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Olga Lautman: Trump Sells Out Ukraine to Aid His Friend Putin

By dianeravitch
October 15, 2026 //
0

Trump has demonstrated again and again that laws mean nothing to him; alliances mean nothing to him. All that matters is his inflated ego and the chance to get richer.

A few days ago, he brazenly abandoned the brave Ukrainians who have battled the powerful Russian nation to a standstill.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the U.S. has passed stern laws sanctioning any country that does business with Russia. The first sanctions law passed in 2022, not long after Russia’s launching of the first ground was in Europecsince 1945.

The second law imposing sanctions on trade with Russia was passed only a month ago to honor the late Senator Lindsey Graham, who despised Putin and supported Ukraine. Trump now dishonors his good friend Lindsey Graham.

Trump ignored those laws when he announced his intention to buy diesel fuel from Russia. Ukraine and out European allies were shocked by Trump’s brazen reversal of U.S. policy. It’s no secret that Russia will receive billions of dollars from the US, which will help pay for its war against Ukraine. It will also help pay for Russian shipment of weapons to Iran.

Most puzzling is that Trump is getting only enough diesel fuel for a few weeks at most. The first shipment, “300,000 tons,” will satisfy our diesel needs for half a day. The shipment amounts to 2.5 million gallons. American consumption of diesel fuel is 4 million gallons daily.

He assumes he can hoodwink American farmers with his deal with Putin. This might help him in the midterm elections.

Olga Lautman, a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis (CEPA), describes how quickly Trump switched sides:

Victoria Deineko holds her daughter Mia while standing in front of a multi-story residential building damaged in a Russian missile strike in Kyiv, Ukraine, Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026. Evgeniy Maloletka/AP Photo

It is rare to see a country switch sides so dramatically during a war, but here we are, watching Trump abandon Ukraine as it fights for its survival and instead assist Russia. And as Russia continues bombing Ukrainian cities, homes, and hospitals, killing civilians, Ukrainian officials say they went two nights in a row without the advance warnings they normally receive from the United States before Russian ballistic missile attacks. During the latest wave of Russian attacks, six people were killed and approximately 600,000 Ukrainians were left without electricity.

As if that weren’t bad enough, reports began coming out of Ukraine overnight that Elon Musk’s SpaceX had suddenly restricted Ukraine’s military StarShield satellite service, leaving Ukrainian officials blindsided. StarShield operates under a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense, and the sudden 100-mile-per-hour speed limit imposed on military terminals disrupted Ukraine’s ability to intercept Russian drones, carry out reconnaissance, and maintain communications.

Ukrainian troops were also having problems staying connected even when moving below the new speed limit. Drone operators were losing live video feeds or having to slow their drones down, leaving them more vulnerable to Russian attacks. Ukraine’s 7th Air Assault Corps said several missions had to be canceled because of this. Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhii Beskrestnov confirmed the restrictions and said that he did not believe the timing was a coincidence, considering Trump’s recent threats against Ukraine. Musk later posted on X that StarShield is controlled by the U.S. government and that decisions about restrictions are made by the military and ultimately Trump. By Wednesday evening, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported that the connection was working better, although the speed limit had not been lifted.

Polish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski was among the first to react as reports came out about the restrictions, taking aim at Musk. “Hey, big man, are you playing politics with your products again? As your European customers, we are watching you,” he wrote on X. Poland continues to help pay for Starlink services used by Ukraine since the full-scale invasion.

Sikorski is right to call this out publicly. Why would any country want to spend billions buying American weapons or depend on American technology if the U.S. can decide when and how it can be used? And this is yet another reason America’s allies are paying close attention to what is happening in Ukraine, wondering whether they could be next.

The restrictions come just days after Trump announced a deal with war criminal Putin to ease sanctions on Russian diesel and allow the U.S. to buy Russian fuel, giving Moscow another source of revenue to fund its brutal invasion. As Ukrainians were dealing with the sudden SpaceX restrictions, Putin’s bagman Kirill Dmitriev announced earlier today that the first contracts for Russian diesel sales to the U.S. could be signed within days. Speaking at Russian Energy Week, Dmitriev said that the U.S. and Russia were communicating almost every hour to work out the logistics of resuming shipments.

Trump’s decision to reopen Russian diesel sales has drawn opposition from some in Congress. Twelve U.S. senators, including six Republicans (just six), warned that the deal would provide Putin with more money to finance his invasion. Some lawmakers also questioned whether this deal violates U.S. sanctions laws.

And while Trump is making deals with Putin, he has also lashed out at Zelenskyy, demanded elections in Ukraine, and threatened to cut off intelligence and military assistance unless Kyiv stops striking Russian oil refineries. After two nights without the usual missile warnings and the sudden StarShield restrictions, Ukrainian officials have every reason to question whether they can still trust the United States.

It’s also interesting how Trump keeps demanding elections from Ukraine but has no such demands for Putin, who has ruled Russia for more than 25 years, while jailing and assassinating opponents. And the double standard doesn’t end there, because Russia continues bombing Ukraine’s power plants and other energy infrastructure, while Trump demands that Ukraine stop attacking Russian oil refineries.

