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Oklahoma: Where Laws and Court Decisions are Bought by the Richest

By dianeravitch
April 22, 2026 //
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John Thompson, retired teacher and historian, lives in Oklahoma and keeps watch on the state of democracy.

He wrote:

Oklahoma is one of several case studies revealing how Trumpians and reactionary institutions such as the Heritage Foundation seek to undermine democracy. So, it is not just Oklahomans who need to come to grips with the multiple ways that Gov. Kevin Stitt, and the Republican-controlled legislature are challenging basic legal norms and the principles of our democracy.

We must understand why Sen. David Bullard told his Republican colleagues that they must restrict voter ballot initiatives. “Your democracy does not need you right now,” he said. “Your republic needs you . . . The Republican form of government says that you’re ruled by your elected officials.”

When I was a child, Oklahoma was a racist, sexist, corrupt oligarchy. But a highly respected federal judge told me that we started to become a democracy on January 1, 1963, the day that Sen. Robert S. Kerr died. That allowed Attorney General Robert Kennedy to send federal investigators into Oklahoma. A month later, they started the investigation of our corrupt Supreme Court. Afterwards, we created one on the nation’s most honest judicial selection processes.

Gov. Stitt has been committed to turning the clock back to the time when the bribery of the Court was the norm. Now, he hopes that an initiative petition can be used to undermine our trustworthy judiciary. That would be a non-starter if the norms of the petition process were respected. But the date of vote was shifted to August 25, when there are virtually no Democrat primaries, and low turnout, so the voters tend to be conservative Republicans.

And that is just one issue where Republicans seek an August vote. They also changed the date for seeking reversing the voters’ decision to protect SoonerCare from Medicaid cuts and for reversing the voters’ decision on the Tobacco Settlement Trust which has ensured that funds from the tobacco settlement are used for building a healthy society. They also hope this tactic will allow for the passage of new Voter I.D. requirements, and cutting property taxes in a regressive manner.

The governor and the legislature have cut taxes by $1.3 billion since 2020. And last year, they committed to the goal of putting “income taxes on the path to zero.” Now the goal is cutting property taxes.

As Christy Taylor of GenXpletives explains:

Oklahoma currently ranks 49th in the nation in per-pupil spending. That means only one state in the country spends less on each student’s education than Oklahoma does. When you adjust for inflation, per-pupil spending has declined since 2008.

Moreover, roughly 80% of every property tax dollar collected in Oklahoma goes directly to public schools and career tech centers.

Even worse, is what Sen. Bullard was speaking about when attacking democracy. He sponsored a ballot measure that required that no more than 10 percent of signatures for a ballot measure come from a county with 400,000 or more people, essentially giving rural, conservative areas the power to block an initiative from appearing on the ballot.

And in another surprise, Gov. Stitt voted to award “a lucrative investment advisory contract to a firm owned by his former chief of staff and one-time business partner — a company that has the power to steer more than $2 billion in state pension, endowment and sovereign wealth fund money.”

Also, it was no surprise, but SB 1439:

Prohibits Oklahoma courts from hearing any civil or administrative action against fossil fuel producers, manufacturers, processors, refiners, pipeline operators, transporters, sellers, trade associations, or any entity that purchases fossil fuels to generate electricity — when the claim arises from or relates to climate change, its alleged effects, or greenhouse gas emissions.

I have been focusing on recently revealed tactics for empowering the affluent and disempowering the poor and working class that the Republican super-majority rushed into place. But, we can’t ignore their HB 3242, which mandates:

Biological sex segregation in restrooms, changing areas, sleeping quarters, and student housing at public schools, public universities, public buildings, and domestic violence shelters. It creates a private right to sue for any person who encounters someone of the opposite biological sex in a covered space. 

Neither can we ignore their attempt to make it harder to regulate puppy mills.

And we can’t overlook the way that what Cherokee Nation Chief Chuck Hoskin was banned from speaking to the House of Representatives because he voiced concerns about rolling back Medicaid.

And we can’t forget that lawmakers filed more than 30 immigration-related bills and that “the vast majority of these bills would further marginalize and penalize Oklahoma immigrants.”

In other words, we must remember that the 2026 session has been full of both “under-the-table” strategies for sneaking rewards to elites that most of Oklahomans would oppose, and loudly displaying cruelty and hatefulness that they believe will bring victory in low-turnout elections.  

Categories Corruption, Democracy, Ethics, Fraud, Injustice, Oklahoma

The Court Decision Requiring U of Penn to Compile a List of Jews on Campus Is Wrong

By dianeravitch
April 20, 2026 //
21

Erwin Chemerinsky writes on the legal site Cafe that a judge’s ruling upholding the Trump administration’s demand for a list of Jews at U of Penn is “egregiously wrong.”

Chemerinsky is the dean of the law school at UC Berkeley and a constitutional scholar.

He wrote:

A federal judge in Philadelphia was egregiously wrong in upholding an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission subpoena to the University of Pennsylvania that effectively requires it to provide a list of its Jewish faculty and staff. At a time of increasing antisemitic acts, and at a moment when the likes of Nick Fuentes and Candace Owens are expressing vile anti-Jewish hate to massive audiences, it should be unthinkable to ask a university to compile and turn over a list of Jewish people on campus, including their home addresses and phone numbers. The University has appealed and the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit should quickly reverse federal district court Judge Gerald Pappert’s truly insensitive opinion…

The EEOC’s goal is to force the University to create a list, with contact information, of as many Jewish faculty and staff on campus as possible so that the agency can reach out to interview them.  It is a fishing expedition by the EEOC with the hope that if it contacts enough Jewish faculty and staff, it might find evidence of antisemitism on campus.

