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Trump Did the Same Trick with His Florida Mortgages of Which He Accuses Letitia James, Adam Schiff, and Lisa Cook

By dianeravitch
December 9, 2025 //
9

ProPublica posted a bombshell story about Trump’s history of mortgages. It is a must-read.

In a late-night tweet that probably was supposed to be a private text message, Trump urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to pursue criminal charges against his political enemies–James Comey, Letitia James, and Adam Schiff–for various alleged crimes.

New York State Attorney General James was accused of mortgage fraud, of getting a mortgage on a home used as an investment property while claiming it would be her secondary residence, in order to lower the cost of borrowing. Trump wants Senator Schiff and Congressman Eric Swalwell prosecuted on the same charge of mortgage fraud; charges have not yet been brought against them.

Letitia James denies the charges. A grand jury indicted her but the case was tossed out by a judge because of errors made by Trump’s inexperienced, hand-picked prosecutor, Lindsey Halligan. Halligan was an insurance lawyer who had never prosecuted a case before. Trump had previously engaged her to review the holdings of the Smithsonian and identify exhibits that disparaged America or promoted DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion).

Attorney General Bondi plans to reindict James.

Now, ProPublica carefully documents, Trump did exactly the same mortgage gambit that he calls criminal.

He bought Mar-a-Lago in 1985. In 1993, he purchased two neighboring homes. He took out a mortgage on both houses and declared at the time that each house would be his primary residence.

But he never lived in either house. They were advertised for rent or leasing, by the week or by the month.

“Given Trump’s position on situations like this, he’s going to either need to fire himself or refer himself to the Department of Justice,” said Kathleen Engel, a Suffolk University law professor and leading expert on mortgage finance. “Trump has deemed that this type of misrepresentation is sufficient to preclude someone from serving the country.”

Mortgages for a person’s main home tend to receive more favorable terms, like lower interest rates, than mortgages for a second home or an investment rental property. Legal experts said that having more than one primary-residence mortgage can sometimes be legitimate, like when someone has to move for a new job, and other times can be caused by clerical error. Determining ill intent on the part of the borrower is key to proving fraud, and the experts said lenders have significant discretion in what loans they offer clients. (In this case, Trump used the same lender to buy the two Florida homes.) 

But in recent months, the Trump administration has asserted that merely having two primary-residence mortgages is evidence of criminality. 

Bill Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency director who has led the charge, said earlier this year: “If somebody is claiming two primary residences, that is not appropriate, and we will refer it for criminal investigation.”

Trump hung up on a ProPublica reporter after being asked whether his Florida mortgages were similar to those of others he had accused of fraud.

In response to questions, a White House spokesperson told ProPublica: “President Trump’s two mortgages you are referencing are from the same lender. There was no defraudation. It is illogical to believe that the same lender would agree to defraud itself.”

The spokesperson added, “this is yet another desperate attempt by the Left wing media to disparage President Trump with false allegations,” and said, “President Trump has never, or will ever, break the law…”

Each of the mortgage documents signed by Trump contain the standard occupancy requirement — that he must make the property his principal residence within 60 days and live there for at least a year, unless the lender agreed otherwise or there were extenuating circumstances.

But ProPublica could not find evidence Trump ever lived in either of the properties. Legal documents and federal election records from the period give his address as Trump Tower in Manhattan. (Trump would officially change his permanent residence to Florida only decades later, in 2019.) A Vanity Fair profile published in March 1994 describes Trump spending time in Manhattan and at Mar-a-Lago itself.

Trump is no longer at risk for mortgage fraud because the statute of limitations has rendered the issue moot.

Democrats suspect that the claims about mortgage fraud were based on confidential information acquired by Bill Pulte, who was appointed by Trump to lead the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Pulte denies it. Pulte, a wealthy private equity investor, contributed generously to Trump’s campaign.

ProPublica points out that Trump tried to fire Federal Reserve Board Governor Lisa Cook on a charge of mortgage fraud, so he could appoint his own choice and gain control of the Board. Cook denied the charges and sued in federal court, where the matter is still pending.

In September, ProPublica reported that three of Trump’s Cabinet members have called multiple homes their primary residences in mortgage agreements. Bloomberg also reported that Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent did something similar. (The Cabinet members have all denied wrongdoing.)

Pulte, the Federal Housing Finance Agency head, has denied his investigations are politically motivated. “If it’s a Republican who’s committing mortgage fraud, we’re going to look at it,” he has said. “If it’s a Democrat, we’re going to look at it.”

Thus far, Pulte has not made any publicly known criminal referrals against Republicans. He did not respond to questions from ProPublica about Trump’s Florida mortgages.

After reading this article, I wondered about Trump’s financing of Mar-a-Lago. It cost $7-10 million. He paid $300,000. He got a mortgage from Chase Manhattan for $8.5 million. At the time, his residence was New York City.

Did he claim Mar-a-Lago as his primary residence?

Categories Accountability, Fraud, Hypocrisy, Justice, Trump

NPE Releases a New Report on Charter Schools and Their Lack of Accountability

By dianeravitch
December 8, 2025 //
5

I was present in the very beginnings of the charter school movement. I advocated on their behalf. I and many others said that charter schools would be better than public schools because they would be more successful (because they would be free of bureaucracy), they would be more accountable (because their charter would be revoked if they weren’t successful), they would “save” the neediest students, and they would save money (because they wouldn’t have all that administrative bloat).

That was the mid-1980s. Now, more than 35 years later, we know that none of those promises were kept. The charter lobby has fought to avoid accountability; charters pay their administrators more than public schools; charters demand the same funding as public schools; the most successful charters avoid the neediest students; and–aside from charters that choose their students with care–charters are not more successful than public schools, and many are far worse. Charters open and close like day lilies.

