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Joyce Vance: Good News! It’s Working!

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2025 //
5

Veteran prosecutor Joyce Vance shared some good news: the nomination of Ed Martin to be U.S. Attorney in DC is hanging by a thread and may be dead. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina interviewed Martin and said he would vote no in the Senate Judiciary Committee because Martin supported the January 6 insurrectionists, even those who assaulted police officers. Since the split on the committee is 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats, Martin’s nomination would not get to the Senate floor. If you live in North Carolina, please call Senator Tillis and thank him.

Vance writes:

Last night, I wrote to you about Ed Martin, Trump’s nominee to be the United States Attorney in Washington, D.C.. Martin, until quite recently, used the handle “Eagle Ed Martin” on Twitter, a reference to his days working for Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum. Apparently, someone mentioned to him during the last month that the handle wasn’t appropriate for a U.S. Attorney hopeful.

But no whisper in the ear could fix Martin’s other flaws, from utter lack of qualifications and knowledge about how to do the job to flagrant ties to people known for their open antisemitism. Last night, I suggested we all needed to be in touch with our senators on the Martin nomination. Although we still need to do that, the message is different now. That’s because North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, a Republican who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, made it known that he won’t support Martin. 

Before Martin goes to the floor of the Senate for a confirmation vote, he has to make it out of committee. And that’s unlikely to happen now. The Senate Judiciary Committee is made up of 12 Republicans and 10 Democrats. All of the Democrats oppose Martin. With Tillis abandoning him, the best Martin could do is 11-11, and a nominee who receives a tie vote doesn’t advance. For all practical purposes, the outcome of that vote will be a death knell for his nomination.

Martin may end up rewarded for his loyal service to Trump and Musk with another plum job, one that doesn’t require Senate confirmation. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t celebrate the moment and the fact that it looks like he won’t be the top law enforcement officer in the District of Columbia. Defeating Martin’s nomination wasn’t a foregone conclusion—far from it. It took lots of research, lots of conversation, and lots of hard work by a lot of people. You never know which issue, or even which call or letter, is going to be the last straw. What matters is that Trump and his plans are not inevitable, and it makes a difference when all of us push back against the horrible as hard as we can.

Tillis told reporters this morning that he is unable to support Martin because of Martin’s support for defendants convicted of committing crimes in connection with January 6. He is certain to face a sustained backlash from MAGA’s inner circle, so if he’s your senator, make sure you thank him, and if your senator is on the Judiciary Committee (that’s Grassley, Graham, Cornyn, Lee, Cruz, Hawley, Tillis, Kennedy, Blackburn, Schmitt, Britt, and Moody on the Republican side and Durbin, Whitehouse, Klobuchar, Coons, Blumenthal, Hirono, Booker, Padilla, Welch, and Schiff for the Democrats) this is a good time to reach out and either thank them for opposing or encourage them to show a little backbone and follow Tillis’ lead. Martin, after all, supports the people who overran the Capitol, threatening these folks and their staff. He is the least qualified selection I can recall seeing to lead a U.S. Attorney’s office, even edging out Trump’s former attorney Alina Habba, the New Jersey nominee, who should be rejected as well. This is a very big win for pro-democracy forces.

There was also a win on a very different front, one that didn’t get a lot of national attention. Trump’s efforts to cut staff and funding at national parks have garnered a lot of attention in the protests that have cropped up across the country. Many protests have taken place at the parks themselves, notably at Yosemite, where staff unfurled an upside-down American flag atop El Capitan to signal distress. On March 1, people protested at all 433 sites in the national park system—the 63 national parks and additional sites like monuments and historic places. Americans, it turns out, love their national parks.

Despite that, the Trump administration continues to keep them on the chopping block. Last week, the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration had suspended all air-quality monitoring at national parks, stating that “The Interior Department, which includes the National Park Service, issued stop-work orders last week to the two contractors running the program, the email shows.”

The reporting provided detail that makes it clear this is a serious matter:

  • Data was being collected on ozone and particulate matter and being used in connection with requests to grant permits to industrial facilities like power plants and oil refineries in close proximity to the parks.
  • The pollutants data was being collected on are “linked to a range of adverse health effects,” including “heart attacks, strokes, asthma attacks and premature death.”
  • One goal of the program is “to curb regional haze,” which has “reduced visibility at scenic viewpoints in parks nationwide” over the past few decades.

