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Steve Schmidt: The Hegseth Ethos

By dianeravitch
December 10, 2025 //
7

Steve Schmidt is a veteran political strategist who worked for Republicans, most recently for John McCain in 2008. When Trump was elected, Schmidt was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. In 2020, he registered as a Democrat. He currently writes a blog at Substack.

This one is brilliant. Pete Hegseth is the embodiment of the moral and spiritual and intellectual rot at the core of the Republican Party today.

Schmidt writes:

There is no “Secretary of War” or “War Department” in the United States of America under US law.

Each time a news organization uses Pete Hegseth’s concocted title, and submits to his “War Department” fantasy, it is an act of corruption.

It is a direct and specific choice that immolates journalistic ethics by embracing fantasy at the demand of power.

Journalism confronts power.

Journalism doesn’t obey it, heed it, submit to it, appease it, or accept the premise that make-believe is real if the leader believes it so, regardless of reality.

This was posted by a man in the chain of command for the release of nuclear weapons after the commission of a war crime on his orders, which was followed by evasions, deflections of responsibility, and an attempt to stab a US Navy admiral in the back:

[Diane’s note: This is juvenile and not funny.]

When General of the Army George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Army Secretary of State and Defense died, President Harry Truman said the following in remembrance of his titanic life. He made an unfortunate reference to the traitorous Robert E. Lee, who was exceeded in every way by Ulysses Grant, a man who bested him, yet was smeared into oblivion over 100 years time by the the same type of white nationalists and Christian Taliban who slither around Mar-a-Lago. That is, until one day, the truth escaped its dungeon and a foremost savior of the Union was seen clearly again.

[Truman said:]

General Marshall was an honorable man, a truthful man, a man of ability.

Honor has no modifying adjectives — a man has it, or he hasn’t. General Marshall had it.

Truth has no qualifying words to be attached to it. A man either tells the truth, or he doesn’t. General Marshall was the exemplification of the man of truth.

Ability can be qualified. Some of us have little of it, some may have moderate ability, and some men have it to the extreme.

General Marshall was a man of the greatest ability.

He was the greatest general since Robert E. Lee.

He was the greatest administrator since Thomas Jefferson.

He was the man of honor, the man of truth, the man of greatest ability.

He was the greatest of the great in our time.

I sincerely hope that when it comes my time to cross the great river that General Marshall will place me on his staff, so that I may try to do for him what he did for me.

*******************

Perhaps one reason that Pete Hegseth fetishizes the “War Department” is that, when it existed, it commanded a segregated force. The Defense Department has always commanded a desegregated force.

Before the US Army was desegregated a young Army Lieutenant named Jackie Robinson faced trumped up charges at a kangaroo court martial.
Here is Jackie Robinson’s legacy perfectly preserved for all time in the magnificent eulogy he received from Reverend Jesse Jackson, to whom I hope we can all send good wishes and prayers this holiday season, as he struggles through the ravages of the burdens handed him with dignity and grace: 

[Jackie Robinson’s eulogy by Reverend Jesse Jackson.]

Powerful men have a long tradition of sending powerless young men to die in unworthy causes in far away lands.

There should be an extremely low tolerance for such men in 2025 America, but they are not only tolerated, but indulged.  

The hypocrisy of the US Congress on the matter of Pete “Kill them all!” Hegseth is bottomless and dangerous. Their faithlessness to the American soldier, sailor, airmen and marine is obscene.

The man who jumped up on a table screaming, “Kill all Muslims!” was exactly who the Congress was warned about. Yet, the warnings were unheeded because the Congress cared more about pleasing Trump than the institutions of the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps that predate the independence of the United States. They cared more about sating a stirred-up Fox News mob than a 19-year-old private.

Shameful doesn’t begin to describe it.

It is a dereliction of duty, and the most profound type of moral betrayal.

The 119th MAGA Congress is an abomination, led by a religious nutter and weakling who is neither bright, decent, funny, nor wise.

In other words, he is a perfect MAGA puppet who thinks he is a ventriloquist. In truth, the hand inserted into his most sacred space, the one he hides his bespectacled head within, is smeared with orange hand paint.

Faithless, treacherous and disloyal are the Hegseth ethos. They are a perfect mirror of the only reflection of equal rottenness in America: the crazed MAGA Congress, filled from bottom to top with corrupt loons, belligerent liars, sexual deviants, conspiracists, fraudsters, women beaters, and insider traders, who worship Trump together.

Pete Hegseth is the leader of a military that is unready and unprepared to fight a necessary war. He is a performance artist, a late-stage mid-tier Fox News star who is a herald of disaster to a population filled with indifference. It is about to find out the hard way how much damage a small group of evil men and women can do to a nation.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Fraud, History, Ignorance, Republicans, Scandals, Shame, Trump, Wall of Shame

Paul Offit: RFK Jr.’s Obsessions Threaten the Lives of Children

By dianeravitch
October 9, 2025 //
1

Dr. Paul Offit is a medical doctor who specializes in children’s infectious diseases. He is appalled by the actions and policies of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., because they endanger the health of our nation, especially children.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a disgrace to his family name. He should not have been put in charge of public health. Not only is he totally unqualified, but his beliefs about medicine are dangerous.

Dr. Offit writes:

On April 15, 2025, Dr. Fiona Havers, an epidemiologist at the CDC, presented data on the impact of COVID-19 on children the previous year. She found that COVID-19 had caused thousands of children to be hospitalized; 20 percent of whom were admitted to the intensive care unit. Virtually all were unvaccinated, half were previously healthy, and 152 had died, most less than 4 years of age. The conclusion was clear; young children in the United States who had never been vaccinated will still benefit from a COVID-19 vaccine. Although the pandemic was over, the virus wasn’t.

Six weeks later, on May 27, 2025, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), in a video posted on X, said that COVID-19 vaccines would no longer be recommended for young, healthy children. When asked to provide evidence for this unilateral, behind-closed-doors decision, he couldn’t.
This week, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) released its own recommendations. Consistent with the CDC’s findings—and in direct contrast to Kennedy’s edict—the AAP stated, “Infants and children 6 to 23 months of age are at high risk for severe COVID-19…All infants and children in this age group [should] receive the 2025-2026 COVID-19 vaccine…Those who are previously unvaccinated should receive an initial series.”

