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How the Billionaires Manufactured an Education “Crisis”

By dianeravitch
September 14, 2026 //
7

Mike Simpson, known on Twitter as “Big Education Ape,” is known for his brilliant memes and editorial cartoons. Typically, they expose the latest fads and lies that defame teachers and public schools. Every once in a while, he publishes a great post, like this one.

He writes:

I’M SHOCKED, SHOCKED — HOW 30 YEARS OF BILLIONAIRE-FUNDED “REFORM” MANUFACTURED THE EDUCATION CRISIS IT PROMISED TO FIX

There’s a famous scene in Casablanca where Captain Renault declares he is “shocked, shocked” to find gambling going on — right before a croupier hands him his winnings. That’s essentially the posture of the billionaire reform industrial complex today, clutching its pearls over a Gallup poll showing public satisfaction with American schools has cratered to 32% — an 11-point nosedive in just two years — while quietly pocketing the profits of the crisis they spent three decades engineering.

Shocked. Absolutely shocked.

The Architecture of a Manufactured Crisis

Let’s be precise about the timeline, because precision matters when someone is picking your pocket.

For roughly 30 years, a well-funded constellation of think tanks, philanthropic foundations, hedge fund managers, and tech oligarchs pumped billions of dollars into a single, relentless narrative: public schools are failing. Not “underfunded.” Not “systematically neglected.” Failing — as in, inherently broken, irredeemably incompetent, populated by bad teachers protected by evil unions, and salvageable only by the heroic intervention of the private market.

The messaging was surgical. The money was real. And — surprise! — it worked.

As the Big Education Ape’s deep dive into school funding makes devastatingly clear, the playbook was never subtle:

Starve public schools of adequate funding. Declare them “failing.” Ride in on a white charter bus to “rescue” the children.

The chronic underfunding wasn’t fiscal negligence. In many states, it was a feature, not a bug. Squeeze hard enough, the theory went, and disruption would force innovation. What it actually forced was deferred maintenance, teacher shortages, and a generation of kids learning to read in buildings where the roof leaks and the textbooks predate the iPhone.

Now the poll numbers confirm the narrative took hold — and the reformers are citing those same poll numbers as proof they were right all along. The audacity is, genuinely, breathtaking.

The Numbers That Tell Two Very Different Stories

Here’s what the data actually shows — and what it doesn’t show:

Metric: The Headline. What It Actually Means Gallup Public Satisfaction 32% — record low 30 years of “failing schools” messaging worked exactly as intended.

Parent Satisfaction with Their Own School Historically ~2x the national figure People trust what they experience; they fear what they’re told

Math & Reading Scores Declining, especially bottom quartile Tracks directly with funding inequity and screen-time explosion

Top-tier U.S. Student Performance Still globally competitive. The “crisis” is concentrated where disinvestment is concentrated

The gap between how Americans rate schools in general versus their own child’s school is the smoking gun. It has always been the smoking gun. People who actually walk into a public school building — who meet the teachers, see the classrooms, watch their kids come home — consistently rate those schools dramatically higher than the national “failing” narrative suggests.

That gap is the manufactured crisis. It lives entirely in the space between lived experience and media-amplified fear.

$1.8 Billion Worth of Snake Oil, Served Fresh

And just when you thought the reform carousel might slow down, along comes the Science of Reading — the latest Next Big Thing™ in a long line of Next Big Things™ that have collectively cost American taxpayers tens of billions of dollars and produced reading scores that went, as the Big Education Ape’s withering analysis puts it, precisely nowhere.

Remember Common Core? $15.8 billion. A decade of standardized testing theater. Reading scores: unmoved.

Now we have the Science of Reading, $1.8 billion deep and climbing, with the same cast of vendors, the same philanthropic networks, and the same conspicuous absence of a money-back guarantee.

To be scrupulously fair: phonics works. Explicit decoding instruction works. The underlying research on structured literacy is legitimate. But here’s the thing about legitimate research — it doesn’t require a $1.8 billion vendor ecosystem, mandatory state legislation in 40+ states, and the systematic deskilling of teachers who are told to stop thinking and start following the script. When real science gets packaged into proprietary curricula, sold to districts under legislative mandate, and deployed without the trained human educators needed to implement it well, you don’t get science. You get very expensive phonics worksheets.

The question nobody in the reform complex wants to answer remains the same one it’s always been: Where is the money-back guarantee?

The Other Hand: How Tech Bros Broke Kids’ Brains While Selling the Cure

Here is the part of the story that deserves its own criminal investigation — or at minimum, a very uncomfortable congressional hearing.

The same Silicon Valley billionaires who spent decades pushing EdTech into classrooms as the revolutionary equalizer — screens for every student! –are the identical billionaires whose social media platforms have:

  • Collapsed long-form reading among adolescents at a rate researchers describe as one of the steepest drops in PISA history
  • Engineered algorithmic doom-scrolling that neurologically rewires 15-year-olds away from the sustained attention that math and reading comprehension require
  • Distracted over a quarter of students internationally during core academic instruction, by their own PISA survey data

They sold the disease and the cure. They pushed the screens that fragmented attention spans, then sold the adaptive software to remediate the fragmented attention spans, then pointed at the test scores and said: See? Public schools are failing.

As Big Education Ape’s piece on reading struggles frames it with characteristic bluntness: if you’re struggling to read this, you have some very rich friends to thank.

The Exit Ramp Is Marked “November 3”

None of this is inevitable. None of this is permanent. The No Kings Coalition — the sprawling, nonpartisan civic movement that flooded the streets in March — is now flooding the polls, with a Vote Early Day of Action on October 17 aimed squarely at the November 3, 2026 midterms.

The math is straightforward, even if the billionaires prefer we can’t do it:

  • Elect candidates who will defend public education funding, not divert it into voucher schemes that enrich private operators at public expense
  • Overturn the Supreme Court rulings — from Citizens United forward — that transformed American democracy into a billionaire auction
  • Restore the principle that public money follows public children into public schools, not into the portfolios of private equity firms with a “reform” logo.

The manufactured crisis has a manufactured solution: more billionaire intervention, more privatization, more EdTech, more testing, more disruption. The actual solution is considerably less glamorous and considerably more effective — fund schools equitably, pay teachers competitively, put phones away, and stop letting people who profit from public school failure write public school policy.

The Bottom Line

The 32% satisfaction number is not evidence that public schools have failed. It is evidence that a 30-year, billion-dollar propaganda campaign succeeded. The same people who manufactured the crisis are now selling the cure — at $1.8 billion a pop, no refunds, no guarantees, no accountability.

