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MMA Fighter Praises Hitler, Denies Holocaust as Mass Stupidity Epidemic Spreads

By dianeravitch
February 8, 2025 //
28

Here is what Trump has wrought: He has made it acceptable for people to be as bigoted and stupid in public as they want, with no sense of shame attached to their bigotry or their stupidity. When Trump attacks DEI, he is openly avowing his racism and misogny. When he rants about immigrants, he doesn’t mean white immigrants, he means nonwhite immigrants.

Thanks to Trump’s malign influence, we get a story like the following, which appeared in the New York Daily News. Bryce Mitchell is a mixed martial arts “star” who flaunts his bigotry and ignorance and belittles the schools that tried to educate him and inculcate a sense of human decency.

MMA star Bryce Mitchell praised Adolf Hitler as a “good guy” and denied the Holocaust happened in a rant on his new podcast, “ArkanSanity.”

“I honestly think Hitler was a good guy, based upon my own research, not my public education and indoctrination,” the 30-year-old fighter said in the first episode.

“He fought for his country, he wanted to purify it by kicking the greedy Jews out who were destroying his country and turning them all into gays,” he added. “Was Hitler perfect? No, but he was fighting for his people. He wanted a pure nation.”

After co-host Roli Delgado countered that genocide was bad, Mitchell then denied the Holocaust.

“That’s what your public education will tell you Roli, because you believe your public education because you haven’t done your own research. When you realize there’s no possible way they could’ve burned and cremated 6 million bodies, you’re gonna realize the Holocaust ain’t real,” he said.

Mitchell, who competes in UFC’s featherweight division, was roundly denounced by others in the fighting community following his comments.

“Each and every day MMA finds a way to reach a new low,” broadcaster Ariel Helwani wrote on social mediaThursday. “A new way of embarrassing itself and those who are fans of it.”

“It just continues to baffle me at how unbelievably stupid — not to mention bigoted — some of the people in the sport or associated with the sport can be,” Helwani concluded.

Mitchell is no stranger to saying divisive things aloud. Last year, he said he planned to home school his children to prevent them from “turning gay.”

“That’s the reason I’m going to home-school Tucker, because I don’t want him to be a communist,” he said in an Instagram video while holding up his son. “I don’t want him to worship Satan. I don’t want him to be gay.”

Categories Bigotry, Evil, Fascism, History, Ignorance, Stupid, Trump

Texas: Public Schools Are Imposing Austerity Measures While State Holds Huge Surplus

By dianeravitch
February 7, 2025 //
14

Texas Governor Greg Abbott is holding hostage the more than five million students in public schools while he demands vouchers for kids who are already enrolled in private and religious schools. Abbott has refused to increase funding for the state’s public schools unless the legislature approves vouchers, most of which will subsidize the affluent.

Last year, the legislature refused to approve vouchers. Since then, Abbott engineered the defeat of several anti-voucher Republicans. He’s hoping to win approval in the current session. Vouchers will pass easily in the state senate. We will see what happens in the House, where rural Republicans stood against vouchers in the past, before Abbott’s purge.

Abbott is playing Reverse Robin Hood. He is stealing from the poor to pay for the rich. Billionaires like Jeff Yass, the richest man jnnOennstlvsnia, and Betsy DeVos of Michigan, are funding his intransigence with millions in campaign contributions.

The Texas Monthly reports that school superintendents are increasing class sizes, laying off teachers, eliminating electives, and doing whatever they can to keep their doors open.

The article says:

Two years ago, during the 2023 legislative session, superintendents of Texas schools were optimistic that state lawmakers would boost public-education funding. After all, soaring inflation was straining the already meager finances of districts across the state, and lawmakers had at their disposal a $32.7 billion budget surplus. Spending some of that money on the urgent educational needs of the state’s children might have seemed like an uncontroversial proposal. 

Instead, the unthinkable happened: Legislators left Austin without putting any significant new money into schools or giving teachers a raise. The consequences have been dire.

Texas’s public schools were already among the most poorly resourced in the country: Our per-student funding is about 27 percent less than the national average. The basic allotment—the minimum amount of funding per student that school districts receive from the state—has been stuck at $6,160 since 2019. That would need to be upped by about $1,400 just to keep pace with rising costs. Public education advocates worry that lawmakers will provide only face-saving increases to the basic allotment in 2025 while diverting billions to private schools.

Many school leaders have had to undertake draconian austerity measures. Nearly 80 percent of districts have reported challenges with budget deficits. Given the stakes, 2025 could be a pivotal year for Texas’s public-education system….

Texas Monthly spoke to a group of superintendents to ask about how they were coping. They all spoke about the budget cuts and unfunded mandates (like requiring the hiring of police officers without providing funding). One superintendent, Jennifer Blaine of Spring Branch, said:

JB, Spring Branch: We don’t have anywhere else to cut. We are cut to the bone. I consolidated everything I could, and I cut everything that I could. If we have to cut further, you’re talking about severely impacting academics in the classroom and, quite frankly, safety and security. Five and a half million kids are in Texas public schools, and I don’t understand how our legislators and our governor don’t see this as a crisis. If we don’t educate these kids to the highest levels and prepare them for postsecondary success, we’re going to crumble as a state. I don’t know where the disconnect is. Education is the great equalizer. But nobody is talking about that, and I think it’s a missed opportunity because this is not going to end well. 

