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Politifact Rates Video Attacking Talarico as a Pedophile to be AI Fake, Generated by Russian Bot

By dianeravitch
October 23, 2026 //
6

When Republicans start losing, they get desperate and spread lies. The best lies are created by Russian bots. Politifact rated a vile video attacking Talarico as a pedophile as an AI fake.

Politifact reported:

This video shows a former James Talarico student accusing him of misconduct.

Pants on Fire!

2026 MIDTERMSARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCETEXASX POSTS

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Texas state Rep. James Talarico arrives at a campaign event in Plano, Texas, on Oct. 18, 2026. (AP)
Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Texas state Rep. James Talarico arrives at a campaign event in Plano, Texas, on Oct. 18, 2026. (AP)

By Jeff Cercone
October 22, 2026

Russian disinformation group targets James Talarico with baseless claim in AI-generated video

IF YOUR TIME IS SHORT

  • The Russian disinformation campaign known as Storm-1516 used artificial intelligence to create a video that impersonated a real man, and claimed it showed a former student accusing James Talarico of misconduct, researchers say.
  • The account that initially shared the video was created in September and is based in Romania, NewsGuard reported.

See the sources for this fact-check

A social media video purporting to show a former student accusing Texas Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico of sexual misconduct is the latest example of how Russian groups are generating false information to influence U.S. elections, researchers say.

As of Oct. 22, X had suspended the account that originally posted the baseless claim, but other accounts have since shared it. NewsGuard, a company that tracks online misinformation, reported that X said the account was created in September with Romania as the signup country. 

Talarico spokesperson JT Ennis issued an emailed statement to PolitiFact about the video.

“The most powerful people in the world know they can’t beat James Talarico with the truth, so they’re slandering him with AI deepfakes, foreign bots, and conspiracy theories to protect their broken, corrupt political system,” Ennis said.

What we know about the video’s origin

Darren Linvill, a Clemson University professor and head of its Media Forensic Hub, said the video is the work of Storm-1516, a Russian propaganda campaign he said made a similar baseless attack on Minnesota Democratic Gov. Tim Walz in 2024 when Walz ran for vice president. In 2024, the group used a paid actor from West Africa to attack Walz, Linvill said.

Linvill said this video was generated to look like a real man who has an account on another platform. The video shows a man claiming to have been a former student of Talarico at Rhodes Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, where Talarico taught Language Arts before his political career as a state representative.

Graphika, a social media analytics company, said in a blog post that the X account that originally shared the video “very likely” impersonated a Facebook user by the same name. That person lives in Texas and was a former student of Talarico. The man has praised Talarico on his Facebook page on several occasions, as recently as February, Graphika noted.

Fact-checkers at Lead Stories spoke with that man and he said the video is not of him, and denied accusing Talarico of misconduct. PolitiFact reached out to him via Facebook, but he didn’t immediately respond. PolitiFact’s review of the man’s Facebook page found no video of him accusing Talarico.

NewsGuard reported that the videos had many signs of AI generation, such as unnatural eye movements and stagnant facial expressions, and that an AI detection tool showed a 98% likelihood of being a deepfake. A deepfake is a machine generated image or video that changes faces, bodies or voices, making people appear to do and say things that they never did or said. 

Graphika said social media accounts known to amplify Storm-1516 content and several accounts from U.S. conservatives shared the video. It said a prominent Storm-1516 amplifier, SGAnon, originally shared the video, then deleted it, writing on X that an analysis showed it was “artificially generated.”

The Russian disinformation playbook

Linvill said Storm-1516 typically uses the same influencers to spread false narratives into political conversations.

“If you examine the recent content of the influencers who first shared this narrative you can easily identify other Storm-1516 lies,” Linvill said. “We believe they are paid to do this. In the same way marketing companies pay influencers to share products, the Russians pay influencers to share lies.”

The New York Times recently reported that Russia and other foreign governments have stepped up efforts to influence U.S. elections, mostly targeting Democrats.

Linvill co-wrote a recent report about Storm-1516 and its work targeting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and found such campaigns often are not aimed at changing people’s behavior or opinions, but seek to shape public discourse.

He said the study’s findings apply to this baseless Talarico narrative.

“By entrenching people in this view of Talarico, the Russians likely hope to exacerbate extreme partisanship and also encourage people to get off the couch and vote for Ken Paxton,” Linvill said. “People who already like Talarico are going to dismiss this claim as the obvious fake it is, but they aren’t the audience.”

We rate the claim that this video shows Talarico’s former student accusing him of misconduct Pants on Fire! 

