Half a dozen Republicans and one independent joined Democrats to authorize a start to aid to Ukraine and sanctions for Russia. They defied not only the Republican leadership, but Trump, who does not want to help Ukraine and has eased sanctions on Russia.
This has been a bad couple of days for Trump. He lost his $1.776 billion slush fund for his allies; Congress will not pay $1 billion for his ballroom; the House passed a War Powers Act to limit his war in Iran. It takes just a few Republican votes to block his authoritarian wishes.
Defying Republican leaders, the House voted on Wednesday to take up a bill to impose sweeping new sanctions on Russia and provide additional aid to Ukraine, after a bloc of G.O.P. defectors joined Democrats in an effort to ratchet up pressure on Moscow more than four years into the war.
The bill, which still must win passage in the House, faces a difficult path to enactment, given divisions in the Senate over a sanctions package and objections from the White House. President Trump has repeatedly signaled he does not want Congress constraining his flexibility to negotiate directly with Moscow, and could veto the legislation if it reaches his desk.
Still, the 218-to-204 vote to take it up, in which six Republicans and one independent who normally votes with them crossed party lines to side with Democrats, sent a clear signal of bipartisan pressure on the matter. It added to a growing list of issues on which the Republican-led Congress has in recent weeks shown a greater willingness to challenge Mr. Trump, including the war with Iran, his push to fund a new White House ballroom and a bid to create a federal fund to benefit his political allies.
The legislation’s centerpiece is a broad package of sanctions targeting Russia’s oil and gas sector that is aimed at striking at the Kremlin’s primary source of wartime revenue. Lawmakers in both parties have argued for more than a year that sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies have failed to fully sever the energy revenues that continue to bankroll Moscow’s war effort.
The bill would expand restrictions on financial institutions that conduct business with sanctioned Russian officials and state enterprises and seek to crack down on entities that help Moscow evade existing sanctions. It also would target international organizations, companies, banks and governments that continue doing business with sanctioned Russian entities, provisions primarily aimed at actors in China, Central Asia and other jurisdictions that have helped Russia circumvent Western restrictions.
And the legislation would eliminate a sanctions waiver President Trump approved earlier this year that provided limited relief.
It would authorize roughly $1.8 billion in direct spending and more than $8 billion in loans for Ukraine’s war effort as the country continues to face deadly bombardment in Kyiv and other areas.
The bill languished for more than a year as Republican leaders on the House Foreign Affairs Committee declined to take it up, preventing lawmakers from debating and amending it.
That prompted Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the committee’s top Democrat, to turn to a procedural maneuver known as a discharge petition, which allows rank-and-file lawmakers to bypass the leadership and force a bill to the House floor if it gains the support of a majority of members.
The bill must pass the House and pass the Senate. Trump might veto it.
But it shows that Trump’s iron control of his party is slipping.
The editorial board of The Dallas Morning News is conservative. But it is not MAGA. It does not traffic in lies and conspiracy theories. It adheres to a basic standard of civility, the kind that enabled members of different parties to compromise and occasionally agree on bipartisan legislation. Not now, but not so many years ago.
Given a choice between John Cornyn, a man who spent his career governing as an honest, deeply conservative representative, or Ken Paxton, a man whose personal and professional dishonesty is so manifest that the mother of his own children can’t endorse him, Texas Republicans said, “we’ll take the second guy.”
It somehow gets worse. Given the choice between Jim Wright, an experienced railroad commissioner who openly favored the oil and gas industry, or Bo French, a conspiracy-mongering bigot, Texas Republicans said, “give us the bigot.”
We would set up the same comparison for the Texas attorney general runoff between “MAGA” Mayes Middleton and Chip Roy, except we wouldn’t know who to compare as the better of the two. Both debased themselves as lickspittles of the president while doing all they can to drive division against immigrants, Muslims and any other group they could demonize to stir fear and hatred as a path to power.
What happened Tuesday night in Texas tells us so much about what the deep base of the Texas Republican Party has become. It should shock every person of good conscience and be an awakening for conservatives who still believe this party and its current leadership can serve the traditions of independence and liberty that Texas was founded upon.
Because it’s Ken Paxton’s Texas GOP now. It’s Trump’s Texas. Remember that Paxton is the man Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick saved from what looked like certain conviction in an impeachment trial right after a $1 million donation and $2 million loan from West Texas Christian conservatives flowed Patrick’s way. This is the man whose top deputies, people who devoted their lives to movement conservatism, decided he was so corrupt they abandoned their careers to alert law enforcement. This is a man who pretends to be the moral authority of this state even after his wife filed for divorce on “biblical grounds.” Read that as infidelity. That’s your Texas Republican Party now.
Regular readers of this page hopefully know a few things about us by now.
We seek to support a thoughtful conservatism grounded in limited government, the expansion of free enterprise, the power of capital to lift people into wealth, the fundamental importance of faith and family to living a good life, a belief in an ordered society where laws are respected and enforced from the border to Main Street, and a strong suspicion of movements that would upend the traditions that have defined our country and our common humanity for generations.
We hope for a democracy where good, if imperfect, people with different points of view are elected, take office and find ways to work out their differences through compromise that respects both the majority’s will and the minority’s rights.
We believe the founders of our nation and our state would have wanted nothing less. That was the sort of natural freedom they sought to enshrine, a freedom rooted in the protection of individual rights and the promotion of shared responsibility for democratic norms and a basic decency toward one another.
The people who are being elected to represent Republicans in this state cannot represent that sort of conservatism. They cannot represent the values that a majority of Texans believe in.
Don’t take our word for it. Take theirs. Paxton and Middleton have told us repeatedly where their loyalty lies. It is not to the people of the state they seek to represent. It is to a man who governs not on the basis of conservative principles but on his daily whims. This is the fundamental promise these candidates have made to Texas voters. We will do whatever President Donald Trump tells us to do.
John Cornyn tried to play this game. We can’t help but believe he will spend a lot of days in regret for what the end of his political career looks like. He did all he could to appease the president’s ego, and it wasn’t enough. So many good conservatives have had to learn the hard way that it is never enough. He will take and take until there is nothing left.
We try to imagine one of the men who founded this state, one of those who rode into Texas when it was still a wild and dangerous land where people had the thought that, if they could survive, they could prosper. We try to imagine the sacrifices along the way, the hard winters and blistering summers. The decision to fight for independence from Mexico. The stubborn streak of self-reliance and persistent belief that Texas is still, somehow, its own place.