This week, the National Center of Charter School Accountability, a project of NPE, published Charter School Reckoning: Part II Disillusionment, written by Carol Burris. This is the second part in a three-part comprehensive report on charter schools entitled Charter School Reckoning: Decline, Dissolution, and Cost.

Its central argument is that a once-promising idea—charter schools as laboratories of innovation—has been steadily weakened by state laws that prioritize rapid expansion and less regulation over school quality and necessary oversight. Those policy and legislative shifts have produced predictable results: fraud, mismanagement, profiteering, abrupt closures, and significant charter churn. The report connects the above instances with the weaknesses in state charter laws and regulations that enable both bad practices and criminal activity. 

As part of the investigation, the NPE team scanned news reports and government investigative audits published between September 2023 and September 2025 and identified $858,000,000 in tax dollars lost due to theft, fraud, and/or gross mismanagement.

The report contrasts the original aspirations of the charter movement with today’s reality, shaped in large part by the intense lobbying of powerful corporate charter chains and trade organizations. It also examines areas that have received far too little attention, including the role of authorizers and the structure and accountability of charter-school governing boards.

It concludes with ten recommendations that, taken together, would bring democratic governance to the schools, open schools based on need and community input, and restore the founding vision of charter schools as nimble, community-driven, teacher-led laboratories grounded in equity and public purpose.

This new report can be found here.

Part I of Charter Reckoning: Decline can be found here.

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Innovation

We Will Never Learn What Is in the Epstein Files

By dianeravitch
November 26, 2025 //
7

Many powerful people have a vested interest in making sure that the public never sees what and who is in the Epstein files. Democrats, Republicans, powerful corporate leaders. They prefer to keep the files under lock and key.

But didn’t Congress just pass a law requiring the release of those files? Didn’t Trump sign the legislation? Even though no legislation was needed, because Trump always had the power to release the files.

Ethan Faulkner, who blogs at Substack as the “Common Sense Rebels,” says that the files that are released will be carefully redacted and curated. Most, he writes, will never be released. Who used Epstein’s services? The names the public wants to know will be blacked out.

He writes:

Everyone imagines a government cover-up as a team of men in suits throwing files into a furnace.

That’s fiction.
The real cover-up is boring. It’s procedural. It’s legal.
And it works.
The United States doesn’t destroy evidence. It manufactures delays.
It fabricates uncertainty.
It deploys exemptions instead of fire.
The truth isn’t burned.
It’s redacted.
And the machinery that performs this ritual — the system that is right now digesting the Epstein files — is something I’m calling:
The Redaction Engine.
Once you understand this machine, the Transparency Act stops looking like a win and starts looking like a transmission belt feeding secrets into a shredder that no one touches by hand.

  1. The Architecture of Obscurity
    FOIA was sold as a “Right to Know” law.
    What Congress actually built is a filtration system — and one that agencies quickly learned how to weaponize.
    Inside the FOIA framework sits a set of exemptions that function like hardware components in an industrial shredder. The Redaction Engine uses them as gears.
    According to the technical audit in The Redaction Engine: National Security Information Control Architectures , the most powerful of these gears are:
    Exemption 1 — The National Security Black Hole
    Everything “classified” stays sealed.
    But classification isn’t an objective fact — it’s a prediction.
    The law only requires a “reasonable expectation” of harm.
    Speculation becomes legal justification.
    Courts almost never challenge it. They review whether the stamp was applied correctly — not whether the classification itself is absurd. That is not oversight. That is choreography.
    Exemption 3 — The Files That Don’t Exist
    This one is an entire legal universe.
    Statutes like the CIA Information Act let agencies designate “Operational Files” that don’t even have to be searched. They can legally pretend an entire category of documents has left the physical plane.
    The public can’t request what the government asserts is not real.
    Exemption 5 — The “Embarrassment Privilege”
    The “Deliberative Process” clause was meant to protect drafts and brainstorming.
    Instead, agencies use it to hide:

*evidence of wrongdoing

*internal dissent

*contradictory analysis

-*early warnings that were ignored

It’s the single most abused exemption in the system.
And then there’s the Mosaic Theory.
This is the government’s favorite intellectual cheat code.
It says:
Even harmless information must be hidden, because it might complete a larger secret picture.
Meaning they can withhold anything, because everything is theoretically meaningful.
This is the neural network of the Redaction Engine.
A legal philosophy that transforms silence into law.

2. The “Active Investigation” Loophole

If the national-security exemptions are the shield, Exemption 7(A) is the sword.
This single exemption — explained in The Active Investigation Shield in Federal Information Law — is the most devastating transparency-killer in the entire system.
It says the government can withhold any record if releasing it could reasonably be expected to interfere with an enforcement proceeding.
Notice that phrase again:
Could. Reasonably. Be expected.
Before 1986, the government had to prove disclosure would interfere.
Then Congress changed one word —
and agencies gained the power to hide anything under the logic of “maybe.”

This birthed the most sinister creature in federal information law:


3. The Zombie Investigation.

An investigation that:

*is technically open

*is not being actively worked

*has no timeline

*and can remain “pending” for decades

Jimmy Hoffa’s file?

Withheld for twenty years because “new leads could theoretically emerge.”

This is not oversight.

This is a loophole weaponized into a vault.

Once an investigation is declared “active,” the Redaction Engine locks the file indefinitely.

At this point, open the link and read the rest for yourselves!

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Corruption, Fraud, Scandal

Mary Trump: Her Uncle on Veterans Day

By dianeravitch
November 12, 2025 //
19

Mary Trump is the daughter of Donald Trump’s older brother Fred Trump Jr. Mary is a trained psychologist. If you haven’t read her first book about Donald and his dysfunctional family, you should. It’s called: Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World’s Most Dangerous Man.

