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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

Trump’s Shameless DEI Hoax

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2025 //
20

Trump would have us believe that the hiring of anyone other than white Christian men is the reason for everything that goes wrong. He has signed executive orders that ban diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in the government and in schools and higher education institutions, as well as any institution that receives federal funding, such as scientific research.

When Trump heard about the horrific airplane-helicopter crash on the Potomac River last week, his reaction was to blame DEI, as well as Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg. To him, diversity equals incompetence. That is, women, Blacks, Hispanics, and people with disabilities are incompetent.

Two points are clear:

First, DEI programs were funded and strengthened during Trump’s first term in office. How did it suddenly become the cause of all that is evil? Why must it be rooted out if every part of American life?

Second, let’s be clear about what DEI IS. It is a knowing effort to seek out and include women and nonwhite minorities and persons with disabilities in the workforce, on faculties, in student bodies.

In other words, those who oppose DEI are using the term to smear the beneficiaries of these policies as undeserving and unqualified, regardless of their experience and qualifications.

Plain English translation: Trump’s anti-DEI policy is RACISM, MISOGYNY, and XENOPHOBIA, and whatever the term is to discriminate against people with disabilities.

When he said the cause of the DC crash was DEI, it was immediately understood that he meant that a woman or a person of color was either the air traffic controller or a pilot. He knew this to be true, he said, not because he had evidence, but because (he said) he had “common sense.”

His instincts told him that a DEI hire did it. Someone, he guessed, was hired to direct the air traffic or to pilot one or both of the aircraft who was not a white Christian man. His “common sense” told him so.

But now we know more about the DEI policy in place. It started under Barack Obama. It was expanded under Trump.

Trump did not know who the air traffic controller was. Nor did he know who was piloting the airplane or the helicopter.

Glenn Kessler, the Fact-Checker for The Washington Post, wrote that Trump ridiculed the diversity policy that his administration put in place:

Reading from a 2024 Fox News report — which he incorrectly identified as being two weeks old — Trump listed conditions that he suggested disqualify people from being air traffic controllers: “hearing, vision, missing extremities, partial paralysis, complete paralysis, epilepsy, severe intellectual disability, psychiatric disability, and dwarfism.”

“Can you imagine?” he asked. “Brilliant people have to be in those positions, and their lives are actually shortened, very substantially shortened because of the stress.” He suggested that it was wrong for anyone with those conditions to qualify “for the position of a controller of airplanes pouring into our country, pouring into a little spot, a little dot on the map, a little runway.”

But here’s the rub: During Trump’s first term, the FAA began a program to hire air traffic controllers with the conditions that Trump decried.

The facts

In the news conference, Trump said Obama weakened standards and “I changed the Obama standards from very mediocre at best, to extraordinary. … Then they changed it back — that was Biden.”

Trump’s claim was repeated in an executive order Trump signed Thursday that ordered a review of aviation safety: “During my first term, my Administration raised standards to achieve the highest standards of safety and excellence.”
That’s false. In his first term, Trump left the standards unchanged.

For air traffic controllers, the Obama administration in 2013 instituted a new hiring system that introduced a biographical questionnaire to attract minorities, underrepresented in the controller corps. The program was criticized, such as in a Fox News report in 2015, as making it harder for more skilled applicants to get hired as controllers.

But Trump, in his first term, left the policy in place, leading to a class-action lawsuit filed in 2019 by Mountain States Legal Foundation. The case was due to go to trial this year.

Moreover, the FAA under Trump in 2019 launched a program to hire controllers using the very criteria he decried at his news conference.
“FAA Provides Aviation Careers to People with Disabilities,” the agency announced on April 11, 2019. The pilot program, the announcement said, would “identify specific opportunities for people with targeted disabilities, empower them and facilitate their entry into a more diverse and inclusive workforce.”

