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The Nation: Linda McMahon’s Very Important Rightwing Think Tank

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
2

Trump selected Linda McMahon to be the next Secretary of Education. She is well known for making it rich in the world of wrestling entertainment, in partnership with her husband. Less well known is her role as Chair of the board of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI). Trump is close to AFPI, which promotes school choice and the “parental rights” movement, which promotes censorship of books and curriculum about racism and LGBT topics. They oppose any teaching that might make students “uncomfortable,” like learning about the history of racism, or that might teach students that LGBT exist.

The Nation published an article by Christopher Lewis and Jacob Plaza. The article tells the story of the think tank McMahon leads. It was launched after Trump’s loss in 2020 and its policy agenda defines Trump’s plans. To understand what Trump intends to do, learn more about AFPI.

Lewis and Plaza write:

Amid the incoming Trump administration’s flurry of unqualified, corrupt, and/or vengeance-driven cabinet nominees, it’s been easy to overlook Linda McMahon, Trump’s pick to head the US Department of Education. McMahon is best known for her role in running World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) with her husband the longtime Trump crony Vince McMahon. Linda McMahon’s background in education is exceedingly thin; she served on the Connecticut Board of Education more than a decade ago, thanks to an appointment from another politically connected friend, then–Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell. McMahon has a teaching certificate but has never actually taught. Indeed, she was forced to resign her spot on the Connecticut board when the Hartford Courant reported that she’d lied on her résumé about having an education degree. Add in the alleged role of the WWE and its parent company in a sexual-abuse scandal involving “ring boys” for the wrestling league, and McMahon’s nomination, in any sanely administered political order, would be dead in the water. (McMahon and her husband both deny the abuse allegations in the pending WWE suit.)

Yet McMahon possesses one key credential for the next Trump administration—in addition, that is, to a proven track record to personal fealty to the president-elect, and a long string of Fox News appearances: She’s the former head of the America First Policy Institute (AFPI), the policy nerve center for MAGA governance. For all the attention focused on the Heritage Foundation and its Project 2025 policy agenda, AFPI has been Trumpworld’s principal policy network, serving as a haven for former Trump appointees during the Biden years. AFPI hands assembled a detailed blueprint for Trump’s return to power, including plans to make the Trump tax cuts permanent and purge the federal workforce of civil service workers deemed insufficiently MAGA. In addition to McMahon, Trump has tapped several senior AFPI figures for cabinet posts, including EPA nominee Lee Zeldin, Agriculture nominee Brooke Rollins (the think tank’s president and CEO), and its Georgia chapter chair, Doug Collins, Trump’s pick to head the Department of Veteran’s Affair

As education secretary, McMahon would be charged with administering a uniquely destructive suite of policies, even by the usual standards of Trump governance. That’s because the Department of Education has been a bête noire of the American right ever since Jimmy Carter founded the agency in 1979. By creating a layer of federal oversight over locally run schools, the DOE has, in the overheated imaginings of right-wing policy mavens, arrogated deep-state sovereignty over the rights of parents to preside over the best educational options and life chances for their children. And as the Education Department has sought to clarify and standardize anti-discrimination policy for LGBTQ+ students, it’s become a pet target for anti-trans culture warriors on the right.

McMahon probably won’t heed the growing chorus of conservative calls to abolish the DOE outright, but she can be counted on to aggressively pursue other key MAGA objectives in education policy. In line with her work at AFPI, McMahon will likely continue to promote the use of privately backed charter schools to defund public education—the most fundamental plank of right-wing education policy. In addition, she’ll probably resume her predecessor Betty DeVos’s campaign to deny basic Title IX protections to LGBTQ+ students. And it’s a safe bet that she’ll also re-up plans to promote Trump’s 1776 commission—MAGA’s agitprop answer to the 1619 Project, promoting a “patriotic” national curriculum to downplay and discourage honest discussion of America’s racial history in the schools.

