Donald Trump has done many things that are unprecedented. He is the first President to be impeached twice. He is the first convicted felon to be elected President. He is the first President to encourage a violent insurrection to overturn the election that he lost.
So many firsts.
But this one takes the cake. It’s the biggest grift of all. It’s the definition of chutzpah.
In the 250 years of this nation’s history, no President has ever sued the government for damages to his reputation.
NBC News reported:
The lawsuit, filed Thursday at a federal courthouse in Miami, says Trump is suing in his personal capacity, not as president. The other plaintiffs include two of Trump’s sons — Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — and the Trump Organization.
“Defendants have caused Plaintiffs reputational and financial harm, public embarrassment, unfairly tarnished their business reputations, portrayed them in a false light, and negatively affected President Trump, and the other Plaintiffs’ public standing,” the complaint says.
The Treasury and IRS did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday night.
A former IRS contractor, Charles Littlejohn, was sentenced to five years in prison in 2024 after he pleaded guilty the year before to leaking Trump’s tax records to The New York Times. The Times published exclusive reporting in 2020 that showed Trump had paid only $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017.
Trump is also suing the Justice Department for $230 million its investigations of his role in the January 6 insurrection and his withholding of documents.
How vigorously do you think Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Pam Bondi will fight their boss in court?
Would taxpayers have standing to sue to oppose any settlement?
The Trump administration is determined to prove that Renee Good was a domestic terrorist who was trying to kill an ICE officer by running him down with her car. He had to kill her to save his own life. The many videos that have been released demonstrate that these assertions were lies. Renee Good was attempting to flee the scene and did not strike or injure ICE agent Jonathan Ross, who fired three shots point blank at her and killed her.
The New York Timesreported that key federal prosecutors in Minnesota quit rather than defend the administration’s lies. The government wanted them to investigate the victim’s widow for links to terrorism.
Three Minnesota federal prosecutors resigned over the Justice Department’s push to investigate the widow of a woman killed by an ICE agent and its reluctance to investigate the shooter, according to people with knowledge of their decision.
Joseph H. Thompson, who was second in command at the U.S. attorney’s office and oversaw a sprawling fraud investigation that has roiled Minnesota’s political landscape, was among those who quit Tuesday, according to three people with knowledge of the decision.
Mr. Thompson’s resignation came after senior Justice Department officials pressed for a criminal investigation into the actions of the widow of Renee Nicole Good, the Minneapolis woman killed by an ICE agent last Wednesday.
Mr. Thompson, 47, a career prosecutor, objected to that approach as well as to the Justice Department’s refusal to include state officials in investigating whether the shooting itself was lawful, the people familiar with his decision said.
Two other senior career prosecutors, Harry Jacobs and Melinda Williams, also resigned on Tuesday. Mr. Jacobs had been Mr. Thompson’s deputy overseeing the fraud investigation, which began in 2022. Mr. Thompson, Mr. Jacobs and Ms. Williams declined to discuss the reasons they resigned
The Guardian reported that several attorneys in the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division resigned in protest when they learned that the Government would investigate the victim but not the killer.
Several attorneys in the US justice department’s civil rights division have reportedly resigned in protest at a decision not to investigate the fatal shooting of an unarmed US citizen by a federal immigration agent in Minneapolis – while the FBI presses ahead with an inquiry into the victim.
At least four leaders of the division’s criminal investigations section have stepped down, according to MS NOW, citing three people it said were briefed about the departures.
Separately, the FBI – which seized total control of the investigation after freezing out local officials – is looking into Good’s “possible connections to activist groups”, according to the New York Times. A succession of Trump administration officials, including the president himself, have portrayed Good, without presenting evidence, as a “domestic terrorist” or “paid agitator” – while video of her confrontation with Ross appears to show her trying to steer her vehicle away from him when she was shot three times in the face…
The resignations are the latest in a flow of departures from the civil rights division since Donald Trump began his second term a year earlier. In May, the Guardian reported that more than 250 attorneys had left, been reassigned or accepted a deferred resignation offer since January, a roughly 70% reduction.
Dhillon, a former Republican official in California, and an election denier who promoted the “big lie” that Trump’s 2020 election defeat was fraudulent, was confirmed by the Senate in April. She worked quickly to realign the division’s priorities away from its longstanding work tackling discrimination and protecting the rights of marginalized groups and towards Trump’s political goals, including exposing voter fraud, which is rare, and focusing on anti-transgender issues.
