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Immigrant Women in ICE Detention Endure “Hell on Earth”

By dianeravitch
April 4, 2025 //
3

Lauren Villagran of USA Today wrote about the inhumane conditions for women in an ICE detention center called Krome. Krome is one of about 130 such centers around the country. It is managed by a for-profit company called Akima Infrastructure Protection, which has a contract for $685 million. Given the horrible living conditions, DOGE and Musk might want to check out waste, fraud, and abuse. We taxpayers are paying a lot for such a tawdry facility.

Villagran writes.

Immigrant women say they were held “like animals” in ICE detention and subjected to conditions so extreme they feared for their lives.

Chained for hours on a prison bus without access to food, water or a toilet. Told by guards to urinate on the floor. Held “like sardines in a jar,” as many as 27 women in a small holding cell. Sleeping on a concrete floor. Getting one three-minute shower over three or four days in custody.

“We smelled worse than animals,” one detainee said. “More girls were coming every day. We were screaming, begging them, ‘You can’t let them come.’ They didn’t have space.”

Four women were held in February at the Krome North Processing Center in Miami – a detention center reserved for men. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took the women into custody on alleged immigration violations, but none has a criminal background, according to a review of law enforcement records. They shared their experiences with USA TODAY on condition of anonymity, fearing retaliation by the government because they are still detained.

The allegations come after two men at Krome died in custody on Jan. 23 and Feb. 20.

USA TODAY provided ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, with a detailed list of the allegations on March 11. A day after publication, on March 24, an ICE spokesperson responded with an emailed statement saying the agency can’t substantiate specific allegations without the names of the individuals.

“ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously,” the statement said. “These allegations are not in keeping with ICE policies, practices and standards of care.”

The government’s own investigators have repeatedly found serious problems in immigration detention centers around the country. The problems have persisted through Democrat and Republican administrations and range from fatal medical neglect to improper use of force.

Last year, a report on unannounced inspections at 17 detention centers from 2020 to 2023 – bridging the Trump and Biden administrations – found that “regardless of time, location, detainee population and facility type, ICE and facility staff have struggled to comply with aspects of detention standards.”

But the women’s allegations at Krome, which was one of the 17 centers reviewed in the report, suggest detention conditions have deteriorated rapidly as the new Trump administration works to deliver on the president’s promises for tougher immigration enforcement.

ICE reported holding 46,269 people in custody in mid-March, well above the agency’s detention capacity of 41,500 beds. Immigration detention is “non-punitive,” according to ICE policy, in recognition that most immigration violations are civil, not criminal.

Mich González, an immigration attorney representing the family of the Ukrainian man who died Feb. 20 in Krome custody, visits the facility regularly to meet with clients. The guards there “are overwhelmed,” he said.

“Guards themselves have made those comments to us: ‘It shouldn’t be like this,'” said González, founding partner of Sanctuary of the South.

The shift from a “flexible” immigration policy to a “very aggressive” one means “the system simply can’t process all of these people,” said Miami-based immigration attorney Nenad Milosevic.

Krome is overwhelmed and understaffed, he said. “I know the conditions are extremely bad, and they’re not supposed to be that way.”

‘He didn’t want to scare me more’

One of the four women wanted to explain what she went through to her fiance. She wrote what she remembered on paper and titled it “Hell on Earth.”

She dialed out on a scratchy phone line and asked him to record her as she read from her notes.

“The officer only say that I am going to spend the night in Miami,” she said, using the English she learned during nearly two decades in the United States. “Now remembering his face, like I knew he knew that I am going to go through hell and he didn’t want to scare me more.”

This account is based on that 15-minute audio recording detailing the alleged mistreatment, as well as numerous telephone and video interviews with the woman and her fiance and with three other detained women, their family members and attorneys, as well as the two attorneys who independently witnessed the deteriorating conditions.

All four women described being chained at the wrist, waist and chest and loaded onto a prison bus, where they were held, in one case, for six hours; in another, for 11 or 12 hours.

“They took us to a bigger bus,” the woman said in the audio recording. “They checked us, and then they put like chains on us, hands to waist, connected. It was very scary because they chained my chest super-tight and I couldn’t breathe properly. I was really scared because I thought, ‘I’m not going to be able to breathe.'”

There was no access to a toilet, so guards told the women – whose accounts in some cases occurred on different days or different buses – to urinate or defecate on the floor. They watched, helpless, as some did.

“A man in the back of the bus – we were separated with a door – he was screaming, ‘Somebody wants a bathroom,'” the woman said in the audio. “And somebody peed there. It stank so badly.”

She described her first impression of Krome as “a really chaotic-looking place.” Guards rushed the women through a corridor, past the male dormitories where men pressed their faces to the glass, “wildly staring … like they had never seen women before.”

“We were pushed in a room, filled with women, like sardines in a jar,” she said. “I will never forget those first seconds when I heard the door behind me locked.”

Open the link to continue reading.

Categories Accountability, Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Health, Immigration

Trump Administration Threatens to Cancel Funding to Public Schools with DEI

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2025 //
13

Michael C. Bender reports in The New York Times that the Trump administration is threatening to cancel funding from schools that refuse to eliminate programs or courses that teach DEI. The administration has turned civil rights enforcement upside down and inside out. For decades, civil rights law meant protection of racial minorities and women, who were often targets of discrimination, exclusion, or unfair treatment. This administration worries most about the rights of white students.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon clearly doesn’t know that federal law prohibits any federal official from interfering with or trying to influence curriculum.

“20 USC 1232a: Prohibition against Federal control of education. Text contains those laws in effect on April 2, 2025

§1232a. Prohibition against Federal control of education

No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, or employee of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, administration, or personnel of any educational institution, school, or school system, or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials by any educational institution or school system, or to require the assignment or transportation of students or teachers in order to overcome racial imbalance.

What Secretary McMahon proposes is illegal.

Bender writes:

The Trump administration threatened on Thursday to withhold federal funding from public schools unless state education officials verified the elimination of all programs that it said unfairly promoted diversity, equity and inclusion.

In a memo sent to top public education officials across the country, the Education Department said that funding for schools with high percentages of low-income students, known as Title I funding, was at risk pending compliance with the administration’s directive.

The memo included a certification letter that state and local school officials must sign and return to the department within 10 days, even as the administration has struggled to define which programs would violate its interpretation of civil rights laws. The move is the latest in a series of Education Department directives aimed at carrying out President Trump’s political agenda in the nation’s schools.

