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DOJ Lawyer Accused Harvard of “Indifference to Anti-Semitism.” As an Undergraduate, He Wrote a Paper from Hitler’s View

By dianeravitch
September 3, 2025 //
3

The Boston Globe reported a startling story. Michael Velchik, the lawyer leading the charge against Harvard University for alleged “anti-semitism,” wrote a paper from Hitler’s perspective when he was an undergraduate at Harvard.

Hilary Burns and Tal Koran wrote:

The cornerstone of the Trump administration’s justification for cracking down on Harvard University is that the Ivy League school has allegedly allowed antisemitism to fester on campus.

“The choice was made, let’s not give federal taxpayer dollars to institutions that exhibit a wanton indifference to antisemitism,” the lawyer defending the government’s case said in federal court in July.

Inside the war on Harvard

Yet that lawyer, Michael Velchik, when he was a senior at Harvard 14 years ago, submitted a paper for a Latin class written from the perspective of Adolf Hitler, according to three people studying in the department with knowledge of the incident. The assignment was to write from the perspective of a controversial figure, but Velchik’s choice of Hitler so unnerved the instructor that he was asked to redo the assignment.

And in an email to a peer about 18 months later, as he was preparing to enter law school, Velchik wrote that he‘d enjoyed Hitler’s autobiography and political manifesto, “Mein Kampf,” more than any other book he’d read recently during a year of travels, according to a copy of the correspondence obtained by The Boston Globe. He did not mention Hitler’s perpetration of the Holocaust, in which 6 million Jews were murdered. 

Velchik — who holds two degrees from Harvard, one from the college and one from the law school — was the sole lawyer arguing the case for the White House in July. The portrait that emerges from interviews with students who knew him at Harvard, colleagues, and friends, as well as from emails he sent to a peer in his early 20s, is of a young man who is extremely intelligent, at times provocative, and unapologetically confident in his intellectual prowess.

To finish the story, open the link.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Higher Education, Hypocrisy

Oklahoma: Board Members Shocked by Images of Nude Women on Ryan Walters’ Screen In Executive Session

By dianeravitch
July 28, 2025 //
15

Oklahoma’s Superintendent of Schools Ryan Walters continues to make news, usually for trying to inject the Bible and the Ten Commandments into every classroom.

But recently he made a different kind of news. As the state board was meeting with Walters in executive session, two members saw that the video screen behind Superintendent Walters was showing naked women. Not women in bathing suits: Naked women!

The video has been viewed more than 90,000 times. He was called out for his hypocrisy. Mr. Family Values!

Tres Savage and Sasha Ndisabiye wrote in NonDoc:

Two members of the Oklahoma State Board of Education were “shocked and mad” when they saw a video featuring “naked women” on the television screen in Superintendent of Public Instruction Ryan Walters’ office during the executive session portion of Thursday’s meeting.

While neither Becky Carson nor Ryan Deatherage could tell what video was displaying nude women on Walters’ office TV, each told NonDoc they were the only people seated in a position to see the screen. Deatherage said he noticed the video first while a parent was speaking about her appeal of a district transfer denial. As Deatherage weighed his options about how to bring the video to the room’s attention, Carson noticed the nudity.

“I was like, ‘What am I seeing?’ I kind of was in shock, honestly. I started to question whether I was actually seeing what I was seeing,” Carson said. “I was like, ‘Is that woman naked?’ And then I was like, ‘No, she’s got a body suit on.’ And it happened very quickly, I was like, ‘That is not a body suit.’ And I hate to even use these terms, but I said, ‘Those are her nipples.’ And then I was looking closer, and I got a full-body view, and I was like, ‘That is pubic hair.’ Even right now, I couldn’t even tell you what I was watching….”

The State Board of Education regularly reviews complaints made against teachers and school staff members that involve allegations of misconduct. With that in mind, Deatherage and Carson each said Thursday’s bizarre scenario demands some sort of action toward Walters.

“Besides the shock value and the disturbance of it all and how it affected me as a woman, I think it’s the double standard,” Carson said. “The accountability we are putting on teachers — and we should, I’m not saying we shouldn’t hold teachers accountable — but we’re looking at teachers sometimes with lesser offenses.”

Deatherage said he believes that any other educator who accidentally displayed a nude video at their workplace would face a complaint, investigation and possibly ramifications.

Nothing quite as stunning as a Bible-thumper caught in the act as a hypocrite.

Categories Disruption, Hypocrisy, Oklahoma

RFK Jr. Endorses a Packaged Meal Loaded with Additives

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2025 //
9

Amanda Seitz and Jonel Alecia of the Associated press reported that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Secretary of Health and Human Services, endorsed a product that violates the standards of his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday praised a company that makes $7-a-pop meals that are delivered directly to the homes of Medicaid and Medicare enrollees. 

He even thanked Mom’s Meals for sending taxpayer-funded meals “without additives” to the homes of sick or elderly Americans. The spreads include chicken bacon ranch pasta for dinner and French toast sticks with fruit or ham patties.

“This is really one of the solutions for making our country healthy again,” Kennedy said in the video, posted to his official health secretary account, after he toured the company’s Oklahoma facility last week. 

