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Mary Trump: Will No One Stop Trump’s Unhinged Behavior?

By dianeravitch
August 28, 2026 //
7

Mary Trump, niece of Donald Trump, notes that Trump behavior in increasingly unhinged, narcissistic, and frankly, ridiculous. Yet no one in his inner circle will tell him the truth. No one will tell him that he has humiliated America in the eyes of the world. Mary is a psychologist and the son of Trump’s older brother. She judges him by his actions and his words, not his braggadocio’

She writes:

Donald rushed the White House press corps into the Oval Office saying he had a big announcement, which is that, effective immediately, he is going to be changing the name of Lake Ontario to Lake America.

One of his flunkies, when asked, “Do you have anything to say about it, Ben?” said, “Yes, sir,” before explaining that this was a straightforward but important executive order. It directs Secretary Burgum and the Department of the Interior to update the Geographic Names Information System to reflect that the lake once known as Lake Ontario will from this time forward be known as Lake America. According to him, this is a lake that has most of its volume in the United States and the deepest parts of the lake sit in United States territory, so this will reflect that this is an American lake. Thankfully, all of the necessary papers and documents were filed to make this official.

In case you were thinking, “Oh, well, okay, maybe he’s finally done renaming bodies of water,” you would be wrong.

This is what Donald said:

The lake change, Lake of America, was something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, actually. As you know, we took something called the Gulf of Mexico. We changed it, and now it’s very routinely the Gulf of America. So if you think about it, we have a Gulf and we have a lake. Now all we need is an ocean. So maybe we’ll have to change the name of the Atlantic and/or the Pacific. Maybe we’ll change them both.

That’s the President of the United States of America who currently has us involved in an illegal, unconstitutional war of choice, who is currently engaged in an unprovoked trade war with our closest ally and second largest trading partner, which will wreak havoc on both the economies of Canada and the United States of America, creating even more hardship for Americans given the fact that the economy, thanks to Donald’s completely stupid economic policies and the aforementioned war of choice, is in shambles.

American farmers are going bankrupt by the score, up to 77 per day. America is divided. America’s reputation across the world is cratering. America is a shadow of its once relatively respectable self, all because of that man and the fascist Republican Party that continues to enable him.

And it’s not because they don’t know what’s going on. They can see clearly that he is in serious, serious cognitive decline. There is overwhelming evidence of this.

They see clearly his toddler like levels of self involvement, his delusions of godhood, and his grasping need for attention. They see that his only priority is his wealth, his power, his megalomania, and yet Republicans continue to go along with his demands, which are increasingly insane, detached from reality, and utterly humiliating.

It’s not an accident, or maybe it is an accident, but it’s a convenient one, that by renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America, the acronym for the Great Lakes, Superior, Huron, America, Michigan, and Erie, is now SHAME.

And I have begun to wonder if America will ever, ever be able to get out from under the weight of the shame Donald Trump and the Republicans have heaped upon us.

It is clear to any sentient being who isn’t lying to him or herself that Donald is increasingly unfit, increasingly just a prisoner to his psychopathologies. And now so too are we because not only has there been no pushback, he continues to be enabled. He continues to be told that he can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants to, because he’s him.

As you may have heard, Donald had wanted to close the Kennedy Center for two years because it needed such extensive renovations, according to him. Howard Lutnick is claiming that Donald is the only person in the world great enough to renovate the Kennedy Center. He also said that when the renovation project started, Donald, the great master builder, should be the project manager because being President is just another part time job.

We’ve also learned recently that Donald wants to make the midterms about himself. So here’s what holier than thou, sick of it Speaker of the House Mike Johnson had to say about it.

This is what Mike Johnson said:

The president is going to look right into the camera and say, I am on the ballot, okay? Because even though his name isn’t, it’s his administration, his legacy.

No, that isn’t how any of this works.