At her confirmation hearing in February, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said schools should be allowed to celebrate the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. But she was more circumspect when asked whether classes that focused on Black history ran afoul of Mr. Trump’s agenda and should be banned.

“I’m not quite certain,” Ms. McMahon said, “and I’d like to look into it further.”

More recently, the Education Department said that an “assessment of school policies and programs depends on the facts and circumstances of each case.”

Programs aimed at recognizing historical events and contributions and promoting awareness would not violate the law “so long as they do not engage in racial exclusion or discrimination,” the department wrote.

“However, schools must consider whether any school programming discourages members of all races from attending, either by excluding or discouraging students of a particular race or races, or by creating hostile environments based on race for students who do participate,” the Education Department said.

It also noted that the Justice Department could sue for breach of contract if it found that federal funds were spent while violating civil rights laws.

The federal government accounts for about 8 percent of local school funding, but the amounts vary widely. In Mississippi, for example, about 23 percent of school funding comes from federal sources, while just 7 percent of school funding in New York comes from Washington, according to the Pew Research Center.

“Federal financial assistance is a privilege, not a right,” Craig Trainor, the acting assistant education secretary for civil rights, said in a statement. “When state education commissioners accept federal funds, they agree to abide by federal anti-discrimination requirements.”

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Curriculum, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, History, Injustice, Racism, Trump, Tyranny

Scott Maxwell: Florida Replaces Immigrant Labor with Child Labor

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2025 //
6

It was entirely predictable that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis would create a labor shortage by driving immigrants away. Whether documented or not, immigrants are the backbone of the tourist industry and agriculture, two of the basic elements in the state’s economy. Once they were gone, who would replace them? Children. DeSantis is now promoting a reduction in child labor laws to replace the immigrant labor he criminalized. Orlando Sentinel columnist Scott Maxwell describes the new Florida economy, balanced on the backs of children. Not the rich kids, but the poor kids.

Maxwell writes:

The Newsweek headline looked like satire: “Florida May Replace Immigrant Workers With Child Labor.”

Savvy Floridians know, though, that you can’t fictionalize stories more absurd than this state’s reality. And Florida lawmakers are, in fact, trying to roll back the state’s child-labor laws.

Basically, if employers in this state can’t exploit immigrants, the governor and Legislature want them to be able to legally exploit your children.

The latest proposal would allow teens to work longer hours, without breaks and even overnight shifts on school nights. Take that, Myanmar.

Up next, maybe we can emulate Burkina Faso where more than half the kids are in the labor force, some as young as 7. Now there’s a country with values.

What you’re witnessing is a real-life version of the dog that chased cars without thinking about what he’d do if he actually caught one. In this case, Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s GOP legislators have fumed for years about undocumented workers without having the slightest clue about how they’d respond if those workers actually walked off Florida job sites.

So now they’re panicking and want your kids to fill the bill.

Normally, in a free-market economy, if an employer can’t find workers, it would just raise wages until people start applying. That’s how supply and demand works.

But Florida’s GOP politicians don’t want to ask their campaign donors to raise wages. They’d rather flood the market with another class of exploitable workers — teenagers.

Maybe you used to dream of your teen becoming an engineer or architect. Well, forget that Ivy League, ivory-tower fiddle-faddle. Florida’s economy needs them harvesting tomatoes and cleaning motel rooms.

In some ways, it makes sense to put our kids to work. We’re sure not educating them. Florida’s SAT scores have dropped to 47th in America. And our state’s eighth-graders just posted the lowest math and reading scores in 20 years.

So, if we’re not preparing them for higher education or high-paying jobs, we might as well get them primed for the low-wage tourism and agriculture jobs that make this state hum.

Senate Bill 918, would eliminate restrictions on how many hours 16- and 17-year-olds can work. It would end guaranteed meal breaks and also lift restrictions for kids as young as 14 who are home schooled or enrolled in virtual school. (So if you want your rugrat pulling down a paycheck, just yank ’em out of traditional school.)

The Florida Policy Institute summarized the bill by saying it would allow Florida to work teens “for unlimited hours, any time day or night, seven days per week and without breaks.”Welcome to childhood in Florida.

Not all Republicans think this is a boffo idea. Sen. Joe Gruters, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, joined Democrats in opposing the bill, saying: “I think we need to let kids be kids.”

Gruters chose his words carefully: “Let kids be kids” is a line DeSantis uses a lot, usually when he’s pushing censorship laws.

Apparently, in DeSantis’ worldview, teens aren’t mature enough to see certain drag performers, even alongside their parents — but are mature enough to work right through the night until school starts at 7 am. That’s just kids being kids.

As I’ve said before, I’m a fan of teens having jobs. I had a paper route in middle school and landed my first real job at a drugstore when I was 14 — old enough to legally sell condoms and tampons, but still immature enough to giggle about it. (Basically, if you ever entered a Revco in the 1980s,  nervous about making a purchase, I was your worst nightmare.)

But here’s the thing: I believe teens should get jobs when they and their parents want them to get jobs — not because we need to plug labor holes in our low-wage economy.

Keep in mind: DeSantis didn’t promote his roll-back-child-labor-laws ideas at a panel discussion on building teen character. He did it at panel discussion on immigration. After noting that undocumented workers provided “dirt cheap labor,” DeSantis asked: “Why do we say why we need to import foreigners, even import them illegally, when you know teenagers used to work at these resorts?”

This is just about swapping one exploitable labor class for another … in a state that already turns a blind eye to companies that break labor laws.

Remember Florida’s “mandatory” E-Verify law? It explicitly said that the state couldn’t even fine companies caught breaking the law until they’re caught three times. And that law-breaking employers must be given 30 days to stop breaking the law before they’re punished. What other laws work like that?

This is a state that gives companies a pass on labor-law violations and now wants to give them a younger workforce. What a dangerous combo. Even moreso when you consider GOP lawmakers also want to let businesses subvert minimum wage laws for some workers “younger than 18 years of age.”

Kids in Florida who say they have financial “hardships” can surrender even more workplace protections. Basically, the poorer you are, the more you can be exploited. So it ain’t gonna be the private, prep-school kids working farm fields and cleaning motel rooms at 3 in the morning.