None of that squares with who these men are. The men who won the GOP’s nomination Tuesday night are not their own men. They are, by their own admission, wholly servile. It is their entire political identity. The tough talk veneer goes only as far as Trump will let them go. There is nothing in them that is independent, that is their own, that is Texan.
We know that most of the people who cast their ballots for Paxton, Middleton and French don’t give a fig what this page says. So many of them long ago tuned out people who still insist on asking questions, who see places for compromise, who believe our neighbors who might be a little different from us are still our neighbors, deserving of our respect and love.
There is a word for what happened in this state Tuesday, and that is shameful.
Texas deserves better than people who truck in lies and bigotry. But that’s what we got.
Where we go from here is hard to say.
My observations:
If there are enough old/fashioned, principled Republicans and independents, Texas has a good chance of turning blue. At the top of the Democratic ticket are two excellent candidates: James Talarico for the U.S. Senate and Gina Hinojosa for Governor.
Texans need fresh leadership. It needs leaders who have not been bought by oil money and White Christian nationalists. It needs leaders who want to solve problems, not engage in bigotry and culture wars.
Talarico would bring a fresh air of honesty and candor to D.C. and a deep commitment to improving the lives of working people and those in need. Hinojosa has the same commitment to helping those who need help and a passionate commitment to public schools. Her own children are public school students. Like many states, Texas has underfunded its public schools and its teachers. Hinojosa understands that Texas needs to educate all its children well. That’s at the top of her agenda.
Talarico and Hinojosa have a chance to change Texas. They represent youth and the future.
South Carolina has 7 Congressional seats. one is held by a person who is Black, Rep. Jim Clyburn. Trump urged the South Carolina legislature to redistrict and turn every seat into a Republican district.
The SC House passed a bill to redistrict. The SC Senate rejected the bill. Twelve Republicans joined 12 Democrats to say no.
Some said they wouldn’t pass the bill because early voting had started and the election was underway. Some must have felt that it was wrong to eliminate the only district with a Black Congressman.
Whenever any Republican has the spine to say NO to the Grifter-in-Chief, it’s a good day for democracy.
The U.S. Supreme Court recently rendered the Caillais decision, which effectively gutted the historic Voting Rights Act. As soon as the decision was released, the Southern states that once formed the Confederacy began to redraw district lines to eliminate Black representatives from Congress and the state legislature. In some of those former-slave states, there is likely to be no Black representation of the state in Congress.
The Confederacy rises again, thanks to the six members of the Supremr Court appointed by Republicans. Once again, Justice Clarence Thomas votes to strip rights from Black people.
Please read this commentary by teacher Ken Bernstein. He includes a speech by President Lyndon B. Johnson, explaining why the Voting rights Act was necessary for our democracy.
This decision makes the case for Supreme Court reform, either by enacting an age limit, term limits, or enlarging the Court.
Today is primary day in Georgia. Jack Hassard offers as good an analysis of the Republican primary as you will see anywhere. Actually, better. Four men are running for the Republican nomination. They all rely on culture war issues, the red meat that gets voters excited, like immigration, crime, and low taxes. Most certainly, they are all conservative Christians. Sadly, none of them addresses the issues that matter most: the closing of hospitals, healthcare, education, the environment. They all embrace Trump, of course.
He blogs as “Citizen Jack.” He is a professor Emeritus of Science Education at Georgia State University.
The Georgia primary is today, Tuesday, May 19. The three weeks of advance voting ended on Friday. Although I didn’t vote on the Republican ticket, I’ve suffered through the continuous bombardment of TV ads by four white Christian pro-Trump men running to be on the November ballot for governor.
No Limit on Spending
The Republican primary for governor in Georgia has become one of the most expensive and combative races in state history. Right now, according to AJC’s Greg Bluestein, the quad has spent over $100 million in the primary. Attorney General Chris Carr, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, and billionaire businessman Rick Jackson are flooding television screens with nearly identical messages: they are Christian conservatives, loyal to Donald Trump, committed to cutting taxes, and determined to crack down on undocumented immigrants. Here is what they’ve pored into the local TV stations.
Chris Carr: Put in $4 million, raised $400,000, 2 million on hand
Bert Jones: Put in $16 million, raised &200,000, $2.1 million on hand
Rick Jackson: Put in $80 million, raised only $200,000, $7. million on hand.
Brad Raffensperger: Put in $6 million, raised $217,000, $2.5 million on hand.
What They Avoid Saying
What is striking is not merely what these candidates say, but what they avoid discussing.
Education funding, hospital closures, rising health-care costs, retirement insecurity, environmental threats, public transportation, affordable housing, and gun violence barely appear in their ads or debate rhetoric.
Instead, the Republican field has narrowed Georgia’s future to culture-war symbolism and tax-cut promises.
That narrowing says a great deal about the current direction of Georgia Republican politics.
Chris Carr
Carr presents himself as the polished establishment conservative. As attorney general, he has aligned himself closely with national Republican priorities and emphasized law enforcement and conservative social policies. His campaign argues that lower taxes and a pro-business climate will keep Georgia economically strong. But Carr rarely discusses the deep inequalities beneath the state’s economic growth.
Georgia continues to rank poorly in maternal mortality, rural health access, and educational equity. Thousands of Georgians live in counties with limited medical services, and many public schools remain underfunded. Carr’s campaign offers little indication that those issues are central to his agenda.
Brad Raffensperger
Raffensperger occupies a more complicated position. Nationally, he became known for refusing Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results. Yet in the governor’s race, Raffensperger has attempted to reposition himself as a conventional conservative Republican emphasizing tax cuts, Christian values, and public safety. His strategy appears designed to reassure Republican primary voters who still distrust him for defying Trump. Disappointingly he claimed he blocked Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams from trying to make it legal for illegal immigrants to vote. Simply not true, Brad. And he borrowed a campaign strategy used by Governor Kemp–a shotgun.
Among the four major candidates, Raffensperger is perhaps the least inflammatory rhetorically. Yet even he has largely avoided bold proposals on expanding health care, addressing climate risks, or improving public education.
His campaign reflects the reality that Republican primaries increasingly punish policy moderation and reward ideological conformity. Rather than using his independent reputation to broaden the debate, Raffensperger has mostly adapted himself to the same narrow framework as his rivals.