Meanwhile, the teachers who showed up every day through a pandemic, through chronic underfunding, through a staffing crisis, through the algorithmic dismantling of their students’ attention spans — those people are still in the classroom at 7 AM, doing the work that no EdTech platform, no voucher program, and no think tank white paper has ever actually replaced.

The casino is rigged. Captain Renault is shocked. And the November ballot is the one lever the house can’t control.

Vote like a public school depends on it. Because one does.

🔗 Related Reading from Big Education Ape:

Sources & Links

🔵 Public Satisfaction & Gallup Data

🔵 PISA Performance & International Benchmarks

🔵 School Funding, Privatization & the Manufactured Crisis

🔵 Science of Reading & EdTech Accountability

🔵 Democracy, Elections & the No Kings Coalition

All links verified active as of September 9, 2026. Primary polling data sourced from Gallup/Walton Family Foundation. PISA data sourced from NCES/OECD 2025 release.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Broad Foundation, Charter Schools, Closing schools, Corporate Reformers, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Hoax, Injustice, Lies, Literacy, Privatization, School Choice, Standardized Testing, State Takeover, Teacher Evaluations, Technology, Vouchers, Walton Foundation

Heather Cox Richardson: Houthis Seize Key Port, Prices Will Rise

By dianeravitch
September 11, 2026 //
12

Heather Cox Richardson writes about an important and devastating turn in Trump’s disastrous war on Iran. The Houthis have captured a key port that enables them to target the transit of oil from the Red Sea. This could drive the cost of oil even higher than it is today, which inflates the cost of most other products.

Think about it: Trump is unqualified to lead the nation into war. He never served, and he has no relevant knowledge or experience. He doesn’t trust American intelligence services, and he has fired top advisors. Pete Hegseth is totally unqualified for his position. He served, but his head is full of nonsense about “manliness” and “the warrior ethic.” He has fired the military’s top generals and admirals.

These two incompetents have dragged us into a war without end.

Heather Cox Richardson describes an ominous development:

We woke up today to news that Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi militants have taken control of the city and seaport of Mocha and much of the shoreline of the Red Sea near the Bab el-Mandeb strait, another chokepoint for world trade including trade in oil. With the Strait of Hormuz largely closed, Saudi Arabia has relied for seagoing transport on the Red Sea route that empties into the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

As Diana Roy of the Council on Foreign Relations wrote in July, the Red Sea is one of the most important routes for global shipping. It carries twelve to fifteen percent of the global maritime trade every year, worth about $1 trillion. The waterway extends about 1,400 miles from the Suez Canal—which connects it to the Mediterranean Sea—at the northern end to the Bab El-Mandeb strait in the south.

The Iran-backed Houthis are in a struggle against the Saudi Arabia–backed Yemeni government. A fragile truce has been in place since 2022, but clashes between the two forces have escalated for weeks, and on Tuesday, September 8, Houthi attacks on Saudi targets started fires at oil facilities and wounded more than 70 people.

The Yemeni government told Reuters that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have guided the Houthi advance, and according to Zachary Cohen, Katie Bo Lillis, and Kylie Atwood of CNN, U.S. officials think that hundreds of IRGC officers are currently in Yemen working with the Houthis to shut down the Bab el-Mandeb. The journalists note that CNN has previously reported that in case U.S. negotiations were unsuccessful, Iran had planned an economic “nuclear option”: closing the Bab el-Mandeb.

Cohen, Lillis, and Atwood reported this afternoon that more than 100 U.S. military advisors are in Saudi Arabia as part of a new joint forces command, providing the Saudis with intelligence and helping them find Houthi targets.

The sources who told the journalists about the joint effort emphasized that the U.S. routinely shares intelligence with the Saudis and that it is neither participating directly in the strikes nor providing operational support. Still, U.S. airstrikes on the Houthis in 2025 killed 153 civilians and wounded 243 others in Yemen in 2025.

The price of oil jumped to $109 a barrel, and U.S. gasoline rose to an average of about $4.28 a gallon. GasBuddy said the national average price of diesel had hit $6.00 for the first time in history. Just a year ago, the national average was about $3.70.

GasBuddy issued a statement, saying: “While gasoline gets the headlines, diesel is the fuel that moves the economy, powering the freight trucks, trains, agricultural equipment, and construction machinery behind nearly everything Americans buy. That means its impact reaches far beyond the transportation sector. As diesel climbs, higher supply chain costs work their way into the price of groceries, household goods, deliveries, and countless other products families rely on every day, even for households that never fuel a diesel vehicle.”

GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis, Patrick De Haan, said the new record “will be a particularly painful one for the economy” and is “likely to reignite inflation up and down the supply chain.” He continued: “I suggest Americans anticipate a costlier holiday season, as it appears diesel prices could continue climbing as geopolitical tensions continue to remain a main factor.”

While all this was going on, tonight President Trump attended the second day of his Dallas rally to fire up his base before the midterm elections. There, a video from the Republican National Committee intoned: “And on June 14th, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a caretaker,’ so God gave us Trump.”

—

Notes:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/sep/10/houthis-seize-key-port-mocha-yemen-red-sea-coast-iran-saudi-arabia-us

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/09/10/politics/us-military-support-saudi-arabia-houthi-iran-yemen

https://www.npr.org/2026/09/08/g-s1-142296/houthi-attacks-saudi-arabia

https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/trump-says-iran-war-end-after-us-midterm-elections-threatens-attack-pickaxe-2026-09-10/

Statement on Diesel Reaching $6 Per Gallon for the First Time in History

https://www.cfr.org/articles/another-hormuz-the-red-seas-threat-to-the-global-economy

Bluesky:

atrupar.com/post/3mv7ckybguq23

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Economy, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: The Plot to Disenfranchise Millions of Voters This Fall

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2026 //
3

Trump is obsessed with stopping mail-in Voting, although he votes by mail. He has spent his time in office sowing doubt in our elections, which are the basis of our democracy. The very fact that this crooked con man was returned to the Presidency makes me doubt the security of our elections.

Nonetheless, a whistleblower at the United States Postal Service leaked a complaint claiming that the USPS is planning to take measures that will throw the midterms into chaos, thus giving Trump a reason to discredit the expected Blue Wave, which will sweep away Republican majorities in the House and possibly the Senate. In brief, Trump intends to use the USPS to determine which votes count. Bear in mind that the Cinstututuin explicitly assigns responsibility to the states, not the federal government.

The actions Trump is taking to discredit the midterm elections are unprecedented. But then so was his demolition of the East Wing of the White House, so are his efforts to control the media, universities, and law firms. So are his efforts to overturn civil rights laws. So is his defunding of medical and scientific research. So are his attacks on freedom of the press. So are his efforts to control the curriculum of the nation’s schools.