DeSantis seemed particularly interested in using kids to fill the theme parks’ job needs. But the proposed rollbacks would also allow teens to work longer hours waxing floors, painting houses, stocking shelves, doing landscaping and working in fast food. Kids would still be banned from doing particularly dangerous jobs like mining or tarring roofs higher than six feet.

So teens could be asked to work overnight shifts right up until the start of a school day. That’s just “kids being kids.” But we’d draw the line at putting kids in boiler rooms and phosphate mines. A state has to have standards, after all.

smaxwell@orlandosentinel.com

Categories Childhood, Cruelty, DeSantis, Evil, Extremism, Florida, Immigration

Trump’s Tariffs: A Global Mess?

By dianeravitch
April 3, 2025 //
8

Yesterday after the stock market closed, Trump held a press conference to announce his much-ballyhooed tariff plan. He used the opportunity to insult other nations, as is his custom. Commentators noted that he slapped tariffs on uninhabited islands. Trump believes that the greatest period in the American economy ended in 1913, when the federal government adopted the income tax. When I was a junior in high school in high school, I learned that the enactment of a federal income tax was progressive because it reduced the vast gap between the very rich and everyone else. I also learned about the Smoot-Hawley tariffs, which set off a global trade war and contributed to the Great Depression. Apparently, these topics were not taught in Trump’s elite military academy. His history classes must have been taught from the perspective of the robber barons.

The Washington Post wrote:

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he will impose a new 10 percent tariff on all imported goods along with higher import taxes tailored for each of about 60 countries that his advisers say maintain the largest barriers against U.S. products, in a sharp turn toward the kind of protectionism that the United States abandoned nearly a century ago.

To impose the new tariffs, the president declared a national emergency, citing the annual merchandise trade deficit that the United States has run each year since 1975.

“For decades, our country has been looted, pillaged, raped and plundered by nations near and far, both friend and foe alike,” Trump said. “But it is not going to happen anymore.”

The tariff increases that the president announced had little modern precedent and would erect towering impediments to products from dozens of foreign countries, many of them poor nations that embraced exporting as a tool to escape grinding poverty….

Speaking in blunt, sometimes intemperate language, the president assailed the nation’s trading partners, including some of its closest allies, as “foreign cheaters” and “foreign scavengers” who had “ripped off Americans” for 50 years. Trump’s tone echoed the dark portrait of “American carnage” that he had sketched in his first inaugural address in 2017….

“In the short run, the effect is probably a recession. It’s going to raise the price of so many goods that can’t be made in the United States,” said economist Brad Setser of the Council on Foreign Relations. “In the long run, it’s a vision of the U.S. that is very isolated from the world.”

Jay Timmons, president of the National Association of Manufacturers, warned that his members operate on thin profit margins and cannot absorb the tariffs. Small businesses and restaurant owners issued statements decrying their added costs.

“This is catastrophic for American families,” said Matt Priest, president of the Footwear Retailers and Distributers of America.

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

Daniel Dale of CNN fact-checked only a few of Trump’s outlandish statements during his press conference about his tariffs. He imposed tariffs on uninhabited islands, populated only by penguins.

Dale wrote:

President Donald Trump made a series of false claims about tariffs and trade – most of which he has made before – in the Wednesday speech in which he announced a sweeping set of global tariffs.

Here is a fact check of some of Trump’s remarks.

Canada’s dairy tariffs

Trump correctly noted that Canada has tariffs exceeding 250% on some US dairy products. However, he falsely claimed that merely “the first little carton of milk” exported to Canada faces a “very low price,” but “then it gets up to 275, 300%.”null

In reality, Canada has guaranteed that tens of thousands of metric tons of imported US milk per year, not merely a single carton, will face zero tariffs at all; Canada conceded a certain guaranteed level of tariff-free US access to its dairy market as part of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) that Trump’s own first administration negotiated.

Trump also didn’t mention something the US dairy industry acknowledges: The US is not hitting its zero-tariff maximum level of exports to Canada in any category of dairy product, so the Canadian tariffs aren’t being applied; with regard to milk in particular, the US isn’t even at half of the tariff-free quota. (There is a vigorous US-Canada debate about why the US is so far from the maximum, with each country blaming the other. Regardless of who’s right, the tariffs aren’t hitting US milk.)

Trump has persistently omitted key facts about Canada’s dairy tariffs. You can read more here from a previous CNN fact check.

US trade deficit with Canada

Trump, claiming “we subsidize a lot of countries,” falsely said “it’s close to $200 billion a year” with Canada. Trump has repeatedly used this $200 billion figure to describe the US trade deficit with Canada in particular, which is actually far lower than $200 billion; official US statistics show the 2024 deficit with Canada in goods and services trade was $35.7 billion and $70.6 billion in goods trade alone.

Trump didn’t mention the trade deficit in particular this time, but even if he was intending to use the word “subsidize” more broadly, there is no basis for the claim.

Who pays tariffs

Trump repeated his frequent false claim that, because of the tariffs he imposed on China during his first term, the US “took in hundreds of billions of dollars” that “they paid.” In fact, US importers, not foreign exporters like China,make the tariff payments, andstudy after studyhas found that Americans bore the overwhelming majority of the cost of Trump’s first-term tariffs on China; it’s easy to findspecific examplesof companies that passed along the cost of the tariffs to US consumers.

Previous presidents’ tariffs on China

Trump also repeated his frequent false claim that, before his first presidency, China “never paid 10 cents to any other president” from tariffs. Aside from the fact that US importers make the tariff payments, the US was actuallygenerating billions per year in revenuefrom tariffs on Chinese imports before Trump took office; in fact, the US has had tariffs on Chinese imports since1789. Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama,imposed additional tariffson Chinese goods.

US wealth

Touting the supposed benefits of tariffs, Trump claimed that “the United States was proportionately the wealthiest it has ever been” from 1789 to 1913, when tariffs made up a higher percentage of federal revenue before the passage of a 1913 law reestablishing the federal income tax.

Trump didn’t explain what he meant by “proportionately the wealthiest,” but by standard measures, the US is far wealthier today than it was in the early 20th century and prior. Per capita gross domestic product isnow many times higherthan it was then.

Douglas Irwin, a Dartmouth College economics professor who studies the history of US trade policy, said in February after Trump had made similar claims, that if Trump’s unclear comments are interpreted to be about per capita income, as “economists usually take this,” it is “obviously not true,” since “real per capita income and standards of living are so much higher today than the past. … It is nice to have indoor plumbing, running water, not outhouses, etc.”

