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Trump Administration Will Close Major Center for Research on Climate Change

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2025 //
3

The Trump administration is engaged in a war against science and medicine. It has eliminated funding in many crucial areas of research conducted by universities and by the National Institutes of Health. Incalculable damage has been done to set back the search for cures for cancer, Alzheimer’s, heart disease, infectious diseases, HIV, respiratory diseases, and pediatric cancer. People will die because of the ignorance of those who close down ongoing, vital research.

Trump has consistently claimed that “climate change” is a hoax. He has said that the term “climate change” refers to the weather. He hates wind farms and has cut federal funding for them. He has hated wind farms since wind turbines were built near his Trump International Golf Links in Scotland. He sued to block them but repeatedly lost.

Now he is closing down a major hub of climate research.

The New York Times reported:

The Trump administration said it will be dismantling the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado, one of the world’s leading Earth science research institutions.

The center, founded in 1960, is responsible for many of the biggest scientific advances in humanity’s understanding of weather and climate. Its research aircraft and sophisticated computer models of the Earth’s atmosphere and oceans are widely used in forecasting weather events and disasters around the country, and its scientists study a broad range of topics, including air pollution, ocean currents and global warming.

But in a social media post announcing the move late on Tuesday, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, called the center “one of the largest sources of climate alarmism in the country” and said that the federal government would be “breaking up” the institution.

Mr. Vought wrote that a “comprehensive review is underway” and that “any vital activities such as weather research will be moved to another entity or location.”

USA Today first reported on the White House plans.

Scientists, meteorologists and lawmakers said the move was an attack on critical scientific research and would harm the United States.

The National Center for Atmospheric Research was originally founded to provide scientists studying Earth’s atmosphere with cutting-edge resources, such as supercomputers, that individual universities could not afford on their own. It is now widely considered a global leader in both weather and climate change research, with programs aimed at tracking severe weather events, modeling floods and understanding how solar activity affects the Earth’s atmosphere.

The center’s research has often proved useful in unexpected places, such as when its studies of downdrafts in the lower atmosphere in the 1970s and 1980s led to development of wind shear detection systems around airports that helped address the cause of hundreds of aviation accidents during that era.

Categories Environment, Evil, Extremism, Medicine, Research, Science, Stupid, Trump

Trump’s Illegal Demolition of the U.S. Department of Education

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2025 //
1

Senator Maxie K. Hirono of Hawaii conducted a forum on Trump’s illegal demolition of the U.S. Department of Education.

Trump promised to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education but he needs the approval of the U.S. Congress to wipe out a Department authorized by Congress. There are Republicans who would not support this reactionary step, so Trump bypassed Congress and took a different, blatantly illegal path.

Acting through his Secretary of Education, wrestling entrepreneur Linda McMahon, he began laying off employees. Then his DOGE crew closed down whole sections of the Department, including its historic mission, the collection of data and statistics about education, as well as its research arm.

The legal way to achieve his goal was to seek Congressional action. Instead, he broke up the Department and handed its functions to other Departments.

McMahon likes to say that the Department spends lots of money, but test scores haven’t gone up. That’s not the purpose of the Department. it exists to equalize funding to some extent, to add extra funding for students who are low-income, who have disabilities, or who have other needs. It also funds postsecondary education and, though its Office for Civil Rights, protects students against discrimination. OCR is now in the hands of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, which is hostile to the traditional definition of civil rights; its highest priority appears to be the protection of the straight white makes.


WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Mazie K. Hirono (D-HI) held a spotlight forum titled, “Dismantling Education: What the Trump Administration’s Illegal Attacks on Federal Programs Mean for Students, Families, and Educators,” highlighting the dangerous consequences of the Trump Administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED) for our nation’s students, families, educators, and schools—among others. During the forum, a panel of witnesses comprised of K-12 education leaders and civil rights experts spoke about how abolishing ED and moving these programs to other federal agencies would harm students across the country, especially those who come from low-income, rural, Native, migrant, and federally-impacted communities.

 

“From Day One, President Trump and his regime have been illegally attacking and undermining the Department of Education, in an attempt to abolish the Department altogether,” said Senator Hirono. “Trump has sown and continues to sow chaos for students across the country: directing the closure of the Department of Education; firing nearly half the Department workforce; slashing, withholding and rescinding funding for federal education programs; and creating a national school voucher program—to name a few things. In the process, he has jeopardized our children’s futures. Today’s forum provided an important opportunity to inform individuals and communities about the destructive actions he has taken so far. Every child in our country deserves access to a quality education, and I will continue working with my colleagues to make sure that is the case.”

 

Specifically, the forum focused on this administration’s recent proposal to illegally move nearly all federal K-12 programs and many higher education programs to other federal agencies that have limited capacity to run these programs and have no experience with dealing with them. ED announced last month that it would partner with the Departments of Labor, Interior, Health and Human Services, and State to conduct the transfer of these programs. This move would essentially fulfill Trump’s promise to eliminate the Department altogether and remove the federal government’s role in helping to ensure that all students have access to a quality education.

 

The forum featured testimony from:

  • Randi Weingarten, President, American Federation of Teachers
  • Rachel Gittleman, President, American Federation of Government Employees Local 252
  • Denise Forte, President and CEO, The Education Trust
  • Dr. Amy Loyd, CEO, All4Ed
  • Chad Rummel, Executive Director, Council for Exceptional Children
  • Angelica Infante-Green, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education, Rhode Island Department of Education

 

At the forum, Senator Hirono was joined by a number of her colleagues, including Senators Peter Welch (D-VT), Jack Reed (D-RI), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Dick Durbin (D-IL).

 

“The Trump Administration has taken a wrecking ball to essential federal education programs like Title I, which ensure first-generation, rural, and lower-income students get an equal opportunity to learn and grow. Despite our taxpayers spending one of the highest rates in the country for our students’ education, Vermont now ranks well below the national average on reading and math scores. Just a decade ago, our students scored the 4th highest in the country,” said Senator Welch. “Instead of trying to dismantle the Department of Education, we should be doing everything in our power to give students the resources they need to succeed.” 

 

“The Trump Administration’s plan to dismantle the Department of Education isn’t about streamlining or efficiency.  It’s whittling down or just completely abandoning critical programs and support for public school students, teachers, and entire communities,” said Senator Reed.  “I’m fighting to ensure our teachers and schools have the support and resources they need to give every child a top-notch education that prepares them for success.  I am grateful for Rhode Island’s Education Commissioner Angelica Infante-Green and education leaders from across the nation who joined us today to discuss their work protecting and preserving opportunity for our students.”

 

“After a year that included mass firings, cancelling critical grant funds for our local schools, and cutting access to student loans, the Trump Administration is trying to make good on their promise to shutter the Department of Education,” said Senator Van Hollen. “While there are many ways to improve our education system, dismantling the department piece by piece only threatens our longstanding goal of ensuring that every child has access to a quality education. We should be investing more in this objective, not less – for the success of today’s students and the future of our country.”

 

“The Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the Education Department are an attack on public education and public schools,” said Senator Warren. “I’m fighting to ensure every kid, no matter their zip code or how much money their family makes, has a shot at a quality education.”

 

“When I was young, my father took me to the doors of the schoolhouse and told me ‘If you walk through those doors and work hard, you can do just about anything because we are fortunate to live in America,’” said Senator Merkley. “I’m grateful that a public school education opened the doors of opportunity for me, but today that dream is harder and harder to achieve as the Trump Administration undermines the tools and resources students need to succeed. We must fight to protect programs like TRIO that expand opportunity for all and strengthen the four foundations working families need to thrive – including health care, housing, good-paying jobs, and education.”