Park Service employees pushed back and demanded that monitoring continue. They pointed out that states lack the equipment and resources to monitor and that without federal monitoring, they would be flying blind. It’s part and parcel of discontinuing environmental justice work at the Justice Department. Data makes it possible to protect the environment and the people who live in it. Trump is creating a permissive environment for business—when you can’t document the consequences of a new plant permit, for instance, it’s hard to oppose it.

But today, Washington Post reporter Teddy Amenabar posted on social media that “After The Post’s article was published, a Park Service spokesperson said the stop-work orders would be reversed and that ‘contractors will be notified immediately.’” Whether it’s traditional media, new media, protests, or our communications with our elected officials, it’s clear that none of what Trump wants to do is inevitable. Sunlight continues to act as a disinfectant. Government employees need public support right now, especially as many of them continue to bravely do the right thing, whether it’s federal prosecutors or park rangers. They richly deserve our support.

So if you’ve been questioning whether what you’re doing matters, it does. The signs you make, the protests you go to, the letters and calls you make to elected officials, your efforts to share information (like this newsletter) with people—all of these efforts matter. It all adds up, small victories and large ones.

Speaking of big ones, Donald Trump appears to have knowingly lied when he invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) in order to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. In his proclamation, he said, “TdA operates in conjunction with Cártel de los Soles, the Nicolas Maduro regime-sponsored, narco-terrorism enterprise based in Venezuela, and commits brutal crimes, including murders, kidnappings, extortions, and human, drug, and weapons trafficking. TdA has engaged in and continues to engage in mass illegal migration to the United States to further its objectives of harming United States citizens, undermining public safety, and supporting the Maduro regime’s goal of destabilizing democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States.”

Not so fast. An intelligence community memo was partially declassified yesterday, two weeks after a FOIA request was made for it—that’s lightning speed in the world of FOIA, where requests can drag on for years. The memo contradicts Trump’s claimed basis for invoking the AEA. Hat tip to my friend Ryan Goodman, whose new Substack is great if you haven’t seen it already, for highlighting the parts of the memo that contradict Trump’s claim that TdA is mounting an invasion of the U.S. on behalf of Venezuela’s government.

Someone involved in responding to FOIA requestsseems to have been highly motivated to make sure the American people have access to the truth. Win.

It’s not clear how or whether this will impact ongoing litigation. Judges largely defer to presidential assessments of this nature under the political questions doctrine. We don’t know if this revelation will have any impact in court, although there should be some ambit, even if it’s small, for courts to reject presidential assessments that run entirely contrary to the facts. But in the court of public opinion, where facts still matter, here are some facts, from the people who know the subject best.

Finally for tonight, the North Carolina Supreme Court race that we’ve been following so carefully since last November seems to finally be over, and Allison Riggs, the Democrat who won the race, will now be declared the winner per an order issued by a federal judge who is a Trump appointee. Two recounts confirmed Riggs’ victory, but the disgruntled loser challenged it nonetheless. He tried to convince courts to disallow ballots cast by North Carolina voters who complied with all of the rules for voting by changing the rules about what ballots could be counted after the fact. He could still appeal this ruling, but it is a solid decision and unlikely to be reversed on appeal. The bottom line democratic principle is that you don’t get to move the goal posts to secure a victory. Didn’t work for Trump, and it didn’t work in North Carolina. Chalk another one up for the rule of law.

Whether it’s lawsuits or your letters, engaged citizens get results. We have a long way to go, but take heart; we are making progress. We can get there. Every little step forward adds to the tally in favor of democracy.

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, District of Columbia, Education Reform, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Justice, Lies, Trump

Thom Hartmann: Trump and the Death of Our Ideals

By dianeravitch
May 7, 2025 //
2

Thom Hartmann sums up what Trump is: a malignant narcissist intent on destroying every shred of our democracy and our ideals. we knew from his first term that he was a liar and a fraud. Yet here he is, acting with even more rage, vengeance, and destruction than before.

