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An Astonishing and Appropriate Use of AI

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2026 //
0

CNN reported an amazing story: Researchers used artificial intelligence to decipher papyrus scrolls that were burned almost 2,000 years ago. Previous attempts to unravel the scrolls had damaged them, even destroyed some. But these researchers created a way to expose their contents without unraveling them.

Lianne Kolirin of CNN reported:

CNN) — A papyrus scroll that was burned and carbonized when Mount Vesuvius erupted almost 2,000 years ago has been virtually unrolled and partially deciphered with the help of artificial intelligence.

The scroll — named PHerc. 1667 — is one of hundreds from the ancient Roman town of Herculaneum, which was buried under volcanic debris when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, according to the Vesuvius Challenge, an initiative focused on decoding the texts of the Herculaneum scrolls without needing to physically unroll them.

Preserved under mud and ash in a villa believed to have once been owned by the father-in-law of Julius Caesar, the scrolls were discovered by an Italian farmer in the 18th century. The collection is the only large-scale library known to have survived from classical antiquity.

Burned so badly they were carbonized, the scrolls are extremely fragile. Over the years, scholars have tried to unroll them using a range of methods, including weights, chemicals, gases and pulverization, though this often led to the scrolls being damaged or destroyed.

The Vesuvius Challenge was launched by Brent Seales, a computer science professor at the University of Kentucky, and entrepreneurs Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross in 2023 to encourage researchers from around the world to try to decipher the scrolls by virtually unwrapping and decoding them.

Virtual unwrapping begins with a CT scan of each coiled-up, warped papyrus.

After following along the curved layers in the scan, researchers then virtually flatten the scrolls and explore them using advanced AI that has been trained to identify ink on the page.

There have been numerous developments in recent years but this latest one — announced at a conference in Naples, Italy on Thursday — is a “historic breakthrough,” according to those involved.

For the first time, scientists have succeeded in fully unwrapping one scroll, revealing an area measuring almost 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) of text across 20 columns.

“For nearly two millennia, many of these texts have been physically preserved but intellectually inaccessible,” Seales said in a statement published on Thursday. “Today — after years of interdisciplinary work combining advanced imaging, artificial intelligence (AI), academic research and an innovation contest — we are finally able to read them.”

To see a photograph of the burnt scroll and to learn what experts found written in the scroll, open the link.

Categories History, Innovation, Technology

Board of Kennedy Center Votes to Put Trump’s Name on the Building Again, Defying Court Order

By dianeravitch
August 17, 2026 //
12

One of Donald Trump’s first acts when he returned to the Presidency was to take full control of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. During his first term in office, Trump never attended any event at the Kennedy Center.

In 2025, Trump fired its board of directors, all except members of Congress, whom he can’t fire. He replaced the bipartisan board with his cronies, who promptly named Trump the chairman of the board. The board proceeded to fire the professionals who ran the Center and to adopt a resolution renaming the Center. Henceforward, the board decreed, the Center would be known as the John F. Kennedy and Donald J. Trump Center for the Performing Arts.

That decision led the Center into a spiral of decline. Many performers and shows cancelled. The Washington National Opera moved out. Ticket sales dropped.

The Kennedy Center suffered incalculable reputation damage after he politicized it. Why did he do it?

Despite his wealth and notoriety, Trump was never accepted into the world of high culture in New York City. He was never invited to serve on the boards of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, the Museum of Modern Art, or any of the city’s other prestigious institutions of high culture. Nor was he known as a donor to those institutions.

He built his brand as a brash businessman who hung out in night clubs with mobsters and beautiful women and sought recognition in the gossip columns of the city’s tabloid press. He was rich, and he was a celebrity, but he was never admitted into elite circles.

His vendetta against the Kennedy Center should be seen in that perspective.

His puppet board at the Kennedy Center did his bidding. In addition to adding his name to the facade of the building, the board decided to close the Center for two years for repairs and renovations. The closure would halt the embarrassment of canceled performances and empty seats. Some critics worried that Trump would tear down the Center as he tore down the East Wing of the White House. Act fast and don’t apologize.

One board member, Congresswoman Joyce Beatty of Ohio, sued to stop the board’s decision to rename the Center and also to close it for two years for Trump-directed “renovations.”

U.S. District Judge Christopher R. Cooper ruled on May 29, 2026, that the Kennedy Center board did not have the legal authority to rename the institution. He said that Congress had established the name by statute and only Congress could change it. He ordered the removal of Trump’s name from the building and from all official Kennedy Center materials. Judge Cooper gave the board a deadline of 14 days.

The Kennedy Center board considered an appeal to delay or reverse the order but ultimately complied. Workers began on June 12 to erect scaffolding in front of the building, moving at a snail’s pace, and began removing Trump’s name at 1:20 a.m. on June 13.

Since then, the facade of the building that shows its name has been covered by white tarps.

At first, Trump petulantly said that Congress should run the Kennedy Center, but he soon reverted to control mode.

On August 13, 2026, the Kennedy Center board voted to put Trump’s name back on the building. It wants to add an inscription saying the center was “Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump,” despite Judge Cooper’s earlier ruling. And it voted to name the large plaza in front of the Center for Trump. It also voted to close the Center for two years, which Judge Cooper said it could not do without more detailed plans and reasons.

Congresswoman Joyce Beatty is suing to reverse the board’s defiance of Judge Cooper’s May 29 decision.

At the same time, the Trump administration is appealing Judge Cooper’s original order.

Judge Cooper could hold the board in contempt of court. Or he could order them not to change the name, as he did in May. Or he could accept the new wording for the facade, which seems unlikely. Or the board could challenge Judge Cooper’s decision to higher courts. Or Congress could step in and rewrite the statute so that Trump could add his name.

Why is the board so insistent on honoring Trump? His hand-picked President Richard Grennell praised Trump for “his visionary leadership.” Board members appointed by him have lavished praise on him.

Trump needs this sycophantic behavior. At his Cabinet meetings, Cabinet secretaries mouth the same obsequious language, stoking his ego, which is insatiable.

Why does this squabble over the Kennedy Center even matter? The U.S. is stuck in a war with Iran that has caused loss of life, depleted our supply of weapons, and harmed the global economy by limiting the flow of oil.

