket.” And that role appears to include information management, as Haberman noted in an article she wrote with Shawn McCreesh:

As long as Ms. Harp is around, he enjoys an unvetted flow of information, some of it poisonous and counterproductive, at least as far as a number of his other advisers are concerned. She supplies him with content she fishes out of the social media gutter (like the video he posted depicting the Obamas as apes) and provides him with a view from the world outside official Washington, of which he has always been mistrustful. Her moniker is “the human printer,” because she tails the president with a portable printer so she can hand him information in hard copy.

Harp posts on social media in Trump’s name and even responds to foreign leaders in his name. She spends more time with Trump than any other aide and reports exclusively to him and no one else.

If the presidency is a job of crisis management, in which the principal task is to deal with an endless number of fires of various sizes and scope, then the most important thing a president can have is good information, to help him know what to handle, what to delegate and what to delay.

If Harp has as much control over Trump’s information environment as she appears to hold — if she is the one shaping his sense of the outside world — then it is entirely reasonable to say that Natalie Harp is one of the most powerful people in the United States.

The reason the Harp story has caught fire is that it is salacious — the elderly president spends nearly all of his waking hours with a young, attractive aide — but the reason it matters is that it is further confirmation of one essential fact of the Trump White House: that the president exists in a degraded, chaotic information environment.

He rejects information that is gathered and collected for the purpose of informing him and is highly reliant, instead, on counsel from people who have no incentive to contradict him and every incentive to tell him what he wants to hear or what they want him to hear. Trump has dismantled every institutional structure designed to curb the worst aspects of the presidency — a tendency toward isolation and groupthink — and has instead sunk deeper into his own propaganda and invented reality.

Harp, it appears, is a key part of that. A total devotee, she shapes his world. The result is a chief executive who is detached from the information he needs to avoid disaster, much less successfully govern the country. Accordingly, Trump has neither avoided disaster nor managed to put the country on stable footing. Instead, he is carelessly careening toward catastrophe. So far, it’s only been a matter of luck that we haven’t crashed.

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Trump

Pentagon Fires Leadership of “Stars and Stripes” for Exercising Freedom of the Press

By dianeravitch
August 24, 2026 //
3

Pete Hegseth has made clear his determination to control press coverage of his actions. He decided which media would get space in the press rooms of the Pentagon, kicking out some established journalists to make room for right-wing journalists. He tried to monitor all information coming from the Pentagon.

This week, he fired the leadership of the military’s “Stars and Stripes,” which has always enjoyed editorial independence. Hegseth can’t tolerate that. He wants total control.

Although he was a talking head on FOX, he has no respect for freedom of the press.

The New York Times reported:

The Defense Department on Friday fired the publisher and the editor in chief of Stars and Stripes, a government-funded news outlet that reports on the U.S. military, according to a senior Pentagon official and the dismissed journalists.

The firings raised questions about the Pentagon’s willingness to ensure the editorial integrity of the publication that has reported extensively on difficulties faced by military communities as the war in Iran has dragged on. The terminations came about 10 days after Stars and Stripes journalists reported on hardships that Navy sailors were facing on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, the aircraft carrier whose deployment was extended to nine months amid the war.

On Friday, the Pentagon sent termination notices to Erik Slavin, the editor in chief, and Max Lederer, the publisher, who had announced his retirement earlier this week, citing conflict with the Pentagon leadership on the paper’s direction. Lara Korte, a Middle East correspondent at the news outlet, was also fired on Friday, according to the official and a post she made on social media.

The Defense Department declined to comment. Capt. William Urban, the military deputy to the publisher who was brought to the role earlier this month, said in a letter published on Friday that his priority was to ensure “the highest quality of editorially independent reporting” at Stars and Stripes. Captain Urban’s previous role was as a senior spokesman for the Pentagon….

Why it matters:

“Stars and Stripes” is supposed to be an independent news organization for the military, not a propaganda mouthpiece for the Pentagon.

The ouster of the leadership of “Stars and Stripes” is a plain effort to muzzle the publication and turn it into a lapdog for Pete Hegseth.

This is a brief overview of how “Stars and Stripes” won its editorial independence, as told by blogger TCinLA:

In 1944, General George S. Patton Jr. was very upset with a 22-year old Sergeant who drew cartoons for “Stars and Stripes”. The Sergeant was Bill Mauldin, creator of two cartoon characters, Willie and Joe, who were considered to be the voice of American GIs on the front lines. Willie and Joe were always tired, needed a shave, were wearing the filthy fatigues they lived in on the front lines in Italy, and viewed the U.S. Army as a more threatening personal enemy than the Wehrmacht. The GIs agreed with everything they said. By 1945, the war in Europe was a slog through the coldest European winter in a century. In March 1945, General Patton summoned Mauldin to his Luxembourg headquarters, where over 45 minutes he accused Sgt. Mauldin of inciting mutiny and destroying military discipline through his unkempt character portrayals. Mauldin defended his work as a “safety valve” for combat infantrymen, resulting in a tense 45-minute standoff that ended in a stalemate.