This is only part of the article. Open the link to finish reading. Dale reviews inflation, the cost of gasoline, and other issues.

Categories Accountability, Economy, Extremism, International, Lies, Stupid, Trump

Trump Wants to Control How Americans Vote

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2025 //
3

Dan Balz of The Washington Post writes about Trump’s executive order seeking control of elections. Trump has complained about election fraud since he won in 2016; he couldn’t believe that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, so he insisted that millions of undocumented immigrants had illegally voted. Although he set up a commission to find election fraud, it found none. When he lost in 2020, he shrieked again about a “stolen” election, but no one ever found any evidence of fraud that would change the outcome, and even his close associates disagreed with him. But after four years of lying about 2020, he recently issued an executive order to change state election laws, which are embedded in the Constitution.

Balz wrote:

Almost no part of government is immune from President Donald Trump’s thirst for power and control. Last week he signed executive orders aimed at the Smithsonian Institution, the District of Columbia and the administration of elections. No president has sought more change in more institutions more rapidly, through executive orders than Trump.

The order on elections is more than 2,500 words and at times densely written. It may have received less attention than warranted as it was issued amid the controversy over how sensitive military operational details were shared in a Signal chat group that accidentally included Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of the Atlantic.

The order is illustrative of how the president is attempting to govern, largely through dictates rather than legislation. It is rooted in Trump’s long-standing, though false, claims that the election system is rife with fraud. Its legal foundations are questionable. But like other executive orders the president has signed, it could produce chaos and change before it is fully litigated.

Trump’s reach for power overrides any ideological consistency, though there is nothing new in that. He is dismantling the Department of Education, arguing that states and local governments should run the nation’s schools (which they already do). Now he is attempting to order state and local election administrators to adopt his rules for running future elections.

The Constitution grants most power over elections to the states. When Democrats were pushing a multifaceted voting rights bill known as H.R. 1 during the administration of President Joe Biden, conservative opponents decried the measure as a federal takeover. So far, there’s been no notable public outcry on the right over the federal takeover that Trump is seeking.

“This is clearly an attempt to federalize election administration to a historic degree, as was H.R. 1,” said Charles Stewart III, a political science professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Certainly liberals and Democrats are going to press the federalism button really hard. And you will get probably some Republican secretaries not pressing it quite as hard, but privately, many of them are going to be pushing back.”

Another election analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity to offer a candid opinion described what he saw as the goal of the order: “It is to reduce turnout by people he thinks won’t vote for him,” the analyst said.

As we can see, billionaire publisher Jeff Bezos has interfered on the opinion pages, but not the news coverage.

Categories Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Lies, Trump

DOGE Aims to Privatize Federal Government Functions

By dianeravitch
April 2, 2025 //
11

Those of us who have watched the movement to privatize public education over the past 30 years have witnessed a long list of broken promises. Privately-run schools, we were told, would be more effective, more accountable, more transparent, more responsive to students and parents, and would save money!

Now we know that none of those claims were true.

Privatization, in the case of charter schools and vouchers, does not produce better results, except when the privatizers exclude the students with the greatest needs. Privatization does not save money; in fact, it’s more expensive because the business has to turn a profit. Privatization means less accountability and less transparency; lobbyists for the charter chains and voucher entities fight both accountability and transparency. Accountability and testing, it turns out, is only for public schools, not for religious and private schools. Privatization opens the way to graft, corruption, fraud, waste, and abuse.

The Washington Post wrote that the highest goal of Elon Musk’s DOGE plan is privatization of government services.

Mail delivery. Real estate. Foreign aid grants. The Trump administration is moving to privatize a sweeping number of government functions and assets — a long-standing Republican goal that’s being catalyzed by billionaire Elon Musk.

The slash-and-burn approach of Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service is paving the way for a new shift to the private sector, reducing the size and power of the federal bureaucracy in a real-world test of the conservative theory — a version of which is also widely popular in Silicon Valley — that companies are better than government at saving money and responding to people’s needs.

Examples are popping up across Washington and in proposals from President Donald Trump’s allies, though the plans are at various stages of development and, in some cases, have already encountered resistance.

At the DOGE-allied General Services Administration, officials are quietly moving ahead with a push to sell hundreds of publicly owned buildings to private companies — which can then lease them back to the government, theoretically saving maintenance and upkeep costs for taxpayers, according to two people briefed on internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss them publicly.

At the Postal Service, whose leaders have tussled with DOGE representatives, a plan for full privatization appears to have lost steam after facing pushback and legal hurdles. But private firms are preparing for a piecemeal government effort to outsource mail and package handling and long-haul trucking routes, while off-loading leases for unprofitable post offices, according to six industry executives.

At the Interior Department, Secretary Doug Burgum has proposed allowing private developers to build on federal lands across the West. And in his first public address as treasury secretary, former hedge fund manager Scott Bessent vowed to “reprivatize the economy.”
Businesspeople and policymakers close to the administration are stepping up with additional proposals.

A Wall Street investor nominated to run the International Development Finance Corporation, a little-known foreign investment agency that works to align the private sector with U.S. foreign policy goals, has suggested redirecting a large portion of the $40 billion budget of the shuttered U.S. Agency for International Development to investors, start-ups and companies that work in developing countries.

The proposal, which was posted on X by the nominee, Ben Black, and tech investor Joe Lonsdale, is under consideration within the White House, according to a person familiar with it, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private deliberations. Bloomberg first reported that the initiative was under consideration.

The military contractor Erik Prince has pushed to turn over defense and immigration enforcement functions to private security firms, at one point pitching U.S. officials on a plan to execute operations in Africa, according to three people with knowledge of the idea, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reflect private conversations. CNN reported that Prince also has floated the use of private military contractors to carry out operations against Houthi rebels in Yemen…

Traditional Republicans have long argued that private companies can do a better job of managing government services than civil servants. But Musk and his Silicon Valley associates want to push the idea much further than the mainstream GOP. At a Morgan Stanley technology conference this month, Musk said the government should privatize “everything we possibly can.”

Categories Charter Schools, Corruption, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, For-Profit, Fraud, Musk, Elon, Privatization, Trump

Trump Demands Nebraska Change Name of State Capitol!

