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A New Declaration of Independence by an Angry Citizen: NO KINGS!

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2026 //
6

Donald Trump’s serial depredations and violations of the law and Constitution inspired a retired educator to write a new Declaration of Indepence, tailored to a new age.

He wrote as follows:

Whereas the people of these United States of America have given their lives in defense of our country, let not the federal usurper attempt to crown himself king and return to the time of George III.

Our populace will rise up and demand a return to the rule of law and civil discourse on issues confronting us. Have no kingly proclamations discourage us from following the traditions and norms of our 249 years. We do not live in the time of the divine right of kings. Our government derives from the will of the people and our rights cannot be dissolved by a false monarch. The strength of our democracy always lies with the hopes of our populace.

In all of our country’s existence we have never faced such an evil. We are not accustomed to a fraud who would besmirch our constitution and attempt to rule with his own pronouncements. He has divided us into many differing camps and beliefs with his lies that he will continue to separate us.

His claims that we are being invaded by groups of nefarious cutthroats that are bent on taking over our country are untrue. He will then be able to declare martial law and use all of the levers of government to suppress all protest activities. Now is the time for all good men and women to come to the aid of their country.

He has not complied with the laws and disregards our judiciary.

He has enriched himself by accepting emoluments from foreign countries, princes and oligarchs.

He has deliberately favored states that voted for him and disavowed those who did not.

He has supported taxes that would enrich the wealthy and deprive the poor.

He has endeavored to make judges bend to his will.

He has plundered our economy and dissolved our relationship with our allies.

He has abducted our people in public places- schools, places of worship, and public buildings.

He has threatened our institutions of higher learning if they did not bend to his will.

He has erected a multitude of new offices in the federal government to dispose of thousands of dedicated public servants.

He has restricted the entry into our country of the brightest young people in the world.

He has aligned himself with our enemies and supports their tyranny.

He has installed a health secretary who is destroying our health system and our capability to do health research.

He has encouraged and pardoned 1500 people who tried to overthrow our government.

His sycophants mock our populace and threaten to jail them if they are not compliant with his wishes.

He is, at this time, transporting armies of masked hoodlums to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty, perfidy, scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy as the head of a civilized nation.

At every stage of these oppressions, we have petitioned for redress of these grievances. We have asked in a most civilized manner. Our petitions have been answered in only the most desultory and vengeful actions. A president whose character is marked by every act which may define a tyrant is not fit to be the leader of our country.

We have been warning our legislative representatives of the danger of these usurpations. They are fearful of his retributions both political and personal. We have entered the justice system in the highest court of the land to create estoppel. Their decisions do not seem to impede the leader’s desire to remake our democracy into an autocracy. The monied interests have formed a choral group for the president. Their support and their largesse have given him impetus to continue his cruelty. No inhabitants of our land are safe from his reach. Children of any age have felt his sting and have been spirited away.

We, therefore, the people of the United States of America, in Assembly, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, and the populace, solemnly publish and declare, that these United States of America are and have a right that our allegiance to the current regime will be absolved if the governing bodies of our federal legislature refuse to restrain the president from his policy of revenge and destruction of our country. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Attest.

Signed by Order and in behalf of the American People

Charles Bryson

                                                                             Jeremiah Foyle

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, History, Resistance, Trump

“Trump is a Malignant Narcissist”

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2026 //
40

Dr. John Gartner has been warning the public about Donald Trump since 2015.

Not enough people heard him.

Trump’s MAGA base became obsessed with him because they thought he was a strong man. They were impressed that he was a billionaire, a very successful businessman who had achieved financial success because of his brilliance. Even better, this billionaire expressed their grievances. He was on their side. Like Trump, his followers believed that the rest of the world was cheating them, treating them unfairly.

Many evangelical Christians believed that Trump was God’s instrument, the one who would end abortion and make America a Christian nation. Those who hated blacks and immigrants, who believed that these groups were stealing their jobs and destroying their white Christian homeland, thrilled to his rhetoric about ending DEI and getting rid of immigrants.

They were willing to overlook his moral flaws because they believed his promises. He was the ultimate film-flam man, the carnival barker who could sell ice to Eskimos. There was a time when divorce or even infidelity could ruin a man’s chances to be president. Not any more. Trump was forgiven his undisguised lust and sexual escapades. His MAGA cult didn’t care that he had been married three times. They didn’t care that he slept with other women while he was married. Strong men did that. They weren’t bothered by his boast that he could have any woman he wanted by simply grabbing their private parts.

The fact that he was a close friend–maybe even the best friend–of the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein did not disillusion his fanatical followers. None of that dimmed their adoration for Trump. If Trump said he knew nothing about Epstein’s activities, that was good enough for the cult.

If he was a philanderer and a sexual predator, well, that just proved that he was a strong man, untouched by political correctness.

