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The GOP’s Shameful Attack on Public Schools

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2025 //
2

Thomas Ultican, retired teacher of advanced mathematics and physics in California, has been keeping track of the privatization movement. In this post, he criticizes the Republican Party for its war on public schools. There was a time when Republicans supported their community schools. They provided strong support for bond issues and were active on local school boards. Today, however, Republicans as a party have led privatization efforts, knowing that it is intended to defund their public schools. None of the promises of privatization have panned out. Surely they know that they are destroying not only their own community’s public schools but a foundation stone in our democracy.

Privatization promotes segregation. Public schools bring people from different backgrounds together. As our society grows more polarized, we need public schools to unite us and build community.

Ultican writes:

This year, state legislators have proposed in excess of 110 laws pertaining to public education. Of those laws 85 were centered on privatizing K-12 schools. Republican lawmakers sponsored 83 of the pro-privatization laws. Which begs the question, has the Grand Old Party become the Grifting Oligarchs Party? When did they become radicals out to upend the foundation of American greatness?

The conservative party has a long history of being anti-labor and have always been a hard sell when it came to social spending. However, they historically have supported public education and especially their local schools. It seems the conservative and careful GOP is gone and been replaced by a wild bunch. It is stupefying to see them propose radical ideas like using public money to fund education savings accounts (ESA) with little oversight. Parents are allowed to use ESA funds for private schools (including religious schools), for homeschool expenses or educational experiences like horseback riding lessons.

A review of all the 2025 state education legal proposals was used to create the following table.

In this table, ESA indicates tax credit funded voucher programs. There have been 40 bills introduced to create ESA programs plus another 20 bills designed to expand existing ESA programs. Most of 2025’s proposed laws are in progress but the governors of Texas, Tennessee, Idaho and Wyoming have signed and ratified new ESA style laws. In addition, governors in Indiana, South Carolina and New Hampshire signed laws expanding ESA vouchers in their states.

None of the 16 proposals to protect public education or 3 laws to repeal an existing ESA program were signed by a governor or passed by a legislature.

Fighting in the Courts

June 13th, the Wyoming Education Association (WEA) and nine parents filed a lawsuit challenging the Steamboat Legacy Scholarship Act, Wyoming’s new voucher program. The suit charged:

“… the program violates the Wyoming Constitution in two key ways. One for directing public dollars to private enterprises, which the lawsuit says is clearly prohibited. The second for violating the constitution’s mandate that Wyoming provide ‘a complete and uniform system of education.”’

On July 15, District Court Judge Peter Froelicher granted a preliminary injunctionagainst the state’s universal voucher program. He wrote, “The Court finds and concludes Plaintiffs are, therefore, likely to succeed on the merits of their claims that the Act fails when strict scrutiny is applied.” The injunction will remain in effect until the “Plaintiffs’ claims have been fully litigated and decided by this Court.”

Laramie County Court House

Last year, The Utah Education Association sued the state, arguing that the Utah Fits All Scholarship Program violated the constitution. April 21st, District Court Judge Laura Scott ruled that Utah’s $100-million dollar voucher program is unconstitutional. At the end of June, the Utah Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal of Scott’s ruling. However, the decision seems well founded.

The Montana Legislature, in 2023, established a statewide Education Savings Account (ESA) voucher program. It allows families of students with disabilities to use public funds deposited into personal bank accounts for private educational expenses. In April this year, Montana Quality Education Coalition and Disability Rights Montana brought suit to overturn this program. In July, the Montana Federation of Public Employees and the organization Public Funds Public Schools joined the plaintiffs in the suit. The legal action awaits its day in court.

At the end of June, the Missouri State Teachers Association sued to end the enhanced MOScholars program which began in 2021 funded by a tax credit scheme. This year in order to expand the program; the states legislature added $51-million in tax payer dollars to the scheme. The teachers’ suit claims this is unconstitutional and calls for the $51-million to be eliminated.

Milton Friedman’s EdChoice Legal Advocates joined the state in defending the MOScholars program. Their July 30thmessage said, “On behalf of Missouri families, EdChoice Legal Advocates filed a motion to intervene as defendants in the lawsuit brought by the Missouri National Education Association (MNEA) challenging the state’s expanded Empowerment Scholarship Accounts Program, known as MOScholars.” It is unlikely EdChoice Legal Advocates are representing the wishes of most Missouri families.

In South Carolina, the state Supreme Court ruled in 2024 that its Education Trust Fund Scholarship Program was unconstitutional. The lawsuit was instituted by the state teachers union, parents and the NAACP. The program resumed this year after lawmakers revised it to funnel money from the lottery system instead of the general fund. 

The South Carolina effort has been twice ruled unconstitutional for violating prohibitions against using public funds for the direct benefit of private education. Legislators are proposing funneling the money through a fund that then goes to a trustee and then to parents, who then use it for private schools. 

 Sherry East, president of the South Carolina Education Association stated:

“We just don’t agree, and we think it’s unconstitutional.”

“We’ve already been to court twice. The Supreme Court has ruled twice that it is unconstitutional. So, we don’t understand how they’re trying to do a loophole or a workaround. You know, they’re trying to work around the Constitution, and it’s just a problem.” 

The South Carolina fight seems destined to return to the courts but they have vouchers for now.

Last year in Anchorage, Alaska, Superior Court Judge Adolf Zeman concluded that there was no workable way to construe the state statues in a way that does not violate constitutional spending rules. Therefore, the relevant laws “must be stuck down in their entirety.” This was the result of a January 23, 2023 law suit alleging that correspondence program allotments were “being used to reimburse parents for thousands of dollars in private educational institution services using public funds thereby indirectly funding private education in violation … of the Alaska Constitution.” Alaska has many homeschool students in the correspondence program.

