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Timothy Snyder: Ed Martin is the Loyal Puppet of Putin and Trump

By dianeravitch
July 2, 2025 //
4

When Trump named Ed Martin as Acting U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, those who know his record (and are not faithful Trumpers) were appalled. He had actively defended the January 6 insurrection and had a long record as a Putin apologist, among other things. A strange choice for a very important role in law enforcement. Fortunately, the Republicans who are a majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee rejected his nomination.

Timothy Snyder writes here about the role Ed Martin has played as a mouthpiece for Putin. Another reason not to normalize the Trump regime. Snyder is perhaps the leading scholar of European history, authoritarianism and tyranny. He recently announced that he was leaving Yale University for the University of Toronto.

Snyder writes:

Ed Martin is a major actor in Trump’s attempted regime change to authoritarianism. His particular role is to transform the law into a tool to intimidate Americans. After a stint as interim US Attorney for DC which was marked by unprecedented weaponization of the position, Martin will now continue his work for Trump as the official “weaponization czar.”

This is a new position within the Justice Department, designed by the Trump administration, to punish people who have committed no crimes. Martin was originally placed on the “weaponization working group” seemingly ex officio when he was a US Attorney; he will now continue as its chairman. On Martin’s account, his assignment will be to publicly single out Americans who have not been found guilty of anything, or for that matter even indicted. He says there will be “no limit to the targets.”

Martin’s authoritarian past and loyalties are a matter of public record. He helped build an alternative reality around Trump’s Big Lie and coup attempt, treating the January 6th criminals as heroes deserving of financial support and pardons. As interim US attorney, he described himself as President Trump’s lawyer, and abused his position to send letters to people who displeased the president in some way. He threatened journalists, universities and scientists.

Martin, to use the historical term, is taking an ostentatious part in the ongoing attempt at what the Nazis called a Gleichschaltung of institutions: of dropping the distinction between the law and the leader, and of attempting to force everyone in public life into line with the leader’s latest statements. The reference is not accidental. Martin is on the far right, and an advocate of great replacement theory: the spurious idea that a conspiracy seeks to replace white Americans with immigrants. He had a very supportive relationshipwith a known American Nazi.

The czars, lest we forget, were Russian autocrats. The title “weaponization czar” reminds us that much of happening in the United States under Trump happened first in the home of the czars. In the Russian Federation today, the law is weaponized. Prosecutions follow the whims of Putin and his regime, and that the law will be invoked against them according to the political (and financial) interests of those who hold power. Russian media is full of accusations made by Russian officials that people are criminals or wrongdoers, even before they have been tried or subjected to any judicial procedure.

It is important that we understand that Russian-style authoritarianism is a real possibility in the world, one which Martin not only advocates but represents. Russia is not a comparison for Martin. It is a central part of his career. He has no actual qualifications to serve in the Department of Justice. His role has to do instead with making the law something that it is not supposed to be: a way to protect the powerful and punish the innocent who offend them. He auditioned for this role as a propagandist for Russia’s regime.

The title “weaponization czar” is appropriate because Martin’s most interesting achievements thus far are, in fact, in the service of Russia. He has done more visible work for the Russian state television than for any other institution. Martin, in other words, has already been part of one weaponized legal system for some time. His American career as “weaponization czar” is a natural second step of his Russian career as apologist for both Russian and American weaponizers and authoritarians.

Between 2016 and 2024, Martin was a star of both RT and Sputnik, which are propaganda arms of the Russian state. Putin himself has made this completely clear. One of the central missions of RT and Sputnik is to weaken the standing and power of the United States. Anyone who goes on RT or Sputnik, as Martin did more than a hundred times, knows what he is doing. For eight years, on any issue of the day, Martin was there to spread mendacious propaganda about Americans and to defend Putin and Trump. His Russian work surpassed any media exposure in the United States.

Julia Davis, who does the important work of contextualizing Russian propaganda television available for a global viewership, has made Martin’s appearances visible. With her permission, I am sharing her work in the following paragraph. It provides samples, with video links back to his appearances, of how Ed Martin spreads untruth in the service of Russian and American authoritarians. If you want to take the time to judge more of his appearances than the ones I cite below, here (again thanks to Julia Davis) is a longer compilationof Martin’s appearances on Russian propaganda television.

Trump as American president can do, says Martin on Russian propaganda television, whatever he wants. Martin proposes that we should live in the alternative reality provided by the Russian propaganda he serves, since American media cannot be trusted. He instructs us that American elections are rigged and that the January 6th criminals are political prisoners. (Note that Martin was thereby on Russian propaganda television forecasting his own role in seeking pardons for these people and raising money for them.) Martin denied that Russia interfered in the 2016 US elections, although this was quite blatant — and indeed continuous, right down to the uncontested reports that Russians called in bomb scares to predominantly Democratic precincts in 2024. Martin also quite clear on the American role in the world, which is that the US should serve Putin and his wars. Echoing Russian claims at the time, Martin claimed that US intelligence was wrong about the coming full-scale US invasion of Ukraine, when is in fact it was entirely correct. In his view, the NATOalliance is unnecessary. The United States should be Russia’s ally.

There was a time, not so very long ago, when long service to hostile foreign propaganda networks would have been disqualifying for positions in the federal government. Now, as the head of RT boasts, it seems to be a qualification. Since Trump wants loyalists to him rather than to the United States, willingness to serve foreign countries, at least corrupt dictatorships, would be a useful filter. Repeating Russian propaganda tropes could hardly be offensive to Trump; he does this all the time. Taking part in Putin’s propaganda system would be naturally understood as the right kind of apprenticeship for work on Trump’s own regime change. We know that Trump chooses his people by treating their television appearances as auditions. So why not Russian television appearances? All the better.

No surprisingly, Martin says that his key assignment as weaponization czar will be to punish those who investigated Trump’s very real connections to Russia. This country has paid a huge price for not recognizing Russia’s intervention in the 2016 election for what it was: highly consequential and quite possibly decisive in the moment, and a sign of the coming age of oligarchical cooperation via digital tools to build right-wing regimes. That age is now upon us. There is, unmistakably, something very strange about the Trump’s submissiveness to Russia: appointing its media darlings (the list includes Tulsi Gabbard, who is of all things director of national intelligence); exempting it from tariffs when everyone else was targeted, refusing to pressure Putin to end a war when that is the obvious policy, sending as his envoy to Moscow a man who simply repeats Russian claims and uses Russian translations. Too many of us have allowed ourselves to be intimidated by the fear that Trump will use the word “hoax” when we point to the Russian elements of our present reality: such as, for example, that our “weaponization czar” apprenticed in the role in the service of Russia. With our weaponization of the law and our czars, we have a Russia problem.