But Trump is deeply engaged in his vanity projects, of which this is one. He is obsessed with his ballroom, which has been stopped by the courts temporarily but is under construction. He assumes it will be known as “the Donald J. Trump Ballroom” forever. He intends to build a 250′ triumphal Arch, despite overwhelming public opposition. He ripped out Jackie Kennedy’s rose garden and paved it over.

He’s doing something to the portico of the White House, but it is hidden by huge shrouds. He is installing a permanent helipad on the White House grounds. He is renovating the Lincoln Bedroom into who-knows-what. He wants to paint the historic grey granite Eisenhower Office Building white, although preservationists have warned him against it (the paint won’t last and it is likely to damage the granite).

All of this is about leaving a permanent mark on D.C. He was not engaged in vanity projects during his first term. Now, at the age of 80, aware of his mortality, he is obsessed by his passion to create a permanent legacy.

Of the many monuments in Washington, D.C., that honor presidents–the Washington Monument, the Jefferson Memorial, the Lincoln Memorial, the Kennedy Center–all were created after the honoree was dead.

Perhaps Trump, who is deeply insecure despite his braggadocio, is afraid he won’t be honored after his death. He remains angry that he never was accepted into the top ranks of New York City’s elite. They treated him like scum. That may be why he is so intent on building Trump monuments while he can.

Act first, get permission later from commissions packed with your flunkies.

Categories Art, Corruption, Ethics, History, Trump

The Best Review of “The Odyssey” Published Anywhere

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2026 //
8

Greg Olear, author and blogger, saw Christopher Nolan’s film The Odyssey at a matinee on the first day it was released. His review is informed, thoughtful, and incisive. If you never read The Odyssey, you will enjoy reading Olear’s review and learning about it; if you have read it, even long ago, you will enjoy his review.

I saw the film two days ago in the one movie house in the village of Greenport, NY. No IMAX 70 theater. The Odyssey is spectacular. If it doesn’t win the Academy Award, I willl be astonished. So too for Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway, both of whom are wonderful.

The critical reviews that I read were picky and insubstantial. Elon Musk was outraged by the film’s ethnic diversity. Helen of Troy is portrayed by a Black woman, Athena is brown-skinned. One character, a soldier in Odysseus’ army, is well-known as trans (Elliott Page).

Musk allegedly has hired Mel Gibson to make a new film about Homer’s classic, one that is “historically accurate.” Bring it on. Homer never mentions the race or ethnicity of his characters.

The works attributed to Homer were created around the 8th to 7th century BCE, probably between 725 and 675 BCE, as oral poetry. Who knows what is historically accurate?

The great effect of the film is that it is a great motivator to read the original. It may even contribute to a revival of the classics.

May the deities bless Christopher Nolan, who brought the film to life.

Greg Olear writes:

Dear Reader,

Past a certain point, recorded history recedes into darkness, just as our individual memories of early childhood vanish into a twilight oblivion. If the siege of Troy by the Mycenaean Greeks isn’t a false historical memory—and I don’t think it is; I think it’s an actual historical event—then the war took place in a past so remote that its events have merged with fiction, mythology, and dream so as to be indistinguishable.

How long ago was it? By the time Homer came along, some three thousand years ago, the Trojan War was already a distant memory. Between the fall of Troy and The Odyssey of Homer came the Late Bronze Age Collapse of 1200-1150 BCE, followed by the Greek Dark Ages, a gaping historical hole of some 400 years during which all of the ancient societies of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East abruptly and simultaneously went dark. 

There is much we don’t know, may never know. Heck, we’re not even sure if Homer is real. The late academic and translator E.V. Rieu, who founded Penguin Classics, tells us that “[i]t is beyond question that he is the earliest surviving Greek writer; probable that he lived in the tenth century before Christ in one or other of those cities which the Greeks had established on the Aegean coast of Asia Minor; and quite likely that he actually committed his poems to writing, though the art was still perhaps hardly known save to the minstrel family to which he belonged. The rest, including his blindness, is legend or guesswork, and there is nothing to be gleaned from the text that gives us any insight into the poet’s personality. Rieu wrote that in May of 1945. Since then, scholars have come to believe that Homer, if he lived at all, was active in the eighth, not the tenth, century BCE.

It was long assumed by scholars that Troy itself was mythical. Not so. Troy was a real place. It stood at the southern shores of the Dardanelles, at the entrance to the narrow strait connecting the Mediterranean to the Black Sea. And there is evidence that a sack of the city did take place, right around 1180 BCE—in the middle of the Collapse. Was there really a Trojan War? Like, why would a people invest so much time and energy in recounting the events of a world-altering conflict that was pure fiction?

I’ve read The Odyssey twice—once in high school, for English class; and once a year or two after college, to reacquaint myself with what is one of the foundational texts of Western civilization. I liked it better the second time; I no longer joked about wanting to hurl my copy into the wine-dark sea. 

Odysseus is a cool cat. Unlike Frodo and company in Lord of the Rings, who survive their perilous travels by dumb luck—the miraculous intervention of an eagle or an elf or whatever—Odysseus relies on his cunning to make it through. He is, after all, the mastermind of the “hollow horse” stratagem that broke the stalemate and won the war. He’s not a big strong brute; he’s a smarty—a character I can get behind. And the themes of The Odyssey—homecoming, exile, fidelity, honor, memory, and the Mycenaean Greek iteration of PTSD—are evergreen.

When I heard that Christopher Nolan, the auteur filmmaker who brought us Inception, Tenet, and Oppenheimer, was making The Odyssey—and with Matt Damon, of all people, in the title role—I was puzzled. The trailers I saw looked meh. Would this be a big flop? How on earth would he pull it off?

Most importantly: what is Nolan’s vision for the source material? What novel take would he bring to literally the oldest plot known to man? And: why did he feel the need to make The Odyssey now, at this moment in history? I was less excited about the movie as I was curious. Not wanting it spoiled, I went to the Friday matinee—the first available showing.