To mark Veterans Day, she wrote about her uncle on her blog.

To date, Donald has murdered over 79 people using the US military as a weapon in a way that is extralegal, unconstitutional, and a contravention of global law. Nobody seems to care. He’s also abusing the presidential pardon power, another thing we desperately need to reform in this country. One person he pardoned was involved in Donald’s insurrection on January 6th, 2021, and has since been revealed to be a pedophile. He pardoned or commuted the sentences of every single person involved on January 6th, even the most violent among them. Some of those people were supposed to serve jail sentences as long as 18 years, but because they were committing horrific acts of violence on his behalf, that was just fine with him. Recently, he pardoned people like Rudolph Giuliani, Jeff Eastman, Jenna Ellis, Sidney Powell, and others who were involved in the fake elector scheme to overturn the valid results of the 2020 election, the free and fair election that Joe Biden won by almost 8 million votes.

We know that Ghislaine Maxwell was Jeffrey Epstein’s co-conspirator in the crimes of rape and sex trafficking of girls and young women. She has been transferred to a minimum-security prison, where she is reportedly receiving preferential treatment. Maxwell was sentenced to 20 years of prison, and Donald will likely pardon her as well. Now, we are facing the very strong possibility that Donald will pardon her as well.

Why would somebody who cares about the rule of law or cares about justice pardon such people? Why would anybody want to be associated with such people? It looks like pretty much every single person Donald has pardoned, give or take, is some kind of criminal who has shown no remorse for his or her crimes. What does that mean? What does that tell us about him? Anybody willing to pardon Maxwell or any sex trafficker, any sexual abuser of women, men, or children, anybody willing to pardon someone who participated in the violent overturning of the American government is somebody who is just as bad, if not worse than they are. Instead of using his power to protect the American people from criminals like that, he sides with the criminals, unleashing them onto us.

Who is the last person on the planet who should be commemorating Veterans Day? Yes, that’s right– a five-time draft Dodger, coward, and traitor to America–Donald Trump. He marked today’s Veterans’ Day with an appearance at Arlington National Cemetery, one of the many things lately that makes my blood boil–the fact that scum has the right to step foot on the grounds of Arlington National Cemetery. Everything about the event was, as we should expect at this point, devoid of the respect and gratitude our veterans deserve. 

Donald also went on about changing the name of the holiday at the ceremony.

I was recently at an event, and I saw France was celebrating Victory Day, but we didn’t, and I saw France was celebrating another victory day for World War II and other countries were celebrating. They were all celebrated, we’re the ones who won the wars. And I said, from now on, we’re going to say Victory Day for World War I and World War II, and we could do for plenty of other wars, but we’ll start with those two. Maybe someday somebody else will add a couple more because we won a lot of good ones.

Today is not about any wars we won. It is about the sacrifices of our veterans, those who gave some or those who gave all to protect the American people. It is also about the American ideals of democracy and freedom. It’s not about victory. It is about honor and sacrifice, two things about which Donald Trump knows absolutely nothing. Next, in an essentially bizarre and meaningless rant, he bragged about firing people.

And the other thing is, we fired thousands of people who didn’t take care of our great veterans. They were sadists, they were sick people, they were thieves, they were everything you want to name. And we got rid of over 9,000 of them. And then when Biden came in, he hired them back, many of them, but we got rid of them, and I think we got rid of them permanently. We replaced them with people who love our veterans, not people who are sick people.

Every accusation is an admission. It is unspeakable that that man is allowed anywhere near a ceremony commemorating our veterans. There was another moment that captured Donald’s audacity–when he lectured troops about making the ultimate sacrifice, or at least he tried to do that. Here is what he said. 

We ask only this, that if we die, we must die. And we as men would die without complaining, without pleading, and safe in the feeling that we have done our best for what we believed was right. We must do what is right. Colonel Wolverton died for us so bravely in battle today; we remember.

Donald has no right to speak about the sacrifices our veterans have made. He has no right to characterize the sacrifices that our veterans have made and continue to make. A man who doesn’t understand what the military does, what it should be used for, who has put this country in unspeakable danger because of his vast shortcomings. This draft dodger has called veterans suckers and losers. On a personal note, my dad was a second lieutenant in the National Guard, and he was treated like a sucker and a loser. 

Thousands of veterans across the country spent the day protesting Donald’s use of the military to enforce his cruel, illegal, and unconstitutional immigration policies. Fox 32 Chicago spoke to US Army veteran Arti Walker Peddakotla in the lead-up to the protest, and here’s what she had to say.

Given the fact that ICE is occupying our communities in some communities, we have military and National Guard members occupying our communities that veterans really needed to stand together with working-class people and speak out against this administration.

Vets say rallies are planned for here in Chicago, as well as cities across the country, to stand against not only the use of the military and immigration actions, but also the tactics of ICE agents and border patrol on immigrants and citizens alike.

As veterans, we sign up to really protect everyone, and no one is being protected by this administration’s tactics. No one is being made safer. In fact, our communities are being made more unsafe by what ICE is doing and what the military is doing on our streets.

Air Force veteran Judson Wager rallied with over 500 other veterans in Washington, DC. He told independent military outlet Stars and Stripes that, quote, 

We’re in the middle of an authoritarian takeover of our government.” Even as I’m honoring my fellow veterans, I’m also sounding the alarm for all Americans. Our democracy is in peril, and it will take all of us to protect it.

Donald is continuing to alienate our country’s closest allies. CNN reports that the United Kingdom has partially halted intelligence sharing with the us. They did this after finding that the Trump regime’s lethal strikes on suspected drug trafficking violate international law. CNN’s national security correspondent Natasha Bertrand shared additional details on this development.

