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Gary Rubinstein Reviews “An Education” with Gusto!

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2025 //
2

Gary Rubinstein is a teacher of mathematics at Stuyvesant High School in NYC and a prominent critic of corporate reform. He started his career as one of the first corps members of Teach for America. After many years inside the reform world, he saw its flaws and became an apostate. Like me. With his superb mathematical skills, he has debunked charter school “miracles,” TFA data, the Tennessee Achievement School District, which did a lot of boasting but failed.

His review is a delight to read.

He writes:

Fifty years after the publication of her first book, ‘The Great School Wars’, author and historian Diane Ravitch has released her long awaited memoirs.  In ‘An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else’ Ravitch takes us through her life from her childhood in Houston through the ups and downs of a long and productive life driven by truth and integrity.

What makes this book a ‘must read’ is that it has the three elements that a great autobiography should.  First, her life story is interesting on an objective level.  Anyone picking up the book and reading over the book jacket will know that Ravtich is someone who achieved fame and notoriety through the unlikely passion of the history of Education in America.  But in this book we learn about the sorrow she had to endure between her great triumphs.  So her story, even if it weren’t so well written, would make a very good book.  A second component of a great autobiography is the author’s ability to reflect on 80 plus years of life and find the pivotal moments that changed the course of her life.  But for an autobiography to be ‘great’ it must be infused and brought to life with excellent precise writing.  As ‘An Education’ has all three aspects, this is a book you are going to want to read and then keep to re-read over the years when you are in need of inspiration.

If you have read any of Ravitch’s education books, you know that she is a master of absorbing decades of events and processing them and creating an insightful, and incredibly efficient, thesis which she develops over the course of a book.  As she explains in this book, she learned her craft while writing as a journalist for The Wellesley News and then for The New Leader magazine.  In all her books she exhibits this efficient technique that would make Strunk and White beam.  But, by design, Ravtich’s books on Education are stripped of emotional language.  Those books educate you through a series of well chosen facts that lead you to understand the implications and big moments without having to spell out every detail.  The big question, which this new book answers with an emphatic ‘Yes’ is whether or not her kind of writing can be used to evoke the joy and the sorrow she experienced through her full 87 years of living.

When I started reading this book, I would bookmark interesting passages that show her talent for memoir.  Eventually I realized that I was bookmarking almost every page.  So after the first 50 of so pages, I had to slow down on the bookmarking.  Here are some of my favorite moments (I will try not to give away too much).

Since Ravitch can write a full tale in the span of five or six lines, there are so many interesting stories in this book.  As a writer she reminds me of one of those painters, I don’t know so much about painting to know what this is called – maybe impressionistic? – who, rather than producing a full photographic quality image, instead just does the minimal with the paint and brush to convey the emotion and ideas.  This is something that is very difficult to do yet she makes it look easy.

A few pages later, Ravitch relays an amusing story about how as a teen she found a pearl in an oyster and ended up in the newspaper for it and also got food poisoning from eating the oyster:  “The next day, after the newspaper appeared with a  photograph of me in short shorts, identified by name, strange men began calling the house, asking for me and saying impudent things.  That went on for days, along with the vomiting.  My mother was not amused.”  This is so efficient, not a word wasted and it does convey the absurdity and the humor with a minimal delivery reminiscent of maybe Bob Newhart.

Here’s one I liked:  “The only Sunday school teacher I remember was a strapping guy who discussed Bible stories and the Jewish religion with us.  He told us that when he was our age he had run away with the circus.”  Ah, see how great this is?  In the first sentence she sets up the scene.  And then in just a few words tells us the perfect thing to understand this guy.  No more is needed and no more is said.

Throughout the book, Ravitch takes stories and moments that could easily fill several pages and finds a way to convey them in a few words.  For the reader, this has the effect of injecting all the humor and sometimes the sorrow of these moments directly into our brains without it having to be processed and translated in our minds.

Though these two examples are fun and convey the innocence of childhood, Ravitch is similarly terse in her telling of some of the deepest tragic moments of her life.  When these happen in the book, the descriptions are so efficiently written that, like sometimes when bad things happen in life unexpectedly, we find ourselves pausing and wondering if that really just happened.  The matter of fact telling of memorable moments of life, both big and small, happy and tragic, has a powerful effect on the reader.

The book really gets rolling when Ravitch enters college in 1956 at Wellesley.  In one sense she is a fish out of water and then she eventually completely at home with the lifelong friends she made there.  This was a really fun chapter to read as Ravitch has the first of her many brushes with fame, like her friend Maddy – eventually Madeleine Albright.  Just as always, Ravitch perfectly sets up the matter of fact description of her friend’s background and then, in an instant it is revealed who she became known as. The Madeleine Albright story was less than one page long.

One of my favorite parts was the description about a satirical musical Ravitch and her friends wrote for the Wellesley Junior Show.  It was hilarious.  I kind of want to see the full script but her description of it, as all her descriptions, gave us just enough that we feel like we saw the whole show but forgot some of the missing details.

After college, Ravitch starts domestic life but isn’t quite content.  She then goes on a lifelong quest for love and for purpose.  As she goes through different eras in her life, she meets a new cast of colorful characters, some famous, some not, but always relevant to her story.

In this book we learn how she went from being the wife of an influential New York City figure to the influential Dr. Ravitch the Education guru of this country.  As she rises in the ranks, she finds herself in the company of so many famous people — even several presidents, yet she conveys in her telling of these encounters that, to her, it wasn’t such a big deal.  They are all just people.  Anyone who has gotten the chance to meet her in person and see her interact with so many people who are not famous will see that she treats non famous people like they are special and is always asking them questions rather than talking about herself.

One of the funniest anecdotes in the book is when she inadvertently got Isaac Asimov angry with her over small talk related to word processors.  Again, this is only a few lines, but another interesting adventure in Ravitch’s full life that put her often in the room with all kinds of famous people.

While married to her husband, Diane unexpectedly meets her soulmate who happens to be a woman. In the chapter about the genesis and growth of her relationship, they have now been together for almost 40 years, she is able to convey what it means to finally experience the joy of true love.

In the last chapters of the book we learn about the Washington years in the Department of Education and how that came about and what she tried to accomplish there.  We also learn about what it took to renounce much of her work and to follow the evidence into a more evolved system of beliefs about what can improve education in this country.  She lost a lot of friends and titles in the process but she kept her personal integrity and commitment to the truth.

Throughout the book, the theme is that Ravitch is never just one thing or the other.  Is she a education conservative or an education liberal?  Is she straight or gay?  Is she a southerner or a north easterner?  Is she an introvert or an extrovert?  Is she a socialite or a homebody?  And throughout her life she is sometimes one and sometimes the other.  She is someone who defies categorization.  And though in the subtitle she says she ‘changed her mind about schools and almost everything else’ she never changed her core belief that you don’t just stay in the same place just because you are comfortable there.

And like with her, this book is a lot of different things.  On one level it is an amusing and interesting read about someone whose choices led her on an unlikely adventure ending with her being, in some circles, a huge celebrity.  But it is also an inspirational tale of how having values and staying true to them can help you overcome some of the unfortunate obstacles you have to deal with in life.  And though I doubt it was intended to accomplish something else, I think that for many readers they will want to write down their own memoirs after reading this.  Ravitch makes it look so easy to analyze your life, find the key moments in it and write some succinct prose – though of course it isn’t so easy but still a worthwhile task.