It took an intervention by Supreme Allied Commander Dwight Eisenhower to protect Mauldin and preserve the editorial independence of “Stars and Stripes,” preventing Patton from banning the paper or jailing the cartoonist. Eisenhower fiercely believed that “Stars and Stripes” should belong entirely to the front-line troops, famously declaring: “This newspaper should be the equivalent of a soldier’s hometown newspaper, with no censorship of its contents, other than for security.” Ike recognized that Willie and Joe served as a vital, non-destructive psychological safety valve. He knew that letting G.I.s laugh at their miserable conditions and blow off steam about overbearing officers actually preserved army morale. Too bad the current dildo running the Pentagon and his short-fingered thin-skinned felonious boss are too fucking stupid to understand that Eisenhower was smarter than all ten of them combined.

Originally when it was created by Congress in 1942, Start and Stripes occupied a unique place in American journalism: funded by the government, read by the military, but mandated by law to report the news independently, without editorial interference. This was because the America that could actually win wars believed US servicemen deserved real news, not Pentagon horseshit. (That happens to still be the law, should any congressional moron care to see it enforced.)

Cartoonist Bill Mauldin won a Pulitzer Prize for his work in “Stars and Stripes.”

You should read the full post by TCinLA, which reports on the recent episodes of censorship by the Trump administration, some of which have succeeded, others that have not.

Categories Censorship, Ethics, Freedom of the Press

Board of Kennedy Center Votes to Put Trump’s Name on the Building Again, Defying Court Order

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2026 //
12

One of Donald Trump’s first acts when he returned to the Presidency was to take full control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. During his first term in office, Trump never attended any event at the Kennedy Center.

In 2025, Trump fired its board of directors, all except members of Congress, whom he can’t fire. He replaced the bipartisan board with his cronies, who promptly named Trump the chairman of the board. The board proceeded to fire the professionals who ran the Center and to adopt a resolution renaming the Center. Henceforward, the board decreed, the Center would be known as the John F. Kennedy and Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts.

That decision led the Center into a spiral of decline. Many performers and shows cancelled. The Washington National Opera moved out. Ticket sales dropped.

The Kennedy Center suffered incalculable reputation damage after he politicized it. Why did he do it?

Despite his wealth and notoriety, Trump was never accepted into the world of high culture in New York City. He was never invited to serve on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, or any of the city’s other prestigious institutions of high culture. Nor was he known as a donor to those institutions.

He built his brand as a brash businessman who hung out in night clubs with mobsters and beautiful women and sought recognition in the gossip columns of the city’s tabloid press. He was rich, and he was a celebrity, but he was never admitted into elite circles.

His vendetta against the Kennedy Center should be seen in that perspective.

His puppet board at the Kennedy Center did his bidding. In addition to adding his name to the facade of the building, the board decided to close the Center for two years for repairs and renovations. The closure would halt the embarrassment of canceled performances and empty seats. Some critics worried that Trump would tear down the Center as he tore down the East Wing of the White House. Act fast and don’t apologize.

One board member, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio, sued to stop the board’s decision to rename the Center and also to close it for two years for Trump-directed “renovations.”

U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled on May 29, 2026, that the Kennedy Center board did not have the legal authority to rename the institution. He said that Congress had established the name by statute and only Congress could change it. He ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the building and from all official Kennedy Center materials. Judge Cooper gave the board a deadline of 14 days.

The Kennedy Center board considered an appeal to delay or reverse the order but ultimately complied. Workers began on June 12 to erect scaffolding in front of the building, moving at a snail’s pace, and began removing Trump’s name at 1:20 a.m. on June 13.

Since then, the facade of the building that shows its name has been covered by white tarps.

At first, Trump petulantly said that Congress should run the Kennedy Center, but he soon reverted to control mode.

On August 13, 2026, the Kennedy Center board voted to put Trump’s name back on the building. It wants to add an inscription saying the center was “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” despite Judge Cooper’s earlier ruling. And it voted to name the large plaza in front of the Center for Trump. It also voted to close the Center for two years, which Judge Cooper said it could not do without more detailed plans and reasons.

Congresswoman Joyce Beatty is suing to reverse the board’s defiance of Judge Cooper’s May 29 decision.

At the same time, the Trump administration is appealing Judge Cooper’s original order.

Judge Cooper could hold the board in contempt of court. Or he could order them not to change the name, as he did in May. Or he could accept the new wording for the facade, which seems unlikely. Or the board could challenge Judge Cooper’s decision to higher courts. Or Congress could step in and rewrite the statute so that Trump could add his name.

Why is the board so insistent on honoring Trump? His hand-picked President Richard Grennell praised Trump for “his visionary leadership.” Board members appointed by him have lavished praise on him.

Trump needs this sycophantic behavior. At his Cabinet meetings, Cabinet secretaries mouth the same obsequious language, stoking his ego, which is insatiable.

Why does this squabble over the Kennedy Center even matter? The U.S. is stuck in a war with Iran that has caused loss of life, depleted our supply of weapons, and harmed the global economy by limiting the flow of oil.

But Trump is deeply engaged in his vanity projects, of which this is one. He is obsessed with his ballroom, which has been stopped by the courts temporarily but is under construction. He assumes it will be known as “the Donald J. Trump Ballroom” forever. He intends to build a 250′ triumphal Arch, despite overwhelming public opposition. He ripped out Jackie Kennedy’s rose garden and paved it over.