For many reasons, this is unconstitutional; it also is deeply frightening. The Supreme Court has held for almost 70 years, since NAACP v. Alabama in 1958, that requiring organizations to disclose their members violates freedom of association. In that case, the Court held that Alabama violated the First Amendment in requiring that groups like the NAACP disclose their membership lists. Many cases since have reaffirmed this principle. For example, in Americans for Prosperity v. Bonta (2021), the Court declared unconstitutional a California requirement that non-profit groups turn over their list of donors that they already were required to provide to the federal government….

There are also serious privacy concerns in requiring that the University compile and turn over contact information. The district court said the information here—personal home addresses and phone numbers, task-force participation, survey receipt—is not “highly personal.” This is just wrong as a matter of law. In U.S. Department of Defense v. FLRA (1994), the Supreme Court recognized substantial federal employee privacy interests in home addresses. Moreover, a list of home addresses and phone numbers is one thing; a list of home addresses paired with religious identity is another. Similarly, in Kallstrom v. City of Columbus (1998), the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit recognized that disclosure of home addresses can threaten personal security when linked to a category that a hostile actor has targeted. Hostile attacks on Jewish victims are at their highest number in decades….

This egregious decision should be reversed on appeal.

Categories Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Injustice, Pennsylvania, Privacy, Religion, Trump

Two Hurrahs for Our Legal System!

By dianeravitch
March 4, 2026 //
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Despite the Trump regime attacking the Constitution, eroding our rights, and filling every office with incompetent or malevolent individuals, our legal system has frustrated some (certainly not all) of their evil designs.

Not three hurrahs but only two. Why? The Department of Justice is now wholly under Trump’s control. It has become Trump’s law firm, answering only to him. The U.S. Supreme Court has been far too accepting of Trump’s reckless policies. Too many federal judges have gone along with him.

All too often, the regime has ignored the judges. Rulings against Trump’s policies have come from all kinds of judges, including some appointed by Trump. Grand juries have refused his efforts to indict his enemies.

Nonetheless, many federal judges across the country have repeatedly blocked the regime. Many have defended the right of due process for immigrants, many of whom are arrested without a warrant or access to a lawyer, then disappeared into a detention camp or deported to a country they never lived in.

Here are reasons for cheer.

The U.S. Supreme Court declared that Trump does not have the power to slap tariffs on every other country, because the Constitution gives the power of the purse to Congress, not the President. Trump, furious, responded by slapping a 10% tariff on every country, then raised it to 15%. Will the Supreme Court ignore his open defiance?

This is the same Court that ruled that the President is above the law. Absolute immunity. Trump is the kind of guy who loves absolute immunity for any actions he takes.

Even more powerful than the decisions of judges has been the refusal of grand juries to indict Trump’s enemies and critics. That’s why he attacked Iran without congressional approval. Why should he bother? He is above the law, the dream of a habitual law-breaker.

Many federal judges have repeatedly defended the very American idea that immigrants–even undocumented immigrants–have legal rights. They have repeatedly interfered with ICE’s efforts to arrest, detain, and oust immigrants, without a hearing, without due process.

Federal judges confounded Trump’s vendetta against big law firms who represented Trump’s enemies.They frustrated his vengeance so consistently that the Justice Department dropped the charges. The law firms that quickly acquiesced to Trump have egg on heir collective faces.

The grand juries have been dogged in their refusal to bow to Trump’s pursuit of vengeance.

When Sean Charles Dunn, a paralegal in the Justice Department hurled his footlong Subway sandwich (turkey) at US Customs and Border Patrol agents, he was charged with a crime, fired from his job, and hauled before a grand jury. The grand jury refused to indict him. The “Sandwich Guy” was briefly a folk hero for his defiance.

Mark Joseph Stern, writing in Slate, said that the grand jury’s refusal to indict appeared to be an instance of jury nullification, stating that “a grand jury will typically indict a ham sandwich, but it turns out a D.C. grand jury won’t indict the guy who threw the sandwich.”

Trump told Pam Bondi to go after his enemies and she did.

She charged former FBI Director James Comey with lying to Congress, but the grand jury refused to indict him. She charged him again, and the next grand jury did not indict him.

Bondi then went after New York State Attorney General Leticia James, who won successful convictions of Donald Trump in New York state courts.

Trump wanted her indicted for bank fraud and mortgage fraud. (DOJ allegedly received confidential information from Bill Pulte, chair of the Federal Housing Finance Agency). Eric Siebert, the first interim federal prosecutor in Virginia, who was respected by both parties, refused to bring charges because the evidence was flimsy. He resigned and was replaced by Lindsay Halligan, a personal attorney of Trump’s who had no experience as a prosecutor.

Halligan persuaded a grand jury to indict James but the prosecution was invalidated because Halligan had not been confirmed by the Senate and her predecessor had used up the 120 days when he was interim prosecutor.

Two new grand juries refused to indict James, even though they heard only the prosecutors’ evidence, not her defense. .

