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The FBI Raids an Ohio Voting Rights Organization. Why?

By dianeravitch
June 30, 2026 //
2

Denis Smith’s late brother was an FBI agent. He was part of a team of agents sent to Mississippi to protect voting rights. When Denis learned that Kash Patel’s FBI recently raided a voting rights organization in Cleveland, he had a flashback.

Denis Smith was a public school administrator. He worked in the charter school office at the State Education Department.

Smith doesn’t explain why the FBI raided a group that was encouraging people to register to vote. We are all left to wonder why.

He wrote in the Ohio Capital Journal:

Something happened in Cleveland recently that needs our attention, regardless of political affiliation.

The headline about the event was concise, specific and, in the end, alarming: FBI Raids Ohio Voting Rights Organization. 

With so many crises facing the nation now, do we have to read that six-word headline again to fully understand what we have come to as a republic celebrating its 250th birthday? 

For me, reading about the FBI raiding a voting rights organization here in Ohio brought back a vivid memory about the career of my late brother, an FBI agent. Let me explain.

Six decades ago, the headlines back then also involved the FBI and voting rights, though the setting was not Ohio, but in Mississippi.   

There was one huge difference with the Ohio FBI raid: The Bureau was not involved more than a half-century ago in raiding organizations supporting voting rights, whether in Mississippi or Ohio. 

Quite the opposite.

In June 1964, three civil rights workers were murdered in Neshoba County, Mississippi by local members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner died at the hands of the Klan because they were helping people register to vote. 

Since the three men initially were listed as missing, the FBI was able to assume jurisdiction because the initial thinking had the three treated as being kidnapped, allowing federal agents to use federal abduction law to work around the local authorities, who were thought to be also involved in the disappearance of the trio.

That proved to be correct, as Lawrence Rainey, the Neshoba County sheriff and his deputy, Cecil Price, were indicted as part of a conspiracy that led to the murders of the activists. Rainey was acquitted but Price was convicted of civil rights violations and served most of a six-year prison sentence.

In 1988, Mississippi Burning, a film starring Gene Hackman, chronicled the epic events surrounding the murders of the civil rights workers. 

The film name came from MIBURN, the case file named for the charred vehicle used by the men that was found after their disappearance as well as referring to the burned African American churches that were set ablaze during the summer of 1964. 

As the scope of the case widened and weeks passed with no sign of the three men, more FBI agents from other field offices were put on temporary assignment to the case and traveled to Philadelphia, Mississippi, the Neshoba County seat.

One of those on temporary assignment in Mississippi was FBI Special Agent Edward C. Smith Jr., who was also from Philadelphia — the one in Pennsylvania. He was my brother.

As a career FBI agent, my brother was the utmost model of professionalism. He did not discuss his work, and during this era of civil and voting rights activism, particularly in the South, his family had no idea where he might be at any given moment.

That changed when my sharp-eyed mother was watching the Today Show at her home in Philadelphia one morning during that momentous summer of 1964. 

As she was ironing, her attention was drawn to the TV screen by a report about the ongoing investigation in Mississippi. 

When she heard the words Philadelphia, Mississippi, she dropped her weekly laundry routine to fixate on the story coming from the Neshoba County Courthouse. 

To her great surprise she saw her son Ed on the TV screen standing among some other FBI agents on the courthouse steps.

Now our family knew the scope of work our brother was involved with and why he had not contacted us recently.

This personal detail about my brother is provided to inform as well as remind readers that once upon a time, the Federal Bureau of Investigation — however reluctant it might have been during the tenure of long-time director J. Edgar Hoover — nevertheless worked diligently to protect individuals involved in civil and voting rights activity. 

It is no coincidence that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was a consequence of the upheaval during the summer of 1964.

Upon his retirement, my brother did provide some details about his experience during the Mississippi Burning era, when some of the locals referred to his agency as the Federal Bureau of Integration. 

But such epithets proved to be confirmation of the effectiveness of the FBI to enforce the newly enacted Voting Rights Act as well as ensuring that the Fifteenth Amendment and the right to vote extended to every eligible citizen.

It is therefore understandable that those who lived during the bad times of the 1960s, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation had a mission to enforce federal law and ensure that Americans had access to the ballot box, are uneasy about a raid by the same FBI on an organization that works to promote voting rights.