Heather Cox Richardson explains:

Yesterday, by a vote of 5–4, the United States Supreme Court allowed Trump to continue to build his ballroom. The five right-wing justices concluded that the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which had sued to stop the construction of the ballroom, did not have legal standing to sue and that national security considerations came down on the side of construction.

The majority said it was not resolving the issue of whether the project is legal.

It was Chief Justice John Roberts who covered that aspect of the controversy. He wrote in dissent that the project is “likely unlawful.” “The White House is an iconic American building whose symbolism and history are wrapped up in its architecture,” Roberts wrote. He wrote that it is critical to “ensure that those responsible follow the rules in deciding what to tear down and what to build up at the People’s House.”

Nonetheless, as Josh Gerstein of Politico reported, the project will likely be completed before the question of its legality is resolved.

Trump’s behavior in his second term is a logical outcome of the theory of the “unitary executive.” Under President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, those eager to stop Congress from passing legislation that benefited the American people at the expense of businessmen began to argue for the idea that because the president was the head of one of the three branches of the U.S. government, he could not be checked by either of the other two branches: the legislative branch (Congress) or the judicial branch (the courts).

On July 1, 2024, the United States Supreme Court, stacked with Trump’s appointees, took this theory to a conclusion that overturned the central premise of American democracy: that no one is above the law.

It decided that the president of the United States has “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for crimes committed as part of the official acts at the core of presidential powers. The court also said it should be presumed that the president also has immunity for other official acts as well, unless that prosecution would not intrude on the authority of the executive branch.

Writing for the majority, Chief Justice Roberts said that a president needs such immunity to make sure the president is willing to take “bold and unhesitating action” and make unpopular decisions, although no previous president ever asserted that he was above the law or that he needed such immunity to fulfill his role. Roberts’s decision didn’t focus at all on the interest of the American people in guaranteeing that presidents carry out their duties within the guardrails of the law.

This permission structure appears to have convinced Trump he can do whatever he wishes, including rigging elections so he cannot lose.

Yesterday Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, who is the top-ranking Democrat on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, exposed what appears to be a plot to steal the 2026 midterm elections.

Blumenthal released a letter he had written to Postmaster General David Steiner calling attention to an official whistleblower report, which he attached to the letter.

It’s eye-popping.

The whistleblower warns that there are “potentially catastrophic problems in the development of the United States Postal Service’s…new system for handling federal election ballot mail.” According to the whistleblower, the “process for the creation and implementation of an entirely new and untested set of IT systems” for delivering ballots to voters for the midterm election has been “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed.”

The whistleblower says “the administration has hidden the high likelihood that the new ballot mail verification processes will result in major disruptions in mail ballots ever getting delivered to voters. As presently designed, if even one bar code on one single ballot in a bulk-mailing of 10,000 ballots fails to properly scan during the verification process, the entire batch is rejected and sent back to the state—effectively stopping the ballots from being mailed to voters.”

The complaint continues: “Even under ordinary circumstances this would be problematic because of predictable errors in any barcode scanning process.” But the rushed IT development of the new system means it “will almost certainly have significant operating problems when released to the public.” The whistleblower notes that multiple officials from the USPS have described the development process for the system as “a sh*t show.”

The whistleblower said that work on the “USPS election ballot mail IT project” began in June 2026 and has continued despite an injunction from a federal court ordering work on it to stop. Normally, it would take “nine months to a year or more” to roll out a project “of this complexity, magnitude, and importance.” Considering the rush and the consequences, the whistleblower wondered “whether catastrophic failure would be a feature rather than a bug.”

The complaint says: “The apparently sloppy and rushed manner in which the Federal Ballot Mail Portal and supporting IT systems are being built poses significant risk. Potentially millions of American voters may not receive their mail-in ballot this election cycle in a timely manner, or at all.”

Blumenthal noted that the USPS has a restrained role as a mail carrier. It has never before played a gatekeeping function and yet is now building an entirely new system to put itself “in a position to refuse to mail ballots that state election officials have determined should be sent out.” He called for Postmaster General Steiner to “to abandon this ill-conceived, unconscionable plan and ensure that all Americans can exercise their constitutional right to vote, including by mail, without interference by USPS.”

Blumenthal demanded Steiner answer no later than Friday whether the USPS has stopped work on the project as ordered by the courts, as well as provide the names of those who worked on the project and the dates they were active. By September 8, he wants to see all records about the project.

Blumenthal told reporters: “The main takeaway for me is that the Postal Service has designed a system to disenfranchise millions of Americans. One third of all Americans cast their ballots by mail, and the USPS puts all of their votes at risk.”

The administration’s attack on elections is especially concerning considering the recent suggestions that Trump is spending most of his time on his legacy projects like the ballroom, leaving him largely unaware of what is going on in the administration. Nancy A. Youssef, Missy Ryan, and Michael Scherer of The Atlantic reported yesterday that when Army Secretary Dan Driscoll went directly to Trump with his concerns about what Hegseth is doing to the Army, Trump was surprised to learn “how many generals and other top officers had been fired, pushed out, or passed over for promotion under Hegseth” and “expressed concern about the deep cuts to the Army’s senior leadership.”

Driscoll resigned yesterday.

As for the plan to sabotage mail-in voting? Representative Joe Morelle (D-NY), the top-ranking Democrat on the House Committee on House Administration, which oversees the administration of federal elections, posted: “These whistleblower allegations are extraordinary. If Trump Administration officials knowingly built a system designed to prevent Americans from receiving their ballots, that is not election security. It is a betrayal of our Constitution and the American people.”

—

Notes:

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/31/supreme-court-white-house-ballroom-john-roberts-dissent-01057685

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/driscoll-hegseth-military-resignation/688479/

Categories Cheating, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Fascism, Fraud, Lies, Republicans, Scandal, Trump

Jamelle Bouie: Trump’s Plan to Subvert the 2026 Election and the Constitution

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2026 //
3

It’s a well-known fact that Donald Trump hates voting by mail, even though he votes by mail. He is trying to suppress the vote or at the very least persuade Americans that our elections are riddled with fraud and are decided by the votes of non-citizens. His efforts to produce evidence for these claims have turned out to be frauds, but nonetheless he will assert that Democratic wins were tainted.

If you are like me, you may be befuddled by the confluence of lawsuits, court cases, and the role of the United States Postal Service. As usual, Trump is sowing chaos, to keep us from understanding what he is up to.

The Constitution is clear: the states control elections. The President has no role in elections.

So what’s really going on?

Jamelle Bouie, my favorite columnist at The New York Times, explains Trump’s nefarious, evil plan to destroy our democracy:

So far, the president’s plot to subvert the integrity of the midterm elections looks like this.