He’s doing something to the portico of the White House, but it is hidden by huge shrouds. He is installing a permanent helipad on the White House grounds. He is renovating the Lincoln Bedroom into who-knows-what. He wants to paint the historic grey granite Eisenhower Office Building white, although preservationists have warned him against it (the paint won’t last and it is likely to damage the granite).

All of this is about leaving a permanent mark on D.C. He was not engaged in vanity projects during his first term. Now, at the age of 80, aware of his mortality, he is obsessed by his passion to create a permanent legacy.

Of the many monuments in Washington, D.C., that honor presidents–the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Kennedy Center–all were created after the honoree was dead.

Perhaps Trump, who is deeply insecure despite his braggadocio, is afraid he won’t be honored after his death. He remains angry that he never was accepted into the top ranks of New York City’s elite. They treated him like scum. That may be why he is so intent on building Trump monuments while he can.

Act first, get permission later from commissions packed with your flunkies.

Categories Art, Corruption, Ethics, History, Trump

Jan Resseger: The Trump Administration’s War on Children

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2026 //
1

Jan Resseger keeps a steady focus o what matters most in a decent society: the well-being of children. Trump and his minions don’t care. Not about children. Not about the rule of law. Not about democracy. Trump cares about greed and self-enrichment. He seems to care about his children. He cuts them in on the grift. His youngest son Barron is said to be worth $150 million. But he doesn’t care about yours.

The fact that he just issued guidance on childhood vaccinations, which reduces mandated vaccines and puts America’s most vulnerable at risk of serious illness and death, tells you all you need to know about this scientifically ignorant man.

Jan writes:

Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan’s important new book, Regime Change, explores how the second Trump administration functions—the cast of characters, their relationships, and their operational style. A reader is also exposed, however, to the President’s and the administration’s big policy concerns—imposing tariffs, ridding the country of immigrants, ending nuclear weapons in Iran, proclaiming that everything is more affordable, and ending the public’s fixation on Jeffrey Epstein. These issues have also been widely covered broadly in the news.

Here are topics that do not appear at all in Regime Change‘s index: children, public education, CHIP, SNAP, Head Start, or Child Care.  There is not even a mention of Trump’s tuition tax credit private school vouchers launched in the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” The issue of birthright citizenship is mentioned in the index only as a subhead under immigration, and in the book itself birthright citizenship is covered only in one sentence describing its proposed elimination by an early Trump executive order. In the index, there is only one page citation to the U.S. Department of Education itself, but the reference is to brief coverage of the administration’s attempt to eradicate “diversity, equity, and inclusion” at Harvard University.

The lack of regular news coverage—particularly in the local newspapers—about Trump’s damaging public education policy and the administration’s failure to protect children’s well-being and children’s rights does not, however, mean that these issues have been untouched by Trump administration policy. For those of us who do not need CHIP or SNAP, who can afford quality child care and preschool, whose children attend well-funded public schools, whose families have been citizens for generations, however, there is minimal exposure to the Trump administration’s threats to the institutions on which vulnerable families and children depend.

Just this past week the Trump administration took two steps that, if they do come to pass, will seriously impact some of our society’s most vulnerable children—poor children benefiting today from Head Start, and the children of immigrants from whom the President is once again trying to steal the protection of birthright citizenship. First Focus on Children’s President Bruce Lesley has identified what he calls the Trump administration’s “organized abandonment” of the needs and rights of our society’s most vulnerable children.

The Trump administration attempted to destroy Head Start.     At the end of last week, the Trump administration formally proposed new federal administrative guidance to deregulate the quality of Head Start programs that currently serve 700,000 children across the United States.  The destruction of Head Start had been predicted early last week but on Thursday in a notice in the Federal Register, the administration formally proposed radically diminishing 133 pages of rules that have shaped Head Start since it was established in 1965 as a centerpiece of Lyndon Johnson’s War on Poverty.  The Center on Law and Social Policy explains that the proposed new rules are being disguised by the administration with language describing “an effort to ‘streamline,’ ‘enhance,’ and ‘modernize’” the program.  Politico‘s Mackenzie Wilkes reports: “The Heritage Foundation has long called for the elimination of Head Start, but the conservative group published a report last month saying the program should be deregulated in many of the ways the proposed rule suggests while ‘officials work to end the program.’ ”

The Associated Press‘s Moria Balingit outlines the changes the new rules would prescribe: “Head Start… is currently governed by more than 100 pages of regulations… (which) require centers to have low staff-to-student ratios and a research-backed curriculum, among other things, and they ensure centers are providing wraparound services that are critical to children in poverty, including medical and dental screenings and parent coaching. The proposal would toss out nearly all of that rule book. Education Week”s Elizabeth Heubeck adds: “The new proposal would require (that) all classroom instruction be conducted in English, except for immersion programs operated on Native American tribal lands. An estimated 30-35% of children enrolled in the Head Start program are dual language learners.”  The program would also exclude many non-citizen children and children in some immigrant families.

While Congress establishes federal departments and the specific offices within the departments, the legislative branch has no power over the executive branch’s right to establish formal administrative rules and guidance.  It is possible that the rules announced in last week’s Federal Register can be challenged in court, and it is also possible, of course, that public outrage might cause the Trump administration to modify the new rules during the 60 day period when the public is invited to submit public comments before the rule becomes final. A future President, of course, could replace the Trump administration’s new rules.

