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Trump and Musk Rescind List of Federal Properties for Sale

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2025 //
15

If your head is spinning, you are not alone. Trump issues an executive order, one court overturns it, another restores, another court overturns it. Musk sends a mass email to hundreds of thousands of civil servants, telling them they must respond with a list of five things they did in the past week; their failure to respond will be treated as a resignation. The heads of some agencies tell their employees to ignore Elon’s email. The email is withdrawn. Then the email is distributed again.

If you work for the federal government, this is madness, not good for morale.

Russell Vought, primary author of Project 2025, is now director of the Office of Management and Budget, the nerve center of the federal government. He is a Christian nationalist. He said recently:

“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” Vought said in a video revealed by ProPublica and the research group Documented in October. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work, because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down … We want to put them in trauma.”

What’s going on? Chaos. Disruption. A calculated effort to make the government less efficient. Why? I don’t know but I have suspicions.

In recent days, the Trump administration issued a list of more than 400 properties that were for sale. The list included the headquarters of several Departments in D.C.

Then the list was withdrawn.

Madeline Ngo of The New York Times reported:

On Tuesday, the Trump administration identified more than 440 federal properties that could be sold off, a list that included high-profile buildings like the headquarters of the F.B.I., Justice Department and the Department of Health and Human Services.

By Wednesday morning, the entire inventory had been taken down, replaced by an agency web page that said the list of properties was “coming soon.”

The General Services Administration, an agency that manages the federal real estate portfolio, had already revised the list at least once. In the hours after it was published, about 100 properties, including many in the Washington, D.C., area, were removed.

The changes stirred up confusion over the Trump administration’s plan to offload a vast amount of federal property. Officials at the General Services Administration said the “disposal” of the buildings could help save hundreds of millions of dollars and ensure that taxpayers do not have to pay for “underutilized federal office space.” But the list swiftly came under criticism by Democratic lawmakers and some former federal officials who worried about the potential impact on government services across the country.

A spokeswoman for the agency said on Wednesday that officials have received an “overwhelming amount of interest” since releasing the list, and they expect to republish it in the near future after they evaluate initial input. The spokeswoman stressed that it will be continuously reviewed and updated. 

The original version of the list included offices of several cabinet-level departments and other large spaces used by the Agriculture Department and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Those were among the buildings removed when the list was whittled down to 320 properties. Still included for possible sale in that version: buildings used by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as field offices for the Social Security Administration in areas like western Pennsylvania and Saginaw, Mich.

Federal buildings that were about a million square feet were marked for possible sale in Los Angeles, Atlanta, St. Louis, Cleveland, Memphis and Kansas City, Mo. In New York City, the properties included offices for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, along with two downtown buildings that house offices for federal prosecutors with the Southern District of New York and the Internal Revenue Service.

Though the properties are not formally listed on the market, a spokeswoman for the General Services Administration said Tuesday that the agency would consider and evaluate all serious offers.

Categories Cruelty, Ethics, Extremism, Injustice, Insane, Musk, Elon, Trump

Julian Vasquez Heilig: How to Respond to the Department of Education DEI Tipline!

By dianeravitch
March 5, 2025 //
3

Julian Vasquez Heilig is a scholar of diversity, equity and inclusion. His blog is called Cloaking Inequity. He was Provost at Western Michigan State University. He recently stepped down to further his scholarship and advocacy as a professor. Julian is a founding member of the board of the Network for Public Education.

His advice for the DEI tipline: “Let’s flood it with truth.”

He writes:

In yet another attempt to weaponize the federal government against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in education, the U.S. Department of Education—at the urging of Moms for Liberty and other far-right extremist groups—has launched the “Stop DEI Portal” (https://enddei.ed.gov).

This taxpayer-funded snitch line is designed to invite anonymous complaints against public schools, colleges, and universities that are actively working to create inclusive and equitable environments for all students. Their goal? To stoke fear, intimidate educators, and dismantle efforts to address racial, gender, and socioeconomic inequities in education.

Let’s be clear: this is not about stopping discrimination—it’s about silencing efforts to eliminate it.

But here’s the thing: if this portal is truly meant to address discrimination, then let’s make sure it serves that purpose.

Let’s Turn the Tables: Report REAL Discrimination

If the Department of Education wants reports of discrimination, let’s give them exactly that. But let’s report real, documented cases of discrimination—the kind that actually harms students and families every single day, especially in underregulated charter and voucher-funded schools.

Here’s what they don’t want reported, but what we should be flooding their portal with:

1. Discrimination Against Students with Disabilities

• Many charter and voucher schools systematically exclude students with disabilities, either by refusing to provide necessary accommodations or pushing them out with discriminatory discipline policies.

• Special education students in voucher programs often lose their federal protections under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) when they transfer to private schools.

• Some schools refuse to admit students who require additional supports, effectively segregating students with disabilities from their peers.

📌 If you or someone you know has experienced this, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov

2. Discrimination Against LGBTQ+ Students

• In some states, charter and private schools receiving taxpayer-funded vouchers have explicit policies that allow them to deny admission to LGBTQ+ students or expel them for their identity.

• LGBTQ+ students often face harassment, deadnaming, misgendering, and bullying—sometimes by school officials—without intervention.

• Books and curriculum that acknowledge LGBTQ+ history and experiences are being banned, erasing the existence of LGBTQ+ students and families from the classroom.

📌 If you’ve seen LGBTQ+ students being targeted or erased, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov

3. Racial Discrimination and Segregation in Schools

• Many charter and private schools resegregate students by race and income, creating de facto segregation that mirrors the Jim Crow era.

• Black and Brown students face harsher disciplinary actions than their white peers for the same behaviors.

• AP African American Studies, ethnic studies courses, and other curriculum that acknowledges systemic racism are being banned or watered down, denying students an accurate understanding of history.

📌 If you have evidence of racial discrimination in schools, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov

4. Discrimination Against Low-Income Students

• Voucher programs siphon public dollars away from neighborhood schools, making it harder for low-income students to access well-funded, high-quality education.