By continuing to enable him, by continuing to spread the wild, unhinged, untethered from reality narratives, Donald is trapped with it. They continue to act as if it is normal for a president at war to spend his time giving tours of the White House construction projects, to spend millions of dollars renovating a reflecting pool and then arresting people because the job was done so incompetently it made him look bad.

This is the President of the United States spending his time changing the names of bodies of water. First the Gulf of Mexico becomes the Gulf of America. Now Lake Ontario becomes Lake America. And apparently, having secured a gulf and a lake, Donald is considering moving on to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans because, as he explained, “Now all we need is an ocean.”

This is happening while America is at war. It is happening while farmers are going bankrupt. It is happening while we are engaged in a trade war with Canada. It is happening while the economy is in shambles and America’s reputation around the world continues to crater.

Yet the people surrounding Donald continue to treat his increasingly bizarre demands as if they are perfectly normal acts of presidential leadership. Nobody apparently has the courage to tell him that changing the name of Lake Ontario is not an important presidential accomplishment, just as nobody seems willing to tell him that being President of the United States is not a part time job that leaves plenty of room for managing the renovation of the Kennedy Center.

Instead, they flatter him. They indulge him. They tell him that he is the only person in the world capable of doing things that have absolutely nothing to do with the job the American people elected him to perform.

As long as we have people like Mike Johnson and everybody else in Donald’s inner circle trying to normalize this deviance, we are all part of this psychopathological system that will lead inevitably to our destruction.

To which I say, is there not one sane adult who knows where this is going to lead? Is there not one person in the Trump regime who can send up the signal flare to the rest of us that some of them are willing to start speaking out against this insanity?

Because this isn’t simply about renaming Lake Ontario. It isn’t simply about whether Donald decides tomorrow that the Atlantic or Pacific Ocean needs to have America stamped across its name, too. It is about the fact that there seems to be nobody around him willing to say no. There is nobody willing to stop indulging his grasping need for attention, his delusions of godhood, his megalomania, and his increasingly insane demands.

The Republican Party sees what the rest of us see. They know what is happening. They see the same behavior. They hear the same words. They watch him make the same increasingly detached demands, and rather than push back, they continue enabling him. They continue pretending that this is normal because Donald is Donald and therefore, apparently, he gets to do whatever he wants whenever he wants.

And that is how we get here. We have a President of the United States involved in an illegal and unconstitutional war of choice, an unprovoked trade war with one of our closest allies, and an economy that is creating extraordinary hardship for Americans, while he summons the White House press corps to announce that Lake Ontario is now Lake America.

And everybody around him plays along.

Donald said that now that America has a gulf and a lake, all we need is an ocean. Maybe he’ll change the Atlantic. Maybe he’ll change the Pacific. Maybe he’ll change both.

Meanwhile, the Great Lakes are now, conveniently enough, Superior, Huron, America, Michigan, and Erie.

SHAME.

That may be the most appropriate thing Donald has named yet.

This is unsustainable. He is unsustainable. And the sooner somebody is willing to stand up against the depredations that continue to be made against the American people by Donald and those who are perpetuating this, the better.

Categories Ethics, Extremism, Trump

Paul Krugman: Reality and Evidence Are Not to Be Trusted!

By dianeravitch
August 25, 2026 //
2

Paul Krugman is the Nobel-Prize winning economist who was a columnist for The New York Times for many years. He here captures brilliantly the MAGA refusal to accept reality and evidence. How was the mainstream of the Republican Party either captured or cowed by this delusional mindset?

Krugman writes:

The Covid vaccine didn’t work, and vaccines cause autism. But hydroxychloroquine worked, and so did ivermectin. Anthony Fauci killed millions of people.

Climate change is a hoax. Wind power caused a massive TV blackout during the Trump-Biden debate. Solar power is useless because the sun doesn’t shine at night, and batteries don’t exist. Smoke blanketed North America, not because of climate change, but because Canada didn’t rakeits 2 million square miles of boreal forest.

We’ve destroyed Iran’s military, and the Iranian regime is begging for a deal. Also, the U.S. isn’t running out of precision weapons as a result of the Iran war, and furthermore the shortage is Joe Biden’s fault.