 

“A good education for every American is one of the very best investments we can make in our future as a nation,” said Senator Klobuchar.“That is why I so strongly oppose President Trump’s attempts to dismantle the Department of Education and retreat from our commitment to education and our nation’s future. Instead of working with states and school districts to support students, this administration is adding more layers of bureaucracy that will make it even harder for students and schools to succeed.”

 

“The Trump Administration is sabotaging our nation’s future by dismantling the Department of Education,” said Senator Durbin. “So many students rely on the programs and protections provided by the Department, and without that support, the next generation will have less access to the resources they need to thrive.”

 

“No government agency is perfect, and the Department of Education is no exception. Improvements and efficiencies can always be made. But what we are seeing now is not reform—it is abandonment. The administration is walking away from the federal role in education and effectively selling it off for parts,” said AFT President Randi Weingarten. “Families deserve safe and welcoming public schools that are relevant, engaging, and inclusive. These schools, along with thriving universities, are the bedrock of our children’s future and the nation’s economic, scientific, and medical success. We must strengthen—not abandon—public education. Our economy, our democracy and our children depend on it. Every American deserves nothing less.”

 

“The Trump Administration’s plan to dismantle the Congressionally created U.S. Department of Education is unlawful and an insult to the tens of millions of students who rely on it to protect access to a quality education,” said AFGE 252 President Rachel Gittleman. Splintering the Department’s core responsibilities across agencies that lack the expertise to carry them out creates more red tape for states and communities, not less. After attempting to fire the public servants who do this critical work, the Administration is now pushing those responsibilities onto agencies unequipped to serve students and families—creating confusion, eroding public trust, and leaving students and families to pay the price.”

 

“The focus of this Administration has been to deliver on the Great American Heist. The administration’s talk of efficiency and bureaucratic bloat is a cover for stripping students of civil rights, destabilizing millions of student borrowers, and pushing privatization through massive tax credits that subsidize wealthy families’ private and religious schooling,” said Denise Forte, President and CEO of EdTrust. “The federal government should be working with States to improve and strengthen public education for all students, instead of cruel attempts to steal students’ futures.”  

 

“At a time when the U.S. Department of Education faces unprecedented threats—weakening oversight, equity protections, and student supports—every policy decision matters,” said Dr. Amy Loyd, CEO of All4Ed.“The Trump Administration’s attempt to dismantle the Department is illegal, ineffective, and reckless. Rather than one agency coordinating federal education funding, accountability, and oversight, responsibilities are scattered across five departments—Labor, HHS, Interior, State—and a hollowed-out Department of Education. This is not streamlining government; it is fragmenting our national commitment to learners of all ages. I applaud Senator Hirono’s leadership in sounding the alarm and urge Congress to halt these unlawful actions and restore the Department of Education.”

 

“Special education is facing a five-alarm fire,” said Chad Rummel, Council for Exceptional Children Executive Director. “Current actions to close the U.S. Department of Education, fire nearly everyone in the Office of Special Education Programs and deplete the Office for Civil Rights are fracturing the federal education system designed to support all children, and pose a cruel and unnerving threat to the education of children with disabilities.”

 

“As a state education chief, a daughter of immigrants, a lifelong educator, and a mother of two school-aged multilingual children, including one who is on the autism spectrum, I know that a quality education can make all the difference in a child’s life,”said Angelica Infante-Green, Rhode Island Commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education. “During this critical time for our students, the federal government should be finding ways to better support local school communities rather than providing less and creating chaos and concern by proposing to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education. Federal support is not optional; it is essential for continued academic recovery and for advancing the success of children in Rhode Island and across the nation.”

 

Video of the full forum can be found here and photos can be found here.  

 

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Categories Disruption, Extremism, Special Education, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Glenn Kessler: Trump’s Top Ten Lies of 2025

By dianeravitch
December 17, 2025 //
14

Glenn Kessler spent 15 years as the Washington Post fact-checker. He stepped aside recently and now writes at his Substack blog. For years, he has had the daunting task of counting Trump’s lies. Trump has the unparalleled ability to lie with great sincerity even when he knows he is lying.

He writes:

The hardest part about building a list of Donald Trump’s ten biggest lies in a year is the abundance of material.
When I ran The Fact Checker at The Washington Post, our team counted more than 30,000 false or misleading claims in his first term. That’s more than 20 erroneous claims a day. No one is keeping such a comprehensive list in his second term — it’s a thankless duty — but I’m sure he’s keeping the same pace.

Trump makes many false statements, big and small, and I tried to keep this accounting to substantive issues, both domestic and foreign. Even so, I found myself removing claims that others might consider worthy of inclusion.
For instance, he regularly claimed an executive order he issued on prescription drugs would “slash drug prices by 200 percent, 300 percent, 400 percent, 500 percent, 600 percent, 700 percent, 800 percent.” That’s a mathematical impossibility. A 100-percent cut would mean prices were zero. Trump is surrounded by so many lackeys that no one appears to have the heart to tell him.
Another arithmetic-challenged claim is Trump’s frequent boast that under his leadership the United States has secured nearly $20 trillion in new investments. That’s double the official White House count, which itself is a misleading brew of aspirations and vague promises, not actual investments. One clue this is bogus: Trump’s number is two-thirds of the annual gross domestic product of the United States.
Then there’s Trump’s claim that “Portland is burning to the ground,” apparently because he watched a Fox News report that included B-roll from 2020. This year, a few protesters outside an ICE facility have set some small fires, quickly extinguished. Again, why doesn’t his staff set him straight?
Another runner-up was Trump’s outrageous accusation that Erika McEntarfer, the commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, had manipulated jobs numbers. He fired her after job-growth estimates were revised downward — a common occurrence. “In my opinion, today’s Jobs Numbers were RIGGED in order to make the Republicans, and ME, look bad,” he fumed on social media, even though the estimates are derived from surveys conducted by professionals many rungs below the director. Trump never offered evidence for his claim.
Readers may have other nominations. Here’s my list for Trump’s biggest lies in 2025, in no particular order. Taken together, these falsehoods demonstrate how Trump governs — impulsively, defiantly, and often detached from reality.
“Instead of taxing our citizens to enrich other countries, we will tariff and tax foreign countries to enrich our citizens.”
Is it a lie if someone appears to firmly believe something? Trump may love tariffs but he’s been lying to himself as well as the American people about the impact. Every economist agrees that tariffs are a tax on consumers — not countries. Yet in his inaugural speech, Trump said the opposite. It is economic nonsense. Trump, of course, made this claim throughout the 2024 campaign (and in his first term), but it merits inclusion on the 2025 list because this lie had such real-world implications. Trump likely circumvented the Constitution by imposing such sweeping tariffs without congressional authorization, though the final verdict will come from the Supreme Court.
Throughout the year, Trump made many false claims about tariffs — “We’re taking in billions and billions of dollars. … We were losing $2 billion a day. … Now we’re making $3 billion a day” — and offering empty promises to use the “trillions” from tariffs to reduce taxes and pay down the national debt. The money raised from tariffs is not enough to reduce income taxes — and it is in fact another tax — and it won’t pay down the debt. That didn’t stop Trump from falsely claiming in November that tariffs would reduce the federal budget deficit by 25 percent.
By the end of the year, Trump offered $12 billion in aid to farmers hurt by his trade war with China — an unstated acknowledgment that tariffs do have costs for Americans.