Let us not forget that Trump is enabled by the Republican Party. By their slim majorities in Congress. They have meekly watched as he terminated departments and agencies authorized by Congress. They have quietly given the power of the purse to Trump and Musk. They have watched as he turned himself into an emperor and made them useless. They could stop him. But they haven and they won’t.

He writes:

The Trump administration just gutted Meals on Wheels.

Seriously. Meals on Wheels!

Donald Trump didn’t just “disrupt” America; he detonated it. Like a political Chernobyl, he poisoned the very soil of our democratic republic, leaving behind a toxic cloud of cruelty, corruption, and chaos that will radiate through generations if we don’t contain it now.

He didn’t merely bring darkness; he cultivated it. He made it fashionable. He turned cruelty into currency and made ignorance a political virtue.

This man, a grotesque cocktail of malignant narcissism and petty vengeance, ripped the mask off American decency and showed the world our ugliest face. He caged children. Caged. Children. He laughed off their cries while his ghoulish acolytes used “Where are the children?” as a punchline for their next QAnon rally.

He welcomed white supremacists with winks and dog whistles, calling them “very fine people,” while spitting venom at Black athletes who dared kneel in peaceful protest.

He invited fascism to dinner and served it on gold-plated Trump steaks. He made lying the lingua franca of the right, burning truth to the ground like a carnival barker selling snake oil from a flaming soapbox.

And let’s not forget the blood on his hands: 1,193,165 dead from COVID by the time he left office, 400,000 of them unnecessarily, dismissed as nothing more than “a flu,” while he admitted — on tape — that he knew it was airborne and knew it was lethal. His apathy was homicidal, his incompetence catastrophic.

He tried to overthrow a fair election. He summoned a violent mob. He watched them beat cops with American flags and screamed “Fight like hell!” while cowering in the White House, delighting in the destruction like Nero fiddling as Rome burned.

And now, like some grotesque twist on historical fascism, Trump’s regime is quietly disappearing even legal U.S. residents — snatched off the streets by ICE and dumped into El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, a dystopian nightmare of concrete and cruelty.

One such man, Kilmar Ábrego García, had legal status and a home in Maryland. But Trump’s agents defied a federal court order and deported him anyway, vanishing him into a foreign hellhole so brutal it defies comprehension.

This isn’t policy: it’s a purge. A test run for authoritarian exile. And if Trump’s not stopped by Congress, the courts, or We The People in the streets, it won’t end there.

But somehow, he’s still here, waddling across the political stage like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man of authoritarianism, bloated with power, empty of soul, and reeking of spray tan and sulfur.

Donald Trump didn’t just bring darkness: he’s a goddamn black hole, a gravity-well of cruelty sucking the light out of everything he touches.
This is a man who desecrates everything good.
Empathy? He mocks it. Truth? He slanders it. Democracy? He’d bulldoze it for a golf course.
And if we let him continue, he won’t just end democracy — he’ll make damn sure it never rises again.

So the question is: are we awake yet?

Or will we let this orange-faced death-cult leader finish the job he started, grinning over the corpse of the America we once believed in?

Now is not the time to kneel: it’s the time to rise. Stay loud, stay vigilant, and show up. Every protest, every march, every call to DC, every raised voice chips away at the darkness.

Democracy isn’t a spectator sport: it’s a fight, and we damn well better show up for it.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, Ignorance, Immigration, Injustice, Lies, Racism, Shame, Stupid, Trump

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

Jamelle Bouie: Trump Has No Interest in Governing

By dianeravitch
April 27, 2025 //
13

Jamelle Bouie, one of the most insightful columnists for The New York Times, observes that Trump has no interest in governing. He is interested in ruling. He thinks he has a mandate, even though he did not win 50% of the popular vote. He thinks his will is as powerful as law. He does not share power with Congress, and he’s testing how far he can go to diminish the courts.

Bouie reflects on Trump’s indifference to the other branches of Govenment in this newsletter:

I think it’s obvious that neither President Trump nor his coterie of agents and apparatchiks has any practical interest in governing the nation. It’s one reason (among many) they are so eager to destroy the federal bureaucracy; in their minds, you don’t have to worry about something, like monitoring the nation’s dairy supply for disease and infection, if the capacity for doing so no longer exists.