This is all happening as Russia helps Iran target American forces and interests in the Middle East. According to recent U.S. intelligence assessments, Russia and China have been supplying Iran with satellite imagery for targeting and components for weapons. But Trump dismissed the reports, even though they came from his own intelligence agencies. In a Truth Social post, he called people raising concerns “Radical Left Morons and Lunatics,” claimed that any Russian or Chinese assistance was minimal, and added, “I don’t believe they are at all.” So Trump is dismissing his own intelligence agencies’ findings about Russia helping Iran while easing sanctions on Russian diesel and threatening to cut off intel sharing to Ukraine.

And the blame for what is happening does not stop with Trump. Republicans in Congress who have remained silent or defended his decisions bear full responsibility. There are a handful of Republicans who have objected to Trump’s fealty to Putin, but far too many others have either supported his treatment of Ukraine and his attacks on European allies or refused to challenge him. One man could not carry out such a dramatic reversal of American policy without the backing of his party, which has allowed him to continue making concessions to Russia even as Moscow threatens the security of European allies.

None of us should be surprised, of course. We have watched Trump worship Putin and defend Russia for more than a decade, even siding with Moscow over American intelligence agencies. But watching him ease sanctions on Russia, threaten to cut off military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine, and oversee new restrictions on StarShield while Russia continues bombing Ukrainian cities is infuriating. This is no longer just about Trump abandoning Ukraine or pressuring Zelenskyy into a peace deal. He has put the U.S. in the position of assisting and funding Russia’s genocidal war while actively undermining Ukraine’s ability to defend itself. Trump has picked a side, and it’s Russia.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Disruption, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, International, Trump

Melania Trump Threatens to Sue Blogger and Destroy Her

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2026 //
8

The blogger known as “JoJo from Jerz” has an incredible, frightening story to tell. She has a large following on social media, and she uses it to say what she thinks about Donald and Melania Trump. She doesn’t like them.

Not long ago, she got a letter from a government attorney threatening to sue her for defamation. This is, of course, an outrage because the First Amendment protects her right to criticize the President, his policies, and his very public wife.

But the threat was clear. A lawsuit would bankrupt her, cause her to lose her home, and ruin her life. The federal government has unlimited resources; it can destroy your life simply by engaging in litigation. At some point, the ordinary citizen runs out of money.

I learned about the situation while reading Dean Obeidallah’s post, where he gave the background and explained that JoJo is Joanne Carducci, a single mother of two children.

Dean wrote:

I wasn’t surprised to hear that Donald and Melania have been threatening lawsuits against Joanne Carducci—better known as JoJoFromJerz—in an effort to silence her criticism. Carducci has millions of followers between X, Facebook, Threads, Substack and more. But what the Trump crime family didn’t count on is the type of fighter JoJo is and how people would rally to support her!

I spoke to JoJo about her ordeal that she only went public with in her Substack post on September 26, 2026, titled, “Be Best. Be Quiet. Or Be Bankrupted.” It was jaw-dropping to read how the Trumps—apparently led by Melania—had their lawyers send letters to JoJo threatening to sue her for criticizing Donald and the so-called “First Lady.” (In Trump’s case, Melania is far from the first lady—she’s more like the 100th!)

Having read Dean’s introduction, I then opened JoJo’s September 26, 2026, post, where she described the nightmare of being threatened by the Trumps, but most especially by Melania.

Jojo wrote:

For the first half of this year, Melania Trump was doing everything in her power to get me to shut up.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk about this. I didn’t know how to talk about it. And if I’m being fucking honest, I’m scared to talk about it right now.

But I’m sick and tired of carrying it around, and I need to put it down.

And watching my fucking feed turn into a propaganda pageant for that self-anointed patron saint of women has exhausted whatever restraint I had left.

If you’ve followed me for a while, you know something was happening earlier this year. I was trying to keep doing my work while worrying about my children, our home, my livelihood, and whether telling you what was happening could cost us everything.

Here’s what I didn’t tell you.

The president and the first lady of the United States of America were threatening to sue me.

Me. A single mother of two in New Jersey.

At first, the letters were about things I’d said about both of them, although mostly her, but over the next several months it became entirely about Melania. She wanted me to retract what I’d said and apologize, and when I wouldn’t, another letter would come, another accusation of defamation, another demand for money I didn’t have, until this woman’s wounded feelings had become something I had to consider every time I thought about my family’s future.

A prominent attorney who wasn’t able to help me told me I should do everything they asked because otherwise they would ruin me.

They would take my home.

And I don’t know how to explain what those words do to you when you’ve already had to rebuild your life from scratch, when the home somebody is telling you to be afraid of losing is the place you made out of everything you managed to save of yourself. There wasn’t some other fortune underneath us. There was this house, my work, and two children who depended on me to make it enough.

I cried every day for months, but I kept going because I had to keep going, because I didn’t have a choice, because my kids need me and their lives don’t stop to indulge two petulant narcissists who can’t stomach being criticized. There’s still dinner and soccer and baseball and laundry and life—the life I’ve worked so hard to make ordinary for them. They get to have that. They get to need things and forget things and go on being children without having to make room for whatever the first lady thinks she’s entitled to take out of their mother.