Our Sources

X post, Oct. 20, 2026

X post, Oct. 21, 2026

X post, Oct. 22, 2026

X post, Oct. 22, 2026

SGAnon, X post, Oct. 20, 2026

Facebook post, Feb. 14, 2026

Facebook post, May 25, 2021

Facebook page

NewsGuard, Russian Deepfake Accuses Talarico of Sexually Abusing Student, Oct. 21, 2026

Lead Stories, Fact Check: FAKE Video Shows Man Claiming to Be Ex-Student of Democratic Senate Nominee James Talarico — Real Zyon Lewis Says It Is Not Him, Oct. 21, 2026

Darren Linvill, Professor, Clemson University Media Forensics Hub, X posts, Oct. 21, 2026

Darren Linvill, Professor, Clemson University Media Forensics Hub, email interview, Oct. 22, 2026

PNAS, State- sponsored agenda setting: Measuring the impact of narrative laundering, Aug. 3, 2026 

Graphika, research brief shared with PolitiFact, Oct. 22, 2026

Graphika, Storm-1516 Produces Very Likely Deepfake Videos of Student Accusing Democratic Senate Candidate of Sexual Assault, Oct. 21, 2026

Alethea spokesperson, email interview, Oct. 22, 2026

The Gnida Project, X post, Oct. 21, 2026 

Agence France-Presse, Tim Walz targeted by unfounded sexual abuse claim, Oct. 21, 2024

The New York Times, Russia Appears to Step Up Efforts to Influence U.S. Voters, Oct. 16, 2026

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fake News, Fraud, Hoax, International, Lies, Republicans

Russian Bots Are at It Again, Trying to Sway Our Elections

By dianeravitch
October 22, 2026 //
2

Google posted the following unusual warning. The main sources are The New York Times, a YouTube video posted by Bloomberg News, and stories on MSNOW.

The warning asserted that Russian intelligence is deep into a campaign to sway the midterms in Trump’s favor, acknowledging his special relationship with Russian dictator Putin. That relationship was cemented by Trump’s latest deal to eliminate sanctions on Russian oil, to pour billions into the Russian economy, and to turn his back on Ukraine.

Google sent out the following warning:

Russia is deploying a highly sophisticated “army of bots” and generative AI to flood social media networks with fabricated videos, deepfakes, and targeted propaganda aimed at disrupting the upcoming November 3, 2026, U.S. midterm elections. [1, 2]

According to U.S. intelligence officials and recent independent research, Moscow’s primary goals are to inject chaos, undermine faith in democratic institutions, target Democratic candidates in key swing states, and weaken international support for Ukraine. [1, 2, 3]

Key Tactics and Operations

1. The “Matrioska” Drone Warfare Strategy

  • Automated Bot Swarms: A Russian disinformation network nicknamed Matrioska has been filling platforms like X (formerly Twitter) with fake election content. [1]
  • The Cycle: When researchers identify these accounts, X suspends them—but the network automatically replaces them with new dormant or artificial profiles. Experts describe this persistent replacement loop as the “disinformation equivalent of drone warfare”. [1]
  • Artificial Engagement: These bots rapidly inflate view counts on fabricated posts to make fake stories appear as though they are trending naturally. [1, 2]

2. AI-Generated Deepfakes & Impersonations

  • Celebrity Splice Fakes: Disinformation operators are pushing out AI-fabricated video clips of famous actors and musicians (including Robert De Niro, Julia Roberts, and Cher) appearing to attack political figures under campaigns like #AllDemocratsAreCriminals. [1]
  • Impersonating Major Media: U.S. intelligence reports that Russian covert campaigns are creating highly accurate clones of reputable Western news outlets like CNN, the BBC, and The New York Times to spread fake news articles and targeted character attacks against Senate candidates. [1, 2]
  • Commercial AI Misuse: Adversaries are reportedly utilizing commercial generative AI models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, to efficiently script and map out massive propaganda pipelines at an unprecedented speed. [1]

3. Integration into State Infrastructure

  • Cloud Infrastructure Consolidation: Security officials emphasize that Moscow has successfully integrated its state intelligence agencies with commercial cloud computing assets. This marks a shift from isolated “troll farms” (like the old Internet Research Agency) to a consolidated state digital ecosystem capable of massive scale.
  • Custom Bias Targeting: The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) has been linked to programs designed to bypass traditional advertisement blocks by embedding customized, AI-driven propaganda directly into personal communication apps based on an individual voter’s specific biases. [1, 2]

To understand the warning, begin by watching the YouTube video posted by Bloomberg News.

Much of this material was based on a story in The New York Times about Russia’s election interference. This is a gift article. You can read it without a subscription.

Written by veteran intelligence reporters, it begins:

The Russian government has been targeting Americans with covert online disinformation operations seeking to undermine public confidence in November’s midterm elections, using a familiar playbook in an attempt to inject chaos into the voting season, according to U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Classified U.S. intelligence assessments from recent months have determined that the Kremlin has again authorized a digital influence campaign to peddle content across social media in hopes of seeding or amplifying domestic divisions around the election season, the officials said.