• Private voucher schools are not required to provide free or reduced-price lunch programs, effectively shutting out students who rely on school meals.

• School choice programs increase economic segregation, allowing affluent families to access better resources while leaving lower-income students in underfunded public schools.

📌 If you know of schools pushing out or underfunding low-income students, report it here: https://enddei.ed.gov

Weaponizing the Portal Against Its Own Purpose

The Stop DEI Portal is not about protecting students—it’s about political theater and furthering a radical agenda to dismantle public education.

Conservative groups like Moms for Liberty, the Heritage Foundation, and other well-funded organizations have pushed for Project 2025, a policy plan designed to eliminate federal civil rights protections, dismantle DEI initiatives, and privatize public education.

They want to create a parallel education system where only privileged, wealthy families benefit—while marginalized students are left behind.

What You Can Do Right Now

✅ Step 1: Submit REAL complaints to the Stop DEI Portal

Visit https://enddei.ed.gov and report discrimination against students with disabilities, LGBTQ+ students, students of color, and low-income students.

✅ Step 2: Share this far and wide

Encourage educators, parents, and students to flood the portal with real discrimination complaints.

✅ Step 3: Support organizations fighting back

Groups like Our Schools Our Democracy (OSOD) and the Network for Public Education (NPE) are exposing the harms of privatization and the discriminatory practices of charter and voucher schools.

✅ Step 4: Stay engaged in the fight to protect public education

The NPE/NPE Action Conference on April 5-6 in Columbus, Ohio is bringing together educators, advocates, and policymakers to discuss how to defend public schools and stop the Project 2025 playbook. I’ll be there. 

There’s no time to sit on the sidelines. The Stop DEI Portal is just the beginning of a much larger battle. If we don’t fight back now, the next generation will inherit an education system built on exclusion, discrimination, and privatization.

Let’s make sure the truth is louder than deception.

🔗 Submit your complaint now: https://enddei.ed.gov

🔗 Support OSOD and the Network for Public Education

🔗 Register for the NPE/NPE Action Conference before spots fill up!

This is about more than DEI. This is about democracy, justice, and the future of public education. Let’s fight back—together.

Categories Accountability, Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of Speech, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, Hoax, Injustice, Racism, Trump

Paul Cobaugh: Trump and Vance Are Traitors

By dianeravitch
February 28, 2025 //
18

Paul Cobaugh spent his career in the military, where he worked in intelligence. In his blog “Truth against Threats,” he expressed his horror and shame about what Trump and Vance did today to betray our country. For another view, consider Senator Lindsey Graham’s craven response; he called on Zelensky to resign, in a tweet. Loyalty above country; loyalty above democracy.

He wrote:

I’m still catching my breath after a long road trip, but wanted to share my most succinct thoughts about the White House, Trump fiasco today, with President Zelenskyy, of Ukraine. 

This is somber and I would ask, that you please consider the heartfelt nature of the following words. No cartoons, no graphics. This is simply, a plea, from the innermost part of my heart. 

My friends and family,

My heart could hardly be heavier, from a professional perspective. What I am about to say, has absolutely nothing to do with anyone’s political party affiliation. It is simply a matter of being an American, loyal to my nation, its founding principles and our esteemed history, as a bastion of democracy and morality. Yes, it is true that we have erred, often in our history, but always as MLK said, and I paraphrase, “moved the arc of history, towards justice.” 

The fiasco today in the White House, represented a treasonous sellout of American values and our own national security. Please, hear what I am saying. The vicious and utterly dishonest attack on President Zelenskiy, by President Trump and VP Vance, with support from others, was the single most disgraceful act I have witnessed in my lifetime. That says something since I have lived through President Nixon’s resignation and President Clinton’s impeachment. 

President Zelenskiy of Ukraine has been doggedly leading his nation in their desperate defense, against a genocidal Putin for the last three years. Ukraine’s fight has always been our fight. They have been ours and NATO’s first line of defense against the world’s most dangerous adversary, Vladimir Putin. Putin, interfered in our 2016, 2020 and 2024 election, in cooperation with the Trump campaign. The evidence, in and outside of classified channels, is overwhelming. 

Putin’s unprovoked assault on Ukraine has been an exercise, in cultural and actual genocide, against the Ukrainian people. Stalin via the Holodomor or starvation of Ukrainians in the 1930s, was the first attempt at erasing Ukrainian culture from history. Putin, in his pathetic attempt to regain the territory of the former Soviet state, is doing the same. Putin is under sanctions by the International Criminal Court for genocide. The Ukrainian people, have suffered what no American could possibly understand and yet, they fight for not only their freedom, but their very lives and culture. 

Our current president and his entire administration supports Putin. There is no argument to support the opposite and I would respectfully challenge anyone, to argue these points. 

My friends and family, the massacre of men, women and children, along with the attempt to erase the very culture of Ukraine, is everything that our nation has long fought against, honorably. It is as simple as, this is what it means to be an American citizen. Democracy is our creed and the lifeblood of our nation. We cannot allow our nation to be submissive to the hopes and desires of genocidal despots, like Vladimir Putin. Still, POTUS Trump, has long admired and has attempted to emulate him. I cannot in any sense, stay quiet, without selling out my own morality. 

Americans defend freedom. That is who we are. We do not praise, endorse or support tyranny. Maybe President Trump does and his entire cabinet and party, but those of us who have demonstrated our values on the battlefield, can never allow ourselves to condone and assist such tyranny. The events today in the White House, did in fact endorse genocide, tyranny and every value abhorrent, to our nation’s values and history. 

President Trump, his sycophantic party and his entire cabinet, should feel absolutely nothing but shame this evening. Any moral American, would resign immediately. No one in this administration will do so. 

Many will argue that what occurred was fine with them, from a party perspective. My friends, our values transcend political parties. Americans do not do, what our president and VP did today, with the full support of the cabinet and party. 

I never endorse a party as that I do not believe in them. I will though, strongly and with every fiber of my moral spine, condemn this administration as un-American and a threat to US and global security. I ask all true patriots, to make your feelings clear to your elected congressmen and senators, that you will not stand for treason. 