Working with Russian institutions will not hurt Martin with Trump’s followers, who have been trained to see Russia not as an actual country with interests but as part of a “hoax,” a conspiracy against Trump. This is the sad convenience of “America First”: it really means “America Only”: no matter how things get, we get to be first, since no other countries exist in our minds. If other countries are meaningless, then MAGA people can rest assured that there is nothing like the complicity of international oligarchs, or the guild of international fascists, or the plans of countries like Russia to destroy the United States from within. If other countries do not matter, then it never seems right to ask: just why is it that Russian propaganda and Trumpian rhetoric so often overlap, to the point that training on one is preparation for mouthing the other? But there are, of course, Republicans who have a notion of the interests of the United States, and of the rule of law. For them, Martin’s services to Russia should matter.

The Russia connection is perhaps most important to opponents of Trump. Speaking of Martin’s connections to Russia is not a way of sloughing off responsibility to another country for our own failings. It is, instead, a way to take responsibility. So long as we see Trump and his loyalists as purely American characters, our American exceptionalism tempts us to normalize what they do. We ask ourselves, over and over again, if this is “really” an attempt to end democracy. But if we take seriously the connections of someone like Martin with a hostile foreign authoritarian power engaged in a genocidal war, we get a sense of where things could be headed. Russia is a real country and, for us, a real possibility. When we recognize that the attempt to make America authoritarian is part of a tawdry global trend, with general patterns that we can recognize, we can better see where we are, and get to work.

Categories Corruption, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Fascism, International, Lies, Propaganda, Trump

The NY Times: DOGE Lied About Social Security

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2025 //
17

In a long and comprehensive article, three New York Times reporters document what happened when DOGE (or DOGS, as I prefer to say) arrived at the Social Security Administration to root out “waste, fraud, and abuse.” Determined to prove that their services were needed, they misinterpreted data and spun outright lies about finding “millions” of dead people collecting Social Security checks.

The Times titled the article “The Bureaucrat and the Billionaire: Inside DOGE’s Chaotic Takeover of Social Security.” The bureaucrat in the title is Leland Dudek, who became the acting administrator of the giant Social Security Administration, even though he never previously oversaw more than a dozen employees. The billionaire, of course, is Elon Musk.

I wish I could give you a gift article but that option was not available to me as a subscriber.

The bottom line of the article is that the young wizards of DOGE came looking for “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and when they didn’t find it, they made it up. While rummaging through the huge agency, which sends out retirement checks to some 74 million senior citizens, they fired senior officers and thousands of other employees. These checks, by the way, are not government beneficence; people pay a percentage of their income into Social Security throughout their work life, which they collect monthly after they retire.

The DOGS sought access to the agency’s huge computer system, which contains sensitive personal data about those who receive those monthly checks. At first, the federal courts rejected their request but ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court decided that these 20-somethings were entitled to access the data. Privacy is dead. Yours and mine. Elon Musk has the data. What has he done with it, along with information about your taxes? No one knows or says. Musk referred to Social Security as a “Ponzi scheme.”

Here are a few of the high points:

Elon Musk stood before a giant American flag at a Wisconsin political rally in March and rolled out an eye-popping allegation of rampant fraud at the Social Security Administration. Scammers, he said, were making 40 percent of all calls to the agency’s customer service line.

Social Security employees knew the billionaire’s claim had no basis in fact. After journalists followed up, staff members began drafting a response correcting the record.

That’s when Leland Dudek — plucked from a midlevel job only six weeks earlier to run Social Security because of his willingness to cooperate with Mr. Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — got an angry call from the White House, according to several people familiar with the exchange.

“The number is 40 percent,” insisted Katie Miller, a top administration aide who was working closely with Mr. Musk, according to one of the people familiar with the April 1 call. President Trump believed Mr. Musk, she said. “Do not contradict the president.”

Throughout the early months of this Trump presidency, Mr. Musk and his allies systematically built a false narrative of widespread fraud at the Social Security Administration based on misinterpreted data, using their claims to justify an aggressive effort to gain access to personal information on millions of Americans, a New York Times investigation has found.

Their work has led to the departures of thousands of employees, thinning an already overstretched work force and setting off a wave of public anxiety over the state of an agency administering politically sacrosanct retirement benefits that Mr. Trump has vowed to protect.

Mr. Musk has left Washington amid a blowup with Mr. Trump, and some of his top aides at DOGE have also departed, leaving federal workers and the public to assess what Mr. Musk’s tornadolike path through Washington yielded. At Social Security, Mr. Musk’s efforts amount to a case study in what happened when his team of government novices ran a critical government agency through misinformation and social media blasts.

Musk’s senior aide was Katie Miller, wife of Stephen Miller, one of Trump’s closest aides and the architect of the ICE crackdown on immigrants. When Musk left, she left with him. Don’t ask me to explain how that works, because I don’t know. Did she move to Texas to join his sister-wives? Did she take her three children? Or did she stay in DC? I don’t know.

When he started the investigation of the SSA, Musk believed that he would find “massive fraud,” especially the millions of dead people that he believed were collecting Social Security. He didn’t believe the career bureaucrats who said that he was wrong, nor did he accept a secret DOGE memo concluding that the “massive fraud” didn’t exist. Trump’s presss secretary said on FOX News that “tens of millions” of dead people were collecting Social Security checks. Trump lowered the number in his March 4 address to Congress. He said that Social Security records reported “3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149….And money is being paid to many of them.”

The Times reporters found:

One audit from 2015 found only 13 people older than 112 still receiving benefits. Other audits found payments being sent to an estimated 24,000 people who generally died more recently — a sign of Social Security needing tighter controls and monitoring — but not the millions Mr. Musk claimed.

DOGE did not find the waste, fraud, and abuse they searched for but they pursued something of perhaps even greater value to them: the personal data of everyone who had a Social Security card, which is almost every citizen except young children.

DOGE demanded that the SSA hire a “21-year-old former intern at Palantir, a data analysis and technology firm, and grant him access to the personal data of every Social Security cardholder despite the executives’ concerns that he lacked sufficient training to handle such sensitive information.”

Despite their objections, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the SSA to give the young man whatever he wanted.