They believed he was a brilliant businessman because they saw him on “The Apprentice,” playing a brilliant businessman. Having that deeply rooted belief in his business success, they refused to believe that he had gone bankrupt six times.

His image as a strong man impressed both men and women who longed for a rough, tough guy in the White House. Nothing he did, nothing he said, no vulgarity that he uttered, could dissuade them from their idolatry. No matter how many times they heard that Trump had dodged the draft six times by presenting a letter from a podiatrist claiming he suffered from bone spurs, they simply didn’t believe it.

When Trump’s former Chief of Staff John Kelly, who had been a Marine general, said that Trump had called fallen service members “suckers” and “losers,” Trump denied it, and his devoted followers believed him.

His MAGA base believed that Trump was sent by Jesus to lead them, to protect their gun rights and stop abortion. He alone would save them from the others. He cared about them.

Trump’s rise to the Presidency is an amazing riches-to-riches story. I have lived in New York City since 1960, with a one-year detour in Georgia (when my then-husband was called to active duty after the Berlin Wall crisis) and a sojourn in D.C. from 1993-1994 (first as Assistant Secretary of Education in the George H.W. Bush administration, then as a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution).

During the 1980s, the 1990s, and until he annnounced his entry into the Republican presidential campaign in 2015, Trump was viewed as a clown by leaders of the business community. They laughed at him. They knew he was not a successful businessman. It was no secret that he frequently didn’t pay his bills and that banks would not finance his deals.

Trump achieved notoriety as a playboy who took beautiful women to high-end nightclubs. He made sure to get his name in the gossip columns by calling them, pretending to be his own publicist, and giving out the details of where he was seen and which gorgeous woman was with him.

After other banks refused to deal with Trump, he established a relationship with Deutsche Bank, which was documented in 2019 by David Enrich in The New York Times.

In 2003, he borrowed money from Deutsche Bank to pay off loans he owed for his failing casinos. However, “Mr. Trump’s company defaulted in 2004, leaving Deutsche Bank’s clients with deep losses. The bank’s investment division that sold the bonds vowed to not do business again with Mr. Trump.

A year later, though, Mr. Trump approached another part of the investment division for a $640 million loan to build a skyscraper in Chicago. It made the loan — and in 2008, Mr. Trump defaulted and sued Deutsche Bank. That prompted the whole investment division to sever ties with Mr. Trump.

And then, three years after his previous default, Deutsche Bank started lending to him again, this time through the private-banking division that catered to the superrich. In fact, it lent Mr. Trump money that he used to repay what he still owed Deutsche Bank’s investment division for the Chicago loan.

One of Trump’s most successful ventures was selling apartments to wealthy Russians. He got the riches he longed for by selling condos at very high prices to Russian gangsters and oligarchs who needed to “launder” money from their various enterprises.

Craig Unger wrote about Trump and his “Russian laundromat” in The New Republic in 2017.

The magazine, knowing of Trump’s extreme litigiousness, preceded the article with this disclaimer:

The questions began the moment Donald Trump announced his candidacy for president in 2015: What were the extent of his financial ties with Russia, and was he compromised? While some on the left conjectured wildly that Trump was a Russian “asset,” Craig Unger did the hard work of connecting the dots—while resisting the temptation to overreach. “To date, no one has documented that Trump was even aware of any suspicious entanglements in his far-flung businesses, let alone that he was directly compromised by the Russian mafia or the corrupt oligarchs who are closely allied with the Kremlin. So far, when it comes to Trump’s ties to Russia, there is no smoking gun,” he wrote. And yet, there was a lot of smoke in the public record showing that “Trump owes much of his business success, and by extension his presidency, to a flow of highly suspicious money from Russia.” Trump may have simply been “a convenient patsy for Russian oligarchs and mobsters” and “an easy ‘mark’ for anyone looking to launder money.” But there’s no question that the trail of dirty money from Russia to Trump is long and wide—and no doubt continuing to this day.

—Ryan Kearney, executive editor, The New Republic

When he descended the escalator at Trump Tower in 2015 to announce that he was running for President, those who knew his history thought it was a joke. The Huffington Post announced that it would not cover his campaign because he was not a serious candidate.

He won in 2016 because FBI Director James Comey announced that he was reopening an investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails, only days before the election. A few days later, the investigation was closed. But the damage was done.

A cult was born and Trump continued to burnish his image as a savior and a man of strength.

Historians will sort this out in years to come. And we will know someday whether the nation can recover from the damage he has done to our institutions, our institutions of education, the rule of law, the career civil service, scientific research, the environment, and our international alliances. Whatever he touched has made him wealthier and impoverished our ideals and our standing in the world.

Categories Bigotry, Character, Evil, Fascism, Trump

International Report: Democracy in the USA is in Jeopardy

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2026 //
2

The Department of Political Science at the University of Gothenburg in Gothenburg, Sweden, publishes an annual report on the state of democracy around the world. In the recently published report, the authors made clear that democracy in the world is in retreat. Nowhere has it declined as dramatically as in the United States.