Hours after the AAP released its statement, Kennedy fired back, posting on X that the AAP was engaging in a “pay-to-play scheme to promote commercial ambitions of AAP’s Big Pharma benefactors.” Kennedy linked to a page showing that the AAP’s Friends of Children Fund, a charity that focuses on adolescent mental health and suicide prevention, had received donations from several vaccine makers. Kennedy also claimed that the medical journal that published the AAP’s recommendations, Pediatrics, was part of this same “pay-to-play scheme.” Kennedy’s actions were a tiresome rerun of his many accusations over the past 20 years. Whenever scientists, doctors, public health officials, academic institutions, scientific journals, or medical or professional societies claim that a vaccine is safe, effective, or valuable, he says that they are all in the pocket of the pharmaceutical industry. No one is to be trusted, except him.

Kennedy’s conflict-of-interest gambit is a misdirection game. If he can get the press and the public to talk about conflicts-of-interest, he can distract from his decision to recommend against COVID-19 vaccines for children that wasn’t supported by the evidence.

Then Kennedy made a veiled threat, posting on X that the “AAP should be candid with doctors and hospitals that recommendations that diverge from the CDC’s official list are not shielded from liability under the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act.” Defy me, argued Kennedy, and I will make sure that doctors and hospitals that recommend COVID-19 vaccines for young children could be sued. It was an empty threat. Doctors and hospitals are protected from liability related to COVID-19 vaccines by the PREP Act. Kennedy’s threat was yet another mean-spirited attempt at misdirection.

Pediatricians, parents, and public health officials are confused by these conflicting recommendations. Epidemiological evidence says one thing, Kennedy another. This confusion will likely result in some young children failing to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. It is also likely that some of these children will be admitted to the hospital, or intensive care unit, or die as a result. And when that happens, we won’t have to look any further than the man who for the past 20 years has been an anti-vaccine propagandist, science denialist, and conspiracy theorist to understand why.

W.H. Auden, a British American poet, wrote, “When all the mass and majesty of this world, when all that carried weight and always weighed the same, lay in the hands of others. They were small and could not hope for help and no help came.” How many children will have to suffer needlessly at the hands of RFK Jr. before someone, anyone steps up to save them?

I’m reminded that protestors against the war in Vietnam used to chant,

“Hey, hey, LBJ,

How many kids did you kill today?”

When will they say that about RFK?

Categories Childhood, Health, Ignorance, Medicine, Science

Former Directors of the CDC: RFK Jr. Endangers Public Health!

By dianeravitch
September 2, 2025 //
0

Nine former directors of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control wrote a joint opinion piece for The New York Times. These are men and women devoted to public health who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. They agree that what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing to the Department of Health and Human Services is outrageous and dangerous.

They write:

We have each had the honor and privilege of serving as director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, either in a permanent or an acting capacity, dating back to 1977. Collectively, we spent more than 100 years working at the C.D.C., the world’s pre-eminent public health agency. We served under multiple Republican and Democratic administrations — every president from Jimmy Carter to Donald Trump — alongside thousands of dedicated staff members who shared our commitment to saving lives and improving health.

What the health and human services secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., has done to the C.D.C. and to our nation’s public health system over the past several months — culminating in his decision to fire Dr. Susan Monarez as C.D.C. director days ago — is unlike anything we had ever seen at the agency and unlike anything our country had ever experienced.

Mr. Kennedy has fired thousands of federal health workers and severely weakened programs designed to protect Americans from cancer, heart attacks, strokes, lead poisoning, injury, violence and more. Amid the largest measles outbreak in the United States in a generation, he’s focused onunproven treatments while downplaying vaccines. He canceled investments in promising medical research that will leave us ill prepared for future health emergencies. He replaced experts on federal health advisory committees with unqualified individuals who share his dangerous and unscientific views. He announced the end of U.S. support for global vaccination programs that protect millions of children and keep Americans safe, citing flawed research and making inaccurate statements. And he championed federal legislation that will cause millions of people with health insurance through Medicaid to lose their coverage. Firing Dr. Monarez — which led to the resignations of top C.D.C. officials — adds considerable fuel to this raging fire.

We are worried about the wide-ranging impact that all these decisions will have on America’s health security. Residents of rural communities and people with disabilities will have even more limited access to health care. Families with low incomes who rely most heavily on community health clinics and support from state and local health departments will have fewer resources available to them. Children risk losing access to lifesaving vaccines because of the cost.

This is unacceptable, and it should alarm every American, regardless of political leanings.

To finish reading the article, open the link.

Categories Budget Cuts, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Health, Ignorance, Insane, Medicine, Trump

The GOP Death March, Led by RFK Jr.

By dianeravitch
September 1, 2025 //
13

Concerned about RFK Jr.’s assault on vaccines, I called my local CVS pharmacist a few days ago to schedule every vaccine for which I was eligible. I got the flu vaccine and the RSV vaccine.

I asked for the COVID-19 vaccine, but was told that the latest version would not be available until mid-October. I’m in the eligible group (over 65), but no vaccine yet. When I got home, I learned that the vaccine is not available in certain states, including New York. I worry that RFK Jr. may decide to cancel the vaccine altogether.

Wajahat Ali writes on his blog, The Left Hook, about RFK Jr.’s threat to public health:

In today’s Democracy-ish, Danielle and I spend the hour discussing the most dangerous horseman of Trump’s Apocalyptic cult: RFK Jr. 

Oh, you know, the scion of the Kennedy empire who was a heroin addict, suffered from brain worms, ate exotic animals, and was described as a predator by his own cousin.

That RFK Jr., who promotes reckless and dangerous anti-vaxx conspiracies, eugenics, and has no medical background or training. That’s the wealthy, mediocre, white man that Trump has elevated as the director of America’s Health and Human Services.

I mean, what could go wrong? 

Who needs vaccines during COVID or the rise of measles? Who needs Medicaid except 20% of Americans who depend on it for healthcare? Who needs the National Institute of Health or the CDC staffed by competent, qualified professionals who have spent their lives devoted to saving lives?

Not the United States, because we aren’t a bunch of woke, weak pansies who listen to so-called experts, damn it!

Welcome to Trump and MAGA’s pro-death march led, in part, by RFK Jr. and his broligarch friendswho are perfectly fine killing Americans to make a profit and advance their white supremacist agenda. 

We bring all the receipts. It’s depressing, but it’s worth hearing to ensure you stay informed, safe, and protected.

Here’s Danielle’s write-up at DAM DIGEST:

In the United States, public health has long depended on institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). For decades—through Republican and Democratic administrations alike—these agencies functioned under a shared goal: protecting Americans’ health through science, research, and expertise.