Again, we are not talking about Mississippi but Ohio. In addition to the headline, the lead played out that feeling of uneasiness.

“FBI agents on Thursday raided the Cleveland offices of the Ohio Organizing Collaborative, a pro-democracy organization that helps register voters in that state…” the story read.

My brother would be very upset if he knew his beloved FBI conducted a raid in Ohio on an organization whose mission is to ensure that people are registered to vote.

Yes, we are witness to an FBI raid on a voting rights organization in Ohio, not Mississippi. Edward C. Smith Jr., may you rest in peace. If you were still with us, you would realize better than the rest of us how far we as a nation have marched. Backwards.

Categories Elections, Ethics, History, Ohio

Randi on the U.S. Supreme Court’s Immigration Decision

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2026 //
6

Today was a good day at the U.S. Supreme Court for Donald Trump and Stephen Miller: the Court gave them permission to deport hundreds of thousands of Haitians, Syrians, and others who hold Temporary Protected Status. Some 350,000 Haitians are affected. Under the same program, Trump has welcomed white South Africans. The Court’s vote was 6-3.

Among those now subject to deportation are engineers, doctors and thousands of health care workers.

The program was established in 1990 with bipartisan support.

In a different 6-3 decision, the Court’s rightwing majority struck down a law in Hawaii that allowed private businesses open to the public, like retail shops, grocery stores, coffee shops, and gas stations to bar patrons carrying guns. The majority said the Second Amendment protects gun owners and they should be allowed to enter these places carrying their guns. The rest of us are not protected from them.

Contact:
Alexis Lopez
305-878-9836
alopez@aft.org

AFT’s Weingarten on US Supreme Court Ruling Ending Protection for Hundreds of Thousands of Haitians and Syrians

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to end temporary protected status protections for thousands of workers from Haiti and Syria who live and work legally in the United States:

“This country has been a beacon of hope for people around the world who seek a safe haven from violence and persecution. Immigrants with temporary protected status pour billions into the economy each year, pay taxes and fill essential jobs across industries including healthcare, agriculture and manufacturing. Losing their right to work and live here will push them into poverty and leave our country weaker, poorer and more vulnerable.

“When darker forces—like those in the White House today—closed our borders in the 1920s, millions of people who needed shelter were slaughtered abroad. We said “never again,” yet now we have a Supreme Court that’s closed its eyes to that history. 

“It is ironic that the six justices who issued this ruling would likely never visit or live in Haiti or Syria because of the extreme and ongoing instability there. Yet they somehow feel constitutionally compelled to send others back based on an administration policy rooted in discrimination and hate. History will not be kind to those who joined this warped opinion—and it is now incumbent on Congress to reverse it.”

###

Categories History, Immigration

Court Rules that Administration May Change Slavery Exhibit in Philadelphia

By dianeravitch
June 22, 2026 //
2

In the 1790s, when George Washington was President, he lived in a house in Philadelphia with nine slaves. The house is now part of the National Park Service. The city of Philadelphia approved an exhibit of panels that told the story of the President’s House.

After Trump ordered the removal from federal sites of signage and exhibits that “disparaged” American history, the National Park Service replaced the Philadelphia exhibit with its own signage.

The city sued and won in federal district court. In appeal, a federal appeals court affirmed the power of the federal government to control the exhibits on the site.

WHYY in Philadelphia reported on the decision.

Categories Censorship, History, Philadelphia

Heather Cox Richardson on the History of Juneteenth

By dianeravitch
June 20, 2026 //
4

I remember from my childhood in Houston the annual celebration of Juneteenth. It was entirely a Black event, not acknowledged by whites.

Now it is a federal holiday, signed into law by President Biden. The timing was fortuitous. Such a law would not likely be passed by the current Congress and would never be signed by Trump.

Heather Cox Richardson posted this history of Juneteenth yesterday. I enjoyed reading it (a day late), and I think you will too. I learned lots that I did not know about the history of this day.

She writes:

Today is the federal holiday honoring Juneteenth, the celebration of the announcement in Texas on June 19th, 1865, that enslaved Americans were free.