First things first: The Odyssey is a lights-out, unequivocal masterpiece. It’s so good, on so many levels. But Anne Hathaway is the highlight. She plays Penelope—Odysseus’s wife, the Queen of Ithaca, who works dutifully at her loom waiting for her long-lost husband to come home, as a throng of uncouth, cruel, Hegsethian suitors commandeer the palace, in the hopes of winning her hand once it is determined that Odysseus is dead. (Spoiler alert: Unlike Mitch McConnell, he is not.) There is none of the warm, chipper, happy-go-lucky Prada-Devil assistant here; it’s a dark part, and she plays it dark. It’s an exquisite performance.

As usual, I underestimated Matt Damon. Oppenheimer got its share of critical flowers, but as I’ve written here, it’s basically two Wikipedia pages in film form. The problem, I realized on Friday, is that Oppenheimer, the character, is kind of dull. Only when Matt Damon shows up does Oppenheimer pick up the pace and become entertaining. In The Odyssey, Nolan makes the wise decision to dispense with the dull centerpiece guy entirely and make the whole film about the Matt Damon character. 

Odysseus is no physical marvel. He’s a soldier, so he’s not soft, but he’s an archer, not a swordsman. Damon is Jason Bourne fit, but, although he’s actually 5’10”, he looks smaller on screen—he’s literally a short king!—whereas Agamemnon, the King of Mycenae and the leader of the Greeks, is a veritable giant, imposing and terrible. In Troy as in the NBA: size matters.

As for Nolan’s novel take, his original vision? He simply makes the story as realistic as possible—and, given the inherent challenges of making a tale involving Cyclopses and Circean pigs realistic, he pulls it off beautifully.

In an early scene, Odysseus and Penelope are in bed, their toddler son Telemachus asleep nearby, and he is lamenting the fact that he has to leave to go to a war he doesn’t particularly want to fight in. The official reason Agamemnon summoned all the vassal kings to sack Troy is because the Trojans have kidnapped his brother Menelaus’s wife. That would be Helen, whose face, as Menelaus notes in the film, launched a thousand ships (even though those lines were written by another British Christopher, Marlowe, in 1604). Duty and honor demand that the Greeks assemble to bring her home.

But the great Mycenaean king, Odysseus tells Penelope, has an ulterior motive. “He wants to control the trade routes.” In other words, the Dardanelles that Troy sits upon are the Late Bronze Age Straits of Hormuz. All that sacrifice, all that bloodshed, all that destruction—all for a little more coin. So “dedicated” is Agamemnon to his imperial designs that he sacrifices his daughter, Iphigenia, to Artemis, for [checks notes] favorable winds. Yikes.

When I first read The Odyssey, I found the Penelope/Telemachus storyline dull. (I was too young to really get it). That’s not the case in the film. The father is gone and may never return; the mother is besieged like Troy itself by the same ilk of ruffians, and is holding out as long as she can; the son understands all of this, but is too raw and soft and young to do anything about it. No one takes him seriously. The kid needs to grow up, and grow up fast; if not, his mother will be taken by one of the odious suitors, and he, Telemachus, will surely be slain, so that the victor can assume the throne of Ithaca himself.

Those are the stakes.

Robert Pattinson, who plays the villainous lead suitor, Antinous, is not going to be denied. It is a delightfully “meta” moment when he contrives to be alone with Penelope, and tries to persuade her to abandon hope of Odysseus’s return and instead marry him; this is freakin’ Edward from Twilight, still one of the most attractive men alive, veritably catapulting pheromones at her; if she isn’t tempted by that, nothing will tempt her.

Agamemnon’s homecoming ends quickly and tragically—with his wife, Clytemnestra, murdering him, to avenge the sacrifice of their daughter to the gods. (In the mythology, Clytemnestra and Helen are half-sisters; in the film, they are twins, both played by Lupita Nyong’o—much to the dismay of MAGA nation, who cannot conceive of a Black woman’s face being worthy of launching even a couple of dinghies, let alone a thousand ships.) Hoping to avoid a similar fate, Odysseus, with the divine guidance of his patron Athene, returns to Ithaca in disguise as an old beggar, to assess the situation before he makes his move. 

One of the weaknesses of Nolan as a filmmaker is that, as great as his movies are, they lack emotional wallop. He can be cold and dispassionate, and when I watch the films, I rarely respond emotionally to them. For example, in Oppenheimer, when the test bomb explodes successfully, we are supposed to be emotionally moved; I wasn’t. That weakness is not on display here. Whether it’s the sublimity of the source material, or simply, as one review has it, that Nolan has finally “learnt to write women,” there are a number of moving sequences in The Odyssey. The moment when Penelope realizes, beyond all doubt, that the beggar in her dining hall is indeed Odysseus is the single best part of the movie.

(The runtime, incidentally, is two hours 52 minutes, which is about as long as it takes a lead-footed New Yorker to drive from Troy to Ithaca.)

Nolan brings out the inherent feminist elements of The Odyssey. In Homer’s world, the women—whether they are gods or mortals—are more powerful than the men. Whatever Agamemnon’s ambitions, the impetus of the Trojan War is the kidnapping of Helen of Troy (which, if we believe the mythology, was itself the result of a squabble among the goddesses Athene, Aphrodite, and Hera). The suitors in the hall at Ithaca are intimidating dudes, but they would fight to the death to claim Penelope’s hand; she has enormous influence over them. It is a nymph, Calypso, who rescues Odysseus and nurses him back to physical health—and helps ease him back into reality. (My theory is that the reason Odysseus dilly-dallied on Calypso’s island for seven years is because that’s how long it took him to come up with a plausible excuse for why he remained “stranded” for so long with his gumad Charlize Theron.) Athene is the goddess that gives him protection. In Mycenae, mighty Agamemnon, the king of kings, is felled by his wife. And as to the epic’s other men? They are pigs—as Circe well knew.

Why did Nolan make this movie now, at this moment in history? J. Robert Oppenheimer and Odysseus have something in common: both used their superior intelligence to devise a way to sack a city and, in so doing, win a war. Both men had to live with the consequences of that: the guilt, the weight of the responsibility for the lost lives and the mindless destruction, the glory, the infamy—all of it. Oppenheimer and The Odyssey are both about brilliant, complicated men coming to terms with their pivotal roles in a great war.