Issue a rule requiring states to give lists of mail-in voters to the Postal Service if their citizens hope to receive mail-in ballots. Knowing that this is a blatantly unconstitutional seizure of the states’ prerogative to run their own elections, count on a federal court to block the rule. Then challenge the injunction, arguing — under the Supreme Court’s “Purcell principle” — that it is too late to make any adjustments to voting procedures, and that the new rules should be treated as the status quo. Then hope that the Supreme Court accepts the argument that the new rules are the status quo and therefore can’t be blocked.

This would leave states that rely on mail-in voting scrambling to accommodate the new rules, leading to the kind of chaos that might keep voters from casting a ballot in the first place. And in states that reject the rules, the administration can tar the results as fraudulent. None of this would stop the public from electing a Democratic majority, but it could give that majority the taint of illegitimacy — and even tee up a situation where new members are challenged in the next session.

It is important to say that there is no way to know, at this point, if any of this will actually work in the end. But it clearly is the plan.

To wit, earlier this week the Supreme Court paused a lower court injunction on the proposed ballot rule, writing that it had not been formally issued yet by the U.S.P.S., so the states that sued could not demonstrate harm. Since then, the Postal Service has issued its rule and a Federal District Court has issued a temporary restraining order, blocking implementation. The administration has appealed this decision, and the Supreme Court is set to hear the case on the merits in a number of weeks, if not days.

From there, the court will have to decide whether it will follow the Constitution — which clearly leaves election administration to the states, unless Congress intervenes — or contrive again to contort the law and give the president a win, allowing him to pursue his irrational crusade against mail-in voting and giving him the tools — if not to sabotage the midterms outright — then to create chaos and disruption.

I would not put much faith in the Supreme Court, but we’ll see what happens.

The details of what is happening here are important — that’s why I laid them out — but it’s also important to step back and make a more fundamental point: the president of the United States is engaged in a conspiracy against the voting rights of the American people, which is to say that the president is engaged in a conspiracy against the Constitution itself. And this is part of a larger effort, spearheaded by the most fanatical of his allies, like Stephen Miller, to end the American republic and supplant it with an authoritarian regime in which President Trump holds sovereign authority over the whole nation.

It is important to say, as well, that this is all out in the open, as plain as day.

Life under Trump during his second term is defined by the aggressive use of unaccountable executive power, from illegal taxes — in the form of tariffs — and wars to the military occupation of American cities and a roaming deportation force used to terrorize entire communities. Thousands of people have been kidnapped in the street and whisked away to squalid detention centers, where dozens have died. Many thousands more, including some American citizens, have been deported, sometimes to countries they’ve never seen or visited in their lives.

The president has wielded his power against colleges and universities in a concerted effort to destroy the nation’s capacity for scientific research and weaken any institution capable of generating independent knowledge.

The administration continues to assault the First Amendment: both the freedom of assembly and the freedom of the press. Not a single member of this White House appears to believe in the public’s First Amendment rights or in its right to choose its own political leadership.

The attitude of the president and his advisers is that the 2024 election was an enabling act for a constitutional revolution, in which rule by the people was replaced by the Führerprinzip.

That the intent is clear does not mean it is the reality on the ground. I believe Trump has failed to accomplish authoritarian consolidation. But he has ripped an enormously damaging Trump-size hole in the constitutional order, and a future president with autocratic designs will have every tool he needs to push the envelope even further.

That’s why, should Democrats capture a majority, they must make the reconstruction of the American political order their first priority. That includes an impeachment trial against President Trump, if only to emphasize the gravity of his conspiracy against the Constitution.

Americans hate the idea of looking back. But we have to if we want any hope of moving forward.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Fraud, Trump

An Important New Development in the Epstein Case!!

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2026 //
0

Julie K. Brown is the reporter at the Miami Herald who broke the Jeffrey Epstein case wide open. She wrote a series in the newspaper revealing the cover-up of Epstein’s criminal activities called “Perversion of Justice.”

The newspaper says this about her series:

In her year-long investigation of Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, Miami Herald reporter Julie Brown tracked down more than 60 women who said they were victims of abuse and revealed the full story behind the sweetheart deal cut by Epstein’s powerhouse legal team. Since the Herald published ‘Perversion of Justice’ in November 2018, a federal judge ruled the non-prosecution agreement brokered by then Florida U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta was illegal, and on July 6 Epstein was arrested on sex trafficking charges in New York state. On July 12, Acosta resigned as U.S. Secretary of Labor. And on Aug. 10, Epstein died by suicide in his Manhattan jail cell. Investigative journalism makes a difference.

Julie K. Brown wrote today on her Substack blog:

Success, finally. 

Last week, a federal court in Manhattan ordered the release of the voluminous case files from Virginia’s Giuffre’s 2015 civil lawsuit against Ghislaine Maxwell. 

The release of these files was in part the result of eight years of litigation by the Miami Herald and its parent company, McClatchy, which have been fighting for the material since I published my series “Perversion of Justice,” in 2018. 

Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Judge Loretta Preska rejected Maxwell’s final arguments 

to keep the files sealed, noting that the passage last year of the Epstein Files Transparency Act superseded any earlier grand jury arguments that Maxwell was using to keep the records from the public. 

What does this mean, and what new information will we learn? 

First some history. Virginia brought this defamation lawsuit against Maxwell back in 2015, after Maxwell publicly proclaimed that Virginia was a liar who had made up her allegations of being sexually abused by Jeffrey Epstein, Maxwell and other powerful men (including Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz and the former Prince Andrew.) 

Giuffre, represented by the Boies-Schiller firm, sued Maxwell for defamation, asserting that she faced “public ridicule, contempt, and disgrace” when Maxwell went public with her statements. As part of the lawsuit, the lawyers gathered tens of thousands of pages of discovery, including depositions by Giuffre, Maxwell and dozens of other people. Part of the effort also involved Dershowitz, who together with social media influencer Michael Chernovich, tried unsuccessfully to unseal portions of the Giuffre-Maxwell case while it was still being litigated. 

The lawsuit was settled in early 2017. I had been told the discovery contained damning evidence against Epstein, Maxwell and other men, and that it was worth trying to get the courts to unseal the documents on the grounds that they were never properly sealed in the first place. 

Judicial records by law are supposed to be open to the public. In this case, the former judge (Robert Sweet, now deceased) issued a blanket sealing on all the documents because they contained “sensitive” and “private” information. Sweet placed a protective order on massive amounts of material, including hearings and judicial decisions made in the case — and voluminous evidence that Virginia presented to show that Epstein and Maxwell were operating an underage sex trafficking operation. 

This is not the way sealing is supposed to happen, however. Each document that the lawyers want sealed has to be examined, and those requesting it be sealed must provide legal justification to the judge for doing so. This wasn’t done in this case. 