That announcement came as late as it did because while General Robert E. Lee surrendered his Army of Northern Virginia to General Ulysses S. Grant of the U.S. Army on April 9, 1865, it was not until June 2 that General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department, the last major army of the Confederacy, to the United States, in Galveston, Texas. Smith then fled to Mexico.

Seventeen days later, Major General Gordon Granger of the U.S. Army arrived to take charge of the soldiers stationed in Texas. On that day, June 19, he issued General Order Number 3. It read:

“The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves, and the connection heretofore existing between them becomes that between employer and hired labor.”

Granger’s order referred to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, which declared that Americans enslaved in states that were in rebellion against the United States “shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons.” Granger was informing the people of Galveston that, Texas having been in rebellion on January 1, 1863, their world had changed. The federal government would see to it that, going forward, white people and Black people would be equal.

Black people in Galveston met the news Order No. 3 brought with celebrations in the streets, but emancipation was not a gift from white Americans. Black Americans had fought and died for the United States. They had worked as soldiers, as nurses, and as day laborers in the Union army. Those who could had demonstrated their hatred of enslavement and the Confederacy by leaving their homes for the northern lines, sometimes delivering valuable information or matériel to the Union, while those unable to leave had hidden wounded U.S. soldiers and helped them get back to Union lines.

But white former Confederates in Texas were demoralized and angered by the changes in their circumstances. “It looked like everything worth living for was gone,” Texas cattleman Charles Goodnight later recalled.

In summer 1865, white legislators in the states of the former Confederacy grudgingly ratified the Thirteenth Amendment, which abolished enslavement except as punishment for a crime. But they also passed laws to keep freedpeople subservient to their white neighbors. These laws, known as the Black Codes, varied by state, but they generally bound Black Americans to yearlong contracts working in fields owned by white men; prohibited Black people from meeting in groups, owning guns or property, or testifying in court; outlawed interracial marriage; and permitted white men to buy out the jail terms of Black people convicted of a wide swath of petty crimes and then to force those former prisoners into labor to pay off their debt.

Congress refused to readmit the southern states with the Black Codes in place, and in December 1865, Americans added the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Six months later, Texas freedpeople gathered on June 19, 1866, to celebrate the anniversary of the coming of their freedom with prayers, speeches, food, and socializing.

By then, congressmen had turned to guaranteeing that states could not pass discriminatory laws against citizens who lived in them, laws like the Black Codes. In 1866 they wrote and passed the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Its first section established that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” It went on: “No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

That was the whole ball game, the one that would put teeth behind the principles in the Emancipation Proclamation. The federal government had declared that a state legislature—no matter who elected it or what voters called for—could not discriminate against any of its citizens or arbitrarily take away any of a citizen’s rights. Then, like the Thirteenth Amendment before it, the Fourteenth declared that “Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article,” strengthening the federal government.

Rather than accept this new state of affairs, leading white southerners decided they would rather remain under military rule. So in March 1867, Congress passed the Military Reconstruction Act, calling for southern voters to elect delegates to new state constitutional conventions. And, for the first time in U.S. history, they mandated that Black men could vote in those elections.

Three months later the federal government, eager to explain to Black citizens their new voting rights, encouraged “Juneteenth” celebrations, and the tradition of Juneteenth began to spread to Black communities across the nation. The next year, the addition of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution remade the United States of America.

In 1865, Juneteenth was a celebration of freedom and the war’s end. In 1866 it was a celebration of the enshrinement of freedom in the U.S. Constitution after the Thirteenth Amendment had been ratified. In 1867, Juneteenth was a celebration of the freedom of Black men to vote, the very real power of having a say in the government under which they lived.

Celebrations of Juneteenth declined during the Jim Crow years of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but as Black Americans from the South spread across the country during and after World War II, they brought Juneteenth with them. By the 1980s, Texas had established Juneteenth as a state holiday. Other states followed, and in 2021, thanks in part to pressure from activist Opal Lee, Congress made Juneteenth a federal holiday and President Joe Biden signed the measure into law.

But throughout our history, those determined to preserve a government that discriminates between Americans according to race, gender, religion, ability, and so on, have embraced the idea that true democracy requires skewing the vote toward the wealthy and white men. They have also insisted, as former Confederates did in the late 1860s, that any laws protecting the equal rights of minorities discriminate against the white majority.