“We identified and stopped $50 million being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.”
On the face of it, this sounds idiotic, but Trump kept repeating it (and sometimes inflated the figure to $100 million) to justify terminating the U.S. Agency for International Development — an effort led by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. But USAID, which distributed condoms to prevent the spread of sexually transmitted disease, spent less than $50,000 on condoms in the entire Middle East in a year — and nothing in Gaza.
In a striking example of the White House’s sloppy staff work, someone appears to have confused Gaza, the Palestinian enclave on the Mediterranean, with the Gaza province of Mozambique in Africa — and then USAID funding with Health and Human Services Department money given to the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric Aids Foundation for HIV/AIDS prevention. It would be funny if it were not so sad.
Nevertheless, despite such fiction, USAID was dismantled, at great cost to the United States’ global reputation and with little impact on the $7-trillion federal budget. Though Trump in February claimed that DOGE had already saved as much as $500 billion, DOGE itself only tallied $214 billion by December. Of course, that’s also an exaggerated figure. When Politico scrubbed the data in August, it found the savings amounted to less than five percent of the claimed value. That’s because DOGE would count the ceiling value of contracts, which is far more than what the government has agreed to pay.

“You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”
Trump said this in February about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has, against the odds, managed to fend off a Russian assault on his country for nearly four years.
Trump, who for some inexplicable reason always tilts toward Russia, echoed the Russian position that it was pushed into the conflict. It’s akin to saying Japan was forced into attacking Pearl Harbor because the United States imposed a trade embargo in 1940, depriving Japan of oil. The trade embargo came after Japan’s provocative actions in the Pacific, such as the 1931 occupation of Manchuria following a Japanese-manufactured incident.
This comment is emblematic of a series of Trump’s lies about Ukraine — that Zelensky admitted U.S. aid is missing, that Zelensky has never said he has been grateful for American assistance, that the United States provided more aid than Europe, and so forth. Despite sometimes suggesting he was exasperated by Russia, Trump throughout the year has consistently favored Moscow over Kyiv in the conflict that, in the 2024 campaign, he claimed he would solve in 24 hours.

“We’ve ended weaponized government where, as an example, a sitting president is allowed to viciously prosecute his political opponent like me.”
Trump made this proclamation in his annual speech to a joint session of Congress, a clear example of a lie of commission. He and his allies already had fired career Justice Department and FBI employees who worked on the Jan. 6 cases or the Trump prosecutions, launched investigations into political groups and donors, and targeted law firms who worked on cases against him.
Soon, Trump ordered the indictments of former FBI director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, after firing the U.S. Attorney who decided the cases were weak. The cases rested on such shaky ground that they were soon dismissed. But they could be revived and Trump’s point was made — cross him and you will be in the crosshairs.
(For the record, there is no evidence that Joe Biden directed the Justice Department or local prosecutors to pursue the four criminal cases against Trump.)

“Just about everything is down. You know, this whole thing is, they use the word affordability. It’s a Democrat hoax.”
By year’s end, Trump’s approval rating had fallen sharply, largely because Americans perceived he was not focused on “affordability” — the rising cost of goods and services.
As usual, Trump thinks he’s doing great. In December he gave himself a score of “A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus” for his handling of the economy. When asked by Laura Ingraham why Americans were anxious, he dismissed the concern: “I don’t know they are saying that. The polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had.” Even though grocery prices were up, Trump insisted they were down.
Instead, he lied that any problems faced by Americans were the legacy of Biden’s presidency, claiming that “we inherited from the last administration an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare.” In fact, Trump inherited an economy with relatively low unemployment, falling inflation and strong growth. The month before the November election, the Economist newspaper published a cover story declaring that the U.S. economy was “the envy of the world.” Taking office, Trump upended the economy — and sent prices higher — by imposing sweeping tariffs.

“Don’t take Tylenol. Fight like hell not to take it.”
Trump’s news conference in September claiming a link between Tylenol and autism was an appalling display of ignorance and hubris.
He falsely suggested autism rates were soaring — from 1 in 10,000 to 1 in 36 — when in fact the diagnosis of autism has increased because of better detection and expanded definitions. He seized on a disputed report to blame Tylenol, despite decades of research failing to find a causal link. He claimed nonsense that Amish don’t have autism because they refuse vaccinations. Surveys show many Amish vaccinate their children and that there is autism in the community. He cited a “rumor” that Cuba has no autism because the island can’t afford Tylenol. That curious claim was news to Cuba doctors. And then he told American women that they shouldn’t take Tylenol even if they suffer a fever — though fevers can be very harmful to fetuses. (Indeed, it may be fever, not Tylenol, that is linked to autism.)

“I’ve ended eight wars.”
No one can accuse Trump of modesty. In his desperate bid to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — Barack Obama won one, after all — Trump over the course of the year has added to his list of “wars” that he claimed he’s ended. But few of these were wars, Trump’s role was often tangential, and the resolution of the conflicts are likely temporary. Many of the pauses require careful follow-up to ensure implementation, and already some are falling back into bloodshed.
Yet that has not stopped Trump from claiming credit and even asserting “we’ve never had a president that solved one war, not one war.” That’s obviously false. Theodore Roosevelt won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1906 for negotiating peace in the 1904-5 war between Russia and Japan, while Jimmy Carter negotiated the Camp David Accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978.
What’s on Trump’s list? Cambodia and Thailand (A border dispute keeps flaring up, and indeed restarted in December); Armenia and Azerbaijan (They signed a U.S.-brokered peace deal in August, with Trump hosting an Oval Office ceremony, but it must be ratified and Armenia needs to change its constitution); Israel and Iran (a ceasefire was declared after a 12-day conflict but the decades-long conflict continues); India and Pakistan (The long-running dispute over Kashmir continues, though a ceasefire was reached in May; Trump’s claim of credit has been rejected by India); Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo (Fighting continues though a peace agreement was signed with U.S. involvement); Egypt and Ethiopia (This is a mystery entry on Trump’s list as the nonviolent dispute is over hydroelectric dam opened by Ethiopia); Serbia and Kosovo (Another mystery entry as tensions have never eased since Kosovo broke off in 2008); Hamas and Israel (Trump pushed Israel to finally agree to a ceasefire in the two-year war, a real accomplishment, though a final resolution to the conflict appears elusive).
As you can see, it’s inflated and rather crass, much like accepting a dubious “world peace award” from FIFA and renaming the U.S. Institute of Peace after himself after the administration fired the staff and destroyed it.

“Every boat that you see get blown up, we save 25,000 – on average – 25,000 lives.”
Trump has been under fire for the administration’s military strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats in international waters, and in defense he offered a nonsense figure. Dutifully, other administration officials have echoed the lie.
First of all, the administration had not provided evidence that the boats carried drugs. Trump asserts they were transporting fentanyl but that makes no sense since Venezuela mainly supplies cocaine to Europe. In three months, about 20 vessels have been hit by airstrikes, killing more than 80 people, so using Trump’s math that would mean 500,000 Americans lives supposedly were saved. Yet provisional federal data shows that the total number of U.S. overdose deaths was about 75,000 in the 12 months ending in April (the most recent period available).
In other words, Trump invented these numbers. (The “on average” is an effort at verisimilitude.) It’s not supposed to make sense — just sound good.