The link under “targeted disabilities” is now dead, but the Wayback Machine retains links from June 2017 and January 2021 that show the page was unchanged during Trump’s tenure. The list included:

• Hearing (total deafness in both ears)
• Vision (Blind)
• Missing Extremities
• Partial Paralysis
• Complete Paralysis, Epilepsy
• Severe intellectual disability
• Psychiatric disability
• Dwarfism

The June 2019 webpage for the Aviation Development Program (ADP) — also now removed but still visible on the Wayback Machine — said the program “provides an opportunity for Persons with Targeted Disabilities (PWTD) to gain aviation knowledge and experience as an air traffic control student trainee.” Participants would get up to one year of experience in an Air Route Traffic Control Center (ARTCC), with a possibility of getting a temporary appointment at the FAA Academy.
In August 2021, the FAA announced that one of the first three ADP candidates graduated from the FAA Academy and became an official air traffic control trainee. “Twelve candidates are in the pipeline for the ADP, pending completion of the clearance process,” the agency said. “Candidates must first pass the Air Traffic Skills Assessment (ATSA), followed by the security and medical clearance process.”

The announcement said the program was conceived when an air traffic manager met a quadriplegic student who had assumed he would never qualify to be a controller because of his condition. The FAA stressed that participants must meet the same qualifications as any other air traffic controller student.

A White House spokesman declined to comment.

The Pinocchio Test

Trump claimed that he had changed Obama’s criteria for hiring air traffic controllers with greater diversity — when in fact he left it unchanged. Moreover, he decried the fact that FAA hired controllers with a range of disabilities that he listed at the news conference. But that program was launched during his first term.

Four Pinocchios [The biggest possible lie.]

Trump likes to say that “merit” is the only possible reason to hire someone. The person hired should be the best qualified for the job.

Is conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the best qualified person to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services? No.

Is Pete Hegseth, with his record as a drunk, a sexual predator, and failed management experience, the best qualified person to be Secretary of Defense? No.

Is Tulsi Gabbard–apologist for Putin and Assad, member of a weird cult–the best qualified person to oversee the nation’s intelligence agencies? No.

Is Kash Patel, sycophant, FBI-hater, and election denier, the best qualified person to lead the FBI, especially after Trump’s sweeping purge of all agents who investigated him? No.

Other Trump choices are equally unqualified. The only one I consider qualified are Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. I was going to add Scott Bradenton, the new Secretary of the Teasury, but then I learned on Saturday that he gave Elon Musk permission to bring his team into the inner sanctum of the Department to copy the personal information of millions of Americans. As in the ransacking of Twitter, Musk’s team brought sofa beds so they could work long hours duplicating data that was supposed to be closely guarded.

Pete Hegseth stated the alleged credo of the Trump administration in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday:

“Color blind and merit based, the best leaders possible, whether it is flying Black Hawks, flying airplanes, leading platoons or in government, the era of DEI is gone at the Defense Department and we need the best and the brightest, whether it is in our air-traffic control, or whether it is in our generals, or whether it is throughout our government,” Hegseth said. 

Hegseth is living proof that Trump has not chosen “the best and the brightest” (nor does he know the origin of the term, which was the title of a book by David Halberstam about the “best and the brightest” whose arrogance ensnared us into the war in Vietnam).

If merit mattered to Trump, most of his cabinet would not have been chosen. If merit mattered in the election, Trump would not be president.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Hoax, Hypocrisy, Ignorance, Lies, Racism, Shame, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: A New Era of Lies and Corruption Begins

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2025 //
3

Heather Cox Richardson is wise not to put titles on her posts. They combine several topics. But this day’s posting has a common thread: the next four years will see a changed focus: from the public interest to private greed. Please read it all!

She writes:

Shortly before midnight last night, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published its initial findings from a study it undertook last July when it asked eight large companies to turn over information about the data they collect about consumers, product sales, and how the surveillance the companies used affected consumer prices. The FTC focused on the middlemen hired by retailers. Those middlemen use algorithms to tweak and target prices to different markets.

The initial findings of the FTC using data from six of the eight companies show that those prices are not static. Middlemen can target prices to individuals using their location, browsing patterns, shopping history, and even the way they move a mouse over a webpage. They can also use that information to show higher-priced products first in web searches. The FTC found that the intermediaries—the middlemen—worked with at least 250 retailers.

“Initial staff findings show that retailers frequently use people’s personal information to set targeted, tailored prices for goods and services—from a person’s location and demographics, down to their mouse movements on a webpage,” said FTC chair Lina Khan. “The FTC should continue to investigate surveillance pricing practices because Americans deserve to know how their private data is being used to set the prices they pay and whether firms are charging different people different prices for the same good or service.”