Bert Jones
Jones has campaigned as the most openly Trump-aligned candidate. Backed by Trump himself, Jones emphasizes immigration enforcement, conservative cultural themes, and tax elimination. His ads frame politics as a battle between “real Georgians” and threatening outsiders. Yet Georgia’s economy depends heavily on immigrant labor in agriculture, construction, hospitality, and logistics. Harsh anti-immigrant rhetoric may energize parts of the Republican base, but it risks deepening division while ignoring practical economic realities.
Jones also promotes eliminating the state income tax, a popular Republican talking point. But candidates rarely explain what services would be reduced to compensate for the lost revenue. Georgia relies on income tax revenue to fund schools, universities, transportation, and public safety. Promising massive tax cuts without explaining the consequences may be politically effective, but it is fiscally evasive.
Rick Jackson
Jackson, the billionaire outsider, has poured enormous sums of personal wealth into the race and attempted to position himself as a businessman who can “fix” government. Like the others, he stresses deportation policies, conservative Christianity, and tax reductions.
Yet Jackson’s campaign has already been shadowed by reports that undocumented workers were employed at his property despite his hardline immigration message. The contradiction highlights a larger pattern in modern Republican politics: immigrants are politically useful as targets even while the economy quietly depends on their labor. Jackson has the most offensive immigrant ad of the four candidates. He uses one case to demonize and lie about immigrants.
More broadly, Jackson’s candidacy reflects the growing influence of billionaire self-financed campaigns. When wealthy candidates can spend tens of millions of dollars on advertising, elections risk becoming less about democratic participation and more about financial saturation. That trend distances politics from the everyday concerns of working Georgians struggling with housing costs, child care, medical debt, and stagnant wages.
“Across all four campaigns, one theme dominates: symbolic politics over practical governance.”
There Are Real Issues
Georgia faces serious long-term challenges. Rural hospitals continue to close. Teachers leave the profession because of burnout and low pay. Metro Atlanta struggles with traffic congestion and housing affordability. Climate change threatens coastal communities and increases severe weather risks. Yet these issues receive little sustained attention in the Republican primary.
Instead, voters are offered simplified narratives centered on religion, fear of immigrants, tax reduction, and loyalty to Trump. Christianity itself becomes less a moral framework than a campaign brand. Faith is invoked constantly, yet there is little discussion of poverty, health care access, or social responsibility — concerns traditionally associated with religious ethics.
The candidates’ silence on environmental issues is particularly revealing. Georgia’s coastline, water systems, and urban air quality face increasing pressure from development and climate change. Younger voters increasingly care about sustainability and clean energy, yet Republican candidates seldom mention these topics except to criticize federal regulations.
The same absence exists around retirement and aging. Georgia’s population is growing older, and many retirees face rising housing and medical costs. None of the leading Republican campaigns have made retirement security a central issue.
In the end, the Republican primary reveals a party focused more on ideological signaling than comprehensive governance. The candidates compete aggressively over who is most conservative, most pro-Trump, and toughest on immigration. But governing a complex and rapidly changing state requires more than slogans and tax pledges.
Georgia’s future will depend on schools, hospitals, infrastructure, environmental stewardship, and economic fairness as much as partisan identity. A campaign that neglects those realities risks serving political ambition more than the long-term interests of Georgians.
Politico pointed out that Republicans have taken to social media to blame Democrats for “divisive rhetoric that fuels violence. So stop calling Stephen Miller a fascist, stop calling ICE “Brown Shirts” or the Gestapo, stop calling out Trump’s authoritarianism. .
And they all agree that Trump’s armored golden ballroom must be built, even though future White House Correspondents dinners would never be held in that ballroom.
Meidas writes:
Trump’s has been oddly quiet…and the MAGA machine is doing the work for him
Let’s start with the silence. Donald Trump’s approval rating is sitting at 33%. His approval on the economy is 30% — worse than Nixon’s numbers at the time Nixon resigned. And oddly enough, Trump this morning has essentially vanished from his own social media feed. His last post was about renaming ICE to “NICE” — National Immigration and Customs Enforcement — so the media would have to say “NICE agents” all day. A random account called @alyssamariiee11 floated the idea, so naturally, Trump ran with it.
Meanwhile, the White House Correspondents Dinner incident, where a lone individual breached a security perimeter before being stopped, has become the latest Trump regime talking point factory. Rather than address inflation, the economic freefall, or the catastrophic war in Iran, the entire MAGA congressional caucus has been deployed with one singular mission: demand Dear Leader a ballroom.
The Ballroom Brigade
I want you to understand what’s happening here. While Americans are struggling to pay rent, while we are in a jobs recession, while this administration loots the public treasury for its right-wing billionaire benefactors — the Republican Party is spending its media time in a coordinated push for a White House ballroom. This is not a coincidence. This is the talking point. They all have it.
Rep. Pat Fallon says a ballroom is something they can “completely control.” Rep. Michael Rulli says “we gotta build that ballroom as soon as possible.” Rep. Mike Lawler calls it “imperative.” Speaker Mike Johnson says it’ll have seven-inch-thick glass and be “a very safe environment.” Rep. Warren Davidson, perhaps the most unhinged of the bunch, calls the entire situation a “flex” directed at Iran…that gathering every top official in American government in a non-secured hotel was some kind of geo-strategic message rather than a security failure.
And then there’s Rick Scott, who told the cameras that Democrats “want President Trump, Republicans murdered all across this country, capitalists murdered.” That is a sitting United States senator. On television.
Rep. Scott Perry added that the whole incident stems from Democrats calling Trump a threat to democracy and comparing people around him to Nazis. Tom Emmer wanted everyone to know that despite all evidence to the contrary, he’s hearing “positive feedback” from somewhere about Trump’s Iran war. And Kash Patel, who should be spending his time running the FBI, not doing cable hits, told the world this was something “the movies don’t even write about.”
Journalist Mehdi Hasan’s response to all of it: “I think I’m gonna have an aneurysm.” Honestly, Mehdi, same.
One social media user put it simply: the GOP’s ability to completely hijack news cycles with this kind of nonsense, while gas prices surge and corruption runs unchecked, is infuriating. And they’re right. That is the strategy. Create a noise machine loud enough that you don’t have to answer for anything real.