In another high-profile case, Secretary of Hegseth wanted to punish six members of Congress–all military veterans–who endorsed a video declaring that members of the military should not obey illegal orders. Hegseth himself was on video saying exactly the same thing a few years ago, but no matter. Trump said that their actions were “seditious” and deserved the death penalty. In another comment, he called them “traitors.” Trump’s top aide Stephen Miller said that the six were engaged in an “insurrection.”

The case was put before a grand jury by the U.S. Attorney for D.C., Jeanine Pirro, a former FOX News host.

The grand jury unanimously refused to indict them.

Not one member of the Grand Jury supported the indictment.

In a separate case, Hegseth tried to reduce Senator Mark Kelly’s rank and pension to punish him for participating in the video. Kelly said he had free speech rights. Federal Judge Richard Leon, a Bush II appointee, enjoined Hegseth’s actions. Hegseth is appealing; he wants to bring Kelly down. His case, however, is absurd. How can a U.S. Senator be muzzled because he is a veteran? How can the Secretary of Defense be allowed to vindictively reduce the rank and pension of those who served honorably but had the temerity to speak their mind?

A few days ago, Federal Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts ruled that the government’s policy of deporting immigrants to third countries–countries they have never lived in–is illegal. This is an unusually cruel policy. The decision will of course be appealed.

So three cheers for the brave judges who stand up for the rights of individuals.

Three cheers for Grand Juries, especially those who think for themselves and refuse to be cowed by political bigwigs.

And two cheers for our legal system, which moves very slowly and can bankrupt anyone who does not have a pro bono lawyer.

Categories Accountability, Injustice, Justice

Andy Borowitz: Will Pam Bondi Go to Prison?

By dianeravitch
February 19, 2026 //
8

Andy Borowitz is America’s humorist. More than that, he is incisive and brilliant. He used to write for The New Yorker, but now has his own Substack blog called The Borowitz Report. I subscribe, and I recommend that you do so as well.

In this post, he gives insight into our notorious Attirney General, Pam Bondi, who has turned the Department of Justice into Trump’s personal law firm.

It’s important to remember that she was Attorney General of Florida from 2011 to 2019. She claimed that human trafficking was her #1 issue but somehow overlooked Jeffrey Epstein. As Attorney General, she is still shielding his crimes. Could it be that she is doing this to protect Trump?

Her obnoxious, aggressive, pugnacious appearance before the House Judiciary Committee showed the real Pam Bondi.

Borowitz writes:

Win McNamee/Getty Images

Can the attorney general of the United States go to prison? 

The answer, of course, is yes: John Mitchell, who served under Richard M. Nixon, later served 19 months behind bars for crimes related to the Watergate cover-up. 

Will the toxin known as Pam Bondi follow in his footsteps? 

It’s worth considering in light of her appearance before Congress on Wednesday, a performance that Kimberly Guilfoyle might call “too shouty.” 

Her testimony was unquestionably obnoxious. But was it criminal? 

When you examine the evidence, it doesn’t look good for Pam. 

This was the pivotal moment: responding to a question from California Rep. Ted Lieu about the Epstein scandal, Bondi snapped, “There is no evidence that Donald Trump has committed a crime. Everyone knows that.”

Lieu, who must have been tickled that Bondi was dumb enough to step into the weasel trap he set for her, responded that the attorney general might have just committed perjury. Which, as every Watergate superfan knows, is exactly what earned her Republican predecessor, John Mitchell, a trip to the pokey. 

When the Trump shitshow is finally over, two things must happen. First, there must be a solid month of dancing in the streets. Second, there must be a reckoning: ideally, Nuremberg-style trials of the corrupt quislings who enabled this unprecedented crime spree. With those enjoyable tribunals in mind, let us now consider the case of Pam Bondi.

Remember when Trump nominated Matt Gaetz to be attorney general? We were so much younger then—although, it should be added, not young enough for Matt Gaetz.

At the time, I observed that Gaetz’s nomination was not what QAnon had in mind when they said they wanted to bring pedophiles to justice. In the end, Matt turned out to be as reckless with Venmo as he was about the age of consent, and Trump quickly withdrew his name.

Pundits claimed that Trump never expected Gaetz to pass muster with the Senate. By their reckoning, he was a “sacrificial lamb”—an odd way to describe a man who, in his personal life, had consistently behaved like a wolf. But by shitcanning Gaetz, the theory went, Trump was sending a signal to his Senate toadies that they’d better confirm all his other nominees, no matter how idiotic, incompetent, or drunk. When it came to Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Tulsi Gabbard, Dr. Oz, Kash Patel, and myriad other passengers in Trump’s clown Cybertruck, the gambit seemed to pay off.

Matt Gaetz, peering into the gates of Hell. (Erin Scott-Pool via Getty Images)

As for the job of attorney general, Democrats and Republicans alike seemed relieved that it would not be filled by a summer-stock version of Jeffrey Epstein. Surely, whoever Trump named as Gaetz’s replacement would be an improvement.

Instead, Trump picked Pam Bondi.

In 2016, when she was Florida attorney general, Bondi secured her place in Trump’s heart with a speech at the Republican National Convention. Her bloodcurdling attack on Hillary Clinton inspired the GOP mob to break into a familiar chant, which prompted Bondi to comment, “Lock her up? I love that.” And so, by approving the incarceration of a woman who had never been charged with a crime, Bondi displayed an attitude towards due process that would someday serve her splendidly as the nation’s top law enforcement officer.