The assessments did not find evidence of attempts to take aim at voting machinery in a way that could compromise the actual voting process, the officials added. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss classified information, did not specify the efforts to influence attitudes online. But experts in Russian disinformation have spotted some social media campaigns in recent weeks that use artificial intelligence to create fake videos of Hollywood celebrities talking about key battleground Senate races.

The disinformation campaign appeared to be less extensive or coordinated than at least some of Russia’s prior efforts in American elections, some of the officials said. Since 2016, the Kremlin has initiated online influence operations in every American federal election cycle, according to previously declassified assessments. The officials added that U.S. spy agencies see Moscow as less interested in midterm races than in presidential contests and as distracted by its grinding war with Ukraine.

Still, the push to inflame the electorate comes as President Trump has repeatedly sought to challenge the integrity of American democracy. In July, Mr. Trump gave a televised prime-time address on election security in which he claimed there were severe vulnerabilities in U.S. voting systems and accused American officials of a yearslong “cover-up” to conceal efforts by China and others to influence elections.

He has instructed a task force to declassify documents purporting to support his narratives of rampant voter fraud and foreign tampering, but those files, which were heavily redacted, did not reveal major new weaknesses in the country’s election systems or show that foreign governments had manipulated any votes.

Some of the officials said the main goal of the Russian influence operations appeared to be to sow chaos rather than aid one particular party, though the examples that independent disinformation researchers in recent weeks have attributed to Russia have exclusively attacked Democratic candidates in swing states.

The White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment. Russia has historically denied U.S. allegations of election meddling.

Some intelligence assessments have also found that Iran, too, may engage in influence operations around the November election as well, the officials said, though little activity had been documented in classified channels that traced to Tehran. The country, which has been locked in a war with the United States since February, sought to spread propaganda undermining Mr. Trump in the 2020 and 2024presidential elections, and officials said it was reasonable to expect the regime to do so again….

In 2016, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered a multipronged interference effort that sought to denigrate Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee, and bolster the electoral prospects of her Republican rival, Mr. Trump, U.S. spy agencies concluded. Multiple audits of those intelligence findings, including a multiyear investigation by the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee, corroborated those conclusions.

Researchers in Europe and the United States who track Russian disinformation campaigns have seen recent signs of Russian activity. In two separate waves over the past week, a network previously linked to Kremlin trolls posted a series of videos on X and BlueSky that appeared to rely on A.I. to churn out baseless claims against Democrats running for Senate in closely contested races. Elements of the campaign were reported earlier by MS NOW.

The posts attacked the candidates using themes that Mr. Trump and the Republican Party have relied on to disparage Democrats, including accusations of corruption, antisemitism and support for gay and transgender rights.

Please open the article to finish reading this important article.

Categories Disruption, Elections, Fake News, International, Media, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump

Trump Claims That Schools in 5 States Encourage Transgender Surgery

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2026 //
20

At a rally a few days ago in Dalton, Georgia, Trump made the preposterous claim that five states allow schools to promote transgender surgery.

We got critical race theory and transgender mutilization insanity out of our schools. I mean, we have five states where your child goes off to school as Tim and comes back as Tammy three or four days later. It’s true. And teachers make — somebody makes a decision. Can you imagine? Goodbye, Timmy. I love you so much.

I’ll see you later. And you say where’s my son? My son is in the hospital. Can you imagine? Can you imagine? They don’t even need approval. It’s sick. You’ll have five — I think Minnesota and some others. I think it’s five or six states. You know that, right? So — and we made English the official language of the United States of America.

He told the same story about the notorious five states repeatedly in the 2024 election, and each time he said it, the news media said it was false. He never produced evidence. Never. Not one single instance.

No teacher. No student. No Timmy. No Tammy.

At first, I was outraged that no journalist called him out for this lie.

But as I read the speech, I realized there were so many lies that it would be overwhelming to correct them all.

Please, if you can stomach it, read the clips from this speech given in Dalton, Georgia, on October 16, 2026.

Categories Fake News, Fraud, Gender, Lies, Trump

Robert Reich: The NY Times Reports “Both Sides” of a Campaign Debate

By dianeravitch
October 20, 2026 //
5

Robert Reich condemns the “both sides” reporting of the debate between the Senate candidates in Michigan, as presented by The New York Times.

Honest reporting, he contends, would comment on the accuracy of the candidates’ remarks, not present them as equivalent.

Reich writes:

Friends,

The venerable New York Times — the “gray lady” of American journalism that not only determines what’s news but sets the standard for how it should be reported — has been describing the upcoming midterms as if it were a competition between two equally passionate and roughly equivalent sides.

For example, in describing the recent debate between the two candidates vying to represent Michigan in the Senate, Republican Mike Rogers and Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, the Times offered its readers an analysis of social media feeds —“one curated for a left-wing audience and one for a right-wing audience.” 