The economy is in a “golden age.” Prices are down. And Trump has a 59 percent approval rating.

Trump won the 2020 election.

Communism is the greatest threat facing America.

The modern American right is very good at hating. MAGA hates immigrants (unless they’re white South Africans); it hates liberals; it hates scientists.

What the ongoing show trial of Fauci — which motivated this post — has really driven home, however, is that what Trump and his supporters hate most of all is reality. They know what they want to believe. They fly into paroxysms of rage whenever someone points out that the world isn’t what they want it to be. And they always want to shoot the messenger.

Of course, motivated reasoning isn’t confined to the right. Some people on the left insist that zoning restrictions have no role in causing high housing prices, that it’s all about Wall Street greed. Many centrists insist that being in the middle on a left-right scale — which isn’t even how most voters think about politics — is the secret to electoral victory. And so on.

I’m not immune to the temptation to believe what I want to be true. I try to fight it, but don’t always succeed. Still, I try to acknowledge and admit it when I have let wishful thinking warp my judgement.

But what we’re seeing now isn’t run-of-the-mill motivated reasoning. It’s something far more extreme.

If believing something suits MAGA’s prejudices and interests, they don’t hesitate: they simply insist that it’s true. They routinely dismiss scientific and statistical evidence, but they don’t stop there. They’re perfectly willing to deny reality even if the truth is staring them in the face.

Thus, Trump urged Americans to remember that 2024 TV blackout, which nobody remembers because it didn’t happen. He insists that California has “blackouts and brownouts every weekend,” when the state’s 39 million residents can tell you it doesn’t. He says that you must show ID to buy groceries, which everyone who buys their own food knows isn’t so.

Do Trump and his followers actually believe these things? As I see it, that’s a category error, starting from the presumption that they even accept that objective facts exist. All the evidence (Hah! “Evidence!”) says that they don’t.

George Orwell, whose work seems more relevant by the day, knew all about this mindset. In his essay “Looking back on the Spanish war” he wrote about how the rise of totalitarianism had changed the rules:

In the past people deliberately lied, or they unconsciously coloured what they wrote, or they struggled after the truth, well knowing that they must make many mistakes; but in each case they believed that ‘the facts’ existed and were more or less discoverable. And in practice there was always a considerable body of fact which would have been agreed to by almost everyone.

Totalitarians, however, denied that objective facts existed. Furthermore, reality is mutable, changing with the leader’s whims:

If the Leader says of such and such an event, ‘It never happened’ – well, it never happened. If he says that two and two are five – well, two and two are five.

If you find the assertion that MAGA has a totalitarian mindset over the top, all I can ask is, have you been following the news?

What’s remarkable is the extent to which Republican politicians act as if they are living in a totalitarian state, when they aren’t — not yet, anyway. ICE would clearly like to be an American Stasi, policing any deviation from the party line, but it’s not able, so far, to arrest members of Congress who express skepticism about the president’s claims. And many Republican politicians still, I believe, know the difference between fantasy and reality.

But they behave as if they were courtiers to Kim Jong Un. Trump speeches are sometimes followed by “endless applause moments,” because none of Trump’s loyalists wants to be seen as the first person to stop clapping.

The susceptibility of the GOP to this totalitarian mindset has come as a surprise even to cynics. I have some idea of how this happened: It involves a confluence of big-money corruption, crony capitalism, religious fanaticism, and the ever-present forces of racism and sexism. But that’s a subject to be delved into another day.

What’s clear is that the war on reality is exacting a high price on America as a whole.

Remember, 1.2 million Americans died from Covid — a number that would have been much lower if MAGA misinformation hadn’t caused so many people to refuse vaccination. Now we’re seeing a frightening rise in measles and other infectious diseases, and God help us if another pandemic strikes with Trump or his successor still in charge.

Climate denial and hostility to renewable energy will mean more pollution even as it consigns the U.S. to energy and economic backwardness.