Plaintiff’s attorney Scott Kendall believes the changes will not disrupt correspondence programs. He claims:

“What is prevented here is this purchasing from outside vendors that have essentially contorted the correspondence school program into a shadow school voucher program. So that shadow school voucher program that was in violation of the Constitution, as of today, with the stroke of a pen, is dead.”

The Big Problem

GOP legislators are facing a difficult problem with state constitutions prohibiting sending public dollars to private schools. The straight forward solution would be to ask the public to ratify a constitutional amendment. However, voucher programs have never won a popular vote so getting a constitutional change to make vouchers easier to institute is not likely.

Their solutions are Rube Goldberg type laws that create 100% tax credits for contributing to a scholarship fund. A corporation or individual can contribute to these funds and reduce their tax burden by an equal amount. Legislators must pretend that since the state never got the tax dollars it is constitutional. Lawyers who practice bending the law might agree but common sense tells us this is nonsense.

The big problem for the anti-public school Republicans is voucher schools are not popular. They have never once won a public referendum.

Categories Accountability, Arizona, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Ethics, Extremism, Inequity, Privatization, Republicans, Vouchers

When Did the Republican Party abandon Its Commitment to Local Control?

By dianeravitch
September 26, 2025 //
7

The U.S. Department of Education just canceled $36 million in magnet school grants to small high schools in New York City because these schools allow transgender students to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity and they allow them to participate in sports.

New York City education officials say they are complying with state and city laws.

The Trump administration says the schools must follow the President’s executive order, not state and local laws.

Isn’t this a classic case of federal control vs. local control?

Didn’t Republicans used to be great defenders of local control?

Categories Bigotry, Civil Rights, Democracy, Ethics, Gender, Republicans, Trump

Jess Piper on “Dust-Licking Pimps”

By dianeravitch
September 4, 2025 //
1

Jess Piper lives in rural Missouri. She taught high school English for 16 years, then quit to run unsuccessfully for the legislature in Missouri. She is executive director of Blue Missouri and runs a weekly podcast called “Dirt Road Democrats.” She is relentless.

She wrote this post while listening to a biography of Mark Twain:

I am currently listening to Ron Chernow’s Mark Twain biography. The audio version is over 44 hours…Chernow is known for the very long biographies and I love to listen to him while driving across the heartland to speak to rural Democrats.

I spoke to about 130 people in Quincy, IL last Thursday. I drove through Hannibal (Twain’s hometown) on my way to the event, and I had been listening to Chernow’s book for about four hours when I finally arrived at the Machinists Lodge for the Adams County summer cookout. 

This was my second time at the Adams County event, and when I arrived, I couldn’t help thinking there’s no way it had been a year since my last visit. 

Time marches on, but I didn’t know it would be at such a quick pace.

When I last drove to Quincy, we hadn’t elected the current regime. I was still hopeful that Trump was in the past and we were moving forward. I was sure the country was going to vote for our first woman President because I was constantly in rooms with hundreds of rural Democrats across the country — they were motivated and excited and on the ground doing the work.

We all know how that went.

Adams County Democratic Party Picnic. Quincy, IL. 7/31/25.

When I arrived at the event, there were already several people there, so I decided to change in the back of my car instead of walking in with my bags and hangers and hairspray and makeup. My car has tinted windows, and if I push the front seats all the way up, I have enough room to hide behind the seats and do a quick change.

Superman’s phone booth has nothing on my Mazda.

Before speaking, I sat down to fresh tomatoes and a grilled pork chop and a salad and a piece of chocolate cake. No Diet Coke available, so I was forced to give my body the water I usually avoid.

After the event, a man came up, introduced himself, and said he was at the same event last year as well. He told me something I have been thinking about ever since: he said, “I saw you last year and your message has changed. You were light-hearted last year. You are pointed this year.”

True enough. 

Last year, I had hope that we would make progress. This year I hope we won’t devolve into an autocratic police state. I hope I heave healthcare in January after the subsidies dry up. I hope my kids can afford to buy groceries and pay their rent. I hope my grandkids’ schools are funded. I hope my neighbor isn’t deported. I hope concentration camps don’t become a normal experience.

I have hope. I am also paying attention.

I have spoken so often that I almost have an autopilot switch. I rearrange the order at most events so I don’t get stale, and I usually throw in a new story or talking point at each event. I can speak unscripted for about 45 minutes, however, I would never. I am an old teacher, so I watch the audience for cues. I watch to see if I should hit a point even harder or if I should wrap up.

There is nothing as awful as a speaker who has gone on too long. I’d rather be booed than be boring.

Since March or so, I have spoken on the cruelty of ICE and the instances of kidnappings on American streets. I talk about the folks who are disappearing before our eyes. I speak on the ICE “agents” without badges or warrants or marked cars. Thugs covering their faces. Thugs who seem to have unlimited power from a regime who wants to turn the US into a police state.

I speak on my privilege and what people who look like me should do if they encounter their neighbors being kidnapped or harassed…get in the way. 

Film the encounter. Ask for badges and warrants. Warn your neighbors if you see ICE. Remind them to not open the door for agents. Narrate your video, focusing on the agents not the detained.

Throw sand in the gears as best you can. 

I reflected on my talking points on the drive home the next morning. My sweet host was up with me by 5:45 to let her dogs out and say goodbye and I started the journey home via Highway 36, the Twain bio roaring through my speakers. 