And I never told them. They still don’t know.

I didn’t want to scare them, didn’t want to give them a reason to look around their own home and wonder whether they would get to keep it, so I kept it from them, even as this constant background noise ran underneath everything else: two of the most powerful people in the world, with all their money and lawyers and access to the levers of power, had targeted me. 

My livelihood. My family. The life I was right there in the middle of trying to live. And I couldn’t make the enormity of that fit with how ordinary we were, how little we had to spare, how much damage they could do without it costing them anything they would miss.

She was swinging a fucking wrecking ball at a mosquito, and my children lived in the building.

For months, I told only the people closest to me and some incredible, heroic human beings—elected officials, people you might recognize from television—who showed up when I needed help. I sat on the rest because I was scared, and I hate that for me, but I fucking hate it for my country, too. I was afraid to tell you what the president and first lady were doing because I didn’t know what telling you might make them do next.

She never had to set foot in our house to make her presence felt in every room.

That’s the brutal, grotesque, fucking disgraceful truth.

And let’s be clear about what I do: I have never intentionally lied about her. When I’m talking about what these people say and do, I’m working from my understanding of the truth, what I can see with my own eyes and hear with my own ears. But a hell of a lot of my work is mockery and ridicule, because I’m a satirist and they’re public figures, and I have a right to point at the ridiculous fucking spectacle they’re making of this country and laugh.

They don’t have to like it. That couture-clad, cash-cushioned control freak was trying to turn free speech into a luxury item and price me out of my own fucking voice.

I don’t need to make shit up. With these two, the problem has never been a shortage of material.

Matt Platkin, New Jersey’s former attorney general, helped me for free, spending hours on the phone with me, giving his time and expertise at considerable personal cost, shepherding me through something I could never have begun to navigate alone. And he listened to me. He advised, explained, helped me understand what I was facing, but the decisions stayed mine. I still cry when I think about the sheer luck of somebody that good showing up in the middle of something that ugly, when I needed help I couldn’t afford and didn’t know how to find.

He’s an extraordinary fucking human being, and I owe him in ways I’ll never be able to adequately express, let alone repay.

Having him beside me felt like somebody putting a hand beneath a box I’d been holding so long my arms had started to shake. I still had to decide where to go with it, but I could finally take a breath without being afraid I’d drop everything. I kept returning to Timothy Snyder’s first lesson in On Tyranny: “Do not obey in advance.”

This is the beginning of her post. Please open and read it all.

It shows how thin-skinned the Trumps are, how ruthless they are, and what true courage looks like.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Courage, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Grit, Injustice, Trump

Defying Federal Judge’s Order, Trump Cuts Down Hundreds of Trees in D.C. on Public Golf Course

By dianeravitch
October 14, 2026 //
5

Donald Trump is busy setting the world on fire, but his real concerns are remodeling the White Hiuse and the District of Columbia. He likes to defy environmental reviews and yo make irreversible changes.

One of his plans involves turning a public golf course in D.C. into a championship course. A federal judge ordered him not to make any changes without getting it cleared by her.

A “furious” federal judge excoriated the Trump administration Monday morning for cutting down hundreds of trees at East Potomac Golf Links, the historic course eyed for redevelopment by President Donald Trump, telling government lawyers they had cost their credibility by ignoring her repeated warnings to give notice before work continued.

Over the weekend, his team cut down 430 trees. Another 300 will be cut down. The judge is furious.

Trump thinks he is a king and doesn’t need permission. Fortunately for him, he’s surrounded by sycophants who do whatever he tells them.

Rick Maese of The Washington Post reported:


Government lawyers told U.S. District Judge Ana C. Reyes at an emergency hearing that approximately 430 trees were removed Saturday and that another 299 are still targeted for removal. Reyes ordered the government to stop cutting down trees until at least 2 p.m. Tuesday, by when she hopes to hear testimony from another administration official involved in the tree removal.

Reyes says she had been reluctant to issue a temporary restraining order in the case. But, she added, “I have no faith that the government isn’t going to cut them down unless there’s an order in place not to do so.”

Violating her order “by two seconds” would prompt contempt proceedings, the judge said.
“I am thoroughly unamused right now,” Reyes said as the hearing began. “I do not know how I could have made it any plainer. I did not want what happened to happen.”

At one point, Justice Department attorney Marissa Ann Piropato told Reyes that government lawyers “did our best” to keep the court apprised of any construction work at the course.

“No, you did not do your best,” Reyes responded, her voice rising. “You did your absolute worst.”
The hearing followed an emergency request filed late Sunday by preservationists seeking to stop the National Park Service from removing additional trees at the historic public golf course.

The D.C. Preservation League and two golfers allege that the administration is racing ahead with irreversible work while avoiding the environmental and historic-preservation reviews required for the president’s proposed transformation of East Potomac into a championship-level course.

Categories Trump

Marc Elias: No Doubt! Trump Lost the 2020 Election.

By dianeravitch
October 13, 2026 //
3

Marc Elias is a leading lawyer in defense of democracy. He has won numerous federal and state cases in defense of voting rights. In this post, Elias refutes The Big Lie.