DOGE used its power to advance Trump’s political goals. When Trump quarreled with Maine Governor Janet Mills over transgender athletes, DOGE staffers canceled contracts with the state of Maine.

But under pressure from Mr. Musk’s team, nearly half of the Social Security Administration’s 140 senior executives, and thousands of employees overall, have taken buyouts or retired. As many as 12 percent of staff members, out of a bureaucracy that numbered around 57,000 people, are expected to depart their jobs as part of DOGE’s cost-cutting plan.

To try to make up for the staffing shortfall, the agency has encouraged specialized professionals like lawyers, human resources staff and technologists to take reassignments in customer service jobs — often at higher pay than what the people they’re replacing had made. Workers have said they felt pressured to volunteer for reassignments, or else risk being fired later.

No one knows at this juncture whether DOGE saved money by firing workers at the SSA. But the benefits to DOGE and Musk are enormous: they now have personal data on almost every American.

What will they do with it?

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Data and Data Mining, Disruption, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Lies, Musk, Elon

Ohio: Judge Rules that EdChoice Vouchers Violate State Constitution

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2025 //
0

In 2022, school districts, parents, and public school advocates filed a lawsuit against the state’s EdChoice voucher program. Yesterday, Franklin County Court of Common Pleas Judge Jaiza Page ruled that vouchers for private schools violate the state constitution.

The Constitution of Ohio says that the General Assembly is responsible for funding a thorough and efficient system of common schools. Common schools are public schools. It explicitly prohibits the use of public funds for religious schools. 

Judge Page issued the first ruling on the lawsuit, known as the Vouchers Hurt Ohio lawsuit, which challenged the constitutionality of vouchers. The plaintiffs were a group of dozens of public schools and the Coalition for Adequacy and Equity of School Funding. The state will appeal this ruling. For now, those who led the lawsuit are thrilled.

“We are pleased that the court affirmed what we have been saying all along,” William Phillis, executive director for the Coalition for Adequacy and Equity of School Funding, said. “The EdChoice private school voucher program, which has been diverting hundreds of millions of much needed tax dollars from public schools to private schools, is unconstitutional.” 

Phillis was behind another lawsuit over Ohio’s schools in the 1990s, which ruled Ohio’s system of funding schools did not adequately live up to the Constitutional requirements. The case, DeRolph v. Ohio, ruled the state’s reliance on property taxes and its funding system did not fulfil the Ohio Constitution’s requirement to create a “thorough and efficient system” of public schools.

Page said the state’s voucher program also fails to create a thorough and efficient system. She ruled the EdChoice program directly contributed to less funding for public schools, increased segregation in public schools as more white students participated in EdChoice, and unconstitutionally provided funds to religious schools without oversight.

Read the decision here.

Stephen Dyer, public school advocate and former legislator, writes on his blog Tenth Period that the decision exposes the lies that the voucher lobby has peddled for years.

Dyer writes:

There have been lots of stories and posts about the historic voucher decision made yesterday by Franklin County Judge Jaiza Page. But I want to take a step back with you, Dear Reader, and explain just how expertly the Judge laid bare the thing I’ve been spitting into the wind over for the past 15 or so years: Ohio school voucher advocates have been lying to you, the public and journalists for a generation. 

Let me point out a few of the most common lies told by voucher advocates.

  1. Ohio vouchers are scholarships. Ohio school choice advocates sometimes are too clever for themselves. Calling vouchers “scholarships” in law doesn’t make them “scholarships”. Yet that’s what these politicians insist we call them. Judge Page went right after this argument in her decision: “The idea that EdChoice establishes scholarships, not a system of schools, and that it funds students, not private schools, is mere semantics … Where EdChoice participating private schools are inexplicably receiving double the per pupil state funding than public schools, it is difficult to say that EdChoice is simply a scholarship that follows and/or benefits the student as opposed to a system that benefits private schools.”
  2. Vouchers are simply a matter of money following the student. This is the kind of EduSpeak bullshit I’ve railed against for years. As I’ve said in this space many times, when 85% of the K-12 students in your state only get 77% of the money spent on K-12 education in your state, money ain’t following the kids. It’s going to private schools. As Judge Page put it: “Where EdChoice participating private schools are inexplicably receiving double the per pupil state funding than public schools, it is difficult to say that EdChoice is simply a scholarship that follows and/or benefits the student as opposed to a system that benefits private schools.”
  3. Vouchers have no impact on public school students. This is obvious bullshit, yet proponents make the claim all the time, even well-thought of ones like the Fordham Institute (who actually argue it helps public school kids!). See, the problem is that when David Brennan started the Ohio Voucher program nearly 30 years ago, he thought he’d be so clever. See, he would (yes, I know legislators did this, but make no mistake about it, Brennan was calling the shots) put the program’s money into the same line item as school district funding. That way, the program could never be line item vetoed, and no matter how much more money the program needed, it would always get the amount it needed because the money would just come out of the state funding for kids in local school districts, who would then have to go for more and bigger property tax levies. But in this case, that cleverness bit voucher advocates in the ass. Because Judge Page can read a spreadsheet. As she put it: “The General Assembly … passed the (Fair School Funding Plan) to fulfill its constitutional directive and address Derolph. Yet, it has shirked that responsibility, by: at best, (1) claiming that the FSFP, a plan of its own creation, is too expensive; or, at worst (2) simply refusing to fund it. Instead, the General Assembly chose to expand their system of private school funding by about the same amount as Ohio’s public schools lost through the General Assembly’s failure to fully fund the FSFP.
  4. Vouchers are a Parental Rights issue.This line of bullshit emanates from the program’s origins — claiming that it would provide poor kids the opportunity to attend the same private schools rich kids do. However, the evidence is clear that’s simply not happening. In fact, it’s the schools — not the parents — that this unconstitutional system empowers. As Judge Page revealed for everyone to see: “Parents only choose which school they apply to. The ultimate decision to accept prospective students, and by doing so receive EdChoice funds, lies with the private school. (So) a private religious school has the discretion and ability to apply for and receive subsidies directly from the government, while at the same time discriminating against applicants on the basis of religion, sexual orientation, or other criteria.”

There will be many more opportunities to go through this historic decision and pick out bits and pieces. But I thought it was important for everyone to recognize the major policy lies voucher advocates have pushed for 30 years were laid bare by this decision. 

Because at its core, Ohio’s unconstitutional voucher program benefits private, mostly religious schools at the expense of the 1.5 million Ohio kids who attend Ohio’s public schools. 