A quick stop in Hannibal for a McDonald’s Diet Coke and back to the drive home.

And back to my audiobook. The narrator reminded me of Mark Twain’s newspaper writing in the West. How Twain had used racist rhetoric in both his notebooks and his writings since the beginning, but his attitude was slowly changing after leaving Missouri, a slave state. 

Twain is a deeply complex man whose views changed and evolved throughout his life. He was vain and always seeking wealth, but he also fought for the oppressed through humor and satire.

The narrator coming through my speakers told of how offended Twain became at the treatment of Chinese immigrants in California and the constant berating and beating at the hands of both the police and politicians and random men on the streets.

As a reporter in San Francisco, Mark Twain witnessed police standing by while white men attacked a Chinese man for no reason. The narrator told me of Twain’s frustration with police complicity in racial violence perpetrated against Chinese immigrants.

In “Roughing It”, Twain said:

No Californian gentleman or lady ever abuses or opposes a [Chinese person], under any circumstances, an explanation that seems to be much needed in the East. Only the scum of the population do it – they and their children; they, and, naturally and consistently the policeman and politicians likewise, for these are the dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum…

I like that phrase. I usually call the folks fighting on behalf of the fascists “bootlickers”, but I think Twain’s description may predate the word bootlicker.

Dust-licking pimps and slaves of the scum…it seems very appropriate for the ICE agents I have seen and read about in the news. 

ICE is getting closer and closer to my home. I just read of a raid in Lenexa, Kansas at a Mexican restaurant. I watched a video of the incident, and I am proud to say that Lenexa community members did in fact get in the way. They stood with their neighbors and tried to protect people in their community. 

Rabbi Moti Rieber is the executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, and says the raids happen without rhyme or reason.

“Because anyone who is perceived as Latino or African, wherever they are at a Home Depot, at a court hearing, out gardening, picking up their kids or at a restaurant in suburban Johnson County can be set upon by armed thugs, armed gunmen in masks, dragged into a van and disappeared. My friends, fascism in the form of uncontrolled executive power, lawlessness, political persecutions and racist law enforcement is not coming. It is here.”

The Rabbi is right. It’s not coming. It’s here. And we have to be ready to fight back on behalf of the people who are being persecuted by the police state. 

The kidnappings are brazen to induce fear, but we have to act in solidarity and without hesitation. We can’t let this stand.

Twain was right in his summation of the dust-licking scum detaining and harming people for the color of their skin in the 1800s. Rabbi Rieber is correct in his description of ICE agents in the present.

As I travel around the center of the country helping to organize rural Democrats, I need you to know they exist. Rural people are also progressive people. There are people in every space in every state standing up for their neighbors and against thugs and fascism and authoritarianism. Against the racism and the disappearings. 

Bootlickers be damned.

~Jess

Categories Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Ethics, Missouri, Republicans

Why Jess Piper is a Star

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2025 //
5

Jess Piper lives on a farm in rural Missouri. She taught English literature for 16 years, then decided to run for the legislature even though her district is ruby-red. Since then, she has been organizing, agitating, encouraging Democrats to run for office in every district. It annoys her that Democrats don’t even put up candidates in districts, so many voters have no choice. She was a speaker at the last conference of the Network for Public Education in Columbus, Ohio, and she was wonderful. Oh, yes, she’s a big presence on TikTok.

She wrote on her blog:

Have you ever seen a bucket with live crabs in it? It’s fascinating to watch. I’ve seen it a few times when I visited the coast and stood to watch fishermen on the piers.

A fisherman can pull up crabs all day long and leave them in a bucket. He won’t have to babysit the bucket. 

The crabs won’t let any of their own escape. As soon as one starts to find a place to pull itself up, another crab will grab it and pull it back down into the bucket. The creatures are stuck there not because there is no way out, but because they won’t let another crab try to get out.

No matter how long you watch in amazement and horror, the crabs are caught in a game that never stops. One crab gets high enough to grab the outer part on the bucket only to be pulled back by the others.

Like a circle of hell…round and round for eternity. Dante style.

It turns out, some people aren’t much better than crabs.

You have likely heard of the crab in the bucket mentality, but if you haven’t, here’s the gist: it’s the mindset of people who try to prevent others from gaining a favorable position, even if attaining such position would not directly impact those trying to stop them. 

Every crab for itself. It’s jealousy and envy and spite.

If I can’t have it, neither can you. And if you try to get it, I will pull you back down.

The GOP mindset in two sentences.

It used to be a little less pronounced than it is now — I don’t know many Trump supporters who are happy these days even though they got every thing they’ve ever wanted and more. The crabs in a bucket mentality has only gotten worse. 

Bitterness and cruelty are the point. The resentment Republicans show to people who aren’t like them is so ingrained in the party, that I don’t know that I need to expand on that point. They hate with a viciousness that seems to have no bounds.

A Trump supporter yells at counter-protesters outside of the U.S. Supreme Court during the Million MAGA March in Washington. Credit: Caroline Brehman.

Trump supporters, and most Republicans, have a problem with others getting ahead or even making progress. Look at the way the regime is dismantling public education and civil rights and women’s healthcare and even programs for the most oppressed and marginalized groups. 

Attacks on public education are meant to keep poor kids off the playing field. The fact that states like Missouri have defunded schools for so many years that 33% of schools are running a 4-day week is evidence. Almost every 4-day week school district is in a defunded rural area. 

The fact that my state is now 50th in educational funding while finding millions in taxpayer money to send to private religious schools is another piece of evidence.