Nearly all the evidence that Virginia’s lawyers uncovered about Epstein and Maxwell’s sex trafficking that came out during this civil case was kept secret.

Maxwell settled the case before it could go to trial, however — and paid Virginia somewhere in the neighborhood of $3-5 million. By settling it, she thought that all the evidence about her involvement would remain under seal. 

But I convinced my editors to ask our lawyers to file a motion to intervene in the case in order to unseal the files. 

An appeals court eventually ruled in our favor, and on August 9, 2019, thousands of pages were made public, including sworn statements by Virginia in which she alleged she was trafficked to Dershowitz, who represented Epstein; former Prince Andrew; former Maine Sen. George Mitchell; former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson; hedge fund manager Glenn Dubin; hotel magnate Tom Pritzker; the late MIT scientist Marvin Minsky. All of the men denied that they were involved with Giuffre. 

Epstein was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell the following morning. …

This is only the opening of her post. The rest is behind a paywall. But the bottom line is that the release of the Maxwell files will add lots of fuel to the Epstein fire.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Evil, Fraud, Scandal

Thom Hartmann: Trump Finds New Ways to Grift and Grab

By dianeravitch
August 11, 2026 //
6

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

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

He writes:

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

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

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

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

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

Heather Cox Richardson: The Destruction of the Department of Justice Under Todd Blanche

By dianeravitch
August 3, 2026 //
3

When Donald Trump sued the Internal Revenue Service for $10 billion, it was a breathtaking display of arrogance and greed. An independent contractor leaked Trump’s tax returns in 2019, along with the returns of other very wealthy people.

A few things to know about this event: the individual who leaked tax returns was convicted and sent to prison. The leaking of tax returns occurred while Trump was President. Trump was expected to release his tax returns as other presidents had done since —, but he never did.

Federal Judge Kathleen Williams made clear that she found the lawsuit fishy, since it was not an adversarial proceeding. As she pointed out, when Trump sued the IRS, he was essentially suing himself since he was in charge of the department he was suing. She was coming close to the conclusion that the lawsuit had no adversary and was possibly a fraud on the court.

Before she issued a ruling, Blanche and Trump announced that they had reached a settlement: Trump would drop his suit in exchange for the Justice Departnent agreeing to set up a fund of $1.776 billion to pay people who had been unfairly targeted and harmed by the federal government. They also agreed that the IRS would not audit Trump or his family (it was never clear whether the agreement covered audits up until 2026 or audits past and present.) Since Trump owed the IRS about $100 million, this piece was very important to him.

Judge Williams issued a ruling and declared the entire agreement void. She said that Blanche and Trump could not even call what they had done a “settlement,” because the terms they agreed to had no legal force.

Senators from both parties were outraged by the slush fund, which they believed would give payouts to the January 6 insurrectionists, as well as Trump friends such as Rudy Giuliani and others who helped his efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Acting Attorney General Blanche assured them that the slush fund was dead but he refused to put it in writing.

When Trump nominated Blanche to be the Attorney General of the United States, two Republican senators said they would block him unless he produced a letter revoking his agreement with Trump.

And so with that background, read what Heather Cox Richardson said about the events of recent days:

Friday’s dismissal of the Department of Justice case against David Hearn for vandalism of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool came days after Hearn’s lawyers asked for transcripts of the grand jury proceedings that led to the indictment. The lawyers noted that the government’s only witness testified that the pool was already damaged before Hearn went near it, and that the witness could not quantify the cost of any damage Hearn might have done over and above the cost of repairing the existing damage. The lawyers told the court there were “irregularities in the government’s presentation of the evidence to the grand jury” that “call into question whether the grand jury was misled.”

The Department of Justice has been caught repeatedly misleading grand juries or committing misconduct in getting indictments. Hearn’s lawyers were suggesting that the Department of Justice engaged in the same misconduct in the indictment of David Hearn for damaging the bottom of the reflecting pool.

In their filing, they noted that a judge and former federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia had recently stated that “[g]enerations of presidential administrations and public officials” have reinforced the idea, called the “presumption of regularity,” that public officials do their jobs properly, operate in good faith, and follow correct procedures. But, the judge noted, “In just six months, the President of the United States may have forfeited the right to such a presumption.”

On July 28, J. David McSwane, Pratheek Rebala, and Carla Astudillo of ProPublica reported that judges across the country are calling out lawyers for the Department of Justice, questioning whether they can be trusted to tell the truth and whether they are operating according to centuries-old norms. Judges have called behavior by Department of Justice lawyers “unlawful,” “unethical,” “unseemly,” and otherwise dishonest.

The degradation of the Department of Justice, which is charged with defending the rule of law for the American people, into an instrument of Trump’s political wrath has been illustrated in the fight over the confirmation of Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche to attorney general.

Before going to the Department of Justice, Blanche was Trump’s personal attorney. He led Trump’s criminal defense team in the case of falsifying records to cover up hush-money payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, as well as his defense against the two cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith: the one indicting him for trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and the one indicting him for retaining classified documents after leaving office.

Since he took over for former attorney general Pam Bondi, Blanche has openly flouted the law in order to do Trump’s bidding. He secured indictments against people Trump perceives to be enemies, including former FBI director James Comey for posting on Instagram a picture of seashells arranged to form the number “8647.”

On July 29, Devlin Barrett and Alan Feuer of the New York Times reported that the Secret Service agents who interviewed Comey in May 2025 were told to send a summary of that interview as quickly as possible to Trump on Air Force One. Trump’s close involvement in the case, the authors wrote, “is one of the most glaring examples to date of the degree to which Mr. Trump now directs federal law enforcement actions.”

On July 28, Comey’s lawyers filed motions to throw out on the grounds of vindictive and selective prosecution the federal charges Blanche brought against him. They noted that Trump had repeatedly made it clear he wanted Comey indicted, even going so far as to put his former special assistant Lindsey Halligan into office as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, where she indicted Comey just four days later. (That appointment was later found to be invalid.) The filings from Comey’s lawyers appear to show that FBI officers engaged in warrantless surveillance of Comey.

Like the lawyers in the Hearn case, Comey’s lawyers suggested that “irregularities in the grand jury process influenced the grand jury to return an indictment.” Like Hearn’s lawyers, they asked the court to “disclose the transcripts and audio recordings of all proceedings before the grand jury in this case” or to review them himself to make sure they followed the law. In a previous case against Comey, they note, Magistrate Judge William Fitzpatrick found that the government’s actions raised “genuine issues of misconduct” that were “inextricably linked to the government’s grand jury presentation.”