There are several mentions in the film of the Sea People. To Penelope, they are terrifying heralds of what feels to her like the end of the world. Odysseus feels the dread, too. His stratagem, brilliant as it was, was a trick that took advantage of the honor of the Trojan people. It worked, yes; but it was a dick move. He violated Zeus’s Law, as he says in the film—and without that, what remains? In the final analysis, what was really won?

Assuming the sack of Troy was real, the Late Bronze Age Collapse happened so soon after the Trojan War that one can reasonably conclude that the latter somehow led to the former. Petty squabbles among the Greeks and Troy weakened all the kingdoms, leaving them vulnerable to invasion by the Sea Peoples—or so the film intimates. Does Nolan see a parallel between then and now?

Traditionally, this kind of epic is populated by characters with British accents. But Nolan—who was born in London and speaks with a British accent himself—made a different choice. The characters all talk like Americans—as if Troy and Ithaca were in Upstate New York and not the Aegean. 

This serves two purposes. First, it makes it seem like these characters, for U.S. audiences at least, exist in the here and now, heightening the realism. Second, it equates the Mycenaean Greeks on the verge of the Late Bronze Age Collapse with the United States in A.D. 2026.

We don’t know what caused the Collapse. Probably it was the result of a number of factors that happened simultaneously: plague; famine brought on by climate change; needless wars over trade routes; alliances breaking down; income inequality exacerbated by a ruling oligarchy; bad leadership; and, maybe, the Sea Peoples. Whatever the cause, the Collapse was the end—not of the world, as Penelope feared, but certainly of a long and fruitful chapter of history.

With the looming stock market crash brought on by speculation in AI and data centers; the burning-of-Library-of-Alexandria-level destruction of our government’s investment in medical research; the fracturing of NATO; the avarice of Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and the rest of the Epstein class; the irrevocable warming of the planet caused by manmade climate change; and the worst possible people governing the country, the end of our current chapter seems imminent. 

How did we get here? How did it come to this?

Our enemies the Russians did not invade the United States. They were not strong enough to do so. Instead, they tricked the American electorate into installing a Kremlin stooge in the White House—not once, but twice.

Odysseus devised his famous stratagem three thousand years before the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Even those who haven’t heard of Homer, much less read his work, know of the trick. It’s been famous for thousands of years.

Trump may be more porcine than equine—a Circe product. Even so, after all this time, we should have been able to spot a Trojan horse.

Categories Art, History, Media

What Would Benjamin Franklin Say if He Were Here Today

By dianeravitch
July 31, 2026 //
1

L.C. Francis authors the blog “L.C. Francis Open Society for History and Civics.” In this post, he imagines how Benjamin Franklin would react if he could time-travel to the present day. He titled this one “A Republic in a Costly Costume.”

His subtitle is:

Benjamin Franklin visits Washington and finds the experiment alive, wounded, witty, dangerous, and leaning toward the very monarchy it was built to resist.

“Whoever would overthrow the Liberty of a Nation, must begin by subduing the Freeness of Speech; a Thing terrible to Publick Traytors.”
— Benjamin Franklin, writing as Silence Dogood, No. 8, published in The New-England Courant, July 1722.

Dear Friends,

Yesterday, I wrote about Adams and Jefferson, two bitter friends who died on the Fourth of July, fifty years after the Declaration. But for weeks, another question has been on my mind: what would one founder think if he returned for America’s 250th birthday?

On this Sunday morning, after the fireworks have quieted and the crowds have gone home, I did not want to hand you another stack of bad news. I did not want to build another time machine just for cleverness. I chose Benjamin Franklin because, of all the Founders, he might be the least surprised by what he found in Washington in 2026.

Franklin was intimately aware of monarchial tendencies because he had known kings, ministers, courtiers, printers, mobs, frauds, scientists, diplomats, and men who mistook applause for wisdom. He would not arrive appalled by our foolishness. He would arrive amused, worried, and already reaching for his pen, because sometimes a Republic needs to hear the truth from a man who understood both human weakness and the strange miracle of self-government.

I visualized him observing the ruined East Wing, the ballroom adjacent to the People’s House, the painted Reflecting Pool, attacks on the press, a craving for royal attention, and an occupant of the People’s House who is more eager to be admired than to serve our Republic.

Then Franklin writes home…Hope you find this insightful & enlightening.

Dispatch on the Status of Our Republic

Washington City
July 5, 2026

My Esteemed Friends,

Having been conveyed, by means I cannot explain, into a future age that corresponds to 250 years from our time, and finding myself in the city your posterity has raised for the administration of the Republic, I have thought it prudent to send you a few observations before I am returned, if I am permitted to be returned to our time.

Mr. Adams and Mr. Jefferson will be pleased to hear that our Republic still exists in form. Elections take place, courts at the national, state, and local levels continue to interpret the law, newspapers continue to publish, and the public debates with such fervor that I almost thought the entire nation was a printing press.

Yet I confess that the condition of the Executive office gave me pause.

We once quarreled with George III because no free people should be governed by the vanity of one man. I now find, to my astonishment, a chief magistrate who appears to regard that monarch not as a warning but as an interior decorator. He favors ceremony, obedience, personal loyalty, public flattery, and buildings large enough to persuade small minds that greatness has occurred.

I had hoped your descendants would remember that we rejected monarchy not because crowns were uncomfortable, but because men wearing them became so.

The President’s residence, also called the People’s House and meant as a duty-bound home, has been significantly transformed. A wing was removed, and a ballroom was added. Donors gather nearby, contractors appear pleased. The words reflect public service, but the atmosphere feels like courtly flattery. I’ve strolled through Versailles and seen men bow so deeply they could pick pockets unnoticed. Now, even the Potomac seems to have acquired a touch of French elegance.

I am told this is all done for greatness. I have found that when a man must constantly proclaim his greatness, the evidence is usually still under construction.

As a printer, I paid especially close attention to the press, and this issue grew more serious the longer I spent in this era. The current President doesn’t just dislike criticism; all public figures dislike it, though some handle it more gracefully. This gentleman, with a countenance the color of an apricot or a persimmon, seems to believe himself to be the reincarnation of the courts of France and, therefore, the press should praise him, obey him, change geography in his favor, and apologize whenever inconvenient facts emerge.