“These [Epstein] files were made up by Comey. They were made up by Obama. They were made up by Biden.”
One of the few issues Trump could neither spin nor shrug off centered on demands that his administration release the investigative files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a onetime friend from the 1990s with whom he later fell out. Trump had promised to release the files during the 2024 campaign, but then the Justice Department refused to do so. Pressure built in Congress for passage of a law to force the files’ release, and in July Trump lashed out, claiming the files were all made up by Democrats, name-checking former FBI director James Comey, Obama and Biden.
This claim is simply nuts. The files represent investigative evidence, so nothing was invented. Neither Obama nor Biden were in office when the FBI investigated Epstein — that happened under George W. Bush in 2007-2008 and Trump in 2018 — while Comey wasn’t even in government at the time. Epstein, who molested hundreds of girls, at first received a sweetheart deal that minimized his crimes, and then the case was reopened under Trump after a Miami Herald investigation. He was found dead in his prison cell in 2019 while awaiting trial, an apparent suicide.
Trump’s instinct is to deflect problems onto his opponents, but he wasn’t successful in this instance. Congress passed the law, requiring the files be released by Dec. 19. The Justice Department has indicated it won’t meet the deadline.

“It won’t interfere with the current building. It will be near it but not touching it. And pays total respect to the existing building.”
This was Trump in July, speaking about his plans to add a ballroom to the White House complex.
Then, suddenly, in October, wrecking crews ripped down the entire East Wing of the White House. Trump was unrepentant about the fierce public outcry, dismissing the East Wing as “common brick, little tiny windows, it looked like hell.” (The White House skipped the requirement to submit its demolition plans, claiming the National Capital Planning Commission has no jurisdiction over demolition.)
In July, Trump had said the ballroom would hold 600 to 700 people and cost $200 million; now the plans call for about 1,000 people, the budget ballooned to more than $300 million, and the architect was replaced because he objected to Trump’s grandiose ambitions. The resulting 90,000-square-foot building will overshadow the existing 55,000-square-foot White House structure.
Is there any lie more emblematic of how Trump has approached his second term? He forges ahead, destroying any obstacles in his path, including the truth, while paying little heed to what Americans might think.

Categories Evil, Extremism, Lies, Trump

Students Applying for College Must Be Wary of DEI!

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2025 //
4

Back in the days when the Republican Party was actually conservative, Republicans believed in small government. They said repeatedly that the federal government should not interfere with decisions made by local governments and private institutions.

The Trump administration is not conservative. It believes that it should impose its ideology on every kind of institution and every level of government.

Trump’s personal hatred of immigrants, of affirmative action, of any kind of program to help members of historically disadvantaged groups knows no bounds. His administration is on the hunt to stamp out anything that promotes diversity, equity, and inclusion. In addition to satisfying his (and Stephen Miller’s) personal hatreds, the war on DEI appeals to unsuccessful white men who think that underrepresented groups got advantages unavailable to them.

Here is the latest intrusion: Trump officials want to stamp out any reference to DEI in college admission essays. Students who have prevailed over adversity should be careful not to mention it, especially if they are Black or immigrants. Colleges are wondering how they will pay for this new federal demand.

This student was warned not to write about her life!

Mo Marie Lauyanne Kouame, 18, dreams of being an aerospace engineer and building spacecraft. This fall, she applied to MIT, Princeton, and Columbia. 

For one college essay, she wrote about being homeless at 8 years old, when she came to the United States from France. 

She recalled watching her parents fight for help from the Department of Transitional Assistance and sleeping in hospital beds at Boston Medical Center when they didn’t know where else to go. That early experience changed her, she said. 

“Homelessness,” she wrote, “taught me resilience.”

Kouame’s essay, which recounts how she learned to thrive as a low-income student of color “surrounded by classmates whose lives felt worlds apart from mine,” is about overcoming adversity. 

That’s a theme the White House has identified as a problem in its campaign against diversity, equity, and inclusion. Over the past year, the federal government has flagged “cues” such as personal essays, along with narratives about “overcoming obstacles” and “diversity statements,” as being potentially unlawful: a stand-in for talking about race.

More than two years have passed since the Supreme Court ended race-conscious affirmative action, and the Trump administration has since demanded colleges submit data proving they don’t consider race in admissions. It has also expanded what it sees as “discriminatory admissions processes” to include considering a student’s sexual orientation, gender identity, ethnicity, nationality, political views, and religious associations.

For Kouame, not writing about her identity felt “impossible,” she said in a Zoom interview, “because the things that I’ve gone through in life make me who I am now.” 

Other students are weighing the pros and cons, said Ethan Sawyer, founder of College Essay Guy, which offers one-on-one coaching and free online resources through the admissions process. He added the key is “to step back and take stock” of what colleges are actually looking for. Essentially: “How will you be a valuable, contributing member of the community?” 

Navigating the college admissions landscape has never been easy, but for the class of 2030 it’s particularly fraught. Plenty of advisers can be hired for a fee: Private consulting is a $3 billion industry, with parents paying tens and even hundreds of thousands of dollars to give their kids an edge. Community organizations, college-prep programs, and high schools are also on hand to assist students. 

There’s no question it’s an uneven playing field, though this year there is one equalizer in the college admissions game: No one really knows what’s coming next.

Categories Bias, Equity, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Higher Education, Trump

The War on Public Education Hurts the Most Vulnerable Students

By dianeravitch
December 15, 2025 //
2

Garry Rayno, veteran journalist in New Hampshire, understands the war on public education. He knows that privatization is meant to diminish public education. He knows that it is sold by its propagandists as a way to help the neediest students. He knows this is a lie intended to fool people. He knows that the children who are hurt most by the war on public education are the most vulnerable students.

You might rightly conclude that the war on public education is a clever hoax.

Rayno writes:

“The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.” 

The quote is often attributed to Mahatma Gandhi, but is also similar to words from British UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft.

What better measure of treating the most vulnerable than the public education system open to all, not just those with the resources to send their children to private or religious schools.

Public education is often called the great equalizer providing the same learning  opportunities to a community’s poorest children to the richest in stark contrast with today’s political climate driven by culture wars and fear of diversity, equality and inclusion.

Public education has provided an educated citizenry for businesses, government and political decision making for several hundred years.

Public education is the embodiment of “the public good,” as it provides a foundation for a well-lived life that is both rewarding and useful to others.

But for the last few decades there has been a war on public education driven by propaganda, ideology and greed.

While the war has intensified in the last decade, it began with the US Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka decision in 1954 declaring racial segregation in public schools a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

The decision overturned the court’s earlier Plessy vs. Ferguson decision which established the separate-but-equal provision for public education.

The Brown decision required the desegregation of public schools sending a tidal wave through the south reaching north to Boston.

The southern oligarchs who never really believed the South lost the Civil War soon colluded with others like them to develop a system to bypass their obligation to pay to educate black kids. Instead they established “segregation academies” where their children could learn in a homogeneous setting.

The system was created with the help of libertarian economist James Buchanan who touted the belief that the most efficient government is one run by the wealthy and educated (the oligarchs) because the regular folks are driven by self interest which makes government inefficient, and most importantly, costly through higher taxes.

This philosophy continues today as libertarians and other far right ideologues want to privatize public education because it takes too much of their money in taxes, and a humanities-based public education induces children to develop beliefs different from their parents, which once was the norm for American families.

It is not by happenstance we see parental bills of rights, opt outs, open enrollment and greater and greater restrictions on what may be taught, along with increased administrative work loads piled onto public education by politicians in Concord as they double down on refusing to do the one simple thing the state Supreme Court told them to do 30 years ago, provide each child with an adequate education and pay for it.

Instead they have pushed a voucher system costing state taxpayers well over $100 million this biennium, with 90 percent of it paying for private and religious school tuition and homeschooling for kids who were not in public schools when their parents applied for grants if they ever were in public schools.

Most of the voucher system expansion occurred under the Chris Sununu administration with his back-room-deal appointed Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut.