A special section of the report is focused on the United States. Under Trump, democracy in the USA is under attack. The President has centralized power in his office. The Republican-dominated Congress has ceded almost all of its Constitutional powers to Trump. The word “almost” may be an overstatement, as it’s difficult to remember an issue when Congress said no to a Presidential power grab.

The V-DEM report begins its special section about the “autocratization” of power in the United States:

*Under Trump’s presidency, the level of democracy in the USA has fallen back to the same level as in 1965.

Yet the situation is fundamentally different than during the Civil Rights era. In 2025, the derailment of democracy is marked by executive overreach undermining the rule of law, along with far-reaching suppression and intimidation of media and dissenting voices.

*The speed with which American democracy is currently dismantled is unprecedented in modern history.

*Legislative Constraints – the worst affected aspect of democracy – is losing one-third of its value in 2025 and reaching its lowest point in over 100 years.

*Civil Rights and Equality before the Law are also rapidly declining, falling to late 1960s levels.

*Freedom of Expression is now at its lowest level since the end of WWII.

*Electoral components of democracy remain stable. Election-specific indicators are re-assessed only in electoral years, and the 2025 scores are based on the quality of the 2024 elections.

The scale and speed of autocratization under the Trump administration are unprecedented in modern times. Within one year, the USA’s LDI score has declined by 24%; its world rank dropped from 20th to 51st place out of 179 nations. The level of democracy on the LDI is dwindling to 1965 level – the year that most regard as the start of a real, modern democracy in the USA.

Yet the deficiencies of American democracy today are fundamentally different from that of the Civil Rights era. As the V-Dem data and other evidence below show, the autocratization now is marked by executive overreach, alongside attacks on the press, academia, civilliberties, and dissenting voices.

The Most Dramatic Decline in American History

In 2023, the USA scored 0.79 on the LDI – shortly before the 2024 election year when first deteriorations were registered. The scores plummeted to 0.57 in 2025 (Figure 22). With such a sharp drop on the LDI, the level of democracy at the end of 2025 is back to the 1965 level. Symbolically, that is the year that most analysts consider the USA began its transition to a real democracy.

Democracy in the USA is now at its worst in 60 years. We are not alone in this assessment. Professor Steven Levitsky at Harvard University says the regime in the USA is now some type of authoritarianism. The Century Foundation argues that “American democracy is already collapsing…”

By magnitude of decline on the LDI, the 2025 plunge is the largest one-year drop in American history going back to 1789 – that is, in the entire period covered by V-Dem data. Only Trump 1.0 compares, when the LDI in the USA fell from 0.85 to 0.73 in four years, bringing the country back to its 1976 level and far below the regional average (Figure 22). American democracy survived Trump 1.0 but did not recover fully.

One notable shift is the transformation of the Republican Party to endorsing a far-right, nationalist, and anti-pluralist agenda. Nationalist, anti-liberal, far-right parties and leaders have largely driven the “third waveof autocratization.” Yet the USA stands out as the only case where such movement seized control over one party in a rigid two-party system.

Please open the link and read the report to review the sources and to understand how dramatically democracy has been undercut during the first year of Trump’s second term.

The Founding Fathers thought they had written a Constitution that would prevent the rise of tyranny. They were wrong.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Environment, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, For-Profit, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, Health, Privatization, Separation of church and state, Trump

Jennifer Rubin: The Republican Crack-Up

By dianeravitch
March 26, 2026 //
4

Jennifer Rubin was a columnist for The Washington Post who departed when publisher Jeff Bezos bent his knee to Trump. Rubin, a journalist and lawyer, knows that Trump is a dangerous demagogue. She says in this piece that Republicans complain privately about Trump but refuse to stand up to him. They will pay for their cowardice in November, as they have in every special election since Trump returned.

Silence is complicity.

Rubin founded The Contrarian, an immensely popular blog, where this article appeared.

She wrote:

Republicans made a calculated bet that by indulging Donald Trump’s ill-conceived and cruel schemes (e.g., unleashing ICE on cities, tariffs, wars with Venezuela and Iran, slashing healthcare to pay for tax cuts for the rich), the country would somehow stumble through. They figured congressional Republicans would share in any successes but somehow avoid any blame when things (inevitably) went haywire. Politics rarely works out that way.

(Credit: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson)

Through Trump’s Iran War, shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, futile effort to pass a Jim Crow-style voter suppression act (the so-called SAVE Act), and inflation-aggravating tariff scheme, Republicans are discovering they are tied at the hip with Trump. Refusing to deviate from his dictates, they will bear the brunt of his serial failures.