“I don’t think it’s an overstatement to see this as the end of the division as we’ve known it,” a civil rights division attorney told the Guardian at the time.
Subsequently, in September, the online news outlet Notus reported that only two lawyers remained out of 36 at the justice department’s public integrity unit assigned to investigations of corrupt politicians and law enforcement.
What you need to know about Harmeet Dhillon, the lawyer appointed by Trump to lead the Civil Rights Division, is that she spent years litigating against civil rights law. Thus, she is just what you would expect: a prosecutor ready and willing to investigate the murder victim, but not the murderer.
Trump, being Trump, turns everything into a story about him. When the news first came out that Hollywood icon Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle were murdered in their home in Los Angeles, Trump posted a callous, cruel comment about their deaths. He wrote the following comment on Monday morning before the police arrested their son Nick.
Trump attributed their deaths to their hatred of him. What?
“A very sad thing happened last night in Hollywood. Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling, but once very talented movie director and comedy star, has passed away, together with his wife, Michele, reportedly due to the anger he caused others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind crippling disease known as TRUMP DERANGEMENT SYNDROME, sometimes referred to as TDS. He was known to have driven people CRAZY by his raging obsession of President Donald J. Trump, with his obvious paranoia reaching new heights as the Trump administration surpassed all goals and expectations of greatness, with the Golden Age of America upon us, perhaps like never before. May Rob and Michele rest in peace!”
Trump’s message was so cynical and self-serving that several Republicans criticized his heartlessness.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said that the deaths of Reiner and his wife were “a family tragedy, not about politics or political enemies.”
Rep. Mike Lawler said that Trump’s comments were “wrong,” and that their deaths deserved “sympathy and compassion from everyone in our country, period.”
Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky said Trump’s post was “inappropriate and disrespectful”; he challenged “anyone to defend it.”
Jenna Ellis, who was one of Trump’s personal lawyers who defended him after he lost the election in 2020, criticized Trump’s post.
“A man and his wife were murdered last night. This is NOT the appropriate response,” Jenna Ellis, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer who is now a conservative radio host, wrote on social media on Monday. “The Right uniformly condemned political and celebratory responses to Charlie Kirk’s death. This is a horrible example from Trump (and surprising considering the two attempts on his own life) and should be condemned by everyone with any decency.”
Trump shows who he is without shame or guile. He has no empathy, no compassion, no sense of propriety. Every issue, every interaction, every event boils down to his self-interest. Nothing else matters.
Steve Schmidt is a veteran political strategist who worked for Republicans, most recently for John McCain in 2008. When Trump was elected, Schmidt was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. In 2020, he registered as a Democrat. He currently writes a blog at Substack.
This one is brilliant. Pete Hegseth is the embodiment of the moral and spiritual and intellectual rot at the core of the Republican Party today.
Schmidt writes:
There is no “Secretary of War” or “War Department” in the United States of America under US law.
Each time a news organization uses Pete Hegseth’s concocted title, and submits to his “War Department” fantasy, it is an act of corruption.
It is a direct and specific choice that immolates journalistic ethics by embracing fantasy at the demand of power.
Journalism confronts power.
Journalism doesn’t obey it, heed it, submit to it, appease it, or accept the premise that make-believe is real if the leader believes it so, regardless of reality.
This was posted by a man in the chain of command for the release of nuclear weapons after the commission of a war crime on his orders, which was followed by evasions, deflections of responsibility, and an attempt to stab a US Navy admiral in the back:
[Diane’s note: This is juvenile and not funny.]
When General of the Army George Marshall, Chief of Staff of the US Army Secretary of State and Defense died, President Harry Truman said the following in remembrance of his titanic life. He made an unfortunate reference to the traitorous Robert E. Lee, who was exceeded in every way by Ulysses Grant, a man who bested him, yet was smeared into oblivion over 100 years time by the the same type of white nationalists and Christian Taliban who slither around Mar-a-Lago. That is, until one day, the truth escaped its dungeon and a foremost savior of the Union was seen clearly again.
[Truman said:]
General Marshall was an honorable man, a truthful man, a man of ability.
Honor has no modifying adjectives — a man has it, or he hasn’t. General Marshall had it.