The title of the article in the print edition was  “A Legislature That Will Spend at Least as Much Per Pupil as Louisiana.”

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Corruption, Cruelty, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Funding, Religion, Separation of church and state, Texas, Vouchers

Heather Cox Richardson: Elon Musk is Trampling on Our Constitution

By dianeravitch
February 4, 2025 //
20

Nobody puts things in perspective as well as Heather Cox Richardson. What is happening in Washington, D.C., right now is dangerous and subversive. Trump has given Elon Musk to destroy our government and trash the Constitution. There is a coup underway.

She writes:

I’m going to start tonight by stating the obvious: the Republicans control both chambers of Congress: the House of Representatives and the Senate. They also control the White House and the Supreme Court. If they wanted to get rid of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), for example, they could introduce a bill, debate it, pass it, and send it on to President Trump for his signature. And there would be very little the Democrats could do to stop that change.

But they are not doing that.

Instead, they are permitting unelected billionaire Elon Musk, whose investment of $290 million in Trump and other Republican candidates in the 2024 election apparently has bought him freedom to run the government, to override Congress and enact whatever his own policies are by rooting around in government agencies and cancelling those programs that he, personally, dislikes.

The replacement of our constitutional system of government with the whims of an unelected private citizen is a coup. The U.S. president has no authority to cut programs created and funded by Congress, and a private citizen tapped by a president has even less standing to try anything so radical.

But Republicans are allowing Musk to run amok. This could be because they know that Trump has embraced the idea that the American government is a “Deep State,” but that the extreme cuts the MAGA Republicans say they want are actually quite unpopular with Americans in general, and even with most Republican voters. By letting Musk make the cuts the MAGA base wants, they can both provide those cuts and distance themselves from them.

But permitting a private citizen to override the will of our representatives in Congress destroys the U.S. Constitution. It also makes Congress itself superfluous. And it takes the minority rule Republicans have come to embrace to the logical end of putting government power in the hands of one man.

Musk’s team in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has taken control of the U.S. Treasury payment systems that handle about $6 trillion in annual transactions for the U.S. government, thus gaining access to Americans’ personal information as well as information about Musk’s competitors. From there, Musk claims to have been cancelling those transactions he thinks are wasteful. He claims, for example, to have “deleted” the popular Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Direct File system that enabled people to file their taxes online for free, without the help of paid tax preparers.

Musk’s team apparently consists of six engineers, aged 19 to 24, who are taking control of the computers at government agencies. From the Treasury Department, they went on to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which receives foreign policy guidance from the State Department. Their breaching of the computers there compromises our national intelligence systems, which must now be considered insecure.

From there, they went on to the General Services Administration (GSA), which manages the federal government’s 7,500 or so buildings. Musk’s people sent an email to regional managers telling them to begin ending the leases on federal offices. According to Chris Megerian of the Associated Press, the person in charge of that initiative is Nicole Hollander, who describes herself on LinkedIn as employed at Musk’s social media company, X.

Today, according to an email sent to employees of the Small Business Administration, Musk’s people have gotten into that agency’s human resources, contracts, and payment systems. The Small Business Administration supports small businesses and entrepreneurs, and under the Biden-Harris administration, small businesses boomed thanks to small-dollar loans to women, Black, and Latino entrepreneurs.

By this afternoon, Musk’s people were digging into the data of the Department of Education with an eye to dismantling it from the inside before Trump tries to shut it down with an executive order, although only Congress itself can shutter the department. According to Laura Meckler, Danielle Douglas-Gabriel, and Hannah Natanson of the Washington Post, Musk’s DOGE staffers had accessed sensitive internal data systems, including the personal information of millions of students who are taking part in the federal student aid program. It is highly unlikely that Congress would destroy the Department of Education, so Musk and Trump hope to hollow it out from within.

On a livestream last night, Musk said of his destruction of the federal government: “If it’s not possible now, it will never be possible. This is our shot, This is the best hand of cards we’re ever going to have. If we don’t take advantage of this best hand of cards, it’s never going to happen.”

Three federal employees unions are suing the Trump administration to stop Musk, and today, Democratic members of the House and Senate tried to enter the USAID building but were denied entry. Led by Senators Chris Murphy (D-CT), Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Representatives Jamie Raskin (D-MD) and Gerry Connolly (D-VA), the Democrats condemned what Raskin called Musk and Trump’s “illegal, unconstitutional interference with congressional power.”

“Elon Musk, you may have illegally seized power over the financial payment systems of the United States Department of Treasury,” Raskin said, “but you don’t control the money of the American people. The United States Congress does that—under Article I of the Constitution. And just like the president, who was elected to something, cannot impound the money of the people, we don’t have a fourth branch of government called Elon Musk. And that’s going to become real clear.”