Edelblut nearly beat Sununu in the 2016 Republican primary for governor for those with short memories.

Sununu sent his children to private schools while he was governor and Edelblut homeschooled his children.

Public education during the eight years of the Sununu administration was not a priority although 90 percent of the state’s children attend public schools.

And it is not coincidence that after the Republican House resurrected House Bill 675 which would impose a statewide school budget cap, that Gov. Kelly Ayotte’s small DOGE team — led by two “successful businessmen” — issued its long awaited report and one category targeted schools following the legislature’s Free State agenda of greater transparency and efficiencies, seeking Medicaid and insurance reimbursements and reforming school audit requirements. 

HB 675 failed to find enough support last session because it violates the once sacred “local control ideal” often touted for local government.

House Majority Leader Jason Osborne, R-Auburn, issued a press release linking the report and the bill.

“HB 675 applies the findings of the report where they matter most. When dollars are committed and taxpayers are on the hook, HB 675 puts power back into the hands of the voter by requiring a higher threshold of consent,” he said.

Yes a higher threshold which means the will of the majority is nullified by a minority.

State lawmakers fail to acknowledge they provide the least state aid to public education of any state in the country. Instead local property taxpayers pay 70 percent of public education costs and should be able to set their school budget and various other realms usurped by state lawmakers without a “higher threshold of consent.”

The battlefield in the war on public education shifts over time. It began with religious and political ideology; moved into gender and sexual identification; parental rights, including who decides whether school materials and books are appropriate; school choice such as open enrollment, which will exacerbate the already great divide between property poor and wealthy school districts; and is now positioned to impact the most vulnerable of public school children, those with disabilities.

Last week special education administrators gathered for their annual meeting and to celebrate 50 years of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) to improve access to education and to integrate classrooms to include those with disabilities.

Today’s special education services and supports are lights overcoming the darkness of institutionalization or stay-at-home kids separated from their peers in public schools.

Many children with disabilities were told to stay home and not to attend school as there were no specialized services or therapies for them.

But services are expensive as federal lawmakers knew they would be, promising to pay 40 percent of the cost, but reneging on that promise and paying only about 13 percent.

In New Hampshire, most of the remainder is paid by local property taxpayers.

The state pays little until a student’s costs reach three-and-a-half times the state’s per-pupil average or about $70,000.

But state lawmakers have also failed to live up to their  obligation to pay their state of the catastrophic costs, so local school districts are reimbursed at less than 100 percent.

Last session lawmakers approved an 80 percent threshold as the low end of the reimbursement scale.

Special education costs are difficult to predict and a budget can be blown quickly if a couple students needing costly special education services move into a district.

The federal government is potentially moving the Office of Special Education from the Department of Education to the Department of Health and Human Services which local special education administrators said would change the goal from education to a health model which would imply there is a remedy or an illness.

And they said it is the first step back down the road they began traveling 50 years ago when students with disabilities were institutionalized or warehoused in one facility.

Several bills to come before the legislature this session will explore going back to centralized facilities to provide services and supports and explore if the private sector can better provide the services, which is consistent with the libertarian ideal of private education.

Great strides have been made in the last 50 years allowing people with disabilities to lead productive and rewarding lives independently, but that could change as lawmakers focus on costs and greater efficiencies, and the political climate seeks a homogenous environment without minorities, disabilities or vulnerable people.

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

Distant Dome by veteran journalist Garry Rayno explores a broader perspective on the State House and state happenings for InDepthNH.org. Over his three-decade career, Rayno covered the NH State House for the New Hampshire Union Leader and Foster’s Daily Democrat. During his career, his coverage spanned the news spectrum, from local planning, school and select boards, to national issues such as electric industry deregulation and Presidential primaries. Rayno lives with his wife Carolyn in New London.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Fake, Fraud, Funding, Lies, New Hampshire, Privatization, Propaganda, School Choice, Supporting public schools, Vouchers

Peter Greene: Today Is the Anniversary of the Sandy Hook Massacre. Remember?

By dianeravitch
December 14, 2025 //
10

Today, many of us are following the news about a terror attack at Brown University, where a gunman walked into a large classroom, murdered two students, and wounded at least a dozen more. A suspect is in custody. And we are following the news about a massacre at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, where terrorists fired on a large crowd of Jews celebrating the first day of Chanukah. At least 16 people died, and many more were wounded.

It happens to be the 13th anniversary of the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. A mentally deranged young man killed his mother, then went to the school, where he killed 20 children–first- and second-grade students–and six staff members, the principal and teachers. Then the murderer killed himself.

The children were babies.

The nation was in a state of shock. I remember being glued to the television as the extent of the horror was revealed. I remember the weeping parents, the shell-shocked survivors, children and teachers.

For many, it seemed that Congress was sure to enact meaningful gun control. Certain to limit access to deadly weapons.

But, not long after the event, the conspiracy theories began to roll out. The vile Alex Jones said that there was no massacre. No one was killed. The parents and students were “crisis actors.” It was all staged to create momentum for gun control. President Obama was in on the hoax. One of this blog’s readers sent me a video created to “prove” that Sandy Hook was a lie. It was shocking and sickening.

Some Newtown parents sued Alex Jones for his lies, which caused them extreme pain and suffering. The parents won their case and were awarded more than $1 billion from Alex Jones. Jones, however, declared bankruptcy and through legal maneuvers has paid little to those he defamed.

Sandy Hook was supposed to be the tragedy that would compel Congress to enact strict control. Needless to say, gun enthusiasts blocked any efforts to strengthen gun control laws. Then, with Trump’s addition to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Court decided that guns should not be controlled at all, citing their interpretation of the Second Amendment.

Then there was the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, on May 24, 2022. Nineteen children and two teachers were murdered by an 18-year-old man with an assault weapon. Nearly 400 law officers from local, state, and federal agencies arrived on the scene, where they crowded the hallways and did nothing. They waited 77 minutes before confronting and killing the gunman.

Gun advocates would have you believe that gun control has never happened and can never happen. That’s not true.

During the Clinton administration, Congress passed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. The law, called the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, had a 10-year sunset clause for the ban on assault weapons. It expired in September 2004, during the George W. Bush administration, and was not renewed.

The current Supreme Court opposes gun control. So here we are.

Peter Greene wrote today:

You can be forgiven for not having noticed that today is the anniversary of the Sandy Hook shootings, the murder of 26 human beings, 20 of them children. There’s not the usual wave of retrospective stories, perhaps because we’re busy catching up on the latest US campus shooting from the weekend.

It makes me angry, every day. Sandy Hook stands out among all our many various mass murders in this country, all our long parade of school shootings, because Sandy Hook was the moment when it finally became clear that we are not going to do anything about this, ever. “If this is not enough to finally do something,” we thought, “then nothing ever will be.”

And it wasn’t.

“No way to prevent this,” says only Nation Where This Regularly Happens is the most bitter, repeated headline The Onion has ever published. We’re just “helpless.”

Today was the 13th anniversary of the shooting that established that we aren’t going to do a damned thing about it, other than blaming the targets for not being hard enough. Need more security. Arm the (marxist untrustworthy) teachers. And somehow Alex Jones and Infowars have not been sued severely enough for them to STFU.

One thing that has happened over the past several years is a huge wave of folks expressing their deep concern about the children.

A whole industry of political activism has been cultivated around the notion that children– our poor, fragile children– must be protected. They must be protected from books that show that LGBTQ persons exist. They must be protected from any sort of reference to sexual action at all. They must be protected from any form of guilt-inducing critical race theory. They must be protected from unpatriotic references to America’s past sins. And central to all this, they must be protected from anyone who might challenge their parents’ complete control over their education and lives.