The ballroom doesn’t even having anything to do with the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, because the White House Correspondents’ Dinner is an event held by the private organization the White House Correspondents’ Association, not the White House. The entire narrative is a complete non sequitur. But that doesn’t stop the MAGA drones from repeating it ad nauseam like shoddy computer software that just got a new update.
Oh, Melania…
In Trump’s absence, Melania stepped up this morning with a social media post attacking Jimmy Kimmel, calling his monologue about their family “hateful and violent rhetoric” and demanding ABC take action. She called Kimmel a coward who “hides behind ABC.”
MeidasTouch’s Adam Mockler reminder her of a recent post made by her husband following the death of Robert Mueller: “Robert Mueller just died. Good, I’m glad he’s dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people! President DONALD J. TRUMP.”
“[T]his your husband?” replied Mockler.
As Mockler went on to write, “MAGA authoritarianism is pretending the president is ‘joking’ when he makes death threats, but comedians are somehow ‘shaping public policy’ when they make jokes.”
By the way, Sunday was Melania’s birthday — and if you noticed, Donald didn’t publicly post a happy birthday message.
Who did wish Melania a happy birthday? Paolo Zampolli — the man who introduced her to Trump back in 1998 and who once reportedly explored starting a modeling agency with Jeffrey Epstein. Zampolli, currently serving as a U.S. ambassador for cultural affairs in this administration, posted a birthday tribute featuring an AI-generated Mount Rushmore with Melania’s face replacing all four presidents. It was weird.
Germany calls out Trump’s Iran “humiliation”
Now to what actually matters internationally. While Trump’s congressional supporters spend their day lobbying for granite and bulletproof glass, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — speaking publicly today — delivered one of the most direct indictments of Trump’s foreign policy failures I’ve seen from a Western ally.
Merz said the United States has “absolutely no coherent strategy whatsoever” in its conflict with Iran. He said this entire situation is, at minimum, “ill-considered,” and directly compared it to the failures in Afghanistan and Iraq — 20-year quagmires that the U.S. stumbled into and couldn’t exit. He pointed out that the Iranians are either negotiating brilliantly or refusing to negotiate brilliantly, and either way, they’re winning. He noted that making American officials travel to Islamabad only to leave empty-handed is the humiliation of a nation.
Merz didn’t stop there. He said Europe has offered to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz once hostilities end, and offered to deploy German minesweepers to clear mines from the strait. But first, he said, the fighting has to stop — and he doesn’t see how that happens any time soon given that Iran is “proving to be much stronger than initially thought” and the Americans have no convincing path to a negotiated exit.
This is the chancellor of one of America’s closest allies, speaking at a school, saying publicly that the United States is being humiliated. And he’s right.
Iran and Russia Meet
Making matters considerably worse, Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi is currently in Moscow, where he met with Sergey Lavrov and Vladimir Putin as part of a pre-planned three-country visit that also included Oman and Pakistan. What Araghchi said while there should be front-page news everywhere.
He declared that Iran and Russia are “strategic partners,” that Russia has “always supported” Iran, and that their cooperation will continue. He added that the world has now seen “Iran’s true power in confronting America,” and declared the Islamic Republic a “stable, steadfast, and powerful system.”
Putin, for his part, praised the Iranian people for “fighting with courage and valor” and said Moscow will do everything in its power to help Iran through this period.
This is happening while Trump invites Russia to the G20. While Trump sucks up to Putin in Alaska. While Trump bombs Iran. All three of these things are happening simultaneously. The so-called strategy, if you can call it that, is collapsing in real time.
Katie Phang sues the DOJ over Epstein Files
Finally, important news from within the MeidasTouch family. Our host and legal analyst Katie Phang has filed a federal lawsuit against the Trump DOJ, accusing it of brazen violations of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The suit alleges the DOJ missed statutory deadlines, over-redacted documents — including materials referencing Donald Trump — and withheld key records from the public. Katie is asking the court to order full disclosure, strike the unlawful redactions, and appoint a special master to oversee compliance.
A former Justice Department prosecutor has filed a federal civil lawsuit, on behalf of journalist Katie Phang, against the Trump Administration, alleging the Administration is violating federal law by withhold and redacting documents from the Jeffrey Epstein files.
This is what independent journalism looks like in 2026. You don’t just report on the corruption, you fight it in court. I’m proud to have Katie on this network. Subscribe to her YouTube channel and follow this lawsuit closely.
More to come. Stay focused, and subscribe to the MeidasTouch podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
Jennifer Rubin was a columnist for The Washington Post who departed when publisher Jeff Bezos bent his knee to Trump. Rubin, a journalist and lawyer, knows that Trump is a dangerous demagogue. She says in this piece that Republicans complain privately about Trump but refuse to stand up to him. They will pay for their cowardice in November, as they have in every special election since Trump returned.
Republicans made a calculated bet that by indulging Donald Trump’s ill-conceived and cruel schemes (e.g., unleashing ICE on cities, tariffs, wars with Venezuela and Iran, slashing healthcare to pay for tax cuts for the rich), the country would somehow stumble through. They figured congressional Republicans would share in any successes but somehow avoid any blame when things (inevitably) went haywire. Politics rarely works out that way.
(Credit: Office of Speaker Mike Johnson)
Through Trump’s Iran War, shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, futile effort to pass a Jim Crow-style voter suppression act (the so-called SAVE Act), and inflation-aggravating tariff scheme, Republicans are discovering they are tied at the hip with Trump. Refusing to deviate from his dictates, they will bear the brunt of his serial failures.
Whether the Iran War ends this month or months from now, Republicans cannot escape responsibility for the massive expenditure of taxpayer dollars, loss of life, rise in energy costs, regional instability, and damage to alliances Trump has wrought. Congressional Republicans refused to invoke the War Powers Act — or even to conduct meaningful oversight hearings — and applauded a senseless, unconstitutional war. Now they seem prepared to rubber-stamp a preposterous demand for $200B more in war spending. Republicans will have no place to hide come November when voters come looking for politicians to blame.
The latest CBS/You Gov poll has nothing but horrendous news for the Iran war cheerleaders: 90 percent say the war will make gas prices higher in the short term, 58 percent over the long term; 63 percent predict it will weaken the economy (a plurality assume we will be in a recession); a plurality of 49 percent think the war makes us less safe; and 57 percent say the war is going badly. Some 62 percent disapprove of how Trump is handling the war. Perhaps Republicans should have fulfilled their constitutional obligations rather than contenting themselves with sitting on the sidelines.