But an Associated Press review of Mom’s Meals menu, including the ingredients and nutrition labels, shows that the company’s offerings are the type of heat-and-eat, ultraprocessed foods that Kennedy routinely criticizes for making people sick. 

The meals contain chemical additives that would render them impossible to recreate at home in your kitchen, said Marion Nestle, a nutritionist at New York University and food policy expert, who reviewed the menu for The AP. Many menu items are high in sodium, and some are high in sugar or saturated fats, she said.

Categories Ethics, Fake, Health, Hypocrisy, Science

Turmoil at the V.A., Amid Deep Cuts of Employees and Healthcare

By dianeravitch
June 12, 2025 //
9

When Trump named Doug Collins, a Baptist preacher and former member of Congress, to be Secretary of the Veterans Administration, even Democrats were relieved because Collins had a long record as a chaplain in the military and was expected to be a responsible advocate for veterans.

The American Prospect described the rapid turnaround in his reputation:

When Doug Collins first appeared before the Senate Committee on Veterans’ Affairs (SVAC) for his confirmation hearing, his comforting bromides about his commitment to the VA and veterans lulled Democratic members, who, with only a few exceptions, voted to confirm Collins as President Trump’s new secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs. As one Capitol Hill insider told the Prospect, many believed that, unlike Pete Hegseth or RFK Jr., Collins was “a man they could work with.”

Democrats on the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs (HVAC) came to the same conclusion. Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA), ranking member of the HVAC, said he was ready to welcome the former Georgia congressman back into the fold because “I think we will be able to do some good work at VA with Doug Collins.”

Fast-forward four and a half months to May 6th, when Collins appeared for the second time in front of the Senate Committee, and May 15th, when he made his first appearance before the HVAC. Assessing his first months on the job, Democrats now clearly viewed Collins as someone working not with, but against, them—and against the nation’s veterans. They expressed anger at his firing of 1,000 probationary employees, his cancelation of hundreds of contracts with vendors that supply VA with critical resources, and his termination of VA researchers, thus interrupting clinical trials that could benefit veterans. And, of course, there was Collins’s vow to lay off 83,000 VA employees.

Several weeks later, Collins has shown his determination to disable the VA. Government Executive reported that the representative from Elon Musk’s DOGS team reported that he couldn’t find much “waste, fraud, or abuse” in the VA; he was fired the next day.

Government Executive reported that Collins is pressing forward and is contracting with another federal agency to help organize the mass layoffs:

The Veterans Affairs Department has signed an agreement with the federal government’s human resources office to help it conduct mass layoffs later this year, with VA saying it requires the assistance due to the unprecedented nature of the upcoming cuts. 

VA will pay OPM $726,000 for its layoff consultation services, according to the agreement, a copy of which was reviewed by Government Executive, which will “ensure legally compliant reductions in force (RIF) procedures.” The department previously announced it would cut more than 80,000 employees, though VA Secretary Doug Collins subsequently said that number was an initial target and the final total could be revised upward or downward. 

“VA [Human Resources and Administration/Operations, Security, and Preparedness] has never undertaken such a large restructuring, and does not have the capabilities, expertise or the internal resources to fulfill the requirement,” the department said in the memo. “Therefore, OPM, an outside resource, will be essential for this effort.”

OPM will provide “qualified, seasoned” HR specialists to help VA reach a level of cuts necessary to meet the demands laid out in President Trump’s executive order calling for workforce reductions and subsequent guidance from OPM and the Office of Management and Budget. VA, like most major agencies, is currently blocked by a federal court ruling from implementing any RIFs or otherwise carrying out its reorganization plans. The administration has requested an emergency stay on that injunction before the Supreme Court, however, which is expected to weigh in within a few days. 

“This Interagency Agreement (IAA) will indirectly support veterans by directly supporting VA’s veteran workforce,” VA wrote in the memo. 

McLaurine Pinover, an OPM spokesperson, said the work would go through the agency’s Human Resources Solutions group that routinely provides strategic consulting advice to agencies employing restructurings and RIFs. 

“HRS exists to assist, advise, and consult with agencies to ensure best practices and full legal compliance throughout a personnel action, including a RIF,” Pinover said. “HRS’s work is done entirely pursuant to interagency agreements with other agencies who hire HRS to consult, advise, and help implement via HRS’s revolving fund authority.”

VA did not respond to a request for comment.

One VA executive directly involved in the RIF planning told Government Executive that department leadership is creating challenges for the team overseeing the cuts because it refuses to put its goals in writing and will not spell out the rationale for its decision making. The verbal instruction, the executive said, is for layoff notices to go out in June. In official communications, however, the executive said leadership will not confirm RIFs are a foregone conclusion. 

The cuts are expected to focus overwhelmingly on headquarters staff in Washington and employees in regional offices, known as Veterans Integrated Service Networks. Still, the executive added there was not enough to cut there to spare individual health care facilities entirely if the 80,000 reduction target remained in effect. 

Because the goal remains a moving target, the executive added, planning has become difficult. On a Monday one appointee will approve a reduction target and by Tuesday another appointee will tell the group the figure is not significant enough. 