Well, unless that person is challenging the parents’ rights by shooting a gun at the child.

The Second Amendment issue is the issue that combines so poorly with other issues. We may be pro-life and insist that it be illegal to end a fetus– but if the fetus becomes an outside-the-womb human that gets shot at with a gun, well, nothing we can do about that. Students should be free to choose whatever school they like–but at any of those schools, people still have the right to shoot at them with a gun. We must protect children from all sorts of evil influences–but if someone wants to shoot a gun at them, well, you know, nothing we can do about that.

The other ugly development has been the ever-growing school security industry, peddling an ever-growing array of products that serve no educational purpose but are supposed to make schools safe, harden the target. Lots of surveillance. Lots of stupid mistakes, like the Florida AI reading a clarinet as a weapon. Lots of security layers that now make entering a school building much like entering a prison. It is what NPR correctly called the “school shooting industry,” and it is worth billions.

That’s not counting the boost that gunmakers get after every school shooting. The panic alarm goes off and the weapons industry sells a ton more product as the usual folks holler, “They’ll use this as an excuse to take your guns” even though in the 26 years since Columbine, the government hasn’t done either jack or shit about taking anybody’s guns. I expect that part of that sales bump is also from folks saying, “Now that I’m reminded that the government isn’t going to do anything about keeping guns out of the hands of homicidal idiots, I guess I’d better arm myself.”

Miles of letters have been strung together to unravel the mystery of why this country so loves its guns and why none of the factors used as distraction (mental health, video games, bad tv shows) could possibly explain the prevalence of gun deaths in this country because every other country in the world has the same thing without having our level of gun violence.

We are great at Not facing Problems in this country, and there is no problem we are better at Not facing than gun deaths. Hell, we can’t even agree it’s an actual problem. The “right” to personally possess the capability to kill other human beings is revered, and more beloved than the lives of actual human children.

And if some of our fellow citizens and leaders are unwilling to make a serious effort to reduce gun violence and these folks insist that the occasional dead child is just the cost of liberty (particularly the liberty to conduct profitable business), well, how can we expect them to take seriously other aspects of young humans’ lives, like quality education and health care.

It is a hard thing to know, every day, that we could do better, and we aren’t going to. We have already taken a long hard look at this issue, and we have decided that we are okay with another Sandy Hook or Uvalde. A little security theater, a little profiteering on tech, a few thoughts and prayers just to indicate that we aren’t actually happy that some young humans were shot dead (talk about virtue signaling), and that pivot quickly to defending guns. Send letters, make phone calls, get the usual platitudes back from elected representatives, who will never, ever pay an election price for being on the wrong side of rational gun regulation.

The whole dance is so familiar and well-rehearsed that we barely have to pay attention any more. It’s exhausted and exhausting, and yet I am still angry.

Categories Evil, Extremism, Guns, History

John Thompson: A Stellar Review of AN EDUCATION

By dianeravitch
December 12, 2025 //
2

John Thompson, historian and retired teacher in Oklahoma, wrote this thoughtful review of my memoirs, An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else.

He writes:

Diane Ravitch’s An Education: How I Changed My Mind About Schools and Almost Everything Else is dedicated to her wife Mary; her sons, Joe, Michael, and Steven; her grandsons Nico, Aidan, Elijah, and Asher; and her ex-husband Richard. An Education intertwines deeply emotional personal and family experiences with the history of how she became such a transformative education leader. Although Diane denies it, I believe she’s the most influential education advocate of the last century.

I’ve been reading Diane Ravitch’s work for decades, but An Education is my favorite book. And my favorite passage started with Diane’s citation of Robert Hutchins who said, “We have to learn to live with those whose opinions differ from our own. After all, they may turn out to be right.”

Then she wrote about Hutchins statement, “for three decades I didn’t realize that it was intended for me.”

Being from Oklahoma, I was captured by the first part of her book, about growing up in Texas. I especially loved her story about meeting Roy Rogers at the Rodeo when she was 9 years old. After Rogers slapped her hand, Diane said, “I determined on the spot that I would never wash that hand again!”

Diane was a tomboy who loved horses and dogs. But she experienced sexism and trauma. She said she “did not have an idyllic adolescence. No one ever does.”  But her teenage years were “destroyed by my father abusing me.” 

During the middle of her book, she recalled her complicated marriage to Richard Ravitch and, then, her wonderful wife, Mary. Mary worked with the progressive educator Deborah Meier and opened a progressive small school in New York City. 

I was especially impressed by Diane’s communication with Al Shanker. He sought to allow teachers to start schools within schools to turnaround kids “in the back of the classroom with their heads on their desks.” Back in the late 1980s, it seemed like he might be able to bring diverse factions together. But, by 1994, charters had been high-jacked by corporate reformers and their winners and losers ideology.

In the middle of An Education. Diane revealed in so much detail the inside stories of her years as a conservative.  Back then, when I was an academic historian, I learned the most about Diane when reading her 1983 book, “The Troubled Crusade: American Education, 1945 – 1980.” Although I couldn’t yet read her work through the eyes of a teacher, I was exceptionally taken by her calls for teaching background knowledge so students could develop reading comprehension skills so they could “read to learn,” and her placing education pedagogies in a broad historical context.

Diane recalls her support for meritocratic, standardized testing, and color-blind policies, when she questioned bilingual education, and even the benefit of the Equal Rights Amendment. This was the time when she made friends with Bill Bennett, President Reagan’s Secretary of Education, and Chester Finn, and Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander. I knew she had ties to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, but I too thought that progressives’ criticism of him was too politically correct. And, until I read An Education, I knew little about the two sides of James Coleman’s research, whose earlier research had seemed persuasive to me.

Neither would I have thought that Chester Finn was like a “sibling” to Diane.

When explaining her then-conservative beliefs, I sometimes felt that Diane was too hard on herself. For instance, she was far, far from alone in failing to understand the wisdom of Gov. Ann Richards, who said, “If there ever is school choice in Texas, the hard-right Christians will get the money to indoctrinate children.”

Moreover, as An Education schooled me on the propaganda behind the so-called “Texas Miracle” it did more than foreshadow the “New York City Miracle,” the “Harlem Miracle,” and the “Mississippi Miracle.”  It brought me back to the decades-long Oklahoma reality when our curriculum and policies were based on Texas’ accountability systems.  During most of my career, our policies were informed by one Texas trick after another to jack up accountability metrics.

Diane served as member of the National Assessment Governing Board from 1997 to 2004, and she would dig deeply into the numbers and the methodologies behind NAEP. But, as she explained, few journalists read the fine print of the research and they wrote “breathlessly” about supposedly dismal results in traditional public schools. They certainly didn’t report properly about the way that students’ outcomes were linked to family income.

When serving in the Education Department, Diane took a lead in establishing national standards for every school subject. Drawing upon excellent historians, multicultural History standards were set. She hoped standards like those would remain voluntary and “unify their respective fields and establish a common ground for a curriculum without telling teachers how to teach.” 

But the conservative Lynne Cheney “published a scathing denunciation of them.” Cheney said the History standards focused too much on people like Joe McCarthy and the Ku Klux Klan, and not enough on Ulysses S. Grant, and Robert E. Lee. This launched the modern wars over curriculum that have become especially destructive under President Trump. 

Even so, in 2002, Diane hoped that Mayor Mike Bloomberg and Joel Klein (who knew nothing about education) would succeed in improving New York City Schools. Klein reorganized schools from top to bottom, with multiple schools per building drawing on funding by the Gates Foundation. (By the way, I saw the chaos Klein created when visiting dozens of hurriedly opened school, especially in Bedford–Stuyvesant. Usually, leaders of the new schools didn’t even know how many new schools were being opened in their building.)

