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Michael Bloomberg: Will Trump Let RFK Jr. Destroy His Greatest Achievement?

By dianeravitch
August 20, 2025 //
3

During his first term in office, Trump had one major achievement: he responded to the pandemic by authorizing the rapid funding of a vaccine for COVID. His project was called operation Warp Speed. It was the domestic and peaceful equivalent of the Manhattan Project. It was a resounding success. Millions of lives were saved.

Unfortunately, Trump’s Health Secretary is opposed to vaccines. He has spent years encouraging people not to trust vaccines. He recently cancelled $500 million in vaccine research, cancelling research on exactly the kinds of mRNA vaccines that protected people from COVID.

Michael R. Bloomberg is a billionaire who has funded medical research at his Alma mater, John’s Hopkins University, and elsewhere. He is as devoted to promoting public health as RFK Jr. is to undermining it. Mr. Bloomberg was mayor of NYC for 12 years. In this post, he cleverly pits Trump’s ego against one of his worst Cabinet choices.

He writes:

For leaders in business, failing to learn the lessons of a crisis can be disastrous. For leaders in government, when millions of lives are at risk, such disasters can be catastrophic. Unfortunately, that’s where the US is heading, thanks to the disagreement that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has with his boss, President Donald Trump.

A little history: On Jan. 10, 2020, a Chinese scientist posted the genetic sequence of a “mystery virus” that had sickened dozens and caused at least one death. Forty-two days later, as Covid-19 spread across the globe, researchers near Boston sent the first shipment of an experimental vaccine to US regulators. Three months after that, Trump announced Operation Warp Speed, an $18 billion effort to accelerate the development, approval and distribution of vaccines.

Within a year, billions of vaccine doses had been administered worldwide — saving millions of lives, including those of many Americans. As Trump said: “Operation Warp Speed, whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, was one of the most incredible things ever done in this country.” He was absolutely correct — but his health secretary disagrees. The question is: Will Trump allow Kennedy to destroy his legacy?

Kennedy recently canceled $500 million in contracts for the research and development of so-called messenger RNA vaccines. His defense — that mRNA technology is ineffective against respiratory infections — is wrong. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, must know that, so he subsequently offered a different defense: There is insufficient public confidence in it.

Bhattacharya didn’t mention, of course, that Kennedy has fueled that public distrust. Regardless, the correct response to misperceptions about lifesaving medicine is not to throw up one’s hands, cancel funding for it and walk away. It’s to use the power of the bully pulpit to bring people together — community, faith, civic and other leaders — to spread facts and overcome hesitations. That’s leadership.

Not content to peddle misinformation and halt existing projects, Kennedy also effectively terminated additional federal funding for research on mRNA vaccines. The two edicts put countless American lives at risk.

To see the scale of the danger Kennedy is creating, it helps to understand how revolutionary mRNA vaccines are. For many decades, traditional vaccines have injected a small part of a dead or weakened virus into a healthy person. This stimulates the immune system to create antibodies, which protect people from serious infection when they encounter the real thing. In some cases, millions of chicken eggs are used to develop and produce these traditional vaccines, by incubating the viruses. In other cases, cell cultures are grown in bioreactors. Both processes are complex and time-consuming.

New mRNA vaccines are faster to develop. Messenger RNA is a strand of genetic code that gives cells instructions. For decades, scientists worked to design a synthetic form of mRNA, which would then tell the body to fight specific infections. Such a discovery, in theory, would also enable drugmakers to manufacture a vaccine without using a virus, cutting months off development. Yet despite significant advances, an mRNA vaccine had never been produced or tested at scale.

Operation Warp Speed helped overcome the obstacles and produce vaccines in record time. The speed of this breakthrough led to fantastical theories, including that the shots change one’s DNA, insert microchips into the body and cause infertility. It was all nonsense — the ultimate fake news. But it spread nonetheless, amplified by skeptics like Kennedy. Countless studies proved the vaccines safe, and the two scientists behind their development won the Nobel Prize.

The misinformation couldn’t be contained, but Kennedy can be. All that’s needed is a call from the White House directing him to reverse his recent decisions. Otherwise, when the next pandemic strikes, other countries — including China — will be equipped to distribute a shot within weeks, while scientists in the US will be left to fiddle with outdated technology as Americans wait in line.

Senator Bill Cassidy, whose vote was critical for Kennedy’s confirmation, lamented last week that the secretary has “conceded to China an important technology” and is imperiling the administration’s goals. He’s right — yet Cassidy and his colleagues in Congress have stood aside while Kennedy puts American lives at risk.

Without government leadership, the private sector is unlikely to fill the funding gap. Research on treatments for a hypothetical pandemic is financially risky, so public funding is essential to saving lives.

Kennedy’s actions will also have a chilling effect on other potential mRNA developments, including work on Type 1 diabetes, HIV, genetic diseases and myriad other illnesses, especially cancer. That bears repeating: mRNA research could lead to a cure for cancer. How many Americans who have family members suffering from cancer are ready to sacrifice them to Kennedy’s dunderheaded paranoias?

The White House should remember and celebrate its extraordinary first-term success — and build on it by reining in Kennedy. If it does that, the president who sped the development of the Covid vaccine might go down in history as doing the same for a cure for cancer and other diseases.

Categories Extremism, Funding, Health, Trump

Trump Wants to Ban Mail-In Voting Because Putin Told Him So

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2025 //
5

Thom Hartmann is outraged. Trump proclaimed that he would issue an executive order banning mail-in voting. Why? Because Putin told him that mail-in voting caused him to lose the 2020 election. Republicans know that they will lose control of the House and possibly the Senate unless they can suppress the vote or redistrict, as they are in Texas, drawing lines that squeeze out Democrats.

Hartmann wrote:

Yesterday, Donald Trump crossed another line that no president in our history has ever dared p to touch. With the echo of Vladimir Putin’s whisper in his ear, in front of President Zelenskyy and seven other European leaders, Trump announced he’s preparing an executive order to ban mail-in ballots and even outlaw voting machines across America ahead of the 2026 midterm elections. 

Sitting in front of the Chancellor of Germany and the Prime Minister of Great Britain, — both nations that allow and even encourage mail-in voting — Trump said:

“Mail-in ballots are corrupt mail-in ballots. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots, and we as a Republican Party are gonna do everything possible that we get rid of mail-in ballots. We’re gonna start with an executive order that’s being written right now by the best lawyers in the country to end mail-in ballots because they’re corrupt. And, you know that we’re the only country in the world, I believe, I may be wrong, but just about the only country in the world that uses it because of what’s happened.”

This is not just a partisan maneuver. It’s an open assault on the Constitution, a grotesque power grab, and a direct threat to the foundation of democracy itself. And it’s happening in real time, in broad daylight, with a criminally compliant Republican Party cheering him on. 