Meanwhile, Trump’s web of lies about immigrants and voting fraud have entangled him and Republicans in a political knot. Trump’s lie about mass voting fraud drove him to insist on the unpassable voter suppression SAVE Act. He then made that a precondition for any deal to resume DHS funding. Even to Republicans, this made no sense.
When Senator John Thune (R-SD) initially recommended that Trump agree to Democrats’ proposal to pass a DHS funding bill that would pay for TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard (leaving ICE funding for later negotiations), Trump rebuffed him. By Monday night, however, Trump was considering a deal to do just that, namely to fund the rest of DHS and handle funding for ICE in reconciliation.
What happened between his refusal to relent on funding and his capitulation? Trump trotted out another senseless and entirely performative maneuver: deploying ICE to airports. ICE agents, untrained for any TSA duties, stood around with virtually nothing to do (reminding one of the National Guard deployed to D.C., who largely loiter around metro stations). This underscores Republicans’ responsibility for bollixing up air travel, Trump’s feebleness in resolving messes of his own making, and the dangerous transformation of ICE into a roving street militia Trump deploys to intimidate and harass Americans.
All the ICE/airport stunt accomplished was to trigger a robust blowback from Democrats and civil society groups, demonstrating once again Trump’s talent in supercharging the Resistance. Deploring Trump’s use of ICE as his “personal dystopian police force,” Public Citizen observed: “The confluence of authoritarian overreach of this moment is striking.” The ACLU likewise condemned using ICE at airports “despite their lack of training for airport security and interactions, and their clear track record of abusing their power, including through using excessive force against citizens and immigrants alike.” (Unsurprisingly, this venture, the ACLU noted, was the first time a president “sent armed ICE agents to airports to replace trained security agents and instill fear in families and other travelers.”)
Trump’s compounding calamities have fractured Republicans internally. Cultists demand perfect fidelity to Trump on the war abroad and bullying at home; others fret that a war betrays their America First ideology and the SAVE Act is a legislative cul-de-sac that now compounds the DHS shutdown disaster. (MAGA provocateur Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has become a chief enabler of Trump’s destructive schemes, “sparking a wave of mostly private animosity from GOP colleagues who believe his plan to push through legislation overhauling how federal elections are conducted is ill-conceived and potentially harmful to the party’s chances in the midterms,” Politico reports.)
Republicans fret privately that the Trump reign of chaos, coupled with the highly unpopular war, spells doom for them in November. One is tempted to ask about the private Republican hand-wringing:
What did Republicans think would happen when they fully empowered a delusional narcissist, one who is so clearly ignorant of government and keen to pursue his own wealth and power, the country be damned?
Some dim-witted MAGA Republicans remain true believers and actually think Trump’s antics will pay off. Others know Trump is nuts and recognize the party is headed for disaster, but lack the courage to say so. They are banking that they will survive the blue wave coming in November to fight another day. Their lack of patriotism may be galling, but their self-preservation strategy looks increasingly daft.
The damage Trump and his flunkies have inflicted on our democracy will reverberate for years to come. American families may take years to recover from the economic hits. It is a small consolation that MAGA lawmakers and right-wing media stooges, who have chosen the route of cowardly compliance over constitutional duty and self-serving propaganda over truth-telling, will shoulder much of the blame. History in the long run and voters in the near term will hold Republicans fully accountable for the blunders they countenanced.
The Contrarian is reader-supported. To receive new posts, enable our work, help with litigation, and keep this opposition movement engaged, please join the fight by becoming a paid subscriber.
Thank you for being part of The Contrarian. Share this piece to help spread the word.
The Century Foundation published an analysis of Trump’s federal voucher program, which explains why it is a hoax and a fraud. The authors are Kayla Patrick and Loredana Valtierra.
The promise it makes is that families and students will choose schools that are just right for them, but the reality is that schools choose the students they want.
The promise is that school choice will benefit black and brown children, as well as children with disabilities, but children abandon all civil rights protections when they enroll in private schools.
The promise is that schools of choice will produce better academic outcomes but typically they produce worse outcomes (see Josh Cowen, The Privateers).
The promise is that school choice represents accountability but it usually means no accountability at all, because nonpublic schools don’t take national or state tests.
Kayla Patrick and Loredana Valtierra write:
Modern school voucher programs are often framed as a response to declining academic achievement and a way to expand “parent choice” by enabling private educators to operate within the public system. But in practice, vouchers operate quite differently than advertised. It’s the private schools, not families, who ultimately decide who enrolls, and they do so outside the accountability systems that govern public education and public dollars and ensure every student has equal opportunity to learn.
The Federal Tax Credit Scholarship Program (FTCS), passed as part of the Republican Party’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” (OBBBA), scales this model for camouflaged privatization to the national level. Though branded as a tax incentive, it functions as a nationwide voucher system that diverts public dollars to private schools while allowing those schools to play by different rules than public providers—evading civil rights protections, academic oversight, and any requirement to provide meaningful evidence to the public of their students’ outcomes.
A National Voucher Program Disguised as a Tax Credit
The FTCS nationalizes a model that at least twenty states and counting –including Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania – have already adopted, one which functions by siphoning public dollars through scholarship granting organizations (SGOs). Under this law, individual taxpayers can donate up to $1,700 annually to SGOs in exchange for a 100 percent federal tax credit, effectively turning private donations into reimbursed public expenditures.
SGOs then will distribute “scholarships” to K–12 students to use toward private school tuition, books, curriculum materials, tutoring or other educational classes, and educational therapies provided by licensed providers. While the program is optional for states, at least twenty-seven have already signaled their intent to participate.
[To see which states have expressed their intent to participate, open the link.]
Despite its branding, this design drains public revenue that would otherwise support public schools—which still educate roughly 90 percent of American students—and redirects it to private, religious, and largely unregulated providers.
The program model also ignores what parents time and again have told us they want for their children. When given a direct choice at the ballot box, voters have repeatedly rejected school vouchers and related private-school subsidy measures. In the 2024 election, proposals to authorize or expand voucher-style programs in Colorado, Kentucky, and Nebraska were defeated, and historical ballot measure data show that voters have rejected every statewide private voucher or education tax credit initiative placed before them since 1970. This opposition is reflected in polling that shows nearly 70 percent of voters say they would rather increase federal funding for public schools than expand government-funded vouchers, including majorities across party lines.