Senator Murphy said: “[L]et’s not pull any punches about why this is happening. Elon Musk makes billions of dollars based off of his business with China. And China is cheering at [the destruction of USAID]. There is no question that the billionaire class trying to take over our government right now is doing it based on self-interest: their belief that if they can make us weaker in the world, if they can elevate their business partners all around the world, they will gain the benefit.”

Murphy continued: “But there’s another reason this is happening. They’re shuttering agencies and sending employees home in order to create the illusion that they’re saving money, in order to…pass a giant tax cut for billionaires and corporations.”

While Musk and his DOGE team are trying systematically to dismantle the government, today Judge Loren L. AliKhan of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to freeze trillions of dollars in grants and loans before DOGE got going. AliKhan said that by impounding funds—which Congress declared illegal in 1974—Trump’s Office of Management and Budget “attempted to wrest the power of the purse away from the only branch of government entitled to wield it.” It is Congress, not the president, that determines federal spending.

Meanwhile, the elected president, Donald Trump, sparked a crisis last Friday when his White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, announced that he fully intended to go through with the trade war he had hyped on the campaign trail. Trump announced he would levy tariffs of 25% on most products from Mexico and Canada and of 10% on products from China, beginning at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, in violation of the trade agreement his own team had negotiated during his first term.

As soon as Leavitt announced the upcoming tariffs, the stock market began to fall, and by last night, stock market futures had fallen 450 points on the expectation of tariffs hitting at midnight tonight. Today, the stock market continued to fall. Even reliable Trump allies began to complain that the tariffs would raise prices. The Wall Street Journal editorial board called Trump’s tariffs “the dumbest trade war in history.”

Today, the president of Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, announced that she and Trump had “reached a series of agreements” that would pause the threatened tariffs for a month. Mexico agreed to “reinforce the northern border with 10,000 elements of the National Guard immediately, to prevent drug trafficking from Mexico to the United States,” while the U.S. “commits to work to prevent the trafficking of high-powered weapons to Mexico.”

When Trump announced their conversation shortly afterward, he omitted the part of the agreement that committed the U.S. to try to stop the flow of guns to Mexico. He also did not mention that, in fact, Mexico committed to putting 10,000 troops at the border in 2021. As Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post commented above a record of Mexican troop deployments: “Any news outlet reporting Mexico conceded anything to Trump to get him to delay tariffs has not done its homework. Trump boasts he got Mexico to commit to stationing 10K troops at our border. Apparently he didn’t realize Mexico already has 15K troops deployed there[.]”

The crisis at the northern border worked out in a similar fashion. After conferring, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump announced a 30-day pause in the implementation of tariffs. Trudeau agreed to appoint a border czar and to implement a $1.3 billion border plan that Canada had announced in December.

In other words, while Musk was causing a constitutional crisis, Trump created an economic crisis that threatened both domestic and global chaos, then claimed Biden administration achievements as his own and declared victory.

The tariffs on Chinese goods went into effect as planned. China has promised to levy tariffs of up to 15% on certain U.S. products beginning a week from today. It also said it will investigate Google to see if it has violated antitrust laws.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Musk, Elon, Republicans, Trump

Alexander Vindman: Elon Musk’s Hostile Takeover of the Federal Government

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2025 //
19

Alexander Vindman was a highly decorated member of the military who was invited to join the staff of the National Security Council where he was Director of European Affairs. In 2019, he testified before Congress about the Trump-Ukraine scandal. The scandal culminated in Trump’s first impeachment.

He writes a blog called “Why It Matters”about public affairs.

He wrote recently about Elon Musk’s brash intrusion into the functioning of the federal government, at Trump’s invitation. With the pretext of finding “efficiencies,” Musk has scooped up vast amounts of private infornation about almost every American and caused the ouster of effective career civil servants. He also instigated a buyout offer to 2 million career civil servants, although no money has been appropriated to pay for mass retirements. The offer was modeled on Musk’s strategy at Twitter, where he dramatically reduced the workforce by almost 80%.

He wrote:


Members of the newly created “Department of Government Efficiency” under Elon Musk have engaged in an ongoing campaign designed to cripple the basic functions of government and decimate the federal civil service. Members of the Department of Government Efficiency are reportedly pushing for full access to payment systems and intend to scrape data from within the Department of Treasury. Cloud Software Group CEO Tom Krause has been designated liaison between the Treasury and the Department of Government Efficiency, with Musk reportedly wanting to add the Treasury to the blockchain. Agents from the Department of Government Efficiency have demanded access to classified info with USAID, with Elon later calling the agency a criminal organization and declaring “Time for [USAID] to die”. Civil servants across the federal government have been offered buy-outs to leave their positions early. Not only have no funds been appropriated for these offers (nor has the full legality been determined), but these buy-outs are being made by an administration lead by someone who has notoriously scammed contractors and avoided paying invoices whenever possible. These actions are taking place in the midst of an ongoing purge of high-ranking officials within the FBI by the Trump administration.