But in recent years, that foundation has begun to crack. The appointment of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (RFK Jr.), an outspoken anti-vaccine activist with no medical training, to lead HHS has brought that crisis into sharp focus. His presence in the nation’s top public health office signals a seismic shift—one where politics trumps science, conspiracy theories replace research, and ideology threatens lives.

The Erosion of Trust in Science

During the COVID-19 pandemic, more than one million Americans died, while public health officials faced harassment, death threats, and relentless political attacks. Former CDC Director Anthony Fauci, who spent his career working to save lives, became a target of right-wing media and extremist groups.

Instead of rallying around experts, leaders like Donald Trump and his allies downplayed the severity of the pandemic, promoted misinformation about masks and vaccines, and openly mocked scientists. This politicization of science directly fueled vaccine hesitancy, prolonging the crisis and causing unnecessary deaths.

Now, five years after the peak of the pandemic, the United States faces a resurgence of diseases once thought to be under control—measles, polio, and other preventable illnesses—precisely because vaccination rates have dropped.

RFK Jr.: Conspiracies Over Credentials

RFK Jr.’s position is especially alarming given his history of promoting anti-vaccine propagandaand debunked eugenics myths. He has falsely claimed that autism and other health conditions are caused by vaccines and even suggested that COVID-19 was “targeted to spare Jews and Black people”—a statement widely condemned as antisemitic and racist.

Despite his lack of medical training, Kennedy insists he can “diagnose” children by sight, attributing health challenges to supposed “mitochondrial issues visible in their faces.” Licensed physicians, including those trained at Harvard and Mayo Clinic, have dismissed such claims as pseudoscience.

Yet under the Trump administration, this man now wields control over Medicare, Medicaid, the CDC, NIH, and national vaccine policy—institutions responsible for the health of over 330 million Americans.

The Resignations and Walkouts

The consequences are already unfolding. After Kennedy moved to push out CDC Director Dr. Susan Monarez—a Trump appointee who nonetheless refused to abandon science—top scientists and health officials resigned in protest. Dr. Dimitri Daskalakis, a respected infectious disease expert, wrote in his resignation letter that serving under Kennedy was “untenable” because HHS leadership was no longer guided by science.

Soon after, CDC staff staged mass walkouts, warning the public that American lives are being endangered by unqualified leadership. These resignations leave critical gaps at the very moment the nation faces rising COVID variants, climate-driven disease risks, and growing vaccine hesitancy.

Cuts That Will Cost Lives

Beyond personnel, the Trump–Kennedy administration has overseen massive funding cuts:

  • $500 million slashed from vaccine research
  • $1 trillion cut to Medicaid, threatening to shutter rural hospitals and nursing homes
  • Reductions in NIH research funding
  • Cuts to foreign aid and peacekeeping operations, destabilizing global health security

These moves directly undermine America’s preparedness for the next pandemic. As climate change accelerates, experts warn that new infectious diseases are almost inevitable. Yet instead of strengthening systems, leaders are dismantling them.

The Bigger Picture: A Pro-Death Movement

This moment cannot be seen in isolation. It reflects a broader “pro-death” political movement that prizes ideology over evidence, power over public health, and partisan gain over human life. Whether it was Trump pushing “herd immunity” at the expense of vulnerable Americans, or Kennedy advancing conspiracy theories that endanger children, the pattern is clear: science is under attack.

The result? Americans are less safe, less protected, and less prepared for the crises ahead.

Why This Matters Now

The rise of unqualified, conspiracy-driven figures like RFK Jr. at the helm of America’s most critical health institutions is not just political theater—it is a direct threat to public safety. The decisions made today about vaccines, research funding, and disease response will determine whether millions live or die in the years ahead.

Public trust in science and medicine must be restored. That means demanding qualified leaders, protecting the integrity of institutions like the CDC and NIH, and pushing back against those who seek to weaponize public health for political gain.

Because as history has shown—from pandemics to polio eradication—science saves lives. Conspiracies cost them.

Categories Accountability, Disruption, Education Industry, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Health, Ignorance, Lies, Medicine, Trump

A Day in the White House: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2025 //
10

Jeff Tiedrich, graphic designer, writes a blog called “Everyone Is Entitled to My Own Opinion.” It’s hilarious, it’s filled with obscenities that I never post, and it captures the essence of whatever he’s writing about.

Please consider subscribing.

I disclaim all of Jeff Tiedrich’s four-letter words and urge you to read this post.

Jeff Tiedrich writes:

Volodymyr Zelenskyy, flanked by European leaders, visited the White House yesterday. they did Statesmanship Kabuki, where everyone tiptoes around and pretends that Donny Convict’s hand is firmly guiding his ship of state — when in reality, America’s Mad King is a semi-sentient drool-bucket who’s only a handful of frayed synapses away from wearing his diaper on his head.

can we just talk about how totally fucking insane Dear Leader is?

I mean, who in the hallowed name of Mentally Unbalanced Jesus does this?

Donny has a huge-ass painting of his Miracle Ear Nicking hanging in the White House — and he makes sure everyone sees it by pointing and whining “this was not a good day.”

if it wasn’t a good day, then why are you forever reminding yourself of it by commissioning a wall-size painting so you can relive it daily?

normal people don’t act like this.

let’s gif that shit, because you would never believe it if you didn’t see it with your own eyes.

everyone in attendance — Zelenskyy, Mark Rutte, Ursula von der Leyen, Keir Starmer, Alexander Stubb, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz, and Giorgia Meloni — these are serious people who run countries, and this is what they have to endure when they come to Donny’s White House: a lunatic wants them to admire his assassination painting. 

what must be going through their minds?

Donny has literally devolved into the insane dictator General Garcia from the film The In-Laws, proudly showing off his crazypants art collection.

but Donny’s outdone General Garcia — because not even the general thought to sell merch at his presidential palace.

that’s right, the White House Gift Shop has now become your one-stop destination for all merchandise MAGA. I’ll bet Zelenskyy was thrilled with his new hat. I’ll bet it’s sitting in a treasured wastebin in Ukraine right now.

tell me, does Dear Leader’s inability to read simple words — or even recognize someone sitting right across from him — make his ass seem demented?

Donny: “President Stubb of… Finland and he’s… uh… he’s somebody that where are we here, huh? where? where?”
Stubb: “I’m right here.”
Donny: “oh.”

Stubb was, in fact, sitting directly across from Donny.

hey Jake Tapper, are you watching this?

again, these are serious people dealing with serious issues — and Donny reacts to them like a bored child who can’t wait for the other person to stop talking, so he can start.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen: “every single child has to go back to its family. this should be one of our main priorities in negotiations is to make sure that the children come back to Ukraine, to their families.”