After finishing this book, I had an experience that only a few people were also able to have.  In the acknowledgements in the ‘friends’ section, among sixteen other names, there was my own.  I got a chill seeing this, never expecting it.  But this made me think something else, also a lesson, though maybe unintended from this great book.  This book reminds us of the importance of relationships.  Everyone you know has a story to tell.  Some people’s lives may not have the highs and lows of Diane Ravitch’s but for each person, their joys and sorrows are meaningful to them.  And even if they don’t have the capability to write the way Ravitch can, if they could, you might find yourselves in the acknowledgement page for that friend or family member.  So enjoy the relationships you have while you can and remember that you are an important person in many people’s lives.

So pick up a copy today and take a ride through the ups and downs of a well lived life.  Though she has made a career of writing about education and teaching, through this book she educates and teaches us that if you keep an open mind and are committed to learning and following the facts, you might end up in a comfortable home a long way from where you started.

Categories Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, Hoax, Ravitch, Diane

Tom Ultican Reviews My New Book, with Some Personal Reflections

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2025 //
3

Tom Ultican had a successful career in the private sector when he made a decision that changed his life: He became a teacher of physics and advanced mathematics in California. After he retired, he became blogging about education. He became one of the most perceptive investigators of the powerful people and dark money behind the organized attacks on public schools.

I am delighted to present his review of my just-published memoir, titled AN EDUCATION: HOW I CHANGED MY MIND ABOUT SCHOOLS AND ALMOST EVERYTHING ELSE (Columbia University Press).

I am posting a portion of his review here. I encourage you to open the link and finish his fine commentary.

He wrote:

An Education; How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else, is highly recommended especially for the thousands of us who consider her a friend. Diane is a very generous person with both her time and resources. I first met Diane through her blog in 2014, then in person at the 2015 NPE conference in Chicago. It was in this time period that she started posting some of my articles on her blog while simultaneously informing me about who was working to destroy public education. At the time, I did not realize what a privilege this was. Her latest book is an intimate memoir that introduces us to Diane Rose Silverstein of Houston, Texas born July 1, 1938. It tells the story of a Jewish Texan from of large struggling family becoming politically influential and a national treasure.

On a page following the dedication page, she quotes Ralph Waldo Emerson:

“Foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and devines.”

I knew that Diane had made a big change and reversed herself on test based accountability and other school reform agendas driven by conservatives and neoliberals. However, the courage this change took and the depth of her reversal were profoundly illuminated by reading this book.

Although growing up in a Roosevelt supporting family and being a registered Democrat, she became deeply conservative. Diane served on the board of the Thomas B. Fordham foundation, contributed to the Manhattan Institute and was a member of the Koret Task Force with the likes of Eric Hanushek and E. D. Hirsch Jr. Her best friends personally and politically all supported the ideas she abandoned. By reversing herself, she walked away from professional security and long held personal friendships. It was courageously principled but must have been a personally daunting move.

Me and Diane

The best part of “An Education” for me was Diane’s recounting growing up in Houston and going to a segregated public school. Her experience was just so relatable. She liked all the music my oldest sister liked. Cheating was rampant in her school just like mine and like her; I let my classmates copy my work. My rural Idaho school was kind of segregated but that was because only white people and a few Mexican families lived in the community. The Mexican kids were very popular in our school. I never met a Black person until I was a senior in high school and had only seen a few through a car window when vacationing in Kansas City. It was wonderful to find some commonalities.

I had studied engineering, worked in Silicon Valley and pretty much ignored education. But I did hear from Diane and her friends about what a failure public education had become. By 1999, I became tired of hearing about people becoming rich off their stock options, working on the next greatest hard drive or dealing with the atrocious San Jose traffic. I decided to return to San Diego and do something to help public education by enlisting in a master of education program at the University of California San Diego (UCSD).

The UCSD program was oriented toward constructivist education which I really liked. I read books by Alfie Kohn and papers by Lisa Delpit and was ready to revolutionize public education. Then I got to my first job at Bell Jr. High School and discovered that the teachers there were well informed pros with lots of experience. By comparison, I was not nearly as competent as most of them.

It was then that I started to see that I had been bamboozled about how bad public schools were and started looking for like minded people. Two books, David Berliner’s and Eugene Glass’s “50 Myths and Lies that Threaten America’s Public Schools” and Diane Ravitch’s “The Death and Life of the Great American School System” were like water for the thirsty. Soon after that, I found Diane’s blog and joined the Network for Public Education (NPE) along with many other public school advocates.

I saw Diane at the 2015 NPE conference in Chicago’s Drake Hotel. It was an absolutely inspiring event with a keynote by the amazing Yong Zhao. Although we started communicating a little by email, I did not meet Diane personally until NPE 2016 in Raleigh, North Carolina. It was there that the Reverend William Barber gave a truly inspiring speech.

Tom Ultican and Diane Ravitch in Raleigh (by Ultican)

Please open the link and keep reading this excellent review!

Categories Dark Money, Democracy, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, History, Network for Public Education, Personal, Ravitch, Diane, Supporting public schools

New Hampshire: Parents Complain that Voucher Program is a Scam

By dianeravitch
December 2, 2025 //
2

Parents in New Hampshire are outraged by the state’s new voucher law. It is siphoning money from public schools, which are attended by 90% of the state’s students, and 95% of those with disabilities. When the state legislature debated vouchers, parents overwhelmingly opposed them. But the legislature ignored the public and parent opposition and approved a modest voucher plan. The original plan was based on the claim that vouchers would “save poor kids from failing schools,”

That plan has since expanded dramatically; no longer modest, it now supplies vouchers to any student, regardless of family income. Currently, 80% of the vouchers are claimed by kids who never attended public schools. Now that the legislature has lifted income limits for those who seek vouchers, the program has become a subsidy for families that can afford to pay the tuition.

Garry Rayno of InDepthNH has the story:

CONCORD — Public education advocates said the state’s universal voucher program is putting students, taxpayers and education professionals at risk as more and more taxpayer money is diverted to the unaccountable program.

At a press conference celebrating American Education Week, Megan Tuttle, president NEA — NH, said the program takes money away from public schools as the state now funds two school systems, one public and the other private.

“As we celebrate American Education Week, let’s recommit to strengthening, not destabilizing public schools,” Tuttle said. “Public dollars belong in public schools. Our students deserve fully funded public schools, not policies that erode them. And our state’s future depends on getting this right.”

She noted private schools do not have to follow the same guidelines as public schools who have to accept all children no matter how expensive their education or their educational needs.

Nor are private schools bound by federal civil rights provisions, she said, such as the Disabilities Education Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Every Student Succeeds Act.

“The only choice in a voucher system,” Tuttle said, “is that private and religious schools get to pick their students, not the other way around.”

The state voucher program, Education Freedom Account, was initially sold as providing opportunities to low-income parents to find the best educational environment for their students if they do not do well in the public school environment.

Initially the program was limited to students whose parents earned 300 percent of the federal poverty level or less, but earlier this year the program was opened to any parent whose child is eligible to attend public school in the state regardless of earnings.

The change doubled the number of students in the program from 5,204 last school year to 10,510 this school year and the cost increased from $28 million to $52 million this year to date.

While the program was sold as an alternative to public education, more than 80 percent of the students to date were in religious or private schools, or homeschooled when they joined the EFA program as is the case in other states with universal vouchers.

Public schools in New Hampshire educate 90 percent of the state’s students and 95 percent of those with disabilities.

Rep. Hope Damon, D-Croydon, who is the deputy ranking member of the House Education Funding Committee, said her party is fighting every day to ensure every child regardless of income or zip code has access to a high quality education, while the governor and Republican lawmakers have doubled down on their reckless school voucher scheme.