President Trump signed two new executive orders to undermine birthright citizenship.     Last Thursday, The Washington Post‘s Isaac Arnsdorf, Justin Jouvenal, and David Nakamura reported: “President Donald Trump took another stab at restricting automatic citizenship for people born in the United States after the Supreme Court rejected his earlier attempt. In two executive orders signed Thursday, Trump reached for different legal maneuvers to test the limits of the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship. The first order said children would be ineligible if born to ‘alien enemies,’ members of foreign terrorist organizations, or foreign lobbyists. The second order said children of people who fraudulently request tourist visas for the purpose of giving birth in the U.S. would not become citizens… The new orders marked a fresh effort to… deliver on a campaign promise by expanding the categories of people who the administration argues fall outside the constitutional guarantee.”

The reporters quote legal experts who doubt that the first executive order could survive a legal challenge: “An estimated 15 million undocumented immigrants live in the U.S., while only a few thousand people are foreign lobbyists registered with the Justice Department. No significant populations of U.S. residents are designated as alien enemies or foreign terrorists, making that provision largely symbolic.”

The reporters attribute the second executive order to White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, who has made stopping “birth tourism” a priority. They provide data to demonstrate that what is called “birth tourism” is relatively infrequent. “In 2024, fewer than 10,000 babies were born in the U.S. to people with foreign addresses, out of 3.6 million total live births.”

None of the legal experts the reporters quote believes that either of these executive orders would be upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court or would challenge in any way what Chief Justice John Roberts declared in his June 30, 2026 decision in Trump v. Barbara: “Children born in the United States to parents unlawfully or temporarily present are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and are citizens at birth under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Citizenship Clause.”

First Focus on Children’s Bruce Lesley believes that both of  last week’s executive orders are seriously misguided: “The legal question isn’t simply what the government thinks about immigration. It’s whether an innocent child can lose fundamental rights grounded in the Constitution because of something government officials allege about a parent’s conduct and intent… The latest effort to gut a fundamental constitutional operating principle since our nation’s founding has been written clearly in the Constitution since 1868, is being sold to the public with pathetic history and legal arguments the Supreme Court itself rejected 128 years ago and early this year. Every administration has the authority to enforce immigration laws. However, none has the authority to rewrite the Constitution… by redefining which babies they deem are precious and which are pushed into the shadows of our society.”

Although there has obviously been some news coverage of the week’s public policy initiatives impacting our society’s children, the well-being of our children is neither the top policy concern for officials in the Trump administration nor the top story for the reporters who track the administration’s agenda. Because the needs of children are definitely not the primary lens through which the Trump administration views and conceptualizes our society’s important needs, it is especially important to watch for news about children’s welfare, their rights, and the enormous institution of public schools that serves the mass of our children

Categories Accountability, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Education Industry, Environment, Ethics, Evil, For-Profit, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Health, Science, Trump

Thom Hartmann: Trump Finds New Ways to Grift and Grab

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2026 //
6

Thom Hartmann is a diligent journalist who digs deep into the corruption of this regime.

On the deregulation of public lands: Trump is allowing destruction of parts of Big Bend National Park, to make way for its exploitation. No complaints from Texas Governor Greg Abbott.

He writes:

— Trump has figured out a way to grift off the plight of immigrant kids. A Texas law firm with virtually no immigration experience, but multiple people close to Trump or accused of being open racists, just got a $150 million sole-source contract to replace the public defenders defending kids being held in Trump’s concentration camps for brown-skinned people. Meanwhile, ICE says that, sure, they’ll wear body cameras when they beat up and murder people, but they’ll only share those videos when they make them look good. Don’t expect to see any released that actually show criminal activity by armed, masked ICE thugs. Sounds over the top? Here’s their exact language: they’ll only release body camera footage when “it is in the best interests of the agency.” Trump has built his SA/SS force of violent, unaccountable modern-day Klan members to intimidate and even kill anybody who dares defy this regime, and it’s not about to start following the law or even behaving morally any time soon. 

— Trumponomics is even worse than Hoovernomics or Reaganomics. Since he fired his statistics person at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and replaced her with a hand-picked toady, the numbers have been looking weird. For example, the regime reported 57,000 new jobs in May, then later quietly revised that down to 20,000 (although the headlines of 57,000 are still out there); they reported 129,000 new jobs for June, then quietly revised that down to 63,000 (ditto on the headlines). And this week we found that instead of the anticipated creation of 80,000 new jobs, the American economy actually lost 23,000 jobs last month (and expect that number to get worse when they “revise” it in 2 months). No matter how hard they try, they can’t keep Americans from noticing that housing, groceries, gas, transportation, drugs, medicine, and pretty much everything else are more expensive while billionaires and the Trump Crime Family get richer and Republicans continue to refuse to allow an increase in the minimum wage or the right to unionize. Eventually, reality catches up with politics, no matter how fast and furious Trump and his lickspittles try to keep us distracted or hating on each other, and hopefully it’s going to catch up in a big way this November. 