Make no mistake, what’s happening right now is a hostile takeover of the federal government by a private agency operating with a broad mandate and no concerns for the stability of the United States or the interests of the average American. It’s easier to break than it is to build, and Elon Musk’s agenda is focused on unraveling America’s governing institutions. When – not if – a preventable disaster is enabled by the Department of Government Efficiency’s decision to destroy a function of government in the name of “fighting wokeness”, there will be a reckoning for the damage Elon Musk has done. 

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Musk, Elon, Trump

Musk Takes Control of USAID, Calls It “Evil”

By dianeravitch
February 2, 2025 //
55

Musk is sending his agents to sensitive federal agencies and taking over. He has taken control of the payments system at the U.S. Treasury, which processes trillions of dollars in Social Security payments, Medicare, Medicaid, and other obligations and holds personally identifiable information about recipients. They gained access to the computers of the Office of Personnel Managenent, which has records of federal employees, and locked out its government overseers.

Now his team has barged into the offices of the U.S. Agency for International Development, clashed with security officers who barred their entry into restricted spaces; the security officers were suspended, and Musk’s team is now downloading their computers.

The Washington Post reported:

The Trump administration has removed two top security officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development after they refused to let representatives of Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” access restricted spaces at the agency, said current and former USAID officials.

The placement of the security officials — John Voorhees and his deputy — on administrative leave is the latest effort by the Trump administration and Musk to wrest control of the world’s largest provider of food assistance, which they have denigrated, without offering evidence, as left-wing and corrupt amid objections from Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

Amid the turmoil at the agency, Matt Hopson, the USAID chief of staff and a political appointee, resigned, according to a current and former USAID official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation. Hopson did not respond to requests for comment.

On Sunday, Musk repeatedly attacked USAID on X, calling the long-standing government agency “evil” and a “viper’s nest of radical-left marxists who hate America.”

“USAID is a criminal organization,” he added. “Time for it to die.”

By Sunday afternoon, USAID’s X account had been taken down, with a message saying the account “doesn’t exist.”

Reuters reported that the Trump administration was dismantling USAID and had fired more than 100 of its career staff.

The New York Times reported that the Trump administration will probably shift the agency into the State Department. Trump currently has imposed a 80-day freeze on all foreign aid.

State Department officials did not answer inquiries seeking to clarify the purpose of the moves, which lawmakers and aid workers said could be anything from a restructuring to an effort to significantly downsize, if not eliminate, most U.S. foreign aid programs.

But Democratic lawmakers said they feared a potentially bleak endgame for the aid agency.

“All the signals of how the senior staff have been put on administrative leave, many of the field staff and headquarters staff have been put on a gag order,” Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, who sits on the Senate panels on foreign relations and appropriations, said Saturday afternoon in an interview.

“It seems more like the early stages of shutting down than it does of reviewing it or merely retitling it,” he added.

U.S.A.I.D. is the government’s lead agency for humanitarian aid and development assistance. Since it was established in 1961, it has received foreign policy guidance from the State Department, but otherwise functioned as an independent entity.

Ironically, the Washington Post published an editorial today defending the value of foreign, especially humanitarian aid.

Foreign assistance is one of the more misunderstood items in the federal budget. In creates an enormous bang for a relatively small buck. American aid supports thousands of programs across 204 countries. It provides lifesaving drugs for millions of people afflicted with HIV/AIDS and malaria. It purifies drinking water, helps rid former war zones of leftover land mines, and trains local police to combat human trafficking and the illegal wildlife trade.
For many people around the world, aid is also the most visible symbol of U.S. power — soft power — and a tangible demonstration of America’s decency. Amounting to $68 billion in fiscal 2023, foreign aid is only about 1 percent of the federal budget. Yet it has long been in the crosshairs of some fiscal conservatives and other critics who deem it a waste of taxpayer dollars that could be better spent at home.

On President Donald Trump’s first day back in office, he signed an executive order suspending all foreign aid for 90 days, pending a review, saying the “foreign aid industry and bureaucracy are not aligned with American interests and in many cases antithetical to American values.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio followed up with a cable on Jan. 24 to all U.S. diplomatic outposts stopping work on most foreign aid programs during the review period, which is supposed to be completed by the time the freeze expires. Initially, exemptions were made only for emergency food aid and military assistance to Israel and Egypt — and conspicuously not for aid to Ukraine or Taiwan. Then on Tuesday, perhaps bowing to global outrage and criticism, Rubio issued an additional waiver for lifesaving humanitarian assistance…

Consider just a few of the programs taxpayers fund, starting with PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, launched under President George W. Bush in 2003. By the end of last year, PEPFAR was providing antiretroviral treatment for nearly 21 million people in 55 countries and delivering pre-exposure prophylaxis (to prevent people from contracting HIV) to 2.5 million people. In South Africa, PEPFAR covers much of the costs for staff to administer the drugs, for HIV-prevention messaging and for supporting the country’s HIV research. It remains unclear whether Rubio’s waiver extends to PEPFAR, but it should. A months-long delay would cost lives.