Following the lead of billionaire right-wing donors, AFPI enthusiastically champions the charter-schools movement, while seeking to undermine the government’s role in providing quality public education. McMahon’s think tank has erected a whole policy infrastructure to promote charter schools, including direct public subsidies to them, the creation of education saving accounts (ESAs) for parents to enroll kids in charters, and proposals to weaken teachers’ unions in conjunction with the rise of open-shop charters. This agenda does more than harness the long-standing animus to government-backed education on the right—it advances the creation of a parallel education system for right-wing partisans. In this regard, as well as in its aggressive model of privatized education funding, the AFPI plan recalls the original role that neoliberal economics played in supporting the new ad hoc network of “segregation academies” launched in the American South after the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education ruling to desegregate the nation’s schools. The same basic dictum holds for today’s American right as it did then: If you can’t segregate with law, segregate with economics.

AFPI claims that charter school students have higher scores on standardized tests. In reality, the findings here follow what holds for better-funded public schools: namely, that well-funded charter schools tend to produce better test scores, while less well-off charters fare a bit worse, with some regional variations. Students in the competitive DC charter school system’s Opportunity Scholarships program, often cited as the gold standard by charter school advocates, actually performed worse on reading tests than those who did not attend the program.

School choice and voucher programs are a drain on the public’s coffers. For hard-right ideologues like the advisers at AFPI, that’s the whole point. Privatized education is part of the broader right-wing campaign to block the public sector’s ability to finance anything, especially if it would further racial equality. The National Education Association notes that voucher programs redirect scarce public funds toward unaccountable private school programs, and found zero evidence that these programs—which increase school segregation—improve students’ performance. In some cases, there are negative impacts.

What’s more, private management naturally leads to a focus on profit, financial self-sustainability, and expansion—mandates that typically lead to steep budget cuts in the schools, even if students suffer. According to the Network for Public Education, for-profit management companies run nearly one in seven charter schools.

AFPI has also endorsed federal legislation to create national education savings accounts. Like charter schools, ESAs seek to redirect public resources to market-driven gimmicks under the broad rubric of consumer choice. When parents open an ESA, they withdraw their children from the school district and receive a deposit of public funds in a savings account authorized by the government. Parents are then allowed to spend from that account on a range of educational expenses, including tutoring, therapy, or school supplies.

ESA plans create an obvious bind by forcing parents to navigate the education industry all on their own. The ESA scheme affords no safeguards for students whose parents made poor spending choices with the funds in their account. A report in Forbes recounted the story of a family using up its entire account before paying for a single English or math class. And like the broader charter model it upholds, the savings-account system reinforces, rather than weakens, the core inequalities of the US education system; it ensures that wealthier parents will be able to afford to send their children to the best schools.

For a bracing illustration of how charter and for-profit education schemes pillage publicly funded schools, consider Chicago’s experience. In 2013, the city closed 48 public schools to cover widening budget shortfalls. And Chicago’s public schools were going broke in no small part due to the rapid expansion of a parallel charter systemcaptained by ardent school privatizers. Since the insurgent charter schools operated outside traditional governance and accountability, they accumulated millions in debt while draining desperately needed funding away from public schools. Ultimately, 17,000 students were displaced, and Chicago was left with a more unequal and racially segmented school system than it had at the outset of the city’s charter-school fiasco.

To finish reading the article, open the link.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Corporate Reform, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, History, Privatization, School Choice, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Just Published: My Review of the Trump Education Agenda

By dianeravitch
January 11, 2025 //
5

This article just appeared on the website of The New York Review of Books.

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/01/11/their-kind-of-indoctrination/

It is my review of Trump’s plans for K-12 education.

NYRB is the most distinguished literary-political journal in the nation. It has a huge readership. It reaches a different audience than education journals.

If you subscribe to NYRB, you can open it in full. If you don’t, it costs $10 for 10 issues. Or, if you wait, I will post it in full in a few weeks.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Deregulation, Disruption, Education Industry, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Freedom to Read, Funding, Gender, History, Ignorance, Inequality, Lies, Privatization, Racism, Religion, Segregation, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Texas: State Will Not Release Data on Pregnancy-Related Deaths

By dianeravitch
December 4, 2024 //
5

Houston Chronicle reporter Jeremy Wallace wrote that state officials have decided not to release information about pregnancy-related deaths in the years following the state’s harsh ban on abortion. Under Governor Gregg Abbott’s lead, the less the public knows, the better off he is.