And, even worse, Jack Welch CEO of General Electric pushed 20-70-10 “stack ranking,” meaning 70% of teachers would be in the middle in terms of effectiveness, and 10% should be “removed,” even if it took the use of invalid and unreliable metrics to evaluate all teachers.

Especially after Diane engaged in a seven-year debate with Deborah Meier, which further “broadened her perspectives,” she became an invaluable leader of the grass-roots opposition to corporate school reforms. She objected to top-down mandates on teaching reading. Diane was among the first to explicitly link in a detailed manner the reforms to the wider privatization movement. And she nailed it when identifying them as the “Billionaires Boys Club.”

Diane analyzed the public relations campaigns which sold “reforms” as the “New York City Miracle.” Drawing upon her insights from serving on the National Assessment Governing Board, she clearly explained why NYC schools flipped back and forth between A and F grades.  Then, she linked President Obama’s flawed $5 billion RTTT experiment with the problems with Common Core curriculum and tests that were years above students’ reading levels.

Diane then quotes John Maynard Keynes who said, “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?”

Today, Diane changes minds by clearly explaining the interconnections between Free Market ideology, and profits, and the mindsets of elites that push privatization. She also reports daily on the interconnected attacks on schools throughout the nation. And now she’s sharing the same wisdom when spreading the word about Trumpism and today’s attacks on democracy.

I always read Diane’s daily blog posts. And I so very much appreciate An Education, even if it briefly pulled me away from reading everything in the Diane Ravitch Blog.

Categories Accountability, Common Core, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Equity, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, History, Klein, Joel, New York City, Privatization, Racism, Ravitch, Diane, Research, School Choice, Segregation, Texas, U.S. Department of Education

Steve Schmidt: The Hegseth Ethos

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2025 //
7

Steve Schmidt is a veteran political strategist who worked for Republicans, most recently for John McCain in 2008. When Trump was elected, Schmidt was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. In 2020, he registered as a Democrat. He currently writes a blog at Substack.

This one is brilliant. Pete Hegseth is the embodiment of the moral and spiritual and intellectual rot at the core of the Republican Party today.

Schmidt writes:

There is no “Secretary of War” or “War Department” in the United States of America under US law.

Each time a news organization uses Pete Hegseth’s concocted title, and submits to his “War Department” fantasy, it is an act of corruption.

It is a direct and specific choice that immolates journalistic ethics by embracing fantasy at the demand of power.

Journalism confronts power.

Journalism doesn’t obey it, heed it, submit to it, appease it, or accept the premise that make-believe is real if the leader believes it so, regardless of reality.

This was posted by a man in the chain of command for the release of nuclear weapons after the commission of a war crime on his orders, which was followed by evasions, deflections of responsibility, and an attempt to stab a US Navy admiral in the back:

[Diane’s note: This is juvenile and not funny.]

When General of the Army George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Army Secretary of State and Defense died, President Harry Truman said the following in remembrance of his titanic life. He made an unfortunate reference to the traitorous Robert E. Lee, who was exceeded in every way by Ulysses Grant, a man who bested him, yet was smeared into oblivion over 100 years time by the the same type of white nationalists and Christian Taliban who slither around Mar-a-Lago. That is, until one day, the truth escaped its dungeon and a foremost savior of the Union was seen clearly again.

[Truman said:]

General Marshall was an honorable man, a truthful man, a man of ability.

Honor has no modifying adjectives — a man has it, or he hasn’t. General Marshall had it.

Truth has no qualifying words to be attached to it. A man either tells the truth, or he doesn’t. General Marshall was the exemplification of the man of truth.

Ability can be qualified. Some of us have little of it, some may have moderate ability, and some men have it to the extreme.

General Marshall was a man of the greatest ability.

He was the greatest general since Robert E. Lee.

He was the greatest administrator since Thomas Jefferson.

He was the man of honor, the man of truth, the man of greatest ability.

He was the greatest of the great in our time.

I sincerely hope that when it comes my time to cross the great river that General Marshall will place me on his staff, so that I may try to do for him what he did for me.

*******************

Perhaps one reason that Pete Hegseth fetishizes the “War Department” is that, when it existed, it commanded a segregated force. The Defense Department has always commanded a desegregated force.

Before the US Army was desegregated a young Army Lieutenant named Jackie Robinson faced trumped up charges at a kangaroo court martial.
Here is Jackie Robinson’s legacy perfectly preserved for all time in the magnificent eulogy he received from Reverend Jesse Jackson, to whom I hope we can all send good wishes and prayers this holiday season, as he struggles through the ravages of the burdens handed him with dignity and grace: 

[Jackie Robinson’s eulogy by Reverend Jesse Jackson.]

Powerful men have a long tradition of sending powerless young men to die in unworthy causes in far away lands.

There should be an extremely low tolerance for such men in 2025 America, but they are not only tolerated, but indulged.  

The hypocrisy of the US Congress on the matter of Pete “Kill them all!” Hegseth is bottomless and dangerous. Their faithlessness to the American soldier, sailor, airmen and marine is obscene.

The man who jumped up on a table screaming, “Kill all Muslims!” was exactly who the Congress was warned about. Yet, the warnings were unheeded because the Congress cared more about pleasing Trump than the institutions of the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps that predate the independence of the United States. They cared more about sating a stirred-up Fox News mob than a 19-year-old private.

Shameful doesn’t begin to describe it.

It is a dereliction of duty, and the most profound type of moral betrayal.

The 119th MAGA Congress is an abomination, led by a religious nutter and weakling who is neither bright, decent, funny, nor wise.

In other words, he is a perfect MAGA puppet who thinks he is a ventriloquist. In truth, the hand inserted into his most sacred space, the one he hides his bespectacled head within, is smeared with orange hand paint.

Faithless, treacherous and disloyal are the Hegseth ethos. They are a perfect mirror of the only reflection of equal rottenness in America: the crazed MAGA Congress, filled from bottom to top with corrupt loons, belligerent liars, sexual deviants, conspiracists, fraudsters, women beaters, and insider traders, who worship Trump together.

Pete Hegseth is the leader of a military that is unready and unprepared to fight a necessary war. He is a performance artist, a late-stage mid-tier Fox News star who is a herald of disaster to a population filled with indifference. It is about to find out the hard way how much damage a small group of evil men and women can do to a nation.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, History, Ignorance, Republicans, Scandals, Shame, Trump, Wall of Shame

Heather Cox Richardson on Pearl Harbor and Its Message for Today

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2025 //
12

Yesterday, December 7, was the 84th anniversary of Pearl Harbor Day. President Franklin D. Roosevelt said it was a day that will live in infamy. After the passage of so much time, Heather Cox Richardson sees that Pearl Harbor shines a light on our current political morass.

She writes:

On the sunny Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, Messman Doris Miller had served breakfast aboard the USS West Virginia, stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and was collecting laundry when the first of nine Japanese torpedoes hit the ship.

In the deadly confusion, Miller reported to an officer, who told him to help move the ship’s mortally wounded captain off the bridge. Unable to move him far, Miller pulled the captain to shelter. Then another officer ordered Miller to pass ammunition to him as he started up one of the two abandoned anti-aircraft guns in front of the conning tower.