Today, those voices are, once again, gaining traction. One hundred and sixty-one years after Juneteenth was established, we are in danger of losing the new nation that it celebrated—one that would honor the equality of all Americans.

Categories Democracy, Freedom, History, Racism

The Lunatic Fringe of the Texas GOP Won!

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2026 //
1

Michelle H. Davis of “Lone Star Left” closes out her coverage of the Texas Republican convention. Her incisive reporting demonstrates the lunacy and cruelty that now dominate Texas Republicans. Well, at least they didn’t adopt a resolution to give the death penalty to any woman who dared to have an abortion. That’s something.

She writes:

The Republican Party of Texas is a party of hate and a party of cruelty. They were built in smoky back offices and pulpits in the early 1970s on the Moral Majority and the New Right. Then, they conquered Texas through the shady legal maneuverings of Tom DeLay and Karl Rove. The men at the top built an empire of corruption and theft. Theft of our water, theft of our clean air, theft of our labor. 

Texas Republicans have long had everything they’ve wanted. For decades, the rich have gotten richer, and the poor have gotten poorer. But it’s not enough. They have to keep people voting for them somehow. Dumb down education. Appeal to the most extreme elements. That’s all they have left. 

In 1964, the John Birch Society found its moment at the Republican National Convention. Barry Goldwater didn’t fully embrace them. But he didn’t reject them either. When Nelson Rockefeller stood at that podium and named the John Birch Society alongside the Ku Klux Klan as examples of extremism that the party should refuse, the crowd booed him off the stage. Goldwater then declared, “extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”

Goldwater was a total shit.

The Birchers never went away. And over the next sixty years, what was once considered the lunatic fringe became the Republican mainstream. The “deep state.” The “new world order.” Conspiracies about globalists, infiltrators, and enemies within. It’s the same playbook.

Which brings us to the 2026 Republican Party of Texas Convention.

The “Abolish Abortion” plank failed the final vote in the platform. That’s the one that would have handed the death penalty to any woman who received abortion care. Any woman. A minor. A rape survivor. Doesn’t matter. But don’t mistake that for a victory, because the men who stood on that convention floor and pushed for it are still on the ballot. Including: 

  • Rep. Bret Money (R-HD02). You can donate to his Democratic opponent, Fatima Muse, HERE. 
  • Rep. David Lowe (R-HD91). You can donate to his Democratic opponent, Yisak Worku, HERE. 

But what did pass on the platform? 

Banning IVF. Banning Sharia Law. 

In 2026, the Birchers write the Republican Party platform. 

Why IVF? Well, because they say this is a person:

But, actually, that ⬆️ is a mouse embryo I found on Google. But if women who are struggling with fertility are not allowed to have IVF in Texas anymore. 1- It will eventually spread to other states, and 2- what kind of repercussions will come from this? 

America already has a history of this. 

  • The Indian Adoption Project, beginning in the early 1950s, adopted Native children out primarily to non-Indian families to reduce reservation populations. By the time Congress finally acted, approximately one-third of all American Indian children had been removed from their homes. The Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 was the legislative response, and the right has been trying to gut it ever since.
  • Between 1998 and 2008, nearly 30,000 Guatemalan-born children were adopted by US parents. The US Embassy in Guatemala knew as far back as 1995 that birth mothers’ lives were threatened if they tried to reclaim their children. Guatemala shut it down in 2008.

The Evangelical Christian adoption movement has a documented history of manufacturing an “orphan crisis” to justify removing children from living parents in developing countries. Even Erika Kirk had an orphanage in Romania, which she was later accused of sex trafficking children out of. 

Banning Sharia Law? 

First of all, they already tried this in the 2015 Legislative session during the last time Muslim panic swept the state of Texas. During that time, Beth Van Duyne, the then-mayor of Irving, was directly responsible for the statewide outrage and upset. This was simialar to the Muslim panic after 9/11. Maybe, not that bad. But the Republicans go back and forth between which marginalized group they hate most each year. This year, it happens to be Muslims. 

When you Google “What is Sharia Law,” you get a lot of different answers, so hear it directly from Rep. Salman Bhojani (D-HD92): 

From the Republicans’ perspective, it really boils down to ignorance and bigotry. Just like the “Show Me Your Papers” bill. Just like the DEI bans. Same rhyme, different verse. 