If you try to better yourself through education, they will attempt to pull you back down into the bucket. 

The crab mentality.

Why would I care if someone is gay and wants to marry? What has that got to do with me or my marriage? Nothing. Why would I ever interfere with the love two other people have for each other? Why would I stand in the way? 

I wouldn’t, but many Republicans would. It would seem they think letting others get married keeps them down…in the bucket.

If a person feels they were born the wrong gender and wants to express their own gender differently, why would I have anything to say about that? It’s not my body and it’s not my business. Why would I stand in the way of trans rights or anyone’s ability to get the healthcare that helps them realize their happiness?

I wouldn’t, but many Republicans would. It would seem like letting a trans kid play soccer makes them uncomfortable and keeps them down…in the bucket.

If someone is religious, and it’s not my religion, what would that have to do with me? If they worship in a church or a synagogue or a mosque, why would I have any say about that and how in the world would that impose any restrictions on my own religion or non-religion?

It wouldn’t, but many Republicans think it does. It would seem letting other people make up their own minds about their own faith makes them feel less than and keeps them down…in the bucket.

This mentality is not contained to one party, though. Democrats do it as well. 

Ask me how I know…

I ran for office in ‘22. I called the party to ask for help, they told me, “you can’t win.” Okay, I know I am not at all likely to flip a seat that no Democrat has won in three decades, but why is “you can’t win” the first thing the party would tell a rural person standing up in a red district?

I wonder if this quip has caused others to decide against running?

I ran anyway. I ran hard. I did everything I could to at least show up for the people, listen to folks, and make a difference. I raised almost 275K in a ruby red district. That’s nearly unheard of.

I signed up to walk in parades and have booths at fairs. My team knocked over 1,000 doors and we called about that many numbers. We cleaned up the VAN data that had not been recorded for years.

That was work I did for free for the party, but I was getting too much attention and some of the crabs weren’t happy. I needed to be pulled back down into the bucket.

From Missouri Democratic politico Jeff Smith:

Others might argue that Jess Piper’s energetic state House campaign in northwest Missouri, which has already raised over a quarter million dollars this cycle, is another counterexample showing Democrats’ commitment to branching out beyond the two major metros.

That’s an extraordinary fundraising haul for any rural House candidate, especially a Democrat in an un-winnable district. Piper has leveraged all available social media tools by tweeting, Tik Tok-ing and Instagramming her way to raise more than any other Democratic House candidate.

In fact, the last two fundraising reports show Piper with more cash on hand than the entire House Democratic Campaign Committee.

But, I suspect, instead of deploying a significant portion of her financial haul in large chunks to 4 or 5 swing districts where she could have a decisive impact and help her party gain seats — perhaps even helping position herself to chair the party next cycle — she’ll instead spend it to close her margin from 30 to perhaps 20 points.

See what he did there? 

How dare I run in a rural race and expect to win? How dare I circumvent the party’s expectations? How dare I raise money in a red district because it’s not worth it and I can’t win anyway. How dare I not send donor money to the party or to others who might win an easier race in an easier district.

How dare I attempt to get out of the bucket and pull my community out with me?

We can easily recognize the crabs in the other party, but we need to examine what we do as well. We need to step away from jealousy and greed and pride and spite. 

We can’t make progress by pulling others down. We can’t win by keeping others from rising above their condition.

Help those pulling themselves up and they will reach back down and help the others still stuck. 

It’s the only way.

~Jess

Categories Democracy, Democrats, Missouri, Politics, Republicans

Thom Hartmann: Time for Progressives to Become Active In the Democratic Party

By dianeravitch
August 4, 2025 //
11

Thom Hartmann, accomplished author, blogger, and podcaster, urges progressives to learn from the success of the radical Right. The ultra-Right as for many years a fringe group, far from the power center of the Republican Party. Now the extremists control the Republican Party. Hartmann explains how they accomplished this feat and why progressives should do the same.

He writes:

What if, lacking an organized resistance to fascism like we have had in previous eras (the civil rights movement, SDS, BLM, the Wobbly’s) the Democratic Party itself could play the role of producing radical, positive transformation across America?

Sound crazy? It’s actually happened twice.

The first time was in the 1930s, when Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal literally flipped our politics and the American economy upside down, turning us from a raw, harsh capitalist system to a democratic socialist system with Social Security, legalized unions, unemployment insurance, a minimum wage, workplace safety rules, massive infrastructure construction, and millions of Americans being employed directly by the government to end poverty.

It happened again in the 1960s, with Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, producing Medicare, Medicaid, the civil rights act, the voting rights act, food stamps, low income housing, National Public Radio, a transformation of our educational system for the better, USAID, Job Corps, VISTA, Head Start, a major Social Security expansion, The National Endowment for the Arts, and what was essentially free college.

Sunday, I was on Ali Velshi’s show on MSNBC a conversation about protest movements. I pointed out that back in the 60s, when I was in SDS, there were a number of groups that were quite active, particularly on college campuses, but today most of them have been gutted or banned. 

Black Lives Matter has disintegrated, the movement against Israel’s slaughter in Gaza has led to universities rolling over and capitulating, and the #MeToo and abortion rights movements are essentially leaderless.

Which leaves the Democratic Party, as I mentioned on Ali’s show. Billionaires and racists turned the Republican Party into a neofascist protest party over the past decade; progressives and those of us who want to preserve democracy in America need to similarly says control of and radicalize the Democratic Party in the tradition of FDR and LBJ.