She would, of course, have another opportunity to assert her preference for imprisoning innocent people with the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia. On April 14, 2025, El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, Trump’s accomplice in the world’s most notorious administrative error, joined him in the Oval Office, receiving a much warmer welcome there than was offered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. After chummily congratulating each other on the abduction and deportation of a non-criminal, the two men started workshopping how their brilliant strategy might be applied to innocent American citizens.

“The homegrowns are next, the homegrowns,” Trump told Bukele, who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator”—a stroke of branding so cringe, it’s amazing it didn’t come from Elon Musk. “You’ve got to build about five more places,” Trump advised him.

Where did America’s attorney general stand on this flagrant nullification of a basic right enshrined in the Constitution? Trump added, “Pam is studying. If we can do that, it’s good.”

Pam, apparently, is a quick study. On Fox that evening, she was all in on Trump’s blatantly illegal idea, asserting, “These are Americans who he [Trump] is saying who have committed the most heinous crimes in our country, and crime is going to decrease dramatically.”

It’s not that Bondi is bad at her job—it’s that she’s outstanding at the exact opposite of her job, that is, using the DOJ to subvert justice whenever possible. Bondi’s Department of Injustice, a mutant creation worthy of George Orwell and Lewis Carroll, has proven inhospitable to career DOJ lawyers, who have struggled in court to defend the indefensible.

One such staffer, senior immigration attorney Erez Reuveni, committed what Bondi apparently considers a cardinal sin: uttering a truthful statement within earshot of a judge. After acknowledging what was obvious to any thinking person (but seemingly elusive to Messrs. Trump and Bukele)—that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was a mistake—Reuveni was put on indefinite leave and then fired.

Meanwhile, Liz Oyer, a longtime DOJ pardon attorney, was fired for refusing to restore gun rights to the actor Mel Gibson, who lost them after pleading no contest to domestic battery charges in 2011. Apparently, Trump believes Mel Gibson needs lethal weapons more urgently than Ukraine.

We shouldn’t be surprised to see Trump standing up for the rights of domestic abusers, since a sizable number of the January 6 rioters he pardoned fit that description. He doubled down on his support for this cohort by appointing a crony accused of domestic violence, Herschel Walker, ambassador to the Bahamas.

But what makes the Mel Gibson case particularly rich is that Trump has repeatedly claimed he is punishing universities for their “failure to combat antisemitism.” If Trump is serious about spanking antisemites, he need look no further than his pal Mel. 

After the actor’s 2006 drunk driving arrest in Malibu, the police report indicated, “Gibson blurted out a barrage of anti-semitic remarks about ‘fucking Jews’. Gibson yelled out: ‘The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world.’ Gibson then asked: ‘Are you a Jew?'”

Mel Gibson after his 2006 drunk driving arrest (L) and his 2011 domestic violence arrest (R).

In the upside-down world of Pam Bondi, highly regarded DOJ lawyers are fired and Mel Gibson is rearmed. But do such perversions of justice make Bondi a candidate for worst attorney general ever? They most certainly do, when one considers how decisively and repeatedly she has violated her oath of office:

“I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.”

Rather than defend the Constitution, Bondi has used her time in office to tirelessly protect pedophiles—which should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with her tenure as Florida’s AG. The following campaign ad from that era, in which she vowed to “put human trafficking monsters where they belong—behind bars,” hasn’t aged well:

As Bloomberg’s Mary Ellen Klas wrote, “Bondi kept her distance from the state’s most prominent sex-trafficking case, even as Epstein’s victims pleaded with the courts to invalidate provisions of his non-prosecution agreement and filed lawsuits alleging that he abused them when he was on work release from jail.”

I am confident that Bondi’s misdeeds—including but not limited to her role in the Epstein cover-up—have more than earned her a Nuremberg-style tribunal. I am not, however, suggesting we chant, “Lock her up.” Unlike our current attorney general, I believe in due process.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Character, Corruption, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Florida, Injustice, Justice

The Context of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”

By dianeravitch
January 19, 2026 //
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Dr. King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” was written in April 1963. Dr. King wrote in response to a public statement by Birmingham religious leaders who called on Dr. King to be patient and not to engage in demonstrations that would provoke resistance.

This context in which he wrote the letter appears on the website of The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute at Stanford University.

In April 1963 King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) joined with Birmingham, Alabama’s existing local movement, the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR), in a massive direct action campaign to attack the city’s segregation system by putting pressure on Birmingham’s merchants during the Easter season, the second biggest shopping season of the year. As ACMHR founder Fred Shuttlesworth stated in the group’s “Birmingham Manifesto,” the campaign was “a moral witness to give our community a chance to survive” (ACMHR, 3 April 1963). 

The campaign was originally scheduled to begin in early March 1963, but was postponed until 2 April when the relatively moderate Albert Boutwell defeated Birmingham’s segregationist commissioner of public safety, Eugene “Bull” Connor, in a run-off mayoral election. On 3 April the desegregation campaign was launched with a series of mass meetings, direct actions, lunch counter sit-ins, marches on City Hall, and a boycott of downtown merchants. King spoke to black citizens about the philosophy of nonviolence and its methods, and extended appeals for volunteers at the end of the mass meetings. With the number of volunteers increasing daily, actions soon expanded to kneel-ins at churches, sit-ins at the library, and a march on the county building to register voters. Hundreds were arrested. 