But there is another, less obvious way in which this observation is true. American governance is a collaborative venture. At minimum, to successfully govern the United States, a president must work with Congress, heed the courts and respect the authority of the states, whose Constitutions are also imbued with the sovereignty of the people. And in this arrangement, the president can’t claim rank. He’s not the boss of Congress or the courts or the states; he’s an equal.

The president is also not the boss of the American people. He cannot order them to embrace his priorities, nor is he supposed to punish them for disagreement with him. His powers are largely rhetorical, and even the most skilled presidents cannot shape an unwilling public.

Trump rejects all of this. He rejects the equal status of Congress and the courts. He rejects the authority of the states. He does not see himself as a representative working with others to lead the nation; he sees himself as a boss, whose will ought to be law. And in turn, he sees the American people as employees, each of us obligated to obey his commands.

Trump is not interested in governing a republic of equal citizens. To the extent that he’s even dimly aware of the traditions of American democracy, he holds them in contempt. What Trump wants is to lord over a country whose people have no choice but to show fealty and pledge allegiance not to the nation but to him.

What was it Trump said about Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, during his first term in office? “Hey, he’s the head of a country. And I mean he is the strong head. Don’t let anyone think anything different,” Trump said in 2018. “He speaks, and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”

He wants his people to do the same.

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Categories Academic Freedom, Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, History, Ignorance, Justice, Stupid, 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

Dana Milbank: Trump & Musk vs. The U.S. Constitution

By dianeravitch
April 1, 2025 //
2

In this essay in The Washington Post, columnist Dana Milbank offers to give Elon Musk private lessons about the Constitution. At no extra fee, he will let Donald Trump join the class. Both men are woefully ignorant of the foundational principles of American law. Musk was raised in South Africa, when apartheid was in force, so his ignorance is understandable. Trump has no excuse.

Milbank writes:

The man President Donald Trump put in charge of taking a chain saw to federal agencies showed once again this week that he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the government he is dismembering.

“This is a judicial coup,” Elon Musk proclaimed, reacting to the growing list of federal judges who have moved to halt the Trump administration’s headfirst plunge into lawlessness. “We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people.”

How did this guy pass his citizenship test?

As the framers wrote in the Constitution, it is the House, not the Senate, that has “the sole power of impeachment.” And the Senate needs “the concurrence of two thirds of the members present” — 67, assuming full attendance, not 60 — to convict.

More important, the framers wrote that judges hold their offices for life “during good behavior” — which has been understood to mean they can only be impeached for corruption. That is how it has been since the 1805 impeachment trial of Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase, when Chief Justice John Marshall, himself a Founding Father, persuaded the Senate to abandon the idea that “a judge giving a legal opinion contrary to the will of the legislature is liable to impeachment.”

Musk, growing up in apartheid-era South Africa, probably wasn’t taught to revere constitutional democracy. But what’s the excuse of his colleagues in the Trump administration?

They have issued scores of executive orders that flatly contradict the Constitution and the laws of the land. Apparently, they are hoping a submissive Supreme Court will reimagine the Constitution to suit Trump’s whims — and federal judges have reacted as they should, by slapping down these lawless power grabs. As such, the administration is on a prodigious losing streak in court. Judges, in preliminary rulings, have already blocked the administration more than 50 times. Over the past week alone, judges:


• Ended Musk’s access to the private Social Security data of millions of Americans for a “fishing expedition.”
• Halted Musk’s continued destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development.
• Blocked enforcement of Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from military service.
• Stopped the administration from terminating $20 billion in grants from a congressionally approved climate program.
• Ordered the Education Department to restore $600 million in grants to place teachers in struggling schools.
• And, most visibly, required the administration to halt the deportation flights of Venezuelan migrants to a Salvadoran prison without any judicial review — an order the administration evidently defied.

There’s an obvious reason Trump is getting swatted down so often: He’s breaking the law. Instead of changing course, the administration is now trying to discredit the courts — and the rule of law. White House adviser Stephen Miller denounced “insane edicts of radical rogue judges” and declared that a judge had “no authority” to stop Trump. Border czar Tom Homan went full-on authoritarian on Fox News: “We’re not stopping,” he said of the deportation flights a judge had temporarily halted. “I don’t care what the judges think.”