Whether the Iran War ends this month or months from now, Republicans cannot escape responsibility for the massive expenditure of taxpayer dollars, loss of life, rise in energy costs, regional instability, and damage to alliances Trump has wrought. Congressional Republicans refused to invoke the War Powers Act — or even to conduct meaningful oversight hearings — and applauded a senseless, unconstitutional war. Now they seem prepared to rubber-stamp a preposterous demand for $200B more in war spending. Republicans will have no place to hide come November when voters come looking for politicians to blame.

The latest CBS/You Gov poll has nothing but horrendous news for the Iran war cheerleaders: 90 percent say the war will make gas prices higher in the short term, 58 percent over the long term; 63 percent predict it will weaken the economy (a plurality assume we will be in a recession); a plurality of 49 percent think the war makes us less safe; and 57 percent say the war is going badly. Some 62 percent disapprove of how Trump is handling the war. Perhaps Republicans should have fulfilled their constitutional obligations rather than contenting themselves with sitting on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, Trump’s web of lies about immigrants and voting fraud have entangled him and Republicans in a political knot. Trump’s lie about mass voting fraud drove him to insist on the unpassable voter suppression SAVE Act. He then made that a precondition for any deal to resume DHS funding. Even to Republicans, this made no sense.

When Senator John Thune (R-SD) initially recommended that Trump agree to Democrats’ proposal to pass a DHS funding bill that would pay for TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard (leaving ICE funding for later negotiations), Trump rebuffed him. By Monday night, however, Trump was considering a deal to do just that, namely to fund the rest of DHS and handle funding for ICE in reconciliation.

What happened between his refusal to relent on funding and his capitulation? Trump trotted out another senseless and entirely performative maneuver: deploying ICE to airports. ICE agents, untrained for any TSA duties, stood around with virtually nothing to do (reminding one of the National Guard deployed to D.C., who largely loiter around metro stations). This underscores Republicans’ responsibility for bollixing up air travel, Trump’s feebleness in resolving messes of his own making, and the dangerous transformation of ICE into a roving street militia Trump deploys to intimidate and harass Americans.

All the ICE/airport stunt accomplished was to trigger a robust blowback from Democrats and civil society groups, demonstrating once again Trump’s talent in supercharging the Resistance. Deploring Trump’s use of ICE as his “personal dystopian police force,” Public Citizen observed: “The confluence of authoritarian overreach of this moment is striking.” The ACLU likewise condemned using ICE at airports “despite their lack of training for airport security and interactions, and their clear track record of abusing their power, including through using excessive force against citizens and immigrants alike.” (Unsurprisingly, this venture, the ACLU noted, was the first time a president “sent armed ICE agents to airports to replace trained security agents and instill fear in families and other travelers.”)

Trump’s compounding calamities have fractured Republicans internally. Cultists demand perfect fidelity to Trump on the war abroad and bullying at home; others fret that a war betrays their America First ideology and the SAVE Act is a legislative cul-de-sac that now compounds the DHS shutdown disaster. (MAGA provocateur Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has become a chief enabler of Trump’s destructive schemes, “sparking a wave of mostly private animosity from GOP colleagues who believe his plan to push through legislation overhauling how federal elections are conducted is ill-conceived and potentially harmful to the party’s chances in the midterms,” Politico reports.)

Republicans fret privately that the Trump reign of chaos, coupled with the highly unpopular war, spells doom for them in November. One is tempted to ask about the private Republican hand-wringing: 

What did Republicans think would happen when they fully empowered a delusional narcissist, one who is so clearly ignorant of government and keen to pursue his own wealth and power, the country be damned?

Some dim-witted MAGA Republicans remain true believers and actually think Trump’s antics will pay off. Others know Trump is nuts and recognize the party is headed for disaster, but lack the courage to say so. They are banking that they will survive the blue wave coming in November to fight another day. Their lack of patriotism may be galling, but their self-preservation strategy looks increasingly daft.

The damage Trump and his flunkies have inflicted on our democracy will reverberate for years to come. American families may take years to recover from the economic hits. It is a small consolation that MAGA lawmakers and right-wing media stooges, who have chosen the route of cowardly compliance over constitutional duty and self-serving propaganda over truth-telling, will shoulder much of the blame. History in the long run and voters in the near term will hold Republicans fully accountable for the blunders they countenanced.

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Categories Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Republicans, Shame, Trump

Russia: Putin Defender Turns Against Him

By dianeravitch
March 19, 2026 //
30

Former KGB agent Vladimir Putin was hand-picked by Boris Yeltsin as his successor. Yeltsin was a drunk, and he miscalculated badly in picking Putin. Instead of building democratic norms and institutions, Putin embarked on a long-term plan to restore the USSR. After serving as president of Russia from 2000-2008, he was succeeded by a puppet (Dimitri Medvedev), then resumed the presidency in 2012. The national legislature extended his term to 2036. Anyone who seriously threatens him ends up in prison or dead.

In a startling development, one of Putin’s most strident sycophants abruptly turned against him. Ilya Remeslo, a lawyer, was known as a reliable lapdog for Putin. He regularly testified in trials against Alexei Navalny.