The Times did this by collecting more than 13,000 posts from X, and then — using a social media analytics company — categorizing the posts according to their apparent political leanings and whether they were “personal attacks and criticism” or concerned a particular issue area. 

Then the Times presented it all in a vertical graph, starting with the beginning of the debate at the top and the end at the bottom, with responses to El-Sayed on the left side and responses to Rogers on the right. 

What did the Times report that might be useful to its readers? It turned out that “viewers following the event on social media likely came away with two very different impressions, depending on their own political inclinations.”

Well, duh. People choose social media depending on their political inclinations to begin with. 

The Times then suggested that the two very different impressions were roughly equal, both in the degree to which they distorted the truth and in how troubling we should find those distortions.

“An algorithm attuned to Democrats … served up commentary depicting the Democratic candidate, Abdul El-Sayed, as a firebrand who delivered quick-witted attacks that left his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, scrambling. A feed curated for Republicans … created an impression of Mr. Rogers as calm and composed onstage as he landed blistering critiques of Dr. El-Sayed.”

When the candidates talked about the Iran war, according to the Times, “left-leaning users” praised “Dr. El-Sayed’s opposition to the conflict” while “right-leaning users” posted “personal criticism of Dr. El-Sayed’s Muslim beliefs.” As the debate shifted to the economy, “left-leaning users” posted about affordability, while the posts of “right-leaning users” were “often laden with personal attacks against Dr. El-Sayed.”

As the debate progressed, the Times reported, these “dueling narratives” became more pronounced. When Dr. El-Sayed again referred to the economy, left-leaning accounts “posted about the high cost of living” while Rogers’s supporters posted that “high gas prices are only temporary.” When Dr. El-Sayed talked about improving healthcare, Rogers’s supporters expressed “skepticism about Dr. El-Sayed’s medical background.” (The Times then noted that although Dr. El-Sayed has a medical degree from Columbia University, he has never practiced medicine.)

So what is the average reader or voter supposed to take away from this so-called analysis? 

Note for starters that all the responses analyzed by the Times were on Musk’s “X” — which already leans authoritarian. 

Beyond this is circular reasoning. People identified as “left-leaning users” were assumed to be “left-leaning” because their comments showed they were for El-Sayed and against Rogers, and “right-leaning users” were “right-leaning” because they were for Rogers and against El-Sayed. 

The worst ad populum fallacy is that both sides deserve equal weight. They engaged in “dueling narratives” and they posted about the same number of comments. Even the graph represented a kind of equivalence. 

Rubbish. Doesn’t The New York Times have a responsibility to tell readers that Rogers has been a rubber-stamp for Trump, including Trump’s war in Iran; that he voted for the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, and surveillance legislation; that he has a political record of suppressing Black votes in Detroit and across Michigan; and that he has long represented corporate interests over the interests of average working people?

And doesn’t the Times also have a responsibility to tell its readers that El-Sayed takes the opposite position on these — and is pushing for a single-payer healthcare system, breaking up large healthcare monopolies, taxing billionaire wealth and regulating AI and data centers, banning corporate campaign contributions, ending gerrymandering, reforming the Supreme Court, and ending U.S. military aid to Israel?

Two weeks from an election that will determine whether guardrails will be erected against America’s first dictator, and what does The New York Times do? Depict it like any other contest between America’s two major political parties — in which they present “dueling narratives” from their “left-leaning” or “right-leaning” perspectives. 

This depiction is irresponsible and dangerously fraudulent. Don’t accept it.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Failure, Fake News, Michigan, Trump

Will the Trump Administration Build a Baseball Stadium in a National Park?

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2026 //
13

Will the Trump administration permit a Major League Baseball team to build a park in the Grand Tetons National Park?

The idea sounds crazy until you remember that Trump built an Ultimate fighting arena on the White House lawn so he could see several matches without having to travel.

The Washington Post reported:

Major League Baseball has approached the Trump administration about hosting a game at a national park, officials from the White House and MLB confirmed Saturday.

The administration has scouted locations in Grand Teton National Park to build a baseball park to host an MLB game, according to two other people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Grand Teton is the country’s eighth-most visited national park and is famous for its breathtaking views of the Teton Range of the Rocky Mountains. National parks are among the country’s most protected federal lands, and constructing a sports facility at Grand Teton could set a new precedent for the use of vast national park land in the Western United States.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Fake, Fake News, Insane, International, Iowa

Paul Thomas on the Fake “Crisis” in Education

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2026 //
7

Paul Thomas taught in South Carolina public high schools for many years, then became a professor of education at Furman University. He is an articulate critic of the decades-old “crisis in education.”

If you are confused by the different fonts, please open the link to read the original article.

He wrote:

People try to put us d-down (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Just because we get around (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
Things they do look awful c-c-cold (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
I hope I die before I get old (Talkin’ ’bout my generation)
“My Generation,” The Who

Born in 1961, I am a young boomer, but a boomer none the less.