That’s the bottom line. 

And that’s been true since 1997.

Categories Education Reform, Extremism, Lies, Ohio, Vouchers

Heather Cox Richardson Questions Trump’s Mental Health After His Frenzied Tweets

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2025 //
17

Heather Cox Richardson relates Trump’s flurry of tweets yesterday, which indicate a heightened state of anxiety. It seemed as though he devoted an inordinate amount of time to posting on his social media site. He did board a helicopter at one point in the day and answered a reporter’s question, using the F word. What people say in private is their own business, but this may be the first time that an American President used that expletive in public, on camera, speaking to the American people. This is a man who seethes with undisguised rage.

Mary Trump would say that this rage is a consequence of slights from his childhood. Maybe she’s right.

Or was it because his grandiose claims of obliterating Iran’s nuclear stockpile turned out not to be true? Trump lies all the time, but this was a big boast on the international stage that turned out to be premature. He looks foolish. He hates that.

Richardson wrote:

At 6:02 last night, President Donald Trump announced on his social media account that Israel and Iran has agreed to “a Complete and Total CEASEFIRE” that would lead to “an Official END to THE 12 DAY WAR.” Maggie Haberman of the New York Times reported today that the announcement took some of Trump’s own senior advisors by surprise. Since then, Trump’s social media feed has been unusually active, posting claims that his approval rate is soaring, that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize, that “for the first time ever [a] majority of Americans believe the United States is on the right track,” and that “Trump was right about everything.”

“THE CEASEFIRE IS NOW IN EFFECT. PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES!” Trump’s social media feed posted at 1:08 this morning. But within hours, Israel had struck Iran again. At 6:50, Trump’s social media feed posted: “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.” At 7:28 it posted: ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly “Plane Wave” to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter! DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.”

After Israel struck, Iran retaliated. This morning, Trump accused both countries of violating the ceasefire agreement—although, to be sure, there has been no published confirmation that any such agreement exists. Sounding angry, Trump told reporters: “We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they’re doing.”

At 11:17 the account posted: “Both Israel and Iran wanted to stop the War, equally! It was my great honor to Destroy All Nuclear facilities & capability, and then, STOP THE WAR!” It also attacked Democrats, especially women of color, at length, saying they were stupid and “can’t stand the concept of our Country being successful again.”

The account also said: “Now that we have made PEACE abroad, we must finish the job here at home by passing “THE GREAT, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL,” and getting the Bill to my desk, ASAP. It will be a Historic Present for THE GREAT PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, as we begin the Celebration of our Country’s 250th Birthday. We are finally entering our Golden Age, which will bring unprecedented Safety, Security, and Prosperity for ALL of our Citizens.”

In fact, Trump’s victory lap seems designed to be the finale to a triumphant storyline that can convince his loyalists he has scored an enormous victory before reality sets in. According to a new CNN poll, Americans disapprove of the U.S. military strikes against Iran by a margin of 56% to 44%.

Further, Natasha Bertrand, Katie Bo Lillis, and Zachary Cohen of CNN reported today that according to early assessments by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) of the damage caused by the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, the strikes did not destroy the main parts of the Iran’s nuclear program and probably set it back by only a few months. The DIA is the intelligence arm of the Pentagon.

The White House called the DIA assessment “flat out wrong.”

Later today, the New York Times confirmed CNN’s reporting.

Republican senator Rand Paul of Kentucky suggested today that the Obama administration had the right approach when it negotiated the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that limited Iran’s nuclear program. Paul said: “I’m arguing that the intervention, the military intervention, may not have been successful, as people are saying, and also that there may not be a military answer to this, that ultimately the answer to the end of the nuclear program is going to involve diplomacy.”

A video on Trump’s social media feed posted at 7:15 tonight recalled Senator John McCain’s 2007 call to “bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann.” Trump’s version used McCain’s “bomb Iran” chorus but was longer and had visual imagery of planes dropping bombs. In Trump’s version, the soundtrack to the video used the melody of Barbara Ann to say things like: “went to a mosque, gonna throw some rocks, tell the ayatollah gonna put you in a box,” and “old Uncle Sam, getting pretty hot, gonna turn Iran into a parking lot.”

It is a truism that, like other authoritarians, Trump tries only to appeal to his supporters, but I confess this video, from the president of the United States, left me aghast. It seems to me long past time to question the 79-year-old president’s mental health.

Tonight, Trump’s social media feed posted: “FAKE NEWS CNN, TOGETHER WITH THE FAILING NEW YORK TIMES, HAVE TEAMED UP IN AN ATTEMPT TO DEMEAN ONE OF THE MOST SUCCESSFUL MILITARY STRIKES IN HISTORY. THE NUCLEAR SITES IN IRAN ARE COMPLETELY DESTROYED! BOTH THE TIMES AND CNN ARE GETTING SLAMMED BY THE PUBLIC!”

Categories Accountability, International, Lies, Trump

Glenn Kessler Fact-Checks Rubio-Vance Lies About Foreign Aid

By dianeravitch
June 19, 2025 //
0

Glenn Kessler is the fact-checker for The Washington Post.

He wrote:

“There are all these humanitarian programs, where we sent money to people for medicine, for food, okay? What I thought, before I got into government, what most Americans think is, okay, so we sent $100,000 to this group to buy food, for like poor kids in Africa, okay? And what actually happens is it’s not $100,000 that goes to the poor kids in Africa. The NGO, the nongovernmental organization, that gets that money, contracts that out to somebody else, … there are like three or four middlemen. What Marco Rubio told me … his best estimate, after having his team look at it, is that 88 cents of every dollar is actually being collected by middlemen. So every dollar we were spending on humanitarian assistance, 12 cents was making it to the people who actually needed it. That’s crazy. There’s a lot of waste.”


— Vice President JD Vance, remarks during interview with Theo Von, June 7


We thought it would be helpful to display Vance’s full quote, because a social media post that received about 4 million views incorrectly attributed the 12-cents statistic to the U.S. DOGE Service. Instead, Vance said this number was the “best estimate” of Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Indeed, Rubio has used this statistic on Capitol Hill, decrying what he called the “foreign aid industrial complex.”

When asked for the source of this number, Vance’s spokesman did not respond to repeated queries and the State Department provided a nonresponsive statement that the “United States is no longer going to blindly dole out money with no return for the American people.”