“You expect change,” the official said of a new administration, “but if they can’t even articulate the in-state expectation, you can’t execute on any sort of change.” 

That executive added that senior VA leaders entered the department with a predetermined idea and are not adjusting to the realities they have encountered. 

“There seems to be a genuine desire to just dismantle things that were working effectively,” the official said. “They came in with the mindset that everything was screwed up and everything needed to be retooled.” 

Former Department of Government Efficiency staffer Sahil Lavingia, who served as a liaison to VA, said the veterans agency mostly worked fine and was not as inefficient as he thought. Lavingia was fired the day after making those comments. 

Collins has maintained that only back-end roles will be impacted by cuts and patient-facing staff will be spared. Several employees questioned that proposition, however, noting that doctors and nurses rely on support personnel to do their jobs. While VA recently cleared more positions to resume onboarding, employees said that services remain hindered by the hiring freeze otherwise in place and such obstacles would be exacerbated by layoffs. 

“You can hire a surgeon but if no one is there to buy the supplies to do the surgery, what the hell’s the difference?” the VA executive said.

VA is currently developing its final workforce plan and has solicited feedback from executives throughout the department. In an unusual move, it has asked those employees to sign non-disclosure agreements related to the planning. VA supervisors have told employees that as a result, they cannot respond to questions to which they know the answers.

VA’s expected reductions have received some bipartisan pushback, with key Republicans saying the department should proceed with caution and without a set number of cuts in mind. Collins has criticized lawmakers for asking him about the plans, saying the matter was predecisional and scaring veterans. The cut target became public only after Government Executive reported on an internal memo discussing it. 

“A goal is not a fact,” Collins said last month of the projected cuts. “You start with a goal. You start with what you look for, and then you use the data that you find from your organizations to make the best choices you can.” 

He added his adjustments could lead to even more significant reductions. 

Categories Character, Cruelty, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Hypocrisy, Trump

Republicans Were Eager to Investigate Biden, But Not Trump

By dianeravitch
May 2, 2025 //
7

Philip Bump of The Washington Post notes the hypocrisy of Republicans, especially James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, who searched and searched forevidence of President Biden’s corruption. He never found it but he never stopped looking and releasing press releases about the corruption he expected to find.

Now there is a genuine grifter in the White House, and Comer has lost interest in corruption, even when it’s detailed on the front pages of the daily press.

Yesterday, we learned that a fund in Abu Dhabi had invested $2 billion in the Trump family’s cryptocurrency business. Is this what we expect of our presidents? Will there be a Congressional investigation?

Bump writes:

One of the more striking aspects of Elon Musk’s rampage through the federal government has been that it is, at least in theory, redundant. There already exist congressional bodies and powers that are ostensibly focused on waste and corruption. The House Oversight Committee, for example, declares as its mission to “ensure the efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability of the federal government and all its agencies.” Why deal with Musk’s messiness when Republicans control how the House exercises that power?

We are not so naive that we cannot summon some answers to that question. One reason for this approach, for example, is that Musk was tasked with operating outside the system by design, pushing for sweeping cuts to congressionally appropriated spending specifically to get around the system of checks and balances.

A more important reason, though, is that the majority of members on the House Oversight Committee and, in particular, Chairman James Comer (R-Kentucky.) have a specific vision for how their power should be deployed. Their mission is not to work across the aisle to make government faster and cleaner. As has been made very clear in the two years since Republicans retook the majority, their mission instead is to generate allegations of impropriety by their political opponents while shielding their allies.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the conflicting approach Comer and his committee have taken to allegations of self-enrichment by the nation’s chief executive.

Days after Republicans won their majority in November 2022, Comer held a news conference in which he sought to draw attention to claims — stoked in right-wing media and embraced by his party while in the minority — that President Joe Biden had benefited from his son Hunter Biden’s consulting work. He insisted that “the Biden family swindled investors of hundreds of thousands of dollars — all with Joe Biden’s participation and knowledge” and suggested that the sitting president (and presumed 2024 Democratic presidential nominee) might be “a national security risk” who was “compromised by foreign governments.”

What ensued over the next 16 months was far less “Law & Order” than “Keystone Kops.” Comer and other Republican leaders made little progress in tying Biden to his son’s business beyond the vaguest of connections, like that Hunter Biden would put his father on speakerphone during business meetings. Countervailing evidence for the idea that Joe Biden was entwined with Hunter’s foreign partners was ignored or spun away. One particular allegation hyped by Comer backfired spectacularly.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California) was eventually pressured into announcing an impeachment probe targeting the president mostly centered on the same things Comer had been claiming since 2022. It went nowhere.
To put a fine point on it, two years of searching and subpoenas and depositions provided no concrete evidence (and very little circumstantial evidence!) that Joe Biden had used his position for his own personal benefit. Two seconds into Donald Trump’s second term in office, by contrast, there could have been any number of ripe targets for a similarly focused investigation.

Comer very obviously has no interest in doing so. When he inherited the Oversight Committee in 2023, in fact, he quietly ended an investigation into Trump’s finances, despite the committee having prevailed in a legal fight to obtain documentation from Trump’s accounting firm. Even with the former president pushing for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, the various ways in which Comer’s allegations against Biden were much more obviously applicable to the Trumps attracted no interest from House Republicans.