The FTC has asked for public comment on consumers’ experience with surveillance pricing.

FTC commissioner Andrew N. Ferguson, whom Trump has tapped to chair the commission in his incoming administration, dissented from the report.

Matt Stoller of the nonprofit American Economic Liberties Project, which is working “to address today’s crisis of concentrated economic power,” wrote that “[t]he antitrust enforcers (Lina Khan et al) went full Tony Montana on big business this week before Trump people took over.”

Stoller made a list. The FTC sued John Deere “for generating $6 billion by prohibiting farmers from being able to repair their own equipment,” released a report showing that pharmacy benefit managers had “inflated prices for specialty pharmaceuticals by more than $7 billion,” “sued corporate landlord Greystar, which owns 800,000 apartments, for misleading renters on junk fees,” and “forced health care private equity powerhouse Welsh Carson to stop monopolization of the anesthesia market.”

It sued Pepsi for conspiring to give Walmart exclusive discounts that made prices higher at smaller stores, “​​[l]eft a roadmap for parties who are worried about consolidation in AI by big tech by revealing a host of interlinked relationships among Google, Amazon and Microsoft and Anthropic and OpenAI,” said gig workers can’t be sued for antitrust violations when they try to organize, and forced game developer Cognosphere to pay a $20 million fine for marketing loot boxes to teens under 16 that hid the real costs and misled the teens.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau “sued Capital One for cheating consumers out of $2 billion by misleading consumers over savings accounts,” Stoller continued. It “forced Cash App purveyor Block…to give $120 million in refunds for fostering fraud on its platform and then refusing to offer customer support to affected consumers,” “sued Experian for refusing to give consumers a way to correct errors in credit reports,” ordered Equifax to pay $15 million to a victims’ fund for “failing to properly investigate errors on credit reports,” and ordered “Honda Finance to pay $12.8 million for reporting inaccurate information that smeared the credit reports of Honda and Acura drivers.”

The Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice sued “seven giant corporate landlords for rent-fixing, using the software and consulting firm RealPage,” Stoller went on. It “sued $600 billion private equity titan KKR for systemically misleading the government on more than a dozen acquisitions.”

“Honorary mention goes to [Secretary Pete Buttigieg] at the Department of Transportation for suing Southwest and fining Frontier for ‘chronically delayed flights,’” Stoller concluded. He added more results to the list in his newsletter BIG.

Meanwhile, last night, while the leaders in the cryptocurrency industry were at a ball in honor of President-elect Trump’s inauguration, Trump launched his own cryptocurrency. By morning he appeared to have made more than $25 billion, at least on paper. According to Eric Lipton at the New York Times, “ethics experts assailed [the business] as a blatant effort to cash in on the office he is about to occupy again.”

Adav Noti, executive director of the nonprofit Campaign Legal Center, told Lipton: “It is literally cashing in on the presidency—creating a financial instrument so people can transfer money to the president’s family in connection with his office. It is beyond unprecedented.” Cryptocurrency leaders worried that just as their industry seems on the verge of becoming mainstream, Trump’s obvious cashing-in would hurt its reputation. Venture capitalist Nick Tomaino posted: “Trump owning 80 percent and timing launch hours before inauguration is predatory and many will likely get hurt by it.”

Yesterday the European Commission, which is the executive arm of the European Union, asked X, the social media company owned by Trump-adjacent billionaire Elon Musk, to hand over internal documents about the company’s algorithms that give far-right posts and politicians more visibility than other political groups. The European Union has been investigating X since December 2023 out of concerns about how it deals with the spread of disinformation and illegal content. The European Union’s Digital Services Act regulates online platforms to prevent illegal and harmful activities, as well as the spread of disinformation.

Today in Washington, D.C., the National Mall was filled with thousands of people voicing their opposition to President-elect Trump and his policies. Online speculation has been rampant that Trump moved his inauguration indoors to avoid visual comparisons between today’s protesters and inaugural attendees. Brutally cold weather also descended on President Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration, but a sea of attendees nonetheless filled the National Mall.