— Over at Montana Dispatch, Ryan Busse lays out the five Big Lies Republicans are using to steal our public lands. Utah’s Republican Senator Mike Lee, for example, recently lied to his constituents that the Bear’s Ears and Grand Staircase Escalante national monuments President Obama designated were brought into being no public comment or input when, in fact, over 2.7 million people weighed in during the comment period. Another Big Lie is that we must let drilling companies exploit our public lands to become “energy independent,” a designation we reached during the Obama years. They’re also trying to tell us that the way to prevent forest fires isn’t to cut back on climate-change-causing CO2 from burning fossil fuels but, instead, to log those trees and leave behind nude wastelands (which actually catch on fire even more easily, because all the wood debris there is dead). Trump — who’s probably never walked through an old-growth forest in his life — tried pitching the lie that people can’t and don’t use our public lands for recreation like camping and fishing. And they try to tell us that we’re not subsidizing the oil and cattle industries with our public lands when in fact we’re handing them the equivalent of billions of dollars every year. Hopefully one of these days there’ll be a cost to these Republicans for the continuous streams of lies they keep pouring out on dozens of topics. 

— Trump has figured out a new grift to let his oil company donors profit from his drawing down the National Oil Reserve. Here’s how it works. Normally, when we release oil from the strategic reserve we sell it on the open market at market prices. That would mean that the oil Trump’s releasing would go for around $100 a barrel, paid by the oil companies. When the oil shortage is over, the government would go onto the public market and buy the oil back for, say, $50 a barrel and refill the reserve. It actually makes a profit for the government. But what Trump’s doing is “loaning” our oil to the oil companies at no charge. They then sell it for $100 barrel and when it’s time to “return” the oil to the reserve they’ll buy it on the market at $50 a barrel (or however low it goes when the crisis is over). The entire profit — quite literally hundreds of millions of dollars — instead of going to us taxpayers, goes to the oil companies who funded Trump’s campaign for president. Lever News has the entire sordid story broken down on their site in an article by Freddy Brewster. 

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Environment, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Trump

Republicans Fully Cave to Trump, Todd Blanche Will Be Confirmed

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
8

The confirmation of Todd Blanche as Attorney General of the United States has been kabuki theater of sorts. We were hopeful that three Republicans had the backbone to turn down this man who has broken the Department of Justice. Surely, the Senate would not confirm a man who is so subservient to Trump. The DOJ is supposed to be at arms’-length from the President. Blanche is under Trump’s thumb.

Blanche is the one who negotiated a deal to create a $1.776 billion slush fund for insurrectionists and Trump allies as well as a sweet deal for Trump, his sons, and their business NOT to be audited by the IRS, a gift to them of at least $100 million, probably more.

I imagined that there would be outrage towards the man who refused to release the Epstein files. The guy who spent two days interviewing sexual predator Ghislaine Maxwell, then arranged for her transfer to a minimum security prison where she received special treatment, as if she were a privileged guest, not a convicted pedophile.

Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski will vote against confirming Blanche. In Collins’ case, this is a pattern. She votes against her party only when her vote is not needed.

Most shocking are the “yes” votes of Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, John Cornyn of Texas, and–today–Bill Cassidy of Louisiana. All three were driven out of the senate by Trump. Till is resigned because Trump threatened to primary him. The other two were primaried by Trump choices and lost.

They had reason to stand against Trump, and they had reason to have a spine. But in the end, all three caved.

And Todd Blanche will head the nation’s Justice Department, where he will continue Trump’s agenda and his vendettas.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Justice, Trump

Unprecedented: Retired Judges Act to Protect the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
1

We live in strange and dangerous times. For the first time in memory, maybe ever, the rule of law itself is under attack. Our Dear Leader has threatened judges who rule against his wishes. He and his lawless administration ignore decisions they don’t like. He installed a Supreme Court majority who were vetted by the far-right Federalist Society. That majority proceeded to overturn Roe v. Wade, despite their repeated pledges not to do so, and to gut the Voting Rights Act, terminating guarantees of equal rights for Black Americans.

At this time when the rule of law itself is disregarded by the President, who is himself ruled only by whim and self-aggrandizement, two retired judges expressed their concern in The Guardian.

Judge Michael P. Connelly and Judge Robert F. Orr wrote:

Last October, US lawyers, judges and rule-of-law advocates traveled to Warsaw as guests of the Carter Center. Neither of us was among them. But when our colleagues returned, their stories inspired us.

They told us about judges and lawyers across central Europe who had been surveilled, smeared, prosecuted and sometimes jailed for standing between political power and courts meant to remain independent.

And they kept going.

Poland’s example was especially compelling. When its government sought greater control over the judiciary, Polish judges put on their robes and marched through Warsaw. Judges from across Europe joined them in what became the March of 1,000 Robes.

Then they left their courthouses and traveled through towns and villages, explaining what an independent judiciary means to a farmer, shopkeeper, parent or business owner. They talked about law not as an abstraction, but as protection against arbitrary power.

They understood a truth Americans can no longer overlook: judicial independence cannot survive merely because judges believe in it. The public must understand why it matters.

That lesson brought us on to a bus.

Last month, shortly after the United States celebrated its 250th birthday, the Justice in Motion tour traveled from western Pennsylvania through Ohio and into Michigan. Thirty sitting and retired judges, lawyers and advocates handed out pocket constitutions, met students and asked a question Americans do not consider often enough: what does the rule of law mean in everyday life, and what happens when we take it for granted?