Blanche’s indictment of Comey to please Trump colors another of his actions: he backed the deal Trump made with the Department of Justice to establish a $1.776 billion slush fund to pay off those convicted of committing crimes surrounding Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 election, including storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Blanche put his name to the second half of that deal that seems to be being eclipsed by the slush fund but is clearly Trump’s main interest: an agreement between Trump and the Department of Justice promising to drop any pending claims against Trump, his oldest sons, or the Trump Organization for past illegalities in tax returns, and promising not to conduct audits of Trump’s tax returns.

That slush fund/nonprosecution deal has been a sticking point for Blanche’s Senate confirmation to attorney general, as two Republican senators—John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina—want him to put in writing that the deal is as dead as he claimed it is in his confirmation hearing before they agree to support his nomination. But he has refused to do so. On Thursday, Trump suggested he was willing to withdraw Blanche’s nomination until Cornyn and Tillis are out of office, leaving him as acting attorney general.

Then, at 7:03 Friday morning, Trump threw a monkey wrench into this fight by posting that in fact, he emphatically supports the slush fund. He appears to reject the idea that it is dead, and seems to be counting on Todd Blanche to implement it, exactly as critics have said.

Trump seems to have been thwarted from getting his way quietly by putting Blanche in as attorney general without any promise to kill the slush fund and its accompanying promise not to prosecute Trump or his associates for crimes associated with their tax filings. And so, on Friday, Trump filed notice that he and the rest of the parties to the “agreement” will appeal the July 13 ruling by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams. She said that the suit that led to the $1.776 billion slush fund and the accompanying nonprosecution promise was filed to “manipulate the judicial process.” Williams said the Justice Department could not claim the deal it made with the Trumps was a judicial agreement.

At 7:32 Saturday morning, Trump posted: “If Senators Cornyn and Tillis, both upset because I wouldn’t Endorse them (they lost, and quit, respectively!), aren’t going to approve Todd Blanche, one of the most respected professionals, according to everybody, in the Country, to be the United States Attorney General, then I will keep Todd as Acting A.G., and push hard to get the Anti-Weaponization Bill, which takes care of those who have been so badly treated by the Crooked Joe Biden (and Obuma!) Administration (I get nothing, although I was treated horribly!), PASSED. Todd Blanche was a voice of reason! It will immediately be back on the table, and I will get it done. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DJT”

After Richardson had posted her commentary, near midnight last night, CNN reported that Todd Blanche released a written statement declaring that he was rescinding the slush fund. This was what Senators Cornyn and Tillis had demanded, and it appeared that they are likely to vote to confirm him tomorrow.

CNN reported:

The document released Sunday also limits the addendum to that agreement that offers the president and members of his family immunity from tax investigations — a sticking point for Cornyn. The senator wanted Blanche to explicitly acknowledge that it applies only to past tax investigations against the president and those listed in the IRS lawsuit.

The Sunday order says the measure “applies by its terms only retroactively” and that it applies only to “the named parties in the lawsuit” referenced in the agreement.

Bottom line: Blanche abandons the slush fund but reaffirms that the IRS will not audit Trump or his family or the Trump Organization for any tax cheating in the past. As Heather Cox Richardson wrote, this was Trump’s main interest, not the slush fund.

So if Cornyn and Tillis are satisfied, Trump gets what he wanted: freedom from having his tax returns audited retroactively. This saves him at least $100 million, possibly much more.

And if Blanche is confirmed, Trump gets what he’s always wanted; his Roy Cohn in charge of the Department of Justice, pursuing his enemies and defending Trump’s actions.

Categories Elections, Ethics, Fraud, Hoax, Justice, Trump

Trump Gutted the Kennedy Center. Everything He Touches, Dies.

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2026 //
5

The story of the John F.Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is tragic. It was one of the nation’s finest venues for the arts. It contained an opera company, an orchestra, performances of all kind, and a beautiful art collection.

Soon after he was elected, Trump decided to impose his ideas, his board, his leadership on the Kennedy Center.

He quickly replaced the board, his board made him its president, and installed his own people. He fired the professional arts administrators and named Richard Grennell as its executive director, despite his lack of any experience in arts management.

Grennell laid off hundreds of employees. The board voted to add Trump ‘s name to the facade of the Center. Overnight, it became the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

The rank politicization of the Center’s programming was deeply polarizing. Ticket sales plummeted. Artists cancelled their performances.

Where once the Kennedy Center was proudly nonpartisan, Trump purged anyone not aligned with his views and his cult.

Faced with a dwindling audience and boycotts by artists, the board announced that the Center would close for two years for”renovations.” Observers worried that Trump intended to tear the building down.

In response to a lawsuit followed by a Congressionally appointed member of the board, a federal judge ordered the board to remove Trump’s name from the facade, the signage, and everything else.

Today, the once vibrant Kennedy Center is mostly empty. The opera left. The symphony has no schedule. Few people visit.

Trump gutted the Kennedy Center. Did he do it on purpose or was it the result of incompetence? Was he envious of John F. Kennedy? Or did he miscalculate his ability to manage a performing arts center?

This article is an interview with long-serving volunteer tour guide. After it appeared, the Kennedy Center suspended the tours.

Categories Art, Disruption, Evil, Failure, Fraud, Trump, Washington, DC

Harry S Truman: The President Must Never Engage in Any Business Transaction

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2026 //
2

Truman didnt say anything about the President’s children!

Mary Trump wrote about how Eric and Donald Jr. are cashing in on their father’s Presidency.

Are there no laws against conflict of interest? Nepotism?

And to think that Republicans were outraged by Hunter Biden! Whatever he did (a seat on the Burisma board; name-dropping his father in business meetings?) is chump change compared to the money-grubbing Trump boys.

Where is the outrage?

Mary Trump writes:

Donald has always insisted that his children run their businesses independently. We have been told repeatedly that there is a bright line separating the presidency from the Trump family’s financial interests. We have also been told to ignore the remarkable coincidence that, every time Donald returns to power, his family somehow discovers lucrative new industries that depend almost entirely on decisions made by the federal government.

Those coincidences are becoming increasingly difficult to believe.

Since Donald returned to the White House, his two oldest and arguably most useless sons have dramatically expanded their investments into industries that rely almost entirely on Pentagon spending and federal policy. These are not businesses they spent years building. They are not industries in which either Don Jr. or Eric has any meaningful experience. They simply happen to be some of the fastest growing sectors benefiting from the Trump regime’s priorities.

Coincidentally, of course.

Don Jr.’s venture capital firm acquired a stake in Vulcan Elements shortly before the company received a $620 million Pentagon loan. According to reporting by ProPublica, that loan was accelerated after intervention from the White House.

Eric, meanwhile, serves as Chief Strategy Advisor for a robotics company despite possessing no discernible qualifications for such a role. That same company later received a $24 million Pentagon contract.