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2025 //
15

Robert Kuttner, editor of The American Prospect, reported this shocking story:

President Trump stunned Nebraskans today with his demand that the state change the name of its capital, Lincoln, or lose federal funding.

“Lincoln was the original DEI president,” Trump said on his site Truth Social. “Not only did he give racial preferences to former slaves in his land grab program of forty acres and a mule. He sent the Union Army to occupy the South to prohibit most white people from voting and sponsored birthright citizenship under the 14th Amendment, which has been abused ever since.”

“I never really liked the guy,” Trump added. “Race relations were fine in the South until Lincoln started a totally unnecessary Civil War. If he understood real estate, he could have made a deal.”

Trump proposed that the name of the state capital be changed from Lincoln to Hayes, in honor of Rutherford B. Hayes, the president who ended Reconstruction in the corrupt Compromise of 1877. “Hayes was a truly great man,” Trump said. “He worked with leaders of both parties to prevent discrimination against white people.”

The reaction of Nebraska leaders was guarded. “We love President Trump,” said Gov. Jim Pillen, a Republican. “But folks around here kind of like the name of our state capital.” In the 2024 election, Trump beat Kamala Harris in Nebraska by a margin of 59.6 to 39.1 percent.

Lincoln Mayor Leirion Gaylor Baird, a Democrat and a graduate of Yale and Oxford, pointed to the odd timing. “This is April Fools’ Day,” she said. “This has to be a spoof.”

I just made a donation to The American Prospect to keep it thriving as a powerful voice against fascism.

Categories Extremism, Humor, Nebraska, Trump

DOGE Creates Chaos and Fear at HHS

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2025 //
3

Government Executive reports that the Secretary Of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. plans to lay off 10,000 of the Department’s 80,000 employeees. Entire divisions will be eliminated or merged. But no one knows who will be laid off. Decisions about layoffs are being made by Elon Musk’s DOGE. Since no one knows who will be fired or why, everyone is fearful.

Government Executive writes:

The Health and Human Services Department has told its employees that 10,000 of them will soon receive layoff notices, though it has not offered any details on who will be impacted or when they will learn of their fates. 

The uncertainty has dangled over the more than 80,000 HHS employees since Thursday, when the department first announced it was planning to shed around 25% of its workforce and half of those eliminations would come through reductions in force. Leadership at individual components and offices are regularly seeking to update their employees on what is happening, according to seven individuals within HHS, though they have all said they have been fully kept out of the loop and only a small group of political leaders within HHS know the plans.

The Food and Drug Administration is expected to lay off 3,500 employees, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 2,400, the National Institutes of Health 1,200 and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services 300, according to an HHS fact sheet. HHS did not respond to an inquiry into why the notices were delayed or when they would go out.

Several employees were told to expect RIF notices to hit inboxes on Friday. When that did not happen, they were told to expect them Friday evening or over the weekend. As of Monday afternoon, the notices have still not gone out. 

“FDA leadership doesn’t know who will be cut,” said an employee briefed on the matter. “They didn’t have any input into these cuts whatsoever.” 

Employees at CDC and NIH expressed similar messages were going out from leadership to the workforce. 

“It’s unnecessarily cruel,” said one CDC employee of the uncertainty and delays. 

A second CDC employee said they spent the entire weekend refreshing their email waiting to see if a RIF notice arrived. The employee was resigned to their fate, but wanted an answer: “Just put me out of my misery,” the staffer said. 

Prior to an “all hands” meeting at one NIH office, employees were encouraged to download their complete personnel files, current position description, pay stubs, tax documents, awards information and contact information for human resources and their supervisor in case they lost access upon being laid off. 

The department will not allow those who are subject to RIFs to be allowed back onto HHS campuses, according to two employees briefed on the matter. Some staff were told to bring their laptops homes each day in case they were laid off and not allowed back into their offices. Unlike other agencies that have gone through RIFs, which have immediately placed impacted staff on administrative leave, at least some HHS employees will be expected to work until their date of separation. 

At FDA, conversations with office directors were taking place to identify U.S. Public Health Service Commission Corps members who could escort laid off employees to their desks to collect their laptops and personal belongings. The uniformed personnel would be available for the RIF-affected staff who need to retrieve items on campus.

The RIFs are expected to take effect May 27, according to the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents much of the HHS workforce. That date could get pushed back given the delay in sending out official RIF letters, however, as agencies typically provide 60 days notice before separations take effect. 

Directors at the highest level of the component agencies have communicated “have no knowledge over what is happening,” one employee said in a sentiment echoed by those throughout the department. 

A senior HHS official said even HR at component agencies have received no information on who is being laid off or when the notices were going out, though the latest expectation was the letters would be delivered Monday. 

“Radio silence,” the official said. “It is madness!” 

Government Executive previously reported that top officials were being left out of the workforce reduction process. At NIH, for example, liaisons from the Department of Government Efficiency dictated staffing targets without input from the agency or anyone else at HHS. 

Some informal notices were beginning to trickle out Monday afternoon. CDC is planning to eliminate its entire Freedom of Information Act office, according to an impacted employee, which could create legal questions as agencies are required to maintain those functions. The official notices had not yet gone out as of Monday afternoon but all of the office’s 40 employees are expected to receive them. 

The reductions will be part of a comprehensive reorganization of HHS. The cuts will save $2 billion annually, department Secretary Robert Kennedy said last week, and HHS will go from 28 divisions throughout the department down to 15. Department-wide functions such as human resources, IT, procurement, external affairs and policy will be centralized into the Administration for Healthy America and regional offices will be slashed in half to just five.

The new AHA will fold into its structure the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry and National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health. HHS will divide up the functions of the Administration for Community Living, which provides oversight of those serving older and disabled Americans, into CMS, the Administration for Children and Families and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation. ASPE itself will be combined with the Agency for Health Research and Quality into the Office of Strategy.

This hurried reorganization is being imposed by the young engineers and computer geeks who work for Musk, apparently without consulting anyone who has done the work. The changes are rushed, haphazard, and carried out without the participation of those with knowledge and experience.

Please open the link to continue reading the article.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Health, Musk, Elon, Science, Trump

Dana Milbank: Trump & Musk vs. The U.S. Constitution

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2025 //
2

In this essay in The Washington Post, columnist Dana Milbank offers to give Elon Musk private lessons about the Constitution. At no extra fee, he will let Donald Trump join the class. Both men are woefully ignorant of the foundational principles of American law. Musk was raised in South Africa, when apartheid was in force, so his ignorance is understandable. Trump has no excuse.