Pjotr Sauer wrote in The Guardian:

For years, Ilya Remeslo was a reliable pro-Kremlin operator, going after critics of the regime and smearing independent journalists, bloggers and opposition politicians.

Then the 42-year-old lawyer abruptly turned on the country’s most powerful man. Late on Tuesday, Remeslo posted a manifesto to his 90,000 Telegram followers titled: “Five reasons why I stopped supporting Vladimir Putin.”

In it, he accused the “illegitimate” Russian president of waging a “failing war” in Ukraine that had caused millions of casualties and wrecked the economy, and argued that Putin’s more than two decades in power illustrated how “absolute power corrupts”, calling on him to step aside….

Doubling down on his earlier remarks, he told the Guardian on Wednesday from his flat in St Petersburg: “Vladimir Putin should resign and be put on trial as a war criminal. His personalised, corrupt system is doomed to collapse, as we’re seeing now with the war in Ukraine and elsewhere.

“The army isn’t advancing in Ukraine, and the war is going nowhere. There are massive losses. We are fighting over tiny territories that will ultimately give Russia nothing.”

He went on to criticise Putin’s authoritarian rule, the state of the economy and Moscow’s recent push to shut down internet access. “This man [Putin] has destroyed everything he could lay his hands on. The country is literally falling apart,” Remeslo said.

Please open the link and finish reading this fascinating article.

Categories Corruption, Democracy, Evil, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, International

Press Freedom? What?

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2026 //
3

Brendan Carr, selected as chairman of the Federal Communications Conmission, threatened to revoke the licenses of stations that were too negative in their coverage of the war in Iran.

Ann Telnaes was an editorial cartoonist for The Washington Post. She drew a cartoon showing billionaires bowing down to Trump. One of them was Jeff Bezos, owner of the Post. Her editor wouldn’t publish her cartoon. She resigned.

She now has her own blog on Substack where she is never censored.

It’s not the public interest Carr cares about

The FCC Chairman wants to make the boss happy

ANN TELNAES

Trump wants propaganda, not news coverage of his war and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr is making threats to get it. 

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Media, Trump

FCC Chair Threatens to Revoke Licenses of Broadcasters that Express Negative War Coversge

By dianeravitch
March 15, 2026 //
9

In a startling attack on freedom of the press, Brendan Carr–chairman of the Federal Communications Commission–threatened to revoke the licenses of broadcasters whose coverage of the war on Iran is negative. With Trump ally, the billionaire Ellison family, buying control of CBS and CNN, Carr’s threat is ominous. One of the first steps of fascist leaders is to gain control of or silence the media.

The job of the media in a democracy is to inform the public, not to serve as a propaganda arm of the government.

Clarissa-Jan Lim of MS NOW reported:

President Donald Trump’s Federal Communications Commission chairman is threatening to revoke the licenses of news broadcasters over their coverage of the Iran war.

Brendan Carr, the head of the agency, warned broadcast news organizations on Saturday to “correct course,” following the president’s rants over news coverage of his war with Iran, including stories about U.S. aircraft tankers sustaining damage in a strike.

“Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions – also known as the fake news – have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up,” Carr said in a post on X, without naming any media outlets. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”

The FCC did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.

Carr referenced a Truth Social post from Trump Saturday morning denying reports that five U.S. Air Force refueling planes were struck at a military base in Saudi Arabia. Trump directed his screed at the The Wall Street Journal, which first reported the news, The New York Times and “other Lowlife ‘Papers’ and Media,” claiming they “actually want us to lose the War.”

In his own social media post later in the day, Carr pointed to Trump’s 2024 election win as an example of the lack of trust in the media from the American people.

“When a political candidate is able to win a landslide election victory after in the face of hoaxes and distortions, there is something very wrong,” the FCC chairman said. [Editor’s note: Trump did not win a landslide victory in 2024. Trump won 49.8% of the popular vote, while Harris won 48.3%.]

Carr’s threat was met with immediate blowback from free speech advocates and political figures. 

California Gov. Gavin Newsom called the threat “flagrantly unconstitutional.” Former Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a frequent Trump critic on the right, condemned it as “unacceptable and unamerican.”

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a First Amendment advocacy group, called Carr’s statement an “authoritarian warning,” adding, “Again and again, Carr’s tenure as FCC chairman has been marked by his shameless willingness to bully and threaten our free press. But even by Carr’s standards, today’s hypocrisy is shocking — and dangerous….”

Carr, an author of Project 2025 whom Trump hand-picked to run the FCC, has sought to use his powerful position to bend media outlets — and late-night talk show hosts — to the Trump administration’s will. Under his watch, the FCC has opened investigations into multiple news outlets and threatened to strip the licenses of broadcasting companies deemed to have covered the administration and the president unfavorably.