By Marc Elias · Democracy Docket founder

This weekend, in an interview with Ted Koppel on CBS’s Sunday Morning, Steve Bannon confirmed what I have been saying for years: “The core belief of the MAGA movement is [Trump] won the 2020 election.”

When confronted with the fact that Trump and his allies lost more than 60 court cases challenging dddddddssstsdtsrsrssssssssssrsrrerzzfzzrz sadp the election results, Bannon resorted to a familiar GOP tactic. He falsely suggested that the cases were thrown out on technicalities: “We can go debate this another time, but we didn’t have standing. We never even got into court.”

Even worse, Koppel told viewers that Bannon was “technically correct; they didn’t have standing. They couldn’t find a judge who thought they had a significant case worth hearing.”

Koppel may have meant that the cases failed because they lacked merit. But what he said is simply wrong.

Trump and his allies found plenty of judges willing to hear them out, in many cases through hours or even days of testimony and argument. Those judges listened, weighed the evidence and ruled against them.

I know, because I was the lawyer who helped Joe Biden defeat those cases one by one.

Correcting the record matters as we approach another election in which Trump and the GOP are once again spreading lies. So let me put this one to bed, once and for all.

In 2022, a group of prominent conservatives reviewed every one of the 64 cases that Trump and his allies brought in the six key battleground states. The group included former U.S. Solicitor General Ted Olson, former Republican Sen. John Danforth and retired federal appeals court judge J. Michael Luttig, along with two other retired federal judges and another former Republican senator.

Their conclusion was stark: “Donald Trump and his supporters have failed to present evidence of fraud or inaccurate results significant enough to invalidate the results of the 2020 Presidential Election.”

Most importantly, their report directly rebuts the claim Bannon is making today: that Trump never got his day in court. “Of the 64 cases brought by Trump and his supporters,” they wrote, “twenty were dismissed before a hearing on the merits, fourteen were voluntarily dismissed by Trump and his supporters before a hearing on the merits, and 30 cases included a hearing on the merits.”

In other words, fewer than one-third of the cases were dismissed by a court before reaching the merits. In another 14, Trump’s side walked away rather than test its claims in front of a judge.

Trump’s problem was never a lack of opportunity. As the report’s authors put it, “Joe Biden was the choice of a majority of the Electors, who themselves were the choice of the majority of voters in their states.”

Consider the record.

In Arizona, the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and the state Republican Party went to court claiming that Election Day votes for Trump had been wrongly thrown out. Over a six-hour hearing, the claim that thousands of voters had been disenfranchised fell apart. The campaign narrowed its case to a handful of ballots and the judge dismissed it.

In Wisconsin, Trump requested recounts in Milwaukee and Dane counties, the state’s two largest Democratic strongholds. The recounts increased Biden’s lead.

Trump then lost in federal court and before the state’s conservative-majority Supreme Court.

The federal judge, whom Trump himself appointed, found that Trump had standing, held a daylong hearing, and ruled against him anyway: “This Court has allowed plaintiff the chance to make his case and he has lost on the merits.”

When the Trump campaign asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to throw out more than 221,000 absentee ballots, the conservative court refused. As one justice noted, the president “failed to point to even one vote cast in this election by an ineligible voter.”

In Nevada, Trump’s electors filed and litigated a full election contest, with evidence submitted by both sides. They alleged everything from a vote-buying scheme to illegal voting to malfunctioning voting machines in Clark County. In the end, the judge found that they had failed to prove their allegations “under any standard of proof.” The Nevada Supreme Court unanimously affirmed.

In Michigan, the Trump campaign’s lawsuit over ballot counting rested on a poll watcher’s account of what someone else had told her. The judge rejected it as “inadmissible hearsay within hearsay.” In another Michigan case, a judge heard evidence on claims of fraud at Detroit’s TCF Center and found the plaintiffs’ version of events “incorrect and not credible.”

In Georgia, every ballot was counted three times, including a full hand count. There, one of the Trump campaign’s first lawsuits fell apart within a day. It concerned just 53 absentee ballots in Chatham County. County election officials testified that the ballots had arrived on time, and the judge dismissed the case at the end of the hearing.

Then there is Pennsylvania, where Rudy Giuliani appeared in court himself. He told the judge there was “widespread, nationwide voter fraud.” But under questioning, he admitted, “This is not a fraud case.”

In dismissing the lawsuit, the judge wrote that the campaign had offered “strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations.” On appeal, a Trump-appointed judge wrote for a unanimous panel: “Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here.”

Many of these cases were reviewed by appeals courts or state supreme courts with Republican-appointed or conservative majorities. The U.S. Supreme Court refused to take up any of them.

The Big Lie survives because reporters fail to push back on claims like Bannon’s. The lie that Trump won the 2020 election is a disease, and every suggestion that Trump never had his day in court helps it spread.

Over the past six years, that disease has infected our politics and our culture, and it has bred new conspiracy theories along the way. It drove insurrectionists to storm the U.S. Capitol. And it helped Trump win a second term, and with it a second chance to undermine our democracy.

