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Washington Post: New White House Strategy: Promote Trump as “King”

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2025 //
16

Jeff Bezos may have neutered the editorial pages of The Washington Post but he has not silenced the news reporting. Here is a terrifying example. Their communications strategy is to focus relentlessly on Trump as a “king,” a man of supernatural power. This is a gift article so you should be able to open the link and see the illustrations.

Drew Harrell and Sarah Ellison wrote:

When actress Selena Gomez posted an Instagram video in January in which she cried about the Trump administration’s deportations of children, the viral clip threatened to stoke nationwide unease over the policy’s human impact.

But the White House digital strategy team had a plan. They dispatched videographers to interview the mothers of children killed by undocumented immigrants. They put President Donald Trump’s face on a Valentine’s Day card reading: “Roses are red, violets are blue, come here illegally and we’ll deport you.”

And they mimicked a style of video popular for its meditative soundscapes, known as ASMR, with a presentation that featured the rattling handcuff chains of a deportation flight. Gomez deleted her video shortly after posting, without specifying why. The Trump team’s video has been viewed more than 100 million times.

The effort was part of a new administration strategy to transform the traditional White House press shop into a rapid-response influencer operation, disseminating messages directly to Americans through the memes, TikToks and podcasts where millions now get their news.

After years of working to undermine mainstream outlets and neutralize critical reporting, Trump’s allies are now pushing a parallel information universe of social media feeds and right-wing firebrands to sell the country on his expansionist approach to presidential power.

For the Trump team, that has involved aggressively confronting critics like Gomez, not just to “reframe the narrative” but to drown them out, said Kaelan Dorr, a deputy assistant to the president who runs the digital team.

“We thought it was necessary to provide pushback in the harshest, most forceful way possible,” he said. “And through that, we had a viral hit on our hands.”

Stephen K. Bannon, a senior White House aide during Trump’s first term and the host of the “War Room” podcast, said the White House has reimagined itself as a “major information content provider.” What Trump does “is the action, and we just happen to be one of the distributors,” he said.

“Rapid-response communications are normally defensive,” he said. “They’re all offense, all the time.”

The White House’s rapid-response account posted 207 times to X on Tuesday, the day of Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress, or nearly nine posts an hour, including Trump sound bites, supporter interviews and Democrat-slamming memes and attack lines. When a Fox News analyst called Trump “the political colossus of our time,” the team got the clip cut, captioned and posted online within 11 minutes.

In press rooms, the administration is welcoming friendly “new media” podcasters, X users and YouTubers to deliver what White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt calls “news-related content” to their millions of followers.

And on social media, the White House is firing off talking points across every platform in a bid to win online attention and reach viewers who have tuned out the traditional press. In an X post, communications director Steven Cheung described their goal: “FULL SPECTRUM DOMINANCE.”

The administration has produced news-style reports trumpeting Trump’s successes and put them in email newsletters and Leavitt-narrated “MAGA Minute” video segments; soon, they’ll be delivered via text.

The team has worked to humanize the president with picturesque postcards of a White House snowfall and behind-the-scenes videos from the Oval Office — where a New York Post showing the president’s mug shot hangs framed just outside the door. But the digital team has also gone for shock factor, posting a photo of chained men shuffling onto a transport jet (“Deportation Flights Have Begun”) and a portrait of Trump with a golden crown (“LONG LIVE THE KING”).

The president has appointed influential social media figures across the federal government — like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Kash Patel — who amplify his messages with their own marketing pushes. Trump has also fired off attention-getting posts of his own, including an AI-generated videotransforming the war-torn Gaza Strip into a gilded Trump beach resort, in line with his call to forcibly remove millions of people from Palestinian land.

The administration’s brash campaign-style tactics are designed to stand out on a crowded internet and speak to voters that officials believe are hungry for aggressive action.

“Even the tagline we’ve been using — ‘America is back’ — is very much saying: ‘We’re here. We’re in your face.’ It’s irreverent. It’s unapologetic,” Dorr, 32, said. (A veteran of both Trump campaigns, Dorr also worked as a “head of engagement” at Gettr, the right-wing social network run by Jason Miller.)

