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Trump’s Unprecedented Threat to Take Away Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2025 //
5

Trump’s war on higher education is similar to his war on every other major institution. He wants everyone to be afraid of him. He wants no critics to escape his wrath. He wants dissident voices silenced. He wants to be our king, our emperor, our dictator.

He has threatened to punish law firms that have represented his opponents, such as his 2016 challenger Hillary Clinton and Special Counsel Jack Smith, who gathered evidence of Trump’s crimes but was ultimately defeated by Trump’s delaying tactics.

He has threatened the news media, hitting CBS News “60 Minutes” with a $10 billion lawsuit for editing its interview with Kamala Harris (which is standard practice) and suing ABC News for a remark by George Stephanopoulos that he didn’t like. Both of these are frivolous lawsuits, but CBS is negotiating a settlement and ABC paid out $15 million to end the lawsuit. In a pre-emptive conciliatory move, Amazon (Jeff Bezos) bought the rights to a documentary about Melania Trump for $40 million, which will be produced by Melania. Bezos owns The Washington Post, where he has told the editorial board to go easy on Trump. The Post lost some of its best journalists after Bezos groveled to Trump.

He has threatened to cut off federal funding to universities if they don’t meet his demands. The ostensible reason for targeting universities is to compel them to combat anti-Semitism on their campuses, but it’s hard to credit Trump’s sincerity. He has defended anti-Semites, dined with them, and received their support. His best friend Elon Musk supported Germany’s far-right AfD party in the recent elections. A man who cares so little about civil rights, who attacks academic freedom, who defunds education and social services, who belittles minorities, who threatens democracy, and who is so utterly lacking in compassion–is no friend of Jews.

Last Friday, Trump said on his “Truth Social” account:

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” Trump wrote in a social media post. “It’s what they deserve!”

The President of the United States cannot take away the tax-exempt status of any individual or organization. That is a decision made by the IRS, and it is illegal for the President or Vice-President or any other government official to interfere in that decision. Such a decision is made by the IRS, must be made for cause, and the institution has the right to defend itself. The process can take years.

If the President could order the IRS to audit or investigate his enemies, it would be a very dangerous policy. He can’t. With Trump, the law is a minor inconvenience, so who knows what he will do. The Supreme Court told him he has absolute immunity so maybe he can disregard the law.

The Trump administration is blasting away at Harvard on multiple fronts. The Department of Homeland Security has threatened to revoke Harvard’s ability to enroll international students, who are 27 percent of Harvard’s enrollments.

The Education Department has demanded that Harvard supply the names and email addresses of all foreign students who were expelled since 2016. The Department also wants the names of all scholars, researchers, students and faculty associated with any foreign government. Just a few days ago, Secretary McMahon informed Harvard that it is no longer eligible for new funding so long as it continues to oppose the president’s agenda. That would mean allowing Trump’s agents to take control of admissions, hiring, and curriculum. The nation’s most prestigious university would have to abandon its independence to Trump.

The Department of Health and Human Services and the National Science Foundation have suspended over $2 billion in grants to Harvard for medical and scientific research. Studies that are focused on causes and cures for tuberculosis and ALS, for example, have come to a halt. Another $7 billion in research funding could be suspended. This could damage the research and work of hospitals across the Boston metro area, and the economy of Massachusetts as well. Since Massachusetts is a blue state, Trump doesn’t care.

If this looks like harassment, that’s because it is.

Trump is certainly no libertarian. He is using every federal source of funding to compel universities, colleges, schools, cities, and states to follow his commands.

That’s not democracy. That’s dictatorship.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Higher Education, Trump

Why is Trump Killing the Voice of America?

By dianeravitch
May 4, 2025 //
9

Yesterday was World Press Freedom Day.

Press Freedom is at risk in every authoritarian regime, but also in the U.S. Trump has filed frivolous lawsuits against ABC and other news outlets. ABC paid him $15 million to make peace.

Trump sued CBS for $10 billion for editing a “60 Minutes” interview with Kamala Harris and is now in settlement talks. Editing a pre-taped interview is standard practice. The interview may last for an hour, but only 20 minutes is aired. Since Trump won the election, how was he damaged? It is hard to imagine he would win anything in court.

But Trump’s FCC chairman, Brendan Carr, has the power to destroy CBS. And the owner of CBS–Shari Redstone– is currently negotiating a lucrative deal that needs FCC approval. What will CBS pay Trump?

Given Trump’s legendary vindictiveness, will he succeed in eviscerating press freedom? Will the media dare criticize him as they have criticized every other president?