To fight back, we must correct the record — not just for the past but for the future.

Categories Arizona, Elections, Fraud, Lies, Trump

Trump Makes a Deal with Putin That Betrays Ukraine, the U.S., and Our Allies

By dianeravitch
October 12, 2026 //
12

When Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, western nations imposed sanctions on Russia in an effort to persuade him to stop the war through economic pressure. Despite sanctions, Russia has managed to continue its oil exports, using a “shadow fleet” of unmarked tankers. In recent months, Ukraine has been hitting Russian oil storage facilities and oil refineries in hopes of suppressing Russia’s oil revenues. Those oil revenues fund Russia’s war.

Day after day, Russia has relentlessly sent missiles to bombard civilian targets in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, killing men, women, and children. Without the American Patriot missile systems, Ukraine is almost defenseless.

Trump sent his son-in-law Jared Kushner and his friend Steve Witkoff to talk to Putin about negotiating a peace deal. They left the meeting wreathed in smiles, saying it was a day they would never forget. But they weren’t negotiating a ceasefire or an end to the war. They were negotiating a partnership with Putin to get Russian oil to the U.S. before the midterm elections.

Barely a month ago, Congress passed the Lindsey Graham Russian Sanctions Act, which gave Trump the power to impose 100% tariffs on any nation buying Russian oil.

Guess who is buying Russian oil? The United States! Trump will have to tariff his own country. The members of Congress who passed the Russian Sanctions Act must feel very foolish indeed.

Trump announced triumphantly that Russia would sell the (no longer sanctioned) Russian oil in order to lower prices of diesel in the U.S.

Senator Thom Tillis (NC) said on national television that Trump may be breaking a law passed in 2022. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Tillis said the 2022 law banned oil imports from Russia unless all Russian troops were out of Ukraine.

Trump announced the Russian oil shipments as “tons,” not gallons. The U.S. consumes about 4 million gallons of diesel daily. The first release of Russian diesel (300,000 tons) is about 2.2 million gallons, or a half day of diesel consumption in the U.S. Even the larger amounts that Trump has announced would not last long, a matter of days, maybe weeks.

The closure of the waterways that transit oil from the Middle East is the fundamental problem, a problem of Trump’s making.

Having called on Zelensky to stop bombing Russian oil targets, he added that Zelensky should step down as president of Ukraine because he refused to stop bombing Russian oil targets. Zelensky’s response was to bomb another Russian oil facility.

Trump reacted by saying he would stop negotiating a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine. When he campaigned in 2024, he claimed he would get a peace deal in one day. It’s almost two years later, and he has no deal. He makes demands only on Ukraine, never Russia.

Trump blamed Zelensky for the high price of oil in the U.S., sidestepping his own responsibility for shutting down the global oil supply when Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz after Trump ordered his war on Iran.

Russia comes out ahead. Trump is either a fool or a traitor.

Putin must be laughing. In addition to being free of sanctions on its sale of oil, Russia is supplying Iran with weapons to kill Americans.

It’s a win-win for Putin.

But not for the U.S.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Ethics, Extremism, International, Trump

Snopes: Is There a Golden Statue of a Naked Trump at European Parliament?

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2026 //
6

Snopes investigated the question.

The answer is yes.

Trump is a laughing stock in Europe.

He thinks his bullying and lying makes him look tough.

It doesn’t.

It makes him look ridiculous.

If you are on Twitter, please find this hilarious clip. Trump is giving a speech in Texas, ridiculing James Talarico, calling him a vegan (he’s not), as if that’s criminal (it’s not). Then, he says his wife told him, “Sir, it’s pronounced “vegan,’ not ‘vagan.'”

This clip brought forth hilarious responses.

  1. Why would Melania address him as “sir”?
  2. Whenever he tells a “sir” story, it’s fake.
  3. He must have confused Melania with Natalie Harp.
  4. Melania’s command of English would not enable her to know the difference between the two pronunciations.

And many more.

The unasked question: why is being a vegan worse than being impeached for corruption by the Republican-controlled House in the state legislature?

Poor James Talarico: he has to eat meat constantly to prove he’s not a vegan. Daily ribs or steak. Not the worst punishment but indicative of the absurd campaign of lies against Talarico and Gina Hinojosa, who is running for governor. The Republicans have uncontested power, so they don’t want to talk about issues or policy. So they make personal attacks, usually lies.

Categories Humor, Trump

Trump Ambassador to Greece Begged Donor for Money

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2026 //
1

Kimberly Guilfoyle, ex-fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., current Ambassador to Greece, is embroiled in a scandal. She allegedly pleaded with a Trump donor to pay her American Express bill of $100,000. Not a good move for a federal employee, especially since she was allegedly offering to get favors for him.

Mediate reported:

Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. ambassador to Greece, pleaded with a Republican donor to send her $100,000 to pay off credit card debt, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

The request came as Guilfoyle, the ex-fiancée of Donald Trump Jr., was gearing up for her Senate confirmation hearing last year.

“It won’t show up anywhere if you wire money to American Express,” she wrote on Signal to Eric Deters, a donor to President Donald Trump. “Please.”