One news service was punished for refusing to rename the Gulf of Mexico on command, as though a president could improve geography by signing it in a larger hand. Broadcasters have been threatened. Reporters are treated as enemies when they ask questions rather than bring incense. Lawsuits are brandished like royal decrees. It reminded me of old George III, though fairness requires this confession: George was born into a monarchy. He did not have to assemble one from wounded vanity, public entertainments, donor money, and several coats of gold paint.

Permit an old printer to be plain: a free press is not an ornament of liberty. It is one of its tools. A government that fears printers has already confessed more than printers have written.

I also observed that nearly every citizen carries a small glowing glass into which he may speak a question and receive an answer before his own judgment has had time to put on its shoes. This instrument is astonishing. It fetches a fact, composes a letter, translates a tongue, summarizes a book, and offers counsel with the confidence of a lawyer who has not yet found the statute. Much of what it provides is helpful, though some is incorrect. Its rapid delivery might lead a lazy mind to equate speed with wisdom.

I say this as one who loved invention: no machine, however clever, can spare a Republic the burden of discernment. A device may gather the lightning, but only judgment can make the rod.

Nevertheless, I do not lose hope.

I observed citizens carefully counting votes. I saw judges trying to keep the law from becoming a command. I saw teachers, librarians, clerks, veterans, reporters, and ordinary Americans doing the quiet work no ballroom can replace. They receive little applause, which may be why their service remains valuable.

When we gave the people a Republic, I warned that keeping it would be their burden. Upon further reflection, after visiting our Republic for the first time in 250 years, I would only add this: beware the man who loves the symbols of our country more than its restraints. Beware the patriot who attacks the press, flatters himself with marble, and treats public office as family property. George III lost America by misunderstanding Americans. It would be a poor anniversary indeed if Americans returned the favor by misunderstanding George III.

Tell our friends in Philadelphia that the Republic has not failed. The forms remain: elections, courts, printers, laws, and that blessed American habit of arguing with everyone within reach.

But the balance has shifted toward one man’s office in a manner that would please Mr. Hamilton, satisfy much of Mr. Adams, send Mr. Jefferson searching for ink and a quill, and prompt Paul Revere to get back on horseback. The President now stands so enlarged that many citizens seem less interested in restraining him than in being near enough to admire the glow.

This is the warning I carry home: a Republic may keep its papers and still lose its posture. If the people do not soon pull power back toward Congress, the courts, the press, the states, and themselves, they may wake to find they have not crowned a king but have trained themselves to obey one.

Our democratic experiment continues, but it now dangerously leans toward the very thing we crossed an ocean of trouble to resist.

I remain, as ever,
Your affectionate friend and humble servant,
B. Franklin

P.S. I hope this dispatch finds you in good health and, if possible, in better shade than I presently enjoy, for the heat here is dreadful. I am told the current chief magistrate has intellectual doubts that the climate itself can change, which is a curious position in an age that can weigh the stars, split the atom, and yet still offends itself by consulting a thermometer.

Vivat Constitution!

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, History

Trump Lashes Out at Smithsonian Museum for Refusing His Censorship

By dianeravitch
July 25, 2026 //
10

For more than a year, Trump has pestered the Smithsonian Museum to remove exhibits that shine attention on despicable episodes and phenomena in American history. Trump wants a patriotic version of American history.

The Smithsonian has rejected his bullying, so Trump ordered the National Park Service to place signs around the Smithsonian museums warning visitors about their bias in favor of accurate history.

The Guardian reported:

Donald Trump on Friday ordered the interior department to display signs in front of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History that accuse the institution of inaccuracy.

The order escalates the Trump’s attacks against the Smithsonian, which he and his allies accuse of politicizing the institution by focusing too much on injustices in American history, instead of more triumphant moments such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

The order directs interior secretary Doug Burgum to huddle with the National Park Service and assistant to the president for domestic policy Vince Haley to come up with some temporary signs to install along the National Parks Service-maintained sidewalks and walkways leading into the museum.

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The White House did not immediately respond to a request for more details about what these signs would say.

The order says the signs “shall notify visitors that the museum exhibits should be renovated consistent with the findings in the report”. The signs should direct the public to other places where they can get better American history information, the order says.

The same group will also have to produce signs for the public criticizing the Smithsonian for not commemorating sufficiently the Declaration of Independence during the 250th anniversary of its adoption.

The American Historical Association, a group composed of professional historians, praised the Smithsonian Institution’s “commitment to scholarship and accuracy” in a statement earlier this month.

“Historians practice our craft with scholarly integrity according to established standards of evidence, historical inquiry, and professional practice,” the AHA statement reads. “Political interference in professional museum work threatens the accuracy of historical interpretation and erodes public trust in one of our nation’s most important institutions.”

The National Museum of American History declined to comment.

Categories Bias, Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, History, Propaganda, Trump

Afghanistan: The Corruption of Boys’ Education

By dianeravitch
July 24, 2026 //
12

The Guardian posted a fascinating and depressing article about the “education” of boys in Afghanistan.

It is a reminder that religious education is likely to be indoctrination.

It is a reminder of the importance of separation of church and state.

It is a reminder of why public funds should not pay for religious education.

It is a reminder of the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, who guaranteed freedom of religion and prohibited the establishment of any state religion.

In the world of the Taliban, critical thinking and questioning are not permitted.

In the world of religious zealots, indoctrination is the goal of education.

In the U.S., critical thinking and questioning are necessary for our democracy to thrive.

Which path we will choose?

The Guardian reports:

Before he leaves for Kabul University each morning, Hashmat* checks his face for the beard he has been ordered to grow. Male students are required to grow their facial hair and wear traditional Afghan clothes and those who fall short are punished. Hashmat says he recently saw a classmate beaten for wearing trousers.

“They look at you before they listen to you. If your appearance is wrong, you are already in trouble before the class begins,” he says.

Five years after the ultra-conservative Islamists of the Taliban retook Afghanistan, students have described to the Guardian a collapsing education system, with women banned, lecturers leaving and teaching increasingly focused on religious subjects and discipline.