See CNN’s Brian Stelter on the state of press freedom today.

Now comes Trump’s puzzling vendetta against the Voice of America. In March, he issued an executive order to shut it down, although Republicans have traditionally supported it. On April 22, a federal district court judge overturned Trump’s executive order and demanded the rehiring of VOA staff. They were told they would be back at work in days. But yesterday, a three judge appeals court stayed the lower court’s ruling and VOA’s future is again in doubt. Two of the three appeals court judges were appointed by Trump.

The Voice of America has a unique responsibility. It brings objective, factual, unbiased news to people around the globe. For millions of people, the Voice of America is their only alternative to either government propaganda or no news at all.

Why does Donald Trump want to kill the Voice of America.

He has never explained.

He has called VOA “radical,” “leftwing,” and “woke,” but there is no factual basis for those attacks. They are talking points, not facts.

He appointed his devoted friend, Kari Lake, who ran for office in Arizona and lost both times, as the agent of VOA’s demise. She was an on-air commentator, so she knows something about media.

VOA seems to be in a death spiral, like USAID and the Department of Education.

The Washington Post reported on the Appeals Court’s ruling. Kari Lake described the decision as a “huge victory for President Trump.”

Trump has never explained why the Voice of America should be silenced.

Apparently no one at the VOA understands. I found this interview by Nick Schifrin of PBS (also on Trump’s chopping block), Lisa Curtis, and Michael Abramowitz, Director of VOA:

  • Nick Schifrin: Lisa Curtis is the chair of the board of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and a former senior director on President Trump’s first National Security Council staff.
  • Lisa Curtis: While it’s understandable that President Trump wants to cut down on government waste and fraud, I think this is the wrong organization to be attacking. Russia, Iran, China, these countries are spending billions in their own propaganda, their own anti-American propaganda. So I think it’s critical that the U.S. government is supporting organizations like RFE/RL that are pushing back against that disinformation, misinformation.
  • Nick Schifrin: And she says RFE/RL’s content reaches more than 10 percent of Iranians, many of whom have protested the regime.
  • Lisa Curtis:So I think it really is part of U.S. soft power, but they actually call it the hard edge of soft power because it is so effective in getting out the truth about America, about what’s happening in their local environments. And this is absolutely critical.
  • Nick Schifrin:Curtis said she considers the freeze and their funding illegal because the money is congressionally appropriated and RFE/RL’s mission is congressionally mandated. And they will sue the Trump administration to get it restored.To discuss this, I turn to Michael Abramowitz, who since last year has been the president of Voice of America and before that was the president of Freedom House.Michael Abramowitz, thanks very much. Welcome back to the “News Hour.”As you heard, President Trump in his statement on Friday night referred to VOA as a radical propaganda with a liberal bias. Is it?Michael Abramowitz, Director, Voice of America: I don’t think so.I do think that people at many different news organizations have been accused of bias on both right and left, like many different news organizations. VOA is not perfect, but we’re unusual among news organizations because we are one of the few news organizations that by law has to be fair and balanced.Every year, we look at each of our language services, review it for fairness, for balance. I have been a journalist in this field for a long time, and I think the journalists at VOA stand up very well against people from CNN, FOX, New York Times, et cetera, in terms of the commitment to balance.When we do talk shows, for instance, broadcasting into Iran, we will have Republicans, we will have Democrats. We are presenting the full spectrum of American political opinion, which is required by our charter.
  • Nick Schifrin:You have heard from other administration officials or allies of the president. Ric Grenell, who is a special envoy, called it — quote — “a relic of the past. We don’t need government-paid media outlets.”
  • Elon Musk says:“Shut them down. Nobody listens to them anymore.”Fundamentally, why do you believe taxpayers should pay for VOA journalism?
  • Michael Abramowitz:You know, the media is changing, the world is changing, and the Cold War doesn’t exist anymore.But what is happening around the world is that there is a huge, really, battle over information. The world is awash in propaganda and lies, and our adversaries like Russia and China, Iran are really spreading narratives that directly undermine accurate views about America.And we have to fight back. And VOA in particular has been an incredible asset for fighting back by providing objective news and information in the languages, in 48 languages that people in the local markets we serve. No other news organization does that.
  • Nick Schifrin:Let me ask a little bit about the status of the agency. You and every employee were put on leave over the weekend. Today, all contractors have been terminated. Do you have any notion of what the goal is from the administration? Is it to reform VOA, or is it simply to destroy it?
  • Michael Abramowitz:Candidly, I don’t know.Ms. Kari Lake, who is supposed to be my successor at some point she’s given some interviews, and I think she clearly recognizes in those interviews that VOA serves an important purpose. I think there are a lot of Republicans, in particular, especially on the Hill, who recognize the value of Voice of America, who recognize that, if we shut down, for instance, our program on Iran, which is really an incredible newsroom — we have 100 journalists, most of whom speak Farsi, has a huge audience inside Iran.When the president of Iran, when his helicopter went down over the summer, there was a huge spike in traffic on the VOA Web site because the people of Iran knew that they could not get accurate information about what was going on, so they came to VOA to get it. That’s the kind of thing that we can do.
  • Nick Schifrin:I want to point out, we heard from Lisa Curtis, the chair of the board of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.Voice of America and the Cuba Broadcasting, previously known as Radio Marti — we have got a graphic to show this — those are fully federal networks.(Crosstalk)
  • Nick Schifrin:What RFE/RL is talking about, they are a grantee. They get a grant from the U.S. government. RFE/RL will sue. Does VOA have any recourse today?
  • Michael Abramowitz:Well, I think we are — I mean, there’s a lot of discussion about some lawsuits that different parties are making. I know that the employees may be thinking about that.I think — I’m not sure that litigation in the end is going to be the most productive way. Maybe — I mean, you have to see what happens. But I think what would be really great is if Congress and the administration get together, recognize that this is a very important service, recognize that it’s sorely needed in a world in which our adversaries are spending billions of dollars, like Lisa said, and reformulate VOA to be effective for the modern age.
  • Nick Schifrin:And, finally, how — what’s the impact of this decision and the language that we have heard from the Trump administration on the very idea that information, that journalism sponsored by the U.S. government can support freedom and democracy?
  • Michael Abramowitz:We have been on the air essentially for 83 years through war, 9/11, government shutdown. VOA has kept — has kept its — has kept the lights on, has not been silent.So we’re silenced for the first time in 83 years. That’s devastating to me personally. It’s devastating to the staff. It’s devastating to all the thousands of people who used to work at VOA. I mean, this is a very special and unique news organization. It deserves to live. It doesn’t mean we can’t reform, but it deserves to survive.