“A few years ago, we were promised that vouchers, these so-called EFAs, would serve families in need,” Damon said,  “but it’s clear that was just a ploy for Republican lawmakers in Concord to open up the floodgates and push through an over-budget, universal school voucher program.” 

Now some of the wealthiest families receive taxpayer-funded handouts that pay for private schools, she said, while just 19 percent of the students in the EFA program are from low-income families.

“Our most vulnerable families are being left behind,” Damon said. “Our public schools are already punching above their weight, scoring very well nationally despite extremely limited resources from the state. Vouchers just make their job harder.”

She said the program strains taxpayer dollars and increases property taxes, while it is already $12.3 million over budget at a time when the Republican controlled legislature voted to significantly cut funding for University of New Hampshire.

“This universal voucher scheme is expensive. It flies in the face of fiscal responsibility,” she said. “There’s very little accountability and oversight on how vouchers are used.”

New Hampshire’s future depends on its students having a high quality public education, she said.

Republicans have long argued parents should decide how best to educate their children and are in the best position to determine whether their child is receiving an adequate education.

Longtime school choice advocate, former Rep. Glenn Cordelli, R-Tuftonboro, argued repeatedly that if parents do not like the education their child receives in one EFA educational setting, they are free to move their child to a new one.

“Education freedom is not theory. It is accountability that begins at the kitchen table, where a mother or father can say this is not working and choose what does,” Cordelli said after he received an award earlier this year from the Children’s Fund of NH, the organization that administers the program for the state. 

During the press conference David Trumble of Weare, a business owner, educator and former State Senate candidate, said the state has to invest more in its students just as a business has to invest to grow. 

Republicans focus their efforts on diverting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars to fund private school education, he said, expanding the voucher program to cover wealthy families who can use these funds to pay for tuition or skiing lessons.

“The Republican voucher scheme is dangerous because public schools continue to go underfunded and students lose out on the resources they need to ensure long-term success,” Trumble said. “The state is long overdue in living up to its constitutional mandate to fund the public schools.”
He noted the current situation in Claremont where the school district faces a $5 million deficit building up over the past three school years due to fiscal mismanagement at the Supervisory Administrative Unit level.

He said the city would probably not be in this situation if the state had been meeting its constitutional obligation to fund public education.

Earlier this week, the Senate Education Committee approved a revolving loan program for the city to meet its cash flow needs this school year and into the future by allowing early borrowing from the state adequacy grants it will receive in the future.

That plan included a provision allowing the parents of students to apply for EFA grants mid year to remove their children from the school district, due to the uncertainty.

The plan also requires the city to place a school budget cap warrant article on its next annual school district meeting, both pet projects of GOP lawmakers.

“Claremont’s the canary in the coal mine,” Damon said. “It is not the only district that is in significant financial distress, but attaching even more unlimited vouchers to that bill is a further way to defund public schools. It’s a very, I think, inappropriate attachment.”

When asked what lawmakers could do to bring more transparency, accountability and fiscal constraints to the program, Damon said “the Free State-influenced Republican Party does not want vouchers to be diminished at all, but we’re not going to stop trying.”

Tuttle suggested voters make a change in the composition of the legislature. 

“We know the majority of voters in New Hampshire, they believe public funds belong in public schools,” Tuttle said. “And looking ahead to 2026, we need to be electing leaders in the state of New Hampshire who are going to . . . put in some new policies.” 

Garry Rayno may be reached at garry.rayno@yahoo.com.

Categories Budget Cuts, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Funding, New Hampshire, Privatization, Vouchers

Happy Thanksgiving! Thoughts for 2025, Now

By dianeravitch
November 27, 2025 //
25

Let us be thankful for the good things in our lives. Our families and friends. Health. Food. The blessings of freedom and democracy, which we must defend every day.

Let us think about those who do not enjoy the blessings of family, friends, good health, shelter, and food.

Do what you can to support those less fortunate than yourself. Lend a helping hand at a local community center or church or synagogue or mosque. Support groups that are helping immigrant families who are living in terror, fearful of being kidnapped by ICE.

Remember that it is not normal to have armed military patrolling the streets of our cities. It is not normal to see masked men pepper spraying fellow citizens in the streets. It is not normal to see armed men chasing people on farms, where they are picking the fruits and vegetables on our Thanksgiving table, tackling them, and whisking them away to unknown detention centers.

We don’t have a crisis of too many immigrants. We have a crisis of a do-nothing Congress that has been unable to pass legislation creating a process for honest, hard-working immigrants to have a legal path to citizenship.

We have a crisis of bigotry, of white nationalists who think they can restore a world of white supremacy that has disappeared. Nope, won’t happen. Twenty percent of our population is Hispanic. About 57-58% is Caucasian. Among children 17 and younger, about 49-50% is Caucasian.

Like it or not, our society is diverse. Banning the word “diversity” doesn’t change reality.

We must, all of us, practice kindness. Gratitude. Generosity of spirit.

This Thanksgiving is a good time to start.

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Freedom, Immigration, Justice, Love, Puerto Rico, Racism

The Trump-Putin “Peace Plan” Spells Surrender for Ukraine

By dianeravitch
November 25, 2025 //
13

Make no mistake. Trump is Putin’s ally. Putting Trump in charge of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine is akin to putting the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse. On more than one occasion, Trump has sent his emissaries to devise a “peace plan” without asking Ukraine or the representatives of Europe to participate in the discussions.

Trump campaigned by claiming that he could end the war in a single day. All that was required would be a phone call to his good friend Putin.

That hasn’t happened, but Trump continues to threaten to cut off all aid to Ukraine unless Zelensky capitulates to Putin’s demands. These demands would give Putin everything he wants.

Max Boot spelled out the situation in The Washington Post:

Russia’s barbaric assault on Ukraine continues: A single Russian drone and missile strike on an apartment block in western Ukraine last week killed at least 31 civilians. Meanwhile, Russia is ramping up its campaign of sabotage in Europe: Polish authorities blamed the Kremlin for a Nov. 15 explosion on a rail line used to transport supplies to Ukraine. As German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said recently, Europe “is not at war” but it is also “no longer at peace” with Russia.

The growing threat from Vladimir Putin’s despotic, expansionist regime calls for Churchillian resolution, unity and strength on the part of the transatlantic alliance. Instead, Neville Chamberlain-style irresolution and confusion reigns on both sides of the Atlantic. The situation is far more concerning in the United States than in Europe, with the Trump administration having seemingly endorsed, at least for now, a “peace plan” that would give Russia a victory at the negotiating table that it hasn’t earned on the battlefield.

The Europeans have stepped up, providing weapons and funding to Ukraine as U.S. support has dried up. The European Union has a plan to do even more by sending Kyiv some $200 billionin frozen Russian assets as a “loan” that would likely never be repaid. Obviously, given the current corruption scandal in Kyiv, safeguards on the disbursement of the money would be needed. But this is a vital — indeed, irreplaceable — source of funding that can keep Ukraine afloat for years. Yet tiny Belgium, where most of the funds are frozen, is wringing its hands and holding up the plan. There is no Plan B: Europe has to send the Russian funds or else Ukraine will run out of money. So why dither and delay?

As for the peace plan floated by the White House last week: The 28-point plan amounts to a holiday wish list from the Kremlin. It would require Ukraine to cede the entire Donbas region — even the parts that Russian troops have been unable to conquer — and to cut the size of its armed forces by roughly a third. Ukraine would not be allowed to join NATO, and NATO would not be allowed to dispatch peacekeeping troops to Ukraine. Ukraine would hold elections within 100 days and “all Nazi ideology” would be “prohibited”; this is Kremlin code for toppling the Zelensky government. Russia isn’t being asked to limit the size of its armed forces or to hold elections; all the demands are on Ukraine.