The United States is also the world’s largest donor to the global fight against malaria, mostly through the President’s Malaria Initiative, known as PMI. In fiscal 2024, Congress allocated $795 million to the U.S. Agency for International Development for the effort to diagnose and treat malaria and to distribute insecticide-treated mosquito nets. With even a short suspension of this aid, prevention gains could be reversed, especially in malaria-prone cities such as Lagos, Nigeria, African health officials warn….

All in all, foreign aid is an extraordinarily effective policy tool. Helping eradicate poverty and promote democracy generates goodwill that makes the United States stronger. Combating life-threatening pathogens and removing the causes of economic and social instability make the world safer. Expanding global prosperity creates new markets for American products.

Rubio’s waiver should expand to include all programs vital to health and well-being. And the secretary should see that the review is done quickly and fairly, so that the flow of aid can resume before the pause does lasting damage.

The editorial was written in response to Trump’s 90-day freeze. It did not acknowledge the all-out assault on USAID, nor the fact that Trump is dubious about all foreign aid and Musk thinks it’s “evil.”

Bear in mind that Musk does not believe in philanthropy. He is the world’s richest man, with wealth of more than $400 billion. But where is his philanthropy? Has he endowed any universities, hospitals, museums, medical research? Or anything else. He once denounced Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife McKenzie Scott because she was so generous with her gifts to struggling nonprofits; he said she was undermining Western civilization. I can’t find evidence of any philanthropy on his part. If it exists, it’s well hidden.

Elon Musk has a hard, cold heart. If he has one.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Musk, Elon, Trump

Trump’s Goal: To Take Complete Control of the Federal Government

By dianeravitch
February 1, 2025 //
24

During the campaign, Trump told Sean Hannity that he would be a dictator on Day 1. He understated his goal, as we now know. He intends to be a dictator after Day 1. He wants to take complete control of the federal government.

He wants to destroy the civil service, place his loyalists in every policy making position, politicize the Justice Department, and eliminate all dissenting voices.

Both the Justice department and the FBI are supposed to be insulated from politics. Trump hated that. He’s putting them under the control of close allies. Every career prosecutor at the Department of Justice who worked in the Trump investigations has been ousted. The FBI has been purged.

His plan to eliminate the civil service, called Schedule F, has been rolled out.

He fired a dozen Departments’ Inspectors General. These are the nonpartisan officials who scrutinize each Department and guard against waste, fraud, and abuse. Will he replace them with MAGA flunkies?

To be sure, Trump is the puppet, not the mastermind. Others are pulling the strings. Musk, Vance, Stephen Miller (the architect of his plan to deport 11 million immigrants). The billionaire Peter Thiel pulls Vance’s strings.

Trump’s failed effort to stop-payment on almost every federal program may have been Vance’s idea. Vance is closely aligned with the radical libertarian guru Curtis Yarwin, who believes that democracy is a failure and that what is needed is a dictator who will eliminate most of the government.

The offer sent to two million civil servants asking them to resign in exchange for a payout likely came from Musk, who downsized Twitter by offering a mass buyout. Some Twitter retirees are still suing to get the buyout. No money is available now and unlikely to be appropriated to pay those who accept the offer to give up their civil service jobs.

The loss of top civil servants in every agency will undermine their effectiveness. These are the people with institutional memory; they know the agency far better than their political bosses. They serve, no matter which party is in power. And they are leaving in droves, pushed out by the new bosses.

Just when you think it can’t get worse, another Executive Order rolls out. Trump boastfully signs with his Sharpie. Does he know what’s he’s signing? Does it matter? Day by day, Trump demonstrates that he has “absolute immunity.” Day by day, he brings another part of the government under his control. And the Republicans in Congress not only acquiesce, they praise him for abrogating their powers.

Trump is a puppet, and cowed, pusillanimous Republicans in Congress are his lapdogs.

Day by day, the foundation of a Trump dictatorship are put into place. When he jokes about running for a third term, is he joking?

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Musk, Elon, Trump

Will CBS Defend “60 Minutes” or Will It Pay Off Trump?

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2025 //
21

We have never seen a president like Trump. He never misses an opportunity to grift. He got $16 million from ABC News because George Stephanopoulos said he raped E. Jean Carroll (the judge in the case agreed). Never went to trial. He got $25 million from Zuckerberg because he was locked out of Facebook after the January 6 insurrection. Name he wants a payoff from CBS because he claims that “60 Minutes” edited its interview with Kamala Harris to show her in a favorable light.

Now Trump’s head of the FCC has told CBS to hand over the raw footage so he can decide whether “60 Minutes” was unfair to Trump. Gee, I wonder what he will decide?

How was Trump injured by Harris’s interview?

Not at all. He’s president and now he can turn the powers of the federal government to coerce media and other institutions to cower, and if necessary, pay tribute.

The Los Angeles Times reported:

CBS and its “60 Minutes” have long stood as shining beacons of broadcast news.

The Sunday night newsmagazine, with its ubiquitous ticking clock, earned a reputation for not backing down from a fight. For a half-century, the show established the standard for TV investigative reporting with its no-holds-barred questioning of U.S. presidents and others in power. 