Bypassing data

Texas officials will not investigate pregnancy-related deaths for 2022 and 2023, skipping over the years immediately following the state’s controversial abortion ban, which critics say has led to more dangerous and sometimes fatal pregnancies. 

The state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, which announced the decision this fall after years of trying to catch up on its count, said it was jumping ahead to provide “more contemporary” data for state lawmakers.

Dr. Carla Ortique, who chairs the committee, said the Texas Department of State Health Services will still release some mortality data from 2022 and 2023, even though the committee is not providing an in-depth analysis of causes and trends. Reached for comment this week, Ortique said the committee had been planning to skip forward since earlier this year.

The move comes after the committee delayed the release of its last major review, in 2022, which showed a higher rate of life-threatening hemorrhaging among Black women during childbirth in Texas through 2020. Critics at the time accused Gov. Greg Abbott, who appoints the committee members, of pushing it off until after his reelection bid. 

The committee now says its 2024 review, which would be the first glimpse into impacts from the period after the fall of Roe v. Wade, will be ready sometime in 2026, the same year Abbott has already said he will run for a record-setting fourth term.

Reporters Taylor Goldenstein and Julian Gill have more on the decision here.

Categories Data, Extremism, Gender, Texas

Jane Mayer: Pete Hegseth’s Secret History as a Drunk and Sexual Predator

By dianeravitch
December 3, 2024 //
10

Jane Mayer, superstar writer for The New Yorker, has scored a major scoop with her detailed account of Pete Hegseth’s secret life. She has details that have thus far eluded the major daily newspapers.

Hegseth, of course, is Trump’s nominee to be Secretary of Defense. This is one of the most crucial and demanding jobs in government. The Defense Department has a budget of more than $800 billion and almost three million employees. The Secretary must be prepared to make consequential decisions of life and depth with in-depth knowledge and experience.

Pete Hegseth is not that man.

Mayer writes:

A trail of documents, corroborated by the accounts of former colleagues, indicates that Hegseth was forced to step down by both of the two nonprofit advocacy groups that he ran—Veterans for Freedom and Concerned Veterans for America—in the face of serious allegations of financial mismanagement, sexual impropriety, and personal misconduct.

A previously undisclosed whistle-blower report on Hegseth’s tenure as the president of Concerned Veterans for America, from 2013 until 2016, describes him as being repeatedly intoxicated while acting in his official capacity—to the point of needing to be carried out of the organization’s events. The detailed seven-page report—which was compiled by multiple former C.V.A. employees and sent to the organization’s senior management in February, 2015—states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club, where he had brought his team. The report also says that Hegseth, who was married at the time, and other members of his management team sexually pursued the organization’s female staffers, whom they divided into two groups—the “party girls” and the “not party girls.” In addition, the report asserts that, under Hegseth’s leadership, the organization became a hostile workplace that ignored serious accusations of impropriety, including an allegation made by a female employee that another employee on Hegseth’s staff had attempted to sexually assault her at the Louisiana strip club. In a separate letter of complaint, which was sent to the organization in late 2015, a different former employee described Hegseth being at a bar in the early-morning hours of May 29, 2015, while on an official tour through Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, drunkenly chanting “Kill All Muslims! Kill All Muslims!”

In response to questions from this magazine, Tim Parlatore, a lawyer for Hegseth, replied with the following statement, which he said came from “an advisor” to Hegseth: “We’re not going to comment on outlandish claims laundered through The New Yorker by a petty and jealous disgruntled former associate of Mr. Hegseth’s. Get back to us when you try your first attempt at actual journalism….”