But his latest missive took the administration’s assault on what the president routinely calls the “fake news” a step further. Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said in an X post, “This is a clear directive to provide positive war coverage or else licenses may not be renewed. This is worse than the comedian stuff, and by a lot. The stakes here are much higher. He’s not talking about late night shows, he’s talking about how a war is covered.”

Trump and members of his administration have repeatedly bemoaned the media coverage of the war. Earlier this month, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accused the press of being too focused on American troops’ deaths than the military’s successes.

“But when a few drones get through or tragic things happen, it’s front-page news,” Hegseth said. “I get it; the press only wants to make the president look bad. But try for once to report the reality.”

He again criticized the press on Friday for reporting on the economic fallout of the war.

“Some in this crew, in the press, just can’t stop,” he said.

Late on Friday night, Trump railed against coverage of the war, saying on Truth Social: “The Fake News Media hates to report how well the United States Military has done against Iran.”

Categories Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Propaganda, Trump

When a U.S. Citizen Was Wrongly Arrested by ICE…

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2026 //
21

This story could be told again and again. George Reyes was on his way to work. He is a citizen and a veteran. ICE agents stopped his vehicle, smashed his windshield, dragged him away, and jailed him for three days.

This should not happen in our nation.

Retes wrote:

The author being detained by federal agents on July 10 / Credit: Blake Fagan via AFP

“A body of men holding themselves accountable to nobody ought not to be trusted by anybody.” – Thomas Paine

By George Retes

Last Wednesday, February 18, I officially launched my lawsuit against the federal government. For me, this was something that felt like it was never going to happen. Not because I didn’t want to or because I was afraid, but because I thought that was just the way the law works when you’re trying to hold federal officials—and the government that employs them—accountable for violating someone’s rights.

On July 10, 2025, I was driving to my job as a security guard at a licensed farm in Camarillo, CA. Federal immigration agents were lined across the road that led to the farm I worked at. I clearly stated my citizenship and fully complied with officers, even though they were all yelling contradictory orders and no one was clearly in charge. Yet, despite doing everything right, I was detained and treated as if I had no rights. Agents engulfed my car with tear gas, smashed my window, sprayed pepper spray in my face, and dragged me out. I was choking on gas, unable to breathe, and even though I wasn’t resisting, I had one agent kneeling on my back and another kneeling on my neck while my hands were already behind my back.

I was first taken to a Navy base, where the agents took my fingerprints, picture, and swabbed my DNA. I was then taken off the base to a detention center and held for three days without charges. No phone call. No lawyer. No medical care, even though my skin burned from the chemicals. I never even got to shower. Friday morning, I was put on suicide watch, which means they put me in a yellow concrete room with a concrete bed and tiny mattress on top. They left the light on 24/7. I was in a hospital gown, and a guard watched me. I was in those conditions from Friday morning to the point I was released. I was released with zero charges and no explanation for anything that happened.

After my release, the harm did not stop. Instead of correcting the record, officials from DHS, specifically DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, used social media to spread false and misleading statements about me, in an attempt to justify my detention and undermine my credibility.

I was wrongfully detained and then publicly misrepresented by the very agency that violated my rights. That is not transparency. That is damage control at the expense of the truth. And since they only respond through social media, I would like to ask them to answer these questions, not only to me, but to the world: Why didn’t I ever get a phone call? Or a shower? Or a lawyer? If your accusations are true, why was I released without charges?

Under a law called the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), a person filing a lawsuit against the government must wait six months before they are even allowed to file suit. And even after all that, the chances of actually prevailing in your lawsuit are very low because of the so-called “discretionary function immunity” that the federal government gets. It is even harder to sue federal officials individually. Not because the court system is defending this, but because there is no clear law that allows people to sue individual federal officials for violating their rights.

There is another law that’s sadly relevant here: 42 USC 1983. As my attorneys wrote in Bloomberg Law, Section 1983 “allows constitutional claims to be brought against those acting under color of state law.” But, if, instead, an official is acting under color of federal law (which generally means an official working for the federal government), the result is “near-complete immunity from conventional lawsuits.”

All of that could be easily fixed by Congress. All Congress would have to do is amend the law to allow us to hold federal officials accountable for violating someone’s rights. The law already does this for state officials, so this change would be an easy fix that would hold all law enforcement to the same standards, implying that no one, no matter the badge, is above the law.

This week, I attended the State of the Union as a guest of Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.). I was honored and extremely grateful for the opportunity. Never did I think I would be in this situation, surrounded by these people, and yet here I was. By attending, I was a living reminder of government overreach and how it has impacted so many people, contrary to this administration’s claims that they are only going after “the worst of the worst.” I listened as the president painted DHS’s actions as appropriate simply because we need to fix the border issue. But this characterization is not true. This is not immigration enforcement; it’s madness.

When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.