Trump called the U.S. district judge in the case, James Boasberg (appointed to the bench by George W. Bush and elevated by Barack Obama) a “radical left lunatic” who, “like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” This drew a quick rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts (in case Musk doesn’t know this, he’s also a Bush appointee), who reminded Trump: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

Trump later told Fox News that he “can’t” defy a court order — welcome news, except he apparently had done exactly that in more than one case — while arguing that something had to be done “when you have a rogue judge.”

Someone has gone rogue here, but it isn’t the judge. Boasberg’s actions are squarely within the best tradition of the judiciary, for they are in defense of principle, enshrined in the Bill of Rights, that no person in this country, citizen or alien, may be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” This is precisely what the Trump administration denied to those it deported and imprisoned.

Violations of due process have been alleged in dozens of the cases against Trump’s executive actions: terminating workers and programs; eliminating grants; violating union contracts; denying care to transgender people; banning the Associated Press from the White House; abolishing civil rights enforcement and everything else the administration calls “DEI”; harassing law firms; and summarily deporting migrants. All of these things were done without notice, without recourse, without adjudication and without clarity about which laws give the president the power to do them.


“Due process” might sound technical, but it was elemental to our founding and remains at the heart of our legal system. Trump’s flagrant denial of due process is so radical that it isn’t only at odds with 200 years of U.S. law — it’s also contrary to another 600 years of English law before that. For the benefit of Musk (who doesn’t seem to know about such things) and his colleagues (who don’t seem to care), perhaps a refresher is in order.

For this, I called Jeffrey Rosen, who runs the nonpartisan National Constitution Center, which finds consensus between conservative and liberal scholars. The concept of due process, he explained, is in the Magna Carta, which in 1215 asserted that “no free man shall be arrested or imprisoned … except by lawful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land.” Britain’s 1628 Petition of Right, written during parliament’s struggle against the dictatorial Charles I, holds that “no man … should be put out of his land or tenement nor taken nor imprisoned nor disherited nor put to death without being brought to answer by due process of law.” The king, who imposed forced loans on his subjects and imprisoned people without trials, was beheaded during the English civil war.


“That example completely inspired the American Revolution,” Rosen explained. “They compared the tyranny of George III to the arbitrary rule of Charles I, saying George III was violating due process of law by insisting that patriots are tried in England rather than in local courts, that they can be put in jail without trial, and their liberty is at the whim of the king.” During the revolution, due-process provisions appeared in the constitutions of Pennsylvania, Virginia, New York, North Carolina and Vermont. Similar language was included in the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution, then eventually repeated in the 14th Amendment to apply to all states.
“The very foundation of constitutionalism, which means a government according to law rather than autocratic whim, is the due process of law,” Rosen told me. “What distinguishes a constitutional officeholder from an absolute monarch or a tyrant is that he is bound by the Constitution and by laws.” Without due process, there is no free market, because private property can be taken without justification or explanation. Without due process, there are no civil liberties, for a person’s freedom can be taken for any reason, or none at all.


Without due process, you have what we see today: a leader using a wartime statute in peacetime to declare certain people to be dangerous gang members without providing any evidence, then imprisoning them without charges and finally denying the authority of the courts and defying a court order requiring the leader to obey the laws as written. It is no exaggeration to say that this is the road to despotism.

The Trump administration’s attempt to upend 800 years of settled law is staggering, but it is easily lost in all the other chaos the president is spreading. The Federal Reserve this week said that it expects slower growth and higher inflation than it did before Trump took office, in large part because of his tariffs, while falling confidence among consumers and businesses has raised the danger of recession.

In foreign affairs, Israel has restarted the war in Gaza, and Trump has launched a military campaign to see the Iran-backed Houthi militants in Yemen “completely annihilated.”

Trump failed to get Russian dictator Vladimir Putin to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine, despite Trump’s bullying of Kyiv and his termination of efforts to document Russian war crimes — including the kidnapping of Ukrainian children.