Neither Don Jr. nor Eric serves in government.

Neither is required to comply with federal ethics rules.

Neither files public financial disclosures.

Yet both continue to profit from industries whose fortunes increasingly depend on decisions being made by the administration run by their father.

Late in 2025, the Pentagon established the Defense Autonomous Warfare Group, appropriately abbreviated DAWG, to rapidly expand the military’s use of drones, robotics, and artificial intelligence. Initially funded at roughly $226 million for fiscal year 2026, the Pentagon is now requesting an astonishing $54.6 billion for fiscal year 2027.

That represents an increase of more than 24,000 percent.

It is also larger than the entire proposed budget for the United States Marine Corps.

Think about that for a moment.

The Pentagon is proposing to spend more money on autonomous warfare than on the Marine Corps itself.

And it just so happens that Donald’s two oldest sons have recently become enthusiastic investors in autonomous defense technologies.

This is what MSNBC reported:

This is a major business move and another in a series of examples of the president’s family’s dealings seeming to intersect with his administration. In this case, the Pentagon, as the war with Iran rages on. Just yesterday, drone maker PowerUS announced it will merge with a golf course holding company backed by Trump’s sons Eric and Don Jr., with plans to create a new publicly traded company. That new company calls the Trumps notable investors and says it aims to support American drone industry dominance. The company is expected to compete for lucrative military contracts, trying to fill a void created after the Trump administration banned new foreign made drones on national security grounds. An investment firm joined by Donald Trump Jr. shortly after his father’s reelection has also taken a significant stake in another defense contractor supplying AI powered military technology to the Pentagon. The Trumps maintain their father is not involved in their business dealings, and the White House says President Trump acts only in the best interests of the American people.

The phrase “notable investor” deserves closer examination.

It does not mean Don Jr. or Eric possess unique knowledge about robotics, drones, artificial intelligence, or national defense.

It certainly does not suggest either of them suddenly became experts in autonomous weapons systems. It means they are the sons of the President of the United States. That relationship is their greatest asset. It is the reason companies want them associated with their businesses. It is the reason investors pay attention. And it is almost certainly the reason government contracts suddenly become easier to obtain.

No private citizen should be allowed to leverage proximity to presidential power in this way.

Yet that appears to be exactly what is happening.

Members of Congress are beginning to ask difficult questions.

Following ProPublica’s investigation into Vulcan Elements, Democratic lawmakers demanded explanations after learning that the company’s $620 million Pentagon loan was reportedly handled very differently from virtually every other application under consideration.

According to the report, Don Jr.’s investment firm, 1789 Capital, purchased a stake in Vulcan during 2025. Only months later, the Pentagon approved the largest loan ever issued through its Office of Strategic Capital.

Internal documents reportedly revealed that Vulcan’s application moved through the approval process with unusual speed after direct involvement from senior White House adviser Peter Navarro.

One anonymous Pentagon official summarized the situation bluntly.

The call came from the White House. We have to get this done.

The Pentagon insists political considerations played no role in the decision. Don Jr. likewise denies participating in securing the loan. Those denials become increasingly difficult to accept when viewed alongside the broader pattern.

One contract might be coincidence.

One investment might be luck.

One White House intervention might be explainable.

But eventually coincidences stop looking like coincidences.

They begin looking like a business model.

The deeper problem is that none of this violates the disclosure rules that govern executive branch officials because Don Jr. and Eric are not executive branch officials.

That loophole allows enormous sums of money to flow toward businesses connected to the First Family while shielding the public from understanding the true extent of their financial interests.

Transparency disappears. Accountability disappears. And public trust disappears right alongside them.

Unfortunately, this pattern does not stop with rare earth minerals or autonomous weapons.

It extends into robotics as well. 

Apparently, Eric Trump has now become an expert on robotics too, a development that would be more amusing if it were not attached to Pentagon spending, military applications, and the rapidly expanding market for autonomous weapons systems.

This is what Eric Trump said in a FOX state TV Interview:

We have to win robotics in the United States of America. You had a great segment two days ago, Maria, about the robot in Beijing that was literally running marathons and beating the fastest marathoners by seven, eight minutes for a full marathon. These are in the very early days. We better be winning this race in the United States of America. We are the greatest economy in the world, and that is exactly what this company is doing. I am telling you, he is doing a phenomenal job. When you go up and interact with these robots and they fist bump you, they high five you, they follow your commands. You bring in the AI economy. It is going to change industry, it is going to change military application, it is going to change hospitality. The uses are unlimited and I think it is a very beautiful thing, but we must win this race.

What race, exactly?

The marathon the robot is running?

In what universe does the world become a better place because we have fast-running robots that can fist bump people? Although, to be fair, I would be more than happy to have robots replace Eric and Donnie.

Eric is listed as Chief Strategy Advisor, which, after listening to him speak, makes perfect sense if the strategy is to say a lot of words without demonstrating any understanding of the subject matter. In April 2026, the Pentagon awarded Foundation Future Industries a $24 million contract to test its Phantom robotic systems for military applications. That contract immediately drew attention from lawmakers concerned about potential conflicts of interest.

This is what Senator Elizabeth Warren said:

Is the Pentagon just a cash machine for Trump’s kids now? This looks like corruption in plain sight.

Yes. It does.

The Pentagon has defended the contracting process and has not alleged wrongdoing by Eric or the company. Of course it has not. This is Pete Hegseth’s Pentagon. Expecting it to objectively assess whether Donald Trump’s son is benefiting from conflicts of interest is like asking Donald to fact-check his own net worth.

We need a slightly more objective entity to decide whether there is wrongdoing here.

In May 2026, Ranking Member Robert Garcia wrote a letter to the Department of Defense laying out the concerns with unusual clarity.

Eric and Donnie’s purchases, consultancies, and advisory roles create unprecedented intertwining of Donald’s personal financial interests with U.S. policy and national security. Each new venture opens new opportunities to direct DOD funds to the first family’s pockets, and the Trump administration appears to be taking advantage of those opportunities. Such actions raise concerns that DOD is rewarding companies with contracts for recruiting a Trump family member into their ownership group or directly onto their payroll. Such companies have amassed over $725 million in loans, grants, and awards since Donald took office.

No kidding.

The coincidences are mind-boggling.

The Pentagon maintains that its decisions are based on merit, which is a difficult claim to take seriously when Pete Hegseth is the Secretary of Defense. His appointment alone is evidence that merit is not exactly the organizing principle of this administration.

Because neither Eric nor Donnie is subject to federal disclosure requirements, the public has very limited visibility into the scale of their financial exposure. That is precisely how this kind of corruption is allowed to happen. The President’s children can invest in, advise, or promote companies that stand to benefit from federal contracts, while the American people are left guessing how much money they are making and how directly their father’s administration may be helping them make it.