[Open the link to see which states have held referenda on vouchers.]
Broad Eligibility, Few Quality Controls, and Limited Public Benefit
Even measured against its stated goal of affordability, the FTCS program misses the mark. But if the goal is to make education more affordable for families under real financial strain, this program is also ineffective. Private K–12 tuition averages nearly $13,000 per year nationwide, placing private schooling out of reach for many families even with a modest subsidy. Yet the tax credit is not targeted to families facing affordability pressures. It allows households earning up to 300 percent of area median income to qualify, a threshold that would make roughly 90 percent of U.S. households eligible. In high-income regions, families earning as much as $500,000 per year could receive publicly subsidized support for private education, while in a city like New York—where median income is about $81,000—families earning nearly $244,000 would qualify. At a time when families are struggling to afford groceries, housing, and child care, this program directs public dollars toward a limited use—private education subsidies for households that largely do not need the financial help—rather than toward measures that would help most families, like lowering child care or housing costs.
At a time when families are struggling to afford groceries, housing, and child care, this program directs public dollars toward a limited use—private education subsidies for households that largely do not need the financial help—rather than toward measures that would help most families, like lowering child care or housing costs.
At the same time, the program imposes no meaningful accountability requirements on participating schools. There are no academic performance standards, no transparency obligations, and no requirement to evaluate outcomes. In contrast to nearly every other federal program serving children, from Title I to Head Start, this is public spending without public oversight. Federal programs historically are monitored for fiscal, quality, and sometimes for safety compliance by the agency with charge over the program. In this case, U.S Department of Education (ED) expertise plays no role in oversight of new national policy for education.1
What State Leaders Can and Cannot Control
FTCS offers a tempting hook for well-intentioned state policymakers as well: Some governors and state legislatures may view the tax credit as a way to unlock new resources for priorities like tutoring or after-school programs. In practice, however, it offers no new, flexible funding for states and gives them little control over how public dollars are used. The law defines “scholarship-granting organizations” so broadly that states cannot meaningfully restrict eligibility, set standards, or influence whether funds flow primarily to high-cost private schools rather than unmet public needs.
Once a state opts in, its role is largely administrative and unfunded. States receive no resources to carry out oversight, cannot impose safeguards, and must submit eligible organizations to the U.S. Treasury without authority to shape program design or accountability. Far from being additional education funding that states need, opting in requires that states absorb the fiscal, administrative, and equity consequences of a federal program they are unable to direct or correct. It is not “free money” for states. The opt-in decision is therefore the only meaningful leverage states have—and governors should use their right to refuse to play along in order to protect their public education systems.
Why Oversight and Accountability Matters
Public funding should never function on a good-faith system. It’s very simple: in good policymaking, whenever taxpayer dollars are allocated, oversight measures are put in place to make sure those dollars are spent in the way intended. We already know from numerous examples in the school choice policy space itself that no accountability means that those who need the help the least receive the most benefit.
Eighteen states have a universal private school choice program. Unfortunately, states that have expanded vouchers or education savings accounts with minimal oversight have already seen waste, fraud, and abuse. Arizona’s universal Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) program, for instance, has minimal controls, audit practices that automatically approve reimbursements, and has been linked to purchases of non-educational items like diamond rings, televisions, and even lingerie with taxpayer funds, prompting investigations by the state attorney general. Rather than lowering costs for families, the program has generated ballooning expenses for the state and contributed to a growing budget crisis—with no measurable benefit to students at all.
Similarly, the federal Charter Schools Program has repeatedly been shown to lack meaningful accountability, with investigations and audits documenting hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on schools that never opened or closed prematurely, and charter networks facing conservatorship over financial mismanagement and self-dealing. These outcomes are the predictable result of public dollars flowing to private operators without meaningful oversight.
Decades of research on voucher programs show mixed or negative academic outcomes, particularly in math and reading, and no evidence that vouchers close opportunity gaps. In Louisiana, Indiana, and Ohio, studies found declines in student achievement following expansions in voucher programs. Students in Louisiana’s voucher program experienced drops in both math and reading in their first two years, while voucher students in Indiana and Ohio performed worse than comparable peers who remained in public schools.
The program nationalizes an unproven experiment while insulating it from the very safeguards that exist to protect students and taxpayers alike.
Taken together, these examples underscore why oversight and accountability are not optional when public dollars are at stake. The FTCS program includes no meaningful accountability, evaluation, or research requirements to justify an estimated $26 billion cost to taxpayers. Without data on student learning, fiscal integrity, or long-term outcomes, the public has no way to assess whether this investment is helping students or simply reshuffling them across systems while diverting resources away from the public schools that serve most children and toward unknown corporate interests.2 In effect, the program nationalizes an unproven experiment while insulating it from the very safeguards that exist to protect students and taxpayers alike.
Who Profits When Public Dollars Become Private Subsidies?
Another consequence of turning public education dollars into private subsidies is that it creates a lucrative marketplace for the companies that manage these voucher systems. A handful of firms have seized on state voucher expansions to secure multimillion-dollar contracts, turning what was pitched as a cost-saving policy into a business opportunity for tech and finance intermediaries. These companies often have limited experience running education programs, and in some states have faced scrutiny over operational problems, questionable spending controls, and high administrative costs.
This track record raises questions about whether families truly benefit from FTCS’s model. It would seem the opposite: it diverts taxpayer dollars into private profit streams instead of lowering education costs for struggling families. Instead of more wasteful government contracts, these dollars should be used to improve neighborhood schools by hiring high-quality educators, increasing after school programs, expanding pre-K, and hiring mental health professionals.
A Tax Policy Not Designed to Support Education
Congress gave sole interpretive authority for this program to the U.S. Treasury Department, deliberately excluding the U.S. Department of Education and its education-specific expertise. As a result, a major national education policy will be implemented through the tax code, with limited attention to accountability, equity, or educational impact. While advocates have urged the Treasury Department to include stronger transparency, safeguards, and state authority, it is unlikely those measures will be adopted to address the program’s core design flaws.