I began teaching high school English in the ominous year of 1984, my first students having been born at the end of the same decade as I had, the 1960s.

That means across my career as an educator, I have taught most living generations, including my own. My grandchildren as Generation Alpha.
It does seem valid to note that humans experience generational shifts that can be identified in fair ways, especially in ways that may help those of us who teach better serve our students.

Those characteristics, however, are not universally defining and the cut off dates we decide are more blur than fact.

Being at the end of the boomer generation makes me often quite similar to Gen X folk I meet, including the first wave of students I taught high school.

What seems less valid, is the historical and current urge older generations have to negatively characterize younger generations, often through never-ending cycles of crying “Crisis!,” especially about education (notably reading and math).

The US has been riding a high tide of crisis rhetoric about reading—both that students can’t read and the students don’t read—for about a decade now.

It seems this cycle of crisis has reached a new stage according to The New York Times:

A report on the new data describes a decade-long “learning recession.”…
Students’ test scores had been increasing since 1990 — then abruptly stopped in the mid-2010s. That coincided with two events: an easing of federal school accountability under No Child Left Behind, which was replaced in 2015, and the rise of smartphones, social media and personalized school laptops.

The decade analyze attempts to compare, even with the caveat above, learning using test data that itself has shifted several times and ways even in a relatively brief decade window.

As I have noted about reading proficiency, the US has no standard definition of “reading proficiency” or “grade-level reading,” but instead, we have NAEP achievement levels (that are confusing and misleading) drawn from random sampling about every two years along with annual (except for the Covid blip) testing at the state level, where every state establishes its own cut scores for proficiency (with most state proficiency level overlapping with NAEP “basic”).
Analyses such as these also suffer from compelling but questionable metrics such as days, months, or years of learning. What metric researchers choose and then how data is displayed significantly impacts how the conclusions are interpreted.

Unfortunately, most analyses of education are designed to create the appearance of crisis.
While this rhetorical shift to “learning recession” is yet another oversell that likely will do more harm than good, the immediate responses should prompt even greater skepticism:

Tweet by David Frum, May 13, 2026:

Seven months ago, the David Frum Show hosted former Education Secretary Margaret Spellings for a discussion of why US K-12 scores are declining. Her answer: the decline in testing and accountability since 2015.

Resurrecting former Secretary of Education Spellings deserves a reminder about her misinformation and misunderstanding concerning tests data, which she used to falsely claim success for NCLB (the testing and accountability she is sad to see gone, although that claim isn’t true either):

During President George W. Bush’s tenure, NCLB was a corner stone of his agenda, and when then-Secretary Spellings announced that test scores were proving NCLB a success, Gerald Bracey and Stephen Krashen exposed one of two possible problems with the data.

Spellings either did not understand basic statistics or was misleading for political gain. Krashen detailed the deception or ineptitude by showing that the gain Spellings noted did occur from 1999 to 2005, a change of seven points. But he also revealed that the scores rose as follows: 1999 = 212; 2000 = 213; 2002 = 219; 2003 = 218 ; 2005 = 219. The jump Spellings used to promote NCLB and Reading First occurred from 2000 to 2002, before the implementation of Reading First. Krashen notes even more problems with claiming success for NCLB and Reading First, including:

“Bracey (2006) also notes that it is very unlikely that many Reading First children were included in the NAEP assessments in 2004 (and even 2005). NAEP is given to nine year olds, but RF is directed at grade three and lower. Many RF programs did not begin until late in 2003; in fact, Bracey notes that the application package for RF was not available until April, 2002.”

This recent claim from Spellings, then, must be taken with a gigantic grain of salt because most politicians see education crisis as an opportunity to score political points, not as a way to better serve students.

That we are really about to have testing and accountability nostalgia sold to us is almost laughable—if it weren’t so insidious.

Reasonable people have noted that our testing obsession has resulted in deforming what and how students read, more passages to answer question and less whole book reading.

But research being ignored, makes the opposite and evidence-based argument from Spellings’s self-serving observation:

Almost 63% of the variance in test performance was explained by social capital family income variables that influence the development of background knowledge. Background knowledge is a known predictor of standardized test results. Family income variables are immutable by schools. Only public policies, outside the control of school personnel, can influence family income….
Policy makers and education leaders should rethink the current reliance on standardized test results as the deciding factor to make decisions about student achievement, teacher quality, school effectiveness, and school leader quality. In effect, policies that use standardized test results to evaluate, reward, and sanction students and school personnel are doing nothing more than rewarding schools that serve advantaged students and punishing schools that serve disadvantaged students.

Crisis rhetoric has never and will never serve even good intentions well in terms of seeking better ways to serve the needs of all students, regardless of the generational differences.
But let’s also resist this new push to go back (?) to the good ol’ days of testing and accountability NCLB-style.