Despite the stonewalling, we figured out where this 12-cents figure comes from. It’s a misunderstanding of a number in a U.S. Agency for International Development report issued before the Trump administration took office. That report recorded the percentage of funds that go directly to local entities, bypassing nongovernmental and international organizations. It’s not a new or undiscovered issue, as Vance framed it. In 2023, Samantha Power, USAID administrator in the Biden administration, had decried the “industrial aid complex” and set a goal of directing 25 percent of aid to local entities by 2025, more than doubling the level when she announced the goal.

As is often the case, the Trump administration is reinventing the wheel while misinterpreting the data.

The Facts

We’re not sure how much Vance knows about business, but it’s simpleminded to believe $100,000 in humanitarian assistance would end up in Africa intact. People who deliver the aid must get paid, for instance, even if they work for nonprofit organizations. These organizations need accountants, lawyers and managers, too. The aid — say, food — may need to be delivered on ships. That also adds to the expenses. Moreover, some contractors who deliver aid are profit-making enterprises, so that’s an extra cut off the top.

A similar thing happens in the opposite direction. A doll might get made for $5 in an African country, but then another $2 is needed for export and shipping costs, and $3 for storage, logistics and profit for the importer. The America retailer then doubles the price — to $20 — to cover store operations, staff, rent and profit. You can’t expect, as Vance apparently does, a cost-free transfer across oceans.

In the case of foreign aid, Congress has set rules that further increase expenses. For instance, food aid must be purchased in the United States and by law must be shipped on U.S. carriers, according to the Congressional Research Service.
For years, foreign-policy experts have argued for more aid to be handled at the local level, thereby saving on overhead. (Washington, D.C., for example, is more expensive than most cities in developing countries in Africa, South America, the Caribbean and Asia.) The Share Trust, which pushes for more local funding, estimated last year that local intermediaries in the Middle East could deliver programming that is 32 percent more cost efficient than international organizations.

Steve Gloyd, a global health expert at the University of Washington, had decried what he calls “phantom aid,” in which he said 30 to 60 percent of the total budget of some global health aid projects never even leave the headquarters of the nongovernmental organization hired to manage the program. International NGOs also can inflate the salaries of local staff, draining health ministries of expertise and raising in-country costs.

Not every country, however, has organizations in place that can take on the job. So, for-profit contractors such as Chemonics ($1.6 billion in 2024) and DAI Global ($500 million) win contracts from USAID to, among other tasks, reduce Ukrainian corruption, create a Famine Early Warning System Network and support democracy in El Salvador, according to Pub K Group, which surveys government contracts.
More than 20 years ago, President George W. Bush set up Millennium Challenge Corp. as a way to get individual countries more invested in using the funds wisely — and building sustainable programs to take on the task after the American contract has ended. (DOGE attempted to shutter MCC, but it appears to have gotten a reprieve.)

This brings us to the 12-cent statistic. We scoured for estimates of how much aid money is lost to fees and expenses. There’s no overall number, and the amount varies from program to program, with some highly efficient. But it’s not an 88 percent loss overall. Instead, Vance and Rubio are referring to a report issued under Power assessing progress on her goal of delivering 25 percent of funds to local aid organizations.

In the 2024 fiscal year, “USAID provided $2.1 billion directly to local nongovernmental, private sector and government partners, or 12.1 percent of USAID’s acquisitions and assistance (A & A) and government-to-government (G2G) funding,” the report said. Additional aid given to regional partners brought the percentage to 12.6. The Trump administration deleted the report, which noted that USAID for 15 years has sought to direct more aid to local entities, but it can still be found on the Wayback Machine internet archive.

Publish What You Fund, a group advocating for greater transparency in aid funding, disputed USAID’s methodology, saying the figure is just 5.1 percent, though no major donor country does well. (The Netherlands tops the list at 6.9 percent.)

But, again, this is not what Vance said — “Every dollar we were spending on humanitarian assistance, 12 cents was making it to the people who actually needed it.”

The misunderstanding may have started, as these things do, with a tweet by billionaire Elon Musk. On Feb. 1, as Musk led DOGE’s dismantling of USAID, he elevated a quote from a PBS interview with Walter Kerr, co-executive director of Unlock Aid, a D.C.-based nonprofit that aims to improve American aid effectiveness. “The level of corruption and waste is unreal!” Musk posted.

Kerr was quoted as saying: “It’s actually less than 10 percent of our foreign assistance dollars flowing through USAID is actually reaching those communities.” Kerr told The Fact Checker he had been interviewed in August, and he was referring to a previous report issued by USAID on the percentage of funds going to local aid organizations. His organization issued a statement saying the quote had been taken out of context — a graphic in the PBS segment made clear what he meant — but the genie was out of the bottle.

When Rubio testified before the Senate on May 20, asserting that “at USAID, 12 cents of every dollar was reaching the recipient,” some Democratic lawmakers called him out.

“It would certainly shock Americans to hear that only 12 percent of our foreign aid reaches recipients, needy recipients on the ground, the people who need the help,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (Connecticut). “That is not actually an accurate number. That is the amount of aid that goes directly to local groups on the ground. But as you know, most of our aid runs through bigger international organizations like Save the Children. Those entities are getting somewhere around 80, 85 percent of the aid we give them directly to recipients on the ground.”
Rubio did not respond.

Then Sen. Brian Schatz (Hawaii) followed up.
“It is just not true that only 12 percent of the aid reaches recipients. … That is excluding the World Food Program, that is excluding Catholic Relief Services,” he said. “I will just say if there’s an enterprise to reduce overhead, count me in, but it is not 88 percent overhead. That’s not what’s happening.”

This time, Rubio answered. “That number, just to clarify, was actually Samantha Power’s number,” he said, without admitting error. “And she regretted that one of the things she was unable to do at USAID is improve upon that number.”
Rubio may have trouble improving on that number as well.

The foreign-aid cuts under President Donald Trump have significantly tilted the percentage of foreign-aid awards toward U.S.-based institutions, according to an analysis by the Center for Global Development, a think tank.

“Given how scandalous members of the administration appeared to find the fact that only about ten percent of USAID awards went to prime awardees based in recipient countries, it is surely disappointing their ‘reform’ efforts have further decreased that percentage,” the analysis said.

The Pinocchio Test

There’s a good case that too many foreign-aid dollars get spent inside the Beltway, and that more funds should be directed to organizations on the ground in recipient countries. After years of debate, the Biden administration set a goal for improvement.