The posts have shocked and repulsed the left, leading Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats to say on X: “To find joy and entertainment in this is truly vile.” But the Trump team has been emboldened to go even further by the millions who have watched, shared and followed the accounts since Trump’s inauguration. Half of the White House’s Instagram views have come from non-followers, Dorr said, a sign that the team’s messages are gaining traction beyond Trump’s base.

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that the approach is built to reach audiences without the media’s help and to broadcast Trump’s “America First message far and wide.”

But this model of messaging could supercharge the presidential bully pulpit until it shifts Americans’ perception of events, according to experts who study propaganda and the press. Like Trump’s moves to shore up loyalty in Congress and remake the judiciary, the strategy is designed to weaken his opponents and dismantle checks against executive power.

Undermining the accountability mission of the Fourth Estate and building a viral pipeline of state media helps the administration — and future ones — stifle dissent, said Anya Schiffrin, a senior lecturer at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs.

And by replacing dispassionate observers with partisan cheerleaders, political leaders are elevating a class of messengers incentivized to defend their decisions, no matter the seriousness or scale. Every policy maneuver could turn into a meme.

Said Renee Hobbs, a communications professor at the University of Rhode Island: “It’s an effort to replace the mainstream press with a partisan press” that will function as the new “purveyors of reality.”

‘Going to be great television’

Though members of the digital team serve on the front lines of what the White House calls the “most transparent administration” in history, Trump officials requested that their identities remain anonymous, citing personnel policy and concern over public backlash.

The team is made up of roughly a dozen employees — people mostly in their 20s and 30s from outside politics — who work out of the White House and are given wide leeway to craft content. By removing layers of bureaucracy before publishing, the team avoids the “analysis paralysis” of other messaging shops, Dorr said.

And members are expected to move at internet speed. When a federal judge declined to block the White House from banning the Associated Press from certain news events, the team raced to declare “VICTORY” in graphics that members slapped across White House TVs and social accounts.

They “have the buy-in from the [Trump] team to go out there and be unapologetic in our pursuit of advancing the administration’s goals,” Dorr said, “with the ferocity and the quickness and the pointedness” the White House demands.

For its rapid-response account, the White House employs video producers and editors, known as clippers, to create and post short videos on the fly. The role was first popularized by political activists looking to highlight opponents’ gaffes on the campaign trail, but Trump’s clippers often promote his moments, hoping to make them go viral in real time.

On Friday, within minutes of Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s fiery confrontation with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the White House accounts blasted out video of major punch lines, meme-ready photos and images of the American flag. “This is going to be great television,” Trump said as reporters filed out of the Oval Office.

The approach seems to be resonating online: Trump’s first Cabinet meeting, which was live-streamed and featured billionaire Trump ally Elon Musk, has more than 6 million views on X. “Trump is literally overwhelming them with information” in a way that is “changing the nature of the presidency,” Bannon said. “How many young men under 30 years old would ever watch two seconds of a Cabinet meeting?”

That fast-twitch model has spread beyond the White House, including to the Defense Department, which this month launched a rapid-response account to praise Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, grapple with senators and declare that “REAL journalism is dead.” But it has also helped seed major advertising campaigns to reach viewers beyond the web.

Kristi L. Noem, head of the Department of Homeland Security, has posted videos of herself in a flak jacket at the southern border and on immigration raids, including one on Tuesday at an apartment complex in Northern Virginia.

Footage from the raids is used in an international TV and digital ad blitz that warns undocumented immigrants to leave the country or be hunted down. At the Conservative Political Action Conference, Noem said the ads had a budget of up to $200 million and had been personally requested by Trump.

“We’re not going to let the media tell this story,” Noem recalled Trump saying, as was first reported by Rolling Stone. “We’re going to run a marketing campaign to make sure the American people know the truth.”

‘Desecrate their idols’

As the administration has expanded its marketing arm, it has also worked to uproot the classic structure of the White House press corps. In her first briefing, Leavitt called on “podcasters, social media influencers and content creators” to apply for credentialed access to a briefing room long filled by legacy news outlets. More than 12,000 have since applied, according to the White House, and several have been ushered to exclusive new-media seats near the podium.

Administration officials have said the change reflects a fundamental shift in American culture, as journalists compete for relevance with a new generation of influencers who speak to audiences of millions online.