What does Ukraine get in return? A separate draft agreement specifies that in the event of renewed Russian aggression, the United States could respond with “armed force, intelligence and logistical assistance, economic and diplomatic actions.” But the U.S. wouldn’t be compelled to do anything. Ukraine would be left to rely on a worthless Russian pledge of “nonaggression” — something it already promised in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

This isn’t a peace plan. It’s a blueprint for Ukraine’s capitulation. If implemented, it would turn this pro-Western, democratic nation, which has been courageously resisting Russian aggression since 2014, into a Kremlin colony….

In the New York Times, Thomas Friedman was scathing in his view of the Trump-Putin “peace plan.”

He predicted that Trump would not get the Nobel Peace Prize, which he covets, but would certainly win the ““Neville Chamberlain Peace Prize” — awarded by history to the leader of the country that most flagrantly sells out its allies and its values to an aggressive dictator.”

He wrote:

This prize richly deserves to be shared by Trump’s many “secretaries of state” — Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio and Dan Driscoll — who together negotiated the surrender of Ukraine to Vladimir Putin’s demands without consulting Ukraine or our European allies in advance — and then told Ukraine it had to accept the plan by Thanksgiving…

If Ukraine is, indeed, forced to surrender to the specific terms of this “deal” by then, Thanksgiving will no longer be an American holiday. It will become a Russian holiday. It will become a day of thanks that victory in Putin’s savage and misbegotten war against Ukraine’s people, which has been an utter failure — morally, militarily, diplomatically and economically — was delivered to Russia not by the superiority of its arms or the virtue of its claims, but by an American administration…

He was the British prime minister who advocated the policy of appeasement, which aimed to avoid war with Adolf Hitler’s Germany by giving in to his demands. This was concretized in the 1938 Munich Agreement, in which Chamberlain, along with others in Europe, allowed Germany to annex parts of Czechoslovakia. Chamberlain boasted it would secure “peace for our time.” A year later, Poland was invaded, starting World War II and leading to Chamberlain’s resignation — and his everlasting shame.

To all the gentlemen who delivered this turkey to Moscow, I can offer only one piece of advice: Be under no illusions. Neither Fox News nor the White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt will be writing the history of this deal. If you force it upon Ukraine as it is, every one of your names will live in infamy alongside that of Chamberlain, who is remembered today for only one thing:

This Trump plan, if implemented, will do the modern equivalent. By rewarding Putin’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine based on his obsession with making it part of Mother Russia, the U.S. will be putting the whole European Union under Putin’s thumb. Trump’s message to our allies will be clear: Don’t provoke Putin, because as long as I am commander in chief, the United States will pay no price and we will bear no burden in the defense of your freedom.

Which is why, if this plan is forced on Ukraine as is, we will need to add a new verb to the diplomatic lexicon: “Trumped” — to be sold out by an American president, for reasons none of his citizens understand (but surely there are reasons). And history will never forget the men who did it — Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff, Marco Rubio, Dan Driscoll — for their shame will be everlasting.

As a Wall Street Journal editorial on Friday put it: “Mr. Trump may figure he can finally wash his hands of Ukraine if Europe and Ukraine reject his offer. He’s clearly sick of dealing with the war. But appeasing Mr. Putin would haunt the rest of his presidency. If Mr. Trump thinks American voters hate war, wait until he learns how much they hate dishonor. … A bad deal in Ukraine would broadcast to U.S. enemies that they can seize what they want with force or nuclear blackmail or by pressing on until America loses interest.”

Mind you, I am not at all against a negotiated solution. Indeed, from the beginning of this war I have made the point that it will end only with a “dirty deal.” But it cannot be a filthy deal, and the Trump plan is what history will call a filthy deal.

Even before you get to the key details, think of how absurd it is for Trump to strike a deal with Putin and not even include Ukraine and our European allies in the negotiations until they were virtually done. Trump then declared it must be accepted by Thursday, as if Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who has a parliament that he needs to win acceptance from, could possibly do so by then, even if he wanted to.

As my Times colleague David Sanger observed in his analysis of the plan’s content: “Many of the 28 points in the proposed Russia-Ukraine peace plan offered by the White House read like they had been drafted in the Kremlin. They reflect almost all Mr. Putin’s maximalist demands.”

Ukraine would have to formally give Russia all the territory it has declared for itself in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions. The United States would recognize that as Russian territory. No NATO forces could be based inside Ukraine to ensure that Russia could never invade again. The Ukrainian military would be capped at 600,000 troops, a 25 percent cut from current levels, and it would be barred from possessing long-range weapons that could reach Russia. Kyiv would receive vague security guarantees from the U.S. against a Russian re-invasion (but who in Ukraine, or Moscow, would trust them coming from Trump?).

Under the Trump plan, $100 billion in frozen Russian assets would be put toward U.S.-led efforts to rebuild and invest in Ukraine, and the U.S. would then receive 50 percent of the profits from that investment. (Yes, we are demanding half of the profits generated by a fund to rebuild a ravaged nation.)

Trump, facing blowback from allies, Congress and Ukraine, said Saturday that this was not his “final offer” but added, if Zelensky refuses to accept the terms, “then he can continue to fight his little heart out.” As always with Trump, he is all over the place — and as always, ready to stick it to Zelensky, the guy fighting for his country’s freedom, and never to Putin, the guy trying to take Ukraine’s freedom away.

What would an acceptable dirty deal look like?

It would freeze the forces in place, but never formally cede any seized Ukrainian territory. It would insist that European security forces, backed by U.S. logistics, be stationed along the cease-fire line as a symbolic tripwire against any Russian re-invasion. It would require Russia to pay a significant amount of money to cover all the carnage it has inflicted on Ukraine — and keep Moscow isolated and under sanctions until it does — and include a commitment by the European Union to admit Ukraine as a member as soon as it is ready, without Russian interference.

This last point is vital. It is so the Russian people would have to forever look at their Ukrainian Slavic brothers and sisters in the thriving European Union, while they are stuck in Putin’s kleptocracy. That contrast is Putin’s best punishment for this war and the thing that would cause him the most trouble after it is over.

This would be a dirty deal that history would praise Trump for — getting the best out of a less than perfect hand, by using U.S. leverage on both sides, as he did in Gaza.

But just using U.S. leverage on Ukraine is a filthy deal — folding our imperfect hand to a Russian leader who is playing a terrible one.

There is a term for that in poker: sucker.

James Traub wrote anoter excellent analysis of Trump’s “peace plan.” It would be worth your while to open the link and read in full.

He concludes:

My first reaction on reading the Trump Administration’s 28-point peace plan for Ukraine was shame. That’s a different emotion from the anger I feel when Trump does something deplorable at home, like use the Justice Department to terrorize his enemies. When he abandons people elsewhere I feel ashamed of my country before the world.

This latest exercise in coercive diplomacy does not merely give the Russians what they want and deprive the Ukrainians of what they need. What is extra specially Trumpian, and thus shameful, about the proposal is that its second beneficiary is the United States. Point 10 guarantees the United States “compensation” for the completely unspecified security guarantees alluded to in Point 5. From whom? The plan doesn’t say, but presumably the answer is Ukraine, from which Trump demanded a preposterous $500 billion earlier this year in exchange for ongoing support. So we will profiteer off Ukraine’s subjection….

If the United States walks away, we will have vindicated Putin’s belief that in the end nothing matters except force. We will leave Europe to live in fear of an emboldened Russia. We will have washed our hands of a democratic and patriotic nation.