Republicans hate mail-in voting for multiple reasons.

First, for people who’re paid by the hour, mail-in voting increases participation because they can fill out their ballots at the kitchen table after work. Republicans don’t want people to vote, and have introduced over 400 pieces of legislation in the past three years nationwide to make voting more difficult. 

Second, mail-in voting makes voters better informed and less vulnerable to sound-byte TV ads because, while perusing that ballot at the kitchen table, they can look up candidates on their laptops and get more detail and information. Republicans hate informed voters and rely heavily on often-dishonest advertisements to swing voters. 

Third, mail-in ballots — because they arrive in the mail weeks before the election — give voters an early chance to discover if they’ve been the victim of Republican voter-roll purges, one of their favorite tactics to pre-rig elections. 

Fourth, mail-in ballots end the GOP trick of understaffing and underresourcing polling places in minority neighborhoods, leading to hours-long lines. Hispanic voters generally wait 150% longer than white voters, and Black voters must endure a 200% longer wait; mail-in ballots put an end to this favorite of the GOP’s voter suppression efforts. 

Trump, knowing all this, couldn’t help himself yesterday, finally blurting out his real reason for wanting to end mail-in voting in America:

“We got to stop mail-in voting, and the Republicans have to lead the charge. The Democrats want it because they have horrible policy,” Trump proclaimed. “If you [don’t] have mail-in voting, you’re not gonna have many Democrats get elected. That’s bigger than anything having to do with redistricting, believe me.”

Once again, Trump is ignoring the law and the Constitution, which explicitly delegates the administration of elections to the states and Congress, not presidential executive orders.

That’s not some vague norm or debatable tradition: it’s written into the very DNA of our system of government. States set the rules, unless Congress — not the president — overrides them. States decide how their citizens vote, as the Constitution’s Article I, Section 4, Clause 1 dictates:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

Yet here we have a president declaring that he alone will dictate the terms of elections nationwide, in direct violation of two centuries of law and precedent. This is not only unconstitutional, it’s tyrannical. 

When a president asserts powers he does not have, with the full knowledge that they aren’t his to wield, he’s announcing to the country that the rule of law no longer constrains him. That’s the definition of dictatorship.

And what makes this even more obscene is the source of Trump’s inspiration. According to multiple reports, Trump’s sudden rant on mail-in ballots followed a private conversation with Vladimir Putin, who reportedly told him that mail-in voting was the reason he lost in 2020.

The man occupying the Oval Office is now taking advice about how to rig American elections from the very dictator who has spent his career poisoning journalists, jailing opponents, and staging sham referendums to annex entire countries. 

It’s bad enough that Trump has always been Putin’s toady, but now we see the Kremlin effectively writing U.S. election law. If Jefferson, Madison, or Lincoln were alive to hear this, they would spit.

Mail-in voting is not a scam. It’s not a trick. It’s how tens of millions of Americans — Republicans, Democrats, independents — exercise their right to vote. 

Seniors rely on it. People with disabilities rely on it. Military service members overseas rely on it. Hourly workers who can’t take a day off rely on it. Parents with young children rely on it. Rural voters, who often live miles from polling places, rely on it. 

And every study, every audit, every bipartisan commission has found mail-in voting to be secure, safe, and reliable. Five states do it exclusively; we’ve had it more than two decades here in Oregon with nary a single scandal or problem. To call it fraudulent is a lie. To ban it is voter suppression on a scale this country has never seen.

And voting machines? Trump is openly declaring that he’ll return us to mind-numbingly slow hand-counting of ballots, a tactic straight from the authoritarian playbook designed to create chaos, delays, and endless opportunities to dispute the results in 2026 and 2028. 

I’ve had concerns about voting machines and Windows-based tabulators for decades, but my solution isn’t to end them. Instead, we should use machines owned by the government itself, generating paper ballots and operating transparently on open-source software with every election subject to sample audits. 

Instead of trying to make elections more secure, Trump’s laying the groundwork for election theft in plain sight. This isn’t subtle: it’s the loud declaration of a man preparing to overturn the will of the voters, with the blessing of a foreign adversary, and with a Republican Party too craven to object.

If Trump succeeds in outlawing mail-in ballots and voting machines, millions of Americans will simply not be able to vote. Seniors in nursing homes, service members abroad, people with disabilities, single parents, rural citizens: they will all be disenfranchised overnight. And make no mistake: that’s the point. 

This is not about integrity. This is not about security. This is about shrinking the electorate to a size that Republicans believe will guarantee them victory forever.

Republicans know they can’t win free and fair elections in much of America. They know their policies are unpopular. They know their agenda is toxic. 

So they cheat. They gerrymander districts into grotesque shapes that make a mockery of representative government. They purge voters from the rolls. They criminalize voter registration drives. They intimidate voters at the polls. 

And now, at Trump’s command and Putin’s urging, they want to ban the very methods by which millions of Americans vote. This is not politics as usual. This is the slow-motion strangulation of democracy.

Every American who believes in self-government must rise up against this. Governors must prepare to defy such an executive order in court and in practice. State legislatures must assert their constitutional authority. 

Attorneys general must be ready to sue. And ordinary citizens must take to the streets, the phones, the ballot box, and every civic space available to declare that this will not stand. Because if it does, we’ll have surrendered the very essence of the American experiment.

We’ve been here before in spirit if not in form.

Reagan’s campaign cut a deal with the Iranian Ayatollahs to hang onto the hostages until after the election. Richard Nixon tried to sabotage our democracy by killing LBJ’s peace negotiations with Vietnam and followed-up with burglaries and cover-ups when he thought Democrats were onto him. He was forced to resign. George W. Bush and the GOP stopped the counting of votes in Florida and handed the presidency to themselves. That assault has scarred our politics for decades. 

But never — not once in 250 years — has a president openly declared that he will strip states of their constitutional right to run elections, end mail-in voting, and ban voting machines altogether. This is unprecedented, authoritarian, and it must be stopped.

It’s also just one in a broad spectrum of attacks Republicans have launched against your right to vote, with the SAVE Act — which will prevent women from voting if their birth certificate and drivers’ license have different names on them and they’ve never had an official change-of-name in the courts — teed up in the US Senate. All while millions are being purged from the voting rolls as you read these words.

This is the moment when the American people must decide whether they still believe in democracy. If we shrug, if we accept this as just more noise from a corrupt and broken con man, we will lose it. If we wait for someone else to act, we will lose it. If we tell ourselves the courts will save us, we may be bitterly disappointed. 

The survival of democracy has never been guaranteed. It has always required vigilance, courage, and action. Now it requires all three from each of us.

Trump’s promised executive order is not just a legal maneuver. It’s a declaration of war against the American people. It’s the dream of every tyrant: to control who votes and who does not, to dictate the rules of elections so that the outcome is predetermined. 