But virtually all of the new-media creators have come from right-wing outlets friendly to the Trump cause. The Breitbart writer Matt Boyle asked whether the White House would continue its “breakneck” pace. (Yes, Leavitt said.) The pro-Trump podcaster John Ashbrook asked whether the media was “out of touch” about the border. (Yes, Leavitt said.) And John Stoll, the head of news at Musk’s X, asked about the White House’s “confidence” in going “toe-to-toe with Vladimir Putin.” (Very confident, national security adviser Michael Waltz said.)

“The Trump White House is loyal, and they are loyal to people who stood with them,” podcaster Dan Bongino said while toasting Rumble chief Chris Pavlovski’s moment in the new-media spotlight. (Days later, Bongino was named deputy director of the FBI.)

Some of the new-media figures have eagerly promoted Trump’s domestic agenda. A few hours after podcaster Sage Steele asked about the importance of passing a law to ban transgender women and girls from women’s sports, she stood behind Trump as he signed an executive order on the same issue.

Other Trump-boosting creators have joined the administration outright, like the “Dear America” podcast host Graham Allen, newly hired as the Defense Department’s digital media director. Brenden Dilley, a pro-Trump meme maker, said of the news, “There’s going to be nobody left doing podcasts soon because the top people are all going to work for the government.”

Friendliness between the White House and its messengers of choice is nothing new, including during the first Trump term, when right-wing provocateurs like Mike Cernovich and blogs like Gateway Pundit held credentials alongside the legacy press.

But back then, the traditional press corps set the tone, Bannon said. The softer questions during Trump’s recent Cabinet meeting, he said, made the first term’s briefings look like “hand-to-hand combat.”

Today “the powerful media is the ecosystem of the right,” Bannon said, “while the mainstream media [is] suffering layoffs.”

The right-wing media figures embraced by the Trump administration have often returned the favor. After the banning of the AP, Brian Glenn — a correspondent for the pro-Trump media network Real America’s Voice and the boyfriend of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia) — was given the rare opportunity to question Trump in the Oval Office. A few days later, he posted a selfie with Trump on X that read: “So much accomplished, and we’re still under a month in office.”

For those working closely with Trump’s public-relations infrastructure, the first weeks have marked a huge opportunity for exclusive content. Benny Johnson, a Tampa-based MAGA influencer who calls himself the “Front Seat to the Golden Era,” got to interview Vance last month, then headed to the Capitol, where he live-streamed a friendly chat with two Republican senators before they voted to confirm Patel as FBI director.

“First time in history we’ll have the stream going from the senator’s office. This is amazing,” Johnson said on stream.

The night before, Johnson had posted a video of himself stopping to rejoice outside the shuttered offices of the U.S. Agency for International Development, once the world’s largest provider of food aid. “Destroy the idols of the conquered church, right?” he said with a laugh. “Desecrate their idols. Look at this. There it is. Blacked out. It’s gone.”

Cat Zakrzewski and Michael Scherer contributed to this report.

Categories Extremism, Lies, Media, Trump

Jan Resseger: Will the Trump Gang Succeed in Demonizing the Words “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion”?

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2025 //
12

Jan Resseger reflects on the Trump administration’s determination to eliminate not only to eliminate programs based on “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” but the words themselves. Those three words must be expunged from our vocabularity. We must not recognize that there is diversity of people, even within the same religion or race. We must not strive for equity, which means that everyone has an equal chance to thrive. When they don’t thrive, we ask why. But we mustn’t care anymore.

Inclusion is the third “dirty” word that must be extirpated, inclusion means “all.” Remember when you recited the Pledge of Allegiance in school? I do. We said, “with liberty and justice for all.” I suppose it will be changed now to “with liberty and justice for some.”

Read Jan’s post. As always, it is thoughtful, incisive and well researched.

Have faith. This madness and meanness will come to an end.

Categories Censorship, Equity, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Gender, Language, Lies, Stupid, Trump

Trump Speaks at DOJ, Urges Imprisonment of His Political Foes

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2025 //
14

It’s not customary for the President to speak at the Department of Justice, which seeks a measure of independence, but Trump is not a traditionalist. He spoke today at the DOJ, whined about how unfairly he had been treated (by clipping and hiding top secret documents and inspiring an insurrection to overturn the election), and railed against those who had prosecuted him. It was typical Trump: aggrieved, bitter, self-pitying, angry.

He said that his courtroom opponents were “scum,” the judges were “corrupt,” and the prosecutors “deranged.”