Donny: “thank you, and we did. I was just thinking, we’re hear for a different reason, but we uh just a couple of weeks ago made the largest trade deal in history. that’s a big, that’s a big thing, and congratulations, that’s great. thank you very much.”

shut the fuck up with your children, lady, whoever you are. Donny wants to brag about his trade deals.

everyone was there to talk about ending Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, but Donny was more interested in playing ever-more-outlandish rounds of Things That Never Happened The Most.

“we’re gonna stop mail-in ballots because it’s corrupt. you know, when you go to a voting booth and you do it the right way, you go to a state that runs it properly, you go in, they even ask me, they ask me for my license plate for identify, I said ‘I don’t know if I have it,’ they said ‘sir, you have to have it.’ I was very impressed, actually. but it’s very hard to cheat.”

what the fuck? okay, let’s just give Sundowning President Chucklefuck the benefit of the doubt here, and presume he meant to say drivers license, not license plate. Donny has lived in two states: Florida and New York. granted, Donny also lives in a Perpetual State of Confusion, but you can’t vote there. so let’s talk about New York and Florida. neither of those states require a drivers license to vote, so what the fuck is Donny talking about? oh wait, it’s a sir story. big strong election workers, their faces wet with tears of gratitude, were going ‘sir! sir! we need your license plate, sir! go pry that sucker off the presidential limousine, sir, and fork it over.’

so Donny’s just making shit up, but wait a minute. that clip is from Donny’s one-on-one morning meeting with Zelenskyy, ostensibly about bringing an end to the war in Ukraine — so why is Donny prattling on about whatever nonsensical ‘sir story’ pops into his empty head?

it’s because Donny has lost his fucking marbles — and we’ve all become numb to it. presidents aren’t supposed to act this way. Joe Biden didn’t wander into the tall weeds in the middle of a meeting and start blithering incoherently about whatever he’d seen on TV that morning. neither did Obama. neither did the Bushes.

Reagan did, but he was almost as demented as Donny is — so what does that tell you?

by the way, my What The Fuck Is Wrong With You Challenge is now in its 1,967th day.

would any of the worthless scribblers of the corporate-controlled media care to take me up on it?

oh wait, I think President Scramblebrains wants to talk about some more shit that never happened the most. lay it on us, hotshot.

“we have a thing going on right now in DC. we went from the most unsafe place anywhere to a place that now, people, friends are calling me up, Democrats are calling me up and they’re saying, ‘sir, I want to thank you. my wife and I went out to dinner last night for the first time in four years, and Washington, DC is safe, and you did that in four days.’ I’ll tell you it’s safe. I had another friend of mine, he has a son who’s a great golfer, he’s on tour, and he came in fourth yesterday in the big tournament where Scott Scheffler made the great shot and uh he said his son is going to dinner in Washington DC tonight. I said would you have allowed that to happen a year ago? he said no way, no way. he said ‘what you’ve done is incredible’ and I think the people realize it. but the press says ‘he’s a dictator, he’s trying to take over.’ no, all I want is security for our people. but people that haven’t gone out to dinner in Washington DC in two years are going out to dinner, and the restaurants in the last two days were busier than they’ve been in a long time.”

oh. Donny’s bragging that the police state he’s inflicted on the nation’s capitol has brought untold prosperity to its nightspots. 

fact check: fuck straight off.

Research by Open Table found that restaurant attendance was down every day last week compared with 2024, with the number of diners dipping by 31% on Wednesday, two days after Trump ordered the national guard to patrol Washington.

people would rather stay home in DC than risk being hassled by Donny’s gestapo thugs — yet here’s Donny spinning farcical nonsense about Democrats and golfer-dads phoning him with the tears in their eyes. poor Zelenkyy has to sit there and try keep a straight face while this complete fucking insanity happens right next to him.

Categories Elections, Ethics, Extremism, For-Profit, Humor, Ignorance, Insane, Stupid, Trump

Peter Greene: Why Is it Controversial to Welcome Everyone in a Public School Classroom?

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2025 //
10

In this post, Peter Greene continues his coverage of a teacher in West Ada, Idaho, who got into trouble for putting up a poster that showed different colored hands in the air and said “Everyone is Welcome Here.” District leaders said the poster was unwelcome because it violated federal guidelines that banished DEI, and had to be removed. Some didn’t object to the sentiment but objected to the portrayal of nonwhite hands.

Greene wrote:

Sarah Inama has put her poster up in a new classroom.

Inama, you may recall, is the 6th grade world history teacher told by her district bosses at West Ada School District that her “Everyone Is Welcome Here” poster, complete with hands of many human shades, would not be tolerated in the district.  (I’ve been following this here, here, and here). West Ada is the largest district in Idaho, but their treatment of Inama has been spectacularly awful, both from an Awful Display of Racism standpoint, a Grotesque Mistreatment of Staff standpoint, and a Boneheaded PR Management standpoint. 

Inama went to local news and the story blew up, delivering the shame that West Ada so richly deserved. We know a lot more thanks to some stellar reporting by Carly Flandro and the folks at Idaho Ed News, who FOIAed 1200 emails surrounding this and showcasing the board’s stumbling response. You should read the resulting stories (here and here). 

The day after Inama was on the Today show, the district issued a memo entitled “Ensuring a Consistent and Supportive Learning Environment.” They decided to go with sports analogies. The Chief Academic Officer is a like a referee who enforces rules “to ensure a fair and level playing field.” And there’s this howler–

If one player decided to wear a different uniform, use a different-sized ball, or ignore the rules, the game would lose its structure, creating confusion and imbalance.

Then a report from BoiseDev that the Board of Trustees is considering making every teacher put up an “Everyone is welcome” poster– just without those multi-colored hands. Responding to BoiseDev, a district spokesperson explained:

Regarding the Everyone is Welcome Here posters, the district determined that while the phrase itself is broadly positive, certain design elements have been associated over time with political entities and initiatives that are now subject to federal restriction.

Inama told Idaho EdNews, “That’s appeasing not a political view, but a bigoted view that shouldn’t even be considered by a public school district.”

Inama was told the poster was divisive, that it was “not neutral,” that the problem was not the message, but the hands of v arious skin tones. Teachers shouldn’t have political stuff in the classroom. Inama nails the issue here

“I really still don’t understand how it’s a political statement,” she said. “I don’t think the classroom is a place for anyone to push a personal agenda or political agenda of any kind, but we are responsible for first making sure that our students are able to learn in our classroom.”