What Putin and Trump are proposing is not democracy. It’s not freedom. It’s not America.

And the Republicans who are enabling this treachery are as guilty as Trump himself. They’re betraying their oaths, their constituents, and our country. History will remember them not as conservatives or patriots, but as the gravediggers of our Republic.

This is the line. This is the moment. We cannot let Trump and his cronies bulldoze democracy into the ground at Putin’s command. Every patriot, every progressive, every independent, every honest conservative who still believes in the Constitution must join together and say no. 

No to dictatorship. No to disenfranchisement. No to treason.

If we fail now, there may not be another chance.

Categories Democracy, Elections, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fraud, Trump

Heather Cox Richardson: Trump Goes Off the Rails

By dianeravitch
August 19, 2025 //
5

Trump has a fragile ego in need of constant stroking. When he doesn’t get enough, he praises himself. Two posts appeared overnight that I recommend. One, by the esteemed Heather Cox Richardson, is posted here. The other, by Robert Hubbell, is well worth reading.

Heather Cox Richardson reviews yesterday’s bizarre summit at the White House, where European leaders tried to convince Trump to support a ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump favored a ceasefire until he met with Putin last Friday, then dropped the idea. Strangest of all, Trump abruptly left the meeting to have a 40-minute conversation with Putin. Our allies had no choice but to stand by until Trump finished his private chat with the Russian tyrant. Was he calling for instructions?

Someday historians might be able to explain Trump’s bizarre reliance on Putin.

She writes:

This morning, J.D. Wolf of Meidas News pulled together all of Trump’s self-congratulatory posts from Sunday morning, when the president evidently was boosting his ego after Friday’s disastrous meeting with Russia’s president Vladimir Putin in Alaska. Trump shared an AI-generated meme of himself with a large male lion standing next to him and the words “Peace through Strength. Anyone can make war, but only most courageous [sic] can make peace.” He posted memes claiming he is the “best president…in American history” and the “G[reatest] O[f] A[ll] T[ime], a “legend.”

Trump also reposted material from two QAnon-related accounts and pushed the QAnon belief that the Democratic Party is “the party of hate, evil, and Satan.” Trump has faced a rebellion among his QAnon supporters as he and administration officials have refused to release information from the federal investigation into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and have moved Epstein’s associate Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted of sex trafficking children, to a minimum-security prison camp and given her work-release privileges. It appears he’s working to make QAnon supporters forget that he was named in those files and to lure them back to his support.

For their part, Russia Today trolled Trump’s “peace through strength” boast this morning by posting a video of an armored vehicle first going slowly on a road and then dramatically speeding up. The vehicle was flying both Russian and U.S. flags.

Trump’s social media account this morning posted a long screed saying the president is “going to lead a movement to get rid of” mail-in ballots and voting machines, and lying that the U.S. is the only country that uses mail-in voting because it is rife with fraud. As usual, the post claimed that Democrats “CHEAT AT LEVELS NEVER SEEN BEFORE” and claimed they “are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM.” The post said he would sign an executive order “to help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.”

Then the post claimed that “the States are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes. They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do.”

This is bonkers across the board. Dozens of countries use mail-in voting, and there is zero evidence of widespread voter fraud in the U.S. Just today, news broke that right-wing channel Newsmax will pay $67 million to Dominion Voting Systems for spreading false claims that the company’s voting technology had been rigged to give the 2020 presidential election to Democrat Joe Biden.

Combining that sum with the $787 million Fox News paid for spreading the same lies means, as Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD) wrote today, that media entities have paid out nearly $900 million “for publishing lies about the 2020 presidential election. Yet Donald Trump, who lost by more than seven million votes, keeps repeating the Big Lie and makes it compulsory dogma for his employees.”

Certainly, if Democratic leaders were so unelectable, the Republicans would not go to such lengths to rig district voting maps and keep Democratic voters from the polls. Indeed, while voter fraud is vanishingly rare, the Republicans are using the specter of it to engage in election fraud: manipulating the mechanics of an election to favor one side over another.

This manipulation is happening dramatically right now in Texas, where Trump pressured Governor Greg Abbott to redistrict the state in a highly unusual mid-decade map change in order to set Republicans up to gain five more seats in Congress in the next election. Abbott dutifully called a special session of the legislature to change the maps. Texas Democrats tried to stop the redistricting by leaving the state to deprive the Republicans of a quorum, that is, the minimum number of lawmakers necessary to conduct business. They stayed away until the special session expired. Abbott immediately called another one.

Today, with it clear Abbott would simply call special sessions until they returned, the Democratic legislators went back to Texas fifteen days after they left. “We killed the corrupt special session, withstood unprecedented surveillance and intimidation, and rallied Democrats nationwide to join this existential fight for fair representation—reshaping the entire 2026 landscape,” said the leader of the Texas House Democrats Gene Wu, acknowledging the protests across Texas at the legislative steal. “We’re returning to Texas more dangerous to Republicans’ plans than when we left. Our return allows us to build the legal record necessary to defeat this racist map in court, take our message to communities across the state and country, and inspire legislators across the country how to fight these undemocratic redistricting schemes in their own statehouses.”

Finally, the U.S. Constitution is very clear that no president has the power to dictate election rules. The framers were determined to prevent that power from falling into the hands of a potential dictator and so gave it to the states and Congress, establishing that “[t]he Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

These obvious lies make it seem crystal clear that Trump and his loyalists are preparing to reject any election results that they don’t like.

Trump’s panic about facing voters is increasingly evident. His job approval ratings are already abysmal, and the fallout from his tariffs and deportations is only now beginning to show. Last Thursday, a report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that the Producer Price Index—wholesale costs that will likely show up later in consumer costs—jumped 0.9% in July, the largest jump since June 2022, when the U.S. was mired in post-pandemic inflation. The wholesale price of vegetables jumped 38.9% in July.

On Friday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reported that the budget reconciliation bill (called by Republicans the OBBBA, for “One Big, Beautiful Bill Act”) that adds $3.4 trillion to the federal deficit over the next decade will trigger cuts of up to $491 billion in Medicare (not a typo) from 2027 to 2034 in addition to its cuts of almost a trillion dollars to Medicaid over the next ten years. The 2010 Statutory Pay-As-You-Go Act (S-PAYGO) automatically triggers cuts to government programs if the budget deficit increases as it is expected to under the new law, and Medicare spending would be on the chopping block.

Although Democrats called attention to this threat to Medicare during debates over the measure, Republicans promised their cuts to Medicaid would target only “waste, fraud, and abuse” and promised they would not touch Medicare.