He said the people who did this to him are “bad people,” and they should be imprisoned.

Trump vowed to “remake the agency and retaliate against his enemies.”

He is unhinged, deranged, vindictive, and we are in deep trouble.

Categories Character, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Justice, Lies, Shame, Trump

Josh Cowen: Michigan Doesn’t Want Vouchers, But Trump May Impose Them

By dianeravitch
March 14, 2025 //
2

The DeVos family has poured millions into persuading the people of Michigan to endorse vouchers but they have failed. So far. In a statewide referendum in 2000 sponsored by the DeVoses, voters resoundingly rejected vouchers. Since no voucher referendum has ever passed in any state, the voucher pushers have to find another route that does not include letting voters decide.

Josh Owen thinks they may have found the strategy. He wrote the following editorial for The Detroit Free Press. His article was republished by the Network for Public Education.

New post on Network for Public Education.

Josh Cowen: Another GOP attempt to sneak school vouchers into Michigan — this time, it may work

Noted voucher scholar Josh Cowen wrote an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press warning Michigan that the GOP is trying yet another backdoor approach to getting vouchers into the state. 

Michiganders don’t want school vouchers. But the federal government might force vouchers into Michigan, whether we want them to or not.

In the coming days, Congress will consider whether to include the “Educational Choice for Children Act” (ECCA) among many GOP priorities as part of the budget reconciliation process that will set federal spending for next year and beyond.

That bill, which GOP leaders have introduced in both the Senate and the House, is a school voucher plan mixed with a tax credit that would allow donors to divert all or part of what they owe in federal taxes to other organizations that then distribute those funds for private K-12 tuition and other private educational expenses.

Put another way, this is the federal version of the voucher plans spreading in red states across the country — except this one is nestled inside a tax shelter for mostly wealthy donors. Those donors can give either $5,000 or up to 10% of their adjusted income — whichever is greater — for $10 billion in diverted revenue in the first year alone. Then that spending cap can go up. A similar, Michigan-specific version of this scheme was unsuccessfully backed by Betsy DeVos and allies three years ago.

The new federal bill would top off voucher spending in states that have those systems already, and force vouchers into states that have don’t have or want them — states like Michigan.

Our state constitution bans state funding from going to private K-12 schools. But the new voucher tax credit could circumvent that ban by using federal dollars instead. So much for “giving education back to the states,” as the Trump Administration says it wants to do.

Read the full op-ed here. You can view the post at this link : https://networkforpubliceducation.org/blog-content/josh-cowen-another-gop-attempt-to-sneak-school-vouchers-into-michigan-this-time-it-may-work/

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Michigan, Privatization, Trump, Vouchers

Quick: What’s the Purpose of the EPA?

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2025 //
3

The EPA is the Environmental Protection Agency. It was established in 1970 during the Nixon administration. The creation of EPA was a response to public and scientific concern about pollution of the air, land, and water by chemicals discarded by industry.

Republicans at the time were conservatives, and they prided themselves on championing clean air and clean water.

But in the age of Trump, environmental protection is considered a hindrance to industry. It also is a burden to the coal industry.

Trump appointed one of his most loyal allies to lead EPA. This is how he defines its mission:

“We are driving a dagger straight into the heart of the climate change religion to drive down cost of living for American families, unleash American energy, bring auto jobs back to the U.S. and more,” EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a news release.

  1. To drive down the cost of living.
  2. To unleash American energy.
  3. To bring back auto jobs to the U.S.

Notice what’s missing? Any reference to reducing toxic pollution from the air, land, and waters.

Zeldin announced that he intends to eliminate dozens of EPA regulations. More toxic chemicals will be dumped into lakes and streams. More smokestacks will belch smoke into the air. More brownfields of chemicals will poison the land.

A sad day for America.

Categories Corruption, Environment, Evil, Extremism, Health, Science, Trump

Robert Kennedy Blames Child’s Measles Death on Poor Nutrition and Exercise, Not Lack of Vaccination

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2025 //
5

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised at his confirmation hearings that he was no longer a vaccine-denier and swore he would follow the science.

He lied.