All the Texas transplants, pretending to be Texans. 

Now, don’t get me wrong, we love our transplants. They add to the vibrant culture that makes our state so unique. But nothing chaps my hide more than a bunch of dudes that moved here in their 40s rambling on about how THEY represent Texas values more than ME. Like, sirs, I have a grandfather and a great-uncle in the square the day JFK got shot, and they were both born in Dallas.

And all of these Republicans, the wealthy ones, who came here to get into politics or nepo-baby their way into their daddy’s corporation that came to Texas for the low taxes, they think the Texas spirit is all about taking as much as you can for yourself, while screwing everyone else at the bottom, and hurting anyone different from you. 

Senate Majority Leader Tan Parker, born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, stood at that podium and invoked the Alamo. He talked about faith, family, liberty, and the God-given right of free people to govern themselves. He said Texas is proof that freedom works. 

Parker has been rated as one of the most dangerous anti-choice legislators in Texas. He’s endorsed by both Texas Right to Life and Texas Alliance for Life. His legislative priorities in 2025 centered on capital markets packages and making Texas a hub for financial services, because when women are dying from abortion ban complications, and Texas has a maternal mortality rate that rivals that of developing nations, but Parker’s focus is on helping rich people move their money here faster. 

The man flew in from Pennsylvania, wrapped himself in the Texas flag, invoked the memory of the men who died at the Alamo, and has spent nearly two decades making life harder for the working Texans he claims to represent.

Same thing with Dannie Goober yesterday. 

The rest of the planks we covered mostly passed. 

The full platform will be posted on the Republican Party of Texas website in the coming weeks. Read it. Share it. Make sure every voter in your life knows exactly what these people are planning.

Because we already know what’s coming in the 90th Legislative Session. They’ve written it down for us. Frozen embryos have more rights than the mothers who made them. Muslims are the designated enemy of the cycle. A Texas that looks less like the state we love and more like the fever dream of a John Birch Society pamphlet from 1962.

They are telling us exactly who they are.

The question is whether we’re going to let them keep doing it.

We can stop them by flipping the Texas House. Democrats need a net gain of just 14 seats to break Republican control, and the candidates to do it are on the ballot right now. 

The line in the sand is at the ballot box.

Categories Bigotry, Cruelty, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, History, Ignorance, Republicans, Texas

Watch the Removal of Trump’s Name from the Kennedy Center, Live!

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2026 //
5

MS NOW is live-streaming the removal of Trump’s name from the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

Right now.

Categories Art, Ethics, History, Trump

Colorado: Governor Polis Bends to Trump Pressure, Frees Tina Peters

By dianeravitch
June 2, 2026 //
2

Trump has spent a lot of time rescuing, pardoning and trying to reward the people who joined him in attempting to overturn his election loss in 2020. He is a giant baby. He is a sore loser. He lost decisively, and he refuses to accept it. More than 60 federal and state courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, rejected his appeals because there was no evidence of election fraud.

Someday, with time, we will look back on Trump’s refusal to accept his defeat as a low point in our history. Of course, we will look at his two terms in office as the absolute nadir of our history, as a time he spent rolling back civil rights, environmental protections, international alliances, access to healthcare, defunding medical and scientific research, bullying universities, and censoring the mass media.

Trump bullied Governor Jard Polis of Colorado to free Tina Peters, and Polis succumbed:

Tina Peters, the former clerk convicted of participating in a scheme to chase election conspiracy theories promulgated by President Donald Trump, was released from prison Monday after the president successfully pressured Colorado’s Democratic governor into commuting her sentence.

Peters’ release was confirmed by the Colorado Department of Corrections. The state agency said it would have no more information about the 70-year-old inmate. Her sentence was shortened by Gov. Jared Polis last month after Trump waged a lengthy pressure campaign against the governor and his state.

Peters served less than a quarter of her nine-year sentence.

Peters was the first local election official to be charged with breaching security after the 2020 election. She snuck in an outside computer expert affiliated with My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell — who himself denied that Trump lost the White House in 2020 — and the person copied the county’s Dominion Voting Systems computer server as it was updated in 2021.