Miller had not been trained to use the weapons because, as a Black man in the U.S. Navy, he was assigned to serve the white officers. But while the officer was distracted, Miller began to fire one of the guns. He fired it until he ran out of ammunition. Then he helped to move injured sailors to safety before he and the other survivors abandoned the West Virginia, which sank to the bottom of Pearl Harbor.

The next day, the United States declared war on Japan. Japan declared war on America, and on December 11, 1941, both Italy and Germany declared war on America. “The powers of the steel pact, Fascist Italy and National Socialist Germany, ever closely linked, participate from today on the side of heroic Japan against the United States of America,” Italian leader Benito Mussolini said. “We shall win.” Of course they would. Mussolini and Germany’s leader, Adolf Hitler, believed the Americans had been corrupted by Jews and Black Americans and could never conquer their own organized military machine.

The steel pact, as Mussolini called it, was the vanguard of his new political ideology. That ideology was called fascism, and he and Hitler thought it would destroy democracy once and for all.

Mussolini had been a socialist as a young man and had grown terribly frustrated at how hard it was to organize people. No matter how hard socialists tried, they seemed unable to convince ordinary people that they must rise up and take over the country’s means of production.

The efficiency of World War I inspired Mussolini. He gave up on socialism and developed a new political theory that rejected the equality that defined democracy. He came to believe that a few leaders must take a nation toward progress by directing the actions of the rest. These men must organize the people as they had been organized during wartime, ruthlessly suppressing all opposition and directing the economy so that businessmen and politicians worked together. And, logically, that select group of leaders would elevate a single man, who would become an all-powerful dictator. To weld their followers into an efficient machine, they demonized opponents into an “other” that their followers could hate.

Italy adopted fascism, and Mussolini inspired others, notably Germany’s Hitler. Those leaders came to believe that their system was the ideology of the future, and they set out to destroy the messy, inefficient democracy that stood in their way.

America fought World War II to defend democracy from fascism. And while fascism preserved hierarchies in society, democracy called on all men as equals. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in the war, more than 1.2 million were Black American men and women, 500,000 were Latinos, and more than 550,000 Jews were part of the military. Among the many ethnic groups who fought, Indigenous Americans served at a higher percentage than any other ethnic group—more than a third of able-bodied Indigenous men between the ages of 18 and 50 joined the service—and among those 25,000 soldiers were the men who developed the famous “Code Talk,” based in tribal languages, that codebreakers never cracked.

The American president at the time, Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt, hammered home that the war was about the survival of democracy. Fascists insisted that they were moving their country forward fast and efficiently—claiming the trains ran on time, for example, although in reality they didn’t—but FDR constantly noted that the people in Italy and Germany were begging for food and shelter from the soldiers of democratic countries.

Ultimately, the struggle between fascism and democracy was the question of equality. Were all men really created equal as the Declaration of Independence said, or were some born to lead the rest, whom they held subservient to their will?

Democracy, FDR reminded Americans again and again, was the best possible government. Thanks to armies made up of men and women from all races and ethnicities, the Allies won the war against fascism, and it seemed that democracy would dominate the world forever.

But as the impulse of WWII pushed Americans toward a more just and inclusive society after it, those determined not to share power warned their supporters that including people of color and women as equals in society would threaten their own liberty. Those reactionary leaders rode that fear into control of our government, and gradually they chipped away the laws that protected equality. Now, once again, democracy is under attack by those who believe some people are better than others.

President Donald J. Trump and his cronies have abandoned the principles of democracy and openly embraced the hierarchical society the U.S. fought against in World War II. They have fired women, Black Americans, people of color, and LGBTQ+ Americans from positions in the government and the military and erased them from official histories. They have seized, incarcerated and deported immigrants— or rendered them to third countries to be tortured— and have sent federal agents and federal troops into Democratic-led cities to terrorize the people living there.

They have traded the rule of law for the rule of Trump, weaponizing the Department of Justice against those they perceive as enemies, pardoning loyalists convicted of crimes, and now, executing those they declare are members of drug cartels without evidence, charges, or trials. They have openly rejected the world based on shared values of equality and democracy for which Americans fought in World War II. In its place, they are building a world dominated by a small group of elites close to Trump, who are raking in vast amounts of money from their machinations.

Will we permit the destruction of American democracy on our watch?

When America came under attack before, people like Doris Miller refused to let that happen. For all that American democracy still discriminated against him, it gave him room to stand up for the concept of human equality—and he laid down his life for it. Promoted to cook after the Navy sent him on a publicity tour, Miller was assigned to a new ship, the USS Liscome Bay, which was struck by a Japanese torpedo on November 24, 1943. It sank within minutes, taking two thirds of the crew, including Miller, with it.

We hear a lot these days about how American democracy is doomed and the radical right will win. Maybe. But the beauty of our system is that it gives us people like Doris Miller.

Even better, it makes us people like Doris Miller.

Categories Courage, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, History

Trump Celebrates Himself: Me! Me!

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2025 //
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When Trump allowed his buddy Elon Musk to run a so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency, Musk sent his mentees into every department with a license to terrorize civil servants and destroy their work. Agencies were literally ransacked, employees with deep experience were peremptorily fired by young men in their late teens and early 20s. Foreign aid programs were shuttered, and their employees given orders to return home.

The only certain result of the DOGE incursion was that the kids vacuumed up the personal data of every person, purpose unknown.

One casualty of DOGE in those early days was the Institute of Peace. The Institute was established by Congress and signed into law by President Reagan in 1984. Its goal was to train peacemakers and be the equivalent of military academies. It had a bipartisan board. It trained thousands of professionals in conflict resolution.

In February 2025, Trump signed an executive order to begin dissolving the IP. He fired most of its Board of Directors. The brazen DOGE pests forced their way into the building and took it over. The IP went to court to fight for survival.

The issue is still in court but Trump realized he had a use for the attractive building that previously housed the IP. He invited representatives of Rwanda and the Congo to come to Washington to accept a peace agreement for their decades-long war. This was intended to add luster to Trump’s ongoing campaign for a Nobel Peace Prize. President Obama got one, and that really bothers Trump, who is obsessively jealous of both Obama and Biden.

Days before the big meeting, workmen attached Trump’s name to two sides of the building. It is now officially the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. The words “Institute of Peace” are chiselled into the stone. The Trump name was attached in large silver letters. When he’s gone, they can easily be removed.

Foreign leaders now understand well that the key to Trump’s heart is his ego. So they compete to give him a gold crown, a solid bar of gold, and whatever extravagant symbols of royalty they can dream up.

FIFA, the governing body of world soccer, awarded its first gold “peace prize” to Trump to compensate for his loss of the Nobel peace prize. Trump said, “This is truly one of the great honors of my life.” The event was held at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where Trump fired the entire board, packed the board with his lackeys, and named himself president of the board. He has been thinking of naming the concert hall of the Kennedy Center for Melania. Don’t be surprised if sometime in the next four years, the facility is renamed the Trump Center for the Performing Arts.

And why shouldn’t the Washington Monument be retitled the Trump Monument?

Nothing is too small to be overlooked. Until now, visitors to national parks got free entry on Martin Luther King Jr. Day and Juneteenth, both of which are national holidays. However, the Trump administration has removed those two days. The only free day will be the birthday of Donald J. Trump. Will it soon be declared a national holiday?

Republicans have discussed placing his name and face on a coin–nickel, dime, or quarter–but they better act quickly before the 2026 midterm elections.

Governor Gavin Newsom was quick to respond:

Shortly after Trump won the first FIFA Peace Prize (FIFA is the world soccer federation), retail giant Kohl’s bestowed its first Kohl’s Peace Prize on Governor Gavin Newsom! Governor Newsom said he was honored.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Trump
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