On 10 April the city government obtained a state circuit court injunction against the protests. After heavy debate, campaign leaders decided to disobey the court order. King declared: “We cannot in all good conscience obey such an injunction which is an unjust, undemocratic and unconstitutional misuse of the legal process” (ACMHR, 11 April 1963). Plans to continue to submit to arrest were threatened, however, because the money available for cash bonds was depleted, so leaders could no longer guarantee that arrested protesters would be released. King contemplated whether he and Ralph Abernathy should be arrested. Given the lack of bail funds, King’s services as a fundraiser were desperately needed, but King also worried that his failure to submit to arrests might undermine his credibility. King concluded that he must risk going to jail in Birmingham. He told his colleagues: “I don’t know what will happen; I don’t know where the money will come from. But I have to make a faith act” (King, 73). 

On Good Friday, 12 April, King was arrested in Birmingham after violating the anti-protest injunction and was kept in solitary confinement. During this time King penned the “Letter from Birmingham Jail” on the margins of the Birmingham News, in reaction to a statement published in that newspaper by eight Birmingham clergymen condemning the protests. King’s request to call his wife, Coretta Scott King, who was at home in Atlanta recovering from the birth of their fourth child, was denied. After she communicated her concern to the Kennedy administration, Birmingham officials permitted King to call home. Bail money was made available, and he was released on 20 April 1963. 

In order to sustain the campaign, SCLC organizer James Bevel proposed using young children in demonstrations. Bevel’s rationale for the Children’s Crusade was that young people represented an untapped source of freedom fighters without the prohibitive responsibilities of older activists. On 2 May more than 1,000 African American students attempted to march into downtown Birmingham, and hundreds were arrested. When hundreds more gathered the following day, Commissioner Connor directed local police and fire departments to use force to halt the demonstrations. During the next few days images of children being blasted by high-pressure fire hoses, clubbed by police officers, and attacked by police dogs appeared on television and in newspapers, triggering international outrage. While leading a group of child marchers, Shuttlesworth himself was hit with the full force of a fire hose and had to be hospitalized. King offered encouragement to parents of the young protesters: “Don’t worry about your children, they’re going to be alright. Don’t hold them back if they want to go to jail. For they are doing a job for not only themselves, but for all of America and for all mankind” (King, 6 May 1963). 

In the meantime, the white business structure was weakening under adverse publicity and the unexpected decline in business due to the boycott, but many business owners and city officials were reluctant to negotiate with the protesters. With national pressure on the White House also mounting, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent Burke Marshall, his chief civil rights assistant, to facilitate negotiations between prominent black citizens and representatives of Birmingham’s Senior Citizen’s Council, the city’s business leadership. 

The Senior Citizen’s Council sought a moratorium on street protests as an act of good faith before any final settlement was declared, and Marshall encouraged campaign leaders to halt demonstrations, accept an interim compromise that would provide partial success, and negotiate the rest of their demands afterward. Some black negotiators were open to the idea, and although the hospitalized Shuttlesworth was not present at the negotiations, on 8 May King told the negotiators he would accept the compromise and call the demonstrations to a halt. 

When Shuttlesworth learned that King intended to announce a moratorium he was furious—about both the decision to ease pressure off white business owners and the fact that he, as the acknowledged leader of the local movement, had not been consulted. Feeling betrayed, Shuttlesworth reminded King that he could not legitimately speak for the black population of Birmingham on his own: “Go ahead and call it off … When I see it on TV, that you have called it off, I will get up out of this, my sickbed, with what little ounce of strength I have, and lead them back into the street. And your name’ll be Mud” (Hampton and Fayer, 136). King made the announcement anyway, but indicated that demonstrations might be resumed if negotiations did not resolve the situation shortly. 

By 10 May negotiators had reached an agreement, and despite his falling out with King, Shuttlesworth joined him and Abernathy to read the prepared statement that detailed the compromise: the removal of “Whites Only” and “Blacks Only” signs in restrooms and on drinking fountains, a plan to desegregate lunch counters, an ongoing “program of upgrading Negro employment,” the formation of a biracial committee to monitor the progress of the agreement, and the release of jailed protesters on bond (“The Birmingham Truce Agreement,” 10 May 1963). 

Birmingham segregationists responded to the agreement with a series of violent attacks. That night an explosive went off near the Gaston Motel room where King and SCLC leaders had previously stayed, and the next day the home of King’s brother Alfred Daniel King was bombed. President John F. Kennedy responded by ordering 3,000 federal troops into position near Birmingham and making preparations to federalize the Alabama National Guard. Four months later, on 15 September, Ku Klux Klan members bombed Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls. King delivered the eulogy at the 18 September joint funeral of three of the victims, preaching that the girls were “the martyred heroines of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity” (King, “Eulogy for the Martyred Children,” 18 September 1963). 

Footnotes

“The Birmingham Truce Agreement,” 10 May 1963, in Eyes on the Prize, ed. Carson et al., 1991. 

Douglas Brinkley, “The Man Who Kept King’s Secrets,” Vanity Fair (April 2006): 156–171.

Eskew, But for Birmingham, 1997. 

Hampton and Fayer, with Flynn, Voices of Freedom, 1990. 

King, Address delivered at mass meeting, 6 May 1963, FRC-DSI-FC. 