Truth has no qualifying words to be attached to it. A man either tells the truth, or he doesn’t. General Marshall was the exemplification of the man of truth.
Ability can be qualified. Some of us have little of it, some may have moderate ability, and some men have it to the extreme.
General Marshall was a man of the greatest ability.
He was the greatest general since Robert E. Lee.
He was the greatest administrator since Thomas Jefferson.
He was the man of honor, the man of truth, the man of greatest ability.
He was the greatest of the great in our time.
I sincerely hope that when it comes my time to cross the great river that General Marshall will place me on his staff, so that I may try to do for him what he did for me.
*******************
Perhaps one reason that Pete Hegseth fetishizes the “War Department” is that, when it existed, it commanded a segregated force. The Defense Department has always commanded a desegregated force.
Before the US Army was desegregated a young Army Lieutenant named Jackie Robinson faced trumped up charges at a kangaroo court martial. Here is Jackie Robinson’s legacy perfectly preserved for all time in the magnificent eulogy he received from Reverend Jesse Jackson, to whom I hope we can all send good wishes and prayers this holiday season, as he struggles through the ravages of the burdens handed him with dignity and grace:
Powerful men have a long tradition of sending powerless young men to die in unworthy causes in far away lands.
There should be an extremely low tolerance for such men in 2025 America, but they are not only tolerated, but indulged.
The hypocrisy of the US Congress on the matter of Pete “Kill them all!” Hegseth is bottomless and dangerous. Their faithlessness to the American soldier, sailor, airmen and marine is obscene.
The man who jumped up on a table screaming, “Kill all Muslims!” was exactly who the Congress was warned about. Yet, the warnings were unheeded because the Congress cared more about pleasing Trump than the institutions of the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps that predate the independence of the United States. They cared more about sating a stirred-up Fox News mob than a 19-year-old private.
Shameful doesn’t begin to describe it.
It is a dereliction of duty, and the most profound type of moral betrayal.
The 119th MAGA Congress is an abomination, led by a religious nutter and weakling who is neither bright, decent, funny, nor wise.
In other words, he is a perfect MAGA puppet who thinks he is a ventriloquist. In truth, the hand inserted into his most sacred space, the one he hides his bespectacled head within, is smeared with orange hand paint.
Faithless, treacherous and disloyal are the Hegseth ethos. They are a perfect mirror of the only reflection of equal rottenness in America: the crazed MAGA Congress, filled from bottom to top with corrupt loons, belligerent liars, sexual deviants, conspiracists, fraudsters, women beaters, and insider traders, who worship Trump together.
Pete Hegseth is the leader of a military that is unready and unprepared to fight a necessary war. He is a performance artist, a late-stage mid-tier Fox News star who is a herald of disaster to a population filled with indifference. It is about to find out the hard way how much damage a small group of evil men and women can do to a nation.
This documentary is fascinating. It shows young Bobby’s idyllic childhood at the family’s sprawling, luxurious compound in Virginia. He grew up in a world of joy, fun, and privilege.
You can see how deeply he was scarred by the murder of his father, with whom he was very close. This was an experience no child should endure.
He is sent away to a boarding school, where he is soon kicked out. Then another, then Harvard, which was a given, in light of his name. At Harvard, he becomes addicted to drugs and a drug dealer. Pot, cocaine, heroin.
He goes to law school, flunks the bar exam, but eventually passes. He marries an eligible young woman, has children, divorces her. Still a drug addict. Meets a beautiful Catholic girl, marries her, has four children. He begins to find his niche as an environmental lawyer. Life is looking up. But he’s a sex addict and he keeps a record of his conquests–at least 37. His wife finds the record and hangs herself.
He believes he is destined for greatness. He is a Kennedy so he keeps looking for the vehicle that will catapult him to fame. He discovers angry mothers who are looking for the cause of their children’s autism. He latches on to the issue and becomes their champion. He also becomes a prominent anti-Vaxxer and conspiracy theorist.
He briefly runs for president in 2024 but soon realizes that his prospects are nil. Trump offers a big job if he joins his campaign. Bobby accepts his offer, to the dismay of his family.
Bobby speaks to large, adoring crowds. He loves it.
Trump appoints him to lead the government’s public health agency–Health and Human Services. His family is appalled. They know he is unqualified. They know he has no respect for science. He promises the Senate committee that he won’t stop vaccines, despite his long history as a critic of them. He wins approval.