In Columbus, we did something neither of us imagined during our years on the bench. We put on our robes and marched from the federal courthouse toward the supreme court of Ohio, carrying purple flowers, an international symbol of judicial independence.

American judges do not ordinarily march in the streets. Nor should they. The judiciary derives much of its legitimacy from restraint. Judges do not campaign for particular outcomes or answer criticism with press conferences. They speak through their decisions. But these are no ordinary times.

And our Polish colleagues taught us that silence can carry its own risk.

Our march was not about Democrats or Republicans, nor about defending particular judges or decisions. It was about defending the system that allows legal disagreements to be resolved according to law rather than political power.

One of us was elected to the supreme court of Ohio as a Democrat. The other was elected to the supreme court of North Carolina as a Republican and is now an independent. Through two long careers, we have disagreed about plenty.

That is precisely the point.

The rule of law is not a partisan possession.

Both sides enter a courtroom with the right to be heard. Judges must apply the law to the facts without regard to which party is more powerful, popular or politically useful.

Sometimes judges get it wrong. That is why we have appellate courts. Sometimes courts issue decisions that elected officials or citizens strongly dislike. That is unavoidable in a constitutional democracy.

The answer is appeal, legislation where constitutionally permissible, or constitutional amendment. It cannot be intimidation, retaliation for unpopular rulings or the suggestion that compliance with lawful court orders is optional.

Once adherence to judicial decisions depends upon whether the politically powerful agree with them, we have left the rule of law behind.

In Wooster, Ohio, about 150 people gathered across from the historic courthouse. The discussion was not about red America or blue America. It was about ordinary life.

The rule of law is why you can deposit money in a bank and expect it to be there tomorrow. It is why contracts mean something, property can be protected and an individual citizen can enter a courthouse and challenge the government.

These protections seem ordinary only because generations before us built institutions strong enough to make them ordinary. When the rule of law works, it is almost invisible.

Judges are trained – rightly – to exercise restraint. During our years on the bench, we spoke through our rulings. That tradition is essential to maintaining confidence in an impartial judiciary.

But restraint should not be confused with silence about the survival of the institution itself.

When judges are threatened because of their rulings; when an adverse decision is answered not with an appeal but with demands for retaliation; when courts are judged legitimate only when they produce politically desired outcomes, those who understand the system have an obligation to explain what is being lost.

Our Polish friends understood this before we did. Their circumstances differ from ours, and comparisons should be made carefully. But the lesson travels well.

The rule of law does not defend itself. Neither does an independent judiciary. Constitutions are pieces of paper unless citizens and public officials possess the courage and habits necessary to honor them.

Four days on a bus will not persuade a nation. The purpose was more modest: to begin conversations, one community and one citizen at a time, about institutions Americans have been fortunate enough to take for granted.

That work belongs not only to judges and lawyers, but to all of us.

The rule of law is not something judges possess. It is something citizens inherit.

And every generation must decide whether to preserve it.

What’s giving us hope now

Justice Robert F Orr (retired): What gives me hope is the scope of individuals and groups now focusing and talking about the rule of law and the independence of our judiciary. Our bus trip had a great mix of backgrounds and experience both in the judges participating and meeting us at stops as well as the young people who amplified the message across various media platforms. It’s genuinely a national movement.

Justice Michael P Donnelly (retired): What gives me hope is the genuine appreciation we encountered during the bus tour for the role of an independent judiciary in protecting individual rights and civil liberties. The people we met understood that these freedoms, defended at great sacrifice throughout our history, cannot be taken for granted – and that each generation must be willing to stand up for them.

  • Michael P Donnelly is a retired justice of the supreme court of Ohio
  • Robert F Orr is a retired justice of the supreme court of North Carolina. Both participated in the Justice in Motion tour organized by the Democracy Rising Collaborative and Keep Our Republic

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Justice, Trump

Taxpayers Foot the Medical Bills for Low-Wage Employees of Walmart, Amazon

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2026 //
3

Judd Legum at Popular Information excels at exposing scandals, many of which are in plain view. In this post, he reveals what many people have long suspected: About 10% of the employees at Walmart and Amazon qualify for public subsidies for Medicaid because they are so poorly paid. Meanwhile, the owners of Walmart and Amazon are multi-billionaires. Why don’t they pay wages that are enough to keep their employees off public subsidies?

Judd writes:

American taxpayers are spending billions every year providing Medicaid benefits to hundreds of thousands of employees of Amazon and Walmart, a new analysis by Popular Information reveals.

Amazon and Walmart are two of the largest and most profitable companies in the country — collectively generating $100 billion in profits in 2025 — but many of their employees still qualify for Medicaid because their take-home pay hovers around (or below) the poverty line.

As taxpayers keep their workers afloat, the wealth of the two companies’ largest shareholders is increasing exponentially. The Walton family, the largest shareholders of Walmart, saw their collective wealth increase from $238 billion in 2021 to $513 billion at the end of 2025. Meanwhile, Amazon founder and current executive chairman Jeff Bezos saw his net worth increase from $187 billion to $255 billion over roughly the same time period.