King, Eulogy for the Martyred Children, 18 September 1963, in A Call to Conscience, ed. Carson and Shepard, 2001.

King, Shuttlesworth, and Abernathy, Statement, “For engaging in peaceful desegregation demonstrations,” 11 April 1963, BWOF-AB.

King, Why We Can’t Wait, 1964.

Shuttlesworth and N. H. Smith, “Birmingham Manifesto,” 3 April 1963, MLKJP-GAMK. Back to Top

Stanford

The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute

Categories Alabama, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Courage, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Freedom, History, Injustice

Bernie Sanders: The World We Need and Deserve

By dianeravitch
December 31, 2025 //
28

Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont shared his year-end thoughts along with his hopes for the future. As the first year of Trump’s second term winds down, it’s hard to believe that the dreams he describes can come true. Every day brings a new blow to the environment, to our health care, to our schools, to our children, to the rule of law, to our allies, to our national sense of purpose.

Yet we will persist. We have no other choice.

Sisters and Brothers – 

As we come to the end of a very difficult year, I want to wish everyone a very happy holiday season, a wonderful new year and thank you all for the support you have given our progressive movement.

Let me take this opportunity to share some end-of-the-year thoughts with you. 

As I reflect on the moment in which we’re living, what is most disturbing to me is not just that a handful of multi-billionaires control our economic life, our political life, and our media. That’s bad, and extremely dangerous. But, what is even worse is the degree to which these Oligarchs, through their wealth and power, have created an environment that limits our imaginations and our expectations as to what we deserve as human beings.

It really is quite amazing.

We live in the wealthiest country in the history of the world and, yet, we are asked to accept as “normal” the reality that tens of millions of Americans struggle every day to afford the basic necessities of life – food, housing, health care or education. 

We live in a “democracy,” but we are told that it is legal and proper for one man, the wealthiest person on earth, to spend $270 million in campaign contributions to help elect a president who then provides huge tax breaks and other benefits to the very rich. 

We live in a nation whose Declaration of Independence in 1776 boldly proclaimed “that all men are created equal” while, today, the gap between the rich and poor is wider than ever and the top 1% owns more wealth than the bottom 93%.

We live under a criminal justice system which punishes people for being poor, but rewards fossil fuel tycoons whose carbon emissions are wreaking havoc on the lives of billions of people and posing an existential threat to the planet.

As we enter the new year, our job is clear. We don’t have to accept the Oligarchs’ determination as to what is possible and what is not. We must think big, not small. We must reject status quo politics and economics. We must imagine, and fight for, a world very different than the one in which we now live. We must demand and create a world of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.

Yes. We no longer have to be the only major country on earth that does not guarantee health care for all as a human right. The function of healthcare must not be to make the insurance companies and drug companies even richer. We CAN create a high quality cost-effective health care system that focuses on disease prevention, extends our life expectancy and is publicly funded. This is not a radical idea.

Yes. In a highly competitive global economy we CAN have the best public educational system in the world from child care to graduate school. As a nation, we must respect the importance of education and adequately compensate educators for the important work they do. We must strengthen and improve our primary and secondary educational systems and make child care and public colleges and universities tuition free. This is not a radical idea.

Yes. We CAN end the housing crisis and the reality that 800,000 Americans are homeless and millions spend half of their incomes to put a roof over their heads. We must build millions of units of low-income and affordable housing and, in the process, create many good paying union construction jobs. This is not a radical idea. 

YES. With effective regulation we CAN utilize Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics to improve the lives of all, not just the billionaires who own that technology. As worker- productivity increases we can raise wages, improve working conditions and reduce the work week. Making sure that AI and robotics benefit all of society and not the wealthy few is not a radical idea.

YES. We CAN address the outrageous level of income and wealth inequality that we are now experiencing. While we can respect talented businesspeople and entrepreneurial skills, we do not have to accept the outrageous level of greed and vulgarity that the billionaire class too often exhibits. It is beyond absurd that we have a tax system in which the richest people in this country often pay an effective tax rate that is lower than truck drivers or nurses. Demanding that the 1% and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes is not a radical idea. 

At a time when we live in a dangerous and unprecedented moment in American history, and part of a rapidly changing world, it is absolutely imperative that we boldly respond to the crises that we face. This is not the time for timidity. Our agenda must be fearless and straightforward. Nothing less than the preservation of democracy, the well-being of the planet and the future of humanity is a stake.

As we enter the new year, let us go forward together. 

In Solidarity. 

Bernie

IN THAT SPIRIT, dear friends, Happy New Year!

Don’t stop believing in the power of conscience and collective action.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

🍾🍾🍾🍾🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂🥂

Categories Democracy, Freedom of Speech, Freedom of the Press, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Hope, Inequality, Injustice, Justice

Musk and Trump Have Blood on Their Hands After Canceling US AID

By dianeravitch
December 16, 2025 //
11

At the start of the second Trump administration, Trump unilaterally created a fake “Department of Government Efficiency,” led by Elon Musk. Only Congress can create or eliminate Departments. According to the Constitution, the House of Representatives is responsible for funding and defunding the federal government.

Trump ignored the Constitution and Congress and let Musk and his team ransack the Federal Government, fire thousands of civil servants, and close agencies at will. DOGE decisions were made not by experts but by Musk and his team, most of whom were young men in their 20s, even a teenagers. From their point of view, their greatest accomplishment was to copy massive amounts of personally identifiable data from the Treasury Department and the Social Security Administration.