But Vance and Rubio are undermining the case for reform when they twist statistics and make outlandish claims in interviews and in congressional testimony. Rubio, in his testimony, appeared to acknowledge that he was citing a number generated by the Biden administration — but he failed to admit error. And apparently he failed to tell the vice president that “his best estimate” was false.


Four Pinocchios

Categories Accountability, Ethics, Extremism, International, Lies

Timothy Snyder: Trump’s Fascist Speech to the Troops at Fort Bragg

By dianeravitch
June 13, 2025 //
1

Tomorrow is “No Kings” Day. Join a group and protest Trump’s attempt to make himself our king, our permanent dictator.

Timothy Snyder, noted historian, analyzed Trump’s speech to the troops at Fort Bragg and determined that it was not only self-aggrandizing but also an appeal to disunity, division, and hatred. He honored traitors and oath-breakers, like those who participated in an actual insurrection on January 6, 2021, and leaders of the Confederacy.

Please read and take action to oppose Trump’s tyranny:

Earlier this week Donald Trump called for a second civil war at a US military base. This scenario can be resisted and prevented, if we have the courage to listen, interpret, and act. And this Saturday we will have the occasion to act.

The listening is important. The speech was given at the base now known again as Ft. Bragg. The fort was named for a confederate general. It was renamed Ft. Liberty. Under this administration, it was renamed Fort Bragg, now ostensibly to honor another American serviceman, not the confederate general. It is a dishonest pretense that dishonors everyone. The fort is now named again after a confederate general, as Trump made clear. The tradition that is now in fact being honored, that of oathbreakers and traitors.

In Trump’s speech, the existence of the United States is placed in doubt. We are not a country but a divided society in which some of us deserve punishment by others. He made no mention of the world today, nor of any common American interest that might necessitate national defense. There was no concern about threats from China or Russia. Middle Eastern dictatorships, the only countries that Trump singled out, garnered great praise because their leaders gave Trump money. There was no mention of any wars that are actually underway, such as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Trump invoked battlefields across the decades to create a sense of individual heroism, in which of course the history the the US Army is very rich. But that individual heroism is usually cited by commanders in chief as evidence of a nation that is worthy of defense. No such America figured in Trump’s speech. America did not exist Trump’s speech, except as a cult to him personally.

In the actual history of the United States, one war is central: the Civil War. Trump, who has never seen the point of the Union Army defending the republic, now seems now to have moved on to the position that the Confederacy should have won. He promised to rename Fort Gregg-Adams, the first base named for African-Americans, to Fort Robert E. Lee. The base in question hasn’t been known by the full name of the confederate commander since 1950. Lee was a traitor, an oathbreaker, a defender of slavery and the commander of a force whose mission was to break up the United States of America.

In his speech, Trump claimed that seizing undocumented migrants in 2025 shows the same courage as fighting in the Revolutionary War, or the First World War, or the Second World War, or Korea or Vietnam. It would have been news to the soldiers at the time that charging a trench or jumping from a plane is no different than ganging up on a graduate student or bullying a middle-aged seamstress.

But here we see the magic of Trump’s rhetoric: he seeks to transform the courage of the past into the cowardice of the future. He is preparing American soldiers to see themselves as heroes when they undertake operations inside the United States against unarmed people, including their fellow citizens.

All of this, of course, trivializes actual US military achievements. The actual battles of our history just become a “show,” to use one of Trump’s keywords. They are deeds performed for the pleasure of a Leader who then invokes them to justify his own permanent power. Denuded of all context, military glory becomes a spectacle into which any meaning can be injected. And he who injects the meaning is he who rules. That is the fascist principle that Trump understands. There is no politics except struggle, and he who can define the enemy in the struggle can stay in power. But whereas historical fascists had an enemy without and an enemy within, Trump only has an enemy within. The world is too much for him. The army is just for dominating Americans.

Abraham Lincoln statue

In his speech, Trump was trying to transform a legacy of battlefield victory around the world into a future willingness to take illegal orders regarding his own policy on the territory of the United States. The defiance of the law was clear. Trump cannot, for example, legally just rename those bases. The forts were named by an act of Congress. And he cannot legally deploy the Marines to Los Angeles. He has no authority to do so. The president is expressly forbidden by law from using the armed forces to implement domestic policies.

Trump defined himself not as a president but as a permanent Leader. In repeatedly mocking his predecessor, he was summoning soldiers to defy the fundamental idea that their service is to the Constitution and not to a given person. “You think this crowd would have showed up for Biden?” Whether or not it is unprecedented, as I believe it is, such mockery certainly dangerous. It suggests that something besides an election, something like individual charisma, some personal right to rule, is what matters. That soldiers should follow Trump because he is Trump, and not for any other reason.

In general, we imagine that the US Army is here to defend us, not to attack us. But summoning soldiers to heckle their fellow Americans is a sign of something quite different. Trump seized the occasion to summon soldiers to join him in mocking the press. Reporters, of course, as the Founders understood, are a critical check on tyranny. They, like protestors, are protected by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Trump was teaching soldiers that society does not matter, and that law does not matter. He “loves” soldiers. He is personally responsible for the pay raises: “I gave you so much money for four years it was crazy.” “We’re giving you an across-the-board raise” This is the way a dictator speaks to a palace guard, or a fascist to a paramilitary.

Trump is putting himself above the army and the army above the country: “we only have a country because we first had an army, the army was first.” That ridiculous: the Continental Army was formed in 1775 from the people, for the very specific and time-limited purpose of ending colonial oppression. Trump wants the armed force to be the end in itself, and freedom to be its enemy. Generally, presidents who speak to soldiers of military glory have had in mind the defense of American freedoms, such as the freedom of expression, including the freedom of the press and the freedom to assemble. Trump said nothing about freedom, except as a “flame” or a “shield.” He said nothing about rights. There was not a word about democracy.

We are witnessing an attempt at regime change, rife in perversities. It has a historical component: we are to celebrate the oathbreakers and the traitors. It has a fascist component: we are to embrace the present moment as an exception, in which all things are permitted to the Leader. And of course it has an institutional component: soldiers are meant to be the avant-garde of the end of democracy. Instead of treating the army as defenders or freedom, Trump presented soldiers as his personal armed servants, whose job it was to oppress his chosen enemies — inside the United States. Trump was trying to instruct soldiers that their mission was to crush fellow Americans who dared to exercise their rights, such as the right to protest.