But a different clock is ticking. 

President Trump’s new chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Brendan Carr, this week demanded CBS turn over the full, unedited transcript of its “60 Minutes” interview in October with former Vice President Kamala Harris, including film footage from the different camera angles. 

That interview provoked the ire of Trump, who filed a lawsuit against CBS alleging the network was engaged in deceptive editing practices. 

“We are working to comply with that inquiry as we are legally compelled to do,” CBS said Friday in a statement.

The latest development comes as Paramount Global lawyers engage in preliminary talks to settle the lawsuit Trump filed in October over his objection to edits to the “60 Minutes” interview. Trump alleged the network “deceptively” edited the interview to present Harris more favorably in the closing weeks of the election. 

Lawyers for Trump and Paramount on Friday asked a Texas judge to extend a key deadline in the court case to give the two sides additional time to try to hammer out a truce.

The FCC inquiry raises the stakes in the dispute, which has stoked fears that Trump and his team are using levers of power to chill unflattering news coverage. Paramount’s controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone, has been agitating for her team to settle Trump’s lawsuit to facilitate her family’s sale of Paramount to David Ellison’s Skydance Media, according to people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to comment. 

Paramount needs the approval of the FCC for the Skydance deal to advance. 

The company’s seeming willingness to placate Trump has roiled journalists, including within CBS News. First Amendment experts initially interpreted Trump’s “60 Minutes” lawsuit as a political stunt. They said settling the case with Trump would deliver a crushing blow to CBS News’ legacy. 

“This is an act of pure cowardice for short-term gain that corrupts every journalistic value imaginable,” said USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism Gabriel Kahn.

“It is a sad day,” 1st Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams wrote Friday in an email to The Times. “It’s heart-breaking that CBS —say it again, CBS — seems ready to pay big bucks for its own editing decisions.”

The storied news division has maintained “60 Minutes” as the gold standard in television journalism for more than five decades. People inside the company, who were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said they fear the move will not only tarnish the “60 Minutes” brand but also set a dangerous precedent that could encourage the Trump administration and others to weaken journalism institutions.

“You think in the next four years we’re not going to say something that’s going to get him riled up again and he’ll do this again?” said one veteran journalist in the division.

Anger over a possible settlement runs so deep that CBS News could experience an exodus of journalists and even executives if the company caves to Trump’s demands, some said. 

George Cheeks, co-chief executive of Paramount Global, has been made aware of the news division’s concerns over how a settlement would be perceived in the industry and its broader impact on press freedom. Paramount Global board members also have received pleas from inside the news division to fight the Trump lawsuit, sources said.

“It’s a literal kowtow … a sign of obeisance toward a new overlord — a.k.a. the Trump family — which is exactly the relationship that media owners in Belarus, Hungary and Russia have with the regimes there,” Kahn said. “This is essentially a crack in the foundations of our free press.” 

Cheeks spent months trying to navigate choppy waters amid Redstone’s increasing unhappiness with CBS News and “60 Minutes” over its coverage of the war in Gaza. 

Redstone has not publicly expressed an opinion on the Trump settlement talks. A spokesperson for the mogul declined to comment. 

People close to the lawsuit describe the settlement talks as preliminary. Some executives privately suggested that settling the lawsuit was the price of doing business in Trump’s second administration. These people viewed a settlement as an efficient means to keep CBS out of court and expedite the completion of the Skydance deal.

Paramount and Skydance Media also declined to comment.

CBS News executives were already discussing releasing a full transcript of the interview with Kamala Harris before the FCC inquiry. But they saw that as a dangerous precedent because raw transcripts of edited interviews are typically only released to address issues related to possible defamation. Trump’s lawsuit is not a defamation case.

Categories Ethics, Evil, For-Profit, Fraud, Freedom of the Press, Media, Trump

Simon Rosenberg: Trump Is Responsible for Chaos, Mayhem, Disruption

By dianeravitch
January 31, 2025 //
6

Simon Rosenberg is a leader of the resistance to Trumpism. He blogs at Substack, where his blog is called Hopium. He wrote today:

Morning/Afternoon all. If Donald Trump has a superpower it has been the evasion of responsibility for the bad things he’s done in his life. Yesterday he blamed Biden, Obama, Pete Buttigieg, DEI for the 67 dead in the Potomac. Deflect, blame others, rinse, repeat. So let’s be clear about a few things today: 

Trump Is Trying To Break The US Government And Owns All The Troubles That Come From It – Trump’s savage attack on the day to day operations of our government will result in many, many bad things to happen. The 67 dead in the Potomac are an example. He has gutted the leadership of our government’s aviation security and has waged a war against rank and file employees of the government including air traffic controllers. When things fail like they did this week outside of Reagan National Airport we must hold the President to account. He is literally trying to break things now and when they break there is one person to blame and it sure isn’t Mr or Mrs DEI. 

It is possible those outside of DC don’t understand the scale and scope of the purges happening at senior levels of every department and agency right now. Incredible knowledge, expertise and operational capacity are being lost. The entire National Security Council career staff, for example, was just sent home last week. They are disabling the ability of the US government to carry out its daily responsibilities. 