I have employed the most reasonable language that I am capable of, to bring you this message. I emplore everyone, to revisit our constitution and demand that your representatives and senators, do so as well. I and others in my profession that have worked at the highest levels, predicted today, as far back as 2015. No one would listen then and in the interim. Please, consider my words now, before there is nothing left of what it means to be an American. 

My kindest regards to everyone,

Paul

Categories Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, International, Trump, Vance, J.D.

Paul Cobaugh: Patriots Don’t Support Coups!

By dianeravitch
February 25, 2025 //
3

Paul Cobaugh is a military veteran who spent many years in intelligence operations, decoding propaganda. This post is straight talk from a patriot and a vet. His blog is “Truth Against Threats.”

TAT readers,

This is a quick update. For the next week or so, I have an erratic schedule that will keep me from the longer essays, but will intermittently bring you shorter, very succinct thoughts regarding our ongoing coup by a now, fully fascist Republican Party. There is simply no longer a Conservative Party. Today’s GOP has an exclusively MAGA agenda and has either stood by and cowardly watched the ongoing coup, or offered tacit support. 

Speaker Mike Johnson meekly or rather sneakily, trolls the halls of our Capital Building, cheerleading and garnering votes for the Trump/ Musk/ Putin coup. The business of the US is being shoved aside in order to allow Trump/ Musk, dictatorial powers that allow them to overthrow our republic and replace it with profit and power-driven tyranny. VP Vance, antagonizing our allies in Europe while concurrently backing the AfD, Germany’s extreme, right-wing party, that Musk supports.

Trump’s statements claiming that, “nothing is illegal when saving your country,” which he began claiming, when our court system started throwing legitimate legal roadblocks into his and DOGE’s coup machinery. My friends and fellow citizens, Trump’s chaos is intentional and is a diversion from his intended goal, to place all relevant power under the auspices of the Oval Office. Yes, for those that have been reading TAT for a while now, know that this is exactly the 180-day Transition Playbook from Project 2025.Why won’t the media call it a coup?

Why won't the media call it a coup?

As indicated in my ongoing explanations about the coup, time is critical now, if we are to stop or slow this coup’s steamrolling of our constitutional republic. This is Trump’s second attempt, with January 6th, 2021 being his first try. Apparently, our hand-picked SCOTUS decided to forgive and forget that attempt and gave him a second opportunity. Now, we have no Congress, no SCOTUS and an Executive Branch, bursting at the seams with the tyrannical power that our founding fathers decided to limit with a system of “checks and balances.” Today’s GOP, has devolved that system incrementally now for years. 2025, is the year that it came all together for them and resulting in the only major challenge to our republic, other than the Civil War.

Trump’s pre negotiation concessions to Putin, before talking with him about Ukraine, is a shared, power-play between Trump and Putin. His Gaza plan, a recipe for a much larger war in the Middle East and theirs and Modi’s plan to isolate China, while carving up the rest of the world into serfdom imposing fiefdoms for the three of them. 

Considering my extensive background in the USSOCOM, Special Operations community, I’m on solid ground calling Trump, Putin’s and Modi’s efforts radical, globally dangerous actions, a power play unseen on the world stage, since Hitler, Mussolini and Japan’s maneuvering just prior to and throughout WW II. Americans during that time period were also slow to acknowledge and understand the threat that FDR and Churchill understood. Then like now, it was the GOP and American oligarchy that were the obstacles to preparing for war and fighting global fascism. There is no excuse now for Americans, regardless of party affiliation, to deny this coup and hostile takeover. 

Deep inside all Americans that respect and honor our constitution and true American values, lies a gene of resistance. It appears whenever tyranny raises its ugly head and threatens democracy, ours or the world’s. Trump, Putin and Musk, don’t understand patriotic Americans dedication to our actual values and guaranteed constitutional rights. They will find out soon enough if they persist. As I always say, this is not about party, this is quite plainly, about being a true patriot. Real Americans do not worship God, guns and Trump as American values. Real Americans don’t respect or tolerate what I call the Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse, Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and Political Violence. 

True principled conservatives have now already left the party or vote against it. Those who voted for Trump, have been brainwashed and no longer have the ability to see truth. Stop trying to convince them. When I write, I write for honest citizens, never a party. This is America for heaven’s sake, not Russia, China, Iran or otherwise. We all get a say and freedom to think as we wish, worship or not, and we all have a citizen’s obligation, to defend our nation and its real values. 

Trump and Musk both are schoolyard bullies. This means that at heart, they are both cowards that will fold in the face of overwhelming resistance. It is up to all Americans to participate and stop allowing the MAGA crowd to misinterpret our history, our values and especially our constitution, simply to support their charismatic Pied Piper. My intentions are to put every legal roadblock in front of the coup-crowd publicly. If this is dangerous in the face of intimidation, then I say as did Admiral Farragut during the Civil War, “damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.” 

I aim to continue writing the truth about this coup and its leaders and followers. All of you that are exploding my follower statistics are doing the same. It is what we do as Americans. I’m beyond proud of all of you and am humbly honored, to be among such patriots. 

My warmest regards to all,

Paul

© 2025 Paul Cobaugh
San Antonio, TX 

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Dark Money, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Injustice, International, Propaganda, Republicans, Trump, Tyranny

Trump Is Breaking the Law By Banning Teaching About DEI

By dianeravitch
February 16, 2025 //
10

Haley Bull of Scripps News reported yesterday that Trump sent out an order to all 50 states warning that the federal government would cut off funding to any school that teaches about “diversity, equity or inclusion.”

She wrote:

The Department of Education is warning state education agencies they may lose federal funding if they do not remove DEI policies and programs to comply with the department’s interpretation of federal law.

A letter from the Department of Education Office for Civil Rights was sent to the departments of education in all 50 states, according to the Department of Government Efficiency.

“Institutions that fail to comply with federal civil rights law may, consistent with applicable law, face potential loss of federal funding,” acting assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor writes in the letter. The message warns that “the department will vigorously enforce the law” to schools and state educational agencies receiving funding and that it will start taking measures “to assess compliance” in no more than 14 days.