This use of the tax code stands in sharp contrast to prior policies that successfully supported children and families. The 2021 expanded Federal Child Tax Credit helped to lift more than 2 million childrenout of poverty and reduced the country’s child poverty level to a historic low of 5.2 percent. This program will likely do the opposite. Research shows that private school voucher programs disproportionately benefit wealthy families. Consistent with many other provisions in the law, Congressional Republicans have chosen to prioritize a tax break that disproportionately benefits the wealthy, over nearly every other form of charitable giving, such as donations to food pantries, hospitals, or community services.
By incentivizing families to exit public schools, the voucher tax credit also undermines the financial stability of those schools, particularly in rural and high-need communities. Because education funding is largely enrollment-based, even modest shifts can lead to school closures, consolidations, and reduced services. This leaves behind those families who don’t have the time or resources to navigate private systems, and asks taxpayers to reimburse private donations on top of existing public education costs.
Civil Rights Protections Are Excluded
Public schools that receive federal funding are required to comply with federal civil rights laws, including Title VI and Title IX of the Civil Rights Act, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. In 2024, ED received 22,687 civil rights complaints, including about 8,400 related to disability discrimination, reflecting just how often students and families rely on these protections.
These laws require schools to take corrective action to prevent and respond to discrimination, provide accommodations and services to students, investigate complaints, and offer families meaningful avenues for recourse. This is what public accountability looks like in practice, and its success depends on ED’s legal authority and the staff capacity to respond when families ask for help.
By contrast, the OBBA does not require scholarship-granting organizations or the private schools and programs they fund to comply with these federal civil rights protections, even though they benefit from publicly subsidized dollars. This means that if a student experiences harassment or discrimination based on race, national origin, sex, religion, or disability, families may have little or no ability to hold private schools accountable or seek remedies comparable to those guaranteed in public schools.
Evidence from state voucher programs shows why this gap matters. An investigation in North Carolina found that voucher funds flowed to private schools that were significantly whiter than the communities they serve, reinforcing racial segregation rather than expanding opportunity. In the absence of enforceable civil rights guardrails, public funding supports exclusionary practices that would be unlawful in public schools.
The Cost to Public Schools and Communities
Ultimately, this voucher/tax credit perpetuates a broader pattern of states, in addition to the federal government, stepping back from their responsibility to fully fund and strengthen public schools. Rather than address the systemic problems that perpetuate low-performing schools, it treats educational inequity as a series of individual problems to be solved by sending public dollars to private education. No matter how the administration spins it, these programs fail to prioritize students from lower-income families while simultaneously subsidizing private education for higher-income families. It invites taxpayers to feel as though they are helping children access opportunity, while leaving the underlying inequities in public education unresolved and, in many cases, deepened.
[Open the link to see data on source of insurance.]
This tax credit is projected to cost $26 billion, which is a high price tag that instead could be doing real good in public schools. If Congress instead invested this through Title I, that money would amount to roughly $1,238 per student in schools serving low-income communities. Research shows that investments of this size improve reading and math outcomes. In other words, we know how to use public dollars to help students succeed. This policy chooses not to.
Imagine putting that $26 billion, the lowest estimated cost of the tax credit over ten years, toward Title I, the federal program that benefits most public schools. That would more than double Title I’s current funding at $18.4 billion. Title I’s flexibility allows schools to meet their specific needs to improve student achievement: more teachers, aides, professional development, wraparound services, and more.
IDEA is supposed to fund 40 percent of each student’s special education each year, but the federal government has never met that promise. Current funding at $14.2 billion amounts to less than 12 percent of the promise. However, adding $26 billion to IDEA would almost triple current funding and completely close the gap.
We know that the unprecedented funding from the American Rescue Plan and other COVID relief packages will make a major return on investment: every $1,000 invested per student will be worth $1,238 in future earnings. That funding also required states to at least maintain their education budgets at prior funding so that the federal investment would not replace their responsibility and effort, but work together. The FTCS model completely disregards these precedents, and their values.
The Federal Tax Credit Scholarship Is a Heist Taken Straight from the Right’s Privatization Playbook
The Federal Tax Credit Scholarship program follows a familiar privatization strategy. It routes public dollars to private actors while stripping away the oversight, transparency, and civil rights protections that normally accompany public investment. Framed as generosity and choice, it instead creates a system in which taxpayers assume the cost while private schools and intermediaries operate largely beyond public accountability.
The program recreates many risks at a national scale. The schools and organizations receiving these publicly subsidized funds are not required to demonstrate academic results, comply with federal civil rights law, or provide transparency about how dollars are spent. Families are left without protections, taxpayers without accountability, and policymakers without evidence that the investment is improving student outcomes.
When public dollars are transformed into lightly regulated private subsidies, they invite exploitation. The Federal Tax Credit Scholarship is not an isolated policy choice: it follows a pattern of policies that weaken, and normalize weakening, public education while insulating private actors from responsibility. History shows where this path leads: higher costs, weaker safeguards, and fewer assurances that public investments serve the public good.
Notes
The Trump administration has taken multiple actions to reduce the role of the U.S. Department of Education, including firing staff and reassigning education programs and staff to other agencies through interagency agreements (IAAs) without congressional authorization. Such actions raise legal and governance concerns and further erode the education-specific expertise, oversight, and accountability that Congress has historically vested in ED.
Under the OBBA, the federal tax credit for contributions to SGOs applies to individual taxpayers. The law does not provide separate federal tax credit rules for corporate contributions; whether and how corporations might participate or benefit may depend on future Treasury and IRS regulations and state tax policies. Many states currently allow corporate contributions to SGOs.
Adam Kinzinger is the Republican Congressman who was brave enough to say that Trump inspired an insurrection on January 6, 2021. He was brave enough, with Liz Cheney, to join the January 6 Committee investigating the insurrection. Both Kinzinger and Cheney were reviled by other Republicans for daring to question Trump’s lies.
On his blog, he speaks out with independence and courage. In this one, he describes the Pentagon’s splurge on delicacies and luxury items:
For years we have heard the same talking point from the Trump administration and its allies: government waste is the problem. The answer, they said, was to slash programs, dismantle agencies, and create flashy new outfits like the so-called fake agency Department of Government Efficiency — DOGE — to root out fraud and save taxpayer money. The pitch was simple. Government was bloated, and adults were finally back in charge.
But the reality looks very different.