I’m fully aware that my lawsuit might fail; that the world might look at my story and choose to just move on; that the federal officials who did this to me might get off scot-free. But there’s another future possible here: one where we succeed in court, where people choose not to look away, where federal agents can’t unjustifiably detain a US citizen with impunity. That’s the future I choose to believe in, and the one I’m fighting to make real—not only for myself, but for every single person in this country.

What happened to me is not about politics. It is not about immigration policy. And it is not about one bad decision made in a chaotic moment. It is about power without accountability. If a US citizen, an Army veteran, someone who complied with officers’ directions, identified himself, and broke no law, can be treated this way—detained without charges, denied basic rights, physically restrained, and then publicly smeared to justify it—then no one in this country is as safe as they believe they are.

The Constitution does not only apply when it is convenient. Civil rights do not disappear because an agency makes a mistake. And truth does not stop mattering because it is uncomfortable. I am asking for accountability and my day in court, not just for myself, but for everyone who does not have a platform, a lawyer, or the ability to stand in front of you and tell their story. Because if this can happen to me, it can happen to anyone.

The measure of this country is not whether we admit when we are wrong, but whether we are willing to correct it.

George Retes is a US citizen and Army veteran who served in Iraq and was jailed by ICE and held for three days without an explanation.

Categories Accountability, Citizenship, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Timothy Snyder: Apocalypse Now, a Satire

By dianeravitch
February 27, 2026 //
3

Timothy Snyder left his endowed professorship at Yale University and is now ensconced at the University of Toronto, where he holds the inaugural Chair in Modern European History at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. Snyder is known for his many books about European history.

After Trump’s long and tedious State of the Union speech, Snyder wrote this satirical description of a Cabinet meeting.

He begins:

Donald Trump, president of the United States. “Calling this meeting to order. That was a long speech that I just gave. State of the Union. Long speech. Not going to stand up and do that again next year. So let’s hear it. Plans to make sure I don’t have to. Plans to end the United States by a year from now. Around the table. Go. Start us off, Linda.”

Linda McMahon, Education. “Thank you, sir. Nothing is more important for the country than public schools. So we are destroying them by directing tax money away from public school parents and towards private education scams.”

Russ Vought, Management and Budget. “The republic depends on its institutions. As you know, sir, we are wrecking our civil service by firing those who are qualified and replacing them with political hacks. I don’t want to overstate my case, sir, but these are not just normal hacks. They are hackety-hacks, sir. They will use what remains of the government to hasten the process of its destruction. Hackety-hack, sir.”

Trump. “Good. Hack. Good. But maybe something faster.”

Scott Bessent, Treasury. “A government works on the basis of tax revenue. From the beginning of your administration, sir, we have been overseeing a shift whereby people who actually have the money won’t pay any taxes. Indeed, our oligarchs will be the happy recipients of whatever tax money we can scrape up from the middle and working classes. This wealth shift from the population at large to the wealthy few is inconsistent with the survival of a republic. This will help speed along the change Russ is talking about.”

Howard Lutnick, Commerce. “And there’s a next step, if I may, sir. When we empower the oligarchs they can help us. Big tax cuts make them happy and destructive. The endgame here, sir, is to have billionaires control extraterritorial zones, like Epstein Island, a place that I know well, but without any fear of taxation or any other form of government control. These little fiefs then replace the United States. This is the scenario and I do think we can bring it home within a year.”

Pam Bondi, Attorney General. “And a republic is based upon law. This is where Justice comes in. We can ruin law in a number of ways, such as investigating the people we ourselves murdered, or persecuting your personal enemies. A good way to kill our Constitution is to protect pedophile oligarchs, such as yourself, sir. I was attorney general in Florida while Epstein pioneered our future, sir, and I can see this through on a national scale. We can make this Epstein World, sir.”

Trump. “I like it. But that’s familiar stuff. I mean I live there now, right. Let’s see some movement. How about some color.”

silhouette of building under orange clouds

RFK Jr, Health and Human Services. “There was a lot of color in the middle ages, sir. Our freedom and security are based on modern vaccinations and hygiene. We undo all of that and promote epidemics. We see good results already in Texas and South Carolina. Not just people dying but babies and children getting really colorful diseases like encephalitis. By the way, this also opens up wellness markets for the people Howard and Scott are talking about. It takes people a while to die and there is money to be made there.”

Doug Burgum, Interior. “I may have something even more basic than that, sir. Everything we know about human history indicates that rapid changes in climate can bring down whole civilizations. We are deliberately engineering one of those. By suppressing green energy we can generate rapid global warming and make human life unsustainable. And along the way we get that color. People turning against each other, guns out until we run out of ammunition, then clubs, starvation, the works, a real spectacle. And, as Bobby says, disease. Very colorful, sir.”

Lee Zeldin, Environmental Protection. “And, if I may add, sir, our campaign to fry the species gives us all good practice in telling big lies, which are needed for all of these plans. Also, the billionaires will be fine on their islands when all of this happens.”