When addressing the death of a Mennonite child in Texas who was unvaccinated, Kennedy attributed the death to poor nutrition and lack of exercise, not to her parents’ failure to get her vaccinated. He emphasized that the choice to get vaccinated was personal, not a matter of public health. And he reiterated the risks of getting vaccinated. He is an unrepentant vaccine-denier. The Atlantic just published a story by Tom Bartlett, who interviewed the child’s father. Mennonites don’t trust vaccines. Bartlett points out that before the measles vaccine was introduced in 1963, 400-500 measles deaths occurred every year. Measles deaths are rare now.

The New York Times reported:

In a sweeping interview, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services secretary, outlined a strategy for containing the measles outbreak in West Texas that strayed far from mainstream science, relying heavily on fringe theories about prevention and treatments.

He issued a muffled call for vaccinations in the affected community, but said the choice was a personal one. He suggested that measles vaccine injuries were more common than known, contrary to extensive research.

He asserted that natural immunity to measles, gained through infection, somehow also protected against cancer and heart disease, a claim not supported by research.

He cheered on questionable treatments like cod liver oil, and said that local doctors had achieved “almost miraculous and instantaneous” recoveries with steroids or antibiotics.

The worsening measles outbreak, which has largely spread through a Mennonite community in Gaines County, has infected nearly 200 people and killed a child, the first such death in the United States in 10 years.

Another suspected measles death has been reported in New Mexico, where cases have recently increased in a county that borders Gaines County.

The interview, which lasted 35 minutes, was posted online by Fox News last week, just before the President Trump’s address to Congress. Segments had been posted earlier, but the full version received little attention.

Mr. Kennedy offered conflicting public health messages as he tried to reconcile the government’s longstanding endorsement of vaccines with his own decades-long skepticism.

Mr. Kennedy acknowledged that vaccines “do prevent infection” and said that the federal government was helping ensure that people have access to “good medicines, including those who want them, to vaccines.”

“In highly unvaccinated communities like Mennonites, it’s something that we recommend,” he said.

Mr. Kennedy described vaccination as a personal choice that must be respected, then went on to raise frightening concerns about the safety of the vaccines.

He said he’d been told that a dozen Mennonite children had been injured by vaccines in Gaines County. People in the community wanted federal health workers arriving in Texas “to also look at our vaccine-injured kids and look them in the eye,” Mr. Kennedy said.

Yet the M.M.R. vaccine itself has been thoroughly studied and is safe. There is no link to autism, as the secretary has claimed in the past. While all vaccines have occasional adverse effects, health officials worldwide have concluded that the benefits far outweigh the very small risks of vaccination.

Mr. Kennedy asserted otherwise: “We don’t know what the risk profile is for these products. We need to restore government trust. And we’re going to do that by telling the truth, and by doing rigorous science to understand both safety and efficacy issues….”

In later comments, Mr. Kennedy suggested that severe symptoms mainly affected people who were unhealthy before contracting measles.

“It’s very, very difficult for measles to kill a healthy person,” he said, adding later that “we see a correlation between people who get hurt by measles and people who don’t have good nutrition or who don’t have a good exercise regimen.”

West Texas is “kind of a food desert,” he added. Malnutrition “may have been an issue” for the child who died of measles in Gaines County.

Texas health officials said the child had “no known underlying conditions.”

Dr. Wendell Parkey, a physician in Gaines County with many Mennonite patients, said the idea that the community was malnourished was mistaken.

Mennonites often avoid processed foods, raise their own livestock and make their own bread, he noted. From a very young age, many members of the community also help with farming and other physically demanding jobs.

“They’re the healthiest people out here,” he said. “Nutritionally, I would put them up against anybody.”

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Health, Science

Bill Kristol: Trump Betrays Ukraine and Our Ideals

By dianeravitch
March 13, 2025 //
2

Bill Kristol was a prominent conservative until Trump. He edited The Weekly Standard. Now he is an outspoken critic of Trump because Trump is betraying America and is destroying the Republican Party. In this post, he speaks out against Trump’s craven abandonment of Ukraine and his craven embrace of Putin.

He writes:

The betrayal of Ukraine continues apace.

On Friday, President Donald Trump stopped sharing American intelligence with Ukraine, and Russia responded by immediately stepping up its strikes on civilian Ukrainian targets.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk explained the situation succinctly: “This is what happens when someone appeases barbarians. More bombs, more aggression, more victims.”