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

Trump Honors Crown Prince Bonesaw

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2025 //
3

We have seen many repulsive sights in the Oval Office since Trump was sworn in last January. The covering of the room in fake gold ornaments is an abomination. Trump’s rude treatment of Zelensky was an outrage.

But the top abomination, at this moment, was his loving embrace of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who should be reviled for his brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

What next? A Presidential Medal of Honor for Putin?

Trump has many personal commercial ties to Saudi Arabia. Cynically speaking, Trump is building alliances by making personal deals with potentates who increase his family wealth. Surely, we cannot forget that MBS arranged to give Son-in-law Jared Kushner $2 billion after Trump left office in 2021. Kushner had no experience in financial investing. His background was real estate. Now, Trump’s real estate buddies Steve Witkoff and Howard Lutnick, are Trump’s envoys to Russia, the Middle East, and other hotspots. They too (and their children) are taking in millions and billions, because they are in “the room where it happens.”

The New York Times wrote recently about how Lutnick’s sons are making lucrative deals , which are helped by the fact that their father is Secretary of Commerce. “But never in modern U.S. history has the office intersected so broadly and deeply with the financial interests of the commerce secretary’s own family, according to interviews with ethics lawyers and historians…”

The New York Times also chronicled the ways that billionaire Steve Witkoff’s sons are cashing in with investments in the Middle East and in cryptocurrency, building on their father’s connection to Trump.

This is not what the Founders intended.

But maybe those of us who worry about abstract ideas like ethics and laws are in the wrong. Maybe the best way to make a deal with the devil is to get in bed with him, speak his language, and buy his friendship. That’s Trump’s way. And nobody does it better.

Sabrina Haake writes:

Trump just threw a lavish state party to welcome a Saudi murderer. He defended the murderer’s crime, blamed the victim, and viciously attacked a reporter for asking the question on everyone’s mind: What about Jamal Khashoggi?

Of all the shameful metaphors for the corruption, ignorance, and rot presently infecting the White House, this one wears the Trump crown.

A brutal regime dismembers its critic

Jamal Khashoggi was a US resident and journalist for the Washington Post during its halcyon years, before it fell to corporate interests that now serve Trump.

Khashoggi was also a frequent critic of the Saudi government. He frequently criticized the royal ruling family, not for their lavish lifestyles, but for their suppression of dissent, their refusal to allow free speech among the Saudi people, and their widespread human rights abuses.

On Oct. 2, 2018, Khashoggi was murdered in Istanbul. He had gone to see about a visa for his Turkish fiancée at the Saudi consulate’s office, where he was attacked, stangled, and dismembered.

A recording made by Turkish intelligence agents in the building captured the whole gruesome ordeal: Khashoggi could be heard struggling against Saudi guards of the royal Crown Prince as his killing was recorded, complete with screams, the sounds of strangulation, then quiet, before a bone saw was heard dismembering his body.

US Intelligence knows bin Salman did it

In 2021, US intelligence reports concluded that Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, aka “the Bone Saw Prince,” had personally ordered the operation.

The US Director of National Intelligence supplied reasons supporting that conclusion, including:

· bin Salman’s total control of decision-making in the Saudi Kingdom;

· The direct involvement of bin Salman’s key adviser in the brutal attack, along with members of his personal security team; and

· bin Salman’s stated support for using violence to silence critics of the Saudi government abroad, including Khashoggi.

US intelligence added that, “Since 2017, the Crown Prince has had absolute control of the Kingdom’s security and intelligence organizations, making it highly unlikely that Saudi officials would have carried out an operation of this nature without the Crown Prince’s authorization.”

Despite these publicly available facts, Trump treated bin Salman to an unusually lavish state reception, complete with military officers in full dress carrying both Saudi and American colors. As the US taxpayer-funded Marine band played, Trump and Mr. Bone Saw were treated to a fly-over of advanced fighter jets, samples of the 48 F-35 jets Trump already sold to Saudi Arabia, despite national security concerns that China would be able to steal the aircraft’s advanced technology.

Trump courts a murderer to line his own pockets

Trump’s personal wealth has increased by over $3 billion since his return to office, largely from ethics-adjacent crypto schemes, foreign real estate deals, meme coins that have no value, and overt pay to play transactions. His lavish courtship of bin Salman fits neatly into the same corrupt pattern, promoting Trump’s illegal,private, for-profit interests.

The Trump Organization now has multiple, large-scale projects pending in Saudi Arabia, including a new Trump Tower and a Trump Plaza development in the works in Jeddah, along with two other projects planned in Riyadh. These deals are publicly known; it’s likely billions more are exchanging hands under the table.

Trump is also in private partnership with the Saudi-owned, “International Luxury Real Estate Developer,” Dar Global. There’s also a separate $2 billion deal where an Abu Dhabi-based, UAE-backed investment firm used a cryptocurrency from the Trump family’s venture, World Liberty Financial, to invest in another crypto exchange, profiting Trump royally.

And no one has forgotten Trump’s son in law, Jared Kushner’s, $2 billion private “investment” fee from the Saudis, packaged when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) announced a $55 billion acquisition. Kushner’s fee is widely regarded as payment for providing political cover and guaranteeing Trump’s regulatory protection. After the PIF’s own advisors initially rejected the deal, bin Salman personally overruled them and pushed it through.

Trump didn’t mention these deals this week when he rolled out the red carpet on taxpayers’ dime, but claimed instead with trademark ambiguity that the Saudis were going to “invest as much as $1 trillion in the US.”

Trump endorses the unthinkable

Journalists around the world, not to mention Khashoggi’s family, had to endure the nightmare of watching Trump fawn all over bin Salman. In every photo from the mainstream media, Trump couldn’t keep his hands off him, as if Trump were absorbing Saudi wealth through his fingers.

Tuesday, when journalist Mary Bruce asked bin Salman about intelligence reports concluding that he ordered the Khashoggi murder, Trump jumped in, answering for him. “He knew nothing about it! You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking something like that.”

Trump then suggested Khashoggi got what he had coming for criticizing the government, saying, “A lot of people didn’t like that gentleman (Khashoggi) that you’re talking about, whether you like him or didn’t like him, things happen.”

After sending this chilling message to his critics, Trump then attacked Bruce for asking a “horrible,” insubordinate,” and “just a terrible question,” dressing her down in garbled syntax before cameras of the world with, “You’re all psyched up. Somebody psyched you over at ABC and they’re going to psych it. You’re a terrible person and a terrible reporter,” and later demanded that ABC lose its broadcast license.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is condemned throughout the civilized world as a brutal 5th Century pariah. Trump just spent a taxpayer fortune to rebrand him “one of the most respected people in the world” to elevate and promote Trump’s own private business ventures.

It is fitting that Trump committed this atrocity in a formerly dignified room recently desecrated with tacky gold medallions. The Oval Office is now a bordello whose pimp is selling America to the highest bidder, and we, his trafficked victims, are letting him do it.

Sabrina Haake is a columnist and 25+ year federal trial attorney specializing in 1st and 14th A defense. Her Substack, The Haake Take, is free.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, International, Trump

Thom Hartmann: Destroying the Belief That White Men Are Entitled to Rule

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2025 //
3

Thom Hartmann writes that the Jeffrey Epstein case illuminates an age-old belief that white men are entitled to dominate everyone else. We see this ideology in the inhumane treatment of Native Americans; in the horrors of male control of women.

He writes:

The Jeffrey Epstein scandal stripped away the polite fiction that wealthy white men in America are held to the same standards as everyone else. 

Epstein wasn’t an exception. He was the rule, laid bare. 