Popular Information calculated the public subsidy to Amazon and Walmart by cross-referencing several publicly available data sources. Last week, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report examining the top 25 employers of Medicaid enrollees in six states: Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island. This provided state-level Medicaid enrollment for Amazon and Walmart workers in all six states, with the exception of Amazon in Maine.

Popular Information compared these figures to the total number of employees working for Walmart and Amazon in each state, sourced from company disclosures, to establish an average Medicaid enrollment rate for each company. The average Medicaid enrollment rate was then used to establish an estimated Medicaid enrollment for employees of each company in the remaining states.

Finally, the estimated number of employees receiving Medicaid in each state was multiplied by that state’s average annual cost of a non-elderly, non-disabled Medicaid enrollee, as published by the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC).

Using this methodology, Popular Information estimates that, nationwide, over 156,000 Walmart employees are enrolled in Medicaid at an annual cost to taxpayers of approximately $1.04 billion.

This figure significantly understates the true cost of Medicaid for Walmart employees to taxpayers. First, the calculation only includes the direct cost of Medicaid for the employees themselves. But Walmart’s low wages for these employees also makes their families eligible for Medicaid. Taking into account dependents, the cost to taxpayers would roughly double. Further, the most recent data on Medicaid cost per enrollee from MACPAC is from fiscal year 2023. Costs for 2025 and 2026 are likely significantly higher.

In Walmart’s 2026 fiscal year, then-CEO Doug McMillon was paid over $29.2 million in total compensation while the median Walmart worker earned $30,520 — a ratio of 958 to 1. The earnings of an average worker put them well below the cutoff for Medicaid eligibility for a family of three.

For Amazon, the same methodology finds that an estimated 123,000 Amazon employees are enrolled in Medicaid at a cost to taxpayers of $927 million.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy was given a massive compensation package of $212 million in 2021, mostly in stock that vests over 10 years. Jassy’s compensation has been smaller since; he was paid another $2.1 million in 2024. Meanwhile, the median Amazon employee earned $40,206 that year. This global number includes the many higher-paid technical employees who work at Amazon. Warehouse workers in the United States, and others in blue collar positions, make much less, making them eligible for Medicaid.

“Amazon is one of the largest job creators in the country, so looking at raw numbers instead of percentages is misleading,” an Amazon spokesman said in response to Popular Information’s request for comment. “Also, eligibility for both SNAP and Medicaid is based on total household income and family size, not individual wages or benefits – so employers that offer part-time options for those who want them, like we do, are likely to have more people who are eligible.”

While Walmart ranked first in terms of “raw numbers” of employees on Medicaid, Amazon had a higher percentage of its workforce on Medicaid (11.7%) than Walmart (9.4%).

Not everyone who works parttime does so by choice. In June 2026, 4.7 million “individuals would have preferred full-time employment but were working part time because their hours had been reduced or they were unable to find full-time jobs,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Moreover, according to the GAO, 66.1% of employed individuals on Medicaid work full-time.

Walmart declined to comment on the record. According to the company’s corporate website, starting wages at Walmart have increased by 93% since 2015.

Categories Billionaires, Ethics, Failure, For-Profit, Health, Medicine

Robert Kuttner: Republicans Cave to Trump Again

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2026 //
0

Robert Kuttner of The American Prospect is disgusted by the capitulation of Senators Cornyn and Tillis on their vote for Todd Blanche. The two held out until Blanche gave them a signed piece of paper that is utterly meaningless.

There are many reasons to oppose Blanche: he has utterly politicized the Department of Justice, making it totally subservient to Trump. He has continued to act as Trump’s personal lawyer, not as the nation’s chief defender of the rule of law.

Blanche was ordered by Congress last December to release all the Epstein files. He released about half of them, heavily redacted to protect the names of the predators. He has conspired with Trump to free the Insurrectionists of January 6, 2021. He reacted to Trump’s absurd lawsuit seeking $10 billion from the Treasury Department by signing off on a $1.776 billion fund for Trump’s allies, friends, and insurrectionists. More consequentially, he signed an agreement with Trump in which he pledged that Trump, his sons, the Trump Organization, and various Trump friends would not be audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Since Trump owes the IRS about $100 million, this is a sweetheart deal for him.

Trump collected over $2.2 billion in income in 2025, but his avarice is never satisfied.

Kuttner writes about the collapse of opposition by Senators Cornyn and Tillis.

Blanche’s nomination will be voted in by the Senate next Tuesday. Senator Susan Collins of Maine has said she will vote no; her Senate race in a blue state needs a boost. Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska has not said how she will vote. It takes only two votes to sink Blanche.

The problem is that Trump will find someone even worse!

Kuttner writes:

Over the weekend, it looked as if President Trump had backed himself into a corner in his efforts to get Todd Blanche confirmed as attorney general. Texas Sen. John Cornyn, who was recently primaried by Trump ally Ken Paxton yet remains a key vote on the Senate Judiciary Committee for the rest of the year, wasn’t budging in his insistence that Blanche commit in writing to killing the corrupt deal in which the government set up a $1.776 billion slush fund to compensate supposed victims of government violence and Trump personally got immunity from IRS audits.

Trump himself poured oil on the flames in a series of comments and social media posts in which he walked back his previous commitment to end the slush fund and further insulted Cornyn and Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who was following Cornyn’s lead.