Since the inauguration in January, viable avenues for investigation have become only more numerous.

On Tuesday, the New York Times published an exhaustive look at the Trumps’ creation of a crypto-centered investment structure called World Liberty Financial. It has explicit manifestations of nearly everything Comer was unable to prove about Biden and his family: exercising presidential power for the benefit of the company (and by extension himself and his sons), allowing partners to assume the trappings of the federal government for private financial discussions, foreign investors admitting that their interest is driven by the president’s participation.

The Washington Post recently detailed Trump’s rollout of a different cryptoworld product: a bespoke coin that serves as little more than a speculative vehicle — one from which Trump and his family can directly profit. Trump recently announced that top investors in the coin would be granted an audience with him. At around the same time he did so, the federal government registered the domain thetrilliondollardinner.gov.

“He’s actually selling access, personal access, to him and to the White House if people invest in this meme coin, which really has no intrinsic value,” Virginia Canter, the chief ethics counsel for the watchdog group State Democracy Defenders Action, told The Post. “If you are a foreign government burdened by tariffs, will you be enticed to invest? If you’re a criminal felon, will you maybe invest in hopes of they’ll give you an opportunity to make your case for a pardon?”
Oh, that reminds me: At least two investors in World Liberty Financial have already received presidential pardons.

Then there was the announcement last month that Donald Trump Jr. is the co-founder of a new private club in D.C. For a membership fee of $500,000, you can mingle with MAGAworld luminaries and — if the kickoff event is any indicator — members of the Trump administration. None of this rinky-dink “I’ll put my dad on speakerphone if he calls” stuff. Aptly enough, the club is called Executive Branch.

Those are just recent reports, mind you. The Trump Organization (which directly enriches the president) still operates private businesses around the world, at times in partnership with foreign governments. Trump himself has visited properties run by his private company on 42 of his 102 days in office, giving customers a decent shot at getting face-time with the president. Even when he isn’t at a Trump Organization property, he’s still selling pro-Trump merchandise (like a “Trump 2028” hat) both directly through the Trump Organization and through licensing deals.

Comer, meanwhile, has been focused not on investigating the obvious questions about Trump but, instead, on probing ActBlue — a fundraising system used by Democratic politicians. In an egregious break with the tradition of presidents avoiding interference in the Justice Department, Trump used the pretext of the House probe to demand that ActBlue face criminal investigation.

On Wednesday morning, Comer appeared on Fox Business to discuss Republican efforts to draft a budget bill. He began by asserting that his committee had identified billions in potential budgetary savings (which he later explained would come from targeting federal employee benefits, not from any robust investigation unearthing fraud or waste). Asked about articles of impeachment filed against Trump this week, he leveled a deeply ironic charge at his colleagues across the aisle.

“Harassing, obstructing — that’s all the Democrats know,” Comer said, while insisting that impeachment would go nowhere. “They don’t have any ideas or vision for the future.”

If there is one thing that can be said of Trump, it is that he has a vision for the future — in particular as it relates to the robustness of his own bank account. Comer and his colleagues in the House have proved to be more than happy to not stand in his way.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Ethics, Evil, For-Profit, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Trump

Texas: The Sordid Story Behind the Passage of Vouchers

By dianeravitch
April 18, 2025 //
3

It was no secret that Governor Abbott was intent on passing voucher legislation by any means necessary. In 2024, he called four special sessions to demand a voucher law, offering a big increase in public school funding as a sweetener. A coalition of rural Republicans and Democrats voted them down again and again. Rural Republicans know that their schools are the most important institution in their community. They know the teachers and the principal. They and everyone else in the community support the school and its activities. In rural areas, the public school is not only the hub of community life, but the largest contributor to the economy.

With the help of out-of-state billionaires and home-grown evangelical billionaires, Abbott succeeded in defeating most of the Republicans who opposed vouchers. He blatantly lied about them, claiming they opposed his tough tactics at the border (they didn’t), he claimed they didn’t support increased funding for their local schools because they voted against his bribe. He blanketed their districts with lies.

The Houston Chronicle tells a straightforward account of how the voucher vote went down, based on Abbott’s strong arm tactics. Fear won.

Benjamin Wermund and Edward McKinley of The Houston Chronicle wrote the back story:

Pearland Republican Jeff Barry has long been skeptical of school vouchers, but on Thursday morning he voted to create what could become the largest voucher program in the nation. 

Barry, a freshman House lawmaker, said it felt like he had no choice. 

“If I voted against it I would have had every statewide and national political…figure against me – not to mention all of my bills vetoed,” Barry wrote in a post responding to one user who called his support for the measure a “betrayal.”

He added: “The consequences were dire with no upside at all.” 

Barry wasn’t the only Republican House member who felt cornered after an unprecedented, years-long pressure campaign by Gov. Greg Abbott to bend the chamber to his will. 

Only two GOP members joined Democrats in opposing the measure on Thursday, a remarkable turnaround from their widespread opposition to vouchers just a few years ago. It was a major vindication of Abbott’s governing approach of strong-arming lawmakers into submission. 