Milbank writes:

The man President Donald Trump put in charge of taking a chain saw to federal agencies showed once again this week that he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the government he is dismembering.

“This is a judicial coup,” Elon Musk proclaimed, reacting to the growing list of federal judges who have moved to halt the Trump administration’s headfirst plunge into lawlessness. “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”

How did this guy pass his citizenship test?

As the framers wrote in the Constitution, it is the House, not the Senate, that has “the sole power of impeachment.” And the Senate needs “the concurrence of two thirds of the members present” — 67, assuming full attendance, not 60 — to convict.

More important, the framers wrote that judges hold their offices for life “during good behavior” — which has been understood to mean they can only be impeached for corruption. That is how it has been since the 1805 impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, when Chief Justice John Marshall, himself a Founding Father, persuaded the Senate to abandon the idea that “a judge giving a legal opinion contrary to the will of the legislature is liable to impeachment.”

Musk, growing up in apartheid-era South Africa, probably wasn’t taught to revere constitutional democracy. But what’s the excuse of his colleagues in the Trump administration?

They have issued scores of executive orders that flatly contradict the Constitution and the laws of the land. Apparently, they are hoping a submissive Supreme Court will reimagine the Constitution to suit Trump’s whims — and federal judges have reacted as they should, by slapping down these lawless power grabs. As such, the administration is on a prodigious losing streak in court. Judges, in preliminary rulings, have already blocked the administration more than 50 times. Over the past week alone, judges:


• Ended Musk’s access to the private Social Security data of millions of Americans for a “fishing expedition.”
• Halted Musk’s continued destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
• Blocked enforcement of Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from military service.
• Stopped the administration from terminating $20 billion in grants from a congressionally approved climate program.
• Ordered the Education Department to restore $600 million in grants to place teachers in struggling schools.
• And, most visibly, required the administration to halt the deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison without any judicial review — an order the administration evidently defied.

There’s an obvious reason Trump is getting swatted down so often: He’s breaking the law. Instead of changing course, the administration is now trying to discredit the courts — and the rule of law. White House adviser Stephen Miller denounced “insane edicts of radical rogue judges” and declared that a judge had “no authority” to stop Trump. Border czar Tom Homan went full-on authoritarian on Fox News: “We’re not stopping,” he said of the deportation flights a judge had temporarily halted. “I don’t care what the judges think.”

Trump called the U.S. district judge in the case, James Boasberg (appointed to the bench by George W. Bush and elevated by Barack Obama) a “radical left lunatic” who, “like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” This drew a quick rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts (in case Musk doesn’t know this, he’s also a Bush appointee), who reminded Trump: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

Trump later told Fox News that he “can’t” defy a court order — welcome news, except he apparently had done exactly that in more than one case — while arguing that something had to be done “when you have a rogue judge.”

Someone has gone rogue here, but it isn’t the judge. Boasberg’s actions are squarely within the best tradition of the judiciary, for they are in defense of principle, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, that no person in this country, citizen or alien, may be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This is precisely what the Trump administration denied to those it deported and imprisoned.

Violations of due process have been alleged in dozens of the cases against Trump’s executive actions: terminating workers and programs; eliminating grants; violating union contracts; denying care to transgender people; banning the Associated Press from the White House; abolishing civil rights enforcement and everything else the administration calls “DEI”; harassing law firms; and summarily deporting migrants. All of these things were done without notice, without recourse, without adjudication and without clarity about which laws give the president the power to do them.


“Due process” might sound technical, but it was elemental to our founding and remains at the heart of our legal system. Trump’s flagrant denial of due process is so radical that it isn’t only at odds with 200 years of U.S. law — it’s also contrary to another 600 years of English law before that. For the benefit of Musk (who doesn’t seem to know about such things) and his colleagues (who don’t seem to care), perhaps a refresher is in order.

For this, I called Jeffrey Rosen, who runs the nonpartisan National Constitution Center, which finds consensus between conservative and liberal scholars. The concept of due process, he explained, is in the Magna Carta, which in 1215 asserted that “no free man shall be arrested or imprisoned … except by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” Britain’s 1628 Petition of Right, written during parliament’s struggle against the dictatorial Charles I, holds that “no man … should be put out of his land or tenement nor taken nor imprisoned nor disherited nor put to death without being brought to answer by due process of law.” The king, who imposed forced loans on his subjects and imprisoned people without trials, was beheaded during the English civil war.


“That example completely inspired the American Revolution,” Rosen explained. “They compared the tyranny of George III to the arbitrary rule of Charles I, saying George III was violating due process of law by insisting that patriots are tried in England rather than in local courts, that they can be put in jail without trial, and their liberty is at the whim of the king.” During the revolution, due-process provisions appeared in the constitutions of Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, North Carolina and Vermont. Similar language was included in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, then eventually repeated in the 14th Amendment to apply to all states.
“The very foundation of constitutionalism, which means a government according to law rather than autocratic whim, is the due process of law,” Rosen told me. “What distinguishes a constitutional officeholder from an absolute monarch or a tyrant is that he is bound by the Constitution and by laws.” Without due process, there is no free market, because private property can be taken without justification or explanation. Without due process, there are no civil liberties, for a person’s freedom can be taken for any reason, or none at all.


Without due process, you have what we see today: a leader using a wartime statute in peacetime to declare certain people to be dangerous gang members without providing any evidence, then imprisoning them without charges and finally denying the authority of the courts and defying a court order requiring the leader to obey the laws as written. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the road to despotism.

The Trump administration’s attempt to upend 800 years of settled law is staggering, but it is easily lost in all the other chaos the president is spreading. The Federal Reserve this week said that it expects slower growth and higher inflation than it did before Trump took office, in large part because of his tariffs, while falling confidence among consumers and businesses has raised the danger of recession.

In foreign affairs, Israel has restarted the war in Gaza, and Trump has launched a military campaign to see the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen “completely annihilated.”