Previously, the UK had been happy to help the United States locate and interdict vessels that were transiting the Caribbean that appeared to be trafficking drugs. But the key difference, of course, is that it was helping the Coast Guard intercept those vessels, arrest those on board, seize the drugs, and allow these individuals to have some semblance of due process. But now the US, of course, has started striking these boats unilaterally with military force, killing everyone on board. The total now for a number of people killed is around 76, and we’re told that the UK is deeply uncomfortable with that, and they believe that it is pretty blatantly illegal. Now, it is unclear exactly how long this intelligent sharing suspension is going to last, but we’re told that it has been going on for well over a month now, essentially since the US began its bombing campaign. And it really underscores the continued questions surrounding the legality of this US military campaign, which, of course, the US government, the Trump administration, has insisted is part of an armed conflict that is waging against cartel members and criminal organizations. But much of the international community, as well as legal experts inside the US, do not see it that way.

Let’s get back to our veterans. Yesterday, a flight filled with veterans and their families landed in Washington, DC, and was greeted by an unexpected guest. Please remember all our veterans, those still with us and those who aren’t.

Veteran: This honor flight is to honor all the veterans of World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam. It’s all free for them, but we show them all their monuments and explain what their monuments are about. We just try to treat them with dignity that some of them didn’t get when they came home from the war.

President Obama: Hello, everybody. As we approach Veterans Day, I wanted to stop by and just say thank you for your extraordinary service to you, your family. The sacrifices that all of you made to protect our country is something that will always be honored, and we are very grateful. And we also happen to welcome you with a 70-degree day in DC, which doesn’t always happen around here.

Veteran: That’s the first time I’ve seen a president, former or current, greet an honor flight, and that is absolutely amazing. A commander-in-chief, a leader who’s going to show up and tell you that your service was worth something. I think that’s the important part. So I think it was a great thing to have.

Veteran: The last time I got to see a president it was Gerald Ford.

Thank you, Barack Obama, for demonstrating what a real leader looks like.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Fraud, Trump

Watch PBS’s “The Rise of RFK Jr.” Learn Who He Is.

By dianeravitch
November 9, 2025 //
2

Last night I watched a PBS Frontline documentary: The Rise of RFK Jr.

This documentary is fascinating. It shows young Bobby’s idyllic childhood at the family’s sprawling, luxurious compound in Virginia. He grew up in a world of joy, fun, and privilege.

You can see how deeply he was scarred by the murder of his father, with whom he was very close. This was an experience no child should endure.

He is sent away to a boarding school, where he is soon kicked out. Then another, then Harvard, which was a given, in light of his name. At Harvard, he becomes addicted to drugs and a drug dealer. Pot, cocaine, heroin.

He goes to law school, flunks the bar exam, but eventually passes. He marries an eligible young woman, has children, divorces her. Still a drug addict. Meets a beautiful Catholic girl, marries her, has four children. He begins to find his niche as an environmental lawyer. Life is looking up. But he’s a sex addict and he keeps a record of his conquests–at least 37. His wife finds the record and hangs herself.

He believes he is destined for greatness. He is a Kennedy so he keeps looking for the vehicle that will catapult him to fame. He discovers angry mothers who are looking for the cause of their children’s autism. He latches on to the issue and becomes their champion. He also becomes a prominent anti-Vaxxer and conspiracy theorist.

He briefly runs for president in 2024 but soon realizes that his prospects are nil. Trump offers a big job if he joins his campaign. Bobby accepts his offer, to the dismay of his family.

Bobby speaks to large, adoring crowds. He loves it.

Trump appoints him to lead the government’s public health agency–Health and Human Services. His family is appalled. They know he is unqualified. They know he has no respect for science. He promises the Senate committee that he won’t stop vaccines, despite his long history as a critic of them. He wins approval.

He begins to fire prominent scientists and thousands of experienced employees. He throws the agency into turmoil.

So here we are.

Categories Accountability, Character, Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Fraud, Health, Safety, Science, Shame, Trump

Trump is Our King George: What Would the Founders Say?

By dianeravitch
September 28, 2025 //
8

A reader who uses the name Quickwrit parses the Constitutionnand finds that Trump is doing today exactly what King George did to the colonists.

Quickwrit writes:

WHAT TRUMP IS DOING TODAY is the very same thing that our Declaration of Independence lists as the violations of liberty that triggered our Declaration of Independence. Take a look:

The King used armed forces to control American cities and towns, without first asking permission from the legislatures; quoting the Declaration, it says: “He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.” Just like King Trump sending armed National Guard units into our cities today.

The King replaced local police with his armed forces. The Declaration says: “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

The King’s armed forces were protected from killing civilians: “For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.” People die today in ICE custody, and nothing happens.

The King ignores civil courts: “He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.”

“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices.”

“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people.”

“He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained.” Today, not only do governors of Red States do nothing without Trump’s approval, neither does Congress.

The Declaration also says that we also declare our independence from the King for his:

“cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world’ (just like Trump’s tariffs);

“depriving us in many cases of the benefit of Trial by Jury” and “transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences” (just like Trump deporting people without trial to be imprisoned in foreign nations).

The Declaration says Americans are breaking away because the King has opposed immigration that is vital to America’s economic growth, by “obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither.” Already in 1740, laws had been passed to grant “natural born” citizenship status to immigrants who lived there for seven consecutive years.

The King has also been “redistricting” Americans out of their right to representation: “He has refused to pass Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.” Just like the redistricting going on today.

Americans today truly need to read the history of our Revolution and what went into and is actually in our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. Read the ACTUAL WRITINGS of our Founding Fathers, not just listen to or read the “analyses” of political talking heads on today’s TV and social media.