The letter argues that a Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which found that affirmative action in the university’s admission process violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, should apply more broadly. 

“The law is clear: treating students differently on the basis of race to achieve nebulous goals such as diversity, racial balancing, social justice, or equity is illegal under controlling Supreme Court precedent,” the letter states.

This letter fails to mention that since 1970, the U.S. Department of Education has been subject to a law that states clearly that no officer of the federal government may interfere with what schools teaching.

The law states: “No provision of any applicable program shall be construed to authorize any department, agency, officer, employee, of the United States to exercise any direction, supervision, or control over the curriculum, program of instruction, [or] administration…of any educational institution…or over the selection of library resources, textbooks, or other printed or published instructional materials.“

The law is P.L. 103-33, General Education Provisions Act, section 432.

These zealots are trying to turn teaching about civil rights, about Black history, and about LGBT people into a criminal act.

They are wrong. Reality exists no matter what they ban and censor.

They are violating the law, and they must be stopped.

They must be sued by the ACLU, the NAACP, and every other legal organization that defends the rule of law.

Categories Bigotry, Censorship, Civil Rights, Curriculum, Disruption, Equity, Extremism, Fraud, Freedom to Learn, Freedom to Read, Gender, Ignorance, Inequity, Injustice, Racism, Trump, U.S. Department of Education

Heather Cox Richardson: Keeping track of Trump’s Assault on the Rule of Law

By dianeravitch
February 11, 2025 //
9

The far-right forces behind Trump have been planning their assault on democracy and the rule of law for years. Decades even, if you consider ALEC and other rightwing groups, like the Heritage Foundation. Project 2025 was the plan, and one of its author is now director of the powerful Office of Management and Budget.

A central part of their plan was to overwhelm the public and the media with a flurry of executive orders. They call it “flooding the zone.” It’s nearly impossible to react to three or four outrages a day. Who can even catalogue all of them?

Heather Cox Richardson tries to pull it together for her readers. Yesterday there were multiple court orders, more than she has room to report. And multiple executive orders, including one suspending enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits U.S. firms from bribing foreign officials; Trump thinks it puts American businesses at a disadvantage if they can’t bribe foreign officials as their competitors do. There were multiple DOGE assaults on federal agencies. Even HRC has to be selective. But it’s easy to feel overwhelmed.

That’s exactly what the Trump enablers want. They want the public to feel as though resistance is futile. It’s not. The courts keep telling them “you can’t do that.” So now, through JD Vance, the Trump team is hinting that they might ignore the courts.

Repeat after me. “We will not give up. We will resist. We will work with others. We will join Indivisible or some other resistance group. We will resist.”

She writes:

As soon as President Donald Trump took office, his administration froze great swaths of government funding, apparently to test the theory popular with Project 2025 authors that the 1974 law forbidding the president from “impounding” money Congress had appropriated was unconstitutional. The loss of funding has hurt Americans across the country. Today, Daniel Wu, Gaya Gupta, and Anumita Kaur of the Washington Post reported that farmers who had signed contracts with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to improve infrastructure and who had paid up front to put in fences, plant different crops, and install renewable energy systems with the promise the government would provide financial assistance are now left holding the bag.

With Republicans in Congress largely mum about this and other power grabs by the administration, the courts are holding the line. Chief Judge John McConnell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Rhode Island today found that the Trump administration has refused to disburse federal funding despite the court’s “clear and unambiguous” temporary restraining order saying it must do so. McConnell said the administration “must immediately restore frozen funding” and clear any hurdles to that funding until the court hears arguments about the case. This includes the monies withheld from the farmers.

This evening, Massachusetts U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley blocked the Trump appointees at the National Institutes of Health from implementing the rate change they wanted to apply to NIH grants. But, as legal analyst Joyce White Vance notes, the only relief sought is for the twenty-two Democratic-led states that have sued, keeping Republican-dominated states from freeloading on their Democratic counterparts. As Josh Marshall noted today in Talking Points Memo, it appears a pattern is emerging in which Democratic-led states are suing the administration while officials from Republican-led states, which are even harder hit by Trump’s cuts than their Democratic-led counterparts, are asking Trump directly for help or exceptions.

As soon as he took office, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, who was a key author of Project 2025 and who is also acting as the head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, announced he was shuttering the agency. That closure was a recommendation of Project 2025, which called the consumer protection agency “a shakedown mechanism to provide unaccountable funding to leftist nonprofits.” Immediately, the National Treasury Employees Union sued him, saying that Vought’s directive to employees to stop working “reflects an unlawful attempt to thwart Congress’s decision to create the CFPB to protect American consumers.”

MAGA loyalists, particularly Vice President J.D. Vance, have begun to suggest they will not abide by the rule of law, but before Trump and Vance took office, Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts called out Vance’s hints that he would be willing to defy the rulings of federal courts as “dangerous suggestions” that “must be soundly rejected.”

Today the American Bar Association took a stand against the Trump administration’s “wide-scale affronts to the rule of law itself” as it attacks the Constitution and tries to dismantle departments and agencies created by Congress “without seeking the required congressional approval to change the law.”

“The American Bar Association supports the rule of law,” president of the organization William R. Bay said in a statement. “That means holding governments, including our own, accountable.” He cheered on the courts that “are treating these cases with the urgency they require.”

“[R]efusing to spend money appropriated by Congress under the euphemism of a pause is a violation of the rule of law and suggests that the executive branch can overrule the other two co-equal branches of government,” Bay wrote. “This is contrary to the constitutional framework and not the way our democracy works. The money appropriated by Congress must be spent in accordance with what Congress has said. It cannot be changed or paused because a newly elected administration desires it. Our elected representatives know this. The lawyers of this country know this. It must stop.”

He called on “elected representatives to stand with us and to insist upon adherence to the rule of law…. The administration cannot choose which law it will follow or ignore. These are not partisan or political issues. These are rule of law and process issues. We cannot afford to remain silent…. We urge every attorney to join us and insist that our government, a government of the people, follow the law.”