The whistle-blower report makes extensive allegations. It describes several top managers being involved in drunken episodes, including an altercation at a casino and a hotel Christmas party at which food was thrown from the balcony. Hegseth, it says, was “seen drunk at multiple CVA events” between 2013 and 2015, a time when the organization was engaged in an ambitious nationwide effort to mobilize veterans to vote for conservative candidates and causes…

In October, 2014, C.V.A. instituted a “no alcohol” policy at its events. But the next month, according to the report, Hegseth and another manager lifted the policy while overseeing a get-out-the-vote field operation to boost Republican candidates in North Carolina. According to the report, on the evening before the election, Hegseth, who had been out with three young female staff members, was so inebriated by 1 a.m. that a staffer who had driven him to his hotel, in a van full of other drunken staffers, asked for assistance to get Hegseth to his room. “Pete was completely passed out in the middle seat, slumped over” a young female staff member, the report says. It took two male staff members to get Hegseth into the hotel; after one young woman vomited in some bushes, another helped him into bed. In the morning, a team member had to wake Hegseth so that he didn’t miss his flight. “All of this happened in public,” according to the report, while C.V.A. was “embedded” in the Republican get-out-the-vote effort. It went on, “Everyone who saw this was disgusted and in shock that the head of the team was that intoxicated….”

In December, 2014, the group held an office Christmas party at the Grand Hyatt in Washington. Once again, according to the report, Hegseth was “noticeably intoxicated and had to be carried up to his room.” The report stated, “His behavior was embarrassing in front of the team, but not surprising; people have simply come to expect Pete to get drunk at social events.”

Earlier in his career, in 2007, Hegseth was hired to lead a small veterans’ group called Vets for Freedom, which advocated for expanding the war in Iraq. By 2009, VFF was virtually bankrupt, with $1,000 in the bank, and nearly $500,000 in debts. The billionaire backers lost confidence in him and merged VFF with another vets’ group to minimize his role.

Mayer quotes Margaret Hoover, an advisor to VFF during Hegseth’s tenure, who said to CNN:

 “I watched him run an organization very poorly, lose the confidence of donors. The organization ultimately folded and was forced to merge with another organization who individuals felt could run and manage funds on behalf of donors more responsibly than he could. That was my experience with him.” Hoover stressed that V.F.F. was an exceedingly small organization, with fewer than ten employees, and a budget of between five million and ten million dollars. She told CNN, “And he couldn’t do that properly—I don’t know how he’s going to run an organization with an eight-hundred-and-fifty-seven-billion-dollar budget and three million individuals.”

Categories Accountability, Character, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Trump

Pete Hegseth’s Mother Denounced His Treatment of Women, Then Retracted It

By dianeravitch
December 1, 2024 //
4

Pete Hegseth, the FOX talk show host selected by Trump as Secretary of Defense, has a problem with women.

He has been accused of rape by a California woman, with whom he reached a financial settlement in exchange for her silence. But since no charges weee filed by the police, that incident won’t get in the way of confirmation.

His record of fidelity to his wife is blemished, to say the least.

The New York Times wrote:

Mr. Hegseth married Meredith Schwarz, his high school sweetheart, in 2004, one year after they both graduated from college. Ms. Schwarz sued for divorce less than five years after their wedding. The 2009 court judgment cited Mr. Hegseth’s infidelity as the reason for the breakdown of the marriage.

The following year, Mr. Hegseth married Samantha. Within five years, they had three boys.

Mr. Hegseth has repeatedly said he is a Christian who adheres to conservative family values. In a short-lived bid for the Republican nomination for a Minnesota seat in the U.S. Senate in 2012, he credited his parents for instilling those values in him, saying, “I didn’t learn conservatism out of a book.”

In an essay that same year, he acknowledged that he had erred by fathering a child “out of wedlock” with Samantha, who had been his co-worker at a nonprofit group called Vets for Freedom, after his first marriage ended…

By late 2016, Mr. Hegseth, a Fox News contributor and aspiring anchor, was having an affair with Jennifer Rauchet, an executive producer at Fox News. He was named as the weekend anchor of Fox & Friends in early 2017 — a post he held until earlier this month, when Mr. Trump announced he wanted him to head the Defense Department.

Ms. Rauchet, who has three other children, delivered a baby girl in August 2017, one month before Samantha Hegseth filed for divorce. Mr. Hegseth married Ms. Rauchet in 2019 at a ceremony at Trump National Golf Club Colts Neck in New Jersey.