From the first days of European settlement, powerful white men have moved through this country with a kind of immunity that would be unthinkable for anyone else. That isn’t just a cultural habit: it’s the residue of the original architecture of America. 

We built a nation on the belief that white men were entitled to rule, entitled to take, entitled to decide whose lives mattered and whose didn’t. 

That belief never died. It adapted. It modernized. And today it animates a political movement that has captured one of our two major parties.

The root of the problem goes all the way back to the Doctrine of Discovery. A European/papal decree announcing that white nations had a God-given right to seize any land they encountered became the legal and moral starting point for American expansion. 

The Supreme Court wrote it into our jurisprudence in the nineteenth century, and we never really let it go. From that twisted foundation flowed the taking of Native land, the destruction of Native nations, and the belief that whiteness itself conferred ownership. 

And then — as I point out in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy — that logic didn’t stay confined to the frontier. It seeped into every corner of American life and rose up to try to destroy even the idea of a pluralistic democracy in this country.

Slavery was built on the same logic. It wasn’t an ugly exception to American values; it was a central expression of them. The economy depended on it. Congress bent itself into knots to protect it. The Constitution accommodated it. 

When the Civil War ended, our country had a chance to uproot the white male supremacist ideology that had allowed human beings to be treated as property. Instead, we dodged it. 

I still remember well, when our son was nine years old and we lived in suburban Atlanta, asking him over dinner, “What did you learn in school today?” and his answer was, “We studied the ‘War of Northern Aggression.’”

We allowed the old Confederates back into the halls of power in the 1870s. We let them write the history books. We abandoned the freedmen who had been promised protection and citizenship. 

And the system that emerged was simply white male supremacy, the foundation of slavery, by another name.

Jim Crow wasn’t a detour; it was the natural continuation of the racial hierarchy this country was built on and today’s GOP — and ICE, CPB, and Trump’s toadies in DHS — are trying to re-solidify for the 21st century.

Every tool was used to maintain it. Poll taxes. Literacy tests. Lynching. Chain gangs. Sharecropping. Segregated schools. Redlining. Policing practices that looked far more like occupation than law enforcement. 

All of it justified by the same foundational lie that today animates the brutality of Trump‘s ICE raids: that white people were meant to rule and everyone else existed by their pleasure. And the Big Lie that brown-skinned immigrants are committing “voter fraud” that justifies purging millions from our voting rolls every year. 

That lie still echoes in our institutions. It’s why entire communities — and now polling places — are policed like enemy territory. It’s why Republicans on the courts (particularly SCOTUS) have so often sided with the powerful over the vulnerable. And it’s why we’ve seen, in recent years, an explicitly brutal willingness to use federal force against Americans exercising their constitutional rights of free speech and protest. 

When Trump sent federal agents and troops into Los Angeles, DC, Chicago, Portland, Memphis, and threatened to deploy them elsewhere, it wasn’t a new idea. It was an old ideology flexing its muscles again. It treats American citizens as though they’re foreign enemies. It uses military-trained forces not for defense but for control.

James Madison warned us precisely about this danger of the military policing civilians:

“The means of defense against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.” 

He couldn’t have been clearer. The Founders feared the domestic use of military force not because they were naïve, but because they knew exactly how easily power could be turned inward. They knew that once a government starts treating its own people as threats, libertybecomes the first casualty because they’d seen it done by the British in their own time.

The chilling truth is that the movement dominating the modern GOP has embraced that very mentality. 

It draws its energy from white grievance and Christian nationalism. It relies on the belief that democracy is legitimate only when it protects white cultural dominance (which is why the Trump Department of Labor is exclusively posting pictures of white workers as if they’re the only “real” Americans). 

It thrives on fear and resentment, and encourages a view of fellow nonwhite and female Americans as enemies to be controlled rather than citizens to be represented. 

Today’s GOP and the rightwing-billionaire-funded, 50-year-long “Conservative Movement” that drives it have embraced every bad instinct of the Confederacy, the frontier, Jim Crow, and the backlash to the Civil Rights Movement. 

They’re not “conserving” anything. They’re restoring an old order.

This didn’t happen suddenly. It took decades and the investment of billions of dollars. 

People of a certain age (like me) well remember William F. Buckley Jr.’s 1966-1999 show Firing Line every Sunday on PBS as he pontificated about the wonders of “conservatism” and promoted Republican politicians. My dad was a religious viewer and we watched it together every weekend; the show was a major force in national politics.

In a 1957 editorial titled Why the South Must Prevail, Buckley laid out explicitly what the foundation of conservatism must be.

“Again, let us speak frankly,” Buckley wrote: “The South does not want to deprive the Negro of a vote for the sake of depriving him of the vote. … In some parts of the South, the White community merely intends to prevail — that is all. It means to prevail on any issue on which there is corporate disagreement between Negro and White. The White community will take whatever measures are necessary to make certain that it has its way.”

He asked, rhetorically, if white people in the South are “entitled” to “prevail” over nonwhites even in rural areas of the country or large cities with majority Black populations.

“The sobering answer,” Buckley wrote, “is Yes— the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”

Arguably, following up in April of 2021 the National Review published an article headlined: Why Not Fewer Voters? justifying Republican voter suppression.

Nixon welcomed the old segregationist Democrats into the GOP. Reagan polished the rhetoric and wrapped it in patriotic language. The Republican Party spent years perfecting techniques to suppress votes, gerrymander districts, and reshape the judiciary. 

By the time Trump arrived, the Party was ready for someone who would drop the coded language and say the quiet part out loud.

Trump told white male voters they were the only “real Americans” and everyone else was suspect. He told them the military and the police existed to protect them from demographic change. He told them the only valid elections were the ones they won.

The good news is that most Americans reject this. 

Most Americans believe in a multiracial democracy. They want equal justice. They want freedom that applies to everyone. They don’t want their own government treating nonwhites or women as enemy combatants. They don’t want Epstein-style impunity for morbidly rich white men. They don’t want leaders who behave as if the military is a toy for intimidating political opponents.

But we can’t defeat what we refuse to name. America’s original sin wasn’t just slavery or colonialism: it was the belief that white men are entitled to rule by default and women and nonwhites must be subordinate to them. 

That belief still infects our politics and largely controls the GOP. It still shapes our institutions. It still animates Republican justices on the Supreme Court who see equality as a threat and democracy as negotiable.

We can’t move forward until we reckon with that truth about our nation’s history and today’s GOP. 

We can’t protect liberty while ignoring the warnings of the people who built this country. 

And we can’t defend American democracy — and democracy around the world — while the GOP wages war against the very idea of a nation where everyone counts.

The reckoning is long overdue. This time we have to finish the job.

Double-check your voter registration and pass along the good word to everybody you know.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Gender

Karen Attiah on the Murder of Kashoggi and Trump’s Embrace of His Murderer

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2025 //
4

Karen Attiah was the editor at The Washington Post for Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. She recently left the Post, objecting to its obeisance to Trump.

Trump’s warm welcome for Saudi Arabia’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, outraged her, as it outraged everyone who remembered what happened to Khashoggi.

Khashoggi was a journalist, author, and dissident in Saudi Arabia. He fled Saudi Arabia in September 2017 and settled in the U.S. He was hired by Karen Attiah to write an opinion column for The Washington Post. On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi went to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to get a marriage license. Fifteen Saudi security personnel were waiting for him. They strangled him, and a surgeon in their group dismembered his body. It was never recovered. The CIA later determined that he was killed by direct order of Crown Prince MBS.

Since 2018, MBS has been in disrepute in the West. A few days ago, MBS was an honored guest at the White House. Trump spread a red carpet, praised him lavishly, and commended his record on human rights. He was almost as obsequious to MBS as he is to Putin.