While DOGE slashed and burned agencies and Departments with abandon, the cruelest cut of all was the near-total elimination of foreign aid. Millions of people in impoverished countries relied on U.S. AID for food, medicine, and medical care. The aid is gone. Hundreds of thousands of people died. If you say it in the active tense, Trump and Musk murdered “hundreds of thousands of people” whose lives depended on US AID. The food aid was more than a humanitarian impulse: American farmers lost at least $2 billion that was used to pay them to supply food for US AID.

Matt Johnson wrote for MS NOW:

“We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper,” Elon Musk boasted in February, shortly after President Donald Trump gave him permission to hack his way through the federal government. As a “special government employee” with no oversight running the “temporary organization,” the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Musk destroyed the 64-year-old humanitarian agency in a matter of days, abruptly halting deliveries of lifesaving medicine, emergency food aid and many other forms of support to the poorest people on the planet. This was done in the name of DOGE’s mission to “maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”

Musk claimed that DOGE would slash government spending by “at least $2 trillion,” but it ended up saving a microscopic fraction of that figure. Now that DOGE has been disbanded, Musk claims “We were a little bit successful” — but admits that he wouldn’t do it again. 

Musk tried his hand at government, shrugged and moved on. The same can’t be said for the people who are dead and dying thanks to the DOGE-led onslaught on the U.S. Agency for International Development. “No one has died as [a] result of a brief pause to do a sanity check on foreign aid funding,” Musk declared in March. According to models created by Boston University epidemiologist Brooke Nichols, hundreds of thousands of people have in fact died as a result of eliminated and disrupted aid. 

It’s impossible to calculate the ultimate human toll of shuttering USAID. The U.S. was responsible for 40% of the total foreign aid tracked by the United Nations in 2024, and much of the infrastructure that delivered this aid has now been destroyed. Beyond the frozen payments for active aid projects, partner organizations have closed, supply chains for medicine and food deliveries have been severed and staff who administered and monitored programs have been fired. Early warning systems for starvation and infectious diseases have shut down. 

The individual stories are harrowing. A South Sudanese child with HIV died from pneumonia because he didn’t receive the medication necessary to sustain his immune system. People participating in studies were abandonedwith experimental drugs in their systems and medical devices in their bodies. Cases of acute malnutrition at refugee camps have surged. 

In the MAGAverse, none of this is true because USAID was never an aid organization to begin with. Mike Benz, a right-wing influencer who has accused the agency of being a terror organization and subverting governments around the world, was a big influence on Musk’s assault on USAID, which Benz called the “Terror Titanic.” Like Musk before him, Benz has now been appointed as a special government employee to investigate his allegations that USAID was a massive covert influence operation and front for the CIA. 

Benz’s campaign is just the latest example of MAGA propaganda using USAID as a convenient political scapegoat. DOGE viewed the takeover of USAID as an opportunity to find instances of “viral waste,” which could be broadcast to the American people as a justification for its other cost-cutting efforts. One example cited by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt was the “50 million taxpayer dollars that went out the door to fund condoms in Gaza.” Trump later declared that the money had been “sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas.” 

There was just one problem: The money was actually for family planning in a province of Mozambique called Gaza….

This is not the full article. Open the link to read the rest.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Data, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Failure, Funding, Injustice, International, Musk, Elon, Trump

Karen Attiah on the Murder of Kashoggi and Trump’s Embrace of His Murderer

By dianeravitch
November 20, 2025 //
4

Karen Attiah was the editor at The Washington Post for Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. She recently left the Post, objecting to its obeisance to Trump.

Trump’s warm welcome for Saudi Arabia’s leader, Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, outraged her, as it outraged everyone who remembered what happened to Khashoggi.

Khashoggi was a journalist, author, and dissident in Saudi Arabia. He fled Saudi Arabia in September 2017 and settled in the U.S. He was hired by Karen Attiah to write an opinion column for The Washington Post. On October 2, 2018, Khashoggi went to the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, to get a marriage license. Fifteen Saudi security personnel were waiting for him. They strangled him, and a surgeon in their group dismembered his body. It was never recovered. The CIA later determined that he was killed by direct order of Crown Prince MBS.

Since 2018, MBS has been in disrepute in the West. A few days ago, MBS was an honored guest at the White House. Trump spread a red carpet, praised him lavishly, and commended his record on human rights. He was almost as obsequious to MBS as he is to Putin.

A Warm Welcome for an Assassin

When a reporter asked about Khashoggi, Trump angrily said that the victim was “controversial” and “some people didn’t like him,” and reporters should not ask such disrespectful questions.

Trump cannot plead ignorance about what happened. He was President in 2018, when Khashoggi was murdered.

If you are on BlueSky, you might want to read Karen Attiah’s reaction to Trump’s defense of MBS.

In one of her comments, she wrote:

I will never forget having to edit Jamal’s final, posthumous piece for the Washington Post, after he was murdered.

He was calling for free expression in the Arab world. You can read it here :

A note from Karen Attiah, Global Opinions editor

I received this column from Jamal Khashoggi’s translator and assistant the day after Jamal was reported missing in Istanbul. The Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together. Now I have to accept: That is not going to happen. This is the last piece of his I will edit for The Post. This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world. A freedom he apparently gave his life for. I will be forever grateful he chose The Post as his final journalistic home one year ago and gave us the chance to work together. 