Today, five former Treasury secretaries wrote an op-ed in the New York Times that also reinforced the legal lines of our constitutional system, warning that “our democracy is under siege.” Robert E. Rubin and Lawrence H. Summers, who served under President Bill Clinton; Timothy F. Geithner and Jacob J. Lew, who served under President Barack Obama; and Janet L. Yellen, who served under President Joe Biden, spoke up about the violation of the United States Treasury’s nonpartisan payment system by political actors working in Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency.”

That DOGE team “lack training and experience to handle private, personal data,” they note, “like Social Security numbers and bank account information.” Their involvement risks exposing highly sensitive information and even risks the failure of critical infrastructure as they muck around with computer codes. The former Treasury secretaries noted that on Saturday morning, a federal judge had temporarily stopped those DOGE workers from accessing the department’s payment and data systems, warning that that access could cause “irreparable harm.”

“While significant data privacy, cybersecurity and national security threats are gravely concerning,” the former secretaries wrote, “the constitutional issues are perhaps even more alarming.” The executive branch must respect that Congress controls the nation’s money, they wrote, reiterating the key principle outlined in the Constitution: “The legislative branch has the sole authority to pass laws that determine where and how federal dollars should be spent.”

The Treasury Department cannot decide “which promises of federal funding made by Congress it will keep, and which it will not,” the letter read. “The Trump administration may seek to change the law and alter what spending Congress appropriates, as administrations before it have done as well. And should the law change, it will be the role of the executive branch to execute those changes. But it is not for the Treasury Department or the administration to decide which of our congressionally approved commitments to fulfill and which to cast aside.”

That warning appears as Trump indicates that he is willing to undermine the credit of the United States. Yesterday, on Air Force One, he told reporters that the members of the administration trying to find wasteful spending have suggested that they have found fraud in Treasury bonds and that the United States might “have less debt than we thought.” The suggestion that the U.S. might not honor its debt is a direct attack on the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which says that “[t]he validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned.” That amendment was written under similar circumstances, when former Confederates sought to avoid debt payments and undermine the power of the federal government.

Lauren Thomas, Ben Drummett, and Chip Cutter of the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that “for CEOs and bankers, the Trump euphoria is fading fast.” Consumers are losing confidence in the economy, and observers expect inflation, while business leaders find that trying to navigate Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs is taking all their attention.

Meanwhile, Trump has continued his purge of government employees he considers insufficiently loyal to him. On Friday he tried to get rid of Ellen Weintraub of the Federal Elections Commission, who contended that her removal was illegal. He also fired Colleen Shogan, the Archivist of the United States, head of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the government agency that handles presidential records. The archivist is the official responsible for receiving and validating the certified electoral ballots for presidential elections—a process Trump’s people tried to corrupt after he lost the 2020 presidential election.

It was NARA that first discovered Trump’s retention of classified documents and demanded their return, although Shogan was not the archivist in charge at the time.

The courts happened to weigh in on the case of the retained classified documents today, when U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the FBI must search its records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from journalist Jason Leopold after Leopold learned that Trump had allegedly flushed presidential records down the toilet when he was president, and later brought classified documents to Florida. The judge noted that the Supreme Court ruling in Trump v. United States that the president cannot be prosecuted for crimes committed as part of his official duties and is “at least presumptive[ly] immune from criminal prosecution for…acts within the outer perimeter of his official responsibility” means that there is no reason to hold back information to shield him from prosecution. Indeed, Howell notes, that decision means that the FOIA request is now the only way for the American public to “know what its government is up to.”

Howell highlighted that the three Supreme Court justices who dissented from the Trump v. United States decision described it as “mak[ing] a mockery of the principle, foundational to our Constitution and system of Government, that no man is above the law.” In a footnote, Howell also called attention to the fact that presumptive immunity for the president does not “extend to those who aid, abet and execute criminal acts on behalf of a criminally immune president. The excuse offered after World War II by enablers of the fascist Nazi regime of ‘just following orders’ has long been rejected in this country’s jurisprudence.”

Today, Trump fired David Huitema, director of the Office of Government Ethics, the department that oversees political appointments and helps nominees avoid conflicts of interest.

On Friday, Trump fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, U.S. Special Counsel Hampton Dellinger. That office enforces federal whistleblower laws as well as the law that prohibits federal employees from engaging in most political activity: the Hatch Act. Congress provided that the special counsel can be removed only for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office,” and today Dellinger sued, calling his removal illegal.

Tonight, Judge Amy Berman Jackson blocked Dellinger’s firing through Thursday as she hears arguments in the case.

—

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Injustice, Justice, Trump

Dana Milbank: When You Elect a Felon as President, You Get a Scofflaw

By dianeravitch
February 9, 2025 //
6

Trump has rolled out multiple executive orders that violate the law. He has installed submissive officials in key departments (like Justice) who will defend his law-breaking. The Republicans (who called Joe Biden a dictator) defend Trump’s reign of lawlessness. They have gleefully given Trump their Constitutional powers. Without a peep.

Dans Milbank advises Democrats: Don’t help him. He doesn’t need your vote.

He writes:

So, here’s a shocker: It turns out that, if you elect a felon as president of the United States, he will continue to break laws once he’s in office.

Who knew?

Ultimately, it will be up to the courts to determine which of President Donald Trump’s actions are illegal. But a case can be made — indeed, many cases already have been made in federal courts — that the new administration over the course of the last fortnight has violated each of the following laws. See if you can say them in one breath. In reverse chronological order of first enactment:

The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act of 2024. The Administrative Leave Act of 2016. The Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014. The Affordable Care Act of 2010. The Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986. The Inspector General Act of 1978. The Privacy Act of 1974. The Impoundment Control Act of 1974. The Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The Federal Advisory Committee Act of 1972. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952. The Administrative Procedure Act of 1946. The Public Health Service Act 1944. The Antideficiency Act of 1870.

That’s a century and a half of statutes shredded in just over two weeks. And those don’t include the ways in which Trump already appears to be in violation of the Constitution: The First Amendment’s protections of free speech and association; the Fifth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection and due process; the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment; the 14th Amendment’s promise of birthright citizenship; Article I’s spending, presentment, appropriations and bicameralism clauses; Article II’s take-care clause; and the separation of powers generally.