He begins to fire prominent scientists and thousands of experienced employees. He throws the agency into turmoil.
Jan Resseger recently read Arne Duncan’s cheerful hopes for the Trump education agenda and encouraged the public to look at the bright side. Then Jan remembered Arne’s disastrous Race to the Top, which even the U.S. Department of Education rated as a waste of money, and Jan looked elsewhere for advice. She found Kevin Welner’s sage thoughts.
My view is that Trump, his budget director Russell Vought, and Secretary of Education Linda McMahon ultimately hope to turn all federal funding into block grants to the states, no strings attached. No money dedicated to students with disabilities, no money for schools enrolling large numbers of low-income students. Federal regulations drafted by hard-hearted zealots of the Trump administration will be directed to vouchers, charters, cyber schooling and home schooling.
Don’t be fooled: The Trump administration wants to destroy public schools.
In a recent column in the Washington Post, Arne Duncan suggested that even Democrat-led states can opt into the One Big Beautiful Bill’s tax credit school voucher program and redirect the funds into public schools or at least into programs that support achievement in public schools as a way to replace COVID American Rescue Plan funds that have run out. “This solution is a no-brainer,” he declares.
Here is Arne’s prescription: “The new federal tax credit scholarship program, passed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, allows taxpayers to claim a dollar-for-dollar federal tax credit for donations to scholarship-granting organizations, or SGOs. These SGOs can fund a range of services already embraced by blue-state leaders, such as tutoring, transportation, special education services and learning technology. For both current governors and gubernatorial candidates, it’s a chance to show voters that they’re willing to do what it takes to deliver for students and families, no matter where the ideas originate. By opting in, a governor unlocks these resources for students in their state. Some Democratic leaders have hesitated, however, worried that the program could be seen as undermining public schools, since private scholarships are also eligible. But that misses the point.”
Remember that Arne Duncan launched Race to the Top, which brought No Child Left Behind’s test-and-punish regime into the Obama years by offering gigantic federal grants as a bribe for states to turn around their lowest scoring 5% of public schools with rigid improvement plans—with the schools that failed to improve being closed or charterized—and with the teachers being held accountable and punished if they couldn’t quickly raise test scores. Because none of Arne’s programs worked out, I am hesitant to take Arne Duncan’s advice.
Welner explains that the One Big Beautiful Bill requires the governors of the states to opt into the federal tax credit vouchers (or choose to opt out). As Welner lists how the money can be used, it is clear that the federal dollars can be spent on private education but that, in addition, some programs supporting public schools themselves or their students could qualify: “Under the OBBB, nonprofit Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOs) in states opting into the program are authorized to pool the donated money and then hand out “scholarships” for students’ ‘qualified elementary or secondary education expense[s].’ This is limited to the expenses allowed for Coverdell Savings Accounts,¹ which are tied to school-related needs, such as tuition, fees, and academic tutoring; special needs services in the case of a special needs beneficiary; books, supplies and other equipment; computer technology, equipment, and Internet access for the use of the beneficiary; and, in some cases, room and board, uniforms, transportation, and extended day (after-school) programs.”
Welner continues: “This idea of ensuring that each state could implement the program in ways that allow all flexibility is consistent with the Trump administration’s vociferous embrace of “returning education quite simply back to the states where it belongs.” Welner, however, remains skeptical that the Trump administration really plans to return control of federal dollars back to the states:
“Unfortunately, the U.S. Treasury Department rulemaking is likely to deny states the promised flexibility, notwithstanding the administration’s rhetoric about ‘returning education to the states.’ While the law’s ardent supporters may want Democratic governors to participate, they don’t want to give them the flexibility permitted by the law itself… (T)he key issues for state leaders, particularly the governors who will make the opt-out or opt-in decision in most states, involve whether they can shape the program as it is implemented in their states.” Welner lists key concerns for governors and for those of us who have watched the damage done by the voucher programs now established by many state legislatures. “Governors will want to know… if they can:
“Place requirements on SGOs involving reporting, governance, transparency, access, non-discrimination, profiteering, and prioritization of students with greater need;
“Require that schools and other vendors… be accessible to students and not engage in discrimination against protected groups of students, including members of the LGBTQ+ community;
“Put quality-control policies in place to weed out the lowest-quality of these vendors;
“Limit the program to just one or two of the Coverdell categories, ideally research-based options such as high-impact tutoring and after-school programs.”