There is a vital lesson progressives must learn, which is how the far right took control of the Republican Party over a decade ago and forced the entire Conservative establishment to lurch so far to the Right that they’ve even dumped people like Liz Cheney and George W. Bush.

If progressives hope to have any shot at influencing today’s Democratic Party and kicking out the corporate sellout Democrats and replacing them with real-deal progressives, then we need to get to work right now to do exactly what the Tea Party did a decade and a half ago to take power.

And it starts in our own backyards.

Let me introduce you to the now-defunct Concord Project, a right-wing organization that, a decade ago, was in charge of helping the Tea Party’s Successful effort to take over and radicalize the GOP.

The Concord Project expanded their get-out-the-vote strategy beyond just traditional phone banking, canvassing, and putting up “vote Republican” signs. Instead, they decided to infiltrate local politics by encouraging Tea Partiers and conservatives more generally to become “Precinct Committee Members.”

Here’s their pitch in their own words from one of their Obama-era YouTube training videos:

“What’s the most powerful political office in the world? It is not the President of the United States. It’s Precinct Committeeman.”

So why is a Precinct Committeeman (or person) so important?

“First, because precinct committeemen and only precinct committeemen get to elect the leaders of the political parties; if you want to elect the leadership of one of the two major political parties in this country, then you have to become a precinct committeeman.”

As in the oldest and most basic governing reality in a republic: true and effective political power flows up from the bottom.

It starts with Precinct Committeemen and women — people who are either appointed or win local elections with very few votes at stake, in some cases only 10 or 20 votes — to gain positions that pretty much anyone can hold but which wield enormous power.

It’s Precinct Committee Persons who elect district, county, and state party officials and delegates, who choose primary nominees that then go on to hold elected office, and who help draft a party’s platform.

They’re also generally the first people who elected officials meet with when they come back into the district. And those officials listen carefully to what Precinct Committee persons have to say. 

So, the Concord folks told their people, if far right Tea Partiers moved in and took over Precinct Committee seats then they’d also be able to nominate a slew of Tea Partiers to hold higher offices within the Republican Party and for primaries.

And those Tea Party Republican Party primary candidates would then be winnowed down in the primary to one Tea Party Republican to run against the Democrat in the general election. This way, Tea Partiers would end up dominating the GOP.

That was their pitch: take over the party from the inside, from the bottom up. And it worked….

Open the link to finish reading.

Categories Democracy, Democrats, Elections, Extremism, History, Politics, Republicans

SCOTUS Gives Trump Permission to Eliminate Department of Education

By dianeravitch
July 15, 2025 //
16

After the election, I confidently predicted that Trump would never be able to get rid of the U.S. Department of Education. To eliminate a Department required Congressional approval, and I was confident that Trump would never get that. He would need 60 votes, not 51, and he would never get them. There might even be Republicans voting to keep the Department.

But I was wrong. Obviously. It didn’t occur to me that Trump would fire half the staff of the Department and dismantle it without seeking Congressional approval.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that the President could continue to lay off the employees of the Department of Education while leaving aside the legal question of his power to destroy a Department created by Congress 45 years ago. Its ruling allowed him to achieve his goal without consulting Congress or abiding by the Constitution.

Because he wanted to. And because Congress–if asked– would stop him. And because six members of the Court wanted to help him achieve his goal.

Lower courts told him to reinstate those who were fired without cause. Federal Appeals courts agreed with the lower courts. The Supreme Court reversed them and gave Trump what he wanted.

The Republicans in Congress watched supinely, conceding another of their Constitutuinal powers. They had already abandoned their power of the purse. Trump might as well abolish Congress. He doesn’t need their approval. They have disemboweled themselves, with the approval of the Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court majority are extremists. They occasionally hold up a fig leaf and claim to be “originalists” or “textualists,” interpreting the Constitution as it was written. We now see that they are originalists when it suits them, but not originalists when Trump asks them to expand his imperial powers.

The Founders thought they had created a system of checks and balances, where no single branch could control the other two. Trump is the conniving scoundrel that they warned about in the Federalist Papers.

Republicans were not always hostile to the Department of Education. Reagan wanted to abolish it right away, but instead reaped the rewards of a 1983 report called “A Nation at Risk,” which excoriated the nation’s public schools and undermined the public’s faith in them.

Reagan’s successor, his Vice-President George H.W. Bush, did not try to abolish the Department of Education. Instead, he decided to use it to burnish his credentials. After first appointing a little-known president from Texas as Secretary of Education, Lauro Cavazos, President Bush decided that he wanted to be known as “the Education President.” He appointed Tennessee Governor Lamar Alexander as Secretary and convened a gathering of the nation’s governors to set national goals. (Secretary Alexander selected me to become Assistant Secretary in charge of the Department’s research arm).

There was no talk of abolishing the U.S. Department of Education during the term of Bush 1.

When George W. Bush became President in 2000, he never sought to close down the Department. His first piece of legislation was called No Child Left Behind, and he expected the Department to help him build his claim to be “a compassionate conservative.”

Again, no talk of abolishing the Department during the eight years of Bush 2.

When Trump was elected in 2016, abolishing the Department was not on his agenda. He appointed billionaire Betsy DeVos as Secretary, and her goal was to use the Department to fund charters and vouchers. She shoveled nearly $2 billion into the creation and expansion of charters but got nowhere with a federal voucher plan.