But Tusk was being diplomatic. He was maintaining the pretense that Trump was merely foolishly or wishfully appeasing Putin. Trump isn’t acting foolishly or wishfully. He wants to help Putin.

Indeed, the distinguished military historian Phillips P. O’Brien wrote on Saturday:

What we have seen over the last few days is so extreme that it deserves to be said out loud and acknowledged as soon as possible. The United States has not just abandoned Ukraine, the United States is now actively helping Vladimir Putin and the Russian state kill Ukrainians to try and force Ukraine to accept a bad peace deal that very well might spell the end of their country. At the same time, the USA is now bending over backwards to help protect the Russian military.

O’Brien provides evidence for these charges, which you can and should read if you have the stomach for it. And since O’Brien’s newsletter, we’ve had reports that Trump won’t restore military aid with Ukraine even if there’s a deal on mineral resources, and that the Trump administration wants to depose Volodymyr Zelensky as president.

As the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser remarks: “Trump’s demands right now are Putin’s demands.”

By Sunday night, Trump was telling reporters that the administration had “just about” lifted the pause on Ukraine intel sharing. But the details of the lift were left unclear. Indeed, the alleged willingness to lift the pause seems to be laying the groundwork for failing to do so, or for putting the pause on again, when Zelensky fails to make sufficient concessions for “peace.”

Those looking for optimism continue to try to advance the proposition that Trump is merely stepping back a bit in Europe to focus on the China threat. But there are reports that China, Russia, and Iran are now engaged in new naval exercises near Iran’s Chabahar port. This is only one of many instances of the autocracies of Europe and Asia working together.

And the fact is that Trump wants to cut deals with all the autocrats—with Russia, China, Iran, and for that matter North Korea. Those are the leaders with whom he wants to work to make the world safe for autocracy.

Not all Republicans are on board this agenda. The Reaganite pulse in the GOP still beats, if faintly. And so one reads about Hill Republicans having concerns about Trump’s policy. But as Adam Kinzinger mordantly remarked about his former colleagues: “If only they had votes in say, a legislative body, to do something about it. But no, they can only be ‘concerned.’”

Three House Republicans. Four GOP senators. That’s what it might take to stop or impede Trump’s sellout of Ukraine. They could vow not to support Trump’s agenda, and to vote with the Democrats if necessary, as long as the betrayal of Ukraine continues. They could start with the government funding bill that must pass by the end of this week.

But no, Hill Republicans are still bending the knee to Trump.

And so a Republican who’s been staunchly pro-Ukraine like GOP Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick feels he has to pretend that cutting off intelligence sharing with Ukraine is :an escalate to de-escalate tactic by the administration to bring these parties to the table.”

An escalate to de-escalate tactic.

The mental gymnastics of Republicans who know better, but who do not want to confront Trump, never cease to amaze.

It’s all sickening. It’s sickening to see the betrayal of Ukraine, because one thinks of what will happen to the Ukrainian people.

But it’s also sickening to see the betrayal of Ukraine because of what it will say about what’s happening to us.

As a French friend of America, Bernard-Henri Levy, wrote in the Wall Street Journal last week:

I don’t know if the Americans will grasp that in Mr. Zelensky’s dignity lies their “city upon a hill” creed and that American leaders, from the Founding Fathers all the way to Kennedy and Reagan, would have been proud of a deep bond with this leader.

I don’t know, really, if any of this will be properly understood after that incident, display, fiasco, debacle, monstrosity—call it what you will—in the Oval Office.

It’s proper to blame President Trump for the “incident, display, fiasco, debacle, monstrosity” in the Oval Office. But Trump’s our president. It’s our Oval Office. If Americans in both parties don’t do their utmost to check and overturn the president’s actions, we will all have been part of the betrayal of Ukraine. We will all have been part of a betrayal of America.

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

Trump is Terminating the U.S. Department of Education Without Congressional Authorization

By dianeravitch
March 12, 2025 //
31

During his campaign, Trump pledged to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. Public opinion was overwhelmingly opposed. Trump didn’t care. He claims that the Department is filled with “radical Marxists” and “left wing lunatics” who are intent on indoctrinating children and promoting “gender ideology” that is sure to turn them gay or transgender.