Trump failed to get Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine, despite Trump’s bullying of Kyiv and his termination of efforts to document Russian war crimes — including the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

Trump silenced the Voice of America, to the benefit and delight of China, Russia and Iran. Even the annual visit of the Irish prime minister to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day became mired in controversy when MMA fighter Conor McGregor, given the podium in the White House briefing room, proclaimed that “Ireland is at the cusp of potentially losing its Irishness” because illegal migrants are “running ravage on the country.” Responded the prime minister: “Conor McGregor’s remarks are wrong, and do not reflect the spirit of St Patrick’s Day, or the views of the people of Ireland.”

The new administration’s bows to white nationalism continue apace. It removed, at least temporarily, thousands of pages from the Pentagon website and others that celebrated the integration of the armed forces and the contributions of people of color: a Native American who helped hoist the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, the Navajo code talkers of World War II, the Native American who drafted the Confederacy’s terms of surrender, baseball great Jackie Robinson, and a Black Vietnam veteran, on whose page the URL was changed to “deimedal-of-honor.” Trump, meanwhile, reiterated his offer to give “safe refuge” to White South Africans, while at the same time expelling the South African ambassador. The administration has restored the names of Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, which honored Confederates — getting around a law prohibiting this by technically renaming the bases for other people with the surnames “Benning” and “Bragg.”

The Forward, a Jewish newspaper, reported this week that the head of Trump’s antisemitism task force shared a post on X on March 14 from a white-supremacist leader asserting that “Trump has the ability to revoke someone’s Jew card.” (The aide apparently later unshared the post, whose author led a group that called on Trump supporters to become “racially aware and Jew Wise.”)

The sabotage of the federal government continues, as recklessly as before: dramatically cutting Social Security staff, offices and phone support while simultaneously requiring millions more of the elderly and disabled to apply for benefits in person rather than online; slashing the taxpayer help staff at the IRS and calling off audits; scaling back scientific research at the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health. Paul Dans, the former chief of Project 2025, told Politico that there “is almost no difference between Project 2025 and what Trump was planning all along and is now implementing.”

Trump appointed conspiracy theorist Michael Flynn, Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon’s daughter and the former White House valet to boards overseeing the U.S. military academies. He took time to visit the Kennedy Center, where he has fired the leadership — and used the visit to share “personal stories and anecdotes, including about the first time he saw ‘Cats’ and which members of the cast he found attractive,” as The Post’s Travis Andrews reported. The administration ordered the release of files on the John F. Kennedy assassination before bothering to remove the Social Security numbers of some people who are still alive.

Trump and his cronies continue to use the federal government for personal gain. Following last week’s promotional event for Musk’s Tesla at the White House, the commerce secretary recommended people buy Tesla stock, and the White House has installed Musk’s Starlink service despite security concerns. At the same time, Trump’s crypto project released a second crypto coin, raising $250 million to bring its total to $550 million — and 75 percent of the earnings go into the Trump family’s pockets. All of this is about as on the level as Trump’s golf game. “I just won the Golf Club Championship … at Trump International Golf Club,” he announced on Sunday, as storms and tornadoes ravaged a swath of the country. “Such a great honor!”

The most ominous development, though, is Trump’s expanding abuse of power to silence critics and disable political opponents. He went to the Justice Department last week and delivered a speech attacking lawyers who opposed him, such as Jack Smith, Andrew Weissmann, Norman Eisen and Marc Elias, as “scum” and “bad people” — and the administration has revoked the security clearances of many such lawyers. After issuing executive orders seeking to destroy three law firms because of their ties to Trump’s opponents, the administration has gone after 20 more law firms over their supposed DEI programs.

In the case of the alleged Venezuelan gang members, administration officials and allies are celebrating their defiance of the court. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, which the Trump administration is paying to jail deported migrants at its infamous 40,000-inmate prison, responded on X to Judge Boasberg’s order by saying “Oopsie … too late,” with a laugh-cry emoji. Secretary of State Marco Rubio retweeted it, and Musk added his own laughing emoji. And Attorney General Pam Bondi outrageously claimed “a DC trial judge supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans” — even though the migrants would not have been released under the court order, which only delayed their deportation.

After a reporter asked the president whether he would cut off Secret Service protection for former president Joe Biden’s children, Trump did exactly that. Trump’s acting head of the Social Security Administration admitted that he had canceled contracts with the state of Maine because he was “upset” at Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, for not being “respectful” of Trump during a public exchange they had. Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have asked Trump’s FBI to probe the main Democratic fundraising platform, saying it “has advanced the financial interests of terror.”

Trump cut off $175 million of government funds going to the University of Pennsylvania because of its policy on trans athletes, following the White House’s suspension of $400 million of funds to Columbia University over Gaza protests there and its demand that the school change its discipline and admissions policies. More than 50 other universities are under investigation. Trump’s acting U.S. attorney for D.C., Ed Martin, has threatened to punish Georgetown Law School if it doesn’t change its curriculum, calling it “unacceptable” for the school to “teach DEI.”

Trump, in his appearance at DOJ, said negative coverage of him on CNN and MSNBC “has to be illegal.” He proclaimed that Biden’s use of the pardon, a constitutional power, to preemptively protect members of the House Jan. 6 committee from Trump’s harassment was “null and void.”

He fired the two Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission, his latest defiance of federal statutes protecting independent commissions. His administration fired the board of the independent U.S. Institute of Peace and seized control of its building, physically removing its president and threatening prosecution.

Then there are the summary deportations of people Trump finds undesirable. The administration has arrested and is seeking to deport a Columbia graduate student who is a green-card holder with no criminal record because of his role in Gaza protests. It deported a Brown University doctor even though a judge had issued an order requiring 48 hours’ notice before her deportation.

In the House, Trump’s allies raced to obey his instructions, filing impeachment articles against Boasberg on Tuesday. Freshman Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) submitted the articles, joined by five others. House Republicans have also moved to impeach four other federal judges over disagreements with their rulings.

Thus are Trump and his allies ignoring 215 years of precedent, going back to Samuel Chase, that objections to courts’ opinions are to be resolved through the appeals process, not impeachment.
Thus are Trump and his allies turning their backs on 810 years of precedent, going back to the Magna Carta, in which we protect ourselves from tyranny through the due process of law.

But this is where we are. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a delectable Freudian slip, proclaimed in a briefing this week that “we want to restore the Department of Justice to an institution that focuses on fighting law and order.”


If that is the goal, the Trump administration is to be congratulated on a job well done.

Categories Civics, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, History, Ignorance, Justice, Musk, Elon, Trump

Texas: Beware of Vouchers!