And the Iran war — which Trump started and now refuses to end because he won’t accept reality — has destroyed America’s credibility and depleted our weapon stocks with stunning speed.

But anyone pointing out the obvious is, of course, a Communist.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Hoax, Lies, Trump

To Understand Putin’s Plan to Destroy NATO and the European Union, Read This

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2026 //
1

Today, The New York Times published an astonishing article about Putin’s attempt to destabilize NATO and the EU by driving tiny Moldova back into Russia’s orbit.

Moldova shares a border with Ukraine. Putin hopes to thwart the West by persuading Moldova to oust its pro-Western government.

Putin created an elaborate pro-Russian organization inside Moldova, spending millions of dollars to pay collaborators, agitators, and priests.

The Times‘ articleis a gift article with no pay wall. It begins:

It resembled in many ways a summer camp. Barbecues and beach volleyball games were on offer. A wellness spa was called “Relax and Have Fun.”

The men and women who attended the program at a resort complex in a remote part of Serbia also took part in more sinister activities, like learning to break through police cordons and set buildings on fire. They donned flak jackets and trained with assault rifles.

Their counselors, it turned out, were operatives with ties to Russia’s military intelligence service, known as the GRU. Their purpose, according to intelligence officials from three countries who described the activities, was to build a cadre of disciplined shock troops trained in election interference.

The target was tiny Moldova, a country of about three million people that carries outsize importance for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

The Kremlin’s campaign included methods familiar elsewhere in the West, like hacking and disinformation. But in Moldova, its intervention went further than perhaps anywhere else outside Ukraine, and stands as one of the most extensive and audacious plots to date in Mr. Putin’s effort to destabilize the West, the three Western intelligence officials say.

Besides the camp in Serbia, Russian agents ran training programs in Bosnia and Moscow that were designed to turn pro-Russian Moldovans into foot soldiers. Moscow paid hundreds of Orthodox Moldovan priests to recruit voters and to push Russian narratives from the pulpit. And it spent hundreds of millions of dollars on a sophisticated vote-buying scheme financed by a Moldovan billionaire in exile and conceived and operated from Skolkovo, the Kremlin’s knockoff Silicon Valley outside Moscow.

Moscow’s campaign has not stopped. This spring, Russian missiles targeted energy infrastructure that provided service to Moldova, polluting waterways and disrupting electricity flows.

This article is based on interviews with activists who took part in the Russian effort; senior Moldovan law enforcement and security officials; and more than half a dozen European and American intelligence officials. The New York Times also reviewed thousands of documents related to Russia’s attempts to interfere in Moldova’s elections.

Many of those interviewed insisted on speaking anonymously, either to discuss sensitive security operations or because they feared retribution.

Details about Russian efforts in Moldova have emerged in court cases and local reporting, but the scope and extent of the campaign, including the vote-buying scheme and role of Russia’s intelligence services, has not been previously reported.

Publicly, Russian officials have denied interfering in Moldova’s affairs, and have dismissed accusations that Moscow is trying to undermine the West. Last December, Mr. Putin, in an address to military commanders, castigated European leaders for “stoking hysteria” over the threat from Russia.

Soon afterward, though, he gathered the leaders for a secret briefing to deliver the exact opposite message, according to officials from two countries with knowledge of the episode. Their goal for 2026, Mr. Putin told them, is “the collapse of NATO and the E.U. from within,” the people said.

Ms. Sandu, wearing a blue outfit, walks toward a lectern, with flags in the background.
The pro-Western government of President Maia Sandu has set European Union membership as a priority, making it a Kremlin target.Credit…Daniel Mihailescu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Categories Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, International

Indiana: Republicans Have Systematically Undermined Public Schools, Where 87% of Students Are Enrolled

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2026 //
2

Indiana once took pride in its public schools. Not any more. Since the Republican Party took charge of state government, public schools have been neglected and underfunded.

Veteran educator Vernon Smith was elected to the state legislature after his retirement. He wrote this article, which appeared in the Chicago Tribune.