This is the Trump family business model in its purest form. Find an industry dependent on government action. Attach the Trump name to a company operating in that space. Let the machinery of government create the opening. Then insist there is nothing to see when the money begins flowing.

The problem is not merely that Eric and Donnie are unqualified. That has always been the least surprising part of the story. The problem is that their lack of qualifications does not matter. In fact, it may be part of the point. Companies do not need them for their expertise. They need them for their access.

This is the same pattern that has defined Donald’s entire life. He has never understood the difference between public power and private profit because nobody ever forced him to learn it. Fred Trump built the empire. Donald inherited it, hollowed it out, sold off pieces of it, and survived only because other people kept rescuing him. Now his sons are applying the same principle to national security.

The stakes, however, are much higher this time.

We are not talking about failed casinos, licensing deals, branded steaks, or golf course scams. We are talking about drones, rare earth minerals, autonomous warfare, artificial intelligence, robotics, and Pentagon contracts. We are talking about the future of American military policy and billions of dollars in public money being routed through a system in which the president’s family appears to have direct financial interests.

There needs to be an investigation.

Someday, when we finally get through this mess, Eric and Donnie need to be held accountable, stripped of their ill-gotten gains, and, if warranted by the evidence, prosecuted. The American people should not be treated as a revenue stream for the Trump family. The Pentagon should not function as another Trump family ATM. National security should not be turned into a business opportunity for two men whose only qualification is their last name.

Categories Accountability, Character, Corruption, Elections, For-Profit, Fraud

Popular Lies About Test Scores Corrupt Debates About the Progress of Our Students and Their Schools

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2026 //
4

Atlanta Journal-Constitution

https://share.google/NXK2OD6xIFegOuWoe

By David Reinking and Peter Smagorinsky

Every day we read about people asking, “At what grade level does my child read?” “Is it true that 54% of adults in the U.S. read below a sixth-grade level?” “Have reading scores dropped an entire grade level since the pandemic?”

The assumption behind these questions is test scores are precise indicators of reading ability, like scientific laboratory measurements. But like blood pressure levels — in which there is agreement about what’s being measured — they are variable and open to interpretation. 

Despite the subjectivity and lack of agreement in defining reading, grade level and ability, grade-level reading ability is often mistakenly viewed as determined by a precise, stable test score, one that does not take into account factors such as students’ health and hunger in their testing performance. Not everyone agrees on what is salient at a particular grade level, leading to subjectivity in weighting phonics knowledge, vocabulary, comprehension, the ability to synthesize a theme and recognize an author’s point of view in a given passage, or some combination of such things. 

Standardized tests are typically the basis for establishing grade level. But test scores themselves don’t indicate grade level, which is a creation of an interpreter. That’s why different tests don’t always produce the same grade level. A student who tests at fourth grade in one state may test at the third or fifth grade when moving to another state using a different test. In short, different tests or standards can produce different grade levels.

David Reinking is a retired professor at Clemson and the University of Georgia. He is an inductee in the Reading Hall of Fame, and a former co-editor of Reading Research Quarterly and Journal of Literacy Research. (Courtesy)

David Reinking is a retired professor at Clemson and the University of Georgia. He is an inductee in the Reading Hall of Fame, and a former co-editor of Reading Research Quarterly and Journal of Literacy Research. (Courtesy)

The National Assessment of Educational Progress calls itself “the nation’s report card” even to the point of using the phrase on its website and then having it repeated as if it is an established fact. It is often invoked in commentaries on grade levels. But it wasn’t designed for that purpose. NAEP itself states that “NAEP Proficient achievement level does not represent grade level proficiency as determined by other assessment standards (e.g., state or district assessments). NAEP achievement levels are to be used on a trial basis and should be interpreted and used with caution.”

But that hasn’t stopped many policy makers and journalists from trying to connect a NAEP test score to a grade level. Giving in to political pressure and rejecting recommendations from authorities in developing tests, in 1990 NAEP officials did introduce four tiers of reading achievement: Below Basic, Basic, Proficient and Advanced. These levels were established solely using subjective judgment about what’s expected of children tested at a specific grade level.

Peter Smagorinsky is a retired professor at UGA, an inductee in the Reading Hall of Fame, and a former co-editor of Research in the Teaching of English. (Courtesy)

Peter Smagorinsky is a retired professor at UGA, an inductee in the Reading Hall of Fame, and a former co-editor of Research in the Teaching of English. (Courtesy)

Then, they set equally subjective cut scores to establish boundaries between these four levels. States often use a parallel model for their own tests. In Virginia, student performance is measured on a 0–600 scale, with proficiency set at 400-499 and advanced at 500 or above. It’s hard to imagine that a meaningful difference exists between a student scoring 499 (proficient) and 500 (advanced).

Much confusion is also centered in interpreting whether “basic” is acceptably normal or if it is reasonable to expect all students to be “proficient.” Many commentators, some of whom have a vested interest in arguing that there is a reading crisis, argue the latter. Some have promoted the false idea that “proficient” is grade-level reading, which it absolutely is not. Then, they wrongly argue that two-thirds of American students are reading below grade level by counting “basic” scores as below grade level.

Another way to illustrate the problem is to simply rename NAEP’s subjective categories as “below average,” “average,” “above average” and “far above average.” Then, approximately 60% of students are reading at or above an average score, and only 40% (instead of the usually expected 50%) of students are below average. Presto, much of the reading crisis disappears. As further evidence against a crisis, there has been relatively little variation in NAEP reading scores since 1992, even if an upward trend began retreating around 2015 with many plausible but unconfirmed explanations.

A number of educators have debunked the conclusions of NAEP misinterpreters. Yet, the dogged belief persists that everything can be reduced to subjective interpretations of test scores divided into hierarchical categories that can be falsely, if conveniently, converted to grade levels. 

We are concerned whenever we encounter all-too-common misinformation about grade-level reading ability. When misinformation becomes disinformation offered by those who use grade-level reading ability to advance political, polemical or ideological agendas, we become concerned about how faith in test scores lends them to manipulation and deception to help create the crisis that critics have historically claimed is engulfing schools, only to be saved by their favorite solutions. 

David Reinking is a retired professor at Clemson and the University of Georgia, an inductee in the Reading Hall of Fame, and a former co-editor of Reading Research Quarterly and Journal of Literacy Research. Peter Smagorinsky is a retired professor at UGA, an inductee in the Reading Hall of Fame, and a former co-editor of Research in the Teaching of English.

Categories Accountability, Education Industry, Ethics, Fraud, Lies, Literacy, NAEP, Standardized Testing
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