Today Marty Schladen of the Ohio Capital Journal showed what those cuts actually look like in one state. Schladen reported that the cuts to Medicaid will take insurance from 310,000 people. Schladen also noted that the law ended the “enhanced premium tax credit” that made health insurance purchased on the Affordable Care Act’s insurance markets more affordable for those who make between 100% and 400% of federal poverty guidelines. More than 530,000 people in Ohio have benefited from the program. Their premiums will go up dramatically when it expires at the end of this year, and experts warn that more than 100,000 healthier people will drop their coverage. That loss, in turn, will drive up costs for those remaining in the market.

Scott Horsley of NPR reported on Saturday that electricity prices in the country have “jumped more than twice as fast as the overall cost of living in the last year.” Prices are going up as producers export liquid natural gas and as data centers swallow energy to fuel the AI boom.

Elected on his promises to lower prices, Trump is in trouble with those who believed those promises. Today, former Ohio senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, formally announced his candidacy for the Senate seat vacated when J.D. Vance became vice president. Brown noted that in Ohio, which has a population of about 12 million people, “half a million are going to lose their [health] insurance. These are mostly working families that are working for an employer that doesn’t provide insurance, or they’re kids, or they’re seniors, or they’re disabled people. Those are the people who are losing their health insurance. People didn’t vote for that. They didn’t vote for drug prices to go up. They didn’t vote for higher grocery bills. They didn’t vote for veterans’ benefits being slashed. They didn’t vote for any of this.”

On Thursday, the Pew Research Center reported that only 38% of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance, with 61% disapproving of it.

And then there is the increasing evidence that Trump is unable to manage the presidency. Today Trump met with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, French president Emmanuel Macron, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, German chancellor Friedrich Merz, NATO secretary general Mark Rutte, United Kingdom prime minister Keir Starmer, and Finnish president Alexander Stubb. That so many foreign leaders dropped everything to rush to Washington, D.C., after Trump’s meeting with Putin on Friday indicated their alarm. The leaders reiterated that Putin started the war and could stop it at any time, and pressed Trump to back a ceasefire.

At today’s meetings, Trump repeated Russian talking points, complained about how poorly he is treated, said he had ended six wars, insisted that voting in the U.S. is full of fraud, and suggested he would cancel the 2028 elections. By the late afternoon, the president was unable to recognize President Stubb, who was sitting directly across the table from him. “President Stubb of Finland,” Trump said. Looking around, Trump continued: “And he’s uh, he’s somebody that, where are we here? Huh? Where? Where?” Stubb said, “I’m right here.” Trump focused on him and answered: “Oh. You look better than I’ve ever seen you look.”

This evening, CNN senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes reported that Trump paused his negotiation with European leaders to call Vladimir Putin. Her source said that European leaders were not present for the conversation. Ivan Nechepurenko of the New York Times reported that the call was forty minutes long.

Categories Elections, Extremism, Failure, International, Trump

James Fallows on the Alaska Summit

By dianeravitch
August 18, 2025 //
8

James Fallows is a veteran journalist who has been writing about foreign affairs for decades. He notes the symbolism and messaging embedded in the Trump-Putin meeting in Alaska.

Fallows writes:

Those with experience in US-Russian relations have been quick and near-unanimous in pointing out that Vladimir Putin got nearly everything he could have wanted¹ from his encounter yesterday with Donald Trump. And no one else got anything at all. 

-“No one else” includes the people and government of Ukraine; the people and governments of Europe and the broader NATO alliance; and the people of the United States. (Contrast Trump’s obsequiousness to Putin with his open hostility in the Oval Office toward Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelenskyy six months ago.) 

-It also includes the person who cares about imagery and theatrics more than anything else. But who let himself be owned and mocked by a foreign leader, in a way that people around the world recognized more quickly than he did himself. Of course I am talking about Donald Trump.

Consider the Trump-Putin “press conference” yesterday afternoon that permitted no questions but involved something even stranger than that.

-This was a joint presentation on US soil. Indeed, on a US military base.

-Its two figures were heads of state, of major countries.

-Because this was in the United States, and because a president of the United States is presumptively the most powerful figure at any gathering, the American president should have been unquestionably in charge. 

In every previous such event I have seen, the American president has always taken control. The president steps first to the microphone and begins the proceedings. He welcomes guests and foreign counterparts. He frames the issues. He expresses American ambitions, values, and interests. 

He acts, in effect, not just as host but also as the boss. No one doubts who is in charge. 

And he does this all in English. Even if he could speak other languages. (Several presidents have been functional in a variety of languages, including Herbert Hoover in Chinese.) He does this because he is in the United States. We are playing by his home country’s rules. In ways stated and unstated, he signals that he is running things.

But yesterday, in every conceivable way, Vladimir Putin was in command. I will mention a surprisingly powerful bit of stage business, through which Putin established his alpha-leader dominance over the eager puppy-like supplicant Trump.

At the joint press event yesterday, Putin spoke first. This may sound like nothing. But it was an enormous power move, which the Trump team must idiotically have agreed to. To my knowledge, no American president has ever let it happen before. 

It would be like a lawyer speaking first at a trial, rather than the judge. Or like a graduate speaking first at commencement, pre-empting the university president. It simply would not occur. Maybe Trump, in his entertainment-world role, was thinking of Putin as the “warm-up act”? I can guarantee that the event was not viewed that way in any foreign ministry around the world. 

Then, after he had kicked off the event by taking the mic, Putin went on to establish even more clearly who was boss. He spoke at great length—more than twice as long as Trump eventually did. Trump’s eventual response was his usual ramble, rather than Putin’s prepared and crafted discourse. Putin can speak English, but he did not deign even to utter a few pleasantries in that language—while speaking on American soil. (He could have said, but didn’t: “I am grateful to the president and the people of the United States”²). Instead he plowed straight ahead, all in Russian. He “framed” the Ukraine issue entirely on Russian terms, starting with its “root causes,” which boil down to his familiar argument that Russia deserves to control Ukraine.

Putin’s last fillip, inviting Trump to have their next meeting in Moscow—seemingly unscripted and delivered in English, so everyone would understand it—clearly caught Trump off guard. With this minor bit of event-planning—who talks when—Putin took a step ahead of Trump’s team, and a thousand steps ahead of Trump himself.

I don’t think I’ve used this word previously in writing. But if I used the vocabulary of a MAGA-style person, I would say that Trump was cucked.

Categories Evil, Extremism, Fascism, International, Trump

An Apology to the People of Ukraine

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2025 //
22

Ukraine has been bravely resisting the Russian invaders for more than three years. Its cities and towns have been devastated by Russian bombardment. Ukraine wants to align with the West. Putin is determined to bring Ukraine back into the Soviet orbit, even if it requires murdering its people, destroying its historic monuments, obliterating its cultural centers, wiping out hospitals, schools, and homes.