Peters then joined Lindell onstage at a “cybersymposium” that promised to reveal proof that the election was rigged. Video and photos of the computer system upgrade, including passwords, were posted online. The move stoked false claims that voting machines were manipulated to steal the election from Trump.

Peters was convicted in 2024 of attempting to influence a public servant, conspiracy to commit criminal impersonation, violation of duty and other crimes by jurors in Mesa County, a Republican stronghold that supported Trump. An appeals court upheld her conviction in April, but ordered Peters to be resentenced because it said the judge who sent her to prison wrongly punished her for speaking out about election fraud.

Trump had championed Peters’ case, but because she was convicted under state law, he did not have the power to pardon her. Instead, the president pressured Polis to do so, lambasting him on social media and disinviting him to a White House meeting with other governors. The Trump administration also announced plans to dismantle the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado and relocated the U.S. Space Command to Alabama.

Polis commuted Peters’ sentence on May 15. In a letter, he wrote that although Peters was convicted of serious crimes and deserved to spend time in prison, the sentence was “extremely unusual and lengthy” for a first-time non-violent offender.

Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, a Democrat, called the move a “dark day for democracy” and said it amounted to “selling out our state’s justice system for Trump.”

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Colorado, Corruption, Cruelty, Elections, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Health, History, Injustice, International, Trump

Rep. Steve Cohen Introduces Six Articles of Impeachment of Chief Justice John Roberts

By dianeravitch
May 27, 2026 //
4

The U.S. Supreme Court was designed to be a separate branch of government, the one that monitored the adherence to the Constitution by the other two branches. The Court disappoints sometimes, but it has never been as nakedly partisan as it is under Chief Justice John Roberts. The far-right wing of the Republican Party has a reliable friend at the Court.

It’s hard to say which of their decisions is the worst.

Some might say it was their recent decision to overturn the Voting Rights Act, which will sharply reduce the number of Black members of Congress.

Some might say it was their decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, despite promises by most of them not to do so.

Some would say it is their decisions that tear down the wall of separation between church and state.

I say it was their decision in Trump v. United States, in which the majority decided that the president was above the law and could not be charged for anything he did while in office as part of his official duties. We can be certain that the same court would claim that whatever he did was part of his official duties, including tearing down the East Wing of the White House without seeking anyone’s approval.

Representative Steve Cohen of Tennessee has had enough. He introduced six articles of impeachment of Chief Justice John Roberts. Good for him!

Scott Dworkin reported on his blog:

Rep. Steve Cohen

Rep. Steve Cohen has represented Memphis, Tennessee, for 19 years. Republicans cut his district into pieces, and he decided to retire—but not without a fight.

Cohen told The Dworkin Report in 2019: “[Trump’s] life has been one crime after another. One misdeed after another. One lie after another.” Now he’s applied that same standard to the man who put Trump above the law.

On May 21, Cohen introduced six articles of impeachment against Chief Justice John Roberts. Charges include allowing the Court to become a partisan weapon, placing the president above the law, endorsing a corrupt campaign finance system, and failing to recuse himself while his wife collected millions recruiting attorneys for law firms with cases before the Court.

Cohen was direct: “Under Chief Justice Roberts’ stewardship, [The Supreme Court] is now understood as biased: with decisions designed to benefit Republicans at the expense of representative government.”

They gerrymandered Cohen’s district to silence him. John Roberts now has six articles of impeachment to his name—an award no other Chief Justice has ever received in US history.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, History, Injustice, Justice, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson on the History of Memorial Day

By dianeravitch
May 25, 2026 //
1

Heather Cox Richardson describes the history of Memorial Day. She begins by relating Trump’s proposed Arch, which “perfectly frames Arlington House, the mansion built by endlaved Americans and once owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee.” If the Trump Arch is built, after winning approval by two panels stacked with Trump allies, there is always the possibility that it will be demolished by the next president, along with other gaudy changes, such as his tacky ballroom and the swimming pool blue paint in the august Reflecting Pool on the Mall.

Richardson writes:

President Donald J. Trump’s proposed triumphal arch would sit at a rotary on the Virginia side of the Arlington Memorial Bridge between Arlington National Cemetery and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The proposed arch obscures the Lincoln Memorial, built to honor the president who steered the country safely through the Civil War, but perfectly frames Arlington House, the mansion built by enslaved Americans and once owned by Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The arch does not frame the nation’s honored dead, but frames instead the home of the man who led the armies of the Confederacy that killed them.