He wrote:

Sixteen years ago, Republicans assumed full control of Indiana’s state government, holding the governor’s office and winning majorities in the House and the Senate. Since achieving this trifecta, the Republican supermajority has systematically cut funding and programs that made this state work for the people who live here.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than the state’s complete neglect of public schools for nearly two decades. Since taking power, the Republican supermajority has done everything in its power to undermine public education, and Indiana’s children are worse off for it.

Let me explain where years of Republican education policy have gotten us. Last month, the Network for Public Education released a report revealing Indiana ranks 45th out of 50 states in support of public education. Last year, only 31.2% of students showed proficiency on both the math and ELA sections of the ILEARN test. More than half of fourth graders can’t read proficiently, and nearly seven-in-ten eighth graders aren’t proficient in math.

A record number of school districts across the state — nearly 40 — have turned to ballot referenda to secure the money they need this year because the state won’t properly fund them and has cut their local funding sources. These are the results of Republicans chipping away at Indiana’s public school funding for years.

Consider where their priorities lie. More than 87% of Hoosier children attend traditional public schools. Yet year after year, the supermajority pours its energy and political capital into expanding charter schools and private school vouchers for the children of families who were, in most cases, never going to need the state’s help in the first place. The legislature has made it clear: they have no issue abandoning working-class Hoosiers in favor of giving an extra leg up to the most fortunate among us.

When Indiana first opened the door to charter schools and voucher programs, lawmakers sold it as a lifeline for children of color and children in poverty whose assigned schools were failing them. But once the door was propped open, my Republican colleagues expanded it year after year, extending vouchers to families making well over six figures. If this were truly about rescuing kids who’d been failed by the system, it would have stayed targeted at the kids who needed rescuing. Instead, it grew into a subsidy for everyone but the working-class families the program was designed to serve.

None of this is by accident. The supermajority was warned by Democrats, education professionals and concerned Hoosiers of the consequences that their policies would inflict on our schools. It is the direct, foreseeable and self-inflicted result of almost two decades of choices made by men and women who have mistaken their own supermajority for a mandate to neglect the children they were elected to serve.

Districts across the state are being forced to ask voters to approve referenda to raise their own local property taxes just so schools can keep the lights on and pay their teachers. Let’s not pretend this educational belt-tightening is born of necessity. Indiana has nearly $4 billion in surplus and reserve funds, which is more than enough to return to our previous, robust support of public education. Our schools and the children attending them are being asked to make do with less while the state sits on more money than it knows what to do with.

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I do not say this lightly, and I do not say it out of partisan loyalty. I say it as a man who spent nearly 20 years as a school principal and six years as a teacher before I ever spent a day in the Statehouse. I have seen firsthand what happens when a school has what it needs, and I have seen what happens when it doesn’t.

I am telling you, plainly: Indiana’s Republican supermajority has had 16 years to prove it knows the difference too. It does not. If it did, we would not rank 45th in the nation for public school support. We would not be watching our children fall further behind their peers in other states while the people entrusted with fixing it offer nothing but superficial, special-interest-backed policies that don’t address the underlying issues.

This is where years of unchecked Republican domination have gotten us: two decades of failure and of backs turned on the generation that makes up the future of this state, this nation and the world beyond.

For 16 years, they have stood before us and promised that this would finally be the year public education in Indiana gets fixed. And for 16 years, they have failed to deliver on that promise. The only question left is how much longer Hoosiers are willing to take their word for it and allow more children to fail academically

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Funding, Indiana, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers

Thom Hartmann: Trump Finds New Ways to Grift and Grab

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2026 //
6

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

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

He writes:

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

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

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

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

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

Republicans Fully Cave to Trump, Todd Blanche Will Be Confirmed

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Unprecedented: Retired Judges Act to Protect the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
August 7, 2026 //
1

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

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

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

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

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

And they kept going.

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

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

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

That lesson brought us on to a bus.