I still don’t understand why Trump wants to close down America’s voice to the world.

I ask myself, who benefits if the Voice of America is stifled.

The obvious culprits: America’s enemies, especially Russia.

During the decades of the Cold War, VOA beamed information to dissenters behind the Iron Curtain. It kept hope alive.

No one would be happier to see VOA shut down than Putin.

Categories Budget Cuts, Censorship, Democracy, Disruption, Evil, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, International, Media, Trump

Trump Signs Executive Order Urging CPB to Stop Funding NPR and PBS

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2025 //
16

The Constitution says Congress has the power of the purse, not the president. The president executes the funding decisions of Congress.

Yesterday Trump called on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop funding public radio and public television. Never mind that National Public Radio brings news to listeners in areas totally saturated by rightwing Sinclair stations. Never mind that PBS is the best source of documentaries about science, history, nature, medicine, other nations, and global affairs. PBS is educational television at its best.

The Washington Post reported:

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday evening seeking to prohibit federal funding for NPR and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The order, which could be subject to legal challenge, called the broadcasters’ news coverage “biased and partisan.”

It instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to cease providing direct funds to either broadcaster. It also orders CPB to cease indirect funding of the services through grants to local public radio and television stations.

CPB is the main distributor of federal funds to public media. It receives about $535 million in federal funds per fiscal year, which it mostly spends on grants to hundreds of stations nationwide. The stations spend the grants on making their own programming or on buying programming from services such as NPR and PBS.

CPB, created by an act of Congress in 1967, also sometimes provides direct grants to NPR and PBS to produce national programs.
Thursday’s order instructs the CPB board to ensure that stations receiving its grants “do not use Federal funds for NPR and PBS.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Democracy, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Media, Trump

Wisconsin: State Superintendent Underly Hails Two Court Decisions Undercutting Trump DEI Ban

By dianeravitch
April 25, 2025 //
3

Jill Underly was recently te-elected as State Superintendent of Schools in Wisconsin. She is an active member of the Netwotk for Public Education and attended its last two meetings. She released the following statement after two courts hacked away at Trump’s threat to withhold funds from schools that taught diversity, equity, and inclusion

MADISON, Wis. (WISCONSIN DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION PRESS RELEASE) – State Superintendent Dr. Jill Underly today issued a statement following two federal court rulings that limit the Trump administration’s ability to withhold critical school funding over an unclear certification form and process.