That kind of reading takes time, and too few Americans today are willing to spend the time.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Citizenship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, History, Trump

Trump Justice Department Killed Investigation of Border Czar Tom Homan for Taking $50,000 Cash Bribe

By dianeravitch
September 21, 2025 //
20

MSNBC broke the bombshell story: before the 2024 election, undercover FBI agents handed a paper bag with $50,000 cash to Tom Homan. They heard that Homan was soliciting bribes. The meeting was filmed.

The investigation of Homan for corrupt activities was quashed by Trump’s Department of Justice, presumably with the full knowledge of Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel.

Carol Leonnig and Ken Dilanian of MSNBC reported:

In an undercover operation last year, the FBI recorded Tom Homan, now the White House border czar, accepting $50,000 in cash after indicating he could help the agents — who were posing as business executives — win government contracts in a second Trump administration, according to multiple people familiar with the probe and internal documents reviewed by MSNBC.

The FBI and the Justice Department planned to wait to see whether Homan would deliver on his alleged promise once he became the nation’s top immigration official. But the case indefinitely stalled soon after Donald Trump became president again in January, according to six sources familiar with the matter. In recent weeks, Trump appointees officially closed the investigation, after FBI Director Kash Patel requested a status update on the case, two of the people said. 

It’s unclear what reasons FBI and Justice Department officials gave for shutting down the investigation. But a Trump Justice Department appointee called the case a “deep state” probe in early 2025 and no further investigative steps were taken, the sources say. 

On Sept. 20, 2024, with hidden cameras recording the scene at a meeting spot in Texas, Homan accepted $50,000 in bills, according to an internal summary of the case and sources. 

The federal investigation was launched in western Texas in the summer of 2024 after a subject in a separate investigation claimed Homan was soliciting payments in exchange for awarding contracts should Trump win the presidential election, according to an internal Justice Department summary of the probe reviewed by MSNBC and people familiar with the case. The U.S. Attorney’s office in the Western District of Texas, working with the FBI, asked the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section to join its ongoing probe “into the Border Czar and former Acting Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Tom Homan and others based on evidence of payment from FBI undercover agents in exchange for facilitating future contracts related to border enforcement.”

Homan, who served as acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement early in Trump’s first term, openly claimed during the 2024 campaign that he would play a prominent role in carrying out Trump’s promised mass deportations.

Asked for comment about MSNBC’s exclusive reporting, the White House, the Justice Department and the FBI dismissed the investigation as politically motivated and baseless.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Ethics, Evil, Fraud, Trump

Trump Wants Smithsonian to Downplay or Eliminate Dark Portrayal of Slavery

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2025 //
9

Trump warned that he was prepared to take an active role in reviewing exhibits in the Smithsonian museums, especially the African-American Museum. Too many show bad portrayals of their nation, he complained. Think about it: is it possible to show slavery in a positive light?

Trump’s insistence on purging the Smithsonian of the accurate portrayal of Black history is yet another example of his efforts to minimize and sanitize that history.

The New York Times wrote that Trump is hostile to an honest confrontation with the past:

Since taking office, Mr. Trump has led an effort to purge diversity, equity and inclusion policies from the federal government and threatened to investigate companies and schools that adopt such policies. He has tried to reframe the country’s past involving racism and discrimination by de-emphasizing that history, preferring to instead spotlight a sanitized, rosy depiction of America.

The administration has worked to scrub or minimize government references to the contributions of Black heroes, from the Tuskegee Airmen, who fought in World War II, to Harriet Tubman, who guided enslaved people along the Underground Railroad. Mr. Trump commemorated Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of slavery in the United States that became a federal holiday in 2021, by complaining that there were too many non-working holidays in America. He has called for the return of Confederate insignia and statues honoring those who fought to preserve slavery.

And he has previously attacked the exhibits on race at the Smithsonian, which has traditionally operated as an independent institution that regards itself as outside the purview of the executive branch, as “divisive, race-centered ideology.”

CNN described Trump’s determination to compel museums to remove exhibitions of events that show shameful behavior by whites and the government:

President Donald Trump escalated his campaign to purge cultural institutions of materials that conflict with his political directives on Tuesday, alleging museums were too focused on highlighting negative aspects of American history, including “how bad slavery was.”

In a Truth Social post, Trump directed his attorneys to conduct a review of museums, comparing the effort to his crackdown on universities across the country.

“The Smithsonian is OUT OF CONTROL, where everything discussed is how horrible our Country is, how bad Slavery was, and how unaccomplished the downtrodden have been — Nothing about Success, nothing about Brightness, nothing about the Future,” Trump wrote.

Trump’s comments come days after the White House announced an unprecedented, sweeping review of the Smithsonian Institution, which runs the nation’s major public museums. The initiative, a trio of top Trump aides wrote in a letter to Smithsonian Institution secretary Lonnie Bunch III last week, “aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.”

The letter said the review would focus on public-facing content, the curatorial process to understand how work is selected for exhibits, current and future exhibition planning, the use of existing materials and collections and guidelines for narrative standards.

Bunch — who has served as Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution since 2019 and is the first African American to hold the position — has made multiple comments about the importance of educating people about slavery through the National Museum of African American History and Culture specifically. He told Smithsonian Magazine that part of the purpose of that museum “was to help a nation understand itself — an impossible task without the full recognition of the horrors of slavery.”

Exhibits at the Smithsonian take years of planning and are heavily evaluated by teams of scholars and curatorial experts before they make their debut. Janet Marstine, a museum ethics expert, said that the demands laid out by the Trump administration “set the Smithsonian up for failure.”

“Nobody could provide those kinds of materials in such a comprehensive way, in that short amount of time, and so it’s just an impossible task,” she said. The White House has asked the Smithsonian to provide a wide array of materials, from internal emails and memos to digital copies of all placards and gallery labels currently on display.