Trump has always understood the importance of visuals and has worked hard to project an image of an invincible leader. Moving the inauguration indoors takes away that image, though, and people who have spent thousands of dollars to travel to the capital to see his inauguration are now unhappy to discover they will be limited to watching his motorcade drive by them. On social media, one user posted: “MAGA doesn’t realize the symbolism of [Trump] moving the inauguration inside: The billionaires, millionaires and oligarchs will be at his side, while his loyal followers are left outside in the cold. Welcome to the next 4+ years.”

Trump is not as good at governing as he is at performance: his approach to crises is to blame Democrats for them. But he is about to take office with majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, putting responsibility for governance firmly into his hands.

Right off the bat, he has at least two major problems at hand.

Last night, Commissioner Tyler Harper of the Georgia Department of Agriculture suspended all “poultry exhibitions, shows, swaps, meets, and sales” until further notice after officials found Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, or bird flu, in a commercial flock. As birds die from the disease or are culled to prevent its spread, the cost of eggs is rising—just as Trump, who vowed to reduce grocery prices, takes office.

There have been 67 confirmed cases of the bird flu in the U.S. among humans who have caught the disease from birds. Most cases in humans are mild, but public health officials are watching the virus with concern because bird flu variants are unpredictable. On Friday, outgoing Health and Human Services secretary Xavier Becerra announced $590 million in funding to Moderna to help speed up production of a vaccine that covers the bird flu. Juliana Kim of NPR explained that this funding comes on top of $176 million that Health and Human Services awarded to Moderna last July.

The second major problem is financial. On Friday, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen wrote to congressional leaders to warn them that the Treasury would hit the debt ceiling on January 21 and be forced to begin using extraordinary measures in order to pay outstanding obligations and prevent defaulting on the national debt. Those measures mean the Treasury will stop paying into certain federal retirement accounts as required by law, expecting to make up that difference later.

Yellen reminded congressional leaders: “The debt limit does not authorize new spending, but it creates a risk that the federal government might not be able to finance its existing legal obligations that Congresses and Presidents of both parties have made in the past.” She added, “I respectfully urge Congress to act promptly to protect the full faith and credit of the United States.”

Both the avian flu and the limits of the debt ceiling must be managed, and managed quickly, and solutions will require expertise and political skill.

Rather than offering their solutions to these problems, the Trump team leaked that it intended to begin mass deportations on Tuesday morning in Chicago, choosing that city because it has large numbers of immigrants and because Trump’s people have been fighting with Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat. Michelle Hackman, Joe Barrett, and Paul Kiernan of the Wall Street Journal, who broke the story, reported that Trump’s people had prepared to amplify their efforts with the help of right-wing media.

But once the news leaked of the plan and undermined the “shock and awe” the administration wanted, Trump’s “border czar” Tom Homan said the team was reconsidering it.

—

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Economy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, For-Profit, Fraud, Funding, Hypocrisy, Injustice, Lies, Republicans, Trump

Jay Kuo Reports on Pete Hegseth’s Refusal to Answer Questions at His Hearings

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
3

Jay Kuo, lawyer, humorist and political consultant, watched the confirmation hearings of Pete Hegseth for the position of Secretary of Defense. Hegseth is notoriously unqualified. His Republican defenders treated his lack of experience and knowledge as a plus, a breath of fresh air. To charges of drunkenness, adultery, and womanizing, the Republican attitude was “Yawn. Everyone does it.”

Kuo writes:

Trump’s nominee for Defense Secretary, weekend Fox & Friends host Pete Hegseth, is many things: a serial adulterer, an accused rapist, a right-wing crusader and an often out-of-control drunk.

What he is not is qualified in any way to lead the Defense Department.

But apparently none of that posed any bar to the GOP senators on the Armed Services Committee, who appear ready to send Hegseth through to a full floor vote, which is now expected to go his way along a party line or near-party line vote.

Still, even assuming Hegseth’s confirmation is now assured, Democrats did a good job of laying the groundwork for resistance to and criticism of Hegseth’s leadership. They pulled no punches and demonstrated that it still matters to stand firm on the question of job qualifications, obeying the rule of law, and disqualifying questions of character.

No qualifications? Even better!

Republican senators spent much of yesterday’s confirmation hearing twisting Hegseth’s vices into virtues and his negatives into notches. For example, even though Hegseth has never led an organization of more than 200 people or a department with a budget of hundreds of millions let alone billions of dollars, this was somehow a plus.