University has lost its purpose. It feels more like a … place where curiosity is banned and remaining silent ordered

Qader

Students are required to attend religious lectures and pray in public every day, sometimes for two hours at a time, says Hashmat. The lectures are about Islam, conduct and obedience. They are not optional. In some cases, he says, they are held during time that would otherwise be used for regular academic courses.

“I am missing my actual classes to sit in a lecture about obeying. That is what they [the Taliban] think education is for. Everyone talks about the girls who were banned, but nobody talks about what is happening to the boys who were allowed to stay.”

Another student studying in central Afghanistan said the problem is not only weak teaching, but also the disappearance of debate and questioning from the classroom. “We are expected to listen, not to question,” says Qader*. “Since the fall of Kabul, the university has lost its purpose. It feels more like a madrassa now — a place where curiosity is banned and remaining silent ordered.”

Hashmat studies journalism, a subject shaped by digital tools, online platforms, verification, ethics and technology, but as he listens in class, he says he wonders whether the person teaching the course understands the subject well enough to teach it.

“He is teaching us about the modern world while struggling to use PowerPoint in the class. How can you teach journalism technology if you do not understand what technology is?”

Hashmat’s account matches those of more than 20 students interviewed by phone at public and private universities in seven provinces across Afghanistan – Kabul, Kandahar, Helmand, Nangarhar, Bamiyan, Balkh and Wardak.

Teachers come to class and read from old notes they cannot explain … it feels like we are back in high school

Zalmay

Afghanistan’s higher-education sector contracted sharply between 2019 and 2024, according to Unesco, with female enrolment down to zero by 2024 and male enrolment falling from 310,369 in 2019 to 188,957 in 2024.

Kabul University still looks like a university from the outside. The buildings are open, male students still attend, exams are held and degrees are issued. But students say much of what makes it a university has been hollowed out.

Experienced professors have left the country, stopped teaching or been pushed aside. And ideologically aligned Taliban lecturers have been hired in their place. In some departments, recent graduates and even undergraduates are teaching.

*Names have been changed.

Categories History, International, Religion, Separation of church and state

Florida Scores Dead Last in Supporting Its Public Schools

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2026 //
6

When it comes to supporting its public schools, Florida ranks dead last in the nation. Not only was it dead last of all states, it was at the very bottom in 2024 and 2025.

Florida betrays its state constitution, which contains a clear mandate to create and protect strong public schools.

Article IX, Section 1(a) states:

“The education of children is a fundamental value of the people of the State of Florida. It is, therefore, a paramount duty of the state to make adequate provision for the education of all children residing within its borders. Adequate provision shall be made by law for a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education…”

Under the misleadership of Republican politicians like Jeb Bush and Ron DeSantis, Florida has diverted billions of dollars to privately governed charter schools and unaccountable vouchers for private and religious schools and home schooling. Bush and DeSantis have ignored and abandoned Florida’s state constitution.

And among all the states, Florida’s school rank dead last.

Based on the NPE report Public Schooling in America 2026, Carol Burris, executive director of the Network for public Education, wrote:

This is the third consecutive year that Florida’s statehouse has earned last place when it comes to supporting public schools. Florida’s lawmakers don’t merely encourage privatization through charters, vouchers, and homeschools; they actively engineer conditions that undermine public schools and worsen the environment for teaching and learning.

The damage from Florida’s universal voucher program is staggering. Close to four billion dollars in state education funding now flows annually to voucher programs — nearly one in four state education dollars diverted away from public schools, including to families whose children never set foot in a public school. And the funding mechanism puts the burden directly on school districts, which must absorb the loss.

Meanwhile, Florida continuously revises its school rating standards to ensure more public schools are labeled as failing, while simultaneously incentivizing and subsidizing charter expansion. Its Schools of Hope program even allows charters to colonize unused space inside public school buildings. Success Academy’s Eva Moskowitz teamed up with a Florida billionaire to help draft the enabling legislation, then used it to muscle her chain into the Miami charter market with generous public funding in tow.

Fifty percent of Florida’s charter sector is run by for-profit operators — one of the highest shares in the nation. Only Michigan has more. Florida is home to Academica, the largest for-profit charter chain in the country, and to Charter Schools USA. Both profit from the real estate they build and lease back to their own branded schools.

Charter schools claim to be equally open to all students. That is not the case in Florida, which lost points for the numerous enrollment privileges its laws permit. Florida is one of a small number of states that allow company-based charter schools. The Villages, the largest retirement community in the country, has its own charter school, and it functions less like a school of choice than a company store. The school was created by the community’s developer, and at least one parent must be employed by The Villages or a company that services it. If that parent quits or is fired, the child must leave immediately. For a low-wage service worker who might want to change jobs, the school becomes a trap — a reason to stay put rather than pursue something better.

Florida sinks to the bottom not only because of its weak charter and voucher laws and the financial incentives it offers to expand privatization, but because it actively undermines its public schools through policy and funding decisions at every turn. Florida lost every possible point on school funding — whether measured by cost-of-living-adjusted teacher salaries, equitable funding distribution, or funding based on capacity to pay. It has low teacher satisfaction, high student-to-teacher and student-to-counselor ratios, weak anti-bullying laws, and it still permits corporal punishment.

Of 102 possible points, Florida disgracefully earned only 14. You can read our full NPE 2026 report card here.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Censorship, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Equity, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Federal Waiver, Florida, For-Profit, History

J. Michael Luttig: How to Save Our Nation and the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
July 4, 2026 //
5

On June 22, retired Judge J. Michael Luttig, a greatly revered Appeals Court Judge, delivered these remarks to the Election Integrity Summit of the Cleveland Municipal Bar Association and the Task Force for American Democracy in Cleveland, Ohio. Despite his conservative credentials, he has been one of the most critical voices raised against Trump since January 6, 2021. His resistance to tyranny makes you wonder why most other conservatives have not spoken out on behalf of the rule of law.

He said:

Thus it is that in less than two weeks, on July 4, 2026, we will celebrate the birth of the greatest nation on earth, the greatest experiment in self-government in the history of the world.