Trump held a meeting with Putin, the aggressor, to discuss next steps. Trump pointedly excluded Zelensky and representatives of the European Union.

When Zelensky visited the White House, Trump and Vance humiliated him for his “lack of gratitude” to Trump. But when Putin–the international pariah– met Putin in Alaska, he rolled out a red carpet. He admires this thug, this mass murderer, this ruthless dictator.

Trump gave Putin all he wanted: no ceasefire, bombs away! “Peace” talks on Putin’s terms. Keep on killing innocent civilians. Keep raining drones on hospitals, shopping malls, apartment buildings, power grids, and schools.

We had no reason to expect a different outcome. Putin is a highly experienced KGB agent who has controlled Russia for many years, and Trump is a television personality. Trump has a schoolboy crush on Putin. When he sees Putin, he is starstruck. I suppose we should be glad that Trump didn’t offer to give Alaska back to Russia as a munificent gift.

Trump stabbed the people of Ukraine in the back. Also in the front. He betrayed our European allies.

What a disgrace is this miserable man. What an embarrassment to our nation.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Trump

Thom Hartmann: Fight Trump’s Fascism Now

By dianeravitch
August 15, 2025 //
10

Thom Hartmann has warned us again and again about Trump’s fascist plans. Now they are turning into action, and there’s no denying that every part of our democracy is being transformed into a tool of Trump’s ambitions for dictatorial power. Every government department is now led by a Trump sycophant. In his first term, Trump appointed some reputable people to burnish his credibility. In his second term, however, he has appointed people who have minimal experience or credibility. The chief qualification of his appointees is personal loyalty to Trump, not competence. E.G., Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was named Secretary of Health and Human Services, despite the fact that his hostility to vaccines and science are well known. Pete Hegseth, FOX News host, was made Secretary of Defense despite his absence of managerial experience. Kristi Noem’s main qualification was her obsequious devotion to Trump. This group will never consider invoking the 25th Amendment to remove Trump.

Thom Hartmann writes;

There’s no sugarcoating the truth: As fascism‘s grip tightens under Trump and the GOP, America’s government no longer operates as a constitutional republic. 

Every federal institution now performs in synchronous mimicry of Dear Orange Leader’s unraveling psyche: false justifications, lop-sided pretenses of accountability, cosplay theater designed more for emotional spectacle than legal legitimacy, accelerating escalation at every turn. 

The ostensible oaths to “support and defend the Constitution” are hollow, a ghost script read aloud while the regime marches America toward authoritarian collapse in the mode of Russia and Hungary. 

Nothing — literally nothing organized or passed by Republicans in the last 44 years — was built to uplift average Americans. It’s all been engineered for power consolidation, GOP single-party rule, the wealth of the morbidly rich, and narrative control.

Consider the Justice Department. Once the nation’s arbiter of lawful conduct, it’s now Trump’s personal legal hit squad. Pam Bondi, who claimed she would end “weaponization” of the DOJ, created the novel “special prosecutor” role and appointed Ed Martin — an extremist QAnon promoter and January 6th fan — to target political enemies like Letitia James and Adam Schiff under what appear to be bogus pretexts. 

The resulting spectacle, the parade of propaganda on rightwing TV and the circumvention of norms are all unconstitutional fascist grandstanding.

Meanwhile, in Washington D.C., a carjacking narrative involving two Black minors and a neo‑Nazi hacker nicknamed “Big Balls,” boosted by Elon Musk and Fox, has been seized upon to manufacture a crime panic. 

It’s strikingly defiant of DOJ data, which confirms a 30‑year low in violent crime in the capital city. Trump harnessed the stunt to justify mobilizing ICE, the FBI, and the National Guard, weaponizing fear and fabrications to execute a federal coup on the city’s civil fabric. 

This isn’t safety, it’s occupation.

At the FBI, Kash Patel is purging anyone not MAGA‑approved: long‑serving agents loyal to the institution, or even just connected to cases that charged Trump or January 6th insurrectionists, are being run out. 

Patel’s attack on federalism reached a chilling new level when the FBI agreed to hunt down Texas Democratic state lawmakers who had fled to prevent mid‑cycle gerrymandering. No federal crime was under investigation, just a brazen attempt to subvert state sovereignty and tilt an election. 

This is not law enforcement; it’s authoritarians seizing our nation’s legal infrastructure.

And then the propaganda arm roars in lockstep. Jesse Watters didn’t even bother to murmur coded dog whistles. He publicly declared the GOP must “kick illegal aliens out of the census,” gerrymander “to the hilt,” and lock Democrats into a “permanent minority.” 

It’s open advocacy for one‑party rule rooted in gaslighting and cultural hatred. There are no quiet parts anymore: every word is a confession.

Public health and science have also been hijacked. Bob Kennedy oversaw the cancellation of 22 federal mRNA vaccine projects — including promising research into cancer and bird flu — with half a billion dollars cut. mRNA vaccines have already saved millions: Stopping that research amid emergent threats isn’t policy, it’s mass eugenics masquerading as public health.

Within the military, Pete Hegseth, a Trump loyalist, is rewriting history and norms: he wants Confederate base names restored, monuments to the traitors resurrected, public prayer institutionalized, and the values of supremacist preacher Doug Wilson — who believes women don’t deserve the vote and empathy is Satanic — amplified throughout the military. 

That this is being done under the flag of “service” is a grotesque betrayal of the constitutional order.

ICE is being transformed into Trump’s personal masked, unaccountable, violent paramilitary. Official tweets now celebrate postings that solicit thugs — no degree required, no age limit — and glorify sadistic enforcement. This isn’t border control; it’s paramilitary recruitment for a fascist secret police force.

And now come the arrests. 

Yes, the political arrests have already begun. In Newark, Mayor Ras Baraka attempted to participate in a congressional oversight visit to Delaney Hall, an ICE concentration camp. Federal agents arrested him. Charges were later dropped, and he is now suing for malicious prosecution and defamation, but the precedent was established. 

At the same event, Congresswoman LaMonica McIver was indicted on three counts of assaulting, impeding, and interfering with federal officers, charges that carry up to 17 years. Her crime? Trying to protect the mayor and uphold legislative oversight. Multiple lawmakers and faith leaders have condemned the prosecution as politically motivated intimidation.

At the same time, Senator Alex Padilla was forcibly detained — assaulted, handcuffed, and violently dragged out — after attempting to question DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. He identified himself as a sitting senator; no charges were filed. Still, the message was clear: dissent has been criminalized and there will be a next time.

Add to that the targeting of a Wisconsin judge, Hannah Dugan. The FBI arrested and indicted her after she tried to help an undocumented immigrant evade arrest. She’s been suspended by the state Supreme Court. This is a judge facing prison for expressing compassion.