Thus far, Pete has had three marriages and two children born “out-of-wedlock” to his future wives.

Pete’s mother was outraged by his adulterous behavior, the Times reported.

The mother of Pete Hegseth, President-elect Donald J. Trump’s pick for secretary of defense, wrote him an email in 2018 saying he had routinely mistreated women for years and displayed a lack of character.

“On behalf of all the women (and I know it’s many) you have abused in some way, I say … get some help and take an honest look at yourself,” Penelope Hegseth wrote, stating that she still loved him.

She also wrote: “I have no respect for any man that belittles, lies, cheats, sleeps around and uses women for his own power and ego. You are that man (and have been for years) and as your mother, it pains me and embarrasses me to say that, but it is the sad, sad truth.”

Mrs. Hegseth, in a phone interview with The New York Times on Friday, said that she had sent her son an immediate follow-up email at the time apologizing for what she had written. She said she had fired off the original email “in anger, with emotion” at a time when he and his wife were going through a very difficult divorce…

Hegspeth wears his Christian nationalism on his body, literally, with tattoos. What kind of devout Christian repeatedly commits adultery. It would not be tolerated in the military, where it is treated as a crime. Should the Secretary be held to different standards than the members of the military?

Hegseth has been outspoken in his opposition to women serving in combat. He has not said yet what he plans to do with women who are now serving in the Green Berets and Navy Seals, who passed rigorous tests to earn their badges.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Cruelty, Elections, Gender, Trump

“Democracy”: Pam Bondi Will Weaponize the Justice Department Against Trump’s Enemies

By dianeravitch
November 26, 2024 //
13

Our reader “Democracy” always posts wise, deeply researched comments. In this comment, Democracy makes us wonder whether Trump’s nomination of Matt Gaetz was a deep fake that would make anyone else look better. Such as Pam Bondi.

Pam Bondi will be loyal to Trump. Loyalty is the trait that matters more to Trump than competence or experience.

The Washington Post wrote about Bondi:

“Bondi said the Justice Department’s special counsel investigation into whether Trump associates coordinated with Russian interference in the 2016 election needed to be dissolved. She declared that the 45th president’s first impeachment in 2019 was a “sham.” And when Trump was indicted four times after leaving office, Bondi was blunt about who deserved legal scrutiny — and it wasn’t the former president.

“The prosecutors will be prosecuted, the bad ones,” Bondi declared on Fox News in 2023, soon after Trump’s fourth set of criminal charges. “The investigators will be investigated.”

Democracy writes:

Pam Bondi as Attorney General.

What could go wrong? Let’s see.

Bondi was never a supporter of the Affordable Care Act and tried to extinguish it. As of February of this year, Florida had more than 4 million people receiving health care through the Affordable Care Act, the highest ACA enrollment in the country.

Bondi has been a long-time opponent of LGBTQ rights and same-ex marriage. After the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, Bondi said she had OPPOSED same-sex marriage NOT for any personal beliefs or political partisanship but because of “the rule of law.”

Bondi took that $25,000 political donation from a Trump CHARITY and then dropped any participation by Florida in a lawsuit against the Trump University flim-flam scheme. She denied that she did anything wrong or that there was any connection between the moola and her decision not to participate in the suit against Trump’s crooked tactics. Indeed, as one Trump University official said in court testimony, enrollees in the courses were directed to

“call their credit card companies and raise their credit limits two, three, or four times so that they would be able to invest in real estate,” to “charge the course to multiple credit cards” or “to open up as many credit cards as they could.” 

Bondi is a 2020 election denier, parroting Trump’s false claims that the election was “stolen” by “fake ballots” — she could never provide any evidence of this — and that any investigation into Trump’s incitement of the violent January 6 insurrection was a weaponization of the Justice Department for political purposes. Just last year she said on Fox ‘news” that,

“When Republicans take back the White House, you know what’s going to happen? The Department of Justice, the prosecutors will be prosecuted — the bad ones — the investigators will be investigated.”

Kinda sounds like “weaponization” doesn’t it?