“The Trump administration so far has been the Advent calendar of illegality,” says Norman Eisen, whose group, State Democracy Defenders Action, has been filing lawsuits against the administration. At least seven federal judges appointed by presidents of both political parties have already blocked Trump’s moves to freeze federal funding, end birthright citizenship, extend a dubious buyout offer to government employees and deny treatment to transgender inmates.

Benjamin Wittes, who runs the popular Lawfare publication, predicts that, of the dozens of instances in which Trump is in conflict with existing law, he will ultimately lose 80 percent of the cases when they eventually arrive at the Supreme Court after 18 months or so of litigation. But that’s a long time to wait while the president’s lawlessness causes chaos and suffering. And even if the pro-Trump majority on the Supreme Court hands him a victory only 20 percent of the time, that could still fundamentally reshape the U.S. government, reducing Congress to irrelevance.

Republicans in Congress have for years asserted their Article I authority, and they howled about encroaching dictatorship when President Joe Biden did nothing more nefarious than forgive student-loan debt. (The Supreme Court struck that down.) So what are they doing about Trump usurping the powers of Congress? They’re applauding.

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, acknowledged that what Trump and Elon Musk are doing to cut off congressionally mandated funding “runs afoul of the Constitution in the strictest sense.” But, he told reporters this week, that’s “not uncommon” and “nobody should bellyache about that.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, at a news conference Wednesday, was asked by Fox News’s Chad Pergram about the “inconsistency” of Republicans who are now “ceding Article I powers to the executive branch under Elon Musk.”

“I think there’s a gross overreaction in the media,” Johnson replied, with a forced chuckle. He admitted that what Trump is doing “looks radical,” but went on: “This is not a usurpation of authority in any way. It’s not a power grab. I think they’re doing what we’ve all expected and hoped and asked that they would do.”

These are not the words of a constitutionally designated leader of the legislative branch. These are the words of a Donald Trump handmaiden. And it is time for Democrats to treat him as such.

Democrats have been negotiating in good faith on a deal to fund the government for the rest of fiscal year 2025; the government shuts down in five weeks if funding isn’t extended. There’s no doubt that Rep. Tom Cole (R-Oklahoma), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, and Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairwoman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, are also negotiating in good faith.

But the whole thing is not on the level. Trump has shown that he will ignore the spending bills passed by Congress and fund only those programs he supports — the Constitution, and the law, be damned. And Johnson has made clear that this is “what we’ve all expected and hoped and asked that they would do.”

In a letter to his Democratic colleagues this week, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said he told House GOP leaders that Trump’s efforts to cut off programs funded by Congress “must be choked off in the upcoming government funding bill, if not sooner.” But even if Democrats extracted from Republicans language in the spending bill that the programs must be funded as Congress specifies, Trump has already made clear that such a law wouldn’t be worth the paper it’s written on. And Johnson made it clear he has no intention of obliging Democrats with such a guarantee anyway; he said at his Wednesday news conference that Jeffries’s letter “laid out the foundation for a government shutdown.”

Clearly, there is no hope of good-faith negotiation with Trump, or with Johnson. Republicans control the House, Senate and White House. Let them pass a 2025 spending bill on their own. Let them raise the debt ceiling on their own. Let them enact Trump’s entire agenda on their own. They have the votes. Democrats ought not give them a single one.

Good parenting uses the idea of “natural consequences”: If your child refuses to wear her coat, let her be cold for the day. Either way, the voters will provide the consequences: FAFO. Trump knows what this means: He posted a picture of himself next to a FAFO sign, to deliver the message to Colombia’s president during their recent deportation standoff.

Democrats, by withholding their votes, will be giving Trump and Johnson some good parenting. Republicans can shut the government down. Or they can enact the sort of devastating cuts to popular programs that they like to talk about. Either way, the voters will provide the natural consequences.


The third week of the Trump presidency has been just as chaotic as the first two. Trump, who won the 2024 election promising to end wars and to put “America First,” now proposes to take over Gaza and to spend American taxpayer dollars to dismantle bombs and make it a “Riviera” on the Mediterranean. (He later clarified that Israel would handle the forced resettlement of the 2 million Palestinians there — “people like Chuck Schumer” — and then cede the Palestinian land to the United States.) The Trump-appointed chairman of the Federal Communications Commission is using his agency to assist Trump in his personal vendetta against CBS News, forcing the network to hand over unedited tapes of an interview with Kamala Harris that are the subject of a lawsuit Trump filed against CBS.

Funding was shut off to some Head Start programs for preschoolers. And the administration, though it isn’t deporting any more migrants than the Obama administration did, stepped up efforts to humiliate them and is now sending deportees to Guantánamo Bay.

Meantime, the world’s wealthiest man runs amok through the federal bureaucracy, and he appears to have access to private records of all Americans and highly classified information such as the identities of CIA operatives. He is reportedly doing this with a group of unvetted men in their early 20s — as well as a 19-year-old heir to a popcorn fortune who recently worked as a camp counselor. Musk, though he seems to be running much of the country, has exempted himself from all government disclosure and ethics requirements. But fear not: If Musk, whose companies get billions of dollars in federal contracts, “comes across a conflict of interest,” said White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, he will — Scout’s honor — recuse himself. The administration’s attempt to induce federal employees to take a legally dubious buyout came in the form of an email with the same subject line — “fork in the road” — that Musk used to drive Twitter employees to quit.

The South Africa-born Musk, fresh from his encouragement of far-right extremists in Germany, replied “yes” this week to a post on X that said “we should allow more immigration of White South Africans.”