In 1787, after the Revolutionary War to secure our independence from the tyrannical King George III, “We the People of the United States . . . ordain[ed] and establish[ed] the Constitution of the United States in Order to form a more perfect Union.” The Constitution was ratified and adopted by the States and became the Great Charter for our self-government and the guarantor of our cherished rights and liberties on June 21, 1788.

On July 4, 1776, the American Colonists declared their independence from King George III and the British Crown, two hundred and fifty years ago almost to the day “bringing forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

For the 250 years since its Founding, America has been the envy of the world and the beacon of freedom and liberty because of the shining light of its Democracy, Constitution, and Rule by Law, not by men.

But as we all know, today America is not the same beacon of freedom or the same envy of the world that it has been for a quarter of a millennium.

Today, two hundred and fifty years later, we are again engaged in a great battle “testing whether this nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

Prophetically, these times in which we live on the 250th Anniversary of this nation’s Founding are — once again – the times that try men’s souls.

As we celebrate our Founding today, the question for “We the People” of America is whether we are willing to do the sacred work necessary to return our country to its deserved place as the beacon of freedom and envy of the world, whether we are willing to do the hard, but sacred, work necessary to ensure that America will long endure.

As we struggle to decide what we ourselves want for America and what we want our America to be – and not to be – the entire world is anxiously awaiting our answer, more anxiously awaiting our answer today than it awaited our answer a quarter of a millennium ago.

Two hundred and fifty years into the greatest experiment in self-government in human history, the time of America’s testing has finally come.

The Founders of this great nation feared these times in America.

In this 250th Anniversary year, America’s institutions of government and governance and its institutions of democracy and of law are under vicious, unsustainable, and unendurable attack – from within.

At this point, five and a half years since January 6, 2021, the 47th President of the United States has all but wrought the complete inversion of our nation’s positive law — the Constitution and laws of the United States – our moral law that has been passed down to us through the ages, and even our biblical law as found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible, including The Ten Commandments.

But where, say some, is the King of America? I’ll tell you, friend, he reigns above, and doth not make havoc of mankind like the Royal Brute of Great Britain . . . Let a crown be placed thereon, by which the world may know, that so far as we approve of monarchy, that in America the law is king.

For as in absolute governments the King is law, so in free countries the law ought to be king; and there ought to be no other.

But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the Crown at the conclusion of the ceremony be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is.

Thomas Paine, Common Sense (1776).

Speaking in a time of similar moral and legal upheaval in America nearly two centuries ago, a 29-year-old state legislator, who would later become the 16th President of the United States, urged a revival to the Constitution and the Rule of Law, a renewed reverence for that Great Charter for our governance and guarantor of our liberty and our freedoms.

“Let reverence for the laws,” the young Abraham Lincoln implored, “be breathed by every American mother to the lisping babe that prattles on her lap — let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in Primers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; — let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. . . .”

“[I]n short,” Lincoln sermonized with the reverence he urged, let the Constitution and the Rule of Law “become the political religion of the nation.”

Today, America is in desperate need of such a revival to our Constitution and Rule of Law as our 16th President urged upon the nation in 1838 – a reawakening and quickening to the reverential imperatives of the Constitution from which we have strayed so very far.

Winston Churchill said that “Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities, because . . . courage is the quality which guarantees all others.”

We Americans must summon the courage that has eluded us in our all-consuming fear over the past decade of years. We must summon from deep within the courage that was once our Founders’ courage when, “with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, they mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor” to secure their — and our — liberty and freedom.

With the united support of a hopeful world, we Americans must overcome our fear. We must find our voices again.

We must finally – finally – rise to our feet, raise our voices, and speak out against what we are witnessing in America today.

After all, ours is a nation founded upon dissent and protest.

America’s protest against the British Empire 250 years ago is the single greatest protest in all of history – a revolutionary protest and dissent from the tyranny and oppression of King George III.

Until now, we Americans have never hesitated to support, defend, and protect our cherished liberties, our freedoms, and our fundamental constitutional rights from governmental tyranny, whether it be from abroad or from at home.

Why are we hesitating now? Why are we silent now, at the very time of America’s testing, on this 250th Anniversary of America’s birth? Why have we Americans chosen to remain silent or why have we allowed ourselves to be silenced and betray, in this fateful year of years?

Why have we suddenly lost our voices, two and a half centuries since we were gloriously given our voices by the Constitution of the United States?
I will tell you. We have lost our voices because of fear. Fear of ridicule, fear of political reprisal. Fear of political persecution. Fear of personal persecution. Even fear of prosecution. In far too many cases, fear for our lives and livelihoods.

Fear of the known and fear of the unknown, the unknown as to when this all ends and how.
We can be forgiven for our fear, but we will never be forgiven for our cowardice in the face of our fear.

The Founders of this great country did not cower in their fear, and unlike us, they had reason to fear. When the men who founded the greatest nation on earth first came face to face with fear, “they mutually pledged to each other their Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor.” They stared down their fear and defeated fear itself.

There is no excuse or defense for the cowardice that is inflicting America today, especially the cowardice that has consumed our political leaders. Nor is there forgiveness awaiting those who have cowered or been cowered, least of all those we have elected to represent us and our country.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., hauntingly warned that “In the End, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
We should pray that we will not be remembered for our cowardice and our cowered silence in these times when America needed us most.

If we are to be victorious over the evil that is warring for the heart and soul of America today, it is going to take the courage of the armies of God and the moral clarity of the collective voices of “We the People.” It is we who “ordained and established” this Constitution” “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility . . . and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Ours is the righteous war, not theirs.

America is calling and we must answer.

If we answer and but find the courage to speak our powerful truth to our government’s powerless untruth now — today, not tomorrow — as did the Founders and our ancestors when their time of testing came, the United States of America will soon again be the envy of the world and it will endure forever as the beacon of freedom and liberty to the world.

Once we have finished the righteous and noble task at hand, we must then finish the great task that yet lies ahead of us 250 years since our Founding.

But “[t]he dogmas of the quiet past, are inadequate to the stormy present. . . . As our case is new, so we must think anew, and act anew,” as Abraham Lincoln exhorted the nation in 1862.