The Smithsonian declined to comment on Trump’s latest remarks. A White House official, asked about the attorney review process Trump described, said the president “will explore all options and avenues to get the Woke out of the Smithsonian and hold them accountable.”

Still, Trump’s efforts to target colleges and universities — which he is now comparing to his focus on Smithsonian museums — has been even more aggressive. His administration has moved to strip federal funding from higher education institutions for a variety of reasons, including allegations of antisemitism and failure to comply with certain policy changes. Columbia University recently settled with the Trump administration for more than $220 million dollars and Trump has also been in a protracted battle with Harvard University after his administration froze $2 billion in federal funding.

The Trump administration’s push to align federal support with his cultural agenda has extended beyond the nation’s capital. The Institute of Museum and Library Services and the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities canceled tens of millions of dollars in federal grants earlier this year, affecting small museums, library initiatives, arts programs and academic research projects across the country.

Trump has previously praised the Smithsonian museums, including the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which he toured during his first term as president.

“I’m deeply proud that we now have a museum that honors the millions of African American men and women who built our national heritage, especially when it comes to faith, culture and the unbreakable American spirit,” Trump said during remarks at the museum in February 2017. Later that month, Trump said the museum “tells of the great struggle for freedom and equality that prevailed against the sins of slavery and the injustice of discrimination.”

Earlier this year, Trump signed an executive order that put Vice President JD Vance, who serves on the Smithsonian’s Board of Regents, in charge of stopping government spending on exhibits that don’t align with the administration’s agenda. He also tasked a former member of his legal team, attorney Lindsey Halligan, with helping to root out “improper ideology” at the Smithsonian.

“Museums in our Nation’s capital should be places where individuals go to learn — not to be subjected to divisive narratives,” the executive order said.

The Smithsonian began a review of its own in June, and has repeatedly stressed its commitment to being nonpartisan. The institution told CNN in July that it was committed to an “unbiased presentation of facts and history” and that it would “make any necessary changes to ensure our content meets our standards.”

The Smithsonian was established in the 1840s by the US with funds from the estate of James Smithson, a British scientist. As a unique trust instrumentality that is supported by federal funds, it is not an executive branch agency, which makes it a complex question whether the Trump administration has the ability to control its exhibits. It is governed by a 17-member Board of Regents led by Chief Justice John Roberts.

The fact that the Smithsonian is not an “executive branch agency” won’t deter Trump. He has ignored laws and the Constitution when they don’t support his agenda. Neither the Library of Congress nor the National Portrait Gallery is an executive agency. Yet Congress sat silently as Trump forced out their leaders.

Trump is rapidly assuming control of every federal agency that was designed to be independent.

No other President has attempted to do that.

Categories Censorship, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom to Learn, History, Lies, Racism, Trump

Carol Burris: Charter School Movement Runs Out of Gas, Decline Sets In

By dianeravitch
August 21, 2025 //
10

Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for Public Education, points out that the once promising charter school industry is now in decline. Fifteen years ago, promoters of charter schools boasted of charter school miracles, of closing achievement gaps and saving poor kids who were “stuck in failing public schools.”

The charter industry lobby won federal funding for charter school expansion. Bill Gates put millions into charters and subsidized a propaganda film to sell the public on the remarkable success of privately run charter schools.

But the miracle dissolved. Some of the “best” charters were selecting their students carefully and/or dropping students who fell behind. Many charters failed. Others folded. Some closed because of low enrollment. Some closed because their owners were corrupt. it’s not a lack of money. The federal government is now pouring $500 million every year into charter growth.

The movement is in decline because the magic is gone.

Carol Burris wrote about the decline of the charter industry in The Progressive:

Thirty years ago, charter schools stood for possibility. At their inception in the 1990s, they were supposed to be nimble, innovative, community-driven alternatives to traditional public schools—labs of experimentation led by teachers and grounded in equity. But in 2025, the movement finds itself at a turning point, not because it succeeded, but because it strayed too far from its original vision.

The first installment of a new report, titled “Charter School Reckoning: Decline, Disillusionment, and Cost,” by the National Center for Charter School Accountability (NCCSA) lays bare a system in decline. Closures are accelerating. Enrollment is stagnating. And beneath the rhetoric of “choice” and “opportunity,” a harsh reality has emerged: a sector in retreat, propped up by unchecked federal funding and powerful lobbying interests.

In the first six months of 2025 alone, fifty charter schools announced their closures. Some disappeared with less than a week’s warning. These schools join more than 160 others that vanished during the previous year. Between school years 2022-23 and 2023-24, the number of charter schools in the United States increased by only eleven. Last September, North Carolina’s Apprentice Academy closed days after opening for the school year. Ohio’s Victory Charter gave families two weeks’ notice. In Minnesota and Texas, charter schools folded before winter break. And last month, just weeks before the new school year was set to begin, yet another charter school in Colorado closed its doors. 

And yet, federal investment in the charter school industry hasn’t skipped a beat. The U.S. Department of Education’s Charter Schools Program (CSP), created in 1994 to provide seed money to start charter schools, began with a modest $4.5 million. It now burns through half a billion taxpayer dollars a year. Much of that money is awarded by private contractors who are paid to review applications who provide minimal vetting. Their decisions are based solely on what’s written in grant applications—inviting exaggerated claims and even fiction. One 2022 federal audit found that nearly half the schools promised by Charter Management Organization grant recipients never materialized.

Even more troubling, many of the charter schools that have opened with the help of CSP funding have collapsed. The NCCSA report notes that of the fifty closures so far in 2025, nearly half had received a combined $102 million in federal start-up and expansion grants, according to a search of U.S. Department of Education and state databases.