Trump’s Economic Agenda Is Causing Prices To Rise For Everyone. Tariffs Will Raise Them Even Further – As we discussed with Rob Shapiro earlier this week the President’s proposed economic policies will raise prices for everyone, re-ignite inflation, raise taxes on middle class Americans, cut benefit programs that will cause costs to rise on a wide variety of services including health care and provide extraordinary tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations. As Rob explained to us the tariffs Trump may implement tomorrow are a national sales tax on an incredible array of goods including food, oil and gas, wood and other construction products. Prices on all these things will rise significantly, immediately, perhaps as early as tomorrow, and further fuel inflation. 

Trump’s inflationary agenda is already re-igniting inflation. From Reuters this morning, Key US inflation measure posts largest monthly gain since April: 

U.S. inflation increased by the most in eight months in December amid a surge in consumer spending, suggesting the Federal Reserve would probably be in no hurry to resume cutting interest rates soon.

Other data on Friday showed labor costs rose in the fourth quarter as wages edged up. Price pressures picked up in the fourth quarter, stalling the progress in lowering inflation.

We all need to be very clear that Trump has no plan to lower prices and costs. Regardless of his rhetoric his plan actually seeks to raise prices and costs, not lower them, and here we are – inflation and costs are rising for every American, already. 

Mass Deportation Will Raise Prices For Americans, Disrupt Our Businesses and Slow Growth – As we discussed with David Leopold last week Trump’s mass deportation plan is going to remove millions of workers from our labor force at a time of historically low employment. This will cause our companies to lose long-time productive employees; make it far harder for all companies to hire and grow; prices will rise for food, health care, day care, restaurants, hotels and many, many other items; families and communities will be shattered. All of this contribute to re-igniting inflation, ensuring the Fed does not lower interest rates, keeping mortgages and borrowing costs for all companies and Americans at elevated levels, slowing growth and worsening the cost of living crisis in America. It will also have this effect, via Hopium community member Catherine G: 

My daughter-in-law is a prosecutor. Victims of crime and witnesses are now not showing up for court dates and/or preparation because they are afraid ICE will seize them at the court house. That means cases can’t be prosecuted and that means criminals stay free to commit more crimes. Party of law and order my sweet Aunt Annie.

The savage treatment of the migrants we are sending back, the bullying of countries to accept them, the levying of tariffs on our closest allies, the threat or actual seizure of land from sovereign nations/allies will turn America into a rogue nation, a pariah state, and make us a far less safe and successful nation. 

Life Saving Aid Programs, Medical Research, Clinical Trials, Public Health Programs Are Still Turned Off – It’s possible that the most dangerous actions Trump has taken so far involve a wide array of programs whose funding remains stolen/frozen. Here is a new NYTimes story today that suggests the cut off of foreign aid programs could result in millions of people dying around the world in the coming months, How The World Is Reeling From Trump’s Aid Freeze: 

In famine-stricken Sudan, soup kitchens that feed hundreds of thousands of civilians trapped in a war zone have shut down.

In Thailand, war refugees with life-threatening diseases have been turned away by hospitals and carted off on makeshift stretchers.

In Ukraine, residents on the frontline of the war with Russia may be going without firewood in the middle of winter.

Some of the world’s most vulnerable populations are already feeling President Trump’s sudden cutoff of billions of dollars in American aid that helps fend off starvation, treats diseases and provides shelter for the displaced.

n a matter of days, Mr. Trump’s order to freeze nearly all U.S. foreign aid has intensified humanitarian crises and raised profound questions about America’s reliability and global standing.

“Everyone is freaking out,” Atif Mukhtar of the Emergency Response Rooms, a local volunteer group in the besieged Sudanese capital, Khartoum, said of the aid freeze.

Soon after announcing the cut off, the Trump administration abruptly switched gears. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this weekthat “life-saving humanitarian assistance” could continue, offering a respite for what he called “core” efforts to provide food, medicine, shelter and other emergency needs.

But he stressed that the reprieve was “temporary in nature,” with limited exceptions. Beyond that, hundreds of senior officials and workers who help distribute American aid had already been fired or put on leave, and many aid efforts remain paralyzed around the world.

Most of the soup kitchens in Khartoum, the battle-torn capital of Sudan, have shut down. Until last week, the United States was the largest source of money for the volunteer-run kitchens that fed 816,000 people there.

“For most people, it’s the only meal they get,” said Hajooj Kuka, a spokesman for the Emergency Response Rooms, describing Khartoum as a city “on the edge of starvation.”

After the American money was frozen last week, some of the aid groups that channel those funds to the food kitchens said they were unsure if they were allowed to continue. Others cut off the money completely. Now, 434 of the 634 volunteer kitchens in the capital have shut down, Mr. Kuka said.

“And more are going out of service every day,” he added.

Many of the aid workers, doctors and people in need who rely on American aid are now reckoning with their relationship with the United States and the message the Trump administration is sending: America is focusing on itself.