The mission of the Department of Justice is “to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights.” According to its website, DOJ core values are

• Independence and Impartiality.

• Honesty and Integrity. 

• Respect.

• Excellence.

Obviously, the nomination of Matt Gaetz was laughably terrible. Pam Bondi may be a bit more palatable, but not by much. She is a liar, and a bigot, and a right-wing hack, and a seditious traitor…but with a “pretty” face. She’s the lipstick on the pig.

So what could go wrong? A whole lot.

Categories Accountability, Character, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Florida, Gender, Justice, Trump

Should This Trans Man Use the Women’s Bathroom?

By dianeravitch
November 24, 2024 //
68

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina is outraged at the prospect of a transgender woman using the women’s bathroom in the House of Representatives. Her anger is in response to the election of Sarah McBride, a transgender woman, who was elected to Congress by voters in Delaware. Rep. Mace proposed to require anyone who uses a public bathroom to use the one that corresponds to the gender on his/her birth certificate. Trans men (women who became male) would use the ladies’ room; trans women (like Sarah McBride) would use the men’s bathroom.

After some initial uncertainty, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson supported Mace’s proposal.

A reader who calls himself Teaching Economist posted this question and photo on this blog:

Would you feel comfortable with this trans male obeying the policy and using the women’s restroom?

This is Patricio Manuel, professional boxer, born in Santa Monica, CA, 39 years old. Born female, now a transgender man.

At present, there are no trans men in Congress. When the day comes that there is a trans man, this will be a problem for Nancy Mace, Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other culture warriors.

How will they feel about having trans men like Patricio Manuel in their bathrooms?

Categories Gender

Snopes: Elon Musk Said That Jeff Bezos Ex-Wife was a “Reason Why Western Civilization Died”

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2024 //
23

Did Elon Musk say that? Yes, he did.

Snopes, the fact-checking service, confirmed that billionaire Elon Musk said that Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, was a “reason why Western Civilization died.”

Why? Because since her divorce, Scott has given away billions of dollars to charitable organizations that help women and racial minorities.

Snopes provided this context:

Musk wrote in response to a post on X that, “‘Super rich ex-wives who hate their former spouse'” should be listed among “‘Reasons that Western Civilization died.'” That post said of Scott’s philanthropic efforts that “over half of the orgs to which she’s donated so far deal with issues of race and/or gender.” Musk later deleted his post.

Questions:

Does Elon Musk make charitable gifts? If so, where does he give? There are tax breaks for giving to charity. What are Elon’s charities?

Categories Bias, Billionaires, Character, Democracy, Fake News, Gender, Race, Technology

The Trans Bathroom Issue Explodes in Congress

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2024 //
117

Delaware elected Sarah McBride to Congress. Representative McBride is transgender. Republican women are going nuts for fear that Rep. McBride might use the women’s bathroom. Or the women’s gym.

Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina has introduced a resolution to bar Rep. McBride from using the women’s facilities. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is aghast and insists on calling Rep. McBride “he” and “him.”

The New York Times reported:

“Sarah McBride doesn’t get a say,” [Nancy Mace] told reporters on Monday night. “I mean, this is a biological man.” She said that Ms. McBride “does not belong in women’s spaces, women’s bathrooms, locker rooms, changing rooms — period, full stop.”

The move by Ms. Mace, one of the more attention-seeking members of the House, was straight out of the political playbook Republicans have long employed on transgender issues, which they see as an effective wedge to divide Democrats….

…with Ms. McBride’s arrival in Washington, House Republicans for the first time have a transgender colleague to target in their own workplace…

House Majority Leader Mike Johnson was flummoxed. He said:

“A man is a man, and a woman is a woman. And a man cannot become a woman,” Mr. Johnson said. “That said, I also believe that we treat everyone with dignity. We can do and believe all of those things at the same time.”

McBride posted a comment on social media:

“Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness,” she wrote. “This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing…”

Marjory Taylor Greene was outraged:

“He’s a man,” Ms. Greene told reporters bluntly on Monday night. “He’s a biological male. So he is not allowed to use our women’s restrooms, our women’s gym, our locker rooms. He’s a biological male. He has plenty of places he can go.”