And then came Trump’s second term, where he allied himself with the most extreme elements of the Far Right. They were there during Trump 1, but in his second term, the extremists are in charge. By extremists, I mean not only the anti-government billionaires like Peter Thiel, but the entrenched rightwing zealots of what used to be called the John Birch Society. When Trump denounces Democrats as “Communists,” “radical leftwing lunatics,” and other bile, I feel as if I’m time-traveling back to the McCarthy era, when unhinged rightwingers flung such insults at their political opponents.

With the Supreme Court’s approval, Linda MacMahon will resume firing employees of the Departnent of Education and sending its core programs to other departments.

If the Supreme Court ever gets around to deciding whether Trump has the legal authority to abolish the Department of Education, it will already be gone.

Categories Education Reform, History, Republicans, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers

GOP Has a New Culture War Target: Superman

By dianeravitch
July 14, 2025 //
14

Democrats are tied up in knots trying to frame “the right message.”

Republicans are focused relentlessly on stupid, misleading culture war issues, invented out of whole cloth. They skillfully maneuver voters into arguing about fake issues, enabling them to sidestep their truly terrible policies and goals.

A few years back, Republicans launched a full-scale attack on “critical race theory,” which demonized any honest examination of American history. Parents turned out to school board meetings to protest the phantom CRT, which allegedly made white kids feel bad.

Republicans harped on the issue, and red states passed laws banning CRT and other “divisive” concepts. The base fell for the anti-CRT campaign hook, line, and sinker.

Have you heard about CRT lately? NO. It served its purpose. On to fomenting hate against other targets.

In the 2024 campaign, the Republican Party had two burning issues: transgender people and violent immigrants. They harped relentlessly on parents’ fears that teachers were indoctrinating their children to be gay, even to be transgender. School nurses, it seemed, were performing surgery at school so that students could switched to a different gender, even though the same nurses won’t prescribe an aspirin without parental permission.

Stoking hatred towards immigrants was equally successful for Republicans. Undocumented immigrants were here to rape and murder. When the election was over, Trump used the hatred he had stoked to unleash masked thugs to kidnap people off the streets and throw them into unmarked vans. The mass roundups continue, despite pleas by farmers and the tourist industry to leave their workers alone.

The centerpiece of Trump’s massive Big Ugly Bill was the billions allotted to dertaining and expelling the immigrants that Trump used to stoke fear and hatred.

Culture war issues are very successful for Republicans because they distract the public from what is really happening. They distract from informed discussions of the radical downsizing of the federal government, the shutdown of foreign aid, the elimination of programs authorized by Congress, the incoherent tariff wars that alienate our allies.

The latest culture war issue has been building against the new “Superman” movie. It is even more pointless than the war against CRT and trans kids.

The best description of the Republicans’ efforts to gin up fear of the new movie was written by journalist Parker Molloy, who writes an excellent blog called “The Present Age.”

She wrote:

So apparently Superman believing in “basic human kindness” is now controversial. Who knew?

James Gunn, director of the new Superman film hitting theaters this Friday, recently sat down with The Times of London for an interview about his take on the Man of Steel. His crime? Describing Superman as “the story of America” — specifically, as an immigrant story centered on the apparently radical notion that being kind to people is good, actually.

“I mean, Superman is the story of America. An immigrant that came from other places and populated the country,” Gunn told the newspaper. “But for me it is mostly a story that says basic human kindness is a value and is something we have lost.”

Pretty anodyne stuff, right? The most famously wholesome superhero represents wholesome values. An alien refugee who becomes Earth’s greatest champion might have something to do with immigration. Real “water is wet” territory here.

But in the right-wing media ecosystem, Gunn’s comments were treated like he’d just announced Superman would be spending the entire movie reading The Communist Manifesto while wearing a pussy hat. Fox News immediately branded the film “Superwoke.”Jesse Watters suggested Superman’s cape should read “MS13.” Breitbart called it “terrible,” “superficial,” and “overstuffed” — which is impressive considering they hadn’t seen it yet. One OutKick writer declared that Gunn was “obviously upset that President Donald Trump is deporting illegal immigrants by the millions.”

All because a director pointed out that Superman — a character literally created by the children of Jewish immigrants — is an immigrant story about being nice to people.

The manufactured outrage machine kicked into overdrive so fast, you’d think Gunn had suggested replacing the S on Superman’s chest with a hammer and sickle. But this isn’t really about Superman. It’s about how conservative media takes the most innocuous statements and transforms them into culture war ammunition. It’s about how the right-wing ecosystem has become so reflexively oppositional that even “basic human kindness” reads as a partisan attack.

And perhaps most tellingly, it’s about what happens when you’ve built an entire media apparatus that needs a constant supply of things to be mad about — even if that means getting upset that Superman, of all characters, stands for truth, justice, and helping people.

Let’s trace how this nonsense actually unfolded, because watching the outrage assembly line in action is genuinely instructive.

The Times interview dropped on July 6. Within hours, the right-wing media apparatus had stripped Gunn’s comments of context and repackaged them as an assault on American values.

Fox News didn’t just report on Gunn’s comments; they created an entire narrative. “Superwoke” became their branded shorthand, repeated across segments like a mantra. Kellyanne Conway appeared on the network to declare, “We don’t go to the movie theater to be lectured to and to have somebody throw their ideology onto us.” Because apparently, suggesting people should be kind is now “ideology.”

But it was Jesse Watters who really went for it, quipping, “You know what it says on his cape? MS13.” Yes, the Fox News host actually tried to connect Superman — SUPERMAN — to a Salvadoran gang. Because he’s an immigrant, get it? Real subtle stuff.