A Warm Welcome for an Assassin

When a reporter asked about Khashoggi, Trump angrily said that the victim was “controversial” and “some people didn’t like him,” and reporters should not ask such disrespectful questions.

Trump cannot plead ignorance about what happened. He was President in 2018, when Khashoggi was murdered.

If you are on BlueSky, you might want to read Karen Attiah’s reaction to Trump’s defense of MBS.

In one of her comments, she wrote:

I will never forget having to edit Jamal’s final, posthumous piece for the Washington Post, after he was murdered.

He was calling for free expression in the Arab world. You can read it here :

A note from Karen Attiah, Global Opinions editor

I received this column from Jamal Khashoggi’s translator and assistant the day after Jamal was reported missing in Istanbul. The Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together. Now I have to accept: That is not going to happen. This is the last piece of his I will edit for The Post. This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world. A freedom he apparently gave his life for. I will be forever grateful he chose The Post as his final journalistic home one year ago and gave us the chance to work together. 

I was recently online looking at the 2018 “Freedom in the World” report published by Freedom House and came to a grave realization. There is only one country in the Arab world that has been classified as “free.”

That nation is Tunisia. Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait come second, with a classification of “partly free.” The rest of the countries in the Arab world are classified as “not free.”

As a result, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change.

The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before.

My dear friend, the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, wrote one of the most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He unfortunately is now serving an unwarranted five-year prison sentence for supposed comments contrary to the Saudi establishment. The Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of a newspaper, al-Masry al Youm, did not enrage or provoke a reaction from colleagues. These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence.

As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate. There was a time when journalists believed the Internet would liberate information from the censorship and control associated with print media. But these governments, whose very existence relies on the control of information, have aggressively blocked the Internet. They have also arrested local reporters and pressured advertisers to harm the revenue of specific publications.

There are a few oases that continue to embody the spirit of the Arab Spring. Qatar’s government continues to support international news coverage, in contrast to its neighbors’ efforts to uphold the control of information to support the “old Arab order.” Even in Tunisia and Kuwait, where the press is considered at least “partly free,” the media focuses on domestic issues but not issues faced by the greater Arab world. They are hesitant to provide a platform for journalists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. Even Lebanon, the Arab world’s crown jewel when it comes to press freedom, has fallen victim to the polarization and influence of pro-Iran Hezbollah.

Who attended the White House dinner for Mohammed bin Salman November 19, 2025

The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power. During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe, which grew over the years into a critical institution, played an important role in fostering and sustaining the hope of freedom. Arabs need something similar. In 1967, the New York Times and The Post took joint ownership of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, which went on to become a platform for voices from around the world.

My publication, The Post, has taken the initiative to translate many of my pieces and publish them in Arabic. For that, I am grateful. Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington, then he or she would be able to better understand the implications of similar projects in his or her community.

The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.

Categories Character, Corruption, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Injustice, Trump

Jan Resseger: Trump’s Rush to Dismantle the Federal Government

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2025 //
3

Department after department, agency after agency, in the Federal government has been killed or destroyed by the Trump administration. Foreign aid, which had decades of bipartisan support, was virtually eliminated, meaning certain death for hundreds of thousand of children and families who count on the U.S. for food and medicine. The Department of Defense is now called the Department of War, without Congressional approval. The Consumer Financial Board is gone. The Department of Education has been eviscerated. Civil rights enforcement has been turned upside down, to exclude vulnerable groups for which it was intended.

Jan Resseger is a brilliant, thoughtful analyst of education. I encourage you to sign up for her blog. Here she takes a deep dive into what this chaos means for public schools and students:

Despite that the federal government shutdown has ended, SNAP funds are being distributed, and airplanes are returning to their expected schedules, many of us are feeling disoriented and troubled by the way the federal government seems to be operating under Donald Trump’s leadership. We have been observing the Trump administration violating core principles we learned in civics class are at the heart of our democratic society. And we thought the Constitution was supposed to protect every one of us. In today’s post, I’ll try to name and explore some of the principles that President Trump seems to be violating as he attempts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. On Thursday, in Part 2, I’ll explore three serious constitutional violations. All of this is undermining the well-being of our nation’s massive institution of K-12 public schools, the leaders of 13,000 public school districts, over three million public school teachers, and more than 50 million students enrolled.

NY Times economic reporter Tony Romm reflects on the deeper meaning of the recent federal government shutdown: “(T)he president has frequently bent the rules of (the) budget, primarily to reap political benefits or exact retribution. He has found new and untested ways to spare certain Americans, like the military, from the pain of the government closure, while claiming he has no power to help others, including low-income individuals who rely on benefits like SNAP. The result is a shutdown unlike any other, one that has posed disparate and debilitating risks for those unlucky enough to depend on the many functions of government that Mr. Trump has long aspired to cut… At the heart of Mr. Trump’s actions is a belief that the president possesses vast power over the nation’s spending, even though the Constitution vests that authority with Congress. Mr. Trump and his budget director, Russell T. Vought have dismantled entire agencies, fired thousands of workers and canceled or halted billions of dollars in federal spending—all without the express permission of lawmakers.” Romm is not writing about public education, but you will recognize that his concerns apply to public schools and all the rest of our society’s primary institutions.

Trump Seizes the Power of the Purse

The NY Times Editorial Board enumerates three ways the President has grabbed power from Congress  by violating “the power of the purse” granted to Congress in the Constitution: “First, he has refused to spend money that Congress allocated… Second, Mr. Trump has spent money that Congress has not allocated… Third, the president has taken steps that effectively overturn Congress’s spending decisions. In these cases, he has not added or subtracted federal funds, but he has taken other steps that make it so an agency cannot carry out the mission that Congress envisioned for it.”

All year, and at a new and radical level during the recent federal shutdown, President Trump has ordered Education Secretary Linda McMahon and his other appointees in the Department of Education to usurp the power of the purse primarily by slashing the expenditure of Congressionally appropriated funds to staff the department, along with announcing the goal of eliminating the department and its federal role altogether.  The administration’s imposition of permanent layoffs during the federal shutdown focused on firing the professionals responsible for carrying out the very reason a U.S. Department of Education was established back in the fall of 1979, during President Jimmy Carter’s administration: to gather together and administer programs that equalize opportunity for students across the states, where there had historically been unequal protection of students’ rights depending on children’s family income, race, primary language, immigrant status, sexuality or disability.  Huge grant programs like Title I and IDEA and myriad smaller programs ensure that public schools, no matter where a student lives, meet the specific learning needs of all students including those whose primary language is not English and students with disabilities.

During the shutdown, the Trump administration appeared intent on violating the power of the purse at the U.S. Department of Education by radically reducing the staff who do the work—impounding funds congressionally appropriated for paying the staff who enable the Department of Education to fulfill its primary mission.  For example, Education Week‘s Brooke Schultz examines the implication of the shutdown staff cuts for the Office for Civil Rights, on top of massive staff cuts last spring: “Though the latest layoffs are on hold, an enforcement staff that had 560 members spread across 12 offices… will shrink by more than 70% if they go through… Experts worry that without federal enforcement, a fractured interpretation of civil rights laws and protections could take shape across the country—leading to conflicting and politicized handling of cases depending on where students live and what laws are on the books. They worry students in one state might not have the same protections at school as students in another… (S)ome state lawmakers are worried about civil rights complaints not being handled at all.”