Some parents and students showed up at school to make chalk drawings in support. And yet many folks within and outside the district saw this as a divisive issue. How could anyone do that? Meet district parent Brittany Bieghler, who was dropping her kids off the day that parents were chalking the “Everyone is welcome here” message on the sidewalks.

“The ‘Everyone is Welcome’ slogan is one filled with marxism and DEI, there is no need for those statements because anyone with a brain knows that everyone is welcome to attend school, so there is no need to have it posted, written or worn on school grounds,” she wrote. “My family and I relocated here from a state that did not align with our beliefs and we expected it to be different here, but it seems as time goes by, its becoming more like our former state, which is extremely disheartening.”

“Anyone with a brain” might begin to suspect that everyone is not welcome here under these circumstances. And the school board itself couldn’t decide what to respond, drafting an assortment of emails that tried to show conciliation to those that were defiant and defensive, including one complaining in MAGA-esque tones that Inama was naughty for going to “new media.”

Imana resigned from her position, and by June the word was out that she was a new hire at Boise Schools. She told Idaho Ed News, 

I’m so grateful to be able to work within a district that knows the beauty of inclusion and diversity and doesn’t for a second consider it an opinion but embraces it. As an educator, it’s an amazing feeling to know your (district’s) officials, board, and administrators fully uphold the fundamentals of public education and (have) the dignity to proudly support them. I really feel at home knowing we are truly all on the same team … and that’s a team that is rooting on all of our students.

Damned straight. And just last week, as reported by KTVB news, Inama posted video of herself putting up an “Everyone is welcome here” poster in her new classroom.

(To see the video, open the link.)

So the story ends well for Inama, and that’s a great thing. This is the sort of boneheaded administrative foolishness that can drive teachers out of the profession. The unfortunate part of the story is that up the road in West Ada schools, the administration, board and a non-zero number of parents think that challenging racism is bad and saying that students of all races are welcome in school is just one person’s opinion that shouldn’t be expressed openly in a school. Shame on West Ada.

Categories Bigotry, Democracy, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Idaho, Ignorance, Racism

Timothy Snyder: When Donald Meets Vlad

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2025 //
5

Trump and Putin are meeting Friday in Alaska to discuss Ukraine. Ukrainian leader Zelensky was not invited, nor were any representatives of Europe. Trump will hear Putin’s grievances and claims. He will hear no other. After Russia intensified its drone bombing of Ukrainian civilian targets, Trump demanded a ceasefire. Putin ignored him. He gave his a deadline of 50 days (!) to stop the attacks. Putin intensified the attacks. Then Trump said the deadline was 10-12 days. That was two weeks ago. Putin got a face-to-face meeting with Trump on American soil, and his war against Ukraine goes on.

Timothy Snyder is one of the nation’s pre-eminent historians of Europe. He taught at Yale University for many years, but decided to accept an offer to teach at the University of Toronto after Trump was re-elected in 2024. He is the author of many books, including the national bestseller On Tyranny.

Snyder writes:

In the ancient world, people spoke of “Ultima Thule,” a mythical land in the extreme north, the end of the earth.

By venturing north to Alaska to meet Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump reaches his own Ultima Thula, the arctic endpoint of a foreign policy dreamworld.

The premise of Trump’s foreign relations is that foreign leaders can be dealt with like Americans, with fantastic promises and obnoxious bullying.

The fantasies do not function beyond America’s borders. The empty offer of a “beautiful” future does move dictators who commit crimes for their own visions, or affect people who are defending their families from a criminal invasion.

Ukraine has been resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion for three and a half years. Ukrainians fight because Russians invade their land, steal their wealth, kidnap their children and raise them as Russians, torture civilians in basements, murder people with any sort of association with politics or civil society, and destroy their sovereignty.

Putin, for that matter, has his own vision of a beautiful future, and no reason to prefer Trump’s to his own. Putin’s utopia is one of a Ukraine with no government, with a population cowed by torture, with children stolen and brainwashed, with patriots murdered and buried in mass graves, with resources in Russian hands.

Like Trump’s fantasizing, Trump’s bullying also does not work abroad. To be sure, many Americans are afraid of Trump. He has purged his own political party through stochastic violence. He is deploying the US military as a police force, first in California and then in Washington DC.

But foreign enemies apprehend these intimidation tactics differently. In Moscow, deployments of soldiers inside the United States look like weakness. Trump is signalling that he sees the task of the US military as to oppress unarmed Americans. The very move that shocks Americans delights America’s foes.

The tough talk may resonate in America, where we confuse words with actions. But for Russian leaders it covers a weak foreign policy. Trump has made extraordinary concessions to Russia in exchange for nothing at all. Russia has repaid him by continuing the war and seeking to win it — and by laughing at Trump on state-controlled television.

What are those concessions? Just by meeting Putin in Alaska, Trump gives the Russian dictator a chance to spread his own story of his invasion of Ukraine, both to the Americans around Trump and to the American press. By shaking hands with an indicted war criminal, Trump signals that the killings, the tortures, the kidnapings do not matter. 

Even the choice of Alaska is a concession, and an odd one. Russians, including major figures in state media, routinely claim Alaska for Russia. As one of Putin’s special envoys put it, Putin’s journey to Alaska is a “domestic flight.”

Inviting people who claim your territory inside your main military base on that territory to discuss a war of aggression they started without any participation of the country they invaded — well, that is just about as far as a certain logic of fantasy can go. It is Ultima Thule.

It is Ultima Thule, the very end, because Trump has already conceded the more fundamental issues. He does not speak of the need for justice for Russian war criminals, or of the need for Russia to pay reparations. The Trump administration grants that Russia can determine Ukraine’s and America’s foreign policy on the crucial point of NATO membership. They have accepted that Russia’s invasions should lead not only to de facto but also de jure changes in sovereign control over territory.

It would take a longer essay to explain how senseless these concessions are. Accepting that invasion can legally change borders undoes the world order. Granting Russia the right to decide the foreign policy of others encourages further aggression by Russia. Dropping the obvious legal and historical responses to criminal wars of aggression — reparations and trials — encourages war in general.

Trump speaks loudly and carries a small stick. The notion that words alone can do the trick has led Trump to the position that Putin’s words matter, and so he must go to Alaska for a “listening exercise.” Trump’s career has been full of listening to Putin, and then repeating what Putin says.

Trump and Putin are moved by the future perception of their greatness. Putin believes that this can be achieved by war, and an element of this war is the manipulation of the American president. Trump believes that this can achieved by being associated with peace, which, so long as he is unwilling to make policy himself, puts him in the power of the warmaker.

northern lights

Putin is not moved to end the war when his own propaganda is repeated by the president of the United States. He cannot be enticed by a vague vision of a better world, since he has in mind his own very specific atrocity.