Trump. “OK, that’s colorful, I get it, but I want something with bad guys. Like a movie. The warming thing doesn’t work as a movie. Do you remember The Day After Tomorrow. I don’t remember the Day After Tomorrow. I want enemies. Bad guys who win.”

Marco Rubio, State. “I can help there. You are right, sir, that a republic to survive has to defend itself against autocratic enemies. So we empower the autocrats in China and Russia. We break the international system that held them back. We prop up Moscow in Ukraine and we give Beijing our most sensitive technology, ideally by way of middlemen who enrich you, sir, personally. If I may say so, sir, your friends and family have been very helpful in all of this.”

Tulsi Gabbard, National Intelligence. “Intelligence is the eyes and ears of our republic, sir, and we want these eyes and ears to be penetrated by foreigners who wish for us to fail and die. So we have liftedour cyber-defenses and announced that we have done so. If I may add, sir, both Russia and China support your incredible leadership in their information ops. It’s as though we all want the same thing. I see it every day and it’s beautiful. Spirit of Aloha. We say hello and they say goodbye…”

Kristi Noem, Homeland Security. “Without disagreeing with any of that, I just wanted to add that a republic exists because people believe they belong to a single nation. So the most direct way to kill our republic is a civil war. This almost worked the last time; this time we are getting the federal government behind white supremacy. We are creating a giant national secret police force in order to invade cities and force a conflict.”

Pete Hegseth, Defense. “Kristi is right. The war we can win is against Americans. And now that we are bringing unsupervised AI to direct our weapons, we won’t have to start it ourselves. It will be automated, we just watch from those safe islands. You see, sir? Movies. Terminators. Squiddies. Remember Wargames, sir, shall we play a game? AI likes nuclear war, it will recommend it 95% of the time. Get me into a conventional war, I lose it quickly, and boom. That would save you from having to give the speech, sir.”

Trump. “I like it. No long speeches. No Union. Steal what we can and burn the rest. Or burn first and then steal? Works either way. Steal, burn. Either way. Burn, steal. To help out I will just be me. Steal, burn. Me. Burn, steal. Me.”

(Applause)

•••

The conversation is fictional, of course. In essence, though, this is little more than a review of the news of the last few days and weeks.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Democrats, Disruption, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Humor, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes

Thank You, Minneapolis, for Showing Us How Resistance Succeeds!

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2026 //
8

Trump is determined to punish states and cities that didn’t vote for him. So he sent large numbers of masked ICE agents to bully, beat, harass, and intimidate people in blue places, while recklessly killing two protestors.

He unleashed his fury on Minneapolis, sending in 3,000 ICE agents. They must have been trained to act like Brown Shirts because they do. They don’t just arrest people. They grab them, throw them to the ground, punch them, kick them, ziptie them, toss them into a van, picking up people who “look like” immigrants, and disappear them.

The people of Minneapolis resisted. They resisted with such determination that they forced Trump to back down. DHS announced that it will pull its occupying force out of Minneapolis. Everyone is waiting to see if ICE is really leaving. They will believe it when they see it.

Other cities and communities can learn from Minneapolis. The ICE bullies may soon be sent to your city, your community.

The resistance began immediately. People set up an alarm system, letting others know where ICE was operating. People protected their neighborhoods and communities. They turned out to blow whistles, to film ICE actions on their cell phones, and peacefully protest by their presence

Wherever ICE went, volunteers documented what they did. These videos proved to be powerful evidence of ICE brutality and lies.

Renee Good was murdered at one such protest. The White House and Department of Homeland Security called her a domestic terrorist and said she tried to run over an ICE agent, but multiple videos proved that they were lying.

Alex Pretti was murdered when he tried to help a fellow protestor who had been knocked on her back by ICE goons. He was filming with his cellphone. They called him a terrorist and an assassin, but again they were lying.

The people of Minneapolis treated each other as friends and neighbors and organized a powerful resistance. Volunteers organized to deliver food to people afraid to leave home. They drove people who were afraid to take public transit.

Schools protected their students as best they could. Many children from immigrant families were afraid to leave home. The schools went online to keep them learning. Schools stockpiled food for students and their families; volunteers delivered it. Teachers made home visits to check on students.

Columbia Academy, a middle school in Columbia Heights, a Minneapolis suburb, became “a food bank, a counseling hotline, a missing persons task force, an immigration resource center and a refuge.”

Leslee Sheri, the principal of the school in Columbia Heights, a five-school district, said:

“We are the first call,” said Sherk, a first-year principal who has worked in the district for two decades. “They don’t call the police. They don’t even sometimes call their neighbors or different organizations. They call the school.”

Neighbors helped neighbors. Neighbors helped strangers. The people of Minneapolis reacted with surprising solidarity in opposition to the aggressive militarization of their city.

They stood up, often in bitter cold, spoke out, protected the vulnerable, and demonstrated what democracy, courage l, and compassion looks like.

They won.

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Resistance
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