Ms. Greene said she was “fed up with the left shoving their sick trans ideology down our throats and invading our spaces and women’s sports.”

The Democrats defended their new colleague.

Who will stop her from using the women’s bathroom?

Having used many women’s bathrooms myself, I would like to point out that there are no open stalls. No one is naked. Privacy is certain.

What’s the deal?

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Elections, Gender, Republicans

“Democracy”: Why Trump Chose FOX News Host as Secretary of Defense

By dianeravitch
November 18, 2024 //
26

Our reader “Democracy” explains why Trump chose Peter Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense. Trump has said that he wants the military to participate in rounding up, detaining, and expelling millions of immigrants. Hegseth won’t object. Trump has said he wants the military to crack down on protests or gatherings he doesn’t like. Hegseth won’t object. Hegseth also would block any prosecution of military members who are alleged to have committed war crimes.

“Democracy” writes:

What Elon Musk and others want to do in “cutting” government is to eliminate certain federal agencies, like the department of education, and to gut others, like Interior and the EPA, and to deplete the federal civil service while stocking it with Trump loyalists, competent or not.

What he’s doing with Defense appears to be a first step in weaponizing the US military, turning it into a Trump “army” to be used as he sees fit. As any sensible person knows, he IS unfit for office. That’s a genuine recipe for bad things to come.

Here’s how the Associated Press reported Trump’s selection of Pete Hegseth to be Secretary of Defense:

“Trump passed on a number of established national security heavy-hitters and chose an Army National Guard captain well known in conservative circles as a co-host of Fox News Channel’s ‘Fox & Friends Weekend.’…He has made it clear on his show and in interviews that, like Trump, he is opposed to ‘woke’ programs that promote equity and inclusion. He also has questioned the role of women in combat and advocated pardoning service members charged with war crimes.”

On a conservative podcast, Hegseth said this:

“‘First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Any general, any admiral, whatever,’ who was involved in diversity, equity and inclusion programs or ‘woke shit has “got to go.’”

“Woke” as in being committed to democratic values and principles. “Woke” as in equality, and “liberty and justice for all.” “Woke” as in abiding by US and international law as defined in 18 USC 2441: War crimes.

As the Associated Press also reported,

“…women have successfully passed the military’s grueling tests to become Green Berets and Army Rangers, and the Naval Special Warfare’s test to serve as a combatant-craft crewman — the boat operators who transport Navy SEALs and conduct their own classified missions at sea.”

The Washington Post said this, in part, about the Hegseth pick:

“The breakneck speed of the Hegseth nomination also underscores the value Trump places on TV personalities who have used their platform to promote his agenda.”

Elon Musk. Kristi Noem. Pete Hegseth. All cause for deep concern. Is the next appointment going to be the Brainworm Boy at HHS? The McDonald’s Hamburglar at USDA?

But seriously, given who Hegseth is and what Trump has said, there’s a reason to fear. From CNN:

“There is not much the Pentagon can do to pre-emptively shield the force from a potential abuse of power by a commander in chief. Defense Department lawyers can and do make recommendations to military leaders on the legality of orders, but there is no real legal safeguard that would prevent Trump from deploying American soldiers to police US streets…it is also possible that forces could be sent into American cities if asked to help with the mass deportation plan Trump mentioned repeatedly on the trail.”

And this:

“The president’s powers are especially broad if he chooses to invoke the Insurrection Act, which states that under certain limited circumstances involved in the defense of constitutional rights, a president can deploy troops domestically unilaterally.”

AND this:

“In a video posted last year, Trump said if elected he would ‘immediately re-issue my 2020 Executive Order restoring the President’s authority to remove rogue bureaucrats…we will clean out all of the corrupt actors in our National Security and Intelligence apparatus, and there are plenty of them.’”

The plan is to make the defense and intelligence bureaucracies Trump subsidiaries, along with the Department of Justice. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why, and what he’ll do with that kind of “deep state” power.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Extremism, Gender, Immigration, Trump
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