By dianeravitch
March 31, 2025 //
4

The Texas House of Representatives is moving to a vote on vouchers. Governor Greg Abbott has been pushing vouchers for years, but the House legislators have defeated them again and again, even though Republicans have a super-majority in both houses. The votes were provided by a combination of urban Democrats and rural Republicans. The rural Republicans decided that protecting their local public school was more important than pleasing Governor Abbott.

But then a billionaire in Pennsylvania gave Governor Abbott $6 million so he could defeat the recalcitrant Republicans who blocked vouchers.

Abbott managed to knock off several of the Republicans he targeted by lying about their records. In theory, he has the votes to pass voucher legislation.

But will he? There are still rural Republicans who know that vouchers will destroy their hometown school. How will they vote?

Worse, vouchers have failed wherever they have been tried.

And Texans need to know these facts.

Eight Things to Know – State’s Proposed Education Savings Account Program for Private Schools (March 2025)Download

Eight Things to Know: State’s Proposed Education Savings Accounts (ESAs) for Private Schools

Governor Abbott’s ongoing promotion of universal school choice through taxpayer funded Education Savings Account’s (ESA) focuses on helping low-income, low-performing, and SPED students obtain a better education. However, this material highlights eight things to know that contradict the state’s promotion of taxpayer funded ESAs for private schools.

1.) Taxpayer Cost: The fiscal note for ESAs is $4.6 billion per year in year 2030. In lieu of funding ESAs for private schools, the state could:

 Further reduce property taxes,
 Stop funding public schools below the national average (Texas students are not “Below Average”),
 Provide each Texas public-school graduate with $12,100 to obtain college or technical degrees, or
 Fund public highways versus toll roads.

2.) ESAs Primarily Benefit Students/Families Currently Attending Private Schools: Despite the promotion of providing opportunities for low-income students in public schools, the state estimates that 88% of existing private school students, 9% of home school students, and only 1.8% of current public-school students will receive ESAs (see table below). Source: SB 2 Fiscal Note

2.) Arizona and Universal School Choice: With Arizona being the first state to provide universal school choice, Governor Abbott invited former Governor Ducey to promote the importance of universal school choice at a recent press conference. But no one mentioned that the 2024 NAEP scores of Arizona are among the lowest in the nation and significantly below the NAEP scores of Texas, especially for English Language Learners and Economically Disadvantaged students that ESAs are supposed to benefit. Source: The Nation’s Report Card.

5.) State Currently Funds School Choice With Separate System of Charters and Unproven Results: Over the last 30-years, the State has directed taxpayer funding to provide school choice in local communities through a separate system of privately managed charter schools. Currently, charters:
 Operate 905 schools,
 Enroll over 420,000 students,
 Annually receive taxpayer funding of $4.6 billion,
 Serve students with lower teacher experience, fewer certified teachers, higher student to teacher ratios, administrative costs, and attrition rates compared to locally governed public schools, and
 Underperform locally governed school districts (see “2024 STAAR” below). Source: Texas Education Agency and Txreasearchportal.com.

6.) Admission Policies Mitigate Low-Income, Low-Performing and SPED Student Enrollment: Private school admission requirements directly limit of the enrollment of current low-income, low-performing, and SPED public school students. Based upon various Texas private school Student/Parent Handbooks, private schools restrict admissions based upon academic performance, religious persuasion, special needs/learning differences, and/or cost.
 Academic Performance: Private schools often require students to be “at grade level,” thereby prohibiting the enrollment of low-performing students. Example Student/Parent Handbook – Admissions:

“The student must test at grade level (50 percentile) or above in mathematics and reading on a nationally recognized standardized test…No accommodations are provided for entrance testing.”

“Once students are placed on academic probation (for not achieving a GPA of at least 2.0), they will be given one semester to improve their academic performance to a level of 70%. If not achieved, the student may be required to withdraw from the school

 Religious Persuasion: Religious educational institutions are exempt from Civil Rights legislation relating to the enrollment and acceptance of individuals with a particular religious persuasion. For example, a new non-Catholic student is the last enrollment priority at many Catholic schools. Example Student/Parent Handbook – Admissions:

Enrollment Priority – Children of:
1.) Faculty,
2.) Active parishioners with siblings in school,
3.) Active parishioners without siblings in school,
4.) Non-Active parishioners with siblings in school,
5.) Non-active parishioners without siblings in school,
6.) Catholics that are parishioners of other Catholic communities,
7.) Non-Catholics with siblings in school, and
8.) Non-Catholics.

Further enrollment limitations for non—Catholic students may also be higher tuition relative to Catholic students.

2024/25 Tuition: Catholic – $8,160 and Non-Catholic – $10,408

 Special Needs/Learning Differences: While there are certainly private schools that focus on serving students with special needs/learning differences, private schools are not required to follow the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and may choose to discriminate against students with disabilities. Example Student/Parent Handbook – Admissions:

“The school does not admit students with more severe learning differences or those requiring extensive special education services… (To be admitted), the family must provide current diagnostic testing that recognizes the student’s performance on recognized aptitude testing is 90 or higher.”

“Private schools are not required to significantly alter their programs, lower, or modify their standards to accommodate a child with special needs.”

 ESA Does Not Cover the Cost of Private Schools: SB 2 provides a $10,000 ESA for students to attend a private school. For low-income students, the amount is insufficient to cover the $14,750 estimated average annual private school cost, which is $11,350 for tuition and $3,400 for fees (application, testing, enrollment, computer, sports, club fees, transportation, mandatory parent service hours, and uniforms).

7.) Choice Forces Public-School Closures that Denys the “School Choice” of Public-School Families: It has become common for urban, suburban, and rural school districts to close high-performing campuses due to declining enrollment due to the state’s expansion of charters. In fact, school districts have recently closed over 125 campuses due to the expansion of state-approved charters. As such, providing school choice for certain students is disrupting and denying the school choice for over 50,000 students experiencing closure of their public school. With the state projecting 98,000 existing public-school students will utilize ESAs to attend private schools, additional public-school closures are imminent, and ESAs will further deny choice for families choosing their public school.

8.) Voters Consistently Defeat School Choice: Despite claims the majority of Texans support school choice, voters have defeated school choice initiatives placed ono the ballot in every state. In 2024, voters in Colorado and the conservative states of Kentucky and Nebraska repealed or defeated school choice initiatives for private schools.

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Texas, Vouchers
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