“Our top priority in Wisconsin is our kids and making sure every student has the support they need to succeed. The past few weeks, school leaders have been scrambling to understand what the impact of the U.S. Department of Education’s order could be for their federal funds, forcing them to take their eye off what matters most.

“Today, two separate courts reached a similar conclusion: the USDE’s new certification process is likely unlawful and unconstitutionally vague. That is a welcome development for our schools and communities who, working in partnership with parents and families, are best positioned to make decisions for their communities – not Washington, D.C.

“We are closely reviewing today’s rulings and will continue to stand up for Wisconsin schools, and most importantly, our kids.”

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Wisconsin

Federal Judge Partially Blocks Trump DEI Ban

By dianeravitch
April 24, 2025 //
19

The Trump administration claims that it wants to reduce federal intervention into the nation’s public and private institutions. But it intervenes forcefully in both public and private sectors to punish anyone with different views. It has threatened to withhold federal funding for research from universities unless the targeted universities allow the federal government to supervise its curriculum, its hiring policies, and its admissions policies. And he threatened to stop the funding of any K12 school that continues DEI programs.

The Trump regime has created a nanny state.

From Day 1, Trump made clear that he would ban practices and policies intended to diversity, equity, and inclusion. He threatened to withhold federal funding of schools that ignored his order to eliminate DEI. He has taken complete control of the Kennedy Center, so as to block DEI programming, and he has appointed a woman with no credentials to remove DEI from the Smithsonian museums.

Who knows how the African American Museum will survive Trump’s DEI purge.

ABC News reported that a federal district judge has halted the DEI ban, at least in schools associated with one of the lawsuit’s plaintiffs, the NEA.

ABC News reported:

The Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes, a federal judge said on Thursday.

In an 82-page order, U.S. District Judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.

“Ours is a nation deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned,” Judge McCafferty wrote, adding the “right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is…one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes.”

“In this case, the court reviews action by the executive branch that threatens to erode these foundational principles,” she wrote.

The judge stopped short of issuing the nationwide injunction, instead limiting the relief to any entity that employs or contacts with the groups that filed the lawsuit, including the National Education Association and the Center for Black Educator Development.

Categories Academic Freedom, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, Race, Racism, Trump

Will Ron DeSantis Outrun This Scandal?

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2025 //
11

Jason Garcia is an investigative reporter in Florida who has had plenty to investigate during the regime of Ron DeSantis. His blog is called “Seeking Rents.” This is a post you should not miss.

The governor acts like a dictator, and the Republican-dominated legislature doesn’t stop him. Remember the takeover of New College? It was the only innovative, free-thinking public institution of higher education in the state. It was tiny, only 700 students. But DeSantis took control of the college’s board, hired a new president (a crony) and set about destroying everything that made it unique. He issued one executive order after another for the entire state to crush DEI and assure the only permissible thought mirrored his own. He attacked drag queens and threatened to punish bars and hotels that allowed them to perform. He created a private army, subject only to his control. He selected politicians to run major universities. He imposed thought control on the state. Fascism thrives in Florida.

Thus far, he has gotten away with his gambits. But Garcia doesn’t think he will get away with this one.

He writes:

A simmering scandal erupted Friday afternoon when the Tampa Bay Times, Miami Herald and Politico Florida revealed that the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis orchestrated a $10 million payment last fall to a charity founded by the governor’s wife — which then turned around and gave the money to groups that helped finance the governor’s campaign against a proposed constitutional amendment to legalize marijuana in Florida.

In a nutshell: The DeSantis administration pressured a major state contractor to make a $10 million donation to the Hope Florida Foundation, the controversial charity spearheaded by First Lady Casey DeSantis. It was part of a settlement negotiated with Centene Corp., after the state’s largest Medicaid contractor overbilled the state by at least $67 million.

Days later, Hope Florida transferred that $10 million to a pair of dark-money nonprofits. The state-backed charity gave $5 million each to “Save Our Society From Drugs,” an anti-marijuana group founded by a late Republican megadonor, and “Secure Florida’s Future,” a political vehicle controlled by executives at the Florida Chamber of Commerce, the Big Business lobbying group.

And days after that, Save Our Society From Drugs and Secure Florida’s Future gave a combined $8.5 million to “Keep Florida Clean,” a political committee — chaired by Ron DeSantis’ then-chief of staff — created to oppose Amendment 3, the amendment on last year’s ballot that would have allowed Floridians to use marijuana recreationally rather than solely for medicinal reasons.