And let’s not forget the investigations aimed at AG Letitia James and Senator Adam Schiff. Trump’s federal authorities are now targeting elected officials over their political stances, without a shred of legal basis. These investigations are not about justice: they’re about vengeance, performative brutality, and raw power.

When institutional coercion becomes the norm, when political arrests replace constitutional rule, the democratic state has collapsed. Authoritarian regimes don’t wait until they hold 100% of power; they erode the system until the system can no longer resist them and democracy collapses. That’s exactly what we’re witnessing.

History echoes in every violation. 

Remember Hitler writing Mein Kampf in prison, outlining Lebensraum, cloaking aggression as defense and reunification, always positioning himself as the reluctant warrior. He broke treaties, grabbed territory the way Trump is now threatening Greenland and Central America, and used the language of “peace” — always claiming that was his only goal — to mask aggression. 

Churchill warned early in the 1930s, but was dismissed as a warmonger. Chamberlain chose to believe he could negotiate with a tyrant, and, as Churchill predicted, war followed. 

Trump’s playbook is nearly identical: aggressive power grabs framed as patriotism, defenses against imaginary threats, mythmaking that declares “they made me do it.” And like in the 1930s, the enablers are eating it up.

But here’s the crucial difference: this fight isn’t a continent away; it’s in our towns, our courts, and our statehouses. 

The Greatest Generation fought fascism overseas. Now we must fight it at home, in the institutions built on their sacrifice.

For that, we must act. 

We can’t expect Congress to help: they’re under the control of Republicans completely subservient to their billionaire overlords. 

We can’t expect the media to save us: they folded under Trump‘s threats and even handed him tens of millions of dollars for his personal use. CBS has even installed a “bias monitor” to make sure they don’t offend Trump or his people.

We can’t expect our corporate overlords to rescue our republic: they’ve already sold out for tax breaks, subsidies, and an end to limitations on their monopoly power.

We must become this century’s Greatest Generation: no passive hope, no waiting for saviors. Organize, protest, support independent journalism, call your representatives incessantly, primary the handful of craven “problem solver” Democrats, and support those who are willing to fight. 

In Blue states, support those governors and legislators who are willing to gerrymander and otherwise use partisan power, including voter purges in Republican areas, when that’s what it takes to rescue our country. 

The Republicans never waited for fairness: Democrats have to fight fire with fire.

When they go low, we mustn’t go high: we must fight ferociously, methodically, and effectively. Like the soldiers who landed on Normandy Beach and burned swastikas, we must disrupt, dismantle, and hold accountable every authoritarian ambition.

Trump is in collapse, his psyche fracturing, his infrastructure mirroring his breakdown, his institutions weaponized around his rage. 

The rupture is real, and it’s here, now. There will be no more subtle signals. It’s confrontation or collapse.

Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light they are trying to force upon us.

Categories Fascism, Trump

Federal Judge Overturns Ban on DEI

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2025 //
23

A Trump-appointed judge overturned the Trump administration’s ban on policies of diversity, equity and inclusion in schools and colleges, according to Collin Binkley of the AP. Will her ruling stand?

WASHINGTON (AP) – A federal judge on Thursday struck down two Trump administration actions aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs at the nation’s schools and universities.

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Stephanie Gallagher in Maryland found that the Education Department violated the law when it threatened to cut federal funding from educational institutions that continued with DEI initiatives.

The guidance has been on hold since April when three federal judges blocked various portions of the Education Department’s anti-DEI measures.

The ruling Thursday followed a motion for summary judgment from the American Federation of Teachers and the American Sociological Association, which challenged the government’s actions in a February lawsuit.

The case centers on two Education Department memos ordering schools and universities to end all “race-based decision-making” or face penalties up to a total loss of federal funding. It’s part of a campaign to end practices the Trump administration frames as discrimination against white and Asian American students.

The new ruling orders the department to scrap the guidance because it runs afoul of procedural requirements, though Gallagher wrote that she took no view on whether the policies were “good or bad, prudent or foolish, fair or unfair.”

Gallagher, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, rejected the government’s argument that the memos simply served to remind schools that discrimination is illegal.

“It initiated a sea change in how the Department of Education regulates educational practices and classroom conduct, causing millions of educators to reasonably fear that their lawful, and even beneficial, speech might cause them or their schools to be punished,” Gallagher wrote.

Democracy Forward, a legal advocacy firm representing the plaintiffs, called it an important victory over the administration’s attack on DEI.

“Threatening teachers and sowing chaos in schools throughout America is part of the administration’s war on education, and today the people won,” said Skye Perryman, the group’s president and CEO.

The Education Department did not immediately comment on Thursday.

The conflict started with a Feb. 14 memo declaring that any consideration of race in admissions, financial aid, hiring or other aspects of academic and student life would be considered a violation of federal civil rights law.

The memo dramatically expanded the government’s interpretation of a 2023 Supreme Court decision barring colleges from considering race in admissions decisions. The government argued the ruling applied not only to admissions but across all of education, forbidding “race-based preferences” of any kind.

“Educational institutions have toxically indoctrinated students with the false premise that the United States is built upon ‘systemic and structural racism’ and advanced discriminatory policies and practices,” wrote Craig Trainor, the acting assistant secretary of the department’s Office for Civil Rights.

A further memo in April asked state education agencies to certify they were not using “illegal DEI practices.” Violators risked losing federal money and being prosecuted under the False Claims Act, it said.

In total, the guidance amounted to a full-scale reframing of the government’s approach to civil rights in education. It took aim at policies that were created to address longstanding racial disparities, saying those practices were their own form of discrimination.

The memos drew a wave of backlash from states and education groups that called it illegal government censorship.

In its lawsuit, the American Federation of Teachers said the government was imposing “unclear and highly subjective” limits on schools across the country. It said teachers and professors had to “choose between chilling their constitutionally protected speech and association or risk losing federal funds and being subject to prosecution.”

Categories Bias, Censorship, Civil Rights, Democracy, Disruption, Equity, Ethics, Extremism, Funding, Gender, Inequity, Trump

Richard Haass: Trump Has Already Rewarded Putin

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2025 //
17

Richard Haass, who was chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations for 20 years, is a seasoned diplomat. Since he now speaks for himself, not an organization, he lays out his concerns about the trap that Trump has set for himself when he meets with Putin in Alaska. Putin is not allowed to travel in Europe, where he has been declared a war criminal, both for his invasion of Ukraine and for the systematic kidnapping of thousands of Ukrainian children.

Haass writes:

The big story this week is the highly anticipated meeting… between Presidents Trump and Putin in Alaska. That Friday’s meeting is taking place on U.S. soil is in itself a big win for Vladimir Putin, who has not set foot in this country since 2007. The invitation undermines international efforts to isolate him on account of Russian aggression and war crimes in Ukraine. That this meeting is with him alone and does not include Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is also to Putin’s advantage. As they say, you’re either at the table or you’re on it.