The Journal, which reviewed the Signal correspondence, said Guilfoyle and Deters had communicated for months as Deters sought help from the Trump administration on some tax and legal problems. Deters had promised Guilfoyle as much as $1 million if she was able to use her connections to the president to help him. The outlet reported that Guilfoyle relayed Deters messages she had sent to the Internal Revenue Service on his behalf. Guilfoyle also told Deters she was lobbying the Department of Justice for him.

Shortly before her confirmation, Guilfoyle pleaded with Deters to send $100,000 to her American Express account:

“Honey please I need you to get this done for me today,” she texted Deters, adding a prayer hands emoji and a PDF with bill payment instructions from American Express. “You could just send it here,” she wrote on July 3, 2025, just days before her July 9 confirmation hearing.

The Journal added that Deters, a 63-year-old lawyer and former co-owner of Snappy Tomato Pizza, declined to pay Guilfoyle the money, telling her that he would lose his wife if he did. Additionally, the publication noted a recent scandal in which Guilfoyle had promoted a Greek company, a lobbyist from which had traveled with her throughout the Balkans.

Guilfoyle’s attorney disputed the authenticity of the Signal messages, though he did not specify. Meanwhile, a U.S. Embassy official defended the ambassador.

“Guilfoyle’s career in and out of public service is guided by deep and abiding values,” the official told the Journal. “She was fully vetted by the bipartisan Senate Foreign Relations committee and confirmed by the U.S. Senate. The Ambassador remains committed to representing the American people with dedication and integrity.”

Deters told the Journal that Guilfoyle’s inability to help him with his tax and legal issues had soured him on the Trump administration. Specifically, she had been apparently unable to make headway on Deters’ behalf with then-IRS Commissioner Billy Long, who is now U.S. ambassador to Iceland.

“Deters said Guilfoyle told him if he came up with the Amex money, ‘I will be your Trump ride or die, forever and ever,’” the outlet stated. “But, he said, ‘she never came through on anything.’”

Indeed, a message reviewed by the Journal sbowed Deters griping to Guilfoyle.

“I have paid you $300,000 over the years,” he wrote to her on Signal, attaching a photo of a printed memo claiming his consulting firm owed Guilfoyle $50,000. “As of this memo, I have not received one favor. I am not naive or a sucker. I need results.”

During their communications, Guilfoyle became concerned about Deters’ apparent lack of discretion.

“Eric, I really wish you would stop papering all these things,” she wrote to him. “It’s really dangerous and not helpful to you or me while you could simply just call me on [S]ignal.” She also complained that Deters had mentioned their arrangement to a producer on Guilfoyle’s podcast.

“It’s unbelievable when we have a private arrangement with you that you would now CC a producer talking about money,” she said. “Do not say we have any arrangement.”

Guilfoyle added, “What a nightmare you’ll literally cost me my ambassadorship.”

It is reassuring to know that she was acting with “dedication and integrity,” serving the best interests of the American people.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Trump

Parker Molloy: What the Media Got Wrong About Jack Smith’s Testimony and Eric Schmitt’s Accusation

By dianeravitch
October 8, 2026 //
0

Republicans in Congress are clearly out to incriminate Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, who was appointed by then-Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate former President Donald J. Trump for his role in the insurrection of January 6, 2021.

In the latest debacle, Senator Eric Schmitt garnered headlines for making a huge mistake. He wanted to trap Smith in a lie so he could be charged with perjury. He claimed to have proof that Smith flew to Atlanta under the pretext of watching a basketball game when his real purpose was to meet secretly with Georgia prosecutor Fani Willis. Smith said it was untrue. On the night in question, he was not in Atlanta. Instead, he attended a women’s basketball game in Maryland, in which the phenomenal Caitlin Clark played.

Blogger Parker Molloy pointed out that the news coverage of Schmitt’s collossal error overshadowed the importance of Jack Smith’s eloquent testimony. Molloy’s blog is titled “The present Age.”

What is bizarre about the Republicans’ rage towards Jack Smith is that they are trying to exonerate the man who tried to stage a coup against the Constitution and overturn the election. I know they are afraid of Trump and cower before him. But must they join in the fantasy that the bloody January 6 insurrection was no big deal, just a load of faithful patriots visiting the U.S. Capitol. They were there. Weren’t they hiding under their chairs and in secret rooms?

Molloy writes, in part:

If, like me this week, you heard about this hearing via social media or just a stray article that made its way through your feed, you probably saw one specific highlight: Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) swung for the fences during his questioning of Smith, and… well… it didn’t go how he thought it would.

The short version (which you’ve probably seen) is that Schmitt claimed Smith had been at an Atlanta Hawks game in 2024 and suggested he’d gone to Atlanta to meet with Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Both Smith and Willis had been involved in investigating Donald Trump’s alleged crimes and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

“Did you go to an NBA game between the Golden State Warriors and the Atlanta Hawks on February 3, 2024?” he asked. Smith said no. Schmitt continued: “The day before, Fani Willis came clean with her affair with the prosecutor.” And Smith said that he had never met Willis during his time as special counsel, and he had definitely not been in attendance at that Hawks game.