Referring to migration as an “invasion,” as Trump did during the speech, is meant to blur the distinction between his immigration policy and a foreign war. But it is also meant to transform the mission of the US Army. The meaningful border here is that between reality and fantasy. If soldiers and others are willing to accept that migration is an “invasion,” then they enter into an alternative reality. Inside that alternative reality, they will see those who do not accept the invasion fantasy as enemies. And this is exactly what Trump called for when he portrayed elected officials in California as collaborators in “an occupation of the city by criminal invaders.”

The US Army, like other American institutions, includes people of various backgrounds. It depends heavily on African-Americans and non-citizens. One can try to transform the army into a cult of the Confederacy and a tool to persecute migrants, but this will cause, at a minimum, great friction. Beyond this, using the Army to enforce domestic policy risks ruining its reputation. Deploying the armed forces in cities risks US soldiers killing US civilians. It also risks that provocateurs, including foreign ones, including allies of Trump, will try to kill an American soldier to provoke a disaster. (Trump’s birthday parade seems practically designed for such an incident, by the way.) 

Trump will welcome and exploit such situations, of course. He doesn’t have the courage to say things clearly or start conflict directly, but instead sets up others for situations in which they suffer and he profits. The question is whether civil war is the future Army officers and soldiers want. When Trump promises to celebrate Robert E. Lee, he is telling the Army that oath-breakers and traitors will be celebrated in the future. This is not in his gift. Officers who bring the US armed forces to battle American civilians will be remembered by the heirs of a broken republic and as the people who started a second American civil war.

It is clear what Trump is trying to do. He wants to turn everything around. He wants an army that is not a legal institution but a personal paramilitary. He wants it not to defend Americans but to oppress them. He wishes the shame of our national history to become our pride. He wants to transform a republic into a fascist regime by transforming a history of courage into a future of cowardice.

This can only succeed if it goes unchallenged. All of us can think about his words and their implications. Officers and soldiers can remember that not all orders are legal orders. Those in the media can interpret Trump’s speeches clearly rather than just repeating them or seeing them as one side in a partisan dispute. Our courts can name the limits of his authority. And even a Republican Congress can recognize when its powers are being usurped in a way that risks the end of our country.

Though he did not mention the Civil War, Trump did refer to “the sacred soil of Gettysburg.” It is worth recalling Lincoln’s very different sense of the sacrifice of American soldiers in his Gettysburg Address:

The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

In the end, and in the beginning, and at all moments of strife, a government of the people, by the people, for the people depends upon the awareness and the actions of all of us. A democracy only exists if a people exist, and a people only exists in individuals’ awareness of one another of itself and of their need to act together. This weekend Trump plans a celebration of American military power as a celebration of himself on his birthday — military dictatorship nonsense. This is a further step towards a different kind of regime. It can be called out, and it can be overwhelmed.

Thousands of Americans across the land, many veterans among them, have worked hard to organize protests this Saturday — against tyranny, for freedom, for government of the people, by the people, for the people. Join them if you can. No Kings Day is June 14th.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, History, Inequity, Injustice, Lies, Racism, Trump, Tyranny

Trump Lashes Out at His Enemies and Sells Merch to Troops at Fort Bragg

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2025 //
7

Members of the military are supposed to be nonpartisan; they serve the nation, not the President or his party. Yet Trump gave an invective-filled speech to the troops at Fort Bragg, denouncing his political enemies, while a pop-up shop sold Trump campaign merchandise to the troops.

All completely inappropriate. But Trump respects no norms. The Supreme Court gave him “absolute immunity” as president. He will use that license to do and say whatever he wants, no matter how inappropriate.

Military.com reported on the politicization of the military and how it violates Pentagon policy.

It was supposed to be a routine appearance, a visit from the commander in chief to rally the troops, boost morale and celebrate the Army‘s 250th-birthday week, which culminates with a Washington, D.C., parade slated for Saturday.

Instead, what unfolded Tuesday at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, bore little resemblance to the customary visit from a president and defense secretary. There, President Donald Trump unleashed a speech laced with partisan invective, goading jeers from a crowd of soldiers positioned behind his podium — blurring the long-standing and sacrosanct line between the military and partisan politics.

As Trump viciously attacked his perceived political foes, he whipped up boos from the gathered troops directed at California leaders, including Gov. Gavin Newsom — amid the president’s controversial move to deploy the National Guard and Marines against protesters in Los Angeles — as well as former President Joe Biden and the press. The soldiers roared with laughter and applauded Trump’s diatribe in a shocking and rare public display of troops taking part in naked political partisanship.

For this story, Military.com reached out to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s office as well as the Army and the 82nd Airborne Division directly with a series of questions that ranged from the optics of the event to social media posts showing the sale of Trump campaign merchandise on the base, to the apparent violation of Pentagon policies on political activity in uniform.

Internal 82nd Airborne Division communications reviewed by Military.com reveal a tightly orchestrated effort to curate the optics of Trump’s recent visit, including handpicking soldiers for the audience based on political leanings and physical appearance. The troops ultimately selected to be behind Trump and visible to the cameras were almost exclusively male.

One unit-level message bluntly said “no fat soldiers.”

Open the link from Military.com to continue reading.

Trump speech at Fort Bragg.

Categories Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Lies, Trump

RFK Jr. Fires Every Member of CDC Expert Advisory Panel on Vaccines

By dianeravitch
June 9, 2025 //
3

Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired the Center for Disease Control’s expert advisory panel on vaccines. This clears the way for him to appoint people who share his wacko views about vaccines. When asked why he fired them, he lied and said they had conflicts of interest. This was not true.

Apoorva Mandavilli of The New York Times reported:

The health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., on Monday retired all 17 members of an advisory committee on immunization to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, arguing that the move would restore the public’s trust in vaccines.

He made the announcement on Monday in an opinion column for The Wall Street Journal.

The C.D.C.’s vaccine advisers wield enormous influence. They carefully review data on vaccines, debate the evidence and vote on who should get the shots and when. Insurance companies are required to cover the vaccines recommended by the panel.

This is the latest in a series of moves Mr. Kennedy, a vaccine skeptic, has made to drastically reshape policy on immunizations. A vaccine panel more closely aligned with Mr. Kennedy’s views has the potential to significantly alter the immunizations recommended to Americans, including childhood vaccinations.

Mr. Kennedy said the panel, called the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, “has been plagued with persistent conflicts of interest….”

In fact, ACIP members are carefully screened for major conflicts of interest, and they cannot hold stocks or serve on advisory boards or speaker bureaus affiliated with vaccine manufacturers.