As the New York Times noted,

Mr. Hegseth and his Republican allies on the panel made the case that his lack of experience compared with previous defense secretaries would be a plus.

Mr. Hegseth said: “As President Trump also told me, we’ve repeatedly placed people atop the Pentagon with supposedly the right credentials, whether they’re retired generals, academics or defense contractor executives. And where has it gotten us?”

His utter inexperience was even “a breath of fresh air” per Missouri Sen. Eric Schmitt, with Hegseth being an outsider rather than from “the same cocktail parties that permeate Washington.”

In his opening statement, Hegseth even argued that he didn’t have a similar biography to Defense Secretaries of the last 30 years” but that “it’s time to give someone with dust on his boots the helm.”

This may have made for a good sound bite, but it is disrespectfully false and misleading. It completely whitewashes the fact that his predecessor, Gen. Lloyd Austin, whom Hegseth has implied was a DEI hire, literally ran a war in a desert. Sen. Chuck Hagel, who served as Defense Secretary under President Obama, still has shrapnel in him from his service in Vietnam.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) drove home the point that Hegseth simply isn’t qualified for the job when she asked him to name just one country within ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations), yet Hegseth began talking about South Korea, Japan and Australia.

“Mr. Hegseth, none of those countries are in ASEAN,” responded Sen. Duckworth, who is a combat veteran who lost both legs and mobility in her right arm when her Blackhawk helicopter went down during the Iraq War from hostile fire. “I suggest you do a little homework,” she said.

As reporter Jordan Weissmann remarked, “This might seem like a small, embarrassing gotcha, but ASEAN is an acronym you encounter a lot if you do even very basic reading about the Pentagon’s strategy to counter China.”

The Trump “yes” man

Given that Hegseth’s senate confirmation is more or less in the bag, questions around whether he would be an independent check upon Trump’s excessive executive power have grown in importance.

For example, Sen. Angus King (I-ME) asked Hegseth whether the U.S. would abide by the Geneva Conventions and the prohibitions on torture. Rather than state that we would, Hegseth responded, “What an America First national security policy is not going to do is hand its prerogatives over to international bodies that make decisions about how our men and women make decisions on the battlefield.”

In a similar vein, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) had this exchange with Hegseth that highlighted the danger of having a puppet heading the Pentagon, with loyalty to Trump over the U.S. Constitution:

Sen. Slotkin: “As the Secretary of Defense, you will be the one man standing in the breach should President Trump give an illegal order, right? I’m not saying he will. But if he does, you are going to be the guy that he calls to implement this order. Do you agree that there are some orders that can be given by the Commander-in-Chief that would violate the US Constitution?”

Hegseth: “Senator, thank you for your service, but I reject the premise that President Trump is going to be giving illegal orders.”

Sen. Slotkin then pressed Hegseth on this, giving real-world, not hypothetical, instances where his predecessor, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, apologized for deploying forces in D.C. to put down protests and convinced President Trump not to deploy the 82nd Airborne. Hegseth resisted responding with yes or no answers and refused generally to second-guess or get ahead of conversations that he would have with the president, only grudgingly admitting by the end of the line of questioning that there are “laws and processes under our Constitution that would be followed” (using the passive voice, I should add).

During Sen. Slotkin’s questioning, Hegseth also appeared to confirm that he would use active duty U.S. forces to staff things like detention camps for migrants, which Sen. Slotkin noted the military is not trained to do as it is more of a policing function.

A disqualifying past history

When Democrats had opportunities to question Hegseth about his troublesome history, they scored blows over his alleged sexual assaults, public intoxication, mismanagement of nonprofits and opposition to women in combat.

The most notable exchange occurred between Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Hegseth, when Kaine sought to clarify whether any of the behavior of which Hegseth is accused (including allegations of sexual assault, public drunkenness and spousal abuse) would be disqualifying for a nominee, at least in his opinion, were it proven to be true.

Hegseth repeatedly refused to address Kaine’s questions, claiming again and again that the allegations against him were from anonymous sources and that they were false. Kaine caught Hegseth in a bit of a trap, however, when he laid out the series of instances of adultery that included the incident he claimed as a consensual encounter. Even were that true, it still happened, Kaine pointed out, months after the birth of his daughter by the woman who would become his second wife after he had cheated on his first.