Schmitt then whipped out a poster board that purported to show evidence that Smith had lied under oath.

“I don’t think you know that we have this stuff, so I’ll give you a second to process it so you don’t, you know, perjure yourself,” Schmitt said, dripping with smug confidence. And as you probably know by now, no, Smith wasn’t at that game. He was actually at a University of Maryland women’s basketball game that night. Schmitt seemed to have been confusing the Hawks (NBA team) with the Hawkeyes (NCAA team).

To use a basketball term here, Schmitt air-balled this one big time.

(Somewhat unrelated, but the Warriors-Hawks game Schmitt accused Smith of attending was the one where Steph Curry dropped 60 points, setting a season high. So, hey, I guess if you’re going to put a guy at the wrong basketball game, you might as well pick a good one.)

Senate Judiciary Committee member Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) (L) and Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) display a sign accusing former Special Counsel Jack Smith of meeting with Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis during a hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee in the Hart Senate Office Building on September 29, 2026 in Washington, DC. The committee is holding the hearing to examine Smith’s probe into Donald Trump. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Now, this flub is notable for a couple of reasons. That morning, Axios’s Jim VandeHei reported that Schmitt “is drawing buzz as a possible Vance VP in 2028.” I find it hard to believe the timing was a coincidence. The story ran on the same day Schmitt would try to grab the headlines with a grandstanding moment in which he’d catch Smith in a lie, committing a crime. This was supposed to help propel Schmitt to political stardom in the GOP, but instead, he came away looking like a clown. Even after being corrected, fact-checked, and called out for all of this, Schmitt continued to insistthat he was right, long after he’d been proven wrong. No surprises there.

To add to the egg on his face, there’s the additional irony that he’s the same guy who, back in August, accused Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan Abdul El-Sayed of not knowing ball for saying “Beat Ohio” in reference to Ohio State University (for the record, El-Sayed was right; University of Michigan and its fans regularly do say “Beat Ohio” when referring to OSU, sometimes as a bit of a taunt as Ohio State fans and alumni are known to get a bit touchy whenever someone doesn’t refer to it as “THE Ohio State University.” Hell, former Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh even renamed a practice drill after the phrase).

And yes, all of this clearly is a story. It’s absolutely newsworthy that Schmitt botched his big moment on the day that Axios puffed him up. It’s newsworthy that he clearly thought this was such a slam dunk, and that guys like Benny Johnson and Sean Hannity rushed to post about it on social media, despite the fact that they had literally everything wrong. (Both later deleted their posts.) And yes, it’s newsworthy that Schmitt still won’t actually admit that he made a mistake.

But there was a lot more to the hearing that kind of got lost in the Schmitt show. And if you were paying attention to this as someone who doesn’t closely follow politics, you probably missed it. Smith said a lot of stuff that should shake the country to its core, but instead everyone ended up talking about Eric Schmitt.

And it’s not to say that news organizations ignored the other aspects of Smith’s testimony. They didn’t! But the whole thing got overshadowed by Schmitt’s moment. And I guess that the one thought I had as I read more about what happened during the rest of the hearing was that I kind of wish there was a way for news organizations to capitalize on the viral moment to help inform the public about everything else that happened, to use the viral moment specifically as an opportunity.

But to avoid contributing to the Schmittiness of this, I suppose I should also give a quick rundown of what Smith said during the hearing that I think more people should be aware of. So what did Smith actually say?

Smith told the Senate that people are being threatened with prosecution for being seen as opposing the president

In his opening statement, T-minus about 60 minutes before Schmitt grabbed the spotlight, Smith told the committee this:

As with my appearance before the US House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary, I am prepared to answer your questions truthfully. I stand by my testimony before the House of Representatives, and I will not be silenced by continued threats of prosecution from the president or others.

As I appear before you today, it is my belief that the rule of law faces challenges unlike any we have experienced in our lifetime. Individuals are threatened with criminal prosecution because they are perceived to have opposed the president. Predetermined outcomes increasingly seem to take precedence over the Justice Department’s longstanding core values and traditions.

History teaches that the rule of law is rarely destroyed all at once. It’s often weakened by attacks on the institutions and the public servants sworn to uphold it. Since January of 2025, we have witnessed precisely such an effort, including the vilification of the agents, prosecutors, and staff who worked on my team, simply because of their unwavering dedication to the rule of law.

I myself have been threatened with jail by the President of the United States. However, I remain confident that the rule of law will endure, because so many continue to uphold it faithfully each day. Throughout our legal system, public servants have remained faithful to their oaths, despite extraordinary pressure to do otherwise. Their example demonstrates that while fear may be contagious, courage is as well.

Back in July, House Judiciary Chairman and alleged knower of a disgusting abuse scandal at THE Ohio State University Jim Jordan referred Smith to the Justice Department, accusing him of knowingly making false statements in his December deposition. At issue are text messages that Smith’s team obtained involving 44 members of Congress, including Jordan. These texts were obtained through the National Archives in response to a request for White House phones. Since we live in bizarro-world, Todd Blanche, Trump’s defense attorney during Smith’s investigation, is now the attorney general. Every day is a new horror, basically.