It’s a daisy chain that may have transformed $10 million of public money — money meant to pay for health insurance for poor, elderly and disabled Floridians — into funding for anti-marijuana campaign ads.

DeSantis, of course, has repeatedly insisted that he did nothing wrong while also lashing out in increasingly vitriolic ways at everyone from the Republican speaker of the state House to the newspaper reporters digging into the story.

But at least one prominent GOP lawmaker — Rep. Alex Andrade, a Pensacola Republican who has been presiding over hearings into Hope Florida — told the Times and Herald that the transaction chain “looks like criminal fraud by some of those involved.”

Clearly, this looks very bad. But it is also by no means an isolated incident. 

In fact, this is part of a larger pattern of potential abuses that Ron DeSantis committed last fall when he chose to turn the power of state government against two citizen-led constitutional amendments that appeared on the November ballot: Amendment 3 and Amendment 4, which would have ended Florida’s statewide abortion ban.

Consider what we already know about how DeSantis financed his campaigns against the two amendments using public money taken from taxpayers — and private money taken from donors who got public favors from the governor.

  • Five state agencies directly funded television commercials meant to weaken support for the marijuana and abortion-rights ballot measures. We still don’t know the full extent of their spending, although Seeking Rents has estimated the total taxpayer tab at nearly $20 million. We also know that the DeSantis administration commandeered money for anti-marijuana advertising from Florida’s share of a nationwide legal settlement with the opioid industry — money that was supposed to be spent combatting the opioid addiction crisis.
  • At the same time, another nonprofit funded by Florida taxpayers poured at least $5 million into television ads attempting to soften Florida’s image on women’s healthcare at a time when Florida’s near-total abortion was under intense attack. It was the Florida Pregnancy Care Networks’ first-ever TV ad campaign. And its commercials, which were overseen by DeSantis administration staffers, complemented the state agency ads against the abortion-rights amendment — right down to using the same slogan.
  • Last June, after DeSantis vetoed legislation that would have strictly regulated the state’s hemp industry, CBS News Miami revealedthat industry executives and lobbyists promised to raise $5 million in exchange for the veto for the governor to spend on his campaign against Amendment 3. “Our lobby team made promises to rally some serious funding to stand with him on this,” a hemp industry representative wrote in one message that included a bank routing number for the Republican Party of Florida. “We have to pay $5 million to keep our end of the veto,” a hemp executive wrote in another message.
  • In the closing weeks of the campaign, records show that the Big Tobacco giant Philip Morris International gave $500,000 to DeSantis’ personal political committee — which was also chaired by the governor’s then-chief of staff and which DeSantis was using to campaign against both Amendment 3 and Amendment 4. Shortly after the election, the DeSantis administration handed Philip Morris a lucrative tax break, ruling that the company could sell a new line of electronically heated tobacco sticks free of state tobacco taxes.

There were other abuses of power, too. DeSantis and his team threatened to criminally prosecute television stations that aired ads supporting Amendment 4. They sent state police to the homes of Florida voters who signed Amendment 4 petitions. And they hijacked the ballot-writing process for Amendment 4.

There’s a reason why the DeSantis administration made sure to extract a promise of legal immunityfrom the organization that sponsored Amendment 4 as part of a legal settlement negotiated after the election.

DeSantis’ tactics worked. Though Amendments 3 and 4 each won majority support from Florida voters — 55.9 percent for recreational marijuana, 57.2 percent for abortion rights — both fell short of the 60 percent support needed to amend the state constitution.

But, suddenly, it looks like this may not be over — at least not for Ron DeSantis.

House Republicans are seeking troves of records from the DeSantis administration, including text messages and emails related to Hope Florida. The chamber has also scheduled another hearing on the Casey DeSantis charity next week.

What’s more, the House also unveiled a sweeping ethics reform package last week that would, among other things, explicitly expose senior government officials to criminal penalties if they interfere with elections.

That particular legislation would also prohibit state employees from soliciting money for political campaigns — an idea that emerged after DeSantis aides got caught squeezing lobbyistsfor more donations to their boss’ political committee ahead of a possible Casey DeSantis campaign for governor….

Ron DeSantis bet his political future on beating the marijuana and abortion-rights amendments. And he won both of those battles.

But it may turn out that he ultimately lost the war.

Wishful thinking? I hope not.