Let’s instead recycle an old (and silly then) chestnut from the Reagan era.

When it comes to crisis rhetoric as well as testing and accountability in education reform, just say no.

See Also

The Reading Crisis Paradox: On Moral Crisis and Thought-Terminating Clichés

How to Manufacture Crisis with Line Charts: NAEP Reading Edition

Recommended: Reading educational research: How to avoid getting statistically snookered, Gerald Bracey (2006)

“Kids Today”: Perpetually Dumb and Lazy as a Box of Rocks

Reading Crisis 1961: Tomorrow’s Illiterates
1959: “yet students enter college badly lacking in these fundamental skills”

Reading Full Books in Secondary English Language Arts Classrooms


Categories Accountability, Fake News, Hoax, NCLB (No Child Left Behind)

Colorado Parents and Educators Want an End to High-stakes Testing

By dianeravitch
May 26, 2026 //
5

A group of activists in Colorado speaks out against standardized tests. Angela Engels’ article was printed in the Colorado Times Recorder.


A Message from Judy Solano, Chair, A4PEP (Advocates for Public Education Policy).

“It takes courage to speak out about the injustices in the world, especially when policy-makers funded by wealthy education reform organizations hold the power.  May we all be warriors in the battle for truth.”

COLORADO TIMES RECORDER

Test-Based Accountability Is Failing Colorado’s Children

by Angela Engel                                                       May 15, 2026

As the Colorado General Assembly wraps up the 2026 session, lawmakers once again failed to confront one of the most costly and disruptive features of public education: high-stakes standardized testing.

Key legislative proposals that would have addressed the burden of high-stakes testing were defeated again. SB26-068would have reduced CMAS standardized tests to the minimum extent possible, and HB26-1291 would have reduced teacher evaluations for non-probationary teachers from annually to every three years. Both had bipartisan sponsorship and were supported by teachers, parents, and community members, but opposed by billionaire-backed education reform lobbyists.

A memorial backed by the Advocates for Public Education Policy (A4PEP), urging Congress to return authority to locally elected school boards, as provided in the eww hearing.

These decisions deserve more than a procedural explanation.

The issue of high-stakes testing is neither marginal nor new. Since the passage of No Child Left Behind in 2002, policymakers have imposed lengthy and expensive criterion-referenced standardized tests on students, then incorrectly used that data to make high-stakes decisions about teacher pay and school closures. Because test scores are most closely correlated with income, policymakers have tolerated the practice of closing schools in low-income neighborhoods at the expense of our most vulnerable students.

A 2014 study showed that Colorado’s testing requirements cost up to $78 million annually in combined state and district expenditures. Adjusting for inflation, that would equal more than $100 million today. Approximately 450,000 students spend an average of 20 hours of classroom instruction each year on these assessments — more than 9 million hours diverted away from teaching and learning.

Meanwhile, the number of students identified as at-risk has increased by 118%, more than doubling since 2000. After more than two decades, the results of this approach are clear. Achievement gaps have not closed. Teacher attrition continues to rise. Families increasingly question a system that prioritizes testing over learning, with many choosing to opt out altogether.

This is not a policy in need of minor adjustment. It is an accountability structure that has failed to deliver on its core promises — and it deserves fundamental sreplacement. And yet, it remains firmly in place. Not because the evidence is unclear, but because the accountability system itself is protected.

Standardized testing is no longer just an educational tool. It is embedded in a network of contracts, compliance requirements, testing vendors, consulting firms, and political interests backed by well-funded lobbying efforts. There are real financial and political incentives to preserve it, regardless of outcomes.

Spending more than $100 million annually on a system that continues to produce the same disparities while costing students millions of hours of learning time reinforces a governance model that rewards compliance and discourages challenge.

This climate — where profits and political interests are prioritized before children — did not emerge on its own. It has been shaped over time by a campaign finance system that rewards candidates who support policies centered on test-based school accountability.

When you see something wrong, something inhumane, don’t just say something. Do something. It’s time policymakers stop protecting harmful practices and confront the consequences of policies that continue to waste taxpayer dollars, diminish learning opportunities, and drive many of our most talented and experienced teachers from the profession. After twenty-five years, the ramifications of inaction are impossible to ignore.

Public education should not revolve around protecting systems, contracts, corporate profits, or political interests. It should revolve around children. Colorado students deserve a well-rounded education that values critical thinking, creativity, and civic engagement over excessive testing and data collection. For too long, corporate education groups and privatizers have robbed students of a meaningful education and carefree childhood. This accountability model offers the illusion of control while costing Colorado a future of empowered, well-educated leaders.  

To view the planned Senate memorial, click here.  