Secretary of War Edwin Stanton approved the land that had been Lee’s plantation as a national burying ground for soldiers on June 15, 1864. After 32 years in the U.S. Army, Lee resigned his commission and took over command of the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862, fighting across the state.

In early 1864 the U.S. government bought Lee’s property at public auction after Lee defaulted on property taxes, and months later it became the logical place to establish a national cemetery after the U.S. Army under General U.S. Grant began its spring 1864 offensive to crush the Confederate forces once and for all.

As the army advanced the Wilderness Campaign, grinding through the Battle of the Wilderness, the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House, Cold Harbor, and on to the siege of Petersburg, the dead piled up.

The Army buried the dead and sent the wounded back to Washington, D.C. Journalist Noah Brooks wrote: “Maimed and wounded…. arrived by hundreds as long as the waves of sorrow came streaming back from the fields of slaughter…. They came groping, hobbling, and faltering, so faint and so longing for rest that one’s heart bled at the piteous sight.” For many, that rest was forever. In the era before antibiotics and modern medicine, the soldiers died in the summer heat.

Cemeteries in the city quickly became overwhelmed and Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs proposed to Stanton that the government begin burials at the Lee property. The National Republican newspaper called it, along with the establishment of a village of formerly enslaved Americans, “righteous uses of the estate of the rebel General Lee.”

By August 1864 the government had buried the bodies of twenty-six U.S. soldiers around the perimeter of Mrs. Lee’s rose garden, and it continued to bury bodies around the house to make sure Lee would never again be able to live there. By the end of the war, more than 16,000 Civil War soldiers were buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

It was there, on May 30, 1868, that the first official Memorial Day ceremony took place. In those days the observance was called “Decoration Day” and was widely celebrated after the war as people put flowers on the graves of the war dead. At the 1868 event, the newly organized Grand Army of the Republic honored the occasion with a speech by then-congressman James Garfield, who had served as a major general and seen action across the war, including at the battles of Shiloh and Chickamauga.

Garfield, who would later be elected president and lose his life to an assassin, told his comrades that the men buried at Arlington had “summed up and perfected, by one supreme act, the highest virtues of men and citizens. For love of country they accepted death, and thus…made immortal their patriotism and their virtue.“

They had fought, he said, to defend the fundamental principle of the United States. Before the war, Garfield said, “[t]he faith of our people in the stability and permanence of their institutions was like their faith in the eternal course of nature. Peace, liberty, and personal security were blessings as common and universal as sunshine and showers and fruitful seasons; and all sprang from a single source, the old American principle that all owe due submission and obedience to the lawfully expressed will of the majority. This is not one of the doctrines of our political system—it is the system itself. It is our political firmament, in which all other truths are set, as stars in Heaven…. Against this principle the whole weight of the rebellion was thrown. Its overthrow would have brought…ruin.”

And so, he said, “[t]he Nation was summoned to arms by every high motive which can inspire men. Two centuries of freedom had made its people unfit no for despotism. They must save their Government or miserably perish.”

For those who had died to defend the nation, he asked: “What other spot so fitting for their last resting place as this under the shadow of the Capitol saved by their valor?”

“Seven years ago, this was the home of one who lifted his sword against the life of his country, and who became the great Imperator of the rebellion. The soil beneath our feet was watered by the tears of slaves, in whose hearts the sight of yonder proud Capitol awakened no pride and inspired no hope…. But, thanks be to God, this arena of rebellion and slavery is a scene of violence and crime no longer! This will be forever the sacred mountain of our Capital….

“Hither our children’s children shall come to pay their tribute of grateful homage. For this are we met to-day.”

Garfield’s grand words obscured the extraordinary human cost of the war to defend the U.S. government. Almost seven years before, on July 14, 1861, at the very beginning of the conflict, Major Sullivan Ballou of Providence, Rhode Island, wrote his final letter to “My Very Dear Wife,” Sarah. Ballou anticipated the First Battle of Bull Run, the first major battle of the war, and wanted to explain why he was willing to give up his life for his country, and what it would cost.