During the shutdown, the Trump administration also eliminated most of the remaining staff in the Office for Elementary and Secondary Education who administer the huge and essential Title I grants for school districts serving concentrations of students living in poverty. Trump and McMahon also reduced staff in the Office of Special Education Programs, which oversees IDEA grants, from around 200 to five.  Everyone has understood those proposed shutdown layoffs as the Trump administration’s threat to move special education programming from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services, despite that the mission of that department emphasizes treatment instead of education. During the shutdown, Federal District Court Judge for the Northern District of California, Susan Illston temporarily blocked the proposed permanent staff layoffs and their implications for undermining the mission of the U.S. Department of Education, though, of course her pause on the staff firings had no effect while the shutdown continued.

The end of the shutdown did temporarily end all the shutdown layoffs. We shall have to wait a couple of months to see what happens. K-12 Dive‘s Kara Arundel explains: “The continuing resolution signed into law Wednesday funds federal education programs at fiscal year 2025 levels. This temporary spending plan expires Jan. 30, unless Congress agrees to a more permanent budget before that deadline.  The deal nullifies the reduction-in-force notices sent to 465 agency employees on Oct. 10. The Education Department is also prohibited from issuing additional RIFs through the end of January and must provide back pay to all employees who did not receive compensation during the shutdown.” Clearly Trump and Vought’s power grab to eliminate much of the staff in a department established and funded by Congress has been blocked only temporarily.

Education Week‘s Mark Lieberman addsthat prior to the shutdown, “The Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan federal watchdog funded by Congress, had been investigating more than 40 instances of the Trump administration potentially violating the Nixon-era federal law that prohibits the executive branch from impounding… funds appropriated by Congress… The GAO had already published decisions before Oct. 1 finding that the administration broke the law by withholding funding from programs supporting school infrastructure upgrades, library and museum services, Head Start, and disaster preparation.”

Supreme Court Gives Trump Power through the Shadow Docket

We have also watched all year as Federal District Court judges have temporarily blocked Trump’s executive orders, but lacked the power to declare them permanently unconstitutional or in violation of federal law. Only the U.S. Supreme Court can do that. These cases then become part of “the shadow docket”— cases decided temporarily on an emergency basis but awaiting a full hearing and final decision. The number of these cases derailed to “the shadow docket” has grown rapidly in this first year of Trump’s second term.

In March, the Department of Education fired nearly 2,200 of its 4,133 staff.  After a Federal District Court judge blocked the layoffs temporarily, the case was subsequently appealed. On July 15, Diane Ravitch reported in her blog: “Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the President could continue to lay off the employees of the Department of Education while leaving aside the legal question of his power to destroy a Department created by Congress 45 years ago… If the Supreme Court ever gets around to deciding whether Trump has the legal authority to abolish the Department of Education, it will already be gone.”

After a Federal District Court case is appealed, the Supreme Court releases a temporary, emergency decision, putting off a formal hearing, oral arguments, and what the NY Times‘ Adam Liptak calls, “an explanation of the court’s rationale” until some future time when the case could be scheduled for hearings on what Liptak calls the Supreme Court’s “merits docket.” Liptak explains: “The question of whether the nation’s highest court owes the public an explanation for its actions has grown along with the rise of the ’emergency docket,’ which uses truncated procedures to produce terse, provisional orders meant to remain in effect only while the courts consider the lawfulness of the challenged actions. In practice, the orders often effectively resolve the case.” His implication here is what Diane Ravitch worries about. By the time the Supreme Court fully considers and decides the case, perhaps years from now, it may be too late.

The shutdown has ended, but it is not clear what will happen to the U.S. Department of Education and the many federal programs that support public school equity across our nation.  Part 2 of this post on Thursday will explore what appear to be serious constitutional violations as they impact children and public schools.

Categories Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Lies, Privatization, School Choice, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Trump Moves to Shut Down US Department of Education

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2025 //
11

Trump said he would close the Department of Education, and he’s well on the way to closing a Congressionally-authorized Department without asking Congress for permission.

He and wrestling entrepreneur Linda McMahon have decided that the Department is responsible for stagnant test scores. Nothing could be stupider but what would one expect from people who look with contempt on education. Especially public schools.

I cannot explain their thinking but know this: Trump wants to destroy research into science and medicine. He wants to control the curriculum and to ban teaching about race, ethnicity and gender.

As Forrest Gump’s mother taught him: “Stupid is as stupid does.”

Michael C. Bender of The New York Times wrote:

The Trump administration announced on Tuesday an aggressive plan to continue dismantling the Education Department, ending the agency’s role in supporting academics at elementary and high schools and in expanding access to college.

Those responsibilities will instead be largely taken over by the Labor Department.

Additional changes include moving a child care grant program for college students and foreign medical school accreditation to the Health and Human Services Department, and transferring Fulbright programs and international education grants to the State Department. The Interior Department will take over the Indian Education Office.

Shifting duties away from the Education Department aligns with President Trump’s goal of eventually closing the agency, a move opposed by teachers’ unions and student rights groups and one that can only be accomplished with an act of Congress.

Less clear was how moving programs to other agencies aligned with Mr. Trump’s reason for closing the Education Department, which he has said was to give states more power in shaping school policies. A senior official at the Education Department said the changes would streamline bureaucracy so that “at the end of the day, it means more dollars to the classroom.”

“Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement, adding that the changes were an attempt to “refocus education on students, families and schools.”

The plan drew some immediate blowback from Republicans, including Representative Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, who said in a statement that the “department’s core offices are not discretionary functions.”

“They are foundational,” Mr. Fitzpatrick said. “They safeguard civil rights, expand opportunity, and ensure that every child, in every community, has the chance to learn, grow and succeed on equal footing.”

Kevin Carey, the vice president for education and work at New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington, said the changes were “wasteful, wrong and illegal.”

“Secretary McMahon is creating a bureaucratic Rube Goldberg machine that will waste millions of taxpayer dollars by outsourcing vital programs to other agencies,” Mr. Carey said. “It’s like paying a contractor double to mow your lawn and then claiming you’ve cut the home maintenance budget. It makes no sense.”

Administration officials have pointed to the recent federal shutdown to justify the moves, noting that schools remained open and students continued to be taught despite nearly all of the Education Department’s staff having been furloughed.

The department has posted several social media memes making such a point. In an X post last week, the department announced that federal workers were returning to the office, adding, “But let’s be honest: did you really miss us at all?”

Liz Huston, a White House spokeswoman, said the administration was committed to shrinking the agency “while still ensuring efficient delivery of funds and essential programs.”

“The Democrat shutdown made one thing unmistakably clear: Students and teachers don’t need Washington bureaucrats micromanaging their classrooms,” Ms. Huston said.

Republicans in charge of the House and Senate in Washington have signaled little enthusiasm for voting on a bill to close the department, which was created by an act of Congress in 1979.

Mr. Trump has also shown little interest in collaborating with Congress in his bid to reshape the federal government, and his administration has continued to seek ways to diminish the Education Department.

“We’re going to shut it down, and shut it down as quickly as possible,” Mr. Trump said in March after signing an executive orderthat directed Education Secretary Linda McMahon to start razing the department.

Ms. McMahon’s first act after joining Mr. Trump’s cabinet this year was to instruct the department’s staff to prepare for its “final mission” of shuttering the agency. The following week, Ms. McMahon fired 1,315 of those workers.

The layoffs decimated the department’s Office for Civil Rights, which was created to enforce Congress’s promise of equal educational opportunity for all students, and eliminated the agency’s research armdedicated to tracking U.S. student achievement, which for many students is at three-decade lows.

In July, after the Supreme Court cleared the way for mass layoffs at the department, the administration moved adult education, family literacy programs and career and technical education to the Labor Department.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, Trump, U.S. Department of Education
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