Musk moved to dismiss staff and shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development, which Musk calls “evil.” Maybe that’s because USAID’s inspector general was investigating the activities of Musk’s Starlink in Ukraine. But the administration and its allies rushed to justify the decision — by fabricating propaganda. At the White House, Leavitt told reporters that she was “made aware that USAID has funded media outlets like Politico. I can confirm that more than $8 million … has gone to subsidizing subscriptions.” Trump inflated the fiction further, to suggest “BILLIONS” went to “THE FAKE NEWS MEDIA AS A ‘PAYOFF’ FOR CREATING GOOD STORIES ABOUT THE DEMOCRATS.” In reality, $44,000 of USAID money went to Politico over several years — not from “payoffs” or “subsidies” but from officials subscribing to Politico Pro, as they did throughout the government (hence the $8 million). On Capitol Hill, Johnson provided a different fabrication, crediting Trump and Musk for stopping USAID from funding “transgender operas in Colombia,” “drag shows in Ecuador” and “expanding atheism in Nepal.” But it appears USAID did not fund any of those things.

The willy-nilly cancellation of all foreign aid would end lifesaving programs and various counterterrorism and counternarcotics efforts, dealing a lethal blow to U.S. soft power and driving countries into the arms of China and Russia, while hurting American farmers in the bargain. But it’s not just USAID. Trump and Musk, with their reckless and unfocused attack on federal workers, are raising the likelihood of any number of crises, at home and abroad. Their hollowing-out of the FBI and the Justice Department (with the notable exception of activities targeting Trump critics and migrants) raises the likelihood of a terrorist attack and foreign infiltration, not to mention more crime domestically. Their attempt to drive workers to quit at the CIA and NSA jeopardizes national security. Depleting the ranks of food-safety inspectors and bank regulators poses obvious dangers, as would Trump’s idea of abolishing FEMA. The administration tried to reduce personnel at the FAA — but last week’s plane crash in D.C. suddenly made it discover we need more air traffic controllers.

Yet Republican leaders on Capitol Hill either salute Trump or look the other way. They’re on their way to confirming all of Trump’s nominees, including vaccines opponent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the federal government’s health programs; Tulsi Gabbard, who has a bizarre fondness for Russia, to oversee intelligence; and Kash Patel, Trump’s agent of vengeance, to run the FBI.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-South Dakota) said the sort of thing Trump and Musk are doing to USAID is “probably true of any administration when they come in.” Handmaiden Johnson even welcomed the proposed U.S. takeover of Gaza, saying, contrary to reality, that it was “cheered by, I think, people all around the world.”

A few Republicans are raising objections. Collins doesn’t think Musk’s upending of USAID “satisfies the requirements of the law,” and she pronounces herself “very concerned.” But what’s the senator from Maine going to do about it? Apparently, nothing.

That will have to be up to Democrats. The out-of-power party has been bashed in the news media and by progressives for doing too little to stand up to Trump. Then, when Democratic lawmakers protested outside USAID headquarters, they were criticized for doing too much. “You don’t fight every fight,” Rahm Emanuel told Politico.

In truth, Democrats have almost no ability to stop Trump, but they do have the power, and the obligation, to stand in lockstep opposition to what the president is doing. Some of them might argue that the only way to protect certain programs, and the vulnerable people who need them, is to cut a deal with Trump and Republicans. But Trump has demonstrated abundantly that he will try to use unconstitutional means to kill off those programs regardless of what Congress does.

But if Democrats can’t stop a reckless president from creating unnecessary crises and harming millions of Americans, they certainly don’t need to give a bipartisan veneer to the atrocity. Let Republicans own the consequences of breaking government. Don’t save Trump from himself.

Categories Accountability, Biden, Bigotry, Civil Rights, Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, Injustice, Trump

Will the FBI Sabotage Trump’s Witch-hunt?

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2025 //
4

A few days ago, I suggested in a post that every FBI agent should defeat Trump’s purge if every one said that he or she was involved in the arrest or investigation of the January 6 insurrectionists or the search of Mar-a-Lago. This is a good tactic of resistance.

But wiser heads at the FBI and its branch offices have another plan, which may also be effective. Basically, it is non-compliance.

Trump wants to fire every FBI agent who obeyed lawful orders.

Benjamin Wittes wrote about this strategy in Lawfare, a Brookings Institution blog:

He writes:

The Situation on Friday was too fluid to write responsibly on the ongoing purge at the FBI. 

Things have clarified enough today to say one thing clearly: A lot of people at the bureau—leadership and street agents, analysts and staff alike—are flirting with heroism right now.

Here is my best understanding of what is going on from a combination of press reporting and my own poking around. 

Last week, as has been widely reported, the Justice Department leadership sought to force into retirement a variety of senior leaders at FBI headquarters. In addition, the FBI’s interim leadership was pressured to identify agents and other personnel who had worked on the Jan. 6 investigations. And special agents in charge around the country were told to help identify such personnel. Specifically, they were told to administer a questionnaire to staff—a questionnaire that was due at 3:00 pm today—in which agents and others are asked to self-report on their own Jan. 6-related activities. 

From what I gather, the pushback has been remarkable. A large number of agents are refusing to fill out the questionnaire. The FBI Agents Association has sent around model language for agents who refuse to cooperate. At the management level, the leadership of a number of field offices has made clear that they will not take administrative action against those who do not self-report. And the bureau’s acting leadership itself is clearly pushing back against the demands for this information. 

In his email to the workforce, Acting Director Brian J. Driscoll, Jr. made clear that the demand for information “encompasses thousands of employees across the country who have supported these investigative efforts. I am one of those employees, as is acting Deputy Director Kissane.” 

How widespread is the internal resistance? I don’t know. But we are going to find out soon. 

The results of the questionnaire, over the next day or so, will be sent to the deputy attorney general’s office which—as Driscoll quotes a memo sent to him, “will commence a review process to determine whether any additional personnel actions are necessary.” 

Will the acting deputy attorney general, Emil Bove, receive a pile of actionable material or will he receive what amounts to a large pile of spoiled questionnaires? And either way, what will he—and the White House—do with whatever it receives? In one situation, it will have to take on the reality that a shockingly large number of bureau personnel played a role, quite unsurprisingly, in the largest federal investigation in American history. They executed search warrants, ran down leads, interviewed people, made arrests and testified in one or more of the 1,500 plus federal prosecutions that resulted.