According to a watchdog analysis, the Department of Defense spent $93.4 billion on grants and contracts in September 2025 alone, with nearly half of that money spent in the final five business days of the fiscal year.
Anyone who has worked inside government understands that the end of the fiscal year can become a mad scramble to spend money before it disappears, but the scale of what happened here raises serious questions about priorities.
Some of the spending is almost comical if it weren’t real taxpayer dollars. The Pentagon spent $6.9 million on lobster tail, $2 million on Alaskan king crab, $15.1 million on ribeye steak, and $1 million on salmon in September alone. There were 272 orders of doughnuts totaling $139,224, along with $124,000 for ice cream machines and $12,000 for fruit basket stands.
That same spending spree included $60,000 for Herman Miller recliners, a $98,000 Steinway piano for the Air Force chief of staff’s home, and millions spent on electronics like Apple and Samsung devices. Even more staggering, the Defense Department spent $3.5 billion on cable television services.
At the same time Americans were struggling with rising grocery costs, borrowing money just to buy food, and falling behind on car payments, the Pentagon was filling shopping carts with lobster and ribeye.
What makes this particularly jarring is that this administration simultaneously dismantled programs that actually matter to people around the world. Under the banner of eliminating waste, they gutted much of the United States Agency for International Development. For decades, USAID helped prevent famine, stabilized fragile regions, and projected American compassion and leadership around the globe.
That money fed starving people.
But apparently feeding the world was wasteful. Lobster for the Pentagon was not.
I spent years in uniform flying the RC-26B surveillance aircraft with the Air Force. It wasn’t glamorous. It wasn’t flashy. But it was effective. The aircraft supported counter-terrorism missions and provided intelligence that helped protect American troops on the ground.
In 2023, the program was cancelled.
Why? Because the Air Force didn’t want to spend about $20 million a year to keep it going.
Think about that for a moment. The entire annual cost of a program that directly supported operational missions was less than what the Pentagon spent on lobster tail in a single month. Programs that actually protect American lives were eliminated in the name of efficiency, while luxury purchases and end-of-year spending binges rolled on.
This is the fundamental problem with the politics of “waste.” The loudest critics of government spending are often the least interested in actually fixing it. They are interested in headlines and ideological targets. Programs that help poor people or foreign populations are easy political punching bags. Quiet spending inside the defense bureaucracy is not.
Now, a quick aside. Yearly budgeting and spending can be difficult. Let’s just take my personal Congressional budget per year of around $1.3 million. That covered everything from salaries, new printers, paper, and correspondence, to travel. If I went over my budget for the year, I was personally on the hook for the overspending. So naturally, we saved a lot of expenses for the end of the fiscal year so that we could make sure we stayed within the allowance. Some end of year splurging is understood, but this amount from DOD? Simply insane.
Real fiscal responsibility is not about cutting programs that feed the hungry or abandoning alliances that stabilize the world. It’s about making serious choices about priorities.
If the government wants to talk about waste, we should start with the billions spent on furniture, electronics, luxury food, and end-of-year spending sprees that do little to strengthen national security.
Because the truth is simple.
We didn’t stop feeding the world to save money.
We stopped feeding the world so someone else could buy lobster.
As many of you know, I was born and raised in Texas. I grew up in Houston, third of eight children. I went to public schools, then to college in Massachusetts. I have never stopped being a Texan. I live in Brooklyn now but a part of my heart will always be in Texas. So I keep a close watch over developments in my home state.
The victories of James Talarico for Senate and Gina Hinojosa for Governor put Texas Democrats in a good position to turn Texas blue.
Gina Hinojosa coasted to victory in the Democratic primary over seven opponents. Soon after the polls closed, she had 61% of the vote. She will face incumbent Greg Abbot in November.
Talarico won the primary by 52.8% to Crockett’s 45.9%.
(Full disclosure: I contributed to all three campaigns.)
Talarico was a member of the state legislature. He has studied theology and is working towards a Master of Divinity at the Austin Presbyterian Seminary. He hopes to win independents and Trump voters with his deep religious faith and his rhetoric of love and reconciliation.
Under Governor Greg Abbot–now seeking his fourth term–Texas became an extreme MAGA state. Abbot echoes whatever Trump says , or says it first. Abbot is mean and has a stone heart.
Gina Hinojosa swept the Democratic primary for Governor. She is smart, articulate, beautiful, and Hispanic. One of the reasons that Democrats have not won a statewide office since 1994 is low turnout and growing Hispanic support for Trump. Gina was a featured speaker at the last conference of the Network for Public Education in Columbus, Ohio, and she was wonderful! As she explains in her PBS interview, strengthening neighborhood public schools is her top priority.
The Republicans running for Senate will compete in a May run-off. Jon Cornyn, the incumbent, is a reliable vote for Trump but not really MAGA. He seems like a moderate Republican who votes with Trump to protect his hide. Cornyn is running for his fifth term.
His opponent Ken Paxton is Attorney General of Texas, and it’s fair to say that he’s been scarred by scandals. His wife is a state senator. He cheated on her. Some of his staff blew the whistle on him and said he took payoffs from men he was investigating. The Republican House impeached him; the Republican Senate cleared him, thanks to generous donations by hard-right MAGA billionaires.
Paxton and Cornyn will have a runoff in May.
Talarico will be a strong candidate for the Senate. Hinojosa will be a strong candidate against Abbot, if Texans are sufficiently sick of pay-to-play politics.
The outcome will depend on turnout. Right now, Texas is run by a handful of oil billionaires. They want low taxes and minimal public services. They are Christian nationalists who love money and power.
If Talarico can attract the support of non-MAGA Republicans and if Gina can bring Hispanic voters to the polls, Texas will flip blue.
See Gina Hinojosa speaking at the Network for Public Education conference in April 2025, before the Republican-dominated Texas legislature passed vouchers. The passage of vouchers happened only after Governor Abbot primaried anti-voucher Republicans with the millions given him by billionaire Jeff Yass, the richest man in Pennsylvania.
See Talarico on how the worst people quote Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on MLK Day and then violate his teachings every other day of the year.
Talarico on Christian nationalists, who–he says–are “more committed to the love of power than to the power of love.”
I love these two and will support them both. There will be a tidal wave of money pouring into Texas Republican coffers from other states to try to stop these two exciting Democrats!
Diane Ravitch's blog 