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

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

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

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

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

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

That is precisely the point.

The rule of law is not a partisan possession.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And every generation must decide whether to preserve it.

What’s giving us hope now

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

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

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

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

Will a Fascist, Racist, Anti-Semite Win a Major Election in Texas?

By dianeravitch
August 6, 2026 //
5

Bo French is an uber-bigot who is running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission. Don’t be misled by the title. The Railroad Commission has very little to do with railroads. It oversees the oil and gas industry in Texas and wields enormous power over an essential industry.

You might want to learn about Bo French, because he is running for an important statewide seat. Also because he voices the sentiments of the dark underbelly of American political life.

The Texas Monthly reports on the ascent of a native fascist:

Last week Bo French, the Republican nominee for the Railroad Commission of Texas, sent out a bizarre fundraising email. Framed as a reminder of the 108th anniversary of the Communist overthrow of Russia, the email included an AI-generated image of his Democratic opponent, Jon Rosenthal, smiling in the chambers where the country’s then-ruling Romanov family was executed in 1918. Rosenthal, French’s campaign continued, has “much in common with the Marxist revolutionaries who brutally executed” the Romanovs, and has plans for his own “infernal revolution” of Texas. “My opponent has spent his time in office mocking Christianity, the Virgin Birth, and Christian Communion, while voting against religious liberty and for the spread of Islam,” the email continued. 

If you’re wondering what, exactly, a century-old Russian coup has to do with the railroad commission, which regulates the state’s oil and gas industry, then you’re likely not alone. But among a small audience—those attuned to white supremacist dog whistles—the accusation almost certainly perked up some ears. 

You see, Rosenthal is Jewish. And while French did not explicitly name the Bolshevik revolutionaries who overthrew Russia a century ago, the email appears to be nodding to an antisemitic conspiracy theory that claims there is a Jewish Communist cabal intent on controlling the world and stamping out Christianity. Known as Judeo-Bolshevism, the theory was crucial to Adolf Hitler’s rise and a key justification for the Holocaust. It remains central to the worldviews of many modern fascists, who maintain that communism—and, by extension, immigration—are tools used by Jews to destroy the West and white people.  

In a statement to Texas Monthly, Rosenthal called French’s post “true to form.” The Texas House member from the Houston area and longtime mechanical engineer in the oil and gas industry continued: “While I’m working on substantive solutions for the people of Texas and our energy grid, his whole campaign is about pejorative and racist attacks.” 

Neither French nor his campaign responded this week to numerous requests for an interview, or to clarify whether he intended to invoke the conspiracy theory. But his other recent posts make clear he has a deep familiarity with esoteric racist views that were once largely confined to fringe corners of the far right. 

This week, in response to a video that purported to show nonwhite people trespassing in a restricted part of Yellowstone National Park, French posted a quote from “The Camp of the Saints”—an obscure French dystopian novel that depicts immigrants as diseased, feces-eating hordes and has enjoyed a recent resurgence among the global white nationalist movement. “Your universe has no meaning to them,” French wrote on X to his 80,000 followers, without revealing the source of the quote. “They will not try to understand. They will be tired, they will be cold, they will make a fire with your beautiful oak door . . .”

Citing fears of “gay race communism,” an impending “massacre of heritage Americans,” and the nation ending up like modern South Africa, French has called for the United States to “be Rhodesia,” the African pseudostate in the sixties and seventies in which Black people were violently oppressed by a ruling white minority. Rhodesia has inspired numerous racist killers—most infamously Dylann Roof, the self-described “Last Rhodesian” who massacred nine Black congregants at a South Carolina church in 2015.

“We are all Rhodesians now,” French wrote in January. 

It wasn’t long ago that such views were largely relegated to the online backwater of the neo-Nazi movement or manifestos left by fascist mass shooters, according to Wendy Via, a veteran researcher of the far right and cofounder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. “They are well-known to people who study extremism,” Via told me. “But they’re not well-known to even your average racist. These are the ideological basis for the white supremacist movement.” 