Most of the soup kitchens that feed 816,000 people in Khartoum have shut down. Patients were told to leave a U.S.-funded refugee hospital on the Myanmar border. Organizations that provide maternal care, vaccinations and firewood were forced to suspend operations.

“It feels like one easy decision by the U.S. president is quietly killing so many lives,” said Saw Nah Pha, a tuberculosis patient who said he was told to leave a U.S.-funded hospital in the Mae La refugee camp, the largest refugee camp on the Thai-Myanmar border.

Across the US a freeze/theft of government funding has crippled medical research, clinical trials and other basic public health care systems.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Disruption, Evil, Funding, Trump

Bill Gates Says It is “Insane” to Allow Elon Musk to Destabilize Politics in Other Countries

By dianeravitch
January 27, 2025 //
30

I have frequently criticized Bill Gates for his half-baked efforts to “reform” American public schools, all of which have done terrible damage to the schools.

Now Elon Musk is sticking his nose into elections in other countries, and Bill Gates is calling him out.

This article appeared in Business Insider:

Bill Gates doesn’t like how Elon Musk has involved himself in the politics of foreign countries such as the UK and Germany.

“It’s really insane that he can destabilize the political situations in countries,” Gates said in an interview with the UK newspaper The Times published Saturday.

Musk has become increasingly vocal about his views on UK and German politics in recent weeks.

Earlier this month, Musk called for the removal of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The TeslaCEO accused Starmer of not doing enough to prevent the rape of girls when he was Britain’s chief prosecutor from 2008 to 2013.

And on Saturday, Musk spoke virtually at a campaign rally for the Alternative for Germany, Germany’s far-right party. Germany is set to hold national elections in February.

In December, Musk said in an op-ed for Welt am Sonntag, a prominent German newspaper, that the AfD was “the last spark of hope for this country.” He also praised the party for its “controlled immigration policy.”

“I think in the US foreigners aren’t allowed to give money. Other countries maybe should adopt safeguards to make sure superrich foreigners aren’t distorting their elections,” Gates told The Times.

Musk’s political influence has increased significantly following President Donald Trump‘s victory in November. Musk spent at least $277 million backing Trump and other GOP candidates in last year’s elections.

That bet has since paid off for Musk, who called himself Trump’s “first buddy.” The billionaire has joined Trump on calls with world leaderssuch as Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.

Gates previously criticized Musk for his obsession with going to Mars. Gates said he would rather spend money on vaccines than on rockets. Go, Bill!

If only WE had laws limiting the contributions of billionaires to political campaigns!

Categories Billionaires, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Musk, Elon

The Most Terrifying Article You Will Read This Week or Month

By dianeravitch
January 24, 2025 //
31

This is the story of the takeover of a city and a political party and a state by the farthest right fringe of the Idaho Republican Party. These extremists want to defund education. They want to control everything, not just education.

The article focuses on one community college that they targeted, North Idaho College, which may lose its accreditation, not because of academic or financial problems but because its board is in chaos.

The extremists target all public education. They think education is indoctrination. They think it’s dangerous, even vocational and technical education.

Here are a few illustrative paragraphs:

The charter violations that kicked off this accreditation scandal four years ago never had anything to do with academics. The two-year community college offers a solid education and features the top nursing program in the state. Their finances are stable too. No, NIC might go under because the Board of Trustees has existed in a state of toxicity, chaos, and dysfunction ever since the far right gained a board majority four years ago.

It is difficult to overstate how catastrophic disaccreditation would be for the people of North Idaho. With a price tag 65 percent lower on average than four-year state institutions, community colleges place higher education within reach of the least advantaged Americans; over a third of their students make less than $20,000 per year. At NIC, 57 percent of students
receive financial aid. Local businesses depend on the college for employee training on everything from office software to forklift operation. High school students can enroll in dual credit programs, which let students get a head start on their first year of college and allow homeschoolers to obtain official transcripts….

How could this happen? The problem goes far beyond a three-person majority on the trustee board of a small community college. NIC and many other institutions are in danger because, over the last decade and a half, a core group of extremists has slowly taken over the Idaho Republican Party in the same way that a parasitic wasp slowly takes over its host. This required no astroturfing or Koch-fueled cash infusions, just a regular, everyday indifference to hyperlocal politics. The tactic is underway elsewhere, but Idaho got a head start. This crisis is what happens when insurgency bears fruit….

The consequences of that agenda go far beyond NIC’s accreditation crisis. Idaho’s abortion laws are among the strictest in the country; citing difficulty recruiting doctors given the risk of criminalization, two hospitals have already closed their labor and delivery departments, leaving many rural Idahoans hours from maternal care. Armed militia members have shown up in the children’s section of libraries looking for pornography, and libraries are limiting service due to legislation that holds librarians criminally liable for books deemed inappropriate. Idaho’s primary and secondary schools are literally falling apart; it spends less per student than any other state and ranks 43rd in education quality.

This “parasitic wasp” is at work in other red states.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Read, Funding, Higher Education, Idaho, Ignorance
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