Trump silenced the Voice of America, to the benefit and delight of China, Russia and Iran. Even the annual visit of the Irish prime minister to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day became mired in controversy when MMA fighter Conor McGregor, given the podium in the White House briefing room, proclaimed that “Ireland is at the cusp of potentially losing its Irishness” because illegal migrants are “running ravage on the country.” Responded the prime minister: “Conor McGregor’s remarks are wrong, and do not reflect the spirit of St Patrick’s Day, or the views of the people of Ireland.”

The new administration’s bows to white nationalism continue apace. It removed, at least temporarily, thousands of pages from the Pentagon website and others that celebrated the integration of the armed forces and the contributions of people of color: a Native American who helped hoist the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima, the Navajo code talkers of World War II, the Native American who drafted the Confederacy’s terms of surrender, baseball great Jackie Robinson, and a Black Vietnam veteran, on whose page the URL was changed to “deimedal-of-honor.” Trump, meanwhile, reiterated his offer to give “safe refuge” to White South Africans, while at the same time expelling the South African ambassador. The administration has restored the names of Fort Benning and Fort Bragg, which honored Confederates — getting around a law prohibiting this by technically renaming the bases for other people with the surnames “Benning” and “Bragg.”

The Forward, a Jewish newspaper, reported this week that the head of Trump’s antisemitism task force shared a post on X on March 14 from a white-supremacist leader asserting that “Trump has the ability to revoke someone’s Jew card.” (The aide apparently later unshared the post, whose author led a group that called on Trump supporters to become “racially aware and Jew Wise.”)

The sabotage of the federal government continues, as recklessly as before: dramatically cutting Social Security staff, offices and phone support while simultaneously requiring millions more of the elderly and disabled to apply for benefits in person rather than online; slashing the taxpayer help staff at the IRS and calling off audits; scaling back scientific research at the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Institutes of Health. Paul Dans, the former chief of Project 2025, told Politico that there “is almost no difference between Project 2025 and what Trump was planning all along and is now implementing.”

Trump appointed conspiracy theorist Michael Flynn, Sean Spicer, Steve Bannon’s daughter and the former White House valet to boards overseeing the U.S. military academies. He took time to visit the Kennedy Center, where he has fired the leadership — and used the visit to share “personal stories and anecdotes, including about the first time he saw ‘Cats’ and which members of the cast he found attractive,” as The Post’s Travis Andrews reported. The administration ordered the release of files on the John F. Kennedy assassination before bothering to remove the Social Security numbers of some people who are still alive.

Trump and his cronies continue to use the federal government for personal gain. Following last week’s promotional event for Musk’s Tesla at the White House, the commerce secretary recommended people buy Tesla stock, and the White House has installed Musk’s Starlink service despite security concerns. At the same time, Trump’s crypto project released a second crypto coin, raising $250 million to bring its total to $550 million — and 75 percent of the earnings go into the Trump family’s pockets. All of this is about as on the level as Trump’s golf game. “I just won the Golf Club Championship … at Trump International Golf Club,” he announced on Sunday, as storms and tornadoes ravaged a swath of the country. “Such a great honor!”

The most ominous development, though, is Trump’s expanding abuse of power to silence critics and disable political opponents. He went to the Justice Department last week and delivered a speech attacking lawyers who opposed him, such as Jack Smith, Andrew Weissmann, Norman Eisen and Marc Elias, as “scum” and “bad people” — and the administration has revoked the security clearances of many such lawyers. After issuing executive orders seeking to destroy three law firms because of their ties to Trump’s opponents, the administration has gone after 20 more law firms over their supposed DEI programs.

In the case of the alleged Venezuelan gang members, administration officials and allies are celebrating their defiance of the court. President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, which the Trump administration is paying to jail deported migrants at its infamous 40,000-inmate prison, responded on X to Judge Boasberg’s order by saying “Oopsie … too late,” with a laugh-cry emoji. Secretary of State Marco Rubio retweeted it, and Musk added his own laughing emoji. And Attorney General Pam Bondi outrageously claimed “a DC trial judge supported Tren de Aragua terrorists over the safety of Americans” — even though the migrants would not have been released under the court order, which only delayed their deportation.