Does Bove imagine that he will fire all of these people? Does he imagine administering loyalty tests to them somehow? What do you do when you want to punish FBI agents for enforcing the law—and thousands of them did it faithfully?

Conversely, as seems more likely, Bove may find himself with a whole lot of survey refusal—and thus limited useful data on who the villains are who actually did their jobs with respect to Jan. 6. What does he do then? Does he fire everyone who refused to self-disclose? Does he fire the management in the field offices who tolerated—or even encouraged—the refusal? 

What does an administration bent on revenge do when FBI personnel en masse choose to “hang together” rather than hanging separately?

The FBI rank and file have power in this equation that other agencies, such as USAID for example, do not have. The Trump administration does not need USAID. It wants to eliminate foreign aid anyway, so if the personnel at the aid agency get uppity, who cares? And if they quit? All the better. 

The FBI is not that simple. For one thing, the administration does need law enforcement. If there’s a terrorist attack, and there will be, and the FBI is not in a position to prevent it or investigate it quickly and effectively, the administration will take the blame.

This administration also draws its legitimacy from backing the blue. Even in their war on the intelligence community, Donald Trump and his people always tried to distinguish between the rank and file and the “bad apples” who were running things. Waging a full-scale war against the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, a war that is all about targeting street agents for having done their jobs, is a dangerous game—far different from sacking an FBI director, or even two, who went to some elite law schools and served at the upper levels of the Justice Department.

Then there’s the problem of capacity. FBI agents are actually very hard to replace—good ones are, anyway. The physical demands are significant. Most have specialized education of one sort or another. And while people often imagine FBI agents as glorified cops who kick doors down, the truth is that a lot of agents have exquisitely specialized expertise. The training of a good counterintelligence agent takes many years. Some agents have specialized scientific training. There are even agents who specialize in art theft. Take out a thousand FBI personnel for political reasons, and you destroy literally centuries of institutional capacity. A good FBI agent is much harder to create than, say, a good assistant United States attorney. 

It’s early yet, and I don’t want to wax over-optimistic in dangerous times. 

But I will say this: I’m very proud of how the FBI is performing under incredible stress. 

An FBI that was putting its collective foot down and refusing to be politicized, refusing to participate in a political witch hunt within its own ranks, and refusing to become political agents of the regime in power would, so far anyway, look almost exactly like what we are seeing.

It is always a dangerous thing to cheer when an armed component of the federal government resists political leadership. Nobody, after all, elected the FBI. 

But when the political leadership seeks to conduct personnel actions against career officials based on who was involved in lawful and appropriate law enforcement actions against those who now have the protektzia of the faction in power, a certain measure of conscientious objection is in order—lest the entire operation become an organ of authoritarianism. And when the Justice Department tried to fire people because Trump does not trust them, which violates the Civil Service Reform Act—a law that forbids the government from taking adverse action against those in the competitive service for improper reasons, politics foremost among them—agents who resist are upholding the law, which is closely aligned with their own oaths and the FBI’s culture, and the rule of law itself.

Whether this is happening in the numbers it will take to force the administration to back down I don’t know. Whether it is happening in the numbers it will take to make some Republican senators reconsider their race to install a partisan apparatchik at the helm of the agency, I don’t know either. And whether the next week will see a wholesale elimination of decades of investment in law enforcement and intelligence under the rule of law, I cannot say. 

Today, I can only say thank you to everyone who is doing the right thing in ways the public will probably never see. Right now. Today. When it’s very hard. To everyone who is telling Bove, “Fire me if you don’t like it but no, I’m not helping”: may all the gods keep you safe.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Ethics, Extremism, Failure, Fascism, Injustice, Trump

Wired: The Young Men Who Are Helping Musk Evaluate Federal Programs and Personnel

By dianeravitch
February 5, 2025 //
22

Wired magazine published an article identifying the young men who are members of Elon Musk’s DOGE team. They are called “experts,” even though they range in age from 19 to 24. Some of these “experts” are college dropouts. All of them worked for either Musk or billionaire Peter Thiel before their current assignment.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Injustice, Musk, Elon, Trump

How FBI Agents Can Protect the FBI

By dianeravitch
February 3, 2025 //
30

The FBI is supposed to be a nonpolitical agency, although every FBI director chosen by every president was a Republican.

Over the past four years, the FBI was assigned the job of identifying and arresting those who planned and participated in the January 6, 2021, invasion of the U.S. Capitol. The mob was incited by Trump; its goal was to stop the certification of the 2020 election. The insurrection was an attempt to overthrow the Constitution and give Trump a position he lost in the 2020 elections.

The investigation of the January 6 insurrection was the largest in the history of the FBI.

Now Trump’s minions are asking FBI agents whether they were part on the investigation of January 6 or part of the investigation of Trump’s theft of classified documents.

Those who were will be fired because they can’t be trusted to faithfully execute Trump’s agenda.

Understand that the FBI agents who worked in these investigations were carrying out their duties. Understand that in no sane world is it right to send an angry mob to ransack the U.S. Capitol and to disrupt Congress in performing its prescribed duties.

Trump wants to rewrite history. He wants to make it official that the prosecution of the January 6 mob should never have happened. It was, he says, “a day of love.” The mob that beat up and bludgeoned police officers defending the Capitol and members of Congress were “patriots.”

Historians will ignore his lies. The criminal actions of Trump’s mob are well documented.

How can the FBI save itself from a mass purge?

Simple. Every single member of the FBI should sign a statement saying that they were part of the January 6 investigation. Every. Single. Member.

This is a true statement because who investigated the largest single attack in the Capitol were chosen at random. They were not there as volunteers or Trump-haters. They were there because FBI agents take their assignments seriously and execute them with fidelity.

To defend the FBI, sign your name. They can’t fire everyone. That might even offend the sombolent Republicans in Congress. Most were there on January 6. No matter what they say now, they know that their lives were in danger then. Will they sit by silently and let Trump eliminate the entire FBI? Not likely.

Their Trump obeisance must have limits.

Stand together. Sign your name.

Categories Accountability, Courage, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, History, Injustice, Trump
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