Welner warns, however, that powerful advocates at the federal level are “pushing hard for regulations that slam the door on any approach that does not further the growth of largely unregulated voucher programs.”
He recounts many of the problems with state level private school tuition vouchers: Josh Cowen’s research documenting low academic achievement in voucher programs in Louisiana, Indiana and Ohio; the failure of voucher programs to protect students’ civil rights; “free-exercise” justification for public dollars diverted to religious schools; failure to provide programs for disabled students; diversion of massive state dollars to support private school tuition for wealthy students; and states’ failure to regulate teacher qualifications, curriculum, equal access, and oversight of tax dollars.
Welner thinks governors might do well to wait to make the decision about opting in until they can review the formal guidance which will eventually be provided by the U.S. Treasury Department. “(F)or state leaders who are tempted to opt in, that decision could be publicly announced as conditional on the Treasury regulations allowing the state the flexibility to include specified access, quality, and non-discrimination protections for the state’s students. “
He concludes: “In sum, the federal scholarship tax credit may look to some state leaders like an opportunity to secure additional resources for students, but the risks are profound. The structure of the law, coupled with the likely direction of Treasury rulemaking, points toward a program designed not to empower states but to constrain them—pushing states into a rigid, federally controlled voucher system that undermines educational equity and quality and presents long-run threats to the fiscal stability of public schools.”
This is an extraordinary video, showing ICE-DHS employees turning away a Catholic priest who wanted to hold communion for ICE detainees. These are people suffering a cruel fate. Why not allow them the comfort of their religion?
Consider that the Supreme Court has been using the freedom of religion guarantee of the First Amendment to tear down the “wall of separation” between church and state and to legalize discrimination against gays.
Why then is is legal or acceptable for ICE to refuse to allow religious freedom to detainees?
There’s some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.
In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.
In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain they inflict on loyal American workers.
They’re rolling back historic civil rights legislation that has led to a more just and plural society.
They are abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They are defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands.
They are removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.
A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American.
The America l’ve sung to you about for 50 years is real and regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, “In this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough.” Let’s pray.
President Trump was very angry when he heard that the very popular Bruce Springsteen spoke out in dissent about the darkness across our land.
Trump posted this:
Was that last sentence a warning? What a petty, thin-skinned, vengeful man he is.
Thom Hartmann sums up what Trump is: a malignant narcissist intent on destroying every shred of our democracy and our ideals. we knew from his first term that he was a liar and a fraud. Yet here he is, acting with even more rage, vengeance, and destruction than before.
Let us not forget that Trump is enabled by the Republican Party. By their slim majorities in Congress. They have meekly watched as he terminated departments and agencies authorized by Congress. They have quietly given the power of the purse to Trump and Musk. They have watched as he turned himself into an emperor and made them useless. They could stop him. But they haven and they won’t.
He writes:
The Trump administration just gutted Meals on Wheels.
Seriously. Meals on Wheels!
Donald Trump didn’t just “disrupt” America; he detonated it. Like a political Chernobyl, he poisoned the very soil of our democratic republic, leaving behind a toxic cloud of cruelty, corruption, and chaos that will radiate through generations if we don’t contain it now.
He didn’t merely bring darkness; he cultivated it. He made it fashionable. He turned cruelty into currency and made ignorance a political virtue.
This man, a grotesque cocktail of malignant narcissism and petty vengeance, ripped the mask off American decency and showed the world our ugliest face. He caged children. Caged. Children. He laughed off their cries while his ghoulish acolytes used “Where are the children?” as a punchline for their next QAnon rally.
He welcomed white supremacists with winks and dog whistles, calling them “very fine people,” while spitting venom at Black athletes who dared kneel in peaceful protest.
He invited fascism to dinner and served it on gold-plated Trump steaks. He made lying the lingua franca of the right, burning truth to the ground like a carnival barker selling snake oil from a flaming soapbox.
And let’s not forget the blood on his hands: 1,193,165 dead from COVID by the time he left office, 400,000 of them unnecessarily, dismissed as nothing more than “a flu,” while he admitted — on tape — that he knew it was airborne and knew it was lethal. His apathy was homicidal, his incompetence catastrophic.