On the rare occasion that members have indirect conflicts of interest — for example, if an institution at which they work receives money from a drug manufacturer — they disclose the conflict and recuse themselves from related votes.

Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and former member of the panel, expressed concern that Kennedy wants to replace members of the panel with people who share his antagonism towards vaccines.

How many Americans will die because of this extremist who has strong opinions but limited knowledge of science or medicine?

Categories Disruption, Extremism, Fraud, Health, Insane, Lies, Science, Stupid

Is Harvard Teaching Remedial Math? Trump Says It Is.

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2025 //
14

In his epic battle to punish the nation’s most prestigious university, Trump claimed that Harvard is teaching remedial math. That was his way of saying that its standards of admission are very low because Harvard wants to recruit unqualified nonwhite students.

Trump has refused to release his own academic record but his public statements indicate that he is in no position to tell Harvard whom to admit or what to teach.

Only 3.6% of the students who applied to Harvard last year were admitted.

The Boston Globe took a close look at the course that Trump–the stable genius–calls “remedial.”

A star student at her small Alabama high school, Kyra Richardson graduated confident in her academic prowess in all but one subject: math.

By the time she arrived at Harvard in the fall of 2024, it had been more than 12 months since Richardson‘s last math class. Even though she passed a college-level AP calculus course as a high school junior, Richardson said it felt more like she was memorizing formulas than truly understanding the concepts behind calculus.

So when it came time for her to begin fulfilling the math requirement associated with Harvard’s pre-medical track, the university recommended (and Richardson agreed) she should take an intro-level calculus course called Math MA.

Even with her previous calculus experience, she said, the Harvard course was far from an easy A. “I’m glad that I took a class that pushed me,” Richardson said.

In recent months, amid the White House’s ongoing battle with Harvard, the Trump administration has used that class to questionthe university’s academic rigor. In what has become a familiar refrain, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, Josh Gruenbaum, a top US General Services Administration official, and President Trump himself have all labeled a modified version of the calculus course Richardson completed — known as MA5 — “remedial math.” 

“I want Harvard to be great again,” Trump said in the Oval Office last month. “Harvard announced two weeks ago that they’re going to teach remedial mathematics. Remedial, meaning they’re going to teach low grade mathematics like two plus two is four. How did these people get into Harvard if they can’t do basic mathematics?”

Richardson said she laughed when she heard the remedial math comment because “MA5 is the exact same class [as MA]. It just meets five times a week” as opposed to four. 

According to an online course description of MA5, the extra day of instruction time “will target foundational skills in algebra, geometry, and quantitative reasoning that will help you unlock success in Math MA.” The homework, exams, and grading structure of MA5 are the same as MA, a course Harvard has offered for decades. Even MA5’s format is not entirely new. Five days of instruction was previously required for all students taking Math MA in 2018.

“If you look at academic support and a college trying to help their students, and you think that’s unnecessary or it’s embarrassing that they have to provide that kind of support, then it’s coming from a place of ignorance,” said Richardson. “You have no understanding of how, not just college, but how learning works. You can’t learn without help.”

All Harvard freshmen take a placement exam in mathematics prior to their arrival on campus. Based on how they score, the university suggests which course they should be placed into. Math MA5, MA, and its companion course, MB, make up Harvard’s most basic introductory calculus courses known as the M series. MA5 was introduced last year by Harvard to combat pandemic learning losses, which saw students show up to campus with gaps in their math knowledge, especially in early high school courses like algebra, as a result of virtual learning. 

“When this first came out about us teaching remedial math, I was like, ‘Well, this is news to me and I wouldn’t even know how to do it,’” said Harvard’s director of introductory math Brendan Kelly. “Thinking about how to explain addition to somebody is an expertise that your elementary school teachers and middle school teachers have. … We focus on much more advanced mathematics.”

Only 20 students took MA5 this past academic year according to Kelly. The course was taught across two sections, each with 10 students, Kelly said, all of whom have declared majors like economics or biology that necessitate a strong foundation in calculus…

Remedial math courses in higher education are typically defined as “non credit bearing courses that cover middle school and high school content below that of college algebra,” said Chris Rasmussen, a professor of mathematics at San Diego State University. “So we’re talking fractions or some basic algebraic manipulation.” Rasmussen — who was part of a team of outside professors that recently conducted a full review of Harvard’s math department — said “in no way is MA5 a remedial math course. It’s a rigorous calculus course.”

The article includes a PDF with the course syllabus. How many members of Congress could pass it? Not many. Certainly not Trump or Secretary McMahon.

Categories Bigotry, Higher Education, Lies, Trump

Federal Appeals Court Allows Trump to Exclude AP from Press Pool

By dianeravitch
June 8, 2025 //
7

Trump got very angry at the AP, an international press agency, because it insisted on calling the Gulf of Mexico by its rightful name. It refused to follow Trump’s renaming it as “the Gulf of America.”

So Trump punished the AP by excluding it from the press pool on Air Force 1 and in other gatherings.

A three-judge panel voted 2-1 to allow Trump to continue choosing which press gets access to him. Two of the judges were appointed by Trump.

Peter Baker, a national correspondent for The New York Times wrote on Twitter:

Appeals court rules that the president can punish a news outlet based on the content of its coverage by denying it access that it has had for generations. If the decision stands, it represents a major blow to press freedom. @ZJMontague @minhokimdh

The consequences of this go beyond Trump barring the @AP from the White House press pool. By this logic, a future Democratic president will be able to bar conservative media outlets that want to ask about, say, his advancing age or his son’s business activities.

Replies to his comments criticized the media for not boycotting Trump events in solidarity with AP.

The New York Times reported:

A federal appeals court on Friday paused a lower court’s ruling that had required the White House to allow journalists from The Associated Press to participate in covering President Trump’s daily events and travel alongside their peers from other major news outlets.

By a 2-to-1 vote, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that many of the spaces in the White House complex or on Air Force One where members of the press have followed the president for decades are essentially invite-only, and not covered by First Amendment protections.

“The White House therefore retains discretion to determine, including on the basis of viewpoint, which journalists will be admitted,” wrote Judge Neomi Rao, a Trump appointee. She was joined by Judge Gregory G. Katsas, who was also appointed by Mr. Trump.

The ruling temporarily lifted the requirement that the White House give A.P. journalists the same access as other news media professionals while the appeal continues. But it was clouded by the fact that the situation facing The Associated Press has shifted considerably since the legal standoff began in February.

Categories Extremism, Fascism, Freedom of the Press, Lies, Trump
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