So why does the funding from the federal government continue to flow? One reason is a myth that refuses to die: the million-student waitlist to get into charter schools. This talking point, originally peddled in 2013 by the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, resurfaced in June 2025 by U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon during a Senate hearing. But the figurewas debunked more than a decade ago.

The stark truth is that demand for charter schools is often overestimated. Low enrollment is the number one reason charters shut down. A 2024 study by NCCSA and the Network for Public Education found that nearly half of all charter school closures between 2022 and 2024 were due to insufficient enrollment. Of the fifty closures in the first half of 2025, twenty-seven cited low enrollment as the primary cause.

Consider Florida’s Village of Excellence Academy, which closed with just one day’s notice in January 2025. Its enrollment had fallen from 230 in 2020 to just seventy-eight students. The school is not an anomaly. In 2023-24, 12 percent of all charter schools enrolled fewer than 100 students. 

Meanwhile, at the other extreme, mega-charters such as Commonwealth Charter Academy (CCA) in Pennsylvania have student populations that are ballooning beyond reason. CCA, a virtual charter school with students across Pennsylvania, now enrolls more than 23,000 students—making it the largest K-12 school in the country. It spent nearly $9 million on advertising in the 2022-23 school year alone and $196 million on real estate since 2020—for a cyber school that delivers its instruction without the need for brick-and-mortar buildings. But student outcomes are dismal: just 11 percent proficiency in English, 4.7 percent proficiency in math, and a graduation rate far below the state average.

Then there’s Highlands Community Charter in California, a school that billed itself as a second chance for adults but instead became a case study in fraud. According to a state audit, Highlands took more than $180 million in funding to which it was not eligible and spent the money inappropriately. The school paid $80,000 for staff to attend a conference at a luxury hotel in Hawaii. Teachers were also employed without proper credentials, often because there was only one teacher for every fifty-one students. Graduation rates were between 2 and 3 percent. Following the audit, the entire board has resigned in disgrace and the state has requested a $180 million reimbursement.

This is not innovation. It’s exploitation of taxpayers and at-risk students.

And yet, federal dollars continue to pour into this shrinking, scandal-prone industry. Policymakers invoke waitlists that don’t exist. Authorizers, who are supposed to oversee charter schools, look the other way, incentivized by per-pupil funding kickbacks. Taxpayers are footing the bill for schools that fail to open, fail to serve, or fail to survive.

The question is no longer what charter schools were once meant to be. It’s whether the sector can be reformed at all. As Congress considers the next education budget, we urge lawmakers to ask: Why are we funding growth that isn’t happening? Why are we subsidizing failure? It’s time to stop chasing the ghost of what charter schools might have been—and start holding the system accountable for what it has become.

Categories Charter Schools, Disruption, Failure, Fraud, Funding, Gates Foundation, Bill Gates, Network for Public Education, Privatization, Propaganda

Trump Wants to Ban Mail-In Voting Because Putin Told Him So

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2025 //
5

Thom Hartmann is outraged. Trump proclaimed that he would issue an executive order banning mail-in voting. Why? Because Putin told him that mail-in voting caused him to lose the 2020 election. Republicans know that they will lose control of the House and possibly the Senate unless they can suppress the vote or redistrict, as they are in Texas, drawing lines that squeeze out Democrats.

Hartmann wrote:

Yesterday, Donald Trump crossed another line that no president in our history has ever dared p to touch. With the echo of Vladimir Putin’s whisper in his ear, in front of President Zelenskyy and seven other European leaders, Trump announced he’s preparing an executive order to ban mail-in ballots and even outlaw voting machines across America ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

Sitting in front of the Chancellor of Germany and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, — both nations that allow and even encourage mail-in voting — Trump said:

“Mail-in ballots are corrupt mail-in ballots. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots, and we as a Republican Party are gonna do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots. We’re gonna start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they’re corrupt. And, you know that we’re the only country in the world, I believe, I may be wrong, but just about the only country in the world that uses it because of what’s happened.”

This is not just a partisan maneuver. It’s an open assault on the Constitution, a grotesque power grab, and a direct threat to the foundation of democracy itself. And it’s happening in real time, in broad daylight, with a criminally compliant Republican Party cheering him on. 

Republicans hate mail-in voting for multiple reasons.

First, for people who’re paid by the hour, mail-in voting increases participation because they can fill out their ballots at the kitchen table after work. Republicans don’t want people to vote, and have introduced over 400 pieces of legislation in the past three years nationwide to make voting more difficult. 

Second, mail-in voting makes voters better informed and less vulnerable to sound-byte TV ads because, while perusing that ballot at the kitchen table, they can look up candidates on their laptops and get more detail and information. Republicans hate informed voters and rely heavily on often-dishonest advertisements to swing voters. 

Third, mail-in ballots — because they arrive in the mail weeks before the election — give voters an early chance to discover if they’ve been the victim of Republican voter-roll purges, one of their favorite tactics to pre-rig elections. 

Fourth, mail-in ballots end the GOP trick of understaffing and underresourcing polling places in minority neighborhoods, leading to hours-long lines. Hispanic voters generally wait 150% longer than white voters, and Black voters must endure a 200% longer wait; mail-in ballots put an end to this favorite of the GOP’s voter suppression efforts. 

Trump, knowing all this, couldn’t help himself yesterday, finally blurting out his real reason for wanting to end mail-in voting in America:

“We got to stop mail-in voting, and the Republicans have to lead the charge. The Democrats want it because they have horrible policy,” Trump proclaimed. “If you [don’t] have mail-in voting, you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected. That’s bigger than anything having to do with redistricting, believe me.”

Once again, Trump is ignoring the law and the Constitution, which explicitly delegates the administration of elections to the states and Congress, not presidential executive orders.