In Alaska, Trump reaches his personal Ultima Thula, the limits of his own personal world of magical talk. 

He faces a very simple issue: will Putin accept an unconditional ceasefire or not.

Putin has refused any such thing. The Russians propose an obviously ridiculous and provocative counter: that Ukraine should now formally concede to Russia territory that Russia does not even occupy, lands on which Ukraine has built its defenses. And then Russia can of course attack again, from a far better position. 

Putin knows that Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize. And so Putin’s obvious move is to suggest to Trump that war will end someday, and Trump will get the credit, if the two of them just keep talking (and while Russia keeps bombing).

If Trump leaves Alaska without Putin having agreed to an unconditional ceasefire, there are two paths that Trump can take. He can continue the fantasy, though it will become ever more obvious, even to his friends and supporters, that the fantasy is Putin’s.

Or Trump can make the policy that will make the war harder for Putin, and thereby bring its end closer.

The United States has not formalized its outlandish concessions to Russia, and could take them back in one press conference. The United States has the policy instruments to change the direction of the war in Ukraine, and could employ them.

Trump has threatened “serious consequences” if Putin does not accept an unconditional ceasefire. Those are words, and thus far the consequences of Trump’s words, for Russia, have been more words. This all becomes clear now, at Ultima Thule, clear to everyone. 

When Trump reaches the border of his fantasy world, what is his next step? Where will he go after Ultima Thule?

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, History, Ignorance, International, Lies, Stupid, Trump, Tyranny

Jennifer Berkshire: A New Path, with Less Opportunity and Less Social Mobility

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2025 //
10

Jennifer Berkshire sums up the malicious goals that are embedded in Trump’s One Big Ugly Budget Bill. It will widen the distance between those at the bottom and those at the top. It will reduce the number of students who can pay for graduate degrees. All to assure that the very rich get a a tax break.

While the media may have moved on from the big awful bill that is now the law of the land, I continue to mull over its mess and malice. The single best description I’ve come across of the legislation’s logic comes from the ACLU’s Stefan Smith, who reminds us that the endless culture warring is all a big distraction. The real agenda when you add up all of the elements is “creating more friction for those climbing up the economic ladder in order to ease competition for those already there.” In the future that this legislation entrenches, rich kids will have an even greater advantage over their poor peers, of whom there will be now be many more. Smith calls this “reordering pipelines;” moving the rungs on the ladder further apart or kicking the ladder away works too. However you phrase it, our ugly class chasm just got wider by design.

This is why, for instance, the legislation includes seemingly arbitrary caps on how much aspiring lawyers and doctors can borrow in order to pay for school. By lowering that amount, the GOP just narrowed the pipeline of who can, say, go to med school. As Virginia Caine, president of the National Medical Association, bluntly put it: “Only rich students will survive.” Indeed, college just got more expensive and a lot less accessible for anyone who isn’t a rich student. Meanwhile, cuts to federal Medicaid funding will lead to further cuts in spending on higher education—the sitting ducks of state budgets—meaning higher tuition and fewer faculty and programs at the state schools and community colleges that the vast majority of American students attend. All so that the wealthiest among us can enjoy a tax cut.

This is also the story of the federal school voucher program that has now been foisted upon us. While the final version was an improvement over the egregious tax-shelter-for-wealthy-donors that the school choice lobby wanted, the logic remains the same, as Citizen Stewart pointedly points out:

It’s a redistribution of public dollars upward. And it’s happening at the exact moment many of the same politicians championing school choice are cutting food assistance, slashing Medicaid, gutting student loan relief, and questioning whether children deserve meals at school.

In their coverage of the new program, the education reporters at the New York Times, who’ve been pretty awful on this beat of late, cite a highly-questionable study finding that students who avail themselves a voucher are more likely to go to college. In other words, maybe vouchers aren’t so bad! Except that this sunny view misses the fast-darkening bigger picture: as states divest from the schools that the vast majority of students still attend, the odds of many of those students attending college just got steeper. That’s because as voucher programs balloon in cost, states confront a math problem with no easy answer, namely that there isn’t enough money to fund two parallel education systems. (For the latest on where the money is and isn’t going, check out this eye-opening report from FutureEd.)

Add in the Trump Administration’s decision to withhold some $7 billion from school districts and you can see where this is headed. In fact, when the folks at New America crunched the numbers, they turned up the somewhat surprising finding that the schools that stand to lose the most due to the Trump hatchet are concentrated in red states. Take West Virginia, for example, which is home to 15 of the hardest-hit districts in the land. The state’s public schools must 1) reckon with $30 + million in federal cuts even as 2) a universal voucher program is hoovering up a growing portion of state resources while 3) said resources are shrinking dramatically due to repeated rounds of tax cuts for the wealthiest West Virginians. That same dynamic is playing out in other red states too. Florida, which is increasingly straining to pay for vouchers and public schools, just lost $398 million. Texas, where voucher costs are estimated to reach $5 billion by 2030, just lost $738 million. While 28 states are now suing the administration over the funding freeze, no red state has spoken up.

Shrinking chances

On paper, budget cuts can seem bloodless. Part of the Trump Administration’s strategy is to bury the true cost of what’s being lost in acronyms and edu-lingo, trusting that pundits will shrug at the damage. But as states struggle with a rising tide of red ink, what’s lost are the very things that inspire kids to go to school and graduate: extra curriculars, special classes, a favorite teacher, the individualized attention that comes from not being in a class with 35 other kids. That’s why I’ve been heartened to see that even some long-time critics of traditional public schools are now voicing concern over what their destabilization is going to mean for students. Here’s Paul Hill, founder of the Center for Reinventing Public Education, warning that the explosion of vouchers in red states is going to have dire consequences, not just for students in public schools but for the states themselves:

Enrollment loss will likely reduce the quality of schools that will continue to educate most children in the state. States will be left with large numbers of students who are unprepared for college and career success. 

David Osborne, who has been banging the drum for charter schools since the Clinton era, sounds even more worried. 

Over time, as more and more people use vouchers, the education market in Republican states will stratify by income far more than it does today. It will come to resemble any other market: for housing, automobiles or anything else. The affluent will buy schools that are the equivalent of BMWs and Mercedes; the merely comfortable will choose Toyotas and Acuras; the scraping-by middle class will buy Fords and Chevrolets; and the majority, lacking spare cash, will settle for the equivalent of used cars — mostly public schools.