Sen. Kaine pointed out that it was Hegseth’s judgment that concerned him. The exchange is worth viewing in its entirety:

Sen. Kaine later went on MSNBC to underscore how evasive Hegseth had been. “Should committing a sexual assault be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. Should spousal abuse be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. Should drunkenness on the job be disqualifying to be Secretary of Defense? Not a hard question. He wouldn’t answer any of them. And that was very telling to me.”

On the question of Hegseth’s alcohol consumption, one GOP committee member, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), rose to defend the nominee. He accused Democrats of hypocrisy, asking whether they had ever demanded senators who showed up drunk to step down from their positions.

This defense was awkward in three respects. First, it seemed to confirm that Hegseth indeed has a drinking problem, just one that is shared by some of Mullin’s Senate colleagues. Second, it completely ignores history because a prior nominee for Secretary of Defense, Sen. John Tower, was denied confirmation precisely because of issues over his excessive drinking and womanizing. And third, as Kaitlan Collins of CNN later pointed out to Mullins during an interview, how is the bad behavior of a senator a defense of someone who wants to run the Pentagon? 

Gaming the system

By the time Hegseth even set foot in the committee room, the game was already rigged in his favor.

The main holdout in the GOP has always been Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), who is a sexual assault survivor and a combat veteran. Ernst has brought attention to the plight of female service members and has pressed for changes to how the Pentagon deals with cases of sexual assault. Because she sits on the Armed Services Committee, a no vote from her likely would have doomed Hegseth, whose nomination might never have even gotten out of committee.

Sen. Ernst had been lukewarm to Hegseth before the MAGA bullying began. As the New York Times reported,

Ms. Ernst initially appeared hostile to [Hegseth], telling reporters that he would “have his work cut out for him.” After a private meeting with Mr. Hegseth, she said on Fox News that she was not yet a “yes” on his confirmation.

Her confession prompted an immediate backlash from outside groups affiliated with Mr. Trump, who targeted her with ads and social media posts, while prominent Iowa Republicans threatened to mount primary challenges against her in 2026. 

Within days, Ms. Ernst met with Mr. Hegseth again, and announced that she had been heartened by his promises to audit the Pentagon and appoint a senior official to deter sexual assaults in the military and ensure that female service members would be considered for combat roles if they could meet the requirements.

Sen. Ernst’s political capitulation went beyond merely bowing to GOP pressure. Per reporting by Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Sen. Ernst, along with Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), even declined an offer to meet with Hegseth’s accuser—the woman who filed a complaint with the police claiming Hegseth had raped her after a GOP conference in Monterey, California.

So much for supporting victims of sexual assault.

The FBI background check on Hegseth was already woefully deficient because its investigators interviewed none of Hegseth’s accusers or former spouses. This is contrary to standard protocol, which advises interviews of all current and former spouses of nominees. When the FBI background check finally came back, it came with instructions not to share it with any of the Committee members beyond the chair and the ranking Democratic member.

Finally, to hamstring the vetting process even further, the GOP only permitted only one round of questioning of Hegseth, which completed after just four hours yesterday. Seven minutes for each senator to question the nominee, who largely refused to answer the question asked, produced the desired result: It barely scratched the surface of what the public is entitled to know.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Hypocrisy, Republicans, Scandals, Trump

“Democracy”: Billionaire Bezos Abjectly Kisses Trump’s Ring

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2025 //
14

Our reader who calls him/herself “Democracy” writes here about Jeff Bezos’ shameless betrayal of the founding principles of The Washington Post, as well as its recent motto “Democracy dies in darkness.” He not only canceled the editorial board’s endorsement of Kamala Harris (to avoid taking sides), but he (or David Shipley, editor of the editorial page), canceled a cartoon critical of billionaires (including Bezos) who rushed to pay court to the new, felonious president.

Why would a titan with assets of more than $200 billion bend his knee and kiss the ring of a convicted felon? Why would Mark Zuckerberg, also with assets of more than $200 billion, immediately made his peace with Trump by eliminating content moderation from Facebook, welcoming the return to FB of Nazis, conspiracy theorists, racists, and other malefactors. Are they fearful of losing a few billions? Are they worried about being left out of dinners at Mar-a-Lago?