The run-up to the meeting has been less than reassuring. The president and his envoy-to-everywhere Steve Witkoff have been talking about land swaps. There are several problems with them. Any swap that gives Russia anything rewards it for aggression. Second, land swaps might leave Ukraine worse off militarily if Putin (as is likely) treats any ceasefire as a pause rather than a prelude to a lasting treaty. This risk grows exponentially if swaps are not tied to meaningful security assurances to Ukraine. More generally, territory is the sort of issue that should be held in reserve for final status talks associated with a permanent peace. They are contentious and may be needed to craft a larger package. The focus now should be on bringing about a ceasefire, the simpler the better.

The vice president didn’t help matters by declaring that “We’re done with funding the Ukraine war business.” Only by continuing to do so is there an actual chance that Putin will conclude (however reluctantly) that more war will not deliver more of what he wants. Other pressure could come from imposing new sanctions on Russia and announcing U.S. support for giving Ukraine access to the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets. It is unclear whether the administration will exercise these options. I have my doubts.

My nightmare scenario as we approach Alaska is that President Trump and his envoy, who appear to be conducting diplomacy unencumbered by much in the way of either expertise or experts, will largely side with the Russian president, present a joint proposal to the Ukrainian president, and, when said proposal is rejected as it invariably would be, Trump will blame Zelenskyy for bursting his diplomatic bubble and cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine in response.

As much as I would like to see real progress toward a fair ceasefire and the United States doing all in its power to stand against territorial acquisition by force, I would think the best outcome at Alaska is no agreement, with Trump having learned (again) that his good friend Vlad places a higher priority on undermining Ukraine’s standing as an independent sovereign country than winning hearts and minds in this White House. It is thus somewhat reassuring that the White House spokesperson is walking back expectations, now casting the meeting as a “listening exercise.” If so, the president will have escaped from a trap of his own making, which would be a good thing. No deal is better than a bad one.

Categories Accountability, Corruption, Cruelty, Evil, Extremism, International, Lies, Stupid, Trump

Timothy Snyder: When Donald Meets Vlad

By dianeravitch
August 14, 2025 //
5

Trump and Putin are meeting Friday in Alaska to discuss Ukraine. Ukrainian leader Zelensky was not invited, nor were any representatives of Europe. Trump will hear Putin’s grievances and claims. He will hear no other. After Russia intensified its drone bombing of Ukrainian civilian targets, Trump demanded a ceasefire. Putin ignored him. He gave his a deadline of 50 days (!) to stop the attacks. Putin intensified the attacks. Then Trump said the deadline was 10-12 days. That was two weeks ago. Putin got a face-to-face meeting with Trump on American soil, and his war against Ukraine goes on.

Timothy Snyder is one of the nation’s pre-eminent historians of Europe. He taught at Yale University for many years, but decided to accept an offer to teach at the University of Toronto after Trump was re-elected in 2024. He is the author of many books, including the national bestseller On Tyranny.

Snyder writes:

In the ancient world, people spoke of “Ultima Thule,” a mythical land in the extreme north, the end of the earth.

By venturing north to Alaska to meet Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump reaches his own Ultima Thula, the arctic endpoint of a foreign policy dreamworld.

The premise of Trump’s foreign relations is that foreign leaders can be dealt with like Americans, with fantastic promises and obnoxious bullying.

The fantasies do not function beyond America’s borders. The empty offer of a “beautiful” future does move dictators who commit crimes for their own visions, or affect people who are defending their families from a criminal invasion.

Ukraine has been resisting Russia’s full-scale invasion for three and a half years. Ukrainians fight because Russians invade their land, steal their wealth, kidnap their children and raise them as Russians, torture civilians in basements, murder people with any sort of association with politics or civil society, and destroy their sovereignty.

Putin, for that matter, has his own vision of a beautiful future, and no reason to prefer Trump’s to his own. Putin’s utopia is one of a Ukraine with no government, with a population cowed by torture, with children stolen and brainwashed, with patriots murdered and buried in mass graves, with resources in Russian hands.

Like Trump’s fantasizing, Trump’s bullying also does not work abroad. To be sure, many Americans are afraid of Trump. He has purged his own political party through stochastic violence. He is deploying the US military as a police force, first in California and then in Washington DC.

But foreign enemies apprehend these intimidation tactics differently. In Moscow, deployments of soldiers inside the United States look like weakness. Trump is signalling that he sees the task of the US military as to oppress unarmed Americans. The very move that shocks Americans delights America’s foes.

The tough talk may resonate in America, where we confuse words with actions. But for Russian leaders it covers a weak foreign policy. Trump has made extraordinary concessions to Russia in exchange for nothing at all. Russia has repaid him by continuing the war and seeking to win it — and by laughing at Trump on state-controlled television.

What are those concessions? Just by meeting Putin in Alaska, Trump gives the Russian dictator a chance to spread his own story of his invasion of Ukraine, both to the Americans around Trump and to the American press. By shaking hands with an indicted war criminal, Trump signals that the killings, the tortures, the kidnapings do not matter. 

Even the choice of Alaska is a concession, and an odd one. Russians, including major figures in state media, routinely claim Alaska for Russia. As one of Putin’s special envoys put it, Putin’s journey to Alaska is a “domestic flight.”

Inviting people who claim your territory inside your main military base on that territory to discuss a war of aggression they started without any participation of the country they invaded — well, that is just about as far as a certain logic of fantasy can go. It is Ultima Thule.

It is Ultima Thule, the very end, because Trump has already conceded the more fundamental issues. He does not speak of the need for justice for Russian war criminals, or of the need for Russia to pay reparations. The Trump administration grants that Russia can determine Ukraine’s and America’s foreign policy on the crucial point of NATO membership. They have accepted that Russia’s invasions should lead not only to de facto but also de jure changes in sovereign control over territory.

It would take a longer essay to explain how senseless these concessions are. Accepting that invasion can legally change borders undoes the world order. Granting Russia the right to decide the foreign policy of others encourages further aggression by Russia. Dropping the obvious legal and historical responses to criminal wars of aggression — reparations and trials — encourages war in general.

Trump speaks loudly and carries a small stick. The notion that words alone can do the trick has led Trump to the position that Putin’s words matter, and so he must go to Alaska for a “listening exercise.” Trump’s career has been full of listening to Putin, and then repeating what Putin says.

Trump and Putin are moved by the future perception of their greatness. Putin believes that this can be achieved by war, and an element of this war is the manipulation of the American president. Trump believes that this can achieved by being associated with peace, which, so long as he is unwilling to make policy himself, puts him in the power of the warmaker.

northern lights

Putin is not moved to end the war when his own propaganda is repeated by the president of the United States. He cannot be enticed by a vague vision of a better world, since he has in mind his own very specific atrocity.