“If it is necessary that I should fall on the battle-field for my country, I am ready,” he wrote. “I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American civilization now leans upon the triumph of government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution, and I am willing, perfectly willing to lay down all my joys in this life to help maintain this government, and to pay that debt.”

“Sarah, my love for you is deathless. It seems to bind me with mighty cables, that nothing but Omnipotence can break; and yet, my love of country comes over me like a strong wind, and bears me irresistibly on with all those chains, to the battlefield.

“The memories of all the blissful moments I have spent with you come crowding over me, and I feel most deeply grateful to God and you, that I have enjoyed them so long. And how hard it is for me to give them up, and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when, God willing, we might still have lived and loved together, and seen our boys grow up to honorable manhood around us.”

Ballou fell at the Battle of Bull Run. Sarah never remarried.

May you have a meaningful Memorial Day.

—

Notes:

https://www.nps.gov/arho/learn/historyculture/cemetery.htm#2
https://www.nps.gov/articles/first-official-national-decoration-day.htm
https://americanliterature.com/author/sullivan-ballou/letter/letter-to-sarah-ballou
Categories History

Hey, Hey, DOGE Boys, How Many Kids Did You Kill Today?

By dianeravitch
May 21, 2026 //
4

Back in the midst of the War in Vietnam, protestors used to torment President Lyndon B. Johnson by chanting, “Hey, hey, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” Johnson became President after President Kennedy’s assassination, then was elected by a landslide in 1964. He had an ambitious domestic agenda, which sailed through Congress, but then got ensnared in pursuing the war, which was a disaster.

As soon as Donald Trump was re-elected, he invited his billionaire friend to slash the federal government. Trump created a fictional “department” called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), headed by Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. Vivek soon left to run for governor of Ohio.

Musk and his little group of computer nerds ransacked the agencies, fired thousands of career employees, and copied confidential files from Social Security and the Treasury Department. Throughout this daring attack on our government, Republican majorities in Congress remained silent.

One of the first agencies killed by Musk was U.S. AID, which supplied food and medicine to impoverished people around the world. Musk celebrated his success and told the world that he had used a jeweled chainsaw to kill a program that saved lives and that bought billions of dollars of grain from American farmers.

It’s been reported that DOGE saved very little money, that many government agencies that lost employees had to rehire some, pay severance to others, and that dramatic savings never materialized.

And now we know that whatever savings were realized by Musk’s brief foray have been totally wiped out by the cost of the war in Iran.

What remains of the work of Musk and his DOGE?

Millions of deaths in countries where people died because U.S. AID stopped sending aid. Not only did people die of starvation and preventable diseases, but violence followed the AID cuts.

Science Advisor, published by Science magazine, reported:

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) was once the world’s largest provider of foreign aid. Between 2021 and 2024, the agency—which operated in more than 100 countries—is estimated to have saved some 91 million lives, about a third of which were children under five. But just days after President Donald Trump took office in 2025, his administration began rapidly dismantling the organization. The sweeping cuts dealt a “ tectonic” blow to clinical trials around the globe, devastated agricultural research, and triggered a “ bloodbath” for HIV/AIDS relief programs. According to one study, this sudden removal of foreign aid could lead to more than nine million preventable deaths by 2030. Now, new research published in Science suggests that the destruction of USAID has also unleashed a wave of violent conflict across Africa.

Scientists merged two datasets, one that mapped worldwide foreign aid disbursements and another recording violent events. Cuts to USAID, the team reports, were associated with significant increases in violent conflict, armed clashes, protests and riots across a large swath of Africa. The effects began immediately after USAID withdrawal, persisted for months, and were most pronounced in areas that had previously relied the most on aid from the United States. “With the USAID shutdown, there was a rapid increase in the likelihood of violence, the severity of violence, and the lethality of violence,” study co-author Austin L. Wright told 404 Media.

As economist Axel Dreher wrote in a related Science Perspective, the findings reveal “the effect of a sudden and unexpected disruption,” which, beyond just removing resources, can open the door to civil unrest by interrupting ongoing initiatives and eroding trust in local governments. “A sudden cut can be destabilizing even if the aid program being cut was inefficient or unsustainable in the long run.”

Here is a link to the full paper.

Categories Cruelty, Elections, History, Musk, Elon
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