This is absurd. About 99% of the employees of the Department process grants and contracts, oversee programs, and review submissions from the public and requests from Congress. They are not radical or Marxist. They have no influence on what is taught in the schools. None. A friend once quipped that the Department is a check-writing machine. It sends money appropriated by Congress to schools with large numbers of low-income students, it sends money to fund extra care for students with disabilities, it processes applications for college student aid. Its Office for Civil Rights investigates and acts on claims that students’ rights were violated.

I, along with many others, assumed that Trump would never be able to shut down the Department because he couldn’t do it without 60 votes in the Senate. He would never get 60 votes. There are only 53 Republicans in the Senate, and no Democrat would join them. Some Republicans might defect.

So Trump has taken an alternate route. Yesterday he fired about half the Department’s staff. Tomorrow he might fire more, maybe everyone but Secretary McMahon and her personal staff. The Department will be unable to function. It will be an empty shell.

And that’s how Trump gets what he wants. Not by following the law but by subverting it.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Extremism, Propaganda, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Trump Plans to Spend Billions for Vouchers, Mostly for Religious Schools

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2025 //
10

The Trump administration plans to roll out a massive voucher program that will be available in every state.

We know from the statistics of every voucher program that most vouchers will be claimed by students who never attended public schools. The voucher recipients are already attending religious and private schools. Their parents are able to pay tuition, but will gladly accept a government subsidy to lower their costs. In every state with universal vouchers, most are taken by students already in nonpublic schools.

We also know that vouchers will not help the poorest kids, who are likely to be rejected by good private schools and end up losing ground in substandard schools. Vouchers have not improved education in any state that adopted them. One of the nation’s most expansive voucher programs is in Florida; that state just posted its worst NAEP score in two decades. To learn more, read Josh Cowen’s The Privateers.

Nonetheless, Laura Meckler reports in The Washington Post, the Trump administration is prepared to dole out billions of federal dollars to pay for tuition at nonpublic schools, most of them religious.

Meanwhile, the public schools, which enroll nearly 90% of all K-12 students in the U.S., would receive less funding, have larger class sizes, and less money for teachers’ salaries.

Vouchers have been tested in state referenda repeatedly and have consistently, often by huge margins.

Meckler writes:

The school voucher movement has scored victories in conservative states in a quest to send public dollars to private schools, with tax money following the child. Now backers see their best chance yet to go national.


Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, are pushing for a new tax credit that would direct billions of dollars a year to school voucher programs — and not just in conservative states.


The program would be fueled by a powerful, never-before-tried incentive: Taxpayers who donate to voucher programs would get 100 percent of their money back when they file their taxes. That means the tax break for giving to voucher programs would dwarf tax incentives for giving to churches, hospitals, food banks and every other charity.


Taxpayers who donate to other charities might qualify for a tax deduction — meaning they would not pay taxes on the dollars they contribute. But donors to voucher programs would get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, meaning they could subtract the full value of the donation from their bottom line tax liability.

The goal is to give more families more options for their children’s education. Too many children, supporters say, are stuck in public schools that do not serve them well but cannot afford other options. A federal program would give more children in more states the opportunity to make a different choice for their education. The tax credit, they say, would encourage and allow taxpayers who want to help to do so.


One version of the plan would cost the federal government $5 billion a year in lost revenue; another version, $10 billion. At $10,000 per student, $5 billion would be enough to pay for about 500,000 vouchers, which families could use to send their children to private schools or to pay for home schooling expenses. Under a version of the bill approved by the House Ways and Means Committee last fall and a new version introduced this year, all but the wealthiest families would be eligible to receive vouchers.

“It would be transformational,” said Jim Blew, co-founder of the Defense of Freedom Institute, which advocates for school choice programs. [Blew worked for Betsy DeVos when she was Secretary of Education.] “Although the numbers are very small in the federal context, in the context of the school choice movement, these are huge numbers.”

About 46 million American children — nearly nine in 10 — attend public schools; about 5 million are enrolled in private schools, according to federal data.

But opposition is fierce from those who say these plans drain resources from public schools, which are required by law to take all children. Public school advocates are mobilizing publicly and privately against the plan, lobbying Republicans who might oppose it based on the merits or the cost.

“We’re making sure the public understands this is the greatest threat to public education we’ve ever had at the federal level,” said Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy for AASA, the School Superintendents Association, who helps lead a coalition of more than 60 groups opposed to the voucher plan.