I was recently online looking at the 2018 “Freedom in the World” report published by Freedom House and came to a grave realization. There is only one country in the Arab world that has been classified as “free.”

That nation is Tunisia. Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait come second, with a classification of “partly free.” The rest of the countries in the Arab world are classified as “not free.”

As a result, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change.

The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before.

My dear friend, the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, wrote one of the most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He unfortunately is now serving an unwarranted five-year prison sentence for supposed comments contrary to the Saudi establishment. The Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of a newspaper, al-Masry al Youm, did not enrage or provoke a reaction from colleagues. These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence.

As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate. There was a time when journalists believed the Internet would liberate information from the censorship and control associated with print media. But these governments, whose very existence relies on the control of information, have aggressively blocked the Internet. They have also arrested local reporters and pressured advertisers to harm the revenue of specific publications.

There are a few oases that continue to embody the spirit of the Arab Spring. Qatar’s government continues to support international news coverage, in contrast to its neighbors’ efforts to uphold the control of information to support the “old Arab order.” Even in Tunisia and Kuwait, where the press is considered at least “partly free,” the media focuses on domestic issues but not issues faced by the greater Arab world. They are hesitant to provide a platform for journalists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. Even Lebanon, the Arab world’s crown jewel when it comes to press freedom, has fallen victim to the polarization and influence of pro-Iran Hezbollah.

Who attended the White House dinner for Mohammed bin Salman November 19, 2025

The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power. During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe, which grew over the years into a critical institution, played an important role in fostering and sustaining the hope of freedom. Arabs need something similar. In 1967, the New York Times and The Post took joint ownership of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, which went on to become a platform for voices from around the world.

My publication, The Post, has taken the initiative to translate many of my pieces and publish them in Arabic. For that, I am grateful. Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington, then he or she would be able to better understand the implications of similar projects in his or her community.

The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.

Categories Character, Corruption, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Injustice, Trump

Trump’s Shocking Destruction of the Department of Justice

By dianeravitch
November 17, 2025 //
3

The New York Times published a deeply researched article about the Trump administration’s systematic destruction of the U.S. Department of Justice.

This is a gift article, meaning that non-subscribers may open the link.

Traditionally, the Department of Justice is independent of the administration in power.

Trump has broken down all the guardrails that protected the Department from political interference.

Trump selected Pam Bondi as Attorney General to carry out his wishes. He selected his personal defense attorneys as Bondi’s top assistants. Hundreds of career officials were fired. Thousands have left. The ethics officer was fired, because he insisted that the Department abide by ethics rules. The pardons attorney was fired, because Trump wanted to give pardons to friends, like actor Mel Gibson, who wanted his gun rights restored despite his history of domestic violence.

The Justice Department is now completely under the personal control of Trump. It is an instrument of his whims.

In one example, the Department of Justice sued a prestigious law firm for discriminating against white men, even though the law firm is 97% white. Why? The firm has represented Democrats.

The agency responsible for investigating domestic terrorism has been gutted. Civil rights enforcement has turned to attacking racial inequities and defending aggrieved white men.

The New York Times is the one major newspaper that has not bowed to Trump or capitulated to his threats. We sometimes criticize the Times for its efforts to be “on the one hand, on the other,” but this is not one of those articles.

This is a straightforward demonstration of the politicization and gutting of a bedrock protector of our democracy.

This article documents the early stages of fascism.

Categories Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, Justice, Trump

SCOTUS Pauses Order to Fully Fund SNAP

By dianeravitch
November 7, 2025 //
31

Reuters reported that the U.S. Supreme Court put a hold on a lower court’s order to fully fund the SNAP program, which provides food for low-income people. About one of every eight Americans will go hungry because of the Court’s order. The lower federal district court in Rhode Island ordered the administration to fully fund SNAP. An appeals court declined to overrule the Rhode Island order. The administration was willing to offer about half of the funds needed.

But Chief Justice John Roberts concluded there was no rush to feed hungry people. I bet he went home to a dinner of steak, potatoes, green beans, and salad, accompanied by a splendid Cabernet.

The New York Times, however, said it was Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson who halted the lower court order. She too had a grand meal tonight while 42 million Americans go hungry. Let’s see: filet of sole and salad with a bottle of Chardonnay.

The New York Times reported:

Food stamps: Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson late Friday temporarily halted a lower court order that would have required the Trump administration to fund food stamps in full, fueling new uncertainty around the anti-hunger program’s immediate fate. The justice did not rule on the legality of the White House’s actions. Instead, she imposed a pause meant to give an appeals court more time to weigh the legal arguments raised by the government, as it seeks to withhold funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program during the shutdown. Some states had already said that they were preparing to send out full food stamp benefits. 

Reuters reported:

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday allowed President Donald Trump’s administration to withhold for now about $4 billion needed to fully fund a food aid program for 42 million low-income Americans this month amid the federal government shutdown.

The court’s action, known as an administrative stay, gives a lower court additional time to consider the administration’s formal request to only partially fund the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, known as SNAP or food stamps, for November. Chief Justice John Roberts, who issued the stay, set it to expire in two days.

The administration had filed an emergency request hours earlier asking the justices to put on hold a Rhode Island-based judge’s order that gave the administration until Friday to fully fund the program, which costs $8.5 billion to $9 billion per month.

Categories Character, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Health, Injustice, Trump
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