Angela Engel is a mother, educator, and facilitator. Learn more on her website, www.angelaengel.com. Don Perl, Judy Solano, Mike DeGuire, and Manuel Solano contributed to this article.  https://coloradotimesrecorder.com/2026/05/test-based-accountability-is-failing-colorados-children/79032/

Categories Accountability, Colorado, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Education Industry, Every Student Succeeds Act, Evil, Extremism, Fake News, New York, Standardized Testing

Trump Lies About Vaccines and Babies

By dianeravitch
May 12, 2026 //
10

Trump was interviewed and asked his view of vaccines. He responded with a barrage of lies about how many vaccines babies get and the dangers of them. He claimed that babies get 80 or more vaccines, which is wrong. His ignorance could be deadly. His comments could discourage parents from getting their babies vaccinated, which will expose them to risky diseases.

Trump defended Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s crackpot views about vaccines and their relationship to autism.

Kelby Vera of The Huffington Post reported:

President Donald Trump made an outlandish claim about early childhood vaccine recommendations, lamenting that “beautiful little babies” were given a “vat … of stuff pumped into their bodies.”

In an interview with journalist Sharyl Attkissonon the Sunday episode of her show “Full Measure,” Trump defended Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., saying, “People love him.”

Trump was then asked whether there should be a commission to scrutinize vaccine safety, as Kennedy has long advocated.

“I believe in vaccines, but I don’t believe that, you know, you have to have a mandate for all of them,” Trump said.

Then, he falsely claimed that children were required to receive more than 80  vaccines and argued for reducing the number of immunizations.

“I look at these beautiful little babies, and they get a vat, like a big glass, of stuff pumped into their bodies,” Trump said. “And I think it’s a very negative thing to do.”

As of early 2026, the CDC recommends, rather than mandates, that children under 10 be inoculated against 11 conditions, down from a previous recommendation of 17.

Trump also claimed that paring back the childhood vaccine schedule would lead to a “better result with the autism.”

Despite extensive scientific evidence debunking a link between childhood vaccines and autism spectrum disorder, Kennedy has continued to push the theory. Last year, he personally directed the CDC to change its website to say that there was “not an evidence-based claim” to discredit the connection between vaccines and an autism diagnosis and that studies showing the contrary had been “ignored by health authorities.”

“The whole thing about ‘vaccines have been tested and there’s been this determination made’ is just a lie,” Kennedy told The New York Times in 2025.

Open the link to view the video.

Categories Fake News, Health, Ignorance, Lies, Medicine, Trump

Why Did Washington Press Corps Invite Trump to Dinner?

By dianeravitch
April 29, 2026 //
16

Kevin Cullen, a columnist for The Boston Globe, lambasted the Washington press corps for inviting Trump to be their speaker. What did they expect he would say? Did they want to be insulted as “enemies of the people” and “fake news”?

Sure, it’s customary to invite the President. But did anyone expect Trump to forget about his hatred of the media? Cullen thinks they should be more careful in choosing a speaker, like picking someone who appreciates the First Amendment.

He wrote:

So many questions after a deranged, thankfully inept gunman tried to force his way into the White House Correspondents’ Association gala, where President Trump was a guest.

The biggest one being: Why was Trump there in the first place?

Like all fascists, Trump hates a free press and has done his level best to humiliate, intimidate, harm, cancel, and even prosecute journalists and news outlets. Like all authoritarians, he has tried to limit press scrutiny of himself and his administration.

So what on earth were the White House press corps thinking when it invited this guy to their annual dress-up party?

It’s like inviting your obnoxious neighbor to a family barbecue after he relieves himself in your pool.

It’s like inviting a jackal to a tea party for a bunch of cute little bunny rabbits.

Let’s roll the tape:

In 2015, when he was running for president, Trump mocked New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who suffers from a congenital joint condition. Trump was just getting warmed up.

In 2017, after a Republican congressional candidate in Montana assaulted and body slammed a reporter for The Guardian, Trump voiced support for the attacker, saying, “He’s my kind of guy.”

In 2020, after MSNBC’s Ali Velshi was hit by a rubber bullet during a protest after George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in Minneapolis, Trump called it a “beautiful sight.” Trump misidentified Velshi as being with CNN, but, hey, all the fake news is all the same to Trump anyway.

At a campaign rally in Pennsylvania in November 2024, Trump stood behind bulletproof glass and reassured his supporters he was safe, noting that anyone who tried to shoot him would have to shoot through a bunch of journalists standing in front of him, adding, “I wouldn’t mind that so much.”

More recently, the FBI, led by Kash Patel, the laughably unqualified frat bro whom Trump appointed as FBI director, launched an investigation of Elizabeth Williamson, a New York Times reporter who had the temerity to point out that the FBI is spending untold taxpayer dollars providing a SWAT team to “protect” Patel’s girlfriend, Weymouth’s own Alexis Wilkins, when she engages in risky public acts like getting her hair done.