Where his predecessors, including Gov. Rick Perry, often cozied up to members of the Legislature, Abbott has looked to exploit their weaknesses. His success on what was once seen as an impossible issue marks a potentially major power shift in state leadership, where lieutenant governors have long been seen to hold as much or more power than the governor, because of their control over the Senate. 

“What Perry got by finesse, Abbott gets by force — and that definitely matters for the power structure,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political scientist at the University of Houston. “He, through expending a tremendous amount of political capital and money, was able to reshape the Republican party in his image. That’s something very few governors have been able to do.”

Abbott spent months on the road advocating for vouchers and poured nearly $12 million into unseating fellow Republicans who opposed the same legislation in 2023. Ahead of the vote this month, he met privately with GOP lawmakers on the fence, and on Wednesday morning he gathered the caucus for a call from President Donald Trump, who not-so-subtly reminded them of his success rate in Texas GOP primaries. 

Just four years ago, before Abbott began seriously campaigning for vouchers, four out of five House members publicly opposed the thought of using taxpayer dollars for private education. That included House Speaker Dustin Burrows and state Rep. Brad Buckley, the education committee chairman who carried the bill this year in the House. 

Just one of the remaining Republican holdouts voted the same way early Thursday morningas they did in 2021: state Rep. Gary VanDeaver of New Boston, who narrowly survived a primary runoff election last year against an Abbott-backed challenger.

State Rep. Drew Darby, R-San Angelo, also defeated one of Abbott’s primary challengers last year. He voted for vouchers this time, calling it a pragmatic move to retain at least some modicum of leverage.

“We made this decision with a clear understanding: the bill would pass with or without our support,” Darby wrote on social media shortly after the vote. “Rather than stand by, we chose to stay in the fight, negotiating critical amendments to reduce the impact on our communities.”

Those concessions included annual public audits of the voucher program and its contractors, clarified residency requirements for participants, a requirement that private schools be accredited for at least two years before participating and a permanent one-fifth cap of slots going to students from families that make more than 500% of the federal poverty line — or $160,750 for a family of four. 

One of the aims, Darby and others said, was to block unproven private schools from popping up in areas with few other options, just to access the new state dollars. And critics hoped to prevent existing private school students with wealthy families from taking up a bulk of the voucher slots, as has happened in other states.

Darby’s wife, Clarisa Darby, also posted online that not backing vouchers would have jeopardized billions of dollars in new public school funding for teacher raises and special education.

“School funding would be cut by the Senate in retribution and bills affecting our west Texas economy had a high chance of being vetoed if they voted against the bill,”  she wrote. “Bills affecting school funding, oil, gas, water, jobs, ASU, Howard College, are too important to be vetoed.”

Ahead of the vote Wednesday night, state Rep. James Talarico, an Austin Democrat, accused Abbott of intimidating Republican colleagues with the threat of a primary “bloodbath.” 

“No one including the governor should ever threaten a lawmaker,” Talarico said. “We do not serve the governor, we serve our constituents.” 

Abbott’s office denied the claim. But whether threats were real or implied, House Republicans were clearly feeling the heat after Abbott’s all-out offensive in last year’s primaries. 

“He’s working behind the scenes to make sure he’s got the vote. There’s no question about that,” state Rep. Sam Harless, a Spring Republican, said Wednesday as the voucher debate was beginning. 

Trump’s call Wednesday morning helped quash any lingering doubts among Republicans.

“Many of you I’ve endorsed, and I’ll be endorsing,” Trump told the members. “I won Texas in a landslide. Everybody who was with me got carried.” 

State Rep. Wes Virdell, who campaigned on supporting school vouchers, said earlier this week it was “no secret that the governor is pressuring a lot of people” to support the proposal. 

Steve Allison, a former Republican state lawmaker from San Antonio who lost his seat to an Abbott-backed challenger after opposing vouchers last session, said he liked the changes fought for by Darby and others but would have still voted against the bill.

“I think that members need to prioritize their districts… and I think that was interfered with here, not just in (my) district but elsewhere,” he said, adding that he’d spoken with several current lawmakers who’d been threatened by Abbott. He declined to say who. “It’s just unfortunate what the governor did,” Allison said.

The House GOP shift on vouchers stretched all the way to its top leadership. Even as he has helped block voucher legislation in the past, newly-elected Speaker Dustin Burrows was a vocal champion of the bill this year, appearing at multiple events with Abbott. 

“Speaker Burrows was the real X factor in the debate,” said John Colyandro, a former Abbott adviser who lobbied for the legislation. 

Burrows took the gavel from state Rep. Dade Phelan, one of only two Republicans to vote against the bill. 

As speaker, Phelan had not openly opposed the legislation. And heading into the speaker’s race he said he would prioritize it. 

But before the vote, he explained he was planning to vote against it because he felt voters in his Beaumont district did not support vouchers. He wanted to put it on the ballot in November, a failed proposal offered by Talarico. 

Phelan, who narrowly fended off a Trump-backed primary challenger last year, shrugged off the fear of political threats — real or implied. He brought up the Trump call in an interview ahead of the vote, saying he wasn’t in the room but heard audio of it. 