The escalation was predictable. Ben Shapiro released a YouTube video through The Daily Wire, focusing his ire on lead actor David Corenswet’s refusal to say “the American way” in interviews. Instead, Corenswet had said “truth, justice, and all that good stuff,” which apparently constitutes treason in Shapiro’s America. “The reality that Hollywood is so far to the left that they cannot take a core piece of Americana and just say it’s about America,” Shapiro complained, seemingly unaware that “the American way” wasn’t even added to Superman’s motto until the 1950s.

The coordination across outlets was almost impressive. All the right-wing news organizations hit the same talking points within 48 hours. “Go woke, go broke” appeared in nearly every piece, because if there’s one thing conservative media loves, it’s a catchphrase that rhymes.

What’s particularly rich about all this pearl-clutching is that these same outlets constantly complain about “cancel culture” and “mob mentality.” Yet here they are, organizing a pre-emptive boycott of a movie because its director said… checks notes… immigrants can be good people and we should be nice to each other.

There is more to her brilliant critique. Open the link and finish reading. I subscribed.

Meanwhile, the actual film is getting great reviews and audience reactions. We are all in danger of being nice and kind to one another.

Categories Accountability, Bigotry, Democrats, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Extremism, Gender, Republicans

IRS Rules That Churches May Endorse Political Candidates

By dianeravitch
July 8, 2025 //
26

Trump and the Republican Party have long advocated for changes in federal law to allow churches to engage in political activities. The Johnson Amendment, enacted in 1954, limited the ability of churches and other religious institutions from issuing endorsements from the pulpit. Trump’s base includes evangelical churches that wanted this ban lifted. Trump didn’t have to change the law. He just had to appoint the Director of the Internal Revenue Service.

The New York Times reported:

The I.R.S. said on Monday that churches and other houses of worship can endorse political candidates to their congregations, carving out an exemption in a decades-old ban on political activity by tax-exempt nonprofits.

The agency made that statement in a court filing intended to settle a lawsuit filed by two Texas churches and an association of Christian broadcasters.

The plaintiffs that sued the Internal Revenue Service had previously asked a federal court in Texas to create an even broader exemption — to rule that all nonprofits, religious and secular, were free to endorse candidates to their members. That would have erased a bedrock idea of American nonprofit law: that tax-exempt groups cannot be used as tools of any campaign.

Instead, the I.R.S. agreed to a narrower carveout — one that experts in nonprofit law said might sharply increase politicking in churches, even though it mainly seemed to formalize what already seemed to be the agency’s unspoken policy.

The agency said that if a house of worship endorsed a candidate to its congregants, the I.R.S. would view that not as campaigning but as a private matter, like “a family discussion concerning candidates.”

“Thus, communications from a house of worship to its congregation in connection with religious services through its usual channels of communication on matters of faith do not run afoul of the Johnson Amendment as properly interpreted,” the agency said, in a motion filed jointly with the plaintiffs.

The ban on campaigning by nonprofits is named after former President Lyndon B. Johnson, who introduced it as a senator in 1954. President Trump has repeatedly called for its repeal.

Categories Ethics, Politics, Religion, Republicans, Trump

Randi Weingarten: Trump’s Big Bad Bill Is Good for His Billionaire Buddies

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2025 //
0

The American Federation of Teachers released a statement by its President Randi Weingarten:

Contact:
Andrew Crook
607-280-6603
acrook@aft.org

AFT’s Weingarten on Senate’s Big, Ugly Betrayal of America’s Working Families

As we prepare to celebrate our independence, the promise of the American dream, of freedom and prosperity for all, is now further out of reach.’

WASHINGTON—AFT President Randi Weingarten issued the following statement after the Senate passed President Trump’s billionaire tax scam:

“This is a big, ugly, obscene betrayal of American working families that was rammed through the Senate in the dead of night to satisfy a president determined to hand tax cuts to his billionaire friends.

“These are tax cuts paid for by ravaging the future: kicking millions off healthcare, closing rural hospitals, taking food from children, stunting job growth, hurting the climate, defunding schools and ballooning the debt. It will siphon money away from public schools through vouchers—which harm student achievement and go mostly to well-off families with kids already in private schools. It’s the biggest redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich in decades—far worse, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars, than the version passed by the House.

“But if you only listened to those who voted yes, you wouldn’t have heard anything like that. You would’ve heard bad faith attempts to rewrite basic laws of accounting so they could assert that the bill won’t grow the deficit. You would’ve heard false claims about what it will do to healthcare and public schools and public services, which are the backbone of our nation.

“The reality is that the American people have rejected, in poll after poll, this bill’s brazen deception. As it travels back to the House and presumably to the president’s desk, we will continue to sound the alarm and let those who voted for it know they have wounded the very people who voted them into office. But it is also incumbent on us to fight forward for an alternative: for working-class tax cuts and for full funding of K-12 and higher education as engines of opportunity and democracy.

“Sadly, as we prepare to celebrate our independence, the promise of the American dream, of freedom and prosperity for all, is now further out of reach.”

 ###

The AFT represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.

Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Funding, Health, Inequity, Injustice, Privatization, Religion, Republicans, Trump

How Republicans Preserve White Supremacy

By dianeravitch
July 1, 2025 //
0

Michelle H. Davis writes a thoughtful blog on Substack called “Lone Star Left,” where she reports incisively on politics in Texas. This column explains how white supremacists keep Blacks and Hispanic unrepresented and disenfranchised: gerrymandering voting district. What’s happening in Texas is happening in other states, especially the South.

It’s hard to remember that Congress passed the Voting Rights Act in 1965.