Pudelski noted that unlike public schools, private schools can reject students based on their religion, test scores, disability or ability to pay tuition. The vast majority of vouchers in existing state programs go to religious schools.

“It would be the first time the federal government is choosing to subsidize a secondary private system of education that can pick and choose the students it educates over the one that welcomes all,” she said.

Voters, too, have opposed these plans. In November, ballot measures to allow vouchers in Kentucky and Colorado failed, while voters in Nebraska voted to repeal a voucher program put into place by the legislature.

But the federal plan enjoys robust support from the most powerful people in today’s Republican Party. President Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to create a federal school choice program. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) have both co-sponsored versions of the voucher legislation.

There goes the separation of church and state. There goes common sense. Voucher programs don’t help students. They hurt public schools, which enroll the vast majority of students. Vouchers are a huge drain on the budget.

Why should taxpayers pay tuition for wealthy families? Why should taxpayers underwrite tuition at schools that discriminate against students for any reason they want, be it race, religion, disability status, sexual orientation, or low test scores? If public schools did that, their test scores would be sky-high, but it would betray the promise of public schools: equal educational opportunity. Not for only those we choose to admit.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Funding, Privatization, Racism, Religion, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers

Thom Hartmann: The GOP Plan to Cut Social Security

By dianeravitch
March 11, 2025 //
13

Despite the multiple pledges by Trump and Republicans that they would never custodial Security, don’t believe them. Republicans opposed Social Security when it was created by FDR, and many still thinks it’s socialism, even though it’s not a handout. People have paid for it throughout their working like.

Thom Hartmann says they are looking for ways to cut Social Security but to do it quietly, so you hardly notice. Trump’s Chief budget-cutter Elon Musk doesn’t understand why anyone needs Social Security. He was recently interviewed by Joe Rogan and said that Social Security is “a Ponzi scheme.” It certainly is not. It’s not a grifter’s scheme to take people’s money. It pays out to everyone. Without it, very large numbers of older people would be impoverished.

Why would the world’s richest man know or care?

Hartmann warned:

The plan to “demolish” Social Security is underway right before our eyes: who will stop them? 

The GOP’s plan to make Americans hate Social Security is well along in its execution. Their scheme — which they’ve been advancing in small increments for 44 years — is brilliantly simple: break the agency’s ability to respond to taxpayers, causing people to have to wait on the phone or travel for hours to stand in line for hours.

As complaints mount, Republicans will then point to the “broken Social Security Administration” and pitch a Medicare Advantage-like alternative: privatized “Social Security Advantage,” run by the big New York banks who are reliable GOP donors. Once a critical mass of seniors have moved from SS to the new privatized program, they’ll then just shut down legacy Social Security, arguing that “the free marketplace has spoken.”

The key to accelerating the process (Social Security’s administrative staff has been far too small for decades since Reagan first started cutting it) is a new demand from Trump’s acting Social Security Commissioner that the agency cut its workforce by fully fifty percent. Once that happens, all bets are off; the agency may not even be able to get checks out in a timely manner or process applications for new benefits, much less help SS recipients sign up or solve problems they may encounter.

As Congressman John Larson noted: “This is nothing more than a backdoor benefit cut and an insult to Americans who have paid into the system and earned their Social Security—all to pay for trillions in new tax cuts for the wealthy.” 

Social Security Works president Nancy Altman was blunt: “Field offices around the country will close. Wait times for the 1-800 number will soar.” Larson added: “Let me be clear—laying off half of the workforce at the Social Security Administration and shuttering field offices will mean the delay, disruption, and denial of benefits.”

Meanwhile, Idaho’s Republican Senator Mike Crapo blocked Bernie Sanders’ attempt this week to give all seniors on Social Security a $2400 annual raise. Noting that the raise would be paid for by having people earning more than $250,000 a year start paying Social Security taxes on all their income above that amount (which is currently exempt from Social Security taxes), Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (a co-sponsor of the legislation) said, “The Social Security Expansion Act will protect the national treasure that is Social Security by extending the trust fund’s solvency for 75 years and expanding benefits by $2,400 a year so that everyone in America can retire with the security and dignity they deserve after a lifetime of hard work.”

But big banks and the morbidly rich object, and they own the GOP…

Categories Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Disruption, Economy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Musk, Elon, Poverty, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump
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