Tillis, who had previously signaled his support for Blanche, then posted a withering comment on X: “Despite comments as late as yesterday that the fund is dead, President Trump clearly intends to resurrect the payout pot for punks …”

The two holdout senators had little to lose. Both are leaving Congress this year. Both were dispatched in part by Trump’s hostility. Trump made clear that he would not support Tillis’s re-election, so Tillis decided to retire. Trump explicitly endorsed Cornyn’s challenger, despite Cornyn’s decade-long record of dogged loyalty to Trumpism.

So quite apart from principled objections to the deal, there is little love lost between the two lame-duck senators and Trump. But then, Sunday night, the waves parted. After extended conversations with Blanche, Cornyn agreed to support his nomination. And the details of the deal reeked.

Though Blanche posted on social media a signed memo formally rescinding the order that created the so-called “anti-weaponization fund,” he left most of the IRS deal intact. Trump still gets full immunity from IRS audits of past tax returns, and the scope of the immunity is narrowed to protect “only” Trump, the Trump Organization, and two of his sons. And once Blanche is confirmed, some version of the slush fund could be resurrected at any time.

Somehow, disgracefully, this satisfied Cornyn and Tillis. It’s far from clear, however, that it will satisfy U.S. District Court Judge Kathleen Williams. Back in May, Judge Williams voided an earlier version of the IRS deal. In a scathing ruling on July 13, she threatened a formal ethics complaint against Blanche for conflicts of interest and misrepresentations. “In sum,” she wrote, “the facts before this Court demonstrate there was never adverseness between the Parties; there was never a case or controversy; and there was never a question as to who would prevail.”

The Judiciary Committee has now scheduled a vote Tuesday to advance Blanche’s nomination to the Senate floor. But this isn’t quite over.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Justice, Trump

Florida Threatens to Defund Catholic Schools Unless They Allow Students to Opt Out of Vaccines

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2026 //
11

Florida has become a very weird state. There’s hardly a conspiracy theory that Governor Ron DeSantis is not championing, especially when the subject is public health. DeSantis hired Dr. Joseph Ladapo as the state’s surgeon general, putting the lives of Floridians at risk.

Dr. Ladapo doesn’t believe in vaccinations. Disregarding science, he has sought to make all vaccines a matter of choice, not the protection of public health. Thus, no matter what other medical professionals may say, Dr. Ladapo wants to ban all vaccines mandates.

It’s an odd time to take a stand against vaccinations. Florida is experiencing an uptick in measles cases: As July 2026, Florida has reported 154 confirmed measles cases. Florida ranks among the states with the highest measles case counts in the country this year. 

Nationally, the CDC reports 2,371 confirmed measles cases in the U.S. so far in 2026—the highest annual total in more than 30 years.

Now Florida’s state attorney general has threatened to withhold public funding from Catholic schools unless they allow their students to opt out of vaccines.

The Independent reported:

Florida’s attorney general has threatened to pull funding from Catholic schools unless they allow their students to opt out of vaccine requirements. 

James Uthmeier, the attorney general, revealed on X that he had sent a letter to the Florida Conference of Catholic Bishops (FCCB) expressing concern that schools within the faith may refuse to grant religious exemptions for vaccinations for the upcoming school year.

The letter, which was sent on July 31, is the latest in a series of pushes by lawmakers to change Florida’s vaccine mandates.

According to Uthmeier, at least one diocese appears to have “embraced” a position raised by the National Catholic Bioethics Center that the schools cannot offer exemptions on religious grounds because the Catholic Church does not teach that use of vaccinations produced in cell lines derived from the tissue of an aborted fetus is “intrinsically evil.”

Uthmeier, a Catholic himself, says that such a position is “concerning” as state law requires public and private schools to offer exemptions if parents have religious objections.

“I therefore urge Catholic schools to comply with Florida law and grant religious exemptions to school vaccine policies,” Uthmeier wrote. “Failure to comply could jeopardize eligibility for state educational scholarship programs.”

The Archdiocese of Miami says that over 95 percent of students attending the city’s Catholic schools are on some kind of state scholarship, according to The Miami Herald. Many receive around $6,500 with which to pay for their tuition.

Uthmeier has demanded an answer to his letter by August 7.

Michele Taylor, a spokesperson for the FCCB, told CBS News that the conference is reviewing the letter and will respond to the attorney general. 

“Be assured, Florida’s Catholic schools are operating in accord with the law and Church teaching,” Taylor said.

Under state law, students attending both public and private schools must be vaccinated against diseases including polio, chickenpox and measles. Schools, including Catholic institutions, do permit medical exemptions from vaccines with a valid doctor’s note. 

Vaccination mandates have increasingly come under attack in Florida, with Joseph Ladapo, the state’s surgeon general, likening the mandates to “slavery” late last year.

“Who am I to tell you what your child should put in your body?” he said. “I don’t have that right. Your body is a gift from God.”

Ladapo also pledged to end “every last one” of the mandates. 

However, experts slammed his claims, with Democratic state Representative Anna Eskamani branding the plans a “public health disaster in the making.”

The Florida Education Association also said that reducing vaccinations puts “children’s health and education at risk.”

Categories Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Health, Medicine, Safety, Science
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