So then, this must it be in this 250th Anniversary year. We Americans must think anew and act anew. We must re-found America again. We must reacquaint ourselves with the truths that we once believed were self-evident – and still are. We must reawaken ourselves to the ideals, the beliefs, the principles, the values, and the truths upon which America was founded and has flourished for two and a half centuries – and reexamine these foundational truths, beliefs, and principles, if need be.

We must build anew the hopes and the dreams upon which this country was founded, the hopes and dreams that have inspired us and bound us together into the more perfect union that “We the People” ordained and established, the hopes and dreams that have made America the greatest nation on earth.

We must “turn this government back into the channel in which the framers of the Constitution originally placed it,” as Abraham Lincoln once urged.

We must shore up and reinforce the bulwark of our faltering democracy and Rule of Law and refortify the institutions of our law and democracy. “Preserving virtuous institutions is its own noble purpose,” David French put it so well.

And as we refortify and restrengthen our sacred institutions of law and democracy, we need to inspire among our citizenry a reverential revival to the Constitution and to the Rule of Law. Above all else, America is “[a] government of laws, and not of men.” We are desperately in need of a revival, a revival that will renew and revitalize the flagging faith of the American People in our Constitution and Rule of Law, the organic law of our ordered liberty.

We have no other choice than to pass the test laid down for us by our ancestors, to ensure that this “nation so conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal will long endure.”

And when this storm has passed, we must promise ourselves and the generations that follow that we will never again take our Democracy and our Constitution for granted. We must learn from these tumultuous times – never to forget – that our Democracy and Rule of Law are fragile and can be wrested from us in an instant, even by those among us, if we are not ever-vigilant.

Almost two centuries ago, that same young man of mere twenty-nine years who would one day become President of the United States foretold of the “danger” “from within” that is preying on America today. Listen to Abraham Lincoln’s prescient and ominous warning.

We toiled not in the acquirement or establishment of them–they are a legacy bequeathed us, by a once hardy, brave, and patriotic, but now lamented and departed race of ancestors. Their’s was the task (and nobly they performed it) to possess themselves, and through themselves, us, of this goodly land; and to uprear upon its hills and its valleys, a political edifice of liberty and equal rights; ‘tis ours only, to transmit these . . . to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.

At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! . . .

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time or die by suicide.

I hope I am over wary; but if I am not, there is, even now, something of ill-omen, amongst us. I mean the increasing disregard for law which pervades the country; the growing disposition to substitute the wild and furious passions, in lieu of the sober judgment of Courts; and the worse than savage mobs, for the executive ministers of justice.[6]

What, then, must we Americans do today, if we are to bequeath this “political edifice of liberty and equal rights” to our descendants, this legacy that was bequeathed to us by “our once hardy, brave, and patriotic, race of ancestors”?

I will tell you. We must “dedicate ourselves to the great task that yet remains before us” 250 years later. “[‘T]is ours only, to transmit this ‘goodly land’ and this ‘political edifice of liberty’ . . . to the latest generation that fate shall permit the world to know.”

We in the profession of law belong to one of the most honorable and honored, the most noble and nobilified, and the most venerable and venerated of professions.

Of our Founding Fathers, 35 of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention in 1787 were lawyers or had legal training. Of the Framers of our Constitution, 32 of the 55 were lawyers. Of the “Committee of Five” tasked by the Continental Congress with writing the Declaration of Independence, 4 were lawyers.

We in the legal profession are the guardians and stewards of the Constitution and the Rule of Law, the foundations of our democratic nation and the guarantors of our liberty.

We lawyers take an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States.
We are uniquely qualified, positioned, and obligated to defend our Constitution, our Rule of Law, and our democracy – and we must do so today, tomorrow, and the next day, until the present existential threat is no longer.

Thereafter, at long last finally understanding their fragility, we must forever protect and preserve the Constitution and America’s Democracy, as we are obligated by oath to do.
If this sounds as if the lawyer holds a special place in the constitutional order that is our democracy and that we are weighted by an almost-sacred responsibility, it is because we do, and we are.

We have a high appointment, and we have a high charge.

There comes a time in every single one of our lives – whether that life be private or public – when we are summoned to attest to our beliefs and convictions, when we are summoned to stand, bear witness, and affirm what we believe and what we do not believe.

This moment of truth and decision is our moment of calling. And the decision that we must make in that moment always comes at personal cost.

When our call comes, if we answer with the courage of our convictions, we are heroes, whether we be heroes just to ourselves, to our families, our friends, our loved ones, our communities – or heroes to our country.
We call those in public life and in public service heroes who, when summoned, stand, affirm, and act to preserve and protect all that we cherish and hold dear in America.

We honor these men and women as heroes because when their time comes and they are summoned, they rise, they speak, and they act – without having to decide whether to do so. For them, there is no decision to be made, for they made their decision long before.

When their time comes, these heroes stare down fear, often profound fear – already knowing what they must do and what their sacrifice might be.
We bear witness to, and we affirm, the heroism of these heroes in order that heroism will be forever encouraged in a world in which there are vanishingly few with the strength, the will, and the courage to speak and act when they are called upon — that is, in a world where there are fewer and fewer heroes.

Members of the noble profession of law, our moment of calling has come.

We here today are being summoned, as are all Americans – to stand, bear witness, and affirm that we believe in America, that we believe in our Constitution and our Rule of Law, and that we believe in our Democracy.

You, and we, as members of the venerated profession of law are being summoned to stand, bear witness, and affirm again that we will honor the oath we took to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

We must challenge and entreat each other today to commit and re-commit ourselves to the Constitution and to the Rule of Law, to pledge ourselves to these and to their protection and preservation.

We must vow today that it will be the Rule of Law that triumphs over politics and not politics that triumphs over the Rule of Law.

If we succeed in this, our sacred obligation to our country, we will have risen to what is our high calling to ensure that America long endures as a nation of laws, not of men. We will be heroes for the Constitution and the Rule of Law in America…

Friends, our task is righteous and our task is noble. Our struggle is not only for today, but also for our vast future, Abraham Lincoln reminded us. And the hour is late.


Godspeed America.

Categories Citizenship, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, History

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.”

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Categories History, Immigration
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