Trump noted only one of his endorsed candidates lost, apparently referencing David Covey’s failed bid to unseat Phelan, though the president did not name either candidate. 

“He said he went 42 and 0,” Phelan said. “And then he remembers he lost one.”

Categories Cheating, Community Schools, Cruelty, Democracy, Elections, Hypocrisy, Lies, Privatization, Propaganda, Rural Schools, Texas, Trump, Vouchers

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

By dianeravitch
April 13, 2025 //
8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Peter Greene: Why the Department of Education Matters

By dianeravitch
March 27, 2025 //
6

Peter Greene, veteran teacher, master writer, the voice of wisdom and experience, sets the record straight about the purpose of the U.S. Department of Education. Contrary to what wrestling-entrepreneur Linda McMahon (Trump’s Secretary of Education) says, the Department was not created to raise test scores. The Department was created to promote equal access to educational opportunity. That equalization of resources has not yet been achieved, but Trump intends to abolish the goal altogether. In his thinking, everyone should pull themselves up by their bootstraps, unlike him, who was born into wealth and privilege.

Peter Greene writes:

The official assault on the Department of Education has begun.

If it seems like there’s an awful lot more talking around this compared to, say, the gutting of the IRS or USAID, that may be because the regime doesn’t have the legal authority to do the stuff that they are saying they want to do. The executive order is itself pretty weak sauce– “the secretary is to investigate a way to form a way to do stuff provided it’s legal.” And that apparently involves sitting down in front of every camera and microphone and trying to make a case.

A major part of that involves some lies and misdirection. The Trumpian line that we spend more than anyone and get the worst results in the world is a lie. But it is also a misdirection, a misstatement about the department’s actual purpose.

Likewise, it’s a misstatement when the American Federation of Children characterizes the “failed public policy” of “the centralization of American education.” But the Department wasn’t meant–or built–to centralize US education.

The department’s job is not to make sure that American education is great. It is expressly forbidden to exert control over the what and how of education on the state and local level.

The Trump administration is certainly not the first to ignore any of that. One of the legacies of No Child Left Behind is the idea that feds can grab the levers of power to attempt control of education in the states. Common Core was the ultimate pretzel– “Don’t call it a curriculum because we know that would be illegal, but we are going to do our damnedest to standardize the curriculum across every school in every state.” For twenty-some years, various reformsters have tried to use the levers of power in DC to reconfigure US education as a centrally planned and coordinated operation (despite the fact that there is nowhere on the globe to point to that model as a successful one). And even supporters of the department are speaking as if the department is an essential hub for the mighty wheel of US education.

Trump is just working with the tools left lying around by the bipartisan supporters of modern education reform.

So if the department’s mission is not to create central organization and coordination, then what is it?

I’d argue that the roots of the department are not the Carter administration, but the civil rights movement of the sixties and the recognition that some states and communities, left to their own devices, would try to cheat some children out of the promise of public education. Derek Black’s new book Dangerous Learning traces generations of attempts to keep Black children away from education. It was (roughly) the 1960s when the country started to grapple more effectively with the need for federal power to oppose those who would stand between children and their rights.

The programs that now rest with the department came before the department itself, programs meant to level the playing field so that the poor (Title I) and the students with special needs (IDEA) would get full access. The creation of the department stepped up that effort and, importantly, added an education-specific Civil Rights office to the effort.

And it was all created to very carefully not usurp the power of the states. When Trump says he’ll return control of education to the states, he’s speaking bunk, because the control of education has always remained with the states– for better or worse.

The federal mission was to make the field more level, to provide guardrails to keep the states playing fair with all students, to make sure that students had the best possible access to the education they were promised.

Trump has promised that none of the grant programs or college loan programs would be cut (and you can take a Trump promise to the… well, somewhere) but if all the money is still going to keep flowing, then what would the loss of the department really mean?

For one thing, the pieces that aren’t there any more. The Office of Civil Rights is now gutted and repurposed to care only about violations of white christianist rights. The National Center of Education Statistics was the source of any data about how education was working out (much of it junk, some of it not). The threat of turning grants into unregulated block grants, or being withheld from schools that dare to vaccinate or recognize diversity or keep naughty books in the library.

So the money will still flow, but the purpose will no longer be to level the playing field. It will not be about making sure every child gets the education they’re entitled to– or rather, it will rest on the MAGA foundation, the assumption that some people deserve less than others.

That’s what the loss of the department means– a loss of a department that, however imperfectly, is supposed to protect the rights of students to an education, regardless of race, creed, zip code, special needs, or the disinterest and prejudice of a state or community. Has the department itself lost sight of that mission from time to time? Sure has. Have they always done a great job of pursuing that mission? Not at all. But if nobody at all is supposed to be pursuing that goal, what will that get us?

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Charter Schools, Civil Rights, Corporate Reform, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, Funding, Hoax, Hypocrisy, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Poverty, Privatization, Racism, Republicans, School Choice, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

Trump’s List of Banned Words: It’s Worse Than You Thought!

By dianeravitch
March 8, 2025 //
52

Reporters at The New York Times pored through 5,000 pages from various federal agencies and found that the following words had been removed from government websites and publications. As the article points out, Trump and Musk frequently claim to be champions of “free speech,” but they have no problem censoring words and ideas that offend them.