Bear in mind that The Washington Post led the way in discrediting Joseph McCarthy (those who were alive then will never forget Herblock’s cartoons, portraying him as a thug) and exposing the Watergate Scandal, which led to the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Bezos’s cowardice is causing the loss of excellent journalists, readership, revenue–and most important–reputation.

“Democracy” wrote, as a comment on this blog:

When Eugene Meyer bought The Washington Post in 1933 he established seven “guiding principles” for the newspaper. At the very top was this:

“The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth can be ascertained.”

Some of the other principles were these:

*  “The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.”

*  “The Newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it.”

*  “In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.”

*  “The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs.”

Given what has happened to The Post in the last couple of years under Jeff Bezos, one of the richest people in the world, Eugene Meyer must be spinning in his grave.

Prior to the election, The Fiscal Times reported this:

“23 Nobel Prize-winning economists expressed support for the policies proposed by Kamala Harris, warning that the policies of her opponent would be ‘counterproductive.’…The 23 Nobel laureates — more than half of all living recipients of the economics award — said that the Harris agenda focused on the middle class and entrepreneurship would ‘improve our nation’s health, investment, sustainability, resilience, employment opportunities, and fairness.’…By comparison, Trump’s agenda of high tariffs and regressive tax cuts would ‘lead to higher prices, larger deficits, and greater inequality.’ In addition, in their view Trump represents a threat to the rule of law and political stability, necessary components of a thriving economy.”

The New York Times reported this:

“More than 80 American Nobel Prize winners in physics, chemistry, medicine and economics have signed an open letter endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for president…The letter praises Ms. Harris for understanding that ‘the enormous increases in living standards and life expectancies over the past two centuries are largely the result of advances in science and technology.’ Former President Donald Trump, by contrast, would ‘jeopardize any advancements in our standards of living, slow the progress of science and technology and impede our responses to climate change,’ the letter said.”

And yet, Jeff Bezos SPIKED a Post endorsement of Harris, and then lied about it in a column that was shameful, dishonest, and disreputable to The Post and the quality journalists who work there, or who used to, because a number of them have already quit or are planning on exiting.

Bezos had a relatively simple choice.

Honor The Post’s masthead logo — “Democracy Dies in Darkness — AND the principles established by Eugene Meyer, OR not.

Bezos chose racism and misogyny and sedition, and fascism.

The Atlantic published a piece three days ago by historian Timothy Ryback on Adolf Hitler.Here’s an overview:

“Monday, he swore an oath to uphold the constitution, went across the street for lunch, then returned to the Reich Chancellery and outlined his plans for expunging key government officials and filling their positions with loyalists and  turned to his main agenda: an empowering law that would give him the authority to make good on his promises to revive the economy…withdraw from international treaty obligations, purge the country of foreigners, and exact revenge on political opponents. ‘Heads will roll,’ Hitler vowed…

“When Hitler wondered whether the army could be used to crush any public unrest, Defense Minister Werner von Blomberg dismissed the idea out of hand, observing ‘that a soldier was trained to see an external enemy as his only potential opponent.’…Blomberg could not imagine German soldiers being ordered to shoot German citizens on German streets in defense of Hitler’s government…Hitler had campaigned on the promise of draining the “parliamentarian swamp”—den parlamentarischen Sumpf—only to find himself now foundering in a quagmire of partisan politics and banging up against constitutional guardrails. He responded as he invariably did when confronted with dissenting opinions or inconvenient truths: He ignored them and doubled down.”

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/01/hitler-germany-constitution-authoritarianism/681233/

Sound familiar? 

You’d think that Jeff Bezos might be aware of all of this. He likely is. But he’s chosen to collude with Trump, presumably because it helps his bank account – as if he needs that. Bezos gave $1 million to the Trump inaugural fund, which presumably Trump will pocket, and he coughed up $40 million to produce a “documentary”on Melania Trump, set to air later this year. A. Documentary. On. Melania. Trump.

Honestly, given her “accomplishments,” couldn’t a suitable “documentary” be produced for about $40?

As someone who used to deliver The Post, and who has been a reader for more than 50 years, I think it only appropriate to tell Jeff Bezos from the bottom of my heart that he can Kiss My Ass.

The American democratic republic deserves better.

Categories Billionaires, Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Hypocrisy, Media, Trump
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