Davis writes:

In the early 1960s, Black residents in Leflore County, Mississippi, comprised two-thirds of the population. Despite that, they had no political representation. In 1962, when voter registration of Black voters increased, the all-white Board of Supervisors (similar to a Commissioners’ Court in Texas) cut off federal surplus food aid, a lifeline for over 20,000 poor Black sharecroppers and farmworkers. This move came to be known as the Greenwood Food Blockade.

This move by the white Board of Supervisors exacerbated widespread poverty-induced hunger and malnutrition among Mississippi Delta sharecroppers. This laid the groundwork for long-term food insecurity, economic marginalization, and ongoing inequality in Mississippi that persists to this day.

This pattern is not new. Every time Black Americans have taken even a step toward political power, white supremacy has moved to snatch it back. In Greenwood, it meant starving families to stop them from voting. In Tarrant County today, it means redrawing district lines to erase Black representation, again, by a white-majority governing body.

What happened in Mississippi in 1962 wasn’t just about food. It was about control. And what happened in Tarrant County today isn’t just about maps. It’s about the same thing.

Today, the Tarrant County Commissioners Court voted to approve a redistricting map that effectively eliminates the seat of Commissioner Alisa Simmons, the only Black woman on the court.

It’s not a coincidence. It’s not neutral. It’s not “routine.” It is the calculated removal of a voice that dared to speak up for all of us.

Commissioner Simmons has stood firmly against the racist agenda pushed by Judge Tim O’Hare and the Republican Commissioners on the court. She spoke out against the rise in jail deaths under their watch. She called out the cruelty of defunding Girls Inc., a nonprofit that empowers young women of color. She opposed the elimination of free rides to the polls, which made it harder for working-class people, especially Black and brown voters, to cast a ballot.

And now, she’s being punished for it.

Commissioner Simmons wasn’t just a name on a ballot. She is my commissioner. I voted for her. I campaigned for her. And like thousands of others in Precinct 2, I saw her as a voice for the voiceless, a woman unafraid to shine a light on white supremacy, even when it came dressed in a suit and tie.

That light scared them. So they tried to snuff it out.

What we witnessed today was retaliation. It was white supremacy striking back at a Black woman who told the truth. And just like in Greenwood in 1962, they’re using the tools of power, maps, votes, and bureaucratic language, to do what they couldn’t do in public: silence her.

But we see it. We name it. And we will fight it.

The new map that the County Commissioners voted on today.

The Republican Commissioners and their defenders kept repeating the same excuse over and over again, “This wasn’t about race. It was just about politics.”

They said the map was designed to secure a Republican majority, not to silence Black voters. As if those two things aren’t deeply intertwined.

It’s the same argument Greg Abbott’s lawyers made in Shannon Perez v. Abbott, when Texas was caught racially gerrymandering districts. Their defense?

A direct quote from Greg Abbott: 

“It is not our intent to discriminate against minorities. It is our intent to discriminate against Democrats. If minorities happen to vote Democrat, that is their fault, not ours.”

That’s not a denial. That’s a confession….

Let’s stop pretending this distinction between race and party means anything in Texas. In Tarrant County, in Harris County, across the South, voter suppression by “party” is voter suppression by race. When you target the communities who dare to elect Black women, working-class progressives, young organizers, and civil rights leaders, you are targeting those communities on purpose.

They can say it’s about partisanship all they want. But we know what it’s really about.

Because when Conservatives talk about “conserving” something, they mean it.

They want to conserve white supremacy.

They want to conserve inequality, corporate power, and police brutality.

They want to conserve a system where jails are full, books are banned, teachers are silenced, and women don’t have autonomy.

They want to conserve a Texas where your zip code decides your worth, and where Black and brown voices are only welcome if they stay quiet.

And when people like Alisa Simmons refuse to stay quiet, they get erased.

But erasing her seat won’t erase her power, or ours….

And just when we thought we might get a win, it vanished as quickly as it came.

Yesterday, far-right extremist Tony Tinderholt (R-HD94) announced he would not seek reelection to the Texas House. For a brief moment, there was celebration across Arlington. A man who built his career on cruelty, censorship, and conspiracy was finally stepping aside. But the celebration didn’t last.

Because today, just minutes after the Tarrant County Commissioners voted to dismantle Precinct 2, Tinderholt announced he would run for that very seat, Alisa Simmons’ newly gutted district.

And he didn’t come alone.

Cheryl Bean, another far-right extremist and ally of Tinderholt, announced her run for the now-open HD94 seat. A seat that was, conveniently, made safer for someone like her under the new maps.

Bean doesn’t even live in the district. She changed her voter registration to a new address inside it—an address she doesn’t own, according to the Tarrant Appraisal District. Her real home? Still outside the district lines. But facts don’t matter when the plan is to bulldoze through communities with precision and arrogance.

This wasn’t a coincidence. It was a coordinated political hit job, plain and simple.

A rigged map. A choreographed retirement. A handoff. A handpicked replacement. All timed to disempower the voices of Black and brown voters in Tarrant County. All orchestrated by Tim O’Hare and the extremist wing of the Republican Party.

They knew Simmons couldn’t be beaten fairly.

So they changed the lines.

They cleared the field.

And then they tried to rewrite the future.

But we see them.

We know the playbook.

And we’re not going to let this go unanswered.

This is part of a broader, coordinated strategy across Texas to suppress the political power of Black and brown communities under the guise of partisan politics…..

To read the post in full, open the link.

Categories Bigotry, Character, Cheating, Civil Rights, Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Fraud, History, Racism, Republicans, Texas
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