Meanwhile, the billions spent on vouchers will be subtracted from public school budgets, and the political constituency for public education will atrophy, leading to further cuts.

We’ve seen this movie before

Well, maybe not the exact same movie but a similar one. Anybody recall Kansas’ radical experiment in tax cutting? Roughly a decade ago, GOP pols slashed taxes on the wealthiest Kansans and cut the tax rate on some business profits to zero. Alas, the cuts failed to deliver the promised “trickle-down” economic renaissance. What they did bring was savage cuts in spending on public schools. As school funds dried up, programs were cut, teachers were pink slipped, and class sizes soared, all of which led to a dramatic increase in the number of students who dropped out. Meanwhile, the percentage of high schoolers going to college plunged. 

Young people in the state “became cannon fodder in the fight to redistribute wealth upward,” argues Jonathan Metzl, a scholar and medical doctor, who chronicled the impact of Kansas’s tax-cutting experiment in Dying of Whiteness. Just four years of school budget cuts was enough to narrow the possibilities for a generation of young Kansans. 

But by taking a chainsaw to the public schools, the GOP also gave rise to a bipartisan parent uprising. And not only were lawmakers forced to reverse the tax cuts and restore funding for schools, but voters, who could see with their own eyes what the cuts had meant for their own kids and kids in their communities, threw the bums out the next time they had a chance. Today we’re watching as a growing number of states, with the aid of the federal government and the ‘big beautiful bill,’ embark on their own version of the Kansas experiment—slashing spending, destabilizing public schools, and limiting what’s possible for kids. They’re betting that red state voters will fall in line, sacrificing their own schools, and even their own kids, to ‘own the libs.’ That’s what the ideologues in Kansas thought too.

As I’ve been arguing in these pages, Trump’s education ‘action items’ represent the least popular parts of his agenda. Eliminating the Department of Education is a loser with voters, while cutting funds to schools fares even worse. The idea of cutting funds in order to further enrich the already rich has exactly one constituency: the rich. As the MAGA coalition begins to fragment and fall apart, we should keep reminding voters of all colors and stripes of this fact.

Categories Bigotry, Budget Cuts, Cheating, Childhood, Pre-K, K, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Economics, Education Industry, Education Reform, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Failure, Fake, Fake News, Higher Education, Ignorance, Immigration, NPE Action Fund, Privatization, Propaganda, Scandals Fraud and Hoaxes, School Choice

New Republic: SCOTUS’ Decision to Let Trump Abolish ED Dept is Shameful

By dianeravitch
July 29, 2025 //
10

During his campaign, Trump was outspoken about his determination to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. He blamed the Department for imposing DEI ideology on the nation’s schools, for teaching students “to hate America,” to indoctrinate students to believe whatever he opposes. He even blamed the Department for low test scores.

Never once did he acknowledge that federal law prohibits any federal official from influencing curriculum or instructional materials.

The vast majority of employees of the Department are career civil servants who manage grants, process applications, oversee procurements, and perform necessary tasks to maintain the flow of federal funds to states, school districts, and schools. They have nothing whatever to do with curriculum or test scores.

Trump’s ultimate goal is to withdraw federal funding from public schools. The purpose of federal funding, when the Elementary and Secondary Act was first passed in 1965, was equity, specifically, raising education spending in the poorest states.

Matt Ford of The New Republic describes how the Supreme Court ignored the Constitution and the law to let Trump do what he wants.

He writes:

To cover the Supreme Court these days is to catalogue its lawlessness. The conservative justices’ latest decision in McMahon v. New York allows the president to effectively demolish the Department of Education—a Cabinet-level department that was created by Congress, given duties and responsibilities by Congress, and funded by Congress to carry them out.

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, a pro-wrestling promoter and sexual-abuse lawsuit defendant, made no secret of her goals after taking up her current job. In a speech in March, she declared that the department was to carry out its “final mission”: executing a mandate from President Donald Trump to shutter the department and transfer some of its functions to other agencies. Project 2025, the administration’s de facto policy blueprint, also said the department “should be eliminated.”

A week after taking up her post, McMahon put that plan into action by ordering a “reduction in force,” or RIF, of roughly half of the agency’s employees. The state of New York and other plaintiffs sued McMahon to stop the RIF by arguing that it was a back-door means to end the department’s statutory responsibilities by eliminating the staff responsible for carrying them out.

This was not particularly difficult for the plaintiffs to prove: Trump administration officials publicly described the RIF as part of the “final mission” in alignment with an executive order that directed McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education” while also “ensuring the effective and uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely”—two obviously contradictory goals.

Unsurprisingly, a federal district-court judge granted the plaintiffs a temporary restraining order shortly thereafter. The lower court concluded from the record that the RIF’s actual goal was to “effectively dismantle the Department without an authorizing statute.” When the Trump administration appealed that restraining order to the Supreme Court, it pled ignorance. The district court, the Trump Justice Department argued, “[lacked] jurisdiction to second-guess the executive [branch]’s internal management decisions” and that the order was about “streamlining” the department.

“The government has been crystal clear in acknowledging that only Congress can eliminate the Department of Education,” Solicitor General D. John Sauer told the justices in his filing. “And the government has acknowledged the need to retain sufficient staff to continue fulfilling statutorily mandated functions and has kept the personnel that, in its judgment, are necessary for those tasks. The challenged RIF is fully consistent with that approach.”

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority was gullible enough to believe that. As with almost any other shadow-docket ruling, the court did not bother to explain itself. It fell to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, writing in dissent alongside Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, to explain the gravity of the court’s error. For one thing, Sotomayor noted that black-letter federal law prohibits the Trump administration from doing exactly what it says it is doing.

Congress has prohibited the Secretary of Education from “aboli[shing] organizational entities established” in the Department’s organic statute. 20 U. S. C. §3473(a)(2). As for statutory entities “transferred to the Department,” the Secretary may only “consolidate, alter, or discontinue” a subset of entities specifically identified, after providing Congress with 90 days’ advance notice and a “statement of the action proposed . . . and the facts and circumstances relied upon in support of such proposed action.”

She also emphasized the damage that would result from the court’s decision. “Lifting the district court’s injunction will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended,” she explained. “The majority apparently deems it more important to free the Government from paying employees it had no right to fire than to avert these very real harms while the litigation continues….”

Ford contrasts this decision with SCOTUS refusal to allow Biden to forgive student debt during a national emergency–the COVID pandemic.