That’s not some vague norm or debatable tradition: it’s written into the very DNA of our system of government. States set the rules, unless Congress — not the president — overrides them. States decide how their citizens vote, as the Constitution’s Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 dictates:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

Yet here we have a president declaring that he alone will dictate the terms of elections nationwide, in direct violation of two centuries of law and precedent. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s tyrannical. 

When a president asserts powers he does not have, with the full knowledge that they aren’t his to wield, he’s announcing to the country that the rule of law no longer constrains him. That’s the definition of dictatorship.

And what makes this even more obscene is the source of Trump’s inspiration. According to multiple reports, Trump’s sudden rant on mail-in ballots followed a private conversation with Vladimir Putin, who reportedly told him that mail-in voting was the reason he lost in 2020.

The man occupying the Oval Office is now taking advice about how to rig American elections from the very dictator who has spent his career poisoning journalists, jailing opponents, and staging sham referendums to annex entire countries. 

It’s bad enough that Trump has always been Putin’s toady, but now we see the Kremlin effectively writing U.S. election law. If Jefferson, Madison, or Lincoln were alive to hear this, they would spit.

Mail-in voting is not a scam. It’s not a trick. It’s how tens of millions of Americans — Republicans, Democrats, independents — exercise their right to vote. 

Seniors rely on it. People with disabilities rely on it. Military service members overseas rely on it. Hourly workers who can’t take a day off rely on it. Parents with young children rely on it. Rural voters, who often live miles from polling places, rely on it. 

And every study, every audit, every bipartisan commission has found mail-in voting to be secure, safe, and reliable. Five states do it exclusively; we’ve had it more than two decades here in Oregon with nary a single scandal or problem. To call it fraudulent is a lie. To ban it is voter suppression on a scale this country has never seen.

And voting machines? Trump is openly declaring that he’ll return us to mind-numbingly slow hand-counting of ballots, a tactic straight from the authoritarian playbook designed to create chaos, delays, and endless opportunities to dispute the results in 2026 and 2028. 

I’ve had concerns about voting machines and Windows-based tabulators for decades, but my solution isn’t to end them. Instead, we should use machines owned by the government itself, generating paper ballots and operating transparently on open-source software with every election subject to sample audits. 

Instead of trying to make elections more secure, Trump’s laying the groundwork for election theft in plain sight. This isn’t subtle: it’s the loud declaration of a man preparing to overturn the will of the voters, with the blessing of a foreign adversary, and with a Republican Party too craven to object.

If Trump succeeds in outlawing mail-in ballots and voting machines, millions of Americans will simply not be able to vote. Seniors in nursing homes, service members abroad, people with disabilities, single parents, rural citizens: they will all be disenfranchised overnight. And make no mistake: that’s the point. 

This is not about integrity. This is not about security. This is about shrinking the electorate to a size that Republicans believe will guarantee them victory forever.

Republicans know they can’t win free and fair elections in much of America. They know their policies are unpopular. They know their agenda is toxic. 

So they cheat. They gerrymander districts into grotesque shapes that make a mockery of representative government. They purge voters from the rolls. They criminalize voter registration drives. They intimidate voters at the polls. 

And now, at Trump’s command and Putin’s urging, they want to ban the very methods by which millions of Americans vote. This is not politics as usual. This is the slow-motion strangulation of democracy.

Every American who believes in self-government must rise up against this. Governors must prepare to defy such an executive order in court and in practice. State legislatures must assert their constitutional authority. 

Attorneys general must be ready to sue. And ordinary citizens must take to the streets, the phones, the ballot box, and every civic space available to declare that this will not stand. Because if it does, we’ll have surrendered the very essence of the American experiment.

We’ve been here before in spirit if not in form.

Reagan’s campaign cut a deal with the Iranian Ayatollahs to hang onto the hostages until after the election. Richard Nixon tried to sabotage our democracy by killing LBJ’s peace negotiations with Vietnam and followed-up with burglaries and cover-ups when he thought Democrats were onto him. He was forced to resign. George W. Bush and the GOP stopped the counting of votes in Florida and handed the presidency to themselves. That assault has scarred our politics for decades. 

But never — not once in 250 years — has a president openly declared that he will strip states of their constitutional right to run elections, end mail-in voting, and ban voting machines altogether. This is unprecedented, authoritarian, and it must be stopped.

It’s also just one in a broad spectrum of attacks Republicans have launched against your right to vote, with the SAVE Act — which will prevent women from voting if their birth certificate and drivers’ license have different names on them and they’ve never had an official change-of-name in the courts — teed up in the US Senate. All while millions are being purged from the voting rolls as you read these words.

This is the moment when the American people must decide whether they still believe in democracy. If we shrug, if we accept this as just more noise from a corrupt and broken con man, we will lose it. If we wait for someone else to act, we will lose it. If we tell ourselves the courts will save us, we may be bitterly disappointed. 

The survival of democracy has never been guaranteed. It has always required vigilance, courage, and action. Now it requires all three from each of us.

Trump’s promised executive order is not just a legal maneuver. It’s a declaration of war against the American people. It’s the dream of every tyrant: to control who votes and who does not, to dictate the rules of elections so that the outcome is predetermined. 

What Putin and Trump are proposing is not democracy. It’s not freedom. It’s not America.

And the Republicans who are enabling this treachery are as guilty as Trump himself. They’re betraying their oaths, their constituents, and our country. History will remember them not as conservatives or patriots, but as the gravediggers of our Republic.

This is the line. This is the moment. We cannot let Trump and his cronies bulldoze democracy into the ground at Putin’s command. Every patriot, every progressive, every independent, every honest conservative who still believes in the Constitution must join together and say no. 

No to dictatorship. No to disenfranchisement. No to treason.

If we fail now, there may not be another chance.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Trump
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