To give you an idea of how far/right the legislature is, Garcia lists some of the bills that are currently moving through the legislative process:

  • House Bill 549: Requires all new public school textbooks to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.” Passed the Senate by a 28-9 vote. (See votes) Previously passed the House of Representatives by a 78-29 vote. (See votes) Goes to the governor.
  • House Bill 575: Replaces Gulf of Mexico with “Gulf of America” in state law. Passed the Senate by a 28-9 vote. (See votes) Previously passed the House of Representatives by a 78-27 vote. (See votes) Goes to the governor….
  • House Bill 1517: Allows someone to file a wrongful death lawsuit seeking lost wages on behalf of an embryo or fetus. Passed the House of Representatives by a 79-32 vote. (See votes)…
  • House Bill 7031: Cuts the state sales tax rate from 6 percent to 5.25 percent. Passed the House of Representatives by a 112-0 vote. (See votes)
  • House Bill 123: Allows a traditional public school to be converted into a charter school without the consent of the teachers who work at the school. Passed the House Education & Employment Committee by an 11-4 vote. (See votes)

Categories Academic Freedom, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, DeSantis, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Florida, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read

Joyce Vance: Do Republicans Care About Trump’s Tyranny? If Not Now, When?

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2025 //
16

Joyce Vance was US Attorney for Northern Alabama and a steady voice of reason. She wonders in this post what it will take to awaken Republicans to Trump’s erosion of the Constitution and our rights.

She writes:

Why doesn’t any of this break through? Why do Republicans still support Trump?

The reporting in The Atlantic on the Signal chain? The voter suppression executive order Trump issued…? The foul-ups in deporting supposed gang members who turn out not to be? Why aren’t Americans out on the streets protesting in massive numbers like we have seen people in other countries doing—Israel, Georgia, Turkey, South Korea, and others? In part, it’s because a large number of people who are Trump supporters just don’t care. Their guy can do anything, and they don’t care. They’ll believe any lie, and they’ll ignore any horrible; they’re all in for Trump for reasons the rest of us still struggle to understand.

The question is, how many of the rest of us are there? By that I mean Americans who, regardless of party affiliation, still care about truth and democracy. Those words are no longer just philosophical notions to be bandied about, an elite construct. They are the reality of what we are fighting a rearguard action to try and save.

Statistics from the last election provide reason for some optimism. Donald Trump won with 49.9% of the popular vote. Although he has claimed he has a mandate for a radical transformation of government, the numbers just don’t back that up. And they don’t suggest there’s a mandate for putting out military information on a Signal chain being used on personal phones, rather than on secured government systems. If there ever truly was a mandate for Trump, the reality is, it’s evaporating day by day as egg prices stay high and people lose their jobs. And now, there’s this, a cavalier disregard for the safety of our troops, lax security with one member of the Signal group apparently in Russia while communications were ongoing, what looks like an effort to do an end run around government records retention procedures.

Will the Atlantic story break through? It should. Trump’s Vice President, his Secretary of Defense, his CIA director, his DNI, all put American pilots in harm’s way. If that’s not enough for Senate Republicans to break ranks with Trump, especially those on subcommittees that have oversight into military and intelligence community operations, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

Why use Signal in the first place when American leaders have some of the most secure communications technology in the world available to them? Is it just for convenience? If so, that’s sloppy, and they should be committing to do better, not arguing over whether the information was classified or not. (But if it looks like a duck…) 

The truth is that by going to Signal, they avoided leaving a paper trail. No annoying records that could be unearthed down the road. Remember Trump’s first impeachment? It came about in large part because after the call where he threatened Ukraine’s president with withholding security aid if he wouldn’t announce his country was investigating Joe Biden for financial misconduct, records of the call were buried inside a classified information system where they didn’t belong. That was what got the ball rolling. It was about trying to hide records of an official call that everyone knew was wrong. 

As far as we know at this point, there was nothing improper about the attack on the Houthis. So why were high-ranking members of the Trump administration communicating off the books? How pervasive is the practice, and who knows/authorizes it? We are a government of the people. Transparency isn’t optional. There are rules about public records that have to be followed, and this president who likes to operate in secret and at the margins of our laws has frequently tried to skirt them.

It’s hard to imagine that the Signal chain for the Houthi attack was just a one-off, that they only went to Signal for this moment. Is this how this new government is operating routinely—off the books, in a hidden fashion designed to avoid scrutiny and accountability? 

It may seem like a minor point with everything else that’s going on, but this is how autocrats work, not how a democracy operates. That’s the danger we are now facing, and this is another marker on the path to tyranny.