To sum up: In Robertsworld, a Democratic president can’t use a federal law that lets the Department of Education “waive and modify” student loans during a national emergency—in this particular case, the COVID-19 pandemic—because Congress was too vague about it for the chief justice’s liking. (The trick here is to selectively treat broad statutes as vague ones.) But when Congress says, “Hey, we’re going to create a bunch of programs for the executive branch to carry out, we’re going to house them in the Department of Education, and we’re also going to create strict limits on how you can reorganize them,” those laws are…merely advisory for Republican presidents, I guess?

The theme of this Supreme Court, he concludes, is lawlessness. Trump can break laws with impunity, anticipating that this Court will approve.

What about the rule of law? A casualty of the Trump regime.

Categories Ignorance, Inequity, Injustice, Scandal, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Dan Rather: Robert Kennedy Jr. Is a Public Menace

By dianeravitch
July 9, 2025 //
4

Dan Rather and his team at Steady writes fearlessly about the dangers posed by Trump and his unqualified Cabinet.

In this post, he discusses the scandal of appointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services. Kennedy has no medical or scientific qualifications. He is a lawyer whose head is filled with conspiracy theories. Worse, he has used his position to cancel major scientific studies and fire scientists.

Rather writes:

The last person this country needed to address the many public health issues we face was Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the man Donald Trump chose to helm the Department of Health and Human Services.

Kennedy is an alarmist, a conspiracy theorist, and a disinformation disseminator who is putting American lives at risk. His convenient amnesia and lack of a medical or science background — he is a lawyer by training — has led to confusion, fear, and poorer health outcomes. He has been HHS secretary for only five months.

And this guy’s HHS leads a country that now has the lowest life expectancy and the highest maternal and infant mortality rates among Western countries while offering absurd options to help us. It’s about to get worse.

The budget reconciliation bill that Donald Trump gleefully signed into law on July 4 will drastically and dramatically impact Americans’ health. An estimated 17 million will lose health insurance. Millions more will see their premiums balloon. Hundreds of hospitals and nursing homes will close. The legislation will cause the largest reduction in food assistance ever, disproportionately impacting children. This will result in an estimated 51,000 preventable deaths a year.

Look no further than Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) agenda as one of the main causes of the hard-right shift. MAHA has emphasized real health issues facing Americans, such as chronic disease, obesity, and poor nutrition, but has offered wrong-headed solutions.

Rather than looking for common sense or legislative options, Kennedy has weaponized his fear-based wellness campaign, preying on people’s rightful concerns about their health. He blames corruption in the food industry and gets people to focus on things like removing food dye or the “dangers” of canola oil (it’s safe), rather than address the real culprits: income inequality, lack of access to health care, environmental pollutants, and now the “big, ugly bill” and its anti-health agenda.

Beyond the bill, there are pressing public health crises affecting Americans. The surging measles outbreak that started in Texas could and should have been contained back in January. Yesterday, the CDC confirmed 1,277 cases in 38 states, a 33-year high. Many believe those numbers are low because of underreporting. Remember that in 2000, the World Health Organization declared measles eradicated in the U.S. Now our country is on track to lose that status.

Kennedy initially downplayed the outbreak, saying, “We have measles outbreaks every year.” The U.S. does have measles cases every year, usually fewer than 200, and they are typically attributed to unvaccinated people contracting the disease abroad.

The best defense against this highly contagious and preventable disease is vaccination, according to the American Medical Association (AMA). The MMR vaccine is one of the safest and most beneficial on the market. It is 97% effective and usually lasts a lifetime. Prior to 1963, when the measles vaccine was introduced, the U.S. saw 3 to 4 million cases a year.

Kennedy, a vocal vaccine skeptic, has been lukewarm at best at encouraging people to vaccinate against measles.

At a congressional hearing in May, Kennedy was asked if he would vaccinate his own children against measles. He replied “probably.” Then added, “My opinions about vaccines are irrelevant. I don’t want to seem like I’m being evasive, but I don’t think people should be taking medical advice from me.” We agree.

His skepticism about vaccines in general, and the MMR vaccine specifically, has led to a drop in immunizations and a prolonging of the current outbreak.

But it’s much more than measles. Last month, in an unprecedented move, Kennedy fired all 17 members of the nonpartisan Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Formed in 1987, the committee is made up of doctors and public health professionals who help the CDC determine best practices for vaccine usage.

Kennedy quickly replaced eight of the members with unvetted candidates. Several are avowed anti-vaccine advocates. One new member has been on the committee before. During his first tenure, he made 12 conflict-of-interest disclosures, which is curious since Kennedy said he fired the original members because they were “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest.” A review of the committee’s disclosures found few conflicts, and all were communicated.

Kennedy’s distrust of vaccines has international implications. The Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI) is recognized as one of the most successful public-private health alliances ever. GAVI was founded in 2000 by the United States, Great Britain, and the Gates Foundation with the goal of increasing vaccine access around the world. It has been credited with significantly reducing infant and child mortality globally. GAVI delivered 2 billion COVID-19 vaccine doses.

Kennedy has halted America’s financial contribution to GAVI, which accounts for 12% of its funding, because of (his) concerns about vaccine safety and what he calls a “disregard for scientific evidence.” That is rich coming from a non-scientist who disregards anything that does not align with his narrow and unfounded beliefs.

Though a Democrat for most of his life, Kennedy has fully embraced the MAGA strategy of lying with impunity. The list of his lies is long. Here are some highlights:

  • HHS released a long-awaited MAHA Report in mid-May. The report called for an aggressive assault on chronic disease. But there were two problems. One, several studies cited by the report do not exist; they were simply made up. And others were misrepresented. Oh, and the Trump administration had pulled funding for any of Kennedy’s initiatives.
  • During an appearance on “The Tucker Carlson Show,” Kennedy mentioned a 1999 CDC study on the correlation (not causation) between the hepatitis B vaccine and autism risk, citing a “1,135% elevated risk of autism” among vaccinated children. The “1,135%” figure has been bouncing around the anti-vax community for years, but it was never actually published in a study. It also ignores the years of research debunking any connection between vaccines and autism. No wonder parents are scared and confused.
  • Kennedy has claimed that half the population of China has diabetes. Again, a seemingly crazy notion made up out of whole cloth. And it was. According to The Lancet, the actual prevalence is just over 12%.
  • Kennedy said COVID-19 was a bioweapon developed by China.

While the reckless whims of Donald Trump represent a clear and present danger to every American’s mental health, the dangerous actions of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. risk their physical health. It is a sad day when the person in charge of this nation’s health could also be described as a public menace.

Categories Extremism, Fake, Health, Ignorance, Science, Trump
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