He tried to overthrow a fair election. He summoned a violent mob. He watched them beat cops with American flags and screamed “Fight like hell!” while cowering in the White House, delighting in the destruction like Nero fiddling as Rome burned.
And now, like some grotesque twist on historical fascism, Trump’s regime is quietly disappearing even legal U.S. residents — snatched off the streets by ICE and dumped into El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison, a dystopian nightmare of concrete and cruelty.
One such man, Kilmar Ábrego García, had legal status and a home in Maryland. But Trump’s agents defied a federal court order and deported him anyway, vanishing him into a foreign hellhole so brutal it defies comprehension.
This isn’t policy: it’s a purge. A test run for authoritarian exile. And if Trump’s not stopped by Congress, the courts, or We The People in the streets, it won’t end there.
But somehow, he’s still here, waddling across the political stage like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man of authoritarianism, bloated with power, empty of soul, and reeking of spray tan and sulfur.
Donald Trump didn’t just bring darkness: he’s a goddamn black hole, a gravity-well of cruelty sucking the light out of everything he touches. This is a man who desecrates everything good. Empathy? He mocks it. Truth? He slanders it. Democracy? He’d bulldoze it for a golf course. And if we let him continue, he won’t just end democracy — he’ll make damn sure it never rises again.
So the question is: are we awake yet?
Or will we let this orange-faced death-cult leader finish the job he started, grinning over the corpse of the America we once believed in?
Now is not the time to kneel: it’s the time to rise. Stay loud, stay vigilant, and show up. Every protest, every march, every call to DC, every raised voice chips away at the darkness.
Democracy isn’t a spectator sport: it’s a fight, and we damn well better show up for it.
Pastors for Texas Children has been working hard to defeat vouchers, which would not only eliminate separation of church and state but destroy the state’s rural schools.
Pastors for Texas Children said the following:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Jay Pritchard, 214.558.6656, jay@upwardpa.com
April 14, 2025
Faith Leaders Condemn Voucher Vote During Holy Week as an Affront to Religious Liberty
Austin, TX — Pastors for Texas Children (PTC) strongly condemns the Texas House’s decision to schedule a vote on HB3—the Governor’s private school voucher bill—for this Wednesday, squarely in the middle of Jewish Passover and ChrisHan Holy Week.
“This is an outrageous assault on religious liberty,” said Rev. Charles Johnson, ExecuHve Director of Pastors for Texas Children. “Governor AbboP is exploiting sacred days of worship and family observance to silence faith leaders who have led the opposiHon to his dangerous voucher scheme.”
For months, clergy and faith communiHes across Texas have spoken out against diverHng public funds to private and religious schools. By scheduling this vote during the holiest days of the year, Governor Abbott and House Public Education Chair Brad Buckley are showing calculated disrespect for those religious tradiHons.
“By forcing this vote during ChrisHan Holy Week and Jewish Passover, Greg Abbott and Brad Buckley aredefiling our sacred Hme and silencing prophetic voices,” said Rev. Johnson. “It’s a cynical and cowardly political tacHc.”
Let the People Decide
PTC calls on Governor Abbott and Chair Buckley to reschedule the vote or, better yet, put the issue on the November 2025 ballot and let Texans decide whether public tax dollars should fund private and religious schools.
Momentum is growing to place a school voucher referendum before the voters. Texas law allows for ballot initiatives with a simple majority vote in the Legislature—a far more democratic path than ramming this bill through during a religious holiday week.
“God is God is God—not Greg Abbott,” said Rev. Johnson. “We have a divine and constitutional mandate to protect free, public education. To schedule this vote when clergy are in the pulpit and families are at the Seder table is a disgrace. If the Governor believes in his plan, he should put it before the people—not hide behind a holiday.”
Pastors for Texas Children urges lawmakers of all faiths and parties to stand up against this manipulaHon and vote NO on HB3. Let Texans decide the future of their schools—not politicians exploiting the calendar for poliHcal gain.
About Pastors for Texas Children
Pastors for Texas Children is a statewide network of nearly 1,000 churches, synagogues, and other houses of worship working to protect and support public educaHon. We equip faith leaders to advocate for fully funded public schools and oppose efforts to divert public dollars to private and religious institutions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 