Even if they’re not yet widely accepted, she said, such views are slowly being normalized by President Donald Trump, the scaling back of moderation on many social media websites, and the proliferation of the “great replacement” theory—which claims there is an intentional, often Jewish-driven, effort to demographically replace white people in Western countries. In May, for instance, Greg Bovino, the former Border Patrol commander-at-large under Trump, spoke to a global conference of neo-Nazi-affiliated activists and extreme far-right political figures who had gathered in support of the “remigration” movement, which seeks to forcibly remove people of color, including legal citizens, from their countries. (Detractors have another name for such efforts: “ethnic cleansing.”) 

In Texas, French has been a key purveyor of similarly extreme rhetoric, and he helped make anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant bigotry mainstream in the broader state GOP. He’s called for 100 million people—nearly a third of the American population—to be deported, and for two nonwhite Texas House members to be stripped of their citizenship and removed from the country. He wants some Native Americans—“third world savages”—to be kicked out of America too. French says Texas needs to “ban Islam” and “round upevery Muslim” for deportation. Last week he toldhis followers it was “time to go round up all the Chinese and send them packing!” McCarthyism and the Christian Crusades, he argues, didn’t go far enough. And this week he referred to America’s “not in labor force” population—an economic term for nonworkers that includes retirees, students, and those with serious handicaps—as “low IQ parasites.” 

Categories Bigotry, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Racism, Texas

Vasquez-Heilig: Real Republicans Don’t Impose Their Views on Others

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2026 //
5

I remember, a time long ago, when Republicans believed in small government. Except for public health, they believed in allowing localities and states to make their own decisions.

Trump Republicans, however, believe in imposing their beliefs on everyone else . They use the power of the federal government to enforce their views.

We have seen this with the executive orders that Trump has signed, making programs in “diversity,equity, and inclusion” a reason to defund research grants at institutions of higher education. I can’t imagine President Eisenhower or President Bush (either of them) wielding that stick. And I haven’t forgotten that President Nixon initiated affirmative action, which the Trump administration considers illegal and “racist.”

Similarly, we have seen the Trump administration demanding tribute from law firms, major media, and universities, in exchange for freedom from federal harassment. It vigorously fought the right of women to control their own bodies. It demanded that transgender members of the military be fired, without regard to their years of service or commendations from superior officers.

Julian Vasquez examines the latest Trump administration effort to coerce universities to accept the Trump agenda.

He writes:

When the Trump administration issued its February 2025 Dear Colleague letter attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion in education, I responded nationally on Democracy Now! I warned that higher education had not faced political interference this serious since McCarthyism and asked whether universities would “surrender or resist.”

That Dear Colleague letter went down in flames. Federal courts blocked the directive, finding serious constitutional and procedural problems. In August 2025, a federal court vacated both the letter and its associated certification requirement. The administration eventually abandoned its appeal. Now the Trump administration is trying again.

On August 3, 2026, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issued “A National Call to Action to University Presidents and Governing Boards.” It calls on every college and university to publish a statement by the end of 2026 explaining how it will address admissions, faculty hiring, academic viewpoints, grading, artificial intelligence, foreign influence, research, affordability, and national priorities.

This letter is more carefully written than its failed Dear Colleague predecessor. It does not explicitly threaten universities with the loss of federal funding. It presents itself as an invitation to restore public trust and even acknowledges that there is “no single template for academic excellence.”

But universities should recognize the pattern. When the courts stop one attempt at political control, the administration repackages the same objective and returns through another channel. Expect more legal battles. If the administration tries to transform this ostensibly voluntary letter into funding conditions, investigations, accreditation pressure, or binding institutional obligations, expect it to lose again.

Red States Will Likely Embrace the Letter

In Republican-controlled states, many governing boards and university presidents will likely treat McMahon’s letter as federal permission to intensify attacks on faculty work, tenure, diversity programs, student expression, and academic freedom.