Karen Yourish, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Isaac White andd Lazaro Gamio wrote:

As President Trump seeks to purge the federal government of “woke” initiatives, agencies have flagged hundreds of words to limit or avoid, according to a compilation of government documents.

  • accessible
  • activism
  • activists
  • advocacy
  • advocate
  • advocates
  • affirming care
  • all-inclusive
  • allyship
  • anti-racism
  • antiracist
  • assigned at birth
  • assigned female at birth
  • assigned male at birth
  • at risk
  • barrier
  • barriers
  • belong
  • bias
  • biased
  • biased toward
  • biases
  • biases towards
  • biologically female
  • biologically male
  • BIPOC
  • Black
  • breastfeed + people
  • breastfeed + person
  • chestfeed + people
  • chestfeed + person
  • clean energy
  • climate crisis
  • climate science
  • commercial sex worker
  • community diversity
  • community equity
  • confirmation bias
  • cultural competence
  • cultural differences
  • cultural heritage
  • cultural sensitivity
  • culturally appropriate
  • culturally responsive
  • DEI
  • DEIA
  • DEIAB
  • DEIJ
  • disabilities
  • disability
  • discriminated
  • discrimination
  • discriminatory
  • disparity
  • diverse
  • diverse backgrounds
  • diverse communities
  • diverse community
  • diverse group
  • diverse groups
  • diversified
  • diversify
  • diversifying
  • diversity
  • enhance the diversity
  • enhancing diversity
  • environmental quality
  • equal opportunity
  • equality
  • equitable
  • equitableness
  • equity
  • ethnicity
  • excluded
  • exclusion
  • expression
  • female
  • females
  • feminism
  • fostering inclusivity
  • GBV
  • gender
  • gender based
  • gender based violence
  • gender diversity
  • gender identity
  • gender ideology
  • gender-affirming care
  • genders
  • Gulf of Mexico
  • hate speech
  • health disparity
  • health equity
  • hispanic minority
  • historically
  • identity
  • immigrants
  • implicit bias
  • implicit biases
  • inclusion
  • inclusive
  • inclusive leadership
  • inclusiveness
  • inclusivity
  • increase diversity
  • increase the diversity
  • indigenous community
  • inequalities
  • inequality
  • inequitable
  • inequities
  • inequity
  • injustice
  • institutional
  • intersectional
  • intersectionality
  • key groups
  • key people
  • key populations
  • Latinx
  • LGBT
  • LGBTQ
  • marginalize
  • marginalized
  • men who have sex with men
  • mental health
  • minorities
  • minority
  • most risk
  • MSM
  • multicultural
  • Mx
  • Native American
  • non-binary
  • nonbinary
  • oppression
  • oppression
  • oppressive
  • orientation
  • people + uterus
  • people-centered care
  • person-centered
  • person-centered care
  • polarization
  • political
  • pollution
  • pregnant people
  • pregnant person
  • pregnant persons
  • prejudice
  • privilege
  • privileges
  • promote diversity
  • promoting diversity
  • pronoun
  • pronouns
  • prostitute
  • race
  • race and ethnicity
  • racial
  • racial diversity
  • racial identity
  • racial inequality
  • racial justice
  • racially
  • racism
  • segregation
  • sense of belonging
  • sex
  • sexual preferences
  • sexuality
  • social justice
  • sociocultural
  • socioeconomic
  • status
  • stereotype
  • stereotypes
  • systemic
  • systemically
  • they/them
  • trans
  • transgender
  • transsexual
  • trauma
  • traumatic
  • tribal
  • unconscious bias
  • underappreciated
  • underprivileged
  • underrepresentation
  • underrepresented
  • underserved
  • undervalued
  • victim
  • victims
  • vulnerable populations
  • women
  • women and underrepresented
  • Notes: Some terms listed with a plus sign represent combinations of words that, when used together, acknowledge transgender people, which is not in keeping with the current federal government’s position that there are only two, immutable sexes. Any term collected above was included on at least one agency’s list, which does not necessarily imply that other agencies are also discouraged from using it.
  • The above terms appeared in government memos, in official and unofficial agency guidance and in other documents viewed by The New York Times. Some ordered the removal of these words from public-facing websites, or ordered the elimination of other materials (including school curricula) in which they might be included.

  • In other cases, federal agency managers advised caution in the terms’ usage without instituting an outright ban. Additionally, the presence of some terms was used to automatically flag for review some grant proposals and contracts that could conflict with Mr. Trump’s executive orders.

  • The list is most likely incomplete. More agency memos may exist than those seen by New York Times reporters, and some directives are vague or suggest what language might be impermissible without flatly stating it.

  • All presidential administrations change the language used in official communications to reflect their own policies. It is within their prerogative, as are amendments to or the removal of web pages, which The Times has found has already happened thousands of times in this administration.

  • Still, the words and phrases listed here represent a marked — and remarkable — shift in the corpus of language being used both in the federal government’s corridors of power and among its rank and file. They are an unmistakable reflection of this administration’s priorities.