After a reporter asked the president whether he would cut off Secret Service protection for former president Joe Biden’s children, Trump did exactly that. Trump’s acting head of the Social Security Administration admitted that he had canceled contracts with the state of Maine because he was “upset” at Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, for not being “respectful” of Trump during a public exchange they had. Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have asked Trump’s FBI to probe the main Democratic fundraising platform, saying it “has advanced the financial interests of terror.”

Trump cut off $175 million of government funds going to the University of Pennsylvania because of its policy on trans athletes, following the White House’s suspension of $400 million of funds to Columbia University over Gaza protests there and its demand that the school change its discipline and admissions policies. More than 50 other universities are under investigation. Trump’s acting U.S. attorney for D.C., Ed Martin, has threatened to punish Georgetown Law School if it doesn’t change its curriculum, calling it “unacceptable” for the school to “teach DEI.”

Trump, in his appearance at DOJ, said negative coverage of him on CNN and MSNBC “has to be illegal.” He proclaimed that Biden’s use of the pardon, a constitutional power, to preemptively protect members of the House Jan. 6 committee from Trump’s harassment was “null and void.”

He fired the two Democratic commissioners from the Federal Trade Commission, his latest defiance of federal statutes protecting independent commissions. His administration fired the board of the independent U.S. Institute of Peace and seized control of its building, physically removing its president and threatening prosecution.

Then there are the summary deportations of people Trump finds undesirable. The administration has arrested and is seeking to deport a Columbia graduate student who is a green-card holder with no criminal record because of his role in Gaza protests. It deported a Brown University doctor even though a judge had issued an order requiring 48 hours’ notice before her deportation.

In the House, Trump’s allies raced to obey his instructions, filing impeachment articles against Boasberg on Tuesday. Freshman Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) submitted the articles, joined by five others. House Republicans have also moved to impeach four other federal judges over disagreements with their rulings.

Thus are Trump and his allies ignoring 215 years of precedent, going back to Samuel Chase, that objections to courts’ opinions are to be resolved through the appeals process, not impeachment.
Thus are Trump and his allies turning their backs on 810 years of precedent, going back to the Magna Carta, in which we protect ourselves from tyranny through the due process of law.

But this is where we are. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a delectable Freudian slip, proclaimed in a briefing this week that “we want to restore the Department of Justice to an institution that focuses on fighting law and order.”


If that is the goal, the Trump administration is to be congratulated on a job well done.

Categories Civics, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Funding, History, Ignorance, Justice, Musk, Elon, Trump

Three Prominent Professors Leave Yale for Canada

By dianeravitch
March 28, 2025 //
8

Three noted scholars of history, philosophy, and fascism at Yale University announced that they are moving to a university in Canada. One, Jason Stanley, made clear that he was leaving because of his fear that the U.S. was dangerously close to becoming fascist under Trump.

The Yale Daily News reported:

Three prominent critics of President Donald Trump are leaving Yale’s faculty — and the United States — amid attacks on higher education to take up positions at the University of Toronto in fall 2025.

Philosophy professor Jason Stanley announced this week that he will leave Yale, while history professors Timothy Snyder and Marci Shore, who are married, decided to leave around the November elections. The three professors will work at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy. 

Stanley wrote to the Daily Nous that his decision to leave was “entirely because of the political climate in the United States.” On Wednesday, he told the Guardian that he chose to move after seeing how Columbia University handled political attacks from Trump. 

After the Trump administration threatened to deport two student protesters at Columbia and revoked $400 million in research funding from the school, Columbia agreed on Friday to concede to a series of demands from the Trump administration that included overhauling its protest policies and imposing external oversight on the school’s Middle Eastern studies department.

“When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted — that whole way of thinking presupposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” Stanley told the Guardian…

Yale has not released a statement addressing the revocation of Columbia’s funding. Yale College Dean Pericles Lewis has told the News that he does not anticipate any changes in Yale’s free expression and protest policies. University President Maurie McInnis previously said that she is prioritizing lobbying for Yale’s interests in Washington over issuing public pronouncements.

Shore wrote that the Munk School had long attempted to recruit her and Snyder and that the couple had seriously considered the offers “for the past two years.” Shore wrote that the couple decided to take the positions after the November 2024 elections. However, a spokesperson for Snyder told Inside Higher Ed that Snyder’s decision was made before the elections, was largely personal and came amid “difficult family matters.” The spokesperson also said that he had “no desire” to leave the United States. 