Even more recently, after Saturday’s attack, Trump insulted CBS’s Norah O’Donnell and questioned her professionalism, calling her a “disgrace” for asking a question about the gunman’s manifesto.

If you’re noticing a pattern here, Trump really doesn’t like women journalists who question him.

I could go on — and I haven’t even mentioned the shakedowns of all the networks, and Trump using his influence so Edward R. Murrow’s storied CBS News becomes more like Fox News Lite — but you get the point. 

And yet, Trump’s press secretary stood before journalists after Saturday’s attack and claimed, with a straight face, that the leftist press and Democrats are responsible for the violent rhetoric that leads to attacks like the one at the Washington Hilton.

So what did the Washington press corps think was going to happen when it gave Trump a platform at its shindig?

Did they think he would have some Jeffersonian conversion, pronouncing that if given the choice between a government without journalism or journalism without government, he would choose the latter?

Thomas Jefferson believed strongly in the idea of a free press that would act as a watchdog against government corruption and overreach.

Trump hates a free press for those very same reasons. He doesn’t want the public to know about his cons, about him using government to enrich his family and his cronies. He can’t stand the idea of the press, or anyone, questioning his judgment, or pointing out the folly of his ways, about him starting a needless war when he ran for president claiming he would never start a needless war.

Trump resembles not Thomas Jefferson, but George Jefferson, the TV character who hated everyone and everything. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest Trump is more familiar with George Jefferson than Thomas Jefferson.

Why give Trump a platform to spew his fascist hatred of a robust, free press?….

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Extremism, Fake News, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Trump

Trump’s Tenuous Relationship to Reality

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2026 //
3

Brian Stelter writes “Reliable Sources” for CNN. He is a reliable source himself.

In the second part of the article, watch Trump’s response to a question he doesn’t want to answer. Trump is predictable: he says “I hadn’t heard about that” or he changes the subject. In this case, he changes the subject or pretends he didn’t hear the question.

He wrote today:

Trump vs. Fox polls

Every so often, an hour of television showcases President Trump‘s reliance on “alternative facts” and his supporters’ reluctance to tell him the truth.

Fox‘s “The Five” was that hour of TV yesterday. Trump called into the show and claimed that real polls about his meager approval rating are “fake.” He said that liberal co-host Jessica Tarlov, who was absent from the segment, “uses fake numbers. She’ll give, ‘Well, he’s only polling 42%.’ That’s not right. I’m polling very high, actually.”

That was at 5:29 p.m. At 6 p.m., Fox released a new national poll showing Trump’s approval rating stands at 41%. 

“That’s down two points from a month ago and eight points from a year ago,” Jacqui Heinrich said on “Special Report.”

Of course, many Fox fans trust Trump over Fox’s reporters and pollsters. And Trump has a long history of attacking the Fox polling unit and denying statistical reality. When he complained yesterday about real polls — “I hate people that use fake polls because polls are just like bad journalists. You know, bad journalists, they write fake stories, well, fake polls do damage also” — no one on “The Five” interjected.

Too bad Tarlov wasn’t there. “Was so bummed to miss the show today!” she wrote on X. “But I definitely would’ve said he’s even inflating his numbers to 42%!”

When Bret Baier asked House Speaker Mike Johnson about the poll’s findings, Baier said, “The president doesn’t love Fox News polls, but these polls track with others.” He showed this graphic 👇🏻 and said the “tough numbers” are “real,” and Johnson concurred, “They’re real.”

Another peculiar moment from ‘The Five’ chat…

What the president believes — and where he gets his information, even about his popularity — has heightened relevance in wartime. Wednesday’s NBC News story about Trump watching a rah-rah daily video montage about the Iran war is continuing to get picked up for that reason. NBC said the highlight reel has raised concerns among allies “that he may not be receiving the complete picture of the war.”

I thought “Pod Save America” co-host Tommy Vietor was joking when he summed up another moment from “The Five” this way: “Dana Perino asks Trump how the Iranian people are doing in the midst of this horrible war. He responds that he remembers having lunch with Dana years ago, and piothat she looks hotter now.” 

But Vietor was simply summarizing what actually happened. Perino asked, “Do they have drinking water? Do they have food? It’s upsetting.”

Trump said, “I do” have insight about that, “but first, do you remember when we had lunch years ago in the base of Trump Tower… You haven’t changed. You have not changed. Now, I’m not allowed to say this, it’s the end of my political career, but you may be even better looking [now], okay. I don’t know what you’re doing…”

Trump did not circle back to Perino’s humanitarian concerns. But he did invoke gruesome scenes of Iranian protesters being “women being shot right between the eyes” and people “bleeding from the brain badly.” Then he somehow came back around to Fox and started complimenting “Fox & Friends”and Maria Bartiromo.

“You have so many great people,” he exclaimed. “A couple of bad ones, but you can’t have everything.”

Categories Fake News, Lies, Trump
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