  • For example, the Trump administration has frequently framed diversity, equity and inclusion efforts as being inherently at odds with what it has identified as “merit,” and it has argued that these initiatives have resulted in the elevation of unqualified or undeserving people. That rhetorical strategy — with its baked-in assumption of a lack of capacity in people of color, women, the disabled and other marginalized groups — has been criticized as discriminatory.

Haha. That “rhetorical strategy,” assuming that those groups are incompetent has not only been “criticized as discriminatory.” IT IS DISCRIMINATORY!

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Democracy, Equity, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Freedom of Speech, Gender, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Inequality, Inequity, Racism, Stupid

Mona Charen: Trump’s Spineless Enablers

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2025 //
4

Mona Charen was a bona fide rightwing conservative and a syndicated columnist until Trump was elected in 2016. She then became an outspoken Never-Trumper and joined her fellow disillusioned Republicans–which some no longer are–at The Bulwark. The Bulwark is consistently most interesting blog that I read, offering the views of sadder-but-wiser smart people, disillusioned by Trump. Maybe I enjoy because I was in the same place 17 years ago.

In this column, Charen takes Trump’s defenders over the coals. This is not her full column. She also took aim at Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen, who was one a staunch defender of Ukraine, but turned on a dime when he saw Trump’s disdain for Zelensky. Open the link and read it all.

She writes:

IN 2022, AFTER RUSSIAN TANKS ROLLED across an international border into Ukraine and missiles pierced the quiet of cities like Kharkiv and Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky earned worldwide acclaim for his courage and heroism. Famously, in response to an American offer of a safe exit, he replied “I don’t need a ride. I need ammunition.” Former President George W. Bush expressed what many were thinking when he declared that Zelensky was the “Winston Churchill of our time.”

But perhaps no one was more pro-Ukrainian than Sen. Lindsey Graham, who exulted in an arrest warrant the Russians had issued against him:

I will wear the arrest warrant issued by Putin’s corrupt and immoral government as a Badge of Honor. To know that my commitment to Ukraine has drawn the ire of Putin’s regime brings me immense joy. I will continue to stand with and for Ukraine’s freedom until every Russian soldier is expelled from Ukrainian territory.

Last Friday, after mad king Donald and his scheming viceroy, JD Vance, performed a tag-team ambush on Zelensky in the Oval Office, Graham sounded a different note. “A complete, utter disaster,” he told reporters, which is okay as far as it goes. But then it became clear that he had inverted victim and aggressor. He continued, “Somebody asked me if I was embarrassed about President Trump. I have never been more proud of the president. I was very proud of JD Vance for standing up for our country.”

Disgusting. A politician whose identity was forged as a hawk and staunch defender of liberty and democracy now praises the most powerful man in the world for sandbagging the beleaguered leader of a bleeding ally, a victim of aggression? That’s standing up for America?

There are still millions of Americans who value loyalty to the country and its values over loyalty to a party that lost all its values. Join us.Join

Ditto Marco Rubio, that gelding who has likewise transformed himself from a champion of freedom into an obedient toady to the man whose project is to destroy the Western alliance.

We live in an upside-down world where the far greater man, Zelensky, is being hounded to apologize to the gangster who behaved abominably.

Consider that even before the Oval Office debacle, Trump and his team had been grossly disrespectful and abusive toward Zelensky and Ukraine. Trump called him a “dictator” (though he declined to say as much about Putin) and lambasted him for failing to hold elections. (It is not permitted under Ukrainian law to hold elections during wartime.) He did not mention Putin’s failure to hold free elections for 25 years. Trump then repeated Putin’s propaganda that Ukraine, not Russia, had started the war. Secretary of Defense (God help us) Pete Hegseth pronounced that it would be unrealistic for Ukraine to win back its own territory. Vance told a European audience that he feared “the threat from within” far more than Russia or China. And then Trump proposed a “deal” that amounted to extortion, demanding the right to mine rare earth elements (which Trump called “raw earths”) on Ukrainian soil in return for . . . nothing. At first, Trump claimed that it was to compensate the United States for aid already donated, and though there were later iterations of the deal—all of which were blown up when Zelensky was ejected from the White House—the essential nature of the proposed agreement was clear. It was a shakedown. As Trump unguardedly admittedwhen he lost his temper, he regards Ukraine as a target for extortion because they “don’t have any cards.” Without the United States, Trump thundered, “you have nothing.”

It was the most shameful moment in American presidential history in at least a century. And while the focus of opprobrium should be on Trump and his smarmy understudy, a special shame also attaches to the explainer class of analysts who, without even the excuse of fearing voters, perform pirouettes on their principles.

AS RECENTLY AS JUNE 2023, Marc Thiessen had seen his role differently—that of guide to help MAGA types remain on side with Ukraine. He outlined an “America First Case for Supporting Ukraine,” arguing that “a Ukrainian victory would help deter China”; that a “Russian victory would further popularize the ‘decline of the West’ narrative, eroding U.S. alliances in Europe and Asia”; and that a Russian victory would “mean more nuclear states and more wars of aggression.”

But now, when the leader has pivoted, so has Thiessen.

Categories Accountability, Democracy, Ethics, Failure, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Trump
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