I digress. Back to the hearing. Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) asked Smith whether whistleblowers who’d talked to Congress about Smith’s investigation should themselves be investigated. Smith said: “I’m not aware of any whistleblowers being investigated. I believe public servants should be protected. The members of my team, that you just mentioned, I’m extremely proud to have worked with them. And the fact that they have been targeted illegally, lost their jobs illegally, and had their lives turned upside down by this Department of Justice is an outrage.”

It is a long but very interesting post. I encourage you to open the link and read it in full.

Categories Accountability, Elections, Ethics, Failure, Injustice, Lies, Trump

Robert Reich: A Dystopian Nightmare, with Hegseth in Charge

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2026 //
19

Robert Reich invites readers to imagine a war fought by AI-powered robots. What could possibly go wrong? Bill Gates warned a few days ago that AI could go rogue and kill one billion people..give or take a few thousand. Imagine this cyber war controlled by men who are not celebrated for their humanity, but for their yearning to amass power.

Get out and vote.

Reich warns:

Imagine four of the most frighteningly irresponsible people in America deciding how AI will be put to use in the most frighteningly irresponsible way. 

Pete Hegseth is one of them. Trump is another. The other two are Elon Musk and Newt Gingrich. 

Hegseth says he’s tasking Musk and Gingrich with laying the groundwork for a new “Autonomous Warfare Command,” or AutoWarCom — a new Pentagon command operation for autonomous warfare. It would feature unmanned drones, autonomous sensors, unmanned boats, and other autonomous systems. Hegseth is proposing to triple spending on autonomous warfare to $74 billion. 

Hegseth has also named as an adviser Palmer Luckey, a major Trump donor who designed the Oculus Rift, a virtually reality headset credited with reviving the virtual reality industry, and co-founded of Anduril Industires, a military tech company focused on autonomous drones and sensors. 

The specter of autonomous lethal weapons — weapons that kill without human beings first deciding who, how, or when — is the nightmare of many who deal with AI. Autonomous AI weapons are fraught with unpredictability. And what happens when AI weapons escape their controls and go rogue, as recently occurred at OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, and Google? 

Bad enough that Hegseth and Trump are pouring money into this. Worse that they’re setting up a separate military command for it. Worse still that they’re depending on Musk, Gingrich, and a virtual-reality game designer to tell them how. 

I keep thinking I’ll wake up from this nightmare into a sane world.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Evil, Extremism, Insane, Trump

Peter Greene: New Regulations for Federal Voucher Program Tie the Hands of Local Officials

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2026 //
5

Starting on January 1, 2027, the federal government will sponsor its own voucher program. In this post, Peter Greene explains how the new program will work. You can be sure that every dollar spent on charter schools and vouchers will be taken away from public schools.

Peter Greene writes:

Since Congress passed President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill with its federal school voucher, questions have abounded about the exact form that the tax credit program would take. Today the Treasury Department released proposed rules for the voucher program, and some of those questions are being answered

One of the persistent questions has been how much flexibility will states have in how the program is administered. The answer that came today is “Not very much.”

The basic structure of the tax credit voucher program works like this: a taxpayer redirects $1,700 to a scholarship granting organization (SGO) and receives a dollar-for-dollar tax credit. The SGO uses that money (minus an up-to-10% administrative fee) to grant scholarships to students, who may then use the money for educational expenses. 

While the state must require SGOs to meet the state’s requirements for charitable organizations, the state may not put restrictions on how the SGO operates “such as by limiting the type of school that scholarship recipients may attend or the types of qualified elementary or secondary education expenses for which scholarship funds may be used.” 

This restriction on restrictions dovetails with the voucher movement’s push to render legal the use of redirected taxpayer dollars to fund religious schools without setting limits on how those schools can discriminate.

The rules appear to solidify the idea that an SGO cannot be removed by the state for reasons other than failure to comply with the law’s SGO requirements. These requirements simply require an SGHO to serve at least ten eligible students and spend the appropriate amount of money on the vouchers. Nothing in the law requires SGOs to monitor or assess the educational quality of the vendors who receive the money.

The rules issued do indicate that an SGO can choose to limit its scholarships “to specific subject matter” or to students whose household income is less than 80% of the area median gross income, but it appears that those limits would be placed at the SGO’s discretion and not the state’s.

The federal voucher program caps eligibility at 300% of area median gross income, a generous cap that would make the vast majority of American families eligible for the voucher. 

The rules published today show that if a state wanted to, for instance, add restrictions that directed vouchers only to low-income students or students in particular communities, they could not do so. Nor could they impose any restrictions that would keep the voucher dollars from going to religious schools. 

In short, any governors who expected to use these redirected taxpayer dollars in ways that aligned with their own policy goals may need to reconsider. If they opt in, their hands are tied.

There are other details to be dug out and discussed, but one rule guarantees that these discussions may go on forever. While some “stakeholders” recommended restricting state’s ability to opt out after opting in, the rules indicate that a governor will opt in for just one year at a time.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, For-Profit, Funding, Privatization, School Choice, Separation of church and state, Trump, U.S. Department of Education, Vouchers
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