In Alaska, Trump reaches his personal Ultima Thula, the limits of his own personal world of magical talk. 

He faces a very simple issue: will Putin accept an unconditional ceasefire or not.

Putin has refused any such thing. The Russians propose an obviously ridiculous and provocative counter: that Ukraine should now formally concede to Russia territory that Russia does not even occupy, lands on which Ukraine has built its defenses. And then Russia can of course attack again, from a far better position. 

Putin knows that Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize. And so Putin’s obvious move is to suggest to Trump that war will end someday, and Trump will get the credit, if the two of them just keep talking (and while Russia keeps bombing).

If Trump leaves Alaska without Putin having agreed to an unconditional ceasefire, there are two paths that Trump can take. He can continue the fantasy, though it will become ever more obvious, even to his friends and supporters, that the fantasy is Putin’s.

Or Trump can make the policy that will make the war harder for Putin, and thereby bring its end closer.

The United States has not formalized its outlandish concessions to Russia, and could take them back in one press conference. The United States has the policy instruments to change the direction of the war in Ukraine, and could employ them.

Trump has threatened “serious consequences” if Putin does not accept an unconditional ceasefire. Those are words, and thus far the consequences of Trump’s words, for Russia, have been more words. This all becomes clear now, at Ultima Thule, clear to everyone. 

When Trump reaches the border of his fantasy world, what is his next step? Where will he go after Ultima Thule?

Categories Corruption, Cruelty, Democracy, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, History, Ignorance, International, Lies, Stupid, Trump, Tyranny

Becky Pringle: Hungry Children Can’t Learn

By dianeravitch
August 13, 2025 //
6

Trump and his compliant allies in Congress took pride in the One Big Ugly Bill that they passed in early July. But it offers reasons for shame, not pride. The Trump bill finances tax cuts for the richest Americans by cutting food for schoolchildren and Medicaid for millions of children.

The Republican budget bill locks in benefits for the rich and hunger for children of the poor.

Imagine laughing, applauding, and feeling proud of this heartless bill! I

President Trump Signs His "Big, Beautiful Bill" Into Law And Celebrates Independence Day At The White House

President Donald Trump, joined by Republican lawmakers, signs the One, Big Beautiful Bill Act on July 04, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill will cut federal spending on SNAP by around $186 billion over the next decade. Samuel Corum—Getty Images

Becky Pringle, President of the NEA, writes in TIME magazine about the shamefulness of this legislation.

She writes:

Hunger in America’s public schools is a real problem, and it is heartbreaking. As the head of the largest union of educators in the country, I hear stories almost daily of how kids struggle and how schools and teachers step up to fill the gaps. It’s the school community in Kentucky filling a Blessing Box with foods to help fellow students and families who don’t have enough. It’s the teacher in Rhode Island who started a food “recycling” program to ensure no food goes to waste and to give students access to healthy snacks like cheese sticks, apples, yogurt, and milk.

School meals are more than a budget line item. They are lifelines that help millions of students learn and grow. But as families across America prepare for the new school year, millions of children face the threat of returning to classrooms without access to school meals.

President Donald Trump’s newly-signed tax bill, which Republicans overwhelmingly voted to pass, slashes food assistance benefits via the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) by an estimated $186 billion over the next decade—thelargest cut in American history. These devastating reductions will result in an estimated 18 million children losing access to free school meals.

The cuts shift the cost of school lunches to the states, costing them more than they can afford when they are already grappling with tighter budgets and substantial Republican-led Medicaid cuts.Twenty-three governors warned these cuts will lead to millions of Americans losing vital food assistance.

It’s hard to understand if you’ve never faced hunger, but millions of American children do not have access to enough food each day. In a recent survey of 1,000 teachers nationwide, three out of every four reported that their students are already coming to school hungry. 

Our children can’t learn if they are hungry. As a middle-school science teacher for more than 30 years, I have seen the pain that hunger creates. It’s the student who skips breakfast so she can give it to her little brother. It’s the student who misbehaves because his stomach is rumbling. It’s the students who struggle in class after a weekend where they didn’t have a single full meal. Educators see this pain everyday, and that’s why they go above and beyond—buying classroom snacks with their own money—to support their students. 

Free school meals represent commonsense and cost-effective public policy. They don’t just prevent hunger, they help kids succeed. Decades of research reviewed by the Food Research & Action Center shows that when students participate in school breakfast programs, behavior, academic performance, and academic achievement go up and tardiness goes down. When I stand in a room of bright and curious children, it breaks my heart that some of them are going without the food they need to learn and thrive—not because America can’t afford to feed them, but because adults in Washington decided they’d rather spend the money on tax breaks for the ultra-wealthy.

The cuts from the Republican tax bill will hit hardest in places where families are already struggling the most, especially in rural and Southern states where school nutrition programs are a lifeline to many. In Texas, 3.4 million kids, nearly two-thirds of students, are eligible for free and reduced lunch. In Mississippi, 439,000 kids, 99.7% of the student population, were eligible for free and reduced lunch during the 2022-2023 school year.

These are not abstract numbers. These are real children who show up to school eager to learn but are instead distracted by hunger and uncertainty about when they will eat again. America’s kids deserve better. 

The National School Lunch Act of 1946 laid the foundation that public schools are places where children can receive a free breakfast and lunch each day. This shouldn’t be a partisan issue. For decades, Republican and Democratic administrations alike expanded school lunch programs, operating under the shared understanding that no child should go hungry at school in the richest country in the world.

But the extreme right wing of today’s Republican Party has walked away from that moral consensus—ripping away these programs to give another tax break to billionaires.

The Trump Administration’s authoritarian blueprint outlined in Project 2025 takes the anti-public education attacks even further by attempting to gut the Department of Education and to send tax dollars to private schools, and promoting ideologically-driven book bans and classroom censorship.

And now, as the Trump Administration and its allies work to destroy public education, they also have attempted tointimidate the National Education Association and our 3 million educators. They know we are powerful and vocal advocates for students and a formidable opponent to their attacks on public education. Last month, the relentless efforts of organized educators and our allies got the Trump Administration to release $7 billion in education funds it had tried to withhold.

Together, we will fight forward: for our vision where every student attends a safe, inclusive, supportive, and well-resourced public school, which includes nutritious meals for all students regardless of race or place. 

We are educators. We don’t quit. We will continue to engage with school boards, town halls, state legislatures, and Congress to fight for students. Public education does not belong to politicians trying to dismantle it. It is for every student, parent, and educator who understands it has the power to transform lives.”

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Cruelty, Ethics, Evil, Extremism, Fascism, Funding, Health, Poverty, Trump
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