Shore wrote that her and Snyder’s children were factors in the couple’s decision.

Snyder and Shore both specialize in Eastern European history and each has drawn parallels between the fascist regimes they have studied and the current Trump administration. Stanley, a philosopher, has also published books on fascism and propaganda, including the popular book “How Fascism Works.”  

In 2021, Stanley and Snyder co-taught a course at Yale titled “Mass Incarceration in the Soviet Union and the United States.” Earlier this week, Stanley and Shore joined nearly 3,000 Jewish faculty across the U.S. to sign a letter denouncing the arrest of a Columbia student protester and urging their respective institutions to resist the Trump administration’s policies targeting colleges.

The Daily Nous wrote about Jason Stanley’s decision:

In an email, he writes that “the decision was entirely because of the political climate in the United States.” He had had an offer from Toronto, and decided to accept it last Friday night after Columbia’s capitulation to the Trump administration’s demands…

Stanley writes that he has been “very happy at Yale, with the department and the university,” but that he wants “to raise my kids in a country that is not tilting towards a fascist dictatorship.”

Jason Stanley was even more outspoken in an interview with The Guardian:

A Yale professor who studies fascism is leaving the US to work at a Canadian university because of the current US political climate, which he worries is putting the US at risk of becoming a “fascist dictatorship…”

He said in an interview that Columbia University’s recent actions moved him to accept the offer. Last Friday, Columbia gave in to the Trump administration by agreeing to a series of demands in order to restore $400m in federal funding. These changes include crackdowns on protests, increased security power and “internal reviews” of some academic programs, like the Middle Eastern studies department.

“When I saw Columbia completely capitulate, and I saw this vocabulary of, well, we’re going to work behind the scenes because we’re not going to get targeted – that whole way of thinking pre-supposes that some universities will get targeted, and you don’t want to be one of those universities, and that’s just a losing strategy,” he said.

Stanley added: “You’ve got to just band together and say an attack on one university is an attack on all universities. And maybe you lose that fight, but you’re certainly going to lose this one if you give up before you fight.

“Columbia was just such a warning,” he said. “I just became very worried because I didn’t see a strong enough reaction in other universities to side with Columbia. I see Yale trying not to be a target. And as I said, that’s a losing strategy.”

Stanley said he wasn’t concerned about his ability to continue his scholarship at Yale, but the broader climate against universities played a role. He praised other faculty at Yale for standing up against the attacks on their profession and said he wished he could stay and fight with them.

“But how could you speak out loudly if you’re not an American citizen?” he questioned. “And if you can’t speak out loudly if you’re not an American citizen, when will they come for the American citizens? It’s inevitable.”

Social media posts spread on Wednesday, noting the alarm sounded by a scholar of fascism leaving the country over its political climate. Nikole Hannah-Jones, the journalist and creator of the 1619 Project, wrote on the social media platform Bluesky: “When scholars of authoritarianism and fascism leave US universities because of the deteriorating political situation here, we should really worry.”

In a statement, Yale said it remains a “home to world-class faculty members who are dedicated to excellence in scholarship and teaching”.

“Yale is proud of its global faculty community which includes faculty who may no longer work at the institution, or whose contributions to academia may continue at a different home institution,” the university said. “Faculty members make decisions about their careers for a variety of reasons and the university respects all such decisions.”skip past newsletter promotion

He said he considered leaving the US in 2017, but that the second Trump administration has “definitely” proved worse than the first. Stanley’s profile has also risen since then after the publication of several books on propaganda and fascism. The Munk school is building a program with the view that there’s an “international struggle against democracy” and provides a “very exciting intellectual opportunity”, he said.

“I don’t see it as fleeing at all,” he said. “I see it as joining Canada, which is a target of Trump, just like Yale is a target of Trump.”

What does it say that a scholar of fascism is leaving the US right now? Said Stanley: “Part of it is you’re leaving because ultimately, it is like leaving Germany in 1932, 33, 34. There’s resonance: my grandmother left Berlin with my father in 1939. So it’s a family tradition.”

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