The letter gives presidents and boards a ready-made list of questions. Are academic departments sufficiently “pluralistic”? Are faculty hiring and evaluation practices considering the “right” perspectives? Is research sufficiently aligned with the “national interest”? Are universities placing American priorities ahead of global commitments? These questions sound reasonable until politicians begin supplying the answers.

A board, president, provost, or dean that wants to target a professor, academic department, research center, or student organization can now point to the secretary of education and claim that Washington has demanded action. The letter could become a pretext for investigations, curriculum reviews, program closures, hiring interference, and ideological screening. It does not create those powers. But it may embolden political officials to exercise powers they do not legally possess.

In blue states, many university presidents and boards will probably roll their eyes. They will recognize the document as political theater written by officials with limited understanding of university teaching, research, and shared governance. But they cannot safely dismiss it. The Trump administration has already demonstrated its willingness to use federal funding to reward allies and punish perceived opponents.

Political Retaliation Is Not Hypothetical

The administration acknowledged in court that it canceled approximately $7.6 billion in grants based on whether the affected states voted for Donald Trump in 2024. The canceled projects were concentrated in 16 states that supported Kamala Harris. A federal judge concluded that the politically selective cancellations violated constitutional equal-protection requirements. The Associated Press reported on the ruling.

That episode should concern every university president. If an administration will cancel billions of dollars in congressionally authorized grants based on how a state voted, universities must consider whether this new letter identifies the new political tests that could later determine which institutions receive grants, face investigations, or become targets of federal enforcement.

This is more of the same. Political loyalty is being substituted for neutral governance for all. Red-state institutions may be rewarded for adopting the administration’s agenda. Blue-state institutions may be punished for resisting it. In both cases, federal power becomes an illegal tool for encouraging political conformity.

Please open the link, which shows that Secretary of Education Linda McMahon may well be the least qualified person to serve as Secretary of Education.

Yet, here they are, Trump and McMahon, trying to use their political leverage to reshape higher education.

They are not Republicans. They are not libertarians. They are authoritarians.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Extremism, Higher Education, Trump

Todd Blanche Vows to Attack Abortion Rights in Every State

By dianeravitch
August 5, 2026 //
6

Behind closed doors, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche assured faith-based opponents of abortion that he would act forcefully to outlaw the purchase of abortion pills by mail.

The New Republic wrote:

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche went mask-off last week, promising behind closed doors to roll back abortion access even further, and telling religious pro-life hard-liners that he wanted the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision overturning the right to abortion to become “permanent in every single state.”

Blanche made the comments in a “prayer call” last Thursday hosted by the White House Faith Office and attended by various faith leaders. The call was not open to press and not on the record, although the entirety of the call is now up on YouTube.  

“We don’t have complete victory yet, but we will have victory, and victory will be soon, and it will be permanent,” Blanche said. “If states have said, ‘We are going to protect the unborn and we’re going to protect every life from the moment of conception,’ we’re putting practices and policies in place so that other states and other organizations can’t attack that.”

“They can’t do things like they’re doing with mailing in mail-order drugs,” Blanche added, singling out abortion pills.

This is a far cry from the answer he offered at his confirmation hearing, when he claimed he would “carefully evaluate every lawful action available to ensure the faithful enforcement of the Comstock Act,” the 150-year-old law that bans the mailing of contraceptives and other things considered to be “obscene.”  

He also noted that the Trump administration is “putting practices and policies in place” to block abortion pills mifepristone and misoprostol from being sent to states that have banned abortion, a process that would require the Justice Department to invoke the Comstock Act—something President Trump specifically said he wouldn’t do back in 2024 while campaigning. 

“A vote to confirm Todd Blanche is a vote ‘so that the Dobbs decision becomes permanent in every single state,’” Senator Patty Murray wrote Tuesday on X. “Those were his own words to anti-abortion extremists. Senators who vote for Blanche are voting for an Attorney General who will attack abortion rights in EVERY state.”

Categories Extremism, Gender, Health, Medicine
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