Calls are mounting for Hegseth and others to resign. Anyone who would engage in this kind of behavior and then argue that it was not improper rather than apologizing and promising to do better should leave government, whether voluntarily or not. But they should never have been confirmed in the first place. There is a cancer on the heart of the presidency, to quote from the Watergate era, and it’s infecting all of us.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Funding, Injustice, Lies, Republicans, Trump, Tyranny

Immigration Service Will Screen Social Media Accounts for Anti-Semitism: Deport Elon!

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2025 //
8

NPR reported that the Trump administration would review the social media accounts of immigrants to exclude anyone who is anti-Semitic.

As a Jew, it makes me sick to see the Trump administration use “anti-Semitism” as a reason to vilify anyone, be it a university or an immigrant.

Trump’s minions include numerous openly anti-Semitic allies. He’s gotten support from David Duke, Richard Spencer, Nick Fuentes, and Kanye West, all of whom have expressed anti-Semitic views. He should reprimand all the Nazi-loving guys who carry Nazi symbols and chant “The Jews will not replace us.”

And then there’s Elon Musk, who twice gave the Nazi salute at Trump’s inauguration Right hand on heart, then thrust straight out. Elon re-opened Twitter to expressions of anti-Senitism and racism.

I support the First Amendment and oppose efforts to limit free speech.

But I hate hypocrisy. If Trump intends to use anti-Semitism as a reason to scour social media accounts, he should deport his anti-Semitic friends.

Categories Bigotry, Freedom of Speech, Hypocrisy, Immigration, Trump

Trump Goes After Two Critics, and His Attorney General Will Help His Vendetta

By dianeravitch
April 11, 2025 //
4

Trump is following through on his frequent threats to punish anyone who crossed him in the past. He recently ordered his compliant Attorney General to investigate two men who were critical of him during his first term. Elie Honig, a former federal prosecutor, wrote about the tyrannical nature of this action and about Pam Bondi’s willingness to do whatever he wants.

Honig writes at the website Cafe, a hub for legal experts:

Donald Trump’s presidential payback tour rages on, and now it’s personal. It’s one thing to target multi-billion dollar law firms, universities, and media outlets for organizational retribution; those efforts, aimed at stifling and punishing any criticism or dissent, are reprehensible in their own right. But now Trump is going after individual private citizens, using the might of the Executive Branch to potentially throw his detractors in prison.

In a pair of official proclamations – rendered no less unhinged by the use of official fonts and White House letterhead – Trump identifies two targets who worked in the federal government during his first tenure and dared to speak out publicly against him. First: Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from 2018 to 2020 and made headlines when he publicly contradicted Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. For this act of heretical truth-telling, Trump labels Krebs “a significant bad-faith actor” – whatever the hell that means – who poses grave “risks” to the American public. 

And then there’s Miles Taylor, a former Department of Homeland Security official who publicly criticized the President in an anonymous book and various media appearances. Taylor, like Krebs, purportedly poses “risks” to the United States, is a “bad-faith actor” (though apparently not a significant one like Krebs) and “stoked dissension” with his public commentary. 

Are you scared? Don’t you fear the “risks” posed by these two monsters?

 True to the form he has displayed when going after disfavored law firms, Trump hits below the belt. The President orders security clearances stripped not only from Krebs and Taylor but also from everyone who works with them (Krebs at a private cybersecurity firm, Taylor at the University of Pennsylvania). He’s punishing his targets – plus their employers and colleagues, First Amendment freedom of association be darned. 

It gets worse. In a separate set of orders, Trump directed the Attorney General to open criminal investigations of Krebs and Taylor. Notably absent from the orders is any plausible notion that either might have committed a federal crime. This hardly needs to be said, but it’s not a federal crime to be a “bad-faith actor,” to “stoke dissension,” or even to be a “wise guy,” as Trump called Krebs from the Oval Office.

The next move is Pam Bondi’s – and we know how this will go. 

Any reasonable, ethical attorney general would follow the bedrock principle that a prosecutor must have “predication” – some kernel of fact on which to believe a crime might have been committed – to open a criminal investigation. The bar is low, but it serves the vital purpose of preventing precisely the baseless retributive inquests that Trump has now ordered up. In observance of this foundational precept, even Bill Barr – the subject of sharp criticism in my first book, Hatchet Man – generally ignored Trump’s public pleas for the arrests of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and others. Like the exhausted parent of an unruly toddler, Barr would mostly sit back and let the tantrum pass. 

Don’t count on Bondi taking the same course of passive resistance to the President. She has already shown her true colors, and they’re whatever shade Trump pleases. For example, despite the distinct possibility of criminality by top administration officials around the Signal scandal, the AG refused even to investigate. Instead, she decreed – after zero inquiry, with zero evidence – that information about military attack plans was somehow not classified, and that nobody had acted recklessly. Case closed, no inquiry needed. 

Bondi no longer deserves the benefit of the doubt. She’s in the bag for Trump. The question now is whether she’ll cross the line that even Barr, her crooked predecessor, would not, and use the Justice Department’s staggering investigative power as an offensive weapon. 

Even if DOJ investigates but concludes it cannot bring a criminal charge, the threat to Krebs and Taylor is real. Any criminal inquiry takes an enormous toll on its subject; subpoenas fly, friends and colleagues get pulled into the grand jury, phones get seized and searched, legal costs mount, professional reputations suffer, personal ties fray. Ask anyone who has been investigated by the Justice Department but not indicted. They’ll tell you it’s a nightmare. 

If Bondi does somehow convince a grand jury to indict somebody for something, Trump has unwittingly handed both Krebs and Taylor a potent defense: selective prosecution, which applies where an individual has been singled out for improper purposes. Exhibit A (for the defense): Trump’s own grand proclamations, which openly confess to his personal and political motives for ordering a Justice Department inquiry. Selective prosecution defenses rarely succeed, often because prosecutors typically don’t commit their improper motives to paper. But this would be the rare case where the evidence is so plain – it’s on White House letterhead, signed by the President – that a judge could hardly overlook it.

Trump has long made a habit of threatening his opponents with criminal prosecution through social media posts and by spontaneous outbursts from the lectern. Until now, it was mostly bluster, a public form of scream therapy for the capricious commander-in-chief. But now it’s in writing, from the president to the attorney general, who typically jumps to attention to serve whatever suits the boss, prosecutorial standards be darned. Trump’s dark fantasies are coming to life. 

Elie Honig served as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of New York for 8.5 years and as the Director of the Division of Criminal Justice at the Office of Attorney General for the State of New Jersey for 5.5 years. He is currently a legal Analyst for CNN and Executive Director at Rutgers Institute for Secure Communities

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Injustice, Trump

Trump Targets Two Critics, Accuses Them of Treason

By dianeravitch
April 10, 2025 //
11

In his vendetta against law firms who represented his opponents, universities whose high standards offend him, and anyone who dared to stand up to his lies, Trump has selected two former government employees for retribution. These actions are typical of dictators. Trump is wannabe dictator. He certainly aspires to be a full-fledged fascist. He has a compliant Departnent of Justice. Attorney General Pam Bondi thinks she works for Trump, not the people of the United States.

The blog SpyTalk is written by Jeff Stein.

He writes:

President Trump on Wednesday signed an executive ordering the Justice Department to investigate two prominent former senior Homeland Security officials, saying they could be guilty of “treason” because of their criticism of him. 

Trump also stripped Miles Taylor and Chris Krebs of their security clearances, although it was not clear if they maintained any. The order “also suspends any active security clearance held by individuals at entities associated with Taylor, including the University of Pennsylvania,” where Taylor is an adjunct professor, “pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.”

Likewise, the order also suspends security clearances held by associates of Krebs at SentinelOne, a California-based cyber security firm, where he is currently employed as the company’s chief intelligence and public policy officer.

Taylor, who served as the chief of staff to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly during the first Trump administration, drew Trump’s wrath for writing a blistering, New York Times Op-ed, titled, “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration“, and later a book, A Warning, both under the pen name “Anonymous,” detailing his concerns about the president’s policies. The Op-ed unleashed a furious media campaign to identify him. After he surfaced in October 2020, he became a prominent TV critic of Trump 

“You can’t have that happen,” Trump said as he signed the executive order, adding, “I think he’s guilty of treason if you want to know the truth, but we’ll find out.” 

The executive order called Taylor “a bad-faith actor who weaponized and abused his government position, prioritizing his own ambition, personal notoriety, and monetary gain over fidelity to his constitutional oath.”

Taylor responded on X (formerly Twitter): “I said this would happen. Dissent isn’t unlawful. It certainly isn’t treasonous. America is headed down a dark path. Never has a man so inelegantly proved another man’s point.”…

It’s almost funny to see Trump criticize anyone for failure to be faithful to their “constitutional oath,” since he has violated his own constitutional oath on a daily basis